Balta1701

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 26, 2017 -> 02:44 PM) He already has been caught on tape talking about trying to have sex with a married women and grabbing women without consent, then accused of 15+ cases of doing actually that, had a staffer get briefcases of cash while lobbying for a dictator, has an illegal charity foundation, hasn't paid taxes in 15 years, has been getting flooded with foreign donations, has not released his taxes, has multiple conflicts of interest that he not put at arms length. He's also using an unsecure blackberry for white house communications and was calling foreign leaders on non-secure lines while president elect. How many House Republicans are acting against any of that? None. That's a big list up there with some more important and more vetted than others, but there would have been 20 investigations at once for 8 years by Chaffetz if that was a dem. Every time people bring up the idea of the Republican Congress impeaching him, they seem to forget that the same Confederate Flag flying voters who came to his rally are the base of that Republican Congress. They lose their seats...all of them...if Donald Trump's core voters do not turn out. That is the Tea Party. Donald Trump's Rhetoric is what they want.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jan 26, 2017 -> 03:35 PM) My grocery store is f***ed. To be fair, the value of the peso has already dropped by more than 20% since his election and will drop further once the US Pulls out of NAFTA to do this. That pushes the opposite direction.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 26, 2017 -> 11:49 AM) The clear lesson should be there for finding a candidate that isn't just the next in line. No one wants the John McCain or Hillary Clinton. People today want to be inspired. It was propelled Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump into office. They had the ability to fire their bases up. Learning the lesson of why she lost is very important if the Dems want to take back the White House in 4 years. In reality that campaign should have already started. Here's the basic problem with this logic: you're using Donald Trump as an example of successfully firing up his base, when he: 1. Lost the popular vote badly 2. Would have lost in a blowout, with a bigger vote difference than the 2012 election, had it not been for the intervention of the FBI and crimes committed by a foreign power to aid him 3. Might very well have lost despite the others had it not been for voter suppression laws 4. Might very well have lost despite all the others had the media not gone along with #2. How much of a lesson can you take from a race decided by the FBI director as much as anything else?

By the way, Georgia's Republican Governor is begging for Federal Disaster Assistance and being ignored.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 08:49 PM) Guys having a bad year this year isn't really a bad thing. If they're going to do it, now's the year. I just don't like that i'm seeing lots of "all 5 of these people will have better years this year" posts around without a callout on how unlikely it is that it'll work out for multiple guys. Some of them yes, but it never works out that they all do, and you can't pick out in advance which ones it will be.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 08:37 PM) It will be hard to get worse production in CF and catcher than last year CF, true. Catcher? Avila gave that team 200 non-terrible at bats. Navarro's handling of the staff was rotten but those basically balance out. The catcher's spot could absolutely be substantially worse than last year. If I had to guess I'd guess it'll be about the same - replacement level with Soto and Narvaez taking up most of the time, it could be slightly better, it could be substantially worse.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 08:39 PM) Frazier has little value now. If he can rebound like his first half in 15, he can get someone decent or be in contention for a QO. Being a walk year, hopefully he has a big season. Out of the guys who had down seasons last year, it's probably true that 1-2 of them should be expected to have solid seasons worthy enough to earn something in a trade. If we hold all of them, we also better be ready for 2-3 of them to have worse seasons and just eat the money spent on them. As long as we're ok with that as a franchise, then holding 5 guys and hoping 1-2 of them develop some value is a fair strategy.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 07:36 PM) I hate this "purity" idea that a candidate has to have a perfect, sparkling record of liberalism or progressivism to get my vote. Elizabeth Warren has been a pretty effective legislator with respect to progressive principals over the last several years. Voting to confirm Ben Carson (who is going to be confirmed in any event) does not undo that. Vox had a good read on this point. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/201...rown-carson-hud Ben Carson is as unqualified as any HHS director we've had. He showed no insight into the department or actual housing policy, he had no plan for the department. By any reasonable standard these should be disqualifying statements. Vote that way. You may not like the "purity" idea. Deep down I don't either. But you know what just won the 2016 election? A party that purged itself of anyone who wouldn't toe the party line for 8 years. It worked. I cannot argue with the record of success that the Republican Party has with absolute opposition. They paid zero price for it and were instead rewarded with virtually everything they wanted. Don't hedge on how it could be worse or how you were trying to influence things positively. We have seen how that works.

