Balta1701

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 12:06 PM) I always heard it was frowned upon. I believe it is specifically frowned upon unless a base stealer can successfully swipe at above a certain rate (something like 80%), because the numbers supposedly state that you're vastly more likely to score an additional run with the runner on 1st and waiting for a home run than you are by trying to push the runner to 2nd and potentially wasting an out.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 11:31 AM) I voted for McCain in the primaries over Bush. I've said it before and I'll say it again...I might be a Republican right now had McCain been nominated instead of Bush.

Has anyone else wondered at all where exactly Novak's sources on these came from? Why exactly would people leak things like this to, say, Bob Novak? Or maybe, for example, there's a Democrat or two in the House who want to move up in the leadership, and anything they can do to weaken Pelosi helps that?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 12:25 PM) The irony is that this isn't any different than the stock market driven bubble that was allowed to go on for years too long. Much of the good times in the 90's were driven by equities that put tons of money in peoples pockets just like housing prices have. People also ran up tons of debt in the 90's, and the savings rates haven't changed at all. Not without coincidence, when the stock market burst, so did the economy. The one thing that saved things from being WAY worse and us feeling the full effects of the burst, were the tax cuts saving many jobs. Given that the amount of money pumped into the economy by the tax cuts was relatively marginal compared with the amount of money pumped in by the boom in home equity and refinancing, I would disagree with that last statement...the one thing that saved things from being way worse was the massive stimulus pumped in by the Fed of lowering interest rates to be practically zero, allowing people to massively expand their debt holdings and pumping that cash back into the economy. Edit: The effect of the tax cuts was not zero of course, and I don't mean to come off sounding that way...but the effect of the Tax cuts was in the shape of a normal keynesian stimulus - it wasn't just that the country was cutting taxes, it was that the country was cutting taxes while at the same time printing money while it was going out of style, thus pumping money into the economy in 2 ways - more money in people's hands through the tax cuts, but also more money in people's hands through the growth in government, combined with vastly more money in people's hands through the interest rate environment.

Duke Cunningham wore a wire.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 12:07 PM) There's no question right now that the economy is very strong right now. The talking heads on CNBC are using the term "Goldilocks" over and over again. Last time it was like this was back during the best of the Clinton years. Things are good right now. Well, that seriously depends on where you look. The GDP is growing, but the median income has fallen 5 straight years. The job market is improving, but health care costs are rising. Consumer spending is up, but consumer debt is also through the roof and savings are through the floor. We're in a Goldilocks economy in the technical sense - low inflation at the same time as economic growth. But there has been something fundamentally different about this Goldilocks time as compared to the last time, which makes me very nervous about its future. It's been sustained in such a large part by the low-mortgage rate, high home-equity situation that it just doesn't seem as solid as the last one. Then again, maybe that's just my impression because I don't own a house. Edit: 1 more point...the last Goldilocks seems to have had something similar to these concerns that I express, in the tech bubble - eventually it burst, but when it was going good, on the outside everything looked great. The expansion in the late 90's was sustained by venture capital being pumped into tech industries, which led to massive growths in employment in those industries without them producing any major profit. Edit the 2nd: Decent summary table of some of these issues.

