Balta1701

QUOTE (Texsox @ Sep 1, 2008 -> 10:24 AM) My only interest is if McCain knew this when he selected her as his running mate. On first glance, I think I would be impressed if he knew. If he didn't, it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall when he received the news. No one ever reads my links...

QUOTE (Tony82087 @ Sep 1, 2008 -> 08:54 AM) I like it. I would also like to see Getz back up. For Getz, it hasn't yet been 10 days since he was sent down.

QUOTE (Steff @ Sep 1, 2008 -> 10:06 AM) 2 different kids, 2 different pregnancies, one is a rumor, one is a fact. I see the looong stretch, but I wouldn't relate one to the other. Hopefully she has a happy healthy pregnancy and gets left alone. Here's the key, if the rumors are that the 4 month old baby actually belonged to the daughter, but the daughter is 5 months pregnant with another child, then the 4 month old can't possibly belong to the daughter. The daughter would have to have been 1 month pregnant at the time that she gave birth to the other kid for that to work out.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 1, 2008 -> 08:09 AM) That's not going to affect his average or power numbers though...only his RBI (Young and Kinsler not getting on base, that is...fatigue certainly will). Point made that he's only half the man that Carlos Quentin is and he has no blood of a god in him. It's certainly going to affect his average and power numbers whether or not there's someone on base, especially a guy like Kinsler who is 26/28 on stolen bases this year. It's probably not worth 100 points of average, but if there's a guy on first, like Kinsler, the pitcher is pitching from the stretch, he's throwing more fastballs, he's possibly even forced to throw more hittable pitches because he decides he can't walk Hamilton, etc.

QUOTE (Steff @ Sep 1, 2008 -> 10:01 AM) Not related to the rumors Jim heard. Actually, it appears that you can relate it to those rumors. Different link.

QUOTE (Steff @ Sep 1, 2008 -> 09:18 AM) No doubt a Spears fan. ETA: Jim just told me that he heard she isn't, but that there are rumors that she was and the little one that Palin claims is her son is really her grandson. Link.

So, there are starting to be some serious suggestions out there that Governor Palin wound up being picked basically by default once McCain hit the end of his list, and she really didn't get a full vetting like a normal VP pick would be.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 31, 2008 -> 06:17 PM) And this post was brought to you by the same guy who ripped McCain for not going, and praised Obama for going to the Iowa disater site... So, I can't speak for others, but at least my recollection of the flooding was that the governor of Iowa asked Senator McCain to stay away, and he refused to do so while Senator Obama listened. Senator Obama took a small photo op somewhere in Illinois, a fair distance away, while Senator McCain pushed his way in to the middle of the flooding and forced local assets to move to take care of his visit.

Gavin is rapidly becoming our stopper.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 06:36 PM) My take on Palin. Im a huge fan of the pick and I think it is going to go a long way with winning McCain the election. Im not going to debate experience because it can start and stop with Palin and Obama dont have enough for the other parties liking. I think she will get at least 20% of the exiled Hillary supporters which is huge. She will keep the right wing conservatives because of her views of gun laws, gay marriage and abortion. She has union ties which will help a lot in the swing states as well. The main thing I like about her is her attempt to stop corruption. Experience or not, having a political newcomer that is willing to take on the heads of her party in her state based on morality issues is a breath of fresh air. I would love to see what she can do running the senate. I also like that she came through on her campaign promises of lowering her salary and lowering property taxes 60%. She is also for drilling but is anti big oil which is something I think a lot of people should like. So how do you react to the state trooper firing deal?

FWIW, we now have the 2nd evacuation order issued for a major American city since the end of the civil war. The last one was the same city in 05.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 04:40 PM) I still think it was a stupid move to give Buehrle that contract... He isn't an ace like White Sox fans make him out to be. Frankly, with where contracts currently sit, he's also not paid like an ace either.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 04:03 PM) Beckett. Can we get his arm but with someone else's elbow?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 03:50 PM) What Palin has done is energized the Republican base into a bit of frenzy. But all that does is get people who were going to vote for McCain anyways want to vote for him more, which really isn't the point of a campaign when it's all said and done. I'll disagree with you on this point, because Karl Rove won 1 election by doing exactly that and narrowly lost another one.