QUOTE (Al Lopez's Ghost @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 08:51 PM) In effect we're replacing Eaton with Tilson, or worse if Tilson's injury hampers his speed. We thought Lawrie would be pretty good last year. I certainly agree about Anderson and Frazier although we now hear he has an injury to his left hand, but overall it's tough to be optimistic If you see predictions based on the idea that here's a list of 6 players and all of them will do better than last year...you are looking at predictions that have a serious flaw. Timmy has a good shot at outperforming our SS production from last year because he'll be in his 2nd year and hopefully a full year + improvement for him helps. But all the other guys...yes some of them will likely be better than last year, but it's equally likely that some of them will be worse, and no one else from that group is young enough that you'd expect a major breakout year.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 08:19 PM) By 5 percentage points. So a narrow win only 2 points larger than Hillary's?

JFC So let's see, a guy who is a German citizen and cannot vote...couldn't vote. But ethnic looking people did. JFC. Seriously, those of you who are telling me that I should have hope, that the Congressional Elections in 2018 and the election in 2020 won't be the same debacle...every single thing they do to restrict voting in response to this racist's lies should make you scream in anger because that's what's going to make you wrong.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 02:34 PM) I appreciate Senator Gillibrand voting no on these. I don't think I could back her for president though. She has been an impressively effective legislator so far in her career, given a position in a mostly minority party.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 01:13 PM) I don't have a problem with mattis, either. Is there a reason to? If these were normal times, then yes - we used to believe in a thing called "Civilian control of the military" where the military should not be an insulated group that polices itself. There's a reason why there used to be a law against a former general being Secretary of Defense. If we were debating that policy, I'd support it and as a consequence I'd vote against a general for that position. This cabinet of the worst of the worst makes him look unusually qualified. For a Democrat, given that their vote isn't going to matter anyway, stand up for the principle.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 12:28 PM) List of votes so far. I do think it worth noting that presumptive nominee Senator Gillibrand is the only one so far to have voted against every one of these disasters.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 12:47 PM) To be fair, he RCP did report a Rasmussen poll from today that had Trump's approval rating at 57%. Rasmussen skews conservative, and is a pretty clear outlier in the polling at the moment (Rasmussen was at 52% favorable per RCP last week). But they do have Trump at 57%. Given what we saw in November and the fact that it will soon become even harder for the groups that don't approve of Trump to vote, I'd say there's good logic behind calling that a "conservative outlier" much more representative of the 2018 and 2020 electorates.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 24, 2017 -> 11:24 PM) If you dont have belief in the goodness of other people, then what is the point of liberalism at all? No matter how much progress, there will always be times when humanity takes a step back. But we must persevere. Sometimes we forget that human existence has been a relatively short amount of time. But in that short amount of time we have created some truly magnificent things. And yes, humanity has done terrible things, but life before society was as Hobbes would say "No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." And that sentence was merely describing how much better humans had it with Kings, aristocrats, etc. Less than 200 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans died because a large portion of our nation believed that slavery was okay. In the last 100 years, millions have died fighting over invisible lines and religion. Irrespective of Trump, we are moving forward. He is merely the last scream of a dying belief, its their Battle of the Bulge, and in the end, they will never recover from their losses. Balta, We are on the same side, but comments like this only feed fuel to Trump supporters (not saying that Northside is one). The best way to win this battle, is to strike them at their very core. Republican's have destroyed their foundation, and eventually they will collapse on themselves. It is how society works, the many eventually beat the few. You have far more faith in the goodness of this country than I do after this year.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jan 25, 2017 -> 12:11 AM) Less than 30% of the people voted for him. I always remind myself of that every time some moron says "the people have spoken" History has shown that a great many more people than that will look the other way when the terrible things start, as long as they are coming for someone else.