So JT Snow now = John Olerud. Makes sense to me.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 10:05 AM) And nowhere did you say anything about the jobless number from November being revised UPWARD by 90K, either, which results in a net effect of how many jobs they thought were going to be there are there any way - and the resulting umemployment rate down to 4.9%. Keep picking... Yes I did. Read the first paragraph of my first post. And I just dealt with the "resulting unemployment rate" by dealing with the fact that I consider the unemployment rate statistic the DOL publishes to be a totally worthless statistic.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:55 AM) For s***s and giggles. Does anyone have any specific examples of NSA spying on Americans inside of the country. Or hasn't that been leaked yet. It seems were taking the word of the unbiased NYT with no evidence of specifics. Help me out here. There are plenty of examples of the NSA Spying on Americans inside the country...but using FISA warrants. No examples have been leaked yet of the NSA using Bush's program allowing for spying without FISA warrants, although there have been rumors that NBC and other networks have been looking into possible spying on Journalists (i.e. Christianne Amanpour). Aside from that, we don't have a clue who it's been directed at.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:45 AM) And of course no where in there did you mention that the jobless rate actually FELL to 4.9%. Of course, you should know by now that I put absolutely no stock in that number whatsoever, because that number could very well be due to the continued decrease in the recorded number of people in the work force as people continue to drop out at record rates while on some sort of disability/government assistance, attend some sort of school, or simply stop looking for jobs. I think that number is garbage, to the point that I don't even bother comparing one month's number to another, because there is rapid change in the things not being measured. According to the raw BLS numbers, the number of people classified as "not in the labor force" Rose by 250k during December. That alone is enough to push that number down...when you cut the total number of workers you're counting, even a constant number of jobs would produce a decline in that number.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:42 AM) No, but you bet your ass they should pay the insurance rates and not get taxpayer money when the obvious happens. People can live wherever they want - just don't make me pay for their mistake. There should be national-level zoning, jus like municipalities have for flooding. If you live on the coast of Florida, you are sure as heck in a hurricane zone, and the stipulation should be that no emergency assistance money should go towards your loss of property if that hurricane happens. Unfortunately though, that doesn't happen. When there's an earthquake, or mudslide, or hurricane, what things do you expect to happen? You expect the police to show up, the fire dept. to show up, do their job, etc. There are dozens of areas in this country where people live in areas of massive geologic hazards. Based on the potential for hazards, there should be no one living along the Pacific Northwest, in Hawaii, on the East Coast, or in Tornado Alley. Everyone should huddle together somewhere in North Dakota. Any time there is any sort of disaster in any area, the taxpayers are going to foot some portion of the bill simply for the rescue, police presence, and other associated government tasks (rebuilding roads, etc.). Even if people pay the higher insurance rates, the taxpayers are still on the hook for a significant portion.

Ahem..."FOR DEMS ONLY". I stayed out of your guys's thread. We really need more firm rules for these.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:43 AM) I have no idea. As some liberals. See previous post.

The December monthly job creation totals are in...108,000 new jobs. Predictions were for roughly 200,000 jobs in December. This is quite a bit less than what is usually taken as the number of jobs needed to keep up with population growth. However, the number for November was revised significantly upward in this report. As I pointed out a few days ago, there's quite a few caveats to be taken with this data...the numbers for winter months are heavily seasonally adjusted to try to look at core job growth - they expect a significant number of temporary hires in November and December and layoffs of those temporary workers in January. So, This could very well be an artifact of people being more cautious during the holiday season and not hiring as many temporary workers, or it could be an artifact of them hiring more temporary workers earlier (which would push the November number higher). Either way, I think the usual rule I've seen with these XMas season numbers is this...if the temporary job growth in the pre-christmas months disappoints, it will usually make the job number look better in January, because there will be less total layoffs (due to less people having been hired in the first place). Either way, at least there's still growth, even though the growth still is sluggish. The real question though...is how these reports play into the federal reserve's decision on when to stop raising interest rates. That, at this point, is anyone's guess.

Is anyone else really annoyed how any statement that any government agency wasn't doing a wonderfully perfect job is immediately translated into Oh those people just hate Bush? The Government seriously can do no wrong for these people with Bush in office.

