Balta1701

QUOTE (danman31 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 02:29 PM) Seems weird. The waiver trade period has passed and there seems to be no reason the Sox would need to take Egbert off the 40-man. What's the deal? I don't know everything but I'm guessing it's time to start thinking about the rule 5 draft in early December. There's probably a couple guys in the minors who are eligible if we don't put them on the 40 man.

QUOTE (MattZakrowski @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 01:47 PM) Adam Dunn You need to beat the price equivalent of 2 draft picks and a full season of Dunn. That's a hefty price.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 01:59 PM) Well that is not good. But I understand why those decisions were made, I think. I guess my take is, the best way to address this is to legislate election reform so that businesses and citizens are on an even playing field - but take money out of the equation entirely. If a max contribution amount per person and per business at some flat rate won't work for that legally, then the only alternative is to go fully publically financed. This is one of those cases where I am 100% OK with the government taxing more - funding elections. Make people achieve bar levels by signatures and other non-financial methods to get on ballots, do layered run-offs if necessary, etc. For even more fun, a fully public financed campaign could be plausible, but you also couldn't ban anyone from going the other way, just like candidates nowadays who are well funded will drop out of the partially-public financed system during the actual election. Thus, if Goldman Sachs wanted to run a candidate for an office, even in a publicly financed system, they could spend as much as they wanted on that race. So imagine...Henry Paulson versus some candidate...Paulson funded by Goldman Sachs...Using the bailout money they convinced the government to give them to pay for that candidate. The only way to legitimately do anything about that would be to amend the constitution to say that money does not equal speech and corporations do not equal people.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 01:57 PM) If that happens I will seriously consider moving to Canada. The Canadian border, sponsored by Rent-a-fence.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 01:48 PM) Explain? I've been covering this in the Dem thread. Basically, the logic is this; In the 1880's, the Supreme Court declared that Corporations have all the same rights as people. In the 1960's, the Court ruled that money = speech, and thus buying ads and giving to politicians was a form of free speech. The logic of those decisions suggests that corporations should be able to spend whatever they want on political campaigns. And it sure looks like the Court is going to do exactly that; there is a case before them where a corporate-funded entity wanted to release an anti-Hillary movie before teh 2008 primaries, the FEC said no, and that case is now before the Court. Based on the oral arguments, it seems like the court is apt to overturn ALL campaign finance regulations for corporations. Basically, a corporation will be able to literally sponsor a candidate. Stephen Colbert's Doritos funded campaign in 2008 would be perfectly legal. The Obama Campaign, sponsored by Citigroup. Raytheon presents the Sarah Palin super-happy funtime hour. Literally. Furthermore, until someone brings a similar case regarding individual campaign contribution limits...it's also fairly likely that for a time, the individual contribution limits may exist while the corporate limits may be gone. So, therefore, corporations will actually count more than individual people.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 12:27 PM) But isn't it 30 miles across the shore line as in my rudimentary drawing? I'm talking out in the middle. But if he can see chicago, he can also see anything that is 30 miles in any direction.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 08:37 AM) Off topic but how come there aren't a ton of giant wind turbines in the middle of the great lakes? Because the federal regulatory system for wind farm development has been an abject disaster for the last 10 years. Subsidies exist one year, are promised for future years, then vanish, then reappear. Projects get started then go bankrupt when the subsidy system changes and all the investors pull out, then have to start from scratch a couple years later when the regulatory environment changes again. Then you throw in fossil fuel volatility and the lack of a price on carbon or pollution, and the fact that the lakes themselves are an easy resource for water for fossil fuel plants, and there's just not been any way to get a firmly established program. Then you have years of legal cases tied up because some rich family in Massachusetts doesn't want their view spoiled (you can guess the name of the family) and every wind farm project in the country winds up tied up because if the feds will listen to a NIMBY case when its backed by the right Senator that sets precedent for the rest of the country. If it was ever actually done, there's enough wind on those lakes that if you harvested it, you could power the midwest forever. But it's a symptom of our broken state and national politics that none are there.

That's what a new stadium will do for you. If you were Mauer, would you take that deal? It's still probably a hometown discount if the Yankees think you'll stick at catcher.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 12:12 PM) Technically businesses get basically the same set of rights and rules has humans. And they shouldn't.

Just keep coming up with cutesy terms like that cubs.

