Balta1701

Can we bean Billy Butler just because?

QUOTE (fathom @ May 29, 2009 -> 06:35 PM) Beckham went 2-3 with an error tonight. Fields is 2/3 with 0 errors.

Josh, if Sidney Ponson makes you look bad I'll drive you to Charlotte myself.

2/3, 2 runs scored, 2 2b for Anderson. I'm so not looking forward to Wise playing the next 3 days as punishment.

I haven't gotten the impression we're losing a lot of games because of Corky Miller.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 29, 2009 -> 06:13 PM) Yeah, in all honesty, the best chance for the Sox to have a dynamic offense is Beckham at 2b, Alexei at SS, and Fields at 3b (in the next 2-3 years) The Key for that to work is 30 HR from Fields.

QUOTE (Friend of Nordhagen @ May 29, 2009 -> 06:01 PM) I like Getz. But if he can't bunt, he should be in Charlotte. We have a pretty good infielder on his way up in AAA currently playing 3b...

QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 29, 2009 -> 04:54 PM) Forget the David Duke comments, however, she does base in part her opinions on "reverse-discrimination" (it's bad term - too cliche but I get why it's being used). You can't deny it. I'd like to hear you back it up.

QUOTE (TitoMB345 @ May 29, 2009 -> 03:12 PM) Yeah, it's very exciting.. I just hope he knows how much we are counting on him to BE that guy. Depending on what you mean by "That guy" I'm not sure we are. We're counting on him to be a force...but not an MVP. We're still holding Quentin, Danks, D2: the Mighty Danks, Floyd, Buehrle, Viciedo, Allen, and so on. If he's just a really solid player for 10+ years, I could totally live with that.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ May 29, 2009 -> 03:25 PM) wasn't the knock on Quentin in AZ that he was injury prone? Not necessarily injury prone...but he would never have been available had it not been for an injury. Because he was injured he couldn't do much for the 2007 season, and that led to them resigning Byrnes.

QUOTE (Disco72 @ May 29, 2009 -> 03:03 PM) On your edit - not entirely as the tax systems encourage different things as a result of their focus on earnings versus consumption. True in the simplest form...but at a deeper level...you still need to raise x amount of revenue, which means that at some point you still pay the same taxes. If it encourages savings...hell, right now that's a terrible idea and the Fed is desperately trying to find ways to discourage saving.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 29, 2009 -> 02:24 PM) Maybe he was abused by a hispanic woman as a child. Whatever, someone says something that hateful, they deserve to simply be ignored by thinking people. This nomination is really exposing the battle in the Republican side. On one hand, Limbaugh and Gingrich are out there saying she's a racist, she should withdraw her name, she's a reverse-david-duke, etc. On the other hand, John Cornyn, Michael Steele, and a few others are literally saying they're going to far and it really is going to hurt them long term. The battle lines between the people who'd like to win an election at some point in the next decade and the Limbaugh side really is flaring up hard over this nomination. It'll be interesting to see if Cornyn (head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, thus a guy who needs Limbaugh et al.'s help for fundraising) will be out apologizing and kowtowing soon, or if he stays the course on this one.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 29, 2009 -> 02:24 PM) Sure, that seems likely. I didn't say this was GOING to happen, I was illustrating how it COULD be done properly. Deal. If we're going to do it properly...making it so that somehow avoiding some version of "Tax shelters" and all the other crazy things inserted in to the current income tax system is the only way that it can work. Because otherwise, it turns in to something just as complicated as the income tax system, except different people hire the tax preparers. Edit: but then again, if you could somehow cut back on the loopholes and the deductions in the income tax, you pretty much make the reason for switching taxes go away anyway.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 29, 2009 -> 02:21 PM) Whenever I see someone that over-the-top in their hatred of some specific group, it seems painfully obvious to me they have some issues of their own to work out in that dynamic. Someone who looks upon women in such a foul way, most likely is either a repressed gay man, or someone who feels great fear about women. I also like how he calls the Spanish language "Illegal alien".

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 29, 2009 -> 02:08 PM) Slippery slope? Only if you allow it to happen. YOU may wind up with that, but one does not HAVE to. Give me a campaign finance overhaul first and I'll be happy to believe that our Congress won't go that way. That's simply how our government works. When it can put a 50% tax on something it doesn't like and a 0% tax on something that does give it a ton of money, right now it's going to do so

Between Newt Gingrich calling her un-American and Rush Limbaugh comparing her to David Duke, you'd think it'd be hard to determine a winner for the most patently offensive statement so far from the right wing about Justice Sotomayor. But no, pardoned criminal G. Gordon Liddy has a solid grip on that position for now. H. Christ man, do you actually listen to the bile that spews from your mouth? I'm not even going to blockquote his words, take a look at the hyperlink if you want to figure it out.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 29, 2009 -> 01:43 PM) I've seen this criticism of flat, vat or sales taxes a lot. But it can be addressed quite easily, and in fact some states and localities do exactly that - the rate can be very low or zero on things like clothing, store-bought food, necessities like that, with higher rates against other items. This is done all over. Not really an obstacle, IMO. The real problem is that once you start exempting things from the tax...you wind up just begging it to turn in to something like our income tax. Our income tax system is ridiculously complicated not because an income tax, or even a progressive income tax is very complicated on its face...it's complicated by the shear number of deductions we've written in as a method of rewarding favored industries or adding a distortion to the economy in some way. We offer massive deductions for things like business expenses, homeownership, medical care, etc. There's simply no reason to assume that if you switched to a VAT or added in a VAT that within 5 years it wouldn't be vastly more complicated than the income tax because each Congressman gets to insert an exemption for his or her favorite campaign contributor or method to help his or her district. If you want a way to think about it...ask this question...how long will it take for them to realize that giving a VAT break to ethanol production would be a big benefit to corn farmers?

NSS how have you not bought one of those yet?

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 29, 2009 -> 12:53 PM) The Royals could give the same quote about the Sox in not taking our anemic hitting team for granted. I'm not optimistic w/out CQ's bat in the lineup this weekend. We've basically been without CQ's bat for about a month or more now.

QUOTE (Texsox @ May 29, 2009 -> 12:05 PM) That makes sense from the WS perspective. However, if I'm the next GM, I'm thinking they were willing to give up that before, but it couldn't get done, they will offer at least that, plus more, or receive less, to get the next deal done. I'm certainly not going to allow them a better deal. The cats out of the bag. Makes the next negotiation that much tougher. Does Houston necessarily know who the PTBNL were or at least who was on the list? With that contract, you could interest me in something like Oswalt for Poreda and Richard straight up...no money exchanging hands...but you're simply not getting extra young pitching talent off of me...but with the Peavy trade, extra young talent was hidden as 2 PTBNL's.

Man...that's an awful lot of money he's owed. I know we have money coming off the books, but for a guy his age, that's steep. There's going to have to be cash coming back if they want a package anywhere close to what we offered for Peavy.

Pete Visclosky (D-IN, 1st district) has disclosed that he has been subpoenaed in the investigation in to PMA (the Murtha case).

Have a day, Dewayne.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ May 29, 2009 -> 09:31 AM) I can't stand watching people drink milk with incompatible foods. For instance my sister always has a tall glass of milk with her Chinese food. *gag* If the Asian cuisine is of a variety that has some spice to it, that's a workable combination.