NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (hometeamfan @ Dec 23, 2010 -> 06:59 PM) Too bad the Sox don't want to pay him what he's already earned. All this talk about "Danks wont agree to extension.." Actually...Sox aren't offering him what he's earned. He could suck this year and he's still a valuable, young, lefthanded, dependable, workhorse starter..... MLB made the rules for salaries. Cant fault Danks for taking care of himself. New contracts are really not about "what he's earned". Sure, for favorite son type players there tends to be a bit of extra money, but mostly, contracts are given to players based on what the team thinks that player WILL do in the future. These aren't back pay bonuses.

WHERE'S THE BEER?!?!

QUOTE (NIUSox @ Dec 24, 2010 -> 01:09 AM) Obama to Restore Wilderness Rules to Public Lands QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 24, 2010 -> 11:51 AM) Obama and Co. decided "oh wait maybe we shouldn't crap all over our base that got us elected in 2008" in the last couple of weeks, apparently. f*** yeah - millions of acres of land that have already been presented to have no mineral or gas/oil value have been sitting waiting for designation for no reason other than politics. Good to see ObamaCo remember their promise to better protect wilderness. This issue is one that matters a lot to me, its one my hot button topics. This is the right move. These WSA's and other proposed wild lands were already vetted for this purpose, and they need to move forward.

IL still has a solid majority in both houses and hold the governor's chair, so the loss of seat there will almost surely hit the GOP, not the Dems.

With all the injuries and illness in 2010, I'd be shocked if the system doesn't take some nice steps forward in 2011. But sadly, I have to agree that this is a bottom tier system as it stands in terms of current talent. That does NOT mean that the system's VALUE is bottom tier, necessarily. Sale and Beckham cruised all the way through, and many prospects were traded for major league talent - these rankings simply don't take that into account.

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 06:24 PM) I'd say it would be a good game. An average to above (team does to district finals) High School boys team would have at least 2 or 3 guys over 6'6" and at least 3 long range shooters. Plus, their upper bodies would be more muscularily developed overall than a college woman's. How much basketball have you played with or against men OR women at the college level? How much time have you spent watching women's college B-Ball at the D1 level, in person? And I see you moved the goal posts. Mid-level team is now a district final team.

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 04:46 PM) I'd love to watch a mid-level High School boys team wipe the floor with UConn's women's team. You can't be serious. I mean, I didn't go to UConn, I went to Iowa State, and even there... I played pickup games with some of the girls on the team. They are impressively good. There is no chance a mid-level high school boys team "wipes the floor" with them.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 02:40 PM) Well, there you have it. Case closed, there was no way Jenks could have pitched well again for the White Sox... since56 has spoken. Who pissed in your Cheerios?

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 02:38 PM) God, teams 7-10 seem low. And teams 3 and 6 seem high to me.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 02:30 PM) The Iowa State nonconference was so soft that it doesn't matter. And when you talk about 6 conference wins, 4 would likely be over Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas Tech.....so they won't mean much. For Iowa State to be in tourney consideration, they likely need to beat Oklahoma State and A&M on the road, as well as getting a couple of upsets against the K-State, Mizzou, Kansas, Baylor group. Pomeroy has ISU going 19-12, 6-10, with projected wins against Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Kansas State, Mizzou, Nebraska and Colorado, all in Ames. Regardless, a road win against Virginia would be a nice starting point. So them Pomeroy expects ISU to beat Virginia - which I think is probably not going to happen. Nice if it did though. 19-12/6-10, they need to win at least a game in the tourney to have a shot. 20 wins puts them in serious consideration, in my view. But really, if Hoiberg can even just get this team 18+ wins and an NIT berth, that's progress.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 02:04 PM) The Senate passed the 9/11 health care bill with a unanimous voice vote. Since it was edited, it has to go back to the House now, which is expected to pass it today. I can't find a good article anywhere that tells me what the edits were. Anyone have that info?

