Balta1701

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 17, 2017 -> 05:25 PM) Why not release her today? I expect Trump's administration to foil this somehow. Honestly I do not know at all why this President has chosen commutations over pardons but that has been a choice they have made literally thousands of times over the past year, and since I'm in this thread I can say that I'll defer to their judgment as they've earned some deference.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Jan 17, 2017 -> 04:18 PM) If the Marlins suck by the deadline and decide to sell - anyone think RH tries to trade for Stanton? Does he have an opt out?

President Obama will commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning and she will be released later this year.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jan 17, 2017 -> 01:39 PM) But it's still a true statement that for the majority of people in the country they were fine with what they had pre-ACA. And it's also true that post-ACA many people lost what they liked in their plans. End of the day, it's not accurate to say every vote for Trump was a vote to repeal ACA and every vote for Clinton was in support of it. People vote for different reasons and for the majority the ACA is not one of them. It's also worth highlighting again that people are usually fine with their insurer until they hit one of the walls. For example, prior to the ACA, something like 50% of employer-provided plans had lifetime limits. How many people knew about that part of the fine print? Less than 1% of people in those plans would ever hit them, but when you're the one hit with cancer, suddenly you care about it an awful lot. Second point, while you're correct that it isn't accurate to say that every vote for Trump was a vote to repeal the ACA, it is accurate to say that repealing the ACA was not a dealbreaker for anyone who voted for Trump (in some cases because they did not know what it was I'll note). Much as with the blatant and overt racism and the admitted sexual assault, anyone who was willing to vote for Donald Trump looked at that and thought it was ok enough.

I won't predict wins or ERA (ballpark/team related), but I'll go with 5.1 fWAR. (Expecting if he's on a contending team at the end of the year that someone will push his innings a little harder and so he'll slightly outperform last year)

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 17, 2017 -> 11:53 AM) https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52371 This is just from an analysis of "H.R. 3762, the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015, which would repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) eliminating, in two steps, the law’s mandate penalties and subsidies but leaving the ACA’s insurance market reforms in place." and not the actual hellscape republican plan. 2 points to highlight: 1. The Republicans cannot eliminate the ACAs market reforms (banning preexisting conditions, etc.) without gaining the support of 8 Democrats as those are subject to the filibuster - they were passed when the Democrats had a full 60 seat majority in the Senate. If the Republicans were to remove subsidies without removing those requirements, that is "individual insurance market will collapse" setup because anyone who has a chronic condition and extreme costs would continue purchasing insurance while the correct economic decision for anyone who is generally healthy would be to stay uninsured until a major illness hits. 2. Also worth noting that the Republicans added an amendment earlier this year that states the CBO does not have to provide cost estimates for every set of proposed health care tweaks they offer for analysis.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 17, 2017 -> 12:23 PM) No, I think it's an ignorant thing to say that just because a person is white it's easy for them to "sit back and enjoy life", which is what he's saying VERBATIM. I think I agreed with you. I just used "Sailing by smoothly" to paraphrase "Sit back and enjoy life" because while typing I don't like to scroll up half a screen to see exactly what the verbatim text was to quote.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 17, 2017 -> 12:09 AM) Compared to a woman, a gay person or a minority, it IS. Come on. Wake up. I think he has a point. Telling a person who is working hard, has no health insurance because they don't deserve it, who is one paycheck from bankruptcy, who has a relative they're supporting after a meth/opioid addiction, that they're sailing by smoothly doesn't get the point across. They're not going to consider the alternate case where they got pulled over for having a taillight out and were shot.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 16, 2017 -> 06:56 PM) I didn't realize the Indians still had prospects worth trading for. Last time I checked they had 5-6 guys in the top 100 after their trade for Miller. They're terrifying.

Gene Cernan, the last human being to walk on the Moon.

