Balta1701

After letting Monroe go...it's possible the Tigers noticed that Marcus Thames put up a .705 OPS against righties last year and a .744 OPS after the break, while Jones put up a .832 OPS after the break (although, despite being a lefty, his splits don't show a big righty/lefty swing).

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 03:25 PM) That's true. Maybe she needs more time. It took what, 4 years in office before we discovered that the guy lobbing softball planted Q's at the President was actually a homosexual male prostitute. I'd say she's ahead of the curve, already planting the questions.

QUOTE(thedoctor @ Nov 12, 2007 -> 09:11 AM) question for the indiana fans: any truth to the a.j. ratliff rumors? apparently he wasn't on the team bench over the weekend and there are questions about his future with the program. Man, do you know how many years its been since I linked to the Herald Times? Wow, I feel excited by this.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Nov 12, 2007 -> 09:03 AM) What a difference a few years makes. Remember when he was THE free agent? And I remember how stupid I thought the Yankees were for throwing that much money at him.

So...can anyone else think about ARod's retirement speech..."Yeah, so I'm finishing my career 10 home runs behind Mr. Tetrahydrogestrinone, but my legs just won't hold out for another year." "Q: Mr. Rodriguez: Do you now, looking back, regret sitting out that year when you were in your early 30's, as you could have already broken that record?" "Boras: Next question".

I'd rather take the one year flyer on Garcia or Colon.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 01:37 PM) I predict that less than one in five Americans will choose the nominees. McCain v. Obama I predict that less than 1 in 1000 Americans will choose the nominees. The 200-300,000 people who attend the Iowa caucuses on Jan 3. I think Romney's Iowa lead is big enough that it will take a major slip up to beat him there, despite what the national polls say. The trend keeps being; the more folks see of Rudy, the less they like him. The Republican Caucus is tired of McCain, and Huckabee can't compete with Romney's money. On the Dem side...I thought it was still close in Iowa before Hillarity's recent downturn nationwide after the last debate. I really don't have a clue which one is going to take it, and am not even going to try calling a winner.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 07:51 AM) She gets more and more like Bush every day. The student was a homosexual male prostitute? Anyway, I doubt it's surprising that they're trying this game right now, since they've taken a hit and seemingly lost momentum in the past couple weeks, so now they're trying to make sure their best soundbites get put out and Clinton doesn't trip up again. Just another sad little note to America's political system.

I bet Carl Crawford can't wait for the high energy photon that turns him into an X-Ray! /rimshot

There's some sort of a "Death ray" joke here that I just can't put together...

QUOTE(CrimsonWeltall @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 12:37 PM) "How's it going?" and "What's up?" also function as greetings now. You only need to answer it as a question if the other person stops walking in expectation of a conversation. And that is my pet peeve. It's my instinct to try to answer questions that are asked.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 12:36 PM) Except in MacDougal's case, I think he's likely to be more damaging than most we'd bring in. Plus he's probably still seen as high potential by others in the league, so if you can, I think you try to trade him. Depending on what you're trading him for, I could get into that. If you can get a good return, sure...but the calculation you have to do is MMac on one side with his higher risk but affordable contract and on the other side maybe going 4/$20 for someone like Linebrink and having whatever you got for MMac. Now, that might make sense if you get back a good return or if you can find another reliever somewhere cheaper than that, but I really don't see that many right now.

Now that I think about it... One that gets me is when you're walking down a hallway or down a street, you pass someone you know, you either say "Hi" or give a casual hello or head nod or something because you're both clearly on your way somewhere, and the other one responds with some version of "How's it going" or some other question which not answering would be rude. Seriously, I'm trying to do stuff, I don't want to turn around & start a conversation all the time. Just say hi!

QUOTE(DrunkBomber @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 06:37 AM) I know what you mean I actually started watching more and more NFL network because I hate some things ESPN does. I dont watch hockey but I see the reason for showing the highlights. They already have most basketball, football, baseball fans, so to extend to hockey fans only helps them. You know, if it weren't for the system of enforced monopolies through contracts with leagues and cable companies...this is the kinda situation that starts screaming out for a competitive network. There's clearly a much larger market out there in guys like a lot of us than what ESPN is serving with their folks (whether it's the lack of content, the East Coast bias, or whatever your personal pet peeve is), and the reason that another natioanl sports network hasn't cropped up is that ESPN has made the entry barriers so high by nailing down all the league contracts.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 12:12 PM) Thornton has only been good 1 year. He has control issues. Maybe he's good in 2008, maybe he's bad. Logan should only face lefties MacDougal can't throw strikes. Keep him if you can't get anything for him and see what he does in the spring, but counting on him for big things would be foolish. As I said with both of them...whether you like them or not...they're under contract now. Which means it's simply a waste of money to dump them.

