Balta1701

QUOTE (tjp1684 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 07:01 PM) Not a bad add. You have him for $600,000, so not a huge financial loss (in comparison to what NFL players are making) and only for one year. The only downside is if he produces really well then he's a free-agent the next year. However, maybe he would give the Bears a break because they "gave him a chance". Would have been interesting to see what his other offers were, if any. If for some reason he was really, really good...then there's always the franchise or transition tags available to the Bears as well.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 06:42 PM) possibly. but what I thought I read was that we could be pumping a billion barrels a day out of alaska or Texas and it still wouldnt help since we physically cant turn it into a usable product fast enough. I believe US refineries are running at near 100% capacity. Building refineries needs to be step one in my opinion. Actually this is already happening. They're not building new refineries, but thanks to government mandates and subsidies, they've been expanding them quite rapidly. More rapidly than oil production can keep up with actually. According to data from the EIA, and a bit of simple math (calculating a 12 month moving average) Over the last year U.S. refineries have been operating at about 88.2% of capacity, and that number is dropping sharply (for the last 4 months it's down to 85-86% or lower). The last time that the U.S. had such a low percentage of its refinery capacity utilized was early in 1992.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 05:11 PM) MB is going to the HOF IF he buys a ticket! The price of a ticket = 200 more wins.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 05:06 PM) There are a whole series of IF's here, in terms of this having any effect at all on oil prices. To whit... --IF Congress lifts its ban --IF the states, which have some say, allow it (some probably will, others probably will not, some have laws already on the books for it) --IF the reserves are present in those states to do any good --IF the oil companies find the production equation worth pursuing --IF/WHEN new oil rigs and production systems are built and implemented If all those IF's work out nicely, ideally, then there would be some change in oil prices. Small change, but a change. You're missing the bigger IF's: If global demand stays at a level capable of being kept up with by global supply If Global oil supply does not decline by a larger amount than these fields could possibly produce If there is no major political issue leading to supply disruptions If the U.S. and the world make no progress towards an oil-free transportation system.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 03:47 PM) There is no reason for an all-star game to go 15 innings. Play 9. Eh, I really don't want to see the game end in a tie. I kind of like the "Let people back in" proposal. It's an exhibition game, why is that the rule we have to uphold?

Radomski finds a couple more steroid/HGH receipts lying around his house, including one for Clemens.

QUOTE (MHizzle85 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 03:05 PM) James Posey signs a 4-year deal with New Orleans. Well, now I can no longer like that team.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 04:35 PM) Now the Packers accuse Minnesota of tampering with Favre. This is a f***ing joke. The more teams in the NFC North he demolishes...the better off the Bears are.

QUOTE (scenario @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 01:13 PM) I say we sign him if for no other reason than to block the Tigers from signing him. I don't want to see the Tigers acquiring pitching that could help them in a second half run. Freddie isn't signing somewhere that doesn't give him a chance to pitch several games before the season's up on a regular basis. Any pitching he does this year is an audition for his contract next year.

QUOTE (scenario @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 02:07 PM) The Olympics are from the 8th through the 24th of August. I doubt the Sox have plans for any of our minor league players that would get screwed up by being gone for 16 days in August. Well, you might not plan for it...but you don't want to have your first backup option gone the day before someone does get hurt. Right now, Getz is a pretty likely callup candidate if anything happens to any of our middle infielders.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 11:03 AM) Will 0.0% answer your question? Incorrectly.

QUOTE (ChWRoCk2 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 11:00 AM) Busch Gardens is close. There was also a really nice water park across the street from there last time I was there (like 10 years ago admittedly)