These ISU teams went to the NCAA tourney with these records (overall/conf), in the time I've been following them: 1992: 21-13 (5-9) 1995: 23-11 (6-8) Those were Big 8 seasons of course, but the relative records give you the idea here. To give another view, here are seasons where they had decent overall records (say 18 or better wins) and bad conf records but did NOT make the tourney, from the same period: 2004: 20-13 (7-9) So, looking at the past 20 years or so, of the three teams with 18+ overall wins but a losing conference record, 2 of the 3 went to the NCAA tournament.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 01:49 PM) You would never go into the tournament with a 6-10 conference record no matter how well you do in your conference tourney... Well first of all, unless the rules have changed, you win the conference tourney you go to NCAA's no matter what your record is. Second, I distinctly recall some ISU teams and other teams going to the NCAA's with at best 7-9 records in conference. Not sure about 6-10, I'd have to look that up. And it really depends too on who you beat with those wins.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 01:34 PM) Rex was alleging that dogs can be gay. They don't have the social structure to be gay. They're pack animals. What the heck does being a pack animal have to do with being gay?

QUOTE (shipps @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 12:42 PM) How long have we been saying this though? 10 years? Eh, the critical mass the last few years was never as strong for them as it is now (other than starting pitching). I don't think they are likely to do much in 2011, though you never know.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 12:14 PM) Well, I didn't mean they can't file a lawsuit (as anyone can, for any reason, at any time)...but they can't just "sue and win", which is what you're making it sound like. They lose these cases more than often than they win them. Only evidence I have of that is asking company lawyers from here and another business that I know -- they say out of such lawsuits filed, maybe 5% are legit cases over a decade span of time. But this is merely what I hear. You are doing what I see a lot of people do - dividing civil litigation into two categories, when it may be more complete to see three. 1. Anyone can sue for anything. This is true, but if they have no reasonable legal grounds, they will fail 100% of the time - so really it isn't a meaningful protection at this level. 2. Laws provide legal foundation for lawsuits. Even if the chances of winning in court are low, just having laws on the books that provide these steppings stones is, in itself, important. It not only gives them a chance in court, it also forces settlements and other remedies by those being sued to aid victims, and so this has immense value. This is the level people are missing. 3. People have well-founded and easily provable civil cases. This is the next level up, where they have a lot of leverage. You want to reduce things to 1 and 3, but level 2 is of immense importance.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 12:10 PM) You can sue anyone at anytime you want...more often than not, these result in nothing other than lawyer fees and a lost case. You need sufficient evidence regardless of what kind of lawsuit. Sure, you can sue your employer if they fire you and say they fired me for "X", but proving X is usually harder than it sounds, especially in these sorts of cases. The salient point here is, because the laws exist, that means a victim has a chance to file civil suit and possibly succeed. That is very important to note, and you incorrectly stated they can't sue. Even if only a small number actually make it to court AND win, a lot of other cases are settled out of court, which is still a remedy for a victim. So the ability to sue at all, and make it past the first procedural hurdles (legal grounds, frivilous checks), is in itself an inherent value in the law as it stands.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 07:32 PM) So, Chicago State might be the worst team I've ever seen. Iowa State has 45 points 12 minutes in. 11-2 now, 2 OOC games left: @Virginia, and vs NIU. And they have 8 days off between this game they just played against a crappy team, and the game at Virginia. That's not a good combination, and I doubt they can win. Assuming they beat NIU, they go into the B12 schedule at 12-3, barring an upset of Virginia. I'll predict they go 6-10 in the B12 schedule, to go into the B12 tournament at 18-13 (6-10). That's an NIT berth most likely, but if they make some noise in the conference tourney, they could have an outside shot of going to the NCAA's.

If the Royals can somehow find 1 or 2 better than average pitchers during 2011 (internally or externally), with the talent they have on the farm, I'd say they are about as well set up for 2012 as most teams in baseball. I'd say there is a very strong chance they are a going to be a team to reckon with by then.