And how many will die?

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 23, 2017 -> 04:58 PM) I was more curious about where Balta was going with the story. I have said on numerous occasions, that I think every citizen should have good health coverage. Period. We live in the best country on this planet and with that, we should be able to consistently provide citizens with the best medical coverage to ensure everyone how the choice to see doctors, manage their conditions, etc. I also think that if you don't do those things, you increase risk for terrible epidemics (because the rich aren't immune to disease, superbugs, etc) and on top of that, by ignoring certain issues, you end up having people admitted to ERs where the expenses end up being far greater then if you just treated people. I do think we need to do things about the ridiculous cost of healthcare and pharma stuff. That said, it isn't an easy answer. I think the ACA did many good things, but in general, I still think we are a far ways from being where we should. I am blessed that for the time being, my wife & I make nice livings, etc. and can afford the deductibles we have (our out of pocket family max is like 15K so if something happened to all of us, it would set us back a pretty penny) but even just giving birth cost of $5K (out of pocket) and I wouldn't call that anything overly unusual. I fundamentally have no idea how healthcare and child costs can be so freaking expensive and as I mention, luckily I have the income levels that I do, but I have a hard time comprehending how someone who makes the average living in this country, can afford this stuff, while saving for retirement, etc. At the very least, I don't understand why we cap things like daycare costs from a tax perspective, etc. The basic problem is - if you're ignoring a chronic condition because you cannot afford insurance due to the chronic condition, and that condition becomes acute - you've been ignoring the condition already. So the pain is worse today, it's been bad 2 months ago and you got through it, you may as well ignore it again. Then oops, that's the time it turns fatal. There was...a period of a couple years where I was thinking that was going to be the end result, prior to graduating. The other way that works, and it works just as well, is putting off preventative things like going to the hospital if you get the flu because you skipped the flu shot. That's one you can find plenty of stories of in the pre-ACA days. "it's just the flu, I can get over it".

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2017 -> 07:03 PM) First presidential press statement from Trump: whining about crowd sizes and Twitter. The new press secretary also took no questions while doing this. That is less than normal.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2017 -> 05:51 PM) Per US attorney spokesperson most of the 230 arrested yesterday will face felony rioting charge which carries a max sentence of 10 years and $25k fine. Not exactly a great start to this administration if they want to temper the fears of authoritarianism. https://twitter.com/BruceLeshan/status/8229...src=twsrc%5Etfw Eh, I'm used to people being overcharged after protest based arrests. That doesn't strike me as abnormal.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2017 -> 05:52 PM) Widespread Republican voter suppression efforts have not gotten the attention they should have these past few months. It's a good thing that a state like Wisconsin where there was a strong one put in place wasn't one of the states that swung the other way. Otherwise those complaints about how Democrats didn't turn out to save the Republicans from doing this might really sound tone deaf.

The U.S. Government has been challenging Texas's Voter ID law as a racist way to keep certain groups from voting. Yesterday the government asked for a 30 day delay to rethink their case. I'm sure this will also get mentioned the next time we hear about how Democrats should have turned out to vote. (For reference, getting one of these IDs when you live in a fairly urban area took about 2 hours during a business day, in addition to having all the required documents, etc.)

During his speech today at the CIA, Donald Trump accused the media of falsifying images of his inauguration to make the crowd look smaller, while standing in front of the memorial for fallen CIA operatives. The White House is now setting up for a press event with large, blown up photos of the inauguration taken from the perspective of the Capitol Building. Edit: President Donald Trump today also told the CIA that we may have to reinvade Iraq to take their oil.