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 11:58 AM) It takes something to make the Hall. For most it is statistical dominance over a period of time. For others it is being so good at one thing that those numbers get thrown out. For still others it is changing the game to something it had never been before. To me nothing about Mark stands out as so remarkable, that he deserves to get mentioned with the all time greats. Which is of course...why so many of us are talking about 300 wins for MB. Unless his performance dramatically improves over the next couple years so that we start talking about Cy Youngs for him, which is possible, but frankly not all that likely...his best shot at it is longevity. Which basically for him means 300 wins.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 10:23 AM) It needs to be done completely separate from the Congress, which is why this umbrella should fall to the independant Federal Reserve Banking system. All of the individual government entities that exist need to be rolled into one group that oversees our entire financial system so that regulations can be clearn and cohesive as you move from one sector to another. So that they can be complimentary instead of contradictary. Wait one second here...the rules that I posted a while ago were rules that, as far as I could read, were being put in place by the Fed. In other words, the "independent" fed had the power to have those rules in place a long time ago and chose not to. The LAT piece didn't say anywhere that they had to submit them to Congress for approval or that Congress had told them to get rid of those regulations at some point in the past, although those details could have been left out. If the Fed already had the ability to put the simplest of the simplest of the simplest rules in place and chose not to do so...and this clearly helped build this in to the debacle that it is...why should I trust the Fed in the future?

Seriously dude...thanks a ton for 05.

QUOTE (YASNY @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 10:52 AM) Didn't say we were. Robin was by far the best we saw for decades. But take a look at the Mets for example, they went decades without finding a good 3B. Crede's not God's gift, but he's a pretty damn solid 3B. While there are teams like the Mets and the Cubs that go forever without finding a long term solution at 3b, I don't think it's any harder of a position to fill for a couple seasons than any other. I just went through, for example, the 3rd base stats this year. Right now, there are 21 3rd baseman with enough at bats to qualify for season-awards. That's the same as 2nd base and 1 more than for SS. Out of them, Joe is in the middle of the pack in OPS this season, but there are only 3 guys you'd basically say "No" to their numbers; Mora, Castillo, and Hannahan. And on top of that, there are still big 3b names that are out injured (Zimmerman). It's always nice to have 10 years of stability at a position, but I don't think it's a requirement for any slot, and I don't think 3b is particularly harder to fill than any other important defensive position. If you have youth somewhere then you can find the money to afford one if you're not holding on to one.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 10:45 AM) yea right, so now only liberals were on to this? i don't think so. your post needs a government bailout. I'm sure it's not only liberals...but it's certainly not the people who were in the major media pieces talking about the economy, and it wasn't the people who were writing that the media was telling people the economy was doing great and it was only those dirty liberals saying it wasn't doing well because they wanted to make sure GWB looked bad.

Takashi Saito is out for a month and a half.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 09:28 AM) give it a week and Exxon will demand a government bail out They already get a couple billion a year.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 09:04 AM) What I'm looking for here is things to do that don't include the casinos. I'd be willing to drive an hour and a half or so off the strip if there's anything worth doing. I don't expect this to be the typical Vegas roadtrip. Even when we get back, when asked, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to claim that I've ever been to Vegas. If you're looking to hit national parks, Death Valley is somewhere around a 2 hour drive from Vegas (without traffic). The Grand Canyon Skywalk that Native American tribe built is probably about the same time from the city, and might be less than an hour from Hoover dam.

You know, this is kind of a remarkable window in to how badly weakened the regulatory environment in this country got over the last few years. The Fed is, starting October 1, going to slap some new "Regulations" on the mortgage market. The amazing thing to me is...how in the world were these things not already required? So, we're operating in an environment where the Fed rules say that mortgage lenders can compare different loans without actually comparing them, where they could get around disclosure rules by running ads in Spanish, and where there were no rules requiring any verification of income for a sub-prime loan...and we wonder how in the world people were able to take advantage of this system?

A random, blog inspired thought...the FDIC $100,000 limit was set back in the 1980's, and thanks to inflation, that's something like 2-3 times that amount in today's dollars. Isn't it about time to increase the amount the FDIC insures in any account?

QUOTE (jackie hayes @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 09:52 AM) I'm not saying anyone did. I'd actually say a lot of people did...they're just not the people who get jobs on CNBC or interviews and columns in the Washington Post. Half of my writings from that era have vanished, but I was saying this was going to be a mess back in 2003-2004. It was all those crazy liberals who were just trying to make George W's great economy look bad by pointing out that it was built on a housing market of cards.

Cavs sign Daniel Gibson to a 5 year deal

QUOTE (jackie hayes @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 08:09 AM) But that was still too late to really do anything. I think he deserves some credit for talking about the issue earlier than most, but he didn't seem to see the problem as it was happening. Aside from a handful of liberal crazy tinfoil hat bloggers and far left economists, none of whom deserve any respect because we're so far outside the mainstream that they keep being, um, right...who did?