Balta1701

QUOTE (SouthsideDon48 @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 05:51 PM) If anything, I compare the way the Diamondbacks gave up Quentin to how we traded Chris Young to the Diamondbacks. Really? Chris Young was hurt and undervalued when the DBacks traded for him?

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 05:36 PM) overall taxation including fees, sales tax, state income tax and such is a better way to look at it. raising the state income tax by 50% in Illinois obviously raises the total tax burden for a state resident. from your cited wiki page and we all know that has fixed their budget issues You JUST undermined your own data! You told me how overall taxation was a better way to look at it, and then you cited California's Income tax level to point out its budget problems!

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 05:35 PM) How does a guy put up a near 1.000 OPS against right handed pitching for 5 months if he's done? Don't get that one. Wrigley Field?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:26 PM) Balta's never once struck me as an Owens fanboy. Is it because he doesn't rant and rave about how much bad Owens sucks at every chance? Not really the same thing. If Owens could hit .290 and steal at a 75% clip, I think the numbers said he could have been as effective for us as Podsednik was in early 2005, because that's exactly what Pods was doing. He's patient enough, takes walks, and would be all over the basepaths. His numbers in 2007 suggested he might be able to do that in the big leagues. Now, he's 0/the spring in SB's still right? And he's hitting around .220. I can take no slugging from him if he's giving me OBP and moving himself in to scoring position. He's doing neither of the things I said he needed to do. He's getting a totally fair chance right now. He can have another chance at AAA this season if he keeps struggling. All I want with these guys is for them to get a fair chance. That's all I asked for Anderson...a fair chance at the position. That's all I wanted to see for Owens. He's gotten it, he's crapping his pants, that's all I needed to see. As long as we make decisions based on baseball, and not other things...I'm content.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 05:16 PM) Uh huh. These people are cockroaches. That's pretty much my view of them - they're bred to hate. But ok, whatever. Andf I'm not saying I'm better then them with my opinion. Given the choices of getting things from them or letting them have a better life then they had in the "free world", I vote the cockroach effect. Stomp and ask questions later. Do we have to keep going to 24 references? (The 12 year old kid with the AK repeating "Kill the cockroach" from last fall comes to mind there) Anyway...do whatever you want to them. Just give them a trial first and make it part of their sentence. We're better than them, let's stop acting like we're not.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 05:06 PM) I'm sorry but these people don't deserve s***. These f***ers want to kill people, and nothing but... and you're worried about their rights. Please. As agent Moss said to Jack Bauer, it's the rules that make us better.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:47 PM) We just had an unplanned fire drill in the dorm. Judging by the looks I got outside apparently, people think it’s weird for a person to quickly gather his valuable possessions, put them in a backpack, and book it out of the building,. If your dorm is anything like mine were, yeah, that's weird. Because we got so many damn fire drills that actually thinking there was a fire was insanity.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:14 PM) Yeah, I know, I'm torn though. Next time, if you really need to beat someone, just make sure you do it until he's dead. Save everyone the heartburn later. Yeah...at least then we can appropriately bring charges against the person who killed them.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:15 PM) I need some of the crack that dude's on, or whatever the hell hallucenations he's having. This guy is the best thing to happen to the Democrats in like ever. "Mike Ditka used to tell people to strap it up. You start games off by telling people to strap it down. Which should I do, strap it up or down? DJ: "Whatever you do, just don't strap it on" (10 seconds or so of silence. I imagine the look on Hawk's face). "We got another email here..."