So a question for the R voter people. ATH, no answers from you, I want to hear from the already decided McCain voters. You've now had 24 hours to chew on Sarah Palin as a VP pick. Taking all the good and the bad together, how do you feel about your ticket right now? I get the feeling that if I were a Republican I'd be really nervous about that ticket, but I'm really not qualified to give an opinion from the side of someone who thinks McCain's a good candidate.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 01:50 PM) Yeah, there wasn't anything historic about Katrina's strength. It was the flash flooding that devasted New Orleans. I recall pictures of houses literally moved from their foundation. Good luck to those levees if it's anywhere near a category 4. For the most part, it's still the same levee system that was in place 3 years ago. They added an additional barrier somewhere upriver and added some pumps that are constantly being questioned in the media, but the worries are exactly the same. That levee system was supposed to be able to take a category 3, but because of design flaws, it failed on a weak category 2 that tried to help it out immensely by dropping its strength and sending its weak side towards the city. Quite frankly, If this hits close to the city and comes ashore as a 4+, I'll be very surprised and impressed by the Corps if the levees don't fail hugely again. Maybe even more than last time.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 01:09 PM) My wife and I got married Aug 27 2005... 2 days before Katrina. I remember getting ready in my hotel room and someone was interviewing a guy on CNN who was from NY or something like that. He said "I'm gonna stay. I've never been through a hurricane before!" I bowed my head and muttered, "you dumbass" A group of us were camping at Yellowstone that week. I was the one with a little transistor radio (I used it to check the White Sox results, it was 2005)...I learned like 2 days before that it was aiming at that city, and pretty much all of us said "yup, that's it for them." The prof on the trip had visted New Orleans a few years beforehand because he didn't think he'd get many more chances.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 01:07 PM) Projected to hit as a Cat 4. Katrina was a strong Cat 3 when it hit. And NOLA is on the east side of the storm... the really bad side of a hurricane. No it wasn't. The winds in NOLA never reached anything beyond a weak category 2. The Eye hit in Alabama as a Category 3, but New Orleans only got a glancing blow. It was also helped by the fact that an eyewall regeneration event started just as the storm was hitting shore, which weakened the storm a bit. The New Orleans levee system never faced the category 3 storm strength that it was supposed to survive.

Hanna should also be scaring people right now on the Gulf Coast. It's taking aim at the Florida Keys area or southern Florida, and that's not a big enough landmass to break them up...the trend on ones like that seems to be that if it gets past Florida in tact, it hits those same super warm waters in the gulf and then takes aim for somewhere on the Gulf Coast.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 29, 2008 -> 11:21 PM) If it all happens on the same day, that'll just suck. I think that's the short definition of the End Permian event.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Aug 29, 2008 -> 10:50 PM) The more I've learned about the planet the more convinced I am we're overdue for everything. Watch Mega Disasters -- every event featured within the program is accompanied with a warning of "it's not a matter of if, but when." We're due for another Tunguska sized meteor. We're due for Yellowstone erupting. We're due for some mini ice age. We're due for some virulent strain of flu. I'm sure we're due for a Gamma Ray Burst as well. The list goes on. Part of the issue there is that some of those events aren't exactly well clocked, and we really don't have a full accounting of everything that drives them. Yes, we're due for another Tunguska style event...possibly. That depends on how many of those things there are in the area of the earth at a given time and other recent astronomical events that can change orbits. And it depends on their composition, because certain types of impactors behave differently in the atmosphere. And it depends on whether or not it hits land or the ocean when it does happen...the Pacific is pretty big and no one really cares if a comet explodes over it, if it isn't big enough to be tsunamigenic. A mini ice age? Well, um, I don't think you have to worry about that. Even in the last 10,000 years, humanity got really, really good at keeping a stable climate, because every time we drove a small climate shift, a lot of humans died out. And now, well, there won't be any ice ages happening any time soon with what we've done to this atmosphere. On Yellowstone...yes, the last 2 eruptions were 600,000 years apart, but the 2 before that were 900,000 years apart. We don't fully understand the dynamics of how a system like that builds to a large scale eruption or what the triggers are, and in fact, Yellowstone is doing some interesting stuff right now with all the hydrothermal activity (it's been at a highly elevated level for the last 100,000 years or so), which can cool magma more quickly and possibly delay an eruption. If you want a better answer on that then you need to help make sure the USGS funds my postdoc.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 01:22 PM) Anyone who dies in that city from this storm will not have my sympathy. You may have been unprepared for Katrina, and FEMA certaintly didn't help, but everyone in New Orleans is given plenty of warning for Gustav. Get on the damn bus this time or attempt walking to higher ground. Atleast people in Florida are accustomed to hurricanes and typically have the supplies to cope with them if they remain. Now, even those crusty old "I'm aint gonna leave my town!!!" people should learn from the death of several thousand people three years ago. Katrina still killed 14 people in Florida.

QUOTE (LosMediasBlancas @ Aug 30, 2008 -> 01:05 PM) They expect Gustav to be a 3 when it hits N.O. FWIW, when Katrina actually hit the city, it was nothing more than a weak category 2. The storm had started a weakening cycle just as it hit the shore, and that slowed it up some, and the city itself didn't take a direct blow; the eye came ashore over in Alabama. The last time, nature actually tried to help out the Levee system.

Oh crap...Hannah has shifted her track south and is now aiming right around the southern tip of Florida. That gets an "Oh crap" because the ones that hit the Southern tip of florida or pass through the straits there tend to not lose very much strength or break up very much, and then they wind up slamming in to the gulf coast somewhere a few days later. That's the path Katrina and Rita took, that's the path that Andrew took.

QUOTE (WilliamTell @ Aug 29, 2008 -> 06:46 PM) Yeah I'd be mad if I went there. 65k is way too much for anyone especially him. But compared to what a speaker at his level usually gets, that's actually a pretty decent bargain.