Balta1701

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jun 13, 2008 -> 08:20 AM) I understand you can't have a 100% "free market", but I also don't think government should be "running" anything such as health care, for example. There are several reasons why I might be willing to argue that the government can actually do a solid job of running a health care system. It's not something that will make sense for every industry, but in the case of health care I think there are useful points. 1. Economy of scale. Right now, something like 20-30% of the money this country spends on health care is spent on administrative costs, paying for different paperwork for different insurers, paying the salaries of all the people who's job it is to find excuses for the insurance companies not to cover specific procedures for people, etc. In a streamlined system where you can assume everyone is covered by 1 setup, the paperwork and administrative costs should drop dramatically because everyone can follow the same standardized procedures. 2. Direction of spending. Right now, the way our system is set up, positive health care results are returned as an externality to the system. The main thing our health care system is designed to do is to produce profit for the companies involved, not to produce positive health care results. This leads to clear inefficiencies within the system...easy, cost saving measures not being adopted because the companies involved don't have motivation to save money, over-purchasing and over-ordering of some of the most expensive exams and treatments regardless of need or effectiveness, and direction of research dollars (i.e. in the pharmaceutical industry) to treatments that are more profitable rather than more effective. You will lose something in efficiency if you go to a government based system, you always do when you lose competitiveness, but in many cases worldwide, we see that actually focusing on providing better health care rather than focusing on profits more than makes up for the difference. 3. Preventative care. It's long been shown that the most effective type of care is preventative care for many diseases. Hit things early and they go away. But if you're in a situation where you're uninsured, or you don't know if your insurance will cover a treatment, you're likely to not see a doctor until a condition has advanced more. And then, you often wind up going to the emergency room, which is dramatically more expensive for all sides, and is a major drag on the economy in that it keeps sending people in to bankruptcy and pulls large amounts of money from the government. If you know you're going to get non-banrkupting care, you're likely to seek treatment earlier and find it to be more effective. 4. Need to do something. At the current rates of growth, within a few decades, basically our entire economy will be made up of the energy sector which creates energy that is used to power the health care sector and the health care sector itself. The fact is, the semi-private system we've built in this country is failing rapidly. The private system has had its shot and despite all the "reforms" over the last 20 years, HMO's, the medicare insurance company bailout bill, etc., nothing has gotten better. It's time to try something creative and new.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 13, 2008 -> 05:01 AM) Thank you for posting that. This is EXACTLY what I want John McCain to bring to the debates and here is why. When Jimmy Carter the second starts in about the economy, John McCain can put a torpedo right into his hull by mentioning the damage that this tax plan will do to our economy. Who hires people in this country? Its the rich people. What happens when rich people lose money? They cut costs. What is the #1 cost in a company? Employees. So is the rich guy going to take a paycut, or fire the poor guy? Bye, bye, poor guy. Don't believe me? I really, really hope this comes up. In principle your argument makes sense, but in practice, I can respond to it pretty easily with a simple graph. I ask you to accept for a moment the claim that the Clinton Administration performed one of the biggest tax increases in history early in its term and the Bush Administration performed within its first 3 years one of the biggest tax cuts in history between the 3 large cuts/stimulus packages enacted within its first few years. If you accept those points, then I present this graph: Your argument is that there is a direct connection between the tax situation and job creation. Practically and logically your trickle-down style proposal does make sense. However, just based on the last 2 years of job creation data, the prediction that your proposal makes simply is not found to be true. In a much lower tax environment, especially on the wealthiest of the wealthy, who received by far the largest chunks of the Bush tax cuts, job creation staggered along. After Bill Clinton's large tax increases, which by definition had to hit the wealthiest pretty hard otherwise they wouldn't have increased revenue and helped balance the budget...job creation surged along. This leads me to 1 of 2 conclusions. Either: 1. Your proposal is simply wrong, which is something I don't believe, or 2. You are correct that job creation is affected by the tax rates at the uppermost levels, but those effects are minimal and are swamped out by other, much larger and much more important effects and feedbacks within the economy itself. This is what I'll point to as my answer. And if other forces swamp out the signal you're pointing at so easily, then in terms of job creation, it makes far more sense to focus on encouraging the other positive forces that have the much larger impact. The tax rates on the upper classes, including your friendly wealthiest of the wealthy, certainly do play a role in job creation...and it is likely possible to make a tax increase on that group so large as to truly show a major impact. But once we're away from the 1960's style 90% highest tax rates...changes of the order of 10-20% in the tax rates on the wealthiest of the wealthy over the last 20 years have been divorced from the job creation rate, and that is a hard point to argue around.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 13, 2008 -> 07:35 AM) I'd compare this Laker team to last year's Cavs. One superstar and some inconsistent role players with little experience in championship situations. The only way I see that comparison making sense is in the "Experience" category...but I think if you looked through who the actual players were in the supporting casts, you'd take what the Lakers have over what the Cavs had by a long shot.