I have no problem with...and in fact based on the contracts we handed out and their performances last year I think we have little choice but to start the bullpen with: Jenks Wasserman Logan Thor MMac Whether we like the last 2 or not, they're under contract. And whether we think the middle 2 are adequate or not, they did their jobs last year. But, either way...that's only a 5 man pen. And our other options are guys who failed last year; Aardsma, Masset, etc. For this to be even a complete bullpen, we're missing at least 1 more right handed arm. And it's possible we'll need to find 2 of them. Of course, Floyd or Masset could wind up there by default if the team doesn't want to lose them, but even with a long guy out there, I can't see how we can get around needing to add 1 more righty setup man.

And we'll follow that up by some video fun from CNN.

Al Gore makes an appearance on "30 rock". His exit line is near-Manbearpig quality.

Slightly more details. Supposedly, Reid struck a deal with the Republicans where he would allow a vote on Mukasey's nomination in exchange for the Republicans not blocking a vote on the gigantic, $470 billion DOD appropriation about to go through to fund the DOD next year...except for the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Originally the thinking was for some reason to stick that into the DOD authorization bill, which would force pretty much everyone to vote for it who has a base or manufacturing plant in their district because otherwise they'd have had to vote against their own bases to vote against the Iraq war. Reid got that deal and immediately scheduled a vote. At about 7:00 p.m. he scheduled a midnight vote.

QUOTE(Alpha Dog @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 07:40 PM) Also, Clinton, Obama, Biden and McCain should be fined for missing this vote because of campaigning. They were elected to do a job and vote on things, and to miss a vote such as this is just a dereliction of their duty. They owe us some pay back for not doing their jobs. It sure seems like virtually no one knew the vote was going to happen except Reid until it actually happened. They literally didn't have time after it was scheduled to get back to Washington from where they were.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 02:45 PM) Well, I will get hit and hit bad if this doesn't pass in some shape or form. Not only AMT, but college deductions, sales tax deductions, property tax deductions are all set to expire, and I'm eligible for all those. And then most people get hit with the AMT as well? f***ing bastards. News flash to assholes in Washington... $80-$120K of household imcome IS NOT RICH, you f***tards!!!! It was quite rich like 40 years ago when it was instituted. Which is why some sort of fix is fairly important.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 02:46 PM) Where are the other GOP'ers? And I am amazed there is even that one AmerInd in there. According to the study, the GOP candidates were unwilling to provide the information at all, so the group sort of had to dig a lot harder to get that info, presumably by getting the names of the people and investigating their backgrounds. It might well be that for the smaller candidates/Huckabee they just got lazy or just couldn't get the info, as I said, I really don't know who DiversityInc is and I can't get at the raw data without a subscription. Actually, scratch that, I could get a subscription, but I have office hours starting in another room in 30 seconds and will do so this evening if I have time.

Not sure which thread to put this into, but I found it interesting. An analysis of the level of diversity amongst high-level campaign staffers for each major campaign (It seems you need a subscription to get to the raw data about what level they chose to draw the dividing line at). Link where I grabbed this from.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 02:26 PM) I didn't get a chance to see much of Fields in LF this year. Is he really THAT bad? Worse than Pods... or Carlos Lee, for that matter? For the short time he was there, yes, he was pretty bad. But he just hadn't played the position before. You put him there for all of ST, or for some time in winterball just so he can see fly balls coming at him from that angle and he'd probably pick it up to at least Lee level pretty quick.

Anywho...can someone tell me a good reason why hedge fund managers and their ilk should pay a vastly lower tax rate than the rest of us do on their income just because they're heavy investors? And btw...this is exactly why the Paygo rule is a good thing. This fix needed to be done. And that loophole needed closed. So now...take your pick. Upper Middle class or super rich that are taxed at a lower rate than the lower middle class.