Another way to look at it...who do you think has the best shot to beat the Yankees in a 5 game series, if that's your thing? If I'm the Yankees, I'd be scared to death of facing Verlander and Jackson in NY, followed by Robertson and Verlander in Detroit, and then Jackson again in NY. That's the kind of pitching onslaught that could leave the best offense wondering what happened.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 06:25 AM) And it would have to be something big. You know the type of people that almost relected Ted Stevens after his conviction? The same mentality of people vote for King Richie the second here in Chicago. NSS hit in on the head. Laws be damned, he takes good care of us. There's one other way to look at it. Yes, the city is a pretty corrupt place under the emperor. But would some random mayor wind up having a more or less corrupt place if the emperor was replaced? Not like it's the best solution...but the power that the emperor has probably also acts to keep things under control...because you don't want him angry at you.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 08:53 AM) Yeah, I'm a big fan of a distributed solar system where individual homes and businesses are incented (viat tax rebates and what not) to buy panels and contribute to the +/- net grid system. You should familiarize yourself with the German "Feed-in tariff" model. Despite a fairly cloudy climate, it's helped make Germany one of the world's top solar producers and has set it up well for significant renewable energy job growth over the next 10 years.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:50 PM) You do realize that your drunken plan will be better then what comes out of the halls of economists everywhere, right? "Housing prices never go down!" "AAA ratings!"

Wait a second, health insurers have an anti-trust exemption? Why?

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 07:25 PM) I guess the authorities were posing as "terrorists" trying to talk him out of doing his thing - they then delivered the intert explosives, gave him the cell phone to detonate, and he hit the send button. It's a damn good thing they got to him before the bad guys did or we'd have a few hundred or a thousand people dead today. There appears to have been a totally separate one aimed at a Federal building in Springfield, ILL that was also broken up in an identical manner.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 07:03 PM) Look no further than the Jeffersonian Utopian Farmer to get the idea of what the framers were going for. I know times have changed, but the big picture shouldn't need to. And no where in the Constitution did it say that the government could expand the states by purchasing a large tract of land for sale from France, but one Jefferson did just that.

I want a complete FDIC situation, where everyone with over 100k in deposits (they hadn't raised that limit at the time) gets wiped out and we all start from scratch with the FDIC as our only bank. That'd rule.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 02:37 PM) If Chicago gets them, the support will skyrocket (imo). I just think many people dont want to be upset if Chicago doesnt get them. It's also just like anything else out there in politics...the longer something's hanging out there and being debated, the worse its polling numbers get.

To both sides here, my response is to urge caution. There's so little information out there so far, deliberately, that taking any political conclusion is going to lead you down a dangerous path. There are so many examples, even recently. Am I the only one who recalls how Barack Obama's thugs carved that backwards B in to the woman's face last year? And then, yeah... Or, alternatively, how an anti-abortion protestor was killed just a few weeks ago? This could easily be a killing for political motives. Or, it could easily be that someone decided to rob the victim and thought he could throw the authorities off on the wrong path by making it look political. Here's how I think you should look at it...if you think that Beck et al. are doing nothing wrong, that's fine. All I'll ask is what do you do if someone shoots up a building while screaming Beck's name? Or whatever. Do you guys think Beck is not playing with fire? I thing he is. If you think he's not, then tell me why. Alternatively, to those who are already jumping on this as an example of what Beck has unleashed...what happens when it turns out the "B" was backwards for a reason?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 12:06 PM) Which solution are you referring to? Having everyone who's not the government and in control of the courts ban malpractice claims.

QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 11:28 AM) He better hope the park holds up. Why? If something genuinely needs refurbishing some level of the government will wind up stuck with the bill anyway.

Somehow there's an argument for universal health care in there...

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 11:02 AM) At the same time, its pretty dangerous long term to have something like 60-65% of this country's deposits tied up in 4-5 institutions. Especially when those banks believe they have an implicit government guarantee that if every bet they make goes bad, they won't lose money. What would you do in Vegas if you were guaranteed you would only lose $1000 no matter how much you bet?

QUOTE (CanOfCorn @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 09:50 AM) Yeah...that's what I was thinking. Plus, he's a poor man's Sean Casey. Not bad if you have enough sluggers around him, but if you get rid of Paulie, I'm not sure Nick Johnson is the best replacement. He's Sean Casey in an interesting sense though...Casey has a couple seasons of .900ish OPS, but usually hangs around .750, especially from 2005 on. Johnson's OPS is regularly above .850, and often around .900...if he's ever healthy. He'd be a major offensive guy if he could stay healthy. Casey seems to have had some other, um, performance issues. Johnson would be a terrible replacement for Konerko; you'd need another 1b to take up 500 at bas.t