Balta1701

A thing of beauty. In their rush to sell off as much land as possible for oil and mineral exploration, the Bush Admin. has been holding auctions through the BLM. An environmental activist of some sort managed to get himself in to one of these auctions, and while he didn't win most of the leases he bid on, was able to drive up the price paid by the exploration companies by several million dollars because they had to outbid him. The whole idea of an unrigged auction of course would be that it should drive prices to an equilibrium; if someone is willing to pay more for a parcel of land, they ought to pay it, unless there's already some sort of understanding that this is how much you'd be paying. And since it's pretty clear there was some sort of understanding beforehand, the people wanting to buy the land are outraged, because they had to pay more than they feel they should have. And of course, the BLM, which would gain the money and therefore have slightly more money for the taxpayers...is offering refunds. This guy exposed like a half dozen different levels of corruption in the auction process, and if anyone gets prosecuted it'll be him. Whopee!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 24, 2008 -> 09:49 AM) Too many scams for on-line gambling. I watched some expose on current on line gambling and people are getting played. Just because things aren't being done correctly/legally in our current system doesn't mean that it's impossible for things to work correctly/legally in a totally different system. Part of the reason why these online gaming things are loaded with scams right now is the fact that they're forced to go to great lengths (run outside the country, etc) just to exist. There is therefore little regulation of the fairness of those games, because they've already ducked out of the country to places that aren't going to regulate their right to exist.

This is all I have to add to this discussion. .cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;} The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c A Colbert Christmas: Willie Nelson Sings Colbert at Christmas Colbert Christmas DVD Green Screen Bill O'Reilly Interview

Speaking of pardons...we're going to spend a chunk of late January hearing again about the Mark Rich pardon as a way of going after the President's choice for Attorney General. With that in mind, I'm at least going to use our wonderful Dem only thread to point out this friendly guy who was one of Mr. Bush's pardons yesterday. So, to summarize, guy commits housing related fraud in the middle of a housing debacle. Guy's family makes large donation to the RNC, their first donation ever. A few months later, guy is pardoned by the President. I'm sure this is of course less corrupt than the Rich pardon, because you know, when Bush does it, it's always different

BTW, when this is inked, the Yankees will officially hold baseball's 4 largest contracts (in terms of total value)

A slideshow of other shirtless presidents.

QUOTE (chunk23 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 12:53 PM) I was just going to ask that. KW screwed up by trading Swisher so early. Really? He pilfered a couple guys from the Yankees for a guy that it turns out the Yankees didn't need at all, and settled his salary issues quite early. He's now in a position where he still has batting bullets to fire if he wants. I was just saying the opposite about him and Swisher, that he did well by getting guys from the Yankees before they realized they didn't need to make that deal.

QUOTE (SoxFanForever @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 12:49 PM) I'm sure he will play LF, RF, DH and 1B to spell guys. In other words, by getting to the deal early, KW swiped some reasonable talent from the Yankees and dumped some salary to give them a guy that it turns out they won't really need. Nicely done Kenny.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 12:44 PM) I'm still not sold on Flowers sticking at catcher. Even in that case, I think it makes little sense to pile up catching prospects until he proves he can't handle that spot. Simple way to look at it IMO: what would you rather have for the next 2 years. Someone else to fill the 4/5 starter role, or someone to fill the backup catcher role behind AJ if Flowers can't cut it?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 12:38 PM) cnn.com's breaking news band says this right now: These are somewhat the normal ones. The big ones would be anyone who might have been employed by the CIA or the Army or the DOD (i.e. the people who ran the torture program), anyone who ran the NSA program, Libby, Stevens, or any of the folks involved in the various bribery scandals surrounding Stevens, Cunningham, and Abramoff. Those would be the ones I'd expect to see tomorrow night or on a day like that if they're going to do them.

Who hits the first home run in the new Yankee Stadium?