Most pitchers vary significantly from year to year, so this stuff is all very low on the scale of prediction accuracy. The thing that's good for the Sox is that, even without Peavy, they have a solid 4 that puts them in the upper half. With him, they have the potential to be elite. That's really all you can do going into the season.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 11:06 AM) So long as they never say why, no they cannot be. It would be impossible to prove that's the reason, since the at-will law protects them in simply saying, "we were cutting back", or "we felt like it", without citing the actual illegal reason, even if it was the true reason. You would literally have to get them to say that, or be able to prove that is why...which is nearly impossible. They can still be sued, sometimes successfuly, as noted earlier. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 11:09 AM) Right, and I'm saying that somehow sexuality got thrown in there despite being nothing more than a physical and/or mental trait that's no different than being genetically prone to being overweight, or having red hair or being bald or whatever. It's something beyond your control. I want to know why it's different. I get that gays as a group have been discriminated against, and that's why they were thrown into EE protection, but so are fat people. Where's the outcry for that? And Bigsqwert, you can call me a bigot all you want, but you're blind if you don't think members of the gay community want more than just equality. They want people to not only accept the fact that they're gay, but like it and agree with it. By calling me a bigot and my opinions stupid you've just proven that point. There are members of orientation, religion, or racial classes of all kinds that want special treatment. But most don't. So honestly, this is a non-issue to me, as its a level playing field across those protected classes. And level playing field is something the law can and does strive for. As long as we're all being blunt here... if you are choosing to characterize all gay people by the behavior of some minority of them, but choosing NOT to do so for other groups, then not only are you unfairly stereotyping, but you are being hypocritical and that is obviously motivated by some sort of bias. That bias might be created by your own personal experiences, I do not know, but its still bias. I'm perfectly OK with gays being a protected class in these cases, because they meet the two conditions I feel make it appropriate. One, the property of that class is not related to job performance, and therefore is an invalid reason for altering employment. Two, they are a class of people historically, and to some degree currently, unfairly and repugnantly treated poorly for purely that reason. Therefore, they deserve protection for equality (not being persecuted professionally or otherwise) - not special treatment (i.e. affirmative action, which I am firmly against).

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 10:36 AM) This is probably going to receive a good amount of backlash, but oh well, it's how I feel. In 50 states an employer can legally terminate or deny your employment based on the fact you're unattractive, have small boobs, are fat, have red hair, have moles on your face, wear glasses, grow up being a Cubs fan, etc etc etc. What's the difference? These are physical and biological things that are beyond your control, yet we allow that, but make an exception to protect 5% of the population. I think it's a great step that the military cannot discharge you for being gay or deny you the opportunity to serve. God knows if you sign up you deserve much more than that. I just don't understand why you should receive special treatment because you're gay. I get it, you've been discriminated in the past. But so have a lot of other people for a variety of things. I'm all for equal protection. I'm all for government getting out of people's personal business. I feel though that too often the gay community wants to force people to accept them and their lifestyle more than just being equal with them. You are forgetting half the law here. The law for at-will employment says you can be fired for any reason OTHER THAN conditions solely related to status in a protected class. In other words, you can fire someone for dressing poorly, but you can't fire them becase they are race/religion/orientation/nationality/gender. So the only "special" protection being asked for here within the military is for the military to be subject to the SAME rules that private business is subject to. In other words, not special at all. In fact, equal.

Everything the KW says publically is that Peavy won't be ready for April. Yet, every report we get is that he's hitting key milestones way early, already throwing in mid-December instead of January. Honestly, I've thought this all along... I think that Peavy is on track for Opening week, I think the Sox know he'll be ready, and I think they are going to trade one of the starters and/or Quentin to get relief and RF help. I truly believe that's Plan A to get salary relief and improve the pen. And if Peavy is shaky at all, Sale steps in.

Also, existing home sales up 5.6% despite increