Balta1701

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 22, 2009 -> 12:23 AM) LMAO, I can't believe anyone thought this team was going to contend this year. They are a total mess. There is zero leadership. You really think the problem is Leadership? Then WTF do we keep holding onto Hinrich, Miller and Salmons for?

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 22, 2009 -> 08:52 AM) I would've never imagined the blue jays were that bad... Vernon Wells was a -18.2.

So, in case you still were in the "They need to redo all those calculations because the scientists are evil!" camp, here's another version of it redone, including more data than the british Hadley Center typically does. It, of course, shows that the earth has warmed more over the last 60 years than the previous survey, not less. (The difference basically winds up coming down to how much detail you get on temperature records from the polar regions, which are screaming upwards in temperature)

Heavens to betsy.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 07:27 PM) IRAQ There's only 1 sense in which that was a failure of intelligence...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 07:42 PM) So stupidity is recession proof. Yeah, that's smart. Any chance he's a type A? I just want to feel even more intelligent by comparison.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 05:23 PM) Foreign Intelligence Really? It's entirely possible we're better at it, we're just facing a different kind of threat. 30 years ago the KGB and the Israelis appear to have thorougly broken several CIA and FBI agents, for example. Meanwhile, the ability of the government to gather electronic intelligence has likely gone up exponentially, because there's so much more electronic intelligence now and it all runs through our wires.

If you're not in this field, and you want to spend an hour or so watching a paleo-climate scientist go through the basics of the geologic side of the evidence for the interaction of CO2 and climate, here's a pretty good named lecture from last week's AGU meeting (Was supposedly standing room only). There's very little jargon and I'm happy to fill in any blanks if you have any. And yes Tex, SOB, wrong thread. Good catch. Thanks.

Checking Soxtalk

1 is easy. Regulation. Banks, food supply, labor laws, pretty much anything that if enforced would cost people money it's magically gotten worse at.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 11:19 AM) Wow. That is incredibly low compared to the rumors. At that kind of cost, I want to see the Sox interested. I think the Sox think he's a really likely bust

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 12:06 PM) I agree whole-heartedly. IMO, the absolute #1 need for 1 and 2 spots is OBP. Alexei could be 2 hitter if he walked more, but he doesn't. At least the start of this season, Beckham has to bring his OBP to the two spot. Putting him at 6th (instead of 2nd) robs him of something like 72 at bats over the course of the season and reduces RBI from PK/CQ. Alexei actually did really well at drawing walks last year, he drew 49 over the course of the full year. That's really not terrible. If it wasn't for his awful April, he hit .286 with a .342 OBP. His numbers for OBP are down because of how godawful he was in April.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 12:08 PM) The country (government)? Is that all that matters? Did they put the cap measure back in yesterday, because as of Sat. night they said it was out... quite literally, yeah, it was caught that they changed the wording late last week and the Dems jumped at that, so it's been reworded again already. Not sure how the final wording turned out, could still have issues, but that got caught.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 12:02 PM) Doesn't ban caps. They took that out at the last minute. As I said earlier regarding "cadillac plans" - they are now DOA. They're not going to collect s*** off of that. Premiums are going to go up, not down. Oh, wait, co-ops will stop that... BS. That's the lifeline - co-ops will take away from the private insurers. Y2HH, short term, insurance gets a small bone, but long term, they get screwed royally. Actually they re-inserted it after it was caught. And there's nothing wrong with cadillac plans being DOA. You know as well as I do that winds up being a huge cost savings to the country.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 11:57 AM) I work for an insurance company, and we paid nobody anything to cause riots or organize in any way. And the bill Reid has doesn't do much of anything to private insurance, either. I hope you realize that...but apparently you don't. Heh. Bans pre-existing conditions, bans lifetime caps or close to them, bans recissions, increases the medical loss ratio required for every company, attempts to limit the growth of insurance costs by imposing a tax on the cadillac plans (simple economics again), ends a number of other abuses, may increase competition between them, makes it possible for people who can't get insurance right now to actually get it without paying their entire business. Would have been really nice to get a public option for competition.

QUOTE (G&T @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 11:48 AM) According to Terry Boers and his people, the Sox did not think they would be stuck with Rios' salary. That was unplanned. And I said then...if that was true, then KW ought to have lost his job, because everyone here knew that it was highly likely the Jays would just let him walk, and a message board shouldn't know more about MLB than a GM.

