NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 26, 2012 -> 03:19 PM) The rosters are far from finalized at the minor league level. Yeah, those rosters aren't usually accurate until mid-April for A ball and above, and early June for rookie clubs. Basically, right before they open play.

That makes me sad, but, he never really got the velocity where it needed to be, and never lived up to the potential. I hope he lands somewhere else and gets another shot.

I would have paid money to watch Ron Kittle play CF.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 09:30 AM) The whole intent of the way the laws were written was to make them as difficult as possible to knock down. That is why it is so big and complex. That way if the Supreme Court rules that a part is unconstitutional, the Dems get to run around and scream about lifetime limits and the like. I think you are pushing the envelope a bit with the conspiracy thing, I don't think they made it big and complex for that reason. It was big and complex because it is f***ing Congress. You are certainly right that the Dems will say that - that the GOP now "owns" health care, that they actively worked to reinstate lifetime limits and pre-existing condition requirements. And they will be right, sort of. Both parties COULD have come to a way of eliminating those, without the mandate, if they wanted to. Congress is just too much a clusterf*** to pull it off.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 09:19 AM) But that is re-legislating. It is creating a bill that would never have existed in the first place, never even been conceived of, and then telling the executive branch to figure it out until Congress un-does the law the Court created. I completely disagree. It is far more intrusive, and outside the intended realm of SCOTUS, to knock down the whole law, then it is to making a finding on specific aspects or clauses of the law.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 08:54 AM) Personally then, I can't wait to have law sitting on the books reading that a clause is "Essential" when that clause is no longer on the books. The alternative is to re-legislate by removing everything else, which would be in the true sense "judicial activisim". The court's job is to address problems of constitutionality and law, and only certain aspects of the law are problematic in that way. QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 08:54 AM) The issue is the law is unsustainable and impossible to fund without the mandate. Sort of. It certainly does make the law difficult to implement in some aspects. But that is for Congress to repair. It is for SCOTUS to find and determine problematic aspects of the law, not to remove dozens of related legislative items because in their subjective view it makes the law less effective.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 08:48 AM) Exactly, because they actively stripped it out and said that there is no severability. Eh? I think maybe I used poor wording. What you quoted tells me that SCOTUS can and should be able to strike down ELEMENTS of the law, without striking down the whole thing. There is no clause like what you were hinting at before.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 03:49 PM) Might be a little different from what I said earlier, but here's the full text and story. The House initially passed a version including a "Severability" clause, saying that this part of the bill could be struck down without the rest of the bill going down and spelling out how that would work. The Senate then actively removed that clause and the House passed that version which actively removed that clause when they passed the reconciliation bill. And it was replaced with this pair of statements directly stating: The bill itself says that losing that portion would "Undercut" the bill and that the requirement is "essential". If there is such a thing as legislative intent, it's right there. (More details in the full version at link). QUOTE (farmteam @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 04:56 PM) See Balta's post above for what the Health Care Bill actually says, but yes, in general bills can have severability clauses that specifically state "If this part is later found to be unconstitutional, the rest of the bill is still in effect [or, the rest of the bill is void as well. Both happen]." I'm not sure if it's common practice, but it's definitely not unheard of. I am aware they can exist, but was not aware that PPACA had one. And, reading the text, it does not. It has a statement of import and impact, which would and should be taken into account by the courts, but there is not per se severability there.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 03:32 PM) Isn't "Declaring that it's unconstitutional for Congress to say that if one part of a bill goes down the whole bill must go down" basically creating new legislation? Congress passed this thing and said specifically that the mandate is not severable. I can't imagine what Constitutional standard the court could use to declare that "Congress has no right to declare that one part of the bill relies on another part". Wait, what? I must have missed something here. Are you saying that there are words in the legislation that SPECIFICALLY says that if the courts strike down the mandate, the rest of the legislation becomes null and void?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 03:15 PM) Of course, Congress also quite specifically indicated their wishes and said that "if this section of the bill is found unconstitutional, the whole bill must be invalidated". Thus, the Supreme Court would be creating a new standard that the Court can effectively yield a line-item veto in all cases and can override Congress's decision making on that. Some might term that an incredibly "activist" move. "some" being you. Your interperetation is bizarre to me. I'd prefer that SCOTUS narrowly address problems in broader legislation, as opposed to trying to re-legislate, which in my view is truly "activist".

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 10:14 AM) Read exactly what I wrote down to the letter. dur. I assume you've watched bonus stuff on the blu-ray or DVD of the latest Star Trek movie? If not, do so. The actor who plays Chekov talks about that.