The more time goes on, the more I like having Thome - Konerko - Dye, for a couple reasons. 1. It spreads out the lefties more - you put Thome at the end and he's 3 guys behind Pods, and right next to AJ. 2. It massively increases PK's chances for RBI's through Thome drawing walks. 3. It gives our best 2 hitters the best protection we can offer (If Thome or Konerko bats 5th, we better hope Crede, Iguchi, or AJ turn into 25+ home run guys, or they can just pitch around our 5th place hitter). 4. Thome and Konerko are bigger threats than Dye, and the closer they are to the front of the order, the more times they'll hit this season.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:20 AM) 2 out of 3 blue states and the other borderline. Sounds like a plan to me. Well, the destruction of New Orleans has almost certainly turned Louisiana into a hard red state, so congrats.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:18 AM) So, why wasn't it a big deal then? Why didn't the media jump on on that with both feet like they are now? Where was liberal voice when Clinton was trashing the Constitution? Based on the testimony of George Tenet before Congress, Echelon was a fundamentally different animal than what George W. Bush's program entails. Specifically, for the Echelon program...the FISA Law was actually followed. For every person who's information was gathered, a FISA warrant was obtained. Link.

Don't you mean Dennis Kucinich? Gary Kucinich was Dennis's brother, and as far as Google is telling me, he never ran for anything beyond Cleveland Mayor. I could be wrong though.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 08:18 AM) Which is exactly my point. It would be REALLY expensive, as it should be. No more making the rest of the country pay for someone's stupid choice to live in a sub-sea level flood plain. Time to abandon California, New York, and Florida.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 08:14 AM) That's weird, why did the CIA just call and ask me for everyones IP adresses??? Oh Crap. Why do I get the feeling I should start all my emails and phone calls with the phrase "F*ck the NSA"?

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 05:40 AM) I was looking at some murder stats and it seems plus or minus 18,000 people are murdered each year in America. How about publishing that story like they do the Iraq totals? That works out to about 50 per day. Population of The United States: ~300,000,000 Population of Iraq: ~ (slightly less than) 30,000,000 According to Bush, approximate number killed in Iraq due to the war: 30,000 in 2.5 years. That of course excludes all of the other murder rates, the individual deaths/killings unrelated to the bombings and war which simply aren't reported, things like killings during robberies or kidnappings for ransom.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 08:11 AM) So, if you take a subway somewhere and you don't have a weapon in your bag, nothing happens to you and you're allowed to go on your way. For the sake of argument, let's say that there is no expectation of privacy in phone or e-mail conversations anymore. If you're not plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge via conversations with your buddy in Saudi Arabia, what exactly do you have to worry about? Just curious. The reason you have to worry about this sort of surveillance, specifically warrantless surveillance, is that there is no way to know how the information obtained under the surveillance will be used. If a FISA warrant is successfully obtained, like it is over 99% of the time it is requested, then that means a court somewhere judged on some unknown grounds that there was reason for there to be surveillance. In other words, it's not just surveillance for the Hell of it. The Feds are looking for specific information, and there are rules in place for what information they can obtain and use. On the other hand, without a warrant, there's no limit to the information which can be obtained through domestic spying. This is the Watergate type stuff...if the Feds don't have to get a warrant, what exactly is out there which stops them from saying that the election of John Kerry would be a threat to national security that must be stopped? If they don't have to go out there and get a warrant...actually prove to someone that there's some plausible reason why the government wants data from a specific source, then there's no limits at all to the data which can be collected. What's to stop 1 company from making a discovery, emailing schematics for it, the NSA getting their hands on those schematics, and them being secretly passed on to a person contributing to the party in power? I'd like to believe these things are impossible, but we know from the 1970's that they've already happened once when the Feds were given the power to look into anything they wanted. Information is a very powerful thing, and if you give people the ability to acquire and use information without restrictions, then you can't just assume that the people with that power will decide that they have restrictions and follow them.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 08:46 AM) No no no, we are talking about Andytheclown, not Bingo the Clown. HEEEEYYYYYY KIDS! (Oh wait, that's Binky the Clown. Dag nabit)

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 08:27 AM) This should speed up the Tejada talks with the Sox since now the O's are going to need a real major league outfielder after acquiring Patterson. So you're telling me they're in the market for Borchard?