History says that the last time these people were in office and they wanted to pardon a bunch of their criminal buddies so that they could return 8 years later and run this country further in to the ground, they did so on December 24th. Just something to watch as we come through the media shutdown period that starts tomorrow.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 12:26 PM) Being reported on the bottom line on ESPN. I didn't see a link on espn.com yet. Link. 8 years, greater than $170.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 11:18 AM) Wonder what it would take to pry one of the Rangers' plethora of quality catching prospects? Now that we've used one of our bullets to acquire Flowers, it makes little sense to acquire a quality prospect when all we need is a reasonable 1-2 year solution as a backup.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 09:51 AM) That is definitely a good point about BA. He's in a tough spot right now. I was just thinking more in terms of the team's best interests. Players do get into these situations sometimes. Talented players are either blocked by other guys, or are given only one shot and fail, but seem likely to do better if given another chance. The question we have to care about is...what is better for the team? I can make the case for BA over the other guys very simple...it comes down to money. If we're already running in to our budget, then looking at this roster and how the offense is currently constructed...I think that our team will still score enough runs, especially if one of our 2b contenders can fill the leadoff spot. It's still loaded with power. Maybe even more than last year if people stay healthy and Fields steps back in to his 07 form. If we lose some performance offensively by putting Anderson in CF, at least we pull off some defense there. If we're going to spend any additional money though, there's still 1 spot on the roster that just flat out scares me, and that's the 4/5 pitching spots. Experience suggests we'd probably do all right subbing in rookies/Broadway in to the 5 spot and letting them fight it out. But having 2 slots like that is going to worry me until we get to the season and Cooper does what Cooper does with those guys. Of course, none of this matters because Anderson will never jump past Owens barring injury. But if we're going to risk any more money, I'd rather find a scrap heap guy to give us an ERA of 5.5-6 out of the 5 spot than sign another CF.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 09:56 AM) I see only the still, and I THINK its Bush Sr blowing chunks in the far east. Is it something else, Balta? Yes, that was GHWB vomiting on the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister. I just thought it was an entertaining addendum to a discussion of insulting foreign leaders through odd actions.

QUOTE (jenks45monster @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 09:43 AM) This is pretty scary to think about. All of these nuts killing innocent people. Seems to happen everywhere now: high schools, colleges, highways, Pizza Hut. What the hell is happening to this world? And yet, IIRC, the total crime statistics have been marching downwards for nearly 20 years now.

I still don't know how the Bears won that game.

QUOTE (The Critic @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 08:59 AM) Yeah, the fun is in the complaining, but not so much in the facts leading up to the complaining. If complaining was an Olympic sport, Michael Phelps would be eating my dust. Typically swimming kicks up very little dust. The water tends to keep the dust down. Is that complaining?

The Minnesota Canvassing board today allocated the remainder of the challenged/dropped challenged ballots, and as of this moment, Al Franken unofficially leads by 48 votes. There are 2 remaining legal challenges that must be settled. The Coleman campaign is arguing that there is a group of ballots that were counted twice on election day because of various issues (discussed at length by Silver here). The Franken campaign is arguing that there are 1000 or so absentee ballots that were improperly excluded in the count.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 08:41 AM) If an American spit at the leader of Russia or China I would absolutely expect jail time. The respective countries would probably say it was a humiliating act to their country and was a sign of disrespect. And, despite what may be the feelings of the majority of the population, the government would feel compelled to send a message that such an action is not tolerated and that leaders of other countries must be shown respect and courtesy when on our soil and in the presence of our leaders. I would be shocked if the person did not spend a bit of time on jail.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 22, 2008 -> 08:18 PM) Jim Cramer needs to be fired, man. Why do people listen to him? I don't care if he gets you ratings, the man is probably hurting people's lives. "SEARS is great man, go buy sears!" "The subprime mortgage crisis is a load of hooey" "Don't move your money out of bear stearns!" (when market is at 8300) "Get all your money out now, get it all out" Unbelievable. edit: also, Foreign Policy probably should've added a bloop of their own too...ha Jim Cramer interestingly is a guy who makes enough predictions for you to do a statistically significant analysis of his work. Turns out you'd make more money if you didn't listen to him.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 08:58 AM) That isn't the impression I got at all. I don't think these collisions happen all the time in our atmosphere. Balta? Yea, they pretty much do.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 08:33 AM) Take note, ozzie, most baseball fans feel this way! There is nothing wrong with having a righty/lefty specialist and using them to retire a key righty or lefty.

QUOTE (LosMediasBlancas @ Dec 22, 2008 -> 03:06 PM) Crazy. So how cold does it get there in winter?? There's been 1 time since I've been here that it actually frosted over during the night, but then again I'm up about 900 feet above sea level and tucked in between 2 mountain ranges.. Typically though the Pacific wind patterns will perch temperatures here (and for that matter, in San Francisco, where I was last week) at about 35-40 degrees and up.