Also wanted to add... I really don't seen any good teams in this division outside Detroit. I look at Cleveland and Minnesota, and in my view, this Sox team is clearly better going into Opening Day. Kansas City is a mystery, it all depends on their pitching, but I think I give the Sox the nod over them too. To me, the Sox look like the 2nd best team going in. Though I will say that Detroit has a BIG edge.

QUOTE (fathom @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 11:42 AM) 72-90...with the lack of depth in the minors, if KW starts selling during the year on guys like Floyd/AJ/Thornton, it's going to get really ugly He's only going to "sell" if the team is out of the race at the ASB. And in that case, pretty sure everyone here would agree with him doing it, even if it does mean an ugly 2nd half.

Interestingly, analysis of the arguments from this morning seem to indicate the justices are not leaning towards scrapping the whole thing, but more focusing on just the mandate. Seems like they don't feel it is their place to decide what legislative pieces work well and don't, which would indicate an inclination to only carve out the mandate and let Congress deal with fixing the bill.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 06:02 PM) I thought his accent was wery good. You're joking, right? He was atrocious trying to sound like a Russian. I actually took Russian in college (don't ask), and we discussed at one point some films with Russian players in it... Red October was pointed out as having a lot of well-done work in terms of casting Russian actors, and training other actors to sound Russian... except Connery, who just sounded like... Connery. He was awful.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 07:29 PM) LMAO. Wow. Nancy's likely to cap her ass. Seriously, that is bizarre casting. But equally bizarre (though not as potentially offensive), they are saying John Cusack to play Richard Nixon. WTF?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 09:39 AM) For NSS...the New York Times, a month or so behind those hippy blogs I like to link to, has finally caught on to the idea that the settlement in the mortgage mess gives banks credit for stuff they do anyway. That is not the same argument we had - which is that HAMP counts towards this. Also, looking at the implied math in the article... About $9B of the money can be used as credits for things that don't directly help people stay in their homes (but still needs to go towards homeowners in some fashion), and SOME of that can go towards things they already do. So... what exactly are you arguing against here? That some 10% of the settlement may involve requiring activities that the bank is likely to do anyway? You can look at that two ways, either it is a backstop, or a give-away. I tend towards the latter, so do you probably. So yes its annoying. But not the $25B give-away to banks you seemed to think it was before.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 09:08 PM) Misdemeanor. Or felony. Depends on the assault.

OK Mr. or Miss 60-65 wins, show yourself and tell us why.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 02:14 PM) They're going to have to lobby heavily to have that provision removed. It will destroy their business and they know it. Which means Congress is going to have to take up allowing insurance companies to reject pre-existing conditions, or the court will have to strike down the whole law. And whatever complicated scenario they set up, I guarantee you I'm going to call it "bill to allow people with pre-existing conditions to die". Because it will be. Very possibly. What they should do is scrap the garbage PPACA legislation and enact the NSS72 Health Plan I suggested in here when PPACA was being debated, but dammit, they just don't listen to me.

They'll start off decent, but with some growing pains in the bullpen and on defense. By May they'll be in the race, and stay there near until August, ans the team starts to gel and hit. Peavy pitches surprisingly well, almost like old Peavy... Dunn has a big comeback year... Beckham does better than last year but still not quite there... and Rios sucks, but Fukudome takes more playing time. Then Peavy, Sale and possibly Humber start to feel the wear of massively increased innings, and start to dog down and struggle. One or two might even be shut down or moved to the pen, replaced by Molina or Axelrod or Castro. The team fades through September, but is on the outside edge of the WC race until the last week. 82-85 wins, and about 5 games short of the 2nd wildcard.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 02:05 PM) Im not too worried about insurance companies, they are very good at making money. That's not even in question here. The question is, in the situation where only parts of this law stand without the mandate, HOW will they make their money and what effect does that have on people?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 01:24 PM) Now, I do have a fix for this controversial issue, without the mandate. You have open enrollment periods once a year, but you make them long enough and loud enough that people KNOW it's open enrollment time. There are exceptions to these rules, such as marriage, having a child, etc...where those persons can be added to your insurance outside of that window. HOWEVER, if you don't enroll during that enrollment period, you have to wait until next open enrollment and hope you don't get hurt/sick. Of course, there would be other caviots to this rule, but it would fix the "wait until you're hurt/sick and then buy insurance" gimmick. I'd be down with that.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 12:57 PM) We couldn't wait anymore. Picked it up last night. We got tired of our old car nickle and diming us to death with small repairs. It's so nice to drive a car where everything works and it's quiet. Congrats! Always love the feel of driving a new car home.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 27, 2012 -> 12:21 PM) That's not good, because the whole law won't work without the mandate. Sort of. Requirements like no pre-existing conditions and no lifetime limits can stand just fine.