Balta1701

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 05:10 PM) Well I did work up a sweat from chewing on those granules of limestone or whatever that crap was made of. At least it was a solid antacid then.

That's an impressive wave.

Gameday Audio for the Dodgers broadcast right now? Vin Scully. That brought a smile to my face.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 04:53 PM) im sure it goes both ways. sox fan says wrigley is a dump, cub fan says USCF sucks, sox fan says Zambrano is not an ace, cub fan says buehrle is not an ace. Sox fan says 2005 and walks away smiling.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 04:45 PM) Meh.. it's early. And Viciedo isn't exactly a plate discipline stud, so you'll be getting your hopes up for nothing. Power (OPS) is what I want to see out of him in that bandbox. The OBP will be respectable if his average is up. I want to see his strikeout numbers going down.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 04:39 PM) I always hated Captain Crunch as a kid. It seemed like it had some weird residue on it. Possibly petroleum. That was just from you sweating.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 04:08 PM) Guess how much the highest paid teacher in Illinois makes: http://www.championnews.net/salaries.php (bottom left, can't link you to the actual page unfortunately) Clearly this isn't representative of every teacher, but what teacher is worth that much money? I didn't click on every link in that list, but every one that I clicked on was not a teacher; it was a chief administrator/superintendent or a chief business officer.

G!

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 12:56 PM) "Because that would be both logical and reasonable.” "Because I think we all know that the problem with our education system right now is that teachers are flat out paid too much. A dramatic benefit cut for them is fully justified".

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 12:55 PM) I think the US will emerge as a technological force when it comes to alternative energy in the future, despite it looking like the opposite. I'm sure plenty of money is being spent here on these things, we just don't know about them yet. It is, at some level. The problem is...the Chinese government has actively decided to spend 2x as much as the entire U.S., both public and private, has done, because they want to win this race and they see an opening. Other countries are doing the same thing. That's how Germany is so far out ahead of the rest of the world in solar panels, for example; they saw an opportunity a few years ago and have invested heavily in it.

I think my argument is...they're not breaking rules. They've whittled away at the Depression-era regulations so much that they're able to keep these things off their balance sheets legally, without breaking any of the rules. IMO, the only way that arguing we're in 2010 and not in the great depression is important is that the banks have found more high-tech ways to follow the letter of the law while still being able to get around the intent...and a key element of that is that they've been writing their own rules for 30 years to allow themselves to. You can argue that I've distorted your words in places and I'll disagree, but you've explicitly argued in many places that the compensation/bonus culture is totally unimportant and I shouldn't care about it, and I don't think you can disagree with that. But right here, as far as I can tell, you just made the argument for how important it really is. Each of the companies has been wiped out. The shareholders got killed, the workers got killed. The only people who didn't get killed are the people who took their bonuses and got out early to leave the government holding the bag for the mess they made. There's a huge downside in a corporation acting like that; it destroys the corporation. There's no downside for people getting paid entirely based on short-term gains to act like that, though. Anyway, thanks for replying. I found it quite edifying.

Justice Spitzer.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 12:33 PM) It most likely won't carry over. Very true, it most likely won't carry over. Because he's now sporting a .901 OPS on the season.

If Cuba started drilling for oil off the coast of Miami and the U.S. continued a moratorium on drilling there, you'd be ok with that and wouldn't complain?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 12:03 PM) Ho hum. The sad thing is...that's the classic American attitude, and guess what it means is going to happen? Canada's going to make a fortune developing that energy source. Because they're already pumping money into doing so.

Verducci does the math on "is the extra Yankee/Red Sox game time simply due to them taking more pitches or is it their in-between at bat self-repositioning"

The great lakes are spectacular locations for wind farms.

Here's more on WaMu from the WSJ. A serious question that I'm going to direct in 2k5's direction but I'd be happy for other responses. This whole time, you've argued as far as I can tell that each and every one of these problems in the markets over the last year has come from too much regulation/the government forcing these companies to make loans that went bad. We've recently gotten reports on AIG, Lehman, and now WaMu, and the story winds up, to my eyes, being exactly the same at every single one of them. Large amounts of liabilities were kept off the books so that regulators couldn't touch them and they didn't have to be disclosed to investors. At AIG they did so through the credit default swap market, at Lehman they did so using short-term financing to make their disclosures look better, at WaMu they appear to have relied on a combination of falsehoods and bundling practices. All 3 of them were aided and abetted by the ratings agencies who were more than willing to slap the AAA seal on their crap. I can't see how there's any rational argument that "Less regulation" is the solution here. In every single case, these institutions have gone down because of things that they were doing that the regulators were forbidden from touching. They were allowed to over-leverage without having to keep sufficient collateral on the books to cover their potential liabilities, they were allowed to make assumptions that regulators weren't allowed to challenge, they were allowed to keep so much off of their books that neither regulators nor investors could actually understand what the company's situation was. At least to me, the problem at every level seems to be associated with banks being able to write the rules such that the things that bring the banks down are things that the regulators can't touch. They can't touch stuff that the banks are legally allowed to keep off the books, they can't touch stuff that the ratings agencies slap a AAA sticker on, and in every case, it's the off-the-books stuff or the stuff that can't be regulated that brought these institutions down.

Don't forget that Bynum will probably not be 100% for the Lakers.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 02:04 AM) do you remember writing this? Was there sarcasm I didn't detect in that post? Did someone else get it?

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 07:35 AM) I'm sure news of that gets around and you can avoid that company. Unless it becomes standard practice/a requirement for entry into an industry.

QUOTE (JPN366 @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 12:10 AM) There was a D-Backs scout watching our hitters tonight. Is something up??? Hudson for Upton.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 09:06 AM) I'd sure pick up the phone and ask what they wanted. I'm sure that's already happened. And based on my evaluation of the Astros front office...I'm pretty sure the response involved how many more people could be put on the island of Guam before it starts to sink

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Apr 13, 2010 -> 08:28 AM) I have a question - why was Pierre not given credit for a SB in the extra innings? They called it fielders indifference. Thing is though, it's not as if we were down 5 runs and his run didn't matter. We were up only 1. By allowing him second base it put another RISP with no outs and removed the DP and force out play. Hawk also said that they would not have gotten him even with a throw and that they were holding him on at first. Doesn't matter in the scheme of things but to me that should have been credited as a SB. That was a "you're on the road" call. The home team gets that for his stats. There was no throw or effort to make one, so they could have a point, but they were holding him on at 1b.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 12, 2010 -> 08:35 PM) The one Jays fan I know said he feels Rios is going to bounce back with the Sox and is mad the Jays gave him up for nothing. Even if Rios bounces back fully...I doubt they'll be mad to have gotten themselves rid of a contract. Just like I'm not mad that we got rid of Javy and Swisher.