QUOTE (beautox @ Jan 16, 2017 -> 04:03 PM) After Quintana is moved I would like to see them sign Brett Anderson as another lefty to flip at the deadline along with holland, use Beck, Covey and Danish as spot starters and pen pieces till the pieces in rotation are moved or DFA'd and they get the extra year of control from Giolito, Fulmer & Lopez. I think they'll do that sort of signing but my guess is jason Hammel, who I believe we've heard wants to stay in Chicago Area anyway.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 16, 2017 -> 11:56 AM) They actually have already interviewed both McDaniels & Shanny (did so during each teams bye week). They've also interviewed Tom Cable, Anthony Lynn (person who had been Bills interim coach), Sean McDermott (Bills new HC), Vance Joseph (Broncos new HC), and Sean McVay (Rams new HC). On that list, I would assume that it will likely be either Shanny / McDaniels getting the job (unless they pull a wildcard). A lot of people thought the Niners were going to hire a Pats guy as the GM, but supposedly he ended up saying he wasn't interested (and the presumption is McDaniels would have been a package deal with him). I presume hold up in San Fran is they want to finalize the new GM to ensure the coach / GM dynamic works properly. It now seems that Ron Wolf's son might be the Niners GM (they are currently pretty focused on two Packers guys). McDaniels supposedly took himself out of consideration today.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jan 16, 2017 -> 12:45 PM) We're not. The economies of the world won't allow for it without some country taking a massive economic hit. Never say never, but it's hard to believe having a moron spout dumb things over social media would really escalate anything to that degree. I think the Chinese situation will be much easier to deal with than the European one. China will make some noise in the South China Sea soon, Trump will respond, but then North Korea will get a slight bit of prodding to do something to annoy the US and Trump won't be able to resist a d*ck measuring contest with an actual dictator. He'll either get distracted or he'll wind up right back where we are now - asking China to help deal with the North Korean mess since we have no leverage over them otherwise. There's a reason why the European project exists.

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Jan 13, 2017 -> 01:20 PM) So what percentage would you people put on Trump starting WW3? So, been thinking about this a lot since yesterday's rant against NATO and the EU. It's become quite clear that Donald Trump not only doesn't respect these organizations, but given his moves already to pushing the British departure and allying with Russia, he's actually interested in weakening or even dismantling them. I think it's worth pausing to remember why these two institutions were created in the first place - they are perhaps the reason why there hasn't been a WW3. NATO and the EU were deliberately created both to counter the Soviet threat but to also make it so that minor disputes in Europe did not blow up as they had repeatedly throughout history. None of us have lived in a world like that, where there were multiple alliances in Europe each trying to undercut the other to gain influence or power for themselves. For all the talk about how bureaucratic the EU is, managing the issues of 27 different nations in a diplomatic way still remains a major accomplishment. Back out and imagine some of the world's situations without these organizations and I flash to fear. Just last year we had a Belgian based terror cell make a major attack in France and cooperation between those countries led to their capture - there was no French military operation to raid Belgian facilities. A few years ago with Greece on the edge of economic collapse there was no alliance struck with Britain to protect them militarily in the event they defaulted on debt to Germany. There was no breakup of the EU when they faced a massive influx of refugees hitting specific countries or when a US President decided to invade a random country in the middle east. There was no picking of ethnic sides by different countries in the Yugoslavian conflict. When Argentina invaded the Falklands, France did not get pulled in despite the fact that a French-made Exocet Missile sank a British ship. You can keep doing this, go back through the colonial wars for independence and they stayed colonial rather than expanding back to Europe. A major reason why none of these blew up was NATO and the EU - organizations established to deal with those economic and strategic threats in a coordinated way. Each country has sacrificed some of their ability to act on their own in exchange for the security of not having the country right next door as a major threat. If they can't count on the country next door as not being a threat, then they have to prepare as though they would be, and that preparation destabilizes the region until shots ring out. There's a reason these things were constructed. Unwieldy as they may be sometimes, we haven't had another European war because of them. Get rid of them...and none of us have lived in a world like that, so even I can't say how it will go.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jan 16, 2017 -> 03:13 AM) It's asking the low middle class, independent contractor guy with no subsidies to sock away 6k to cover his deductible and OOPMax that is insane. Forget it if he has a family and his wife gets sick for awhile. Lemme go grab that 15k real quick..meanwhile the average American has less than 6k in savings. God forbid the anesthesiologist for your surgery is out of network. Out of network caps can be 30k if I'm not mistaken. Each carrier decides. I work with 100s of these people. What sucks is that deducts all used to be $500-$1000. Now you gotta pay to play. People aren't going to get things checked out because they are probably going to have to foot the whole bill with these high-ass deducts. Saying Obamacare needs tweaks is an understatement. Not being partisan, just American. Please correct any misinformation on my end. The big problem with those low deductible packages available before the ACA was that you don't note any case of a person actually getting ill and needing it, and then discovering the yearly or lifetime caps (now banned) or that what they needed covered simply wasn't included. There's an offset in every bit of this and prior to 2009 insurers were happy to sell you a low deductible plan that you're paying for...but it's basically worthless if you actually have a major illness. Or have a kid. That was the other side and it was probably buried in 1 out of 25 or 1 out of every 50 contractors on those types of plans.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 10:03 PM) Trump is he conduit to having Pence as President. Every Republican in the house/senate would rather have Pence. I think if there's a serious enough issue, you'll get some serious movement on it. It'll be political theater for the ages. How would they survive their next election without Trump's most ardent voters?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 08:57 PM) The argument is that Trump's "on the fence"/independent supporters were energized the final 10-11 days by the Comey letter and the tide shifted (Clinton had been ahead for most of that time by 3-5% in national polling). Conversely, that it was the final nail in the coffin for young (especially Sanders supporters) and African-American voters who had been previously considering voting for Hillary, depressing votes on the other side. When pollsters asked people which day they made up their vote and who they voted for, during the Comey week there is a big enough dropoff in Hillary Clinton's numbers that it is the equivalent of several million votes compared to a steady race.