Are the Lakers just too shell shocked to pull this out?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 07:04 PM) Call it a guess, but I think it had nothing to do with lack of velocity. I think it was a lack of work ethic that got him traded in the first place.. Seriously, how many twenty game winning, Cy Young runners up get traded the next season? We brought him in to see if he was willing to work like 03, he wasn't, so they cut him. Maybe I am wrong, but there is something going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. The Sox just don't dump people THAT quickly unless there is an alterior motive. Well, he was also a Free Agent at the end of the year he was traded, and he'd clearly lost something if you paid attention to the first half games at all. There was plenty of reason to trade him at that point, especially if you didn't think you'd be able to sign him or if you didn't want to (and man, what a move not signing him was).

I can't believe the Lakers are letting the Celtics back in to this game.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 07:33 PM) Okay, so should we stoop down to being barbaric savages and chop of the heads of threats against us for the whole world to see? Yeah, we're no better than them so we shouldn't even allow them to live! Off with their heads! Yea, because that's entirely what I was saying. I wasn't making a point that the argument you were using was simply absurd and could be used to justify virtually anything because it's really, really hard to come up with things that are worse than chopping off a person's head on camera...I was clearly saying we're the same as them.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 07:24 PM) I think he's played the most of anyone on our team, and players get banged up. Probably could use an extra day off. Maybe do what we did for Konerko and give him a day off followed by being the DH for a game. Actually...thanks to the fact that Alexei played the first 2 days of the season while he was on the bench, the O.C. has played 2 more games than Q.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 07:08 PM) Hey, we're not decapitating these guys on the internet for everyone to see. These prisoners should consider themselves lucky. LOL, the old "We're better than them so that makes everything we do ok" defense.

QUOTE (dasox24 @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 06:53 PM) Was Loaiza that bad?? I haven't been able to watch any games since we picked him up, but it seemed like he was doing okay. He hasn't pitched much in games...it must have simply been a matter of him working with Cooper and the team deciding based on that advice that they were better off with the kid. Can Russell pitch more than 1 inning if needed? Anyone know?

Well that's a bit surprising.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 05:25 PM) McCain disagrees with the SCOTUS decision from today. From a strategic standpoint I'm not sure I understand what he's doing, and it also pretty much contradicts what he's said in the past. He's supposed to be trying to shed the McSame image FFS, not endorse it. I guess it will fire up the GOP base who don't want liberal judges appointed to SCOTUS, but did they really need that motivation to vote against Obama? They won't win him the election, the independents will. Here's what you've missed though...this goes along with the way McCain has been for years. He's against torture as long as no one really asks him to do anything about it. He raises his hand against torture in the Republican debates, but when the White House is trying to encode something in the law that legalizes what they've done at Gitmo and allows for use of evidence obtained through torture, he comes through for them with the Military Commissions act that tries to allow exactly that. He's against people being tortured and specifically says the U.S. shouldn't ever waterboard anyone, but when the Congress votes on a bill that would force the CIA to follow the Army's field manual descriptions for interrogation (and therefore bans torture and waterboarding and that sort of thing) he votes against the bill and supports the veto of it that the White House does, so that the White House can order exactly what he's decried. This is the game McCain plays on this issue. The media never calls him on his actual actions or votes, because he's the brave sailor who was actually tortured and therefore always raises his hands up when a Republican debate is asked which of them oppose torturing prisoners, so he keeps voting to allow torture while decrying it when he's asked about it publicly.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 05:33 PM) This is where it gets kind of tricky IMO. When you detain a terror suspect and question them, in the beginning, you're looking for information of intelligence value. Operational details etc. You're not looking for a confession or information to be used in a trial or whatever, maybe indirectly but that's not really your priority. That's the questioning style you're gearing towards. Didn't KSM openly admit to being the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks by the way? I'm pretty sure he did, yes, and he's asked to receive the death penalty. Here's the other side of the token on the first part...as the FBI proved in the interrogation of Saddam Hussein...there does not and absolutely should not be a distinction between getting operational information out of a detainee and getting information that could be used in trial. The only way that there is a difference is if you choose to torture a prisoner to get information out of them. But make no mistake...torture is a choice in that case, and it is for virtually every reason the worst possible choice.

I'll bet that the money was just too much. A $1 million a year contract and they'd have bitten...but with Owens remembering how to hit down at AAA suddenly, if they decide to move for an OF they seem to have one.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 04:53 PM) So you think that a Canadian citizen arrested in the United States for crimes in the United States that he may or may not have committed should be held to a different standard of guilt? Well, one potential difference with canada is that there are likely (I assume) treaties that have the force of law that cover that area also, whereas with the Taliban and Al Qaeda there certainly aren't. However, naturally I'll agree that without those treaties, the constitution should still stand in force. (Of course, one would then make the argument that the geneva conventions are also a treaty and therefore also have the rule of law...)

Like I said a few pages back...McCain is really going to wind up in a bit of trouble because of the media's constant adoration of him...he's constantly, over and over again, been booked on shows over and over again...and within the last few years has had a chance to answer questions on every issue probably a dozen times, over and over again, to the point where you can stick just about every clip together and wind up with things that contradict. Over and over again.

"I don't think that taste is there"

Ron Paul reportedly to finally exit the race.

QUOTE (Ozzie Ball @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 02:27 PM) We've signed Drew O'Neil also for $260,000 according to Baseball America. Sweet

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 02:16 PM) your posts seem to be 100% pro-Democrat, you don't really seem to be much of an independent. it's kind of weird that the GOP only thread often has more posts from Democrat posters than independents or GOP'ers. anyways, here are my rankings On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being far left.... MSNBC is a 1 CNN is probably a 2 Fox News is a 10 So you really feel like MSNBC is as far to the left as Fox is to the right? Their evening lineup is something like Abrams, Olbermann, Matthews. Matthews sometimes leans left, but is unreliable enough that Media Matters went after him a couple years ago as their misinformer of the year. On the Fox news lineup, you have Brit Hume, Neil Cavuto, Boll O'Reilly, Hannity and Colmens, and Greta van susteren. And I'm not an expert about MSNBC's morning programming, or their "Hard news" programming either, but Joe Scarborough (former Republican Congressman) still seems to host a show in the morning, while Steve Doocy and the Brown haired guy who's not Steve Doocy clearly come at things from the right on Fox...and at least from my perspective, Fox News's "Hard news" reporting has been amongst the most skewed parts of their network. Do you disagree?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 02:18 PM) If KSM was allowed to go free because he was "tortured" I would seriously consider killing him myself, if I ever had that opportunity. Consequences be damned. Then again I can always just claim I was tortured if I got arrested. I think we all would. But that's the problem with the system we've set up. The people running this country decided that the laws didn't need to be followed in certain circumstances and tried to set up a system where they could do those things. But when the courts decided they didn't agree with the memos written by the guys in the DOJ, suddenly all the work by the people who wanted detainees tortured in the name of America wound up not only serving to humiliate the country and inflame the world against us, it also served to make trying them fairly nearly impossible, so we keep going through this sideshow dance with the military tribunals trying desperately to set up a system that isn't directly in contravention of the U.S. constitution but also doesn't force us to let go of the genuinely bad people that we tortured. It wasn't just because of morality that torturing these detainees was a bad idea. There were quite a few practical reasons why it was a terrible idea, and these court losses for the administration are a direct result of them.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 11:52 AM) Things like this are why I'm glad I don't have to make important decisions, because I have no idea where I stand on this. National security is obviously a big deal, but holding people without charging them with anything is just not right, even if they are so called terrorists. The one thing I wonder is how can we prove they are terrorists if we don't even have enough dirt to charge them with a crime? Then again, if they had the connections that led them to Gitmo, they aren't good people obviously. Such a tough situation to gain an opinion on either way IMO. The problems here in Gitmo especially are many-fold. First and foremost, one of the biggest reasons why we haven't been able to charge a lot of these people in a fair courtroom is that for a lot of them, there's nothing to charge them with. In the early months in Afghanistan, the U.S. basically offered up big rewards for people who turned in anyone connected with the Taliban, and so some of the rival warlords got smart and started turning in members of opposing factions, simultaneously getting themselves the rewards and weakening their opponents. So for the first couple years, we spent our time "Interrogating" a lot of people who really hadn't done anything but just got caught up in too wide of a net. Hundreds of people have already been released from Gitmo because eventually, usually their lawyers were able to establish, with about a year or two of DOD stonewalling, that they really hadn't done anything. And at this point, we've held these guys without charges for so long, and "Interrogated" them so much, that even if we establish that they haven't done anything or they were just hired help or something like that...there's no country in the world that will take them back, because their long detainment and "Interrogation" has probably radicalized them. Secondly, another big reason why we can't bring charges in a fair courtroom against these people is that, quite frankly, we've tortured them. In more than a few cases, the evidence we'd be presenting against them would be invalid in any fair court in this world because it would have been obtained under duress (and is therefore oftentimes simply false). And even if specific evidence against them had been built up other ways, say against a guy like KSM, the fact that he's also been tortured by the party bringing the charges would dramatically complicate the proceedings, to the point that a conviction might well be impossible because of how he's been treated regardless of what he did.

Yuck.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 12:05 PM) if he takes the loss, it was still the right guy to have in there For Ordonez and Cabrera, and probably Granderson...yeah, Dotel in is the right move.

Dotel in.