Fascinating. Over the last 30 years, Lake Michigan's ice cover in the winter has declined significantly. Having the lake exposed to the atmosphere all year round has led to increased evaporation and more moisture leaving its watershed area. This has led to a drop of a full foot in lakelevel over the past few years. Superior is having severe lake level problems as well. That's an interesting mechanism. Some studies seem to predict up to 8 feet drops in lake level this century from this effect.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:13 PM) Contracts are contracts. What's the mechanism to fix the mortgages? Judges. Courts. Bankruptcy. People lost their homes. Um, you do realize that the exact law I was making an issue of was one that would allow bankruptcy courts to rewrite mortgages, something that they're not allowed to do right now? That's the law that led to Santelli's whole pre-planned tea party rant.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:12 PM) In fairness to AIG, I have to ask, are the execs getting the bonuses part of the insurance division or the financial division? Because the insurance division is golden, it's the financial division that's f***ed everything for the entire company. Bottom line, not everyone that works at AIG sucks. Overall it's both if you count the $450 million total. A few of the very, very top people have agreed to give up their bonuses because the Feds could probably make them individual scapegoats. There seems to be about $175 million in this batch going directly to the Financial Products division. Also...couple other points. If the government can cut costs and increase profitability of AIG's insurance products division...at some point post-crisis the government is going to sell it off. Breaking down these contracts with them and making the salary for these millionaires go down will likely increase the value of that division when it is sold off to some holding company a few years down the road. And secondly...something like 500,000 in the financial industry are already out of work, IIRC. You think these guys are going to resign if their pay is cut? Right now is the most leverage the higher-ups in the financial industry have had to cut operating costs in the last few decades. If the financial industry were actually all about returning profits to shareholders, that would be the next step for every one of these companies. Of course, it's long since past that point, but in an ideal capitalist world it would be what would be happening everywhere.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 04:10 PM) of course, the newly appointed head of AIG used the tired "best and brightest" argument again today. Did they actually use that phrase? The phrase that described the cabinet of John F. Kennedy, the guys like Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, etc., who organized and led that small conflict in southeast Asia?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 03:57 PM) And f*** Abu Zubaydah. Just remember...the best chance he has at getting out of prison is the fact that they beat him senseless.

Christ, it gets better. He actually told people to violate one of the 2 quotes I've had in my sig since 2005!

This is really creative. I wonder if this could be written well enough to work.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 03:54 PM) It's their right. They only modify the contracts (concessions) on mutual agreement. They COULD choose to not renegotiate. And MG () would have to pay until otherwise stated. And you provided the example I was trying to think of in response to NSS. Bankruptcy is the means to get rid of contracts like this. They would have to decalre bankruptcy before they were paid out. Guess what? AIG is "too big to fail", so they have to honor the contracts. And if $90+ billion of the money made its way to banks, now we see why AIG was too big to fail. Of course, they were. So...you guys have given us an argument about moral hazard and why we can't fix all those mortgages right? If you're head of a company and you know you're teetering on bankruptcy...you've got 2 options. You can either try to fix things and struggle along, and maybe have money you've been paid already grabbed by the company's creditors if things do go bad, but at least you do the best you can to save it. Otherwise, you can run the company so hard in to the ground that systemic risk means that it can't be allowed to fail. If you do that, you get several hundred million dollars in rewards guaranteed. Which would you do?

Guess who. He'd so have been fooled by the vikings.

Link You know, at some point in the next couple years, someone in the international community, maybe even the ICC, is going to actually bring charges against the Bush/Cheney team for this. It's going to be interesting to see how the Obama Administration handles them.

WaPo. The House Democrats are currently holding up an ethics investigation of Congressman Murtha, I believe using a rule-weakening change instituted by the Republicans to protect Tom Delay. This of course, needs to stop. I encourage right wing ranting and raving at this point.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 02:48 PM) They made their contracted targets. Whatever those were. If they made them, whatever they were, they should get the money, screwed up or not. So, in your opinion, if there was a company called, lets say, "Motors General", and they were in financial trouble and asking the government for a bailout, and they had workers who were part of a union, let's call them the Associated Auto Workers, and the company asked them to make concessions in-between contract negotiations so that the company did not go in to bankruptcy, you would advise the Union to say "Absolutely not, we will not renegotiate contracts unless you go in to bankruptcy and a judge forces us to do so."

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Mar 14, 2009 -> 05:35 PM) Derrick Rose vs Chris Paul... That alone makes me want to see the game tonight. One PG from this game talking about the other...

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 11:13 AM) Thing is, unless the Union capitulates to the players giving up blood samples several times a year, and those samples are frozen and retested as technology advances, there will always be doubts about Pujols and everybody else. This is unfortunate for those who stayed clean. They can regain the trust of the avid fan if they do this, but the casual fan (most of them) won't care that much anyway, as evidenced by growing attendance through this era. Until they do, the record book and HOF are a hollow mockery of what they used to stand for. The problem with blaming the players union for making the players look bad by raising a cloud of suspicion over all the players is...the players union represents the players! In other words...the clean players are willing to make themselves look bad to protect the dirty players. That's why the taint (heh) affects them all. They asked for it.

The last 2 words the Phillies wanted to hear together... "Hamels. Elbow".

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 08:09 AM) Why are you surprised about Owens? People seem to think he's some 21 year old up and comer when he's approaching 30. Because usually guys don't fall off this quickly before they hit 30, especially with very few miles on the tires.