I wonder how many stayed home because of voter suppression laws.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 09:15 PM) I think he resigns or the corruption becomes to much for the Rands, Rubios and Grahams You realize how few Republicans you just listed? How many Republicans can afford to have the outright white supremacists turn against them in their next election?

QUOTE (ChiSoxFanMike @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 08:20 PM) Saladino had a .725 OPS with 8 homers, 11 SB's, and a 1.8 WAR last year in just 93 games. I think my prediction is realistic, especially if he plays a full season while being entirely healthy. At the very least, if he put up the OPS numbers and SB numbers you gave, his WAR would be far higher. It doesn't add up.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 07:49 PM) After that penalty he missed a guy that would have gotten the first down. I'm convinced the game would be a bit closer with Romo. Who knows though I would accept "a bit closer" as plausible, but watch the end score. Dallas is not built to put up 40 in a shootout regardless of which QB they have. They want to run the ball - that RB of theirs is in fact pretty good. You don't score 40 in the NFL by Elliot running the ball for 130 yards, that keeps the ball in their hands and gives the defense a breather, but the defense can't stop them right now. The Cowboys defense needs to make some stops.

QUOTE (ChiSoxFanMike @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 06:13 PM) .264/.324/.423 11 HR's, 52 RBI's, 17 SB's, 2.4 WAR That's a .747 OPS. Todd Frazier put up a .766 OPS last year at 3b while being a poor baserunner and fielder. If Saladino puts up those kind of numbers at 3b or 2b, that's a path towards a 4 WAR season unless he only plays 2/3 of the season. If he hits 11 HR in 2/3 of a season that's one impressive power surge for him.

That's 2 really impressive defensive holdings on the Dallas CBs that the cameras caught that weren't called.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Jan 15, 2017 -> 06:46 PM) Their defense was always going to be an issue. They have 3 points and like 68 yards though. And there's an explosion for a quick 7. That penalty for the guy coming into the huddle then leaving took at least 3 points off the board, if not 7. That's on the coaching, not Romo. None of this will matter if GB scores 40 and they're on pace to do so. Romo was not putting up 40. Cowboys have to stop Rodgers here, at least start holding him to FGs.

Well no one has added his article so here. Aside from that blurb it's all stuff we've heard said before including Q's background and contract, that "insider" bit is the new part.