QUOTE (Tex @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 11:28 AM) I realize that working without health benefits is impossible for many people. This cuts small business off from some of the best talent available. Their employees either have to have spouses with insurance, they need to pay them enough to purchase insurance at individual rates, or do without and hope. I posted the data aa few months ago...the U.S. small business community is actually significantly weaker and does much less hiring/job creation than small businesses do in Europe or in other OECD countries. Health insurance is almost certainly the reason why. You can't leave your job and go into th e individual insurance market without it costing you $20k a year for your family, you can't provide insurance to your workers because you're too small to negotiate. It's simple capitalism, really. The higher the costs are to start up a small business, the fewer you'll get.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 11:24 AM) Please do not ignore the fact that it was the dems that cut the sweetheart deal with the drug companies this time, and then protected them when they shot down the amendment to import foreign to increase price competition. They got support from big pharma for a measly 80 billion dollars, which won't help cover even 5% of this bill. I'd bet that will equate to 2% of phrama profits...probably less considering the added 40,000,000 customers they'll be getting. Oh, and this isn't over yet. The house is never going to agree to a bill without a public option. The senate is never going to agree to a bill with it. This is where politics will really rear it's ugly head and things will begin to fall to pieces. Just watch...something very close to the Senate is going to pass. THere's no stopping it now that Reid has 60, and everyone knows the Liberals are going to cave on the public option. And yes, the Dems cut a crappy sweetheart deal with the drug companies. It's a deal with the devil, but frankly, you and I both know it was necessary. There is no way the Dems could have won by taking on both the insurance companies and the drug companies. The insurance companies alone convinced how many thousands of Americans that this bill was going to kill their grandmother, put paid people out to organize riots, and did everything they could to rip the country apart to make sure it didn't pass. Double that if you include the drug industry. On the whole...cutting a crappy sweetheart deal with the drug industry to get an insurance reform bill passed still makes this a better place.

I'd be more than happy to take on the drug companies too, as would most Dems. But considering how close-run this vote already has been...the political realities say it just can't be done all at once. If we didn't have to get 60 votes, it might well have been do-able over the Filibuster. I'd love a perfect bill, but Joe Lieberman and the 40 Republcians and Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh don't want one.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 11:00 AM) Right, so instead we just give them another free pass an call it reformed! Hey, personally, I made money off of it -- I own BMY, MRK, and PFE stock...but you know what, I'd easily give it all back if they did something to keep drug prices affordable. They didn't. Instead, they attacked insurance companies and now we all act as if they were the only problem child in the health care industry. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to agree with you here...it's another part of the bill that could be a lot better, and probably will be at some point in the near future. But this is a "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" argument to me. Hell of a lot better to fix the individual insurance market now and fix the drug market later than to fix neither of them now and wait on the Republicans to fix it down the road.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 10:55 AM) What? Beckham in the heart of the order at 6 actually makes some sense. I'd rather have him there, and Ramirez at 2. Not only is it not a firing offense, its an idea a lot of people like, myself included. Now, eventually, Beckham may be a #3 hitter. But not to start the season. I could tolerate Becks hitting 6th, but that's if we sign a DH like Thome who's hitting 5th, and we're ready to move Becks up if he gets going.

You know the thing that absolutely amazes me? The reason why we're even discussing "reimporting safe drugs from overseas" is that the pro-business faction who passed the drug company bailout bill in 2003 refused to consider that an option. Don't waste time reimporting drugs. We're a bigger purchaser than any overseas government or insurance company anyway, just stop using Medicare as a drug company handout and negotiate ourselves.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 09:40 AM) New England has gotten BETTER since Weis left. But won fewer super bowls

Why is a laptop computer more modern than a desktop?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Dec 20, 2009 -> 10:52 PM) You know, Florida has an insurance co-op for hurricane insurance. Was originally priced higher than what the private companies were offfering so it would be a last resort option only, but soon after, many of the major carriers just stopped offering it in Florida all together, and now costs had risen beyond any projection they ever had. Which is of course exactly why we didn't want the co-ops, we wanted a legit strong public insurance option, or better yet just opening up Medicare for everyoen.