Balta1701

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Does the Senate typically have any patterns or procedures regarding people stepping down from committees or resigning while they're facing criminal charges?

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 29, 2008 -> 09:18 AM) Not me. Especially after I studied amt. of $ spent on students and things like grad rates, and they weren't necessarily positively correlated. It was all over the place. There are so many factors. One monetary factor that does seem to work out very well and hold strongly in the stats is that if the majority of the kids in a school come from low income households, then it tends to drag down the whole school. More discussion in the article. Basically, the more you can spread out the low income kids, the less you concentrate the high income family kids, the better everyone does. The problem is, when you go in to places like New York, Chicago, L.A., the big urban centers, the schools that are the biggest problems, the ones where we're leaving children behind, you're running in to something like 80-90% or more of the population of that school coming from low income, poverty line type families. At that point it's basically endemic. If you give everyone a voucher, it doesn't work, because all the schools in the area are the same thing, the only thing you can do is bus every student 2 hours out in to the suburbs, and no one's going to pay for that.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2008 -> 05:43 AM) Cap and trade has been a massive failure everywhere its been implemented. That's because the most notable place that implemented it...Europe...went with the McCain style, polluter-giveaway version of a cap and trade system where the emissions credits are just handed out to polluters who are then able to resell them to others at a profit, rather than making the polluters actually have to buy their credits in the first place.

Kick some major Twinkie tail Mark.

QUOTE (santo=dorf @ Jul 28, 2008 -> 10:04 AM) Why not move Thome to first and Manny to DH? You think Konerko's struggled with injuries this season...they didn't even put Thome at 1b for any games against the NL this year or use him at 1b while Konerko was out, because they said that Thome just wasn't in shape to handle it.

QUOTE (rangercal @ Jul 28, 2008 -> 08:10 AM) It doesn't matter if we have 3 #1's if we don't have a good line. Yeah...but if we wind up having a good line, it's nice to start off at the 40 every time.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 28, 2008 -> 07:42 AM) Found this on the FDIC's website regarding another bank closing: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/NetBank.html Looks like the money isn't really tied up for long, if at all. Part of the issue with Indymac bank out here was that there was a gigantic rush of customers right when the FDIC grabbed it, so that took a couple days, and then the other banks were especially careful with the checks labeled as coming from the FDIC run version of IndyMac, taking 2 weeks or more to process them, under the auspices of preventing fraudulent checks from appearing. At least with that case there was roughly 2-3 weeks where people seemed to have no idea when and where their money was at.

In other words...Wikipedia is just acknowledging that when it comes to covering Democrats, Fox News is simply just as accurate and believable as the Enquirer.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 28, 2008 -> 08:20 AM) There is a difference between flip-flopping, and adjusting and/or clarifying a position based on the terrain. One clear as day flip-flop from Obama was the telecom immunity thing. He just ouright chickened out on that one, and that bothered me. Am I the only one who really hates that "Flip flopping" is considered a bad thing? I for one have no problem at all with the concept of changing one's position based on new information or hell even based on a new piece of polling data...if they're flip-flopping to a policy position I support. I think it's fit to judge each one based on how they act before, during, and after the flip, and which position they're taking on. For example, Obama's cave on telecom immunity...ugh. McCain's flip-flopping on torture and wiretapping, ugh. George W. Bush's unspoken embrace of all things diplomatic which has suddenly dramatically improved our ability to deal with our supposed enemies? (i.e. North Korea, Iran). Yay!

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 08:20 PM) I'm still partial to ARow and BA screaming uncontrollably. "No way". Aaron Rowand, 10/23/05, 8:27 PM PST.

Frickin' Uclutch Thome

QUOTE (Texsox @ Jul 27, 2008 -> 06:58 AM) Imagine an America with starving old people living in the streets. If you can imagine that happening, then you can imagine not saving social security. If it comes down to saving, for example, The Iraqi people from or feeding our senior citizens, which do you think the politicians will opt for? Still, I agree, retirement would be much nicer with a nest egg of your own, but to believe America will allow millions and millions of senior citizens to die in the streets, ain't going to happen. Just to reiterate...Social Security does not need saving. The bookkeeping trick that makes people say it needs saving is that initial social security benefits grow faster than the inflation rate. So, if you assume that the american worker won't get more productive with time to close the gap, and you look at a far enough time horizon, there will be a deficit because in the infinite time horizon Social Security will take up the entire American economy. If you look at the projections...in the 2040's, when the program goes "Bankrupt", the average senior will be receiving a higher rate of benefits than they are today if nothing is changed at all. Want to save something? Go after Medicare. The health care system is a disaster an order of magitude larger than any problem with OASDI, and it becomes a problem in a couple years instead of a couple decades.

Dotel is now tonight's pitching hero.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:44 PM) good bullpens hold this lead. what more can you ask for on the road, leading going into the 8th? Come on...just get it to Jenks...

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:19 PM) OC had a brutal April. Erstad was actually pretty decent for a while, until he predictably got hurt. I thought I'd never have to point this out again...No he wasn't. At no point when he was with the Sox was he ever "decent". In april he put up a .261 batting average and .688 OPS, and his numbers only went down from there. He looked decent because the rest of the team was struggling so badly that a .261 batting average didn't look all that horrid. He was good for 1 day, when he hit that opening day home run.

QUOTE (santo=dorf @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:14 PM) Darin Erstad 7/26/07: .264/.311/.341 Orlando Cabrera 7/26/08: .268/.328/.355 To think, all we gave up was a starting pitcher and $8 million for this selfish player. If the Sox can get something at the deadline that they feel can help them more this year than the possibility of two draft picks (I'm hoping and assuming Cabrera rejects an arbitration offer,) I say they go for it. Frankly...I think it's actually surprisingly hard to beat the value of those 2 draft picks in a trade for a guy without much time left on his contract.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 05:57 PM) Gammons just reported that the reason the Indians were able to get as good of prospect as Santana for Blake is because the Indians are assuming most of Blake's contract. He said a few GMs think the Dodgers may be having cash flow problems. Could swear I've read something along those lines in teh LAT or somewhere similar recently.

QUOTE (SoxFanForever @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 05:42 PM) Marte is great in low pressure situations (I.e. most of his seasons with the Sox and all of his seasons with Pitt.) However, in the only season we were really in contention when he was here he was pretty brutal in pressure situations. I don't know if i'd say we weren't in contention in 2003 or 2004. We died at the end but we gave it a shot both years.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 04:40 PM) I think Danks has given up 14 runs 13 earned his last 15 innings. Hopefully its just a rough patch and not what happened last season. If Jose hadn't gone down, I'd have been considering giving Dansky an extra week off right around now.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 04:33 PM) I'd have pinch hit Anderson and gone for the kill (better defense, plus BA hits for good pop against lefties even if the average is low). Wise's .333 ops against lefties doesn't excite you?

We pushed Verlander's ERA up to 4.29 today.

Lefties are hitting .322 off of Seay this season according to Gameday.

Honestly, Verlander's probably better off walking him than pitching to him.

QUOTE (G&T @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 05:15 PM) 1 is unearned. I think that depends on how the rest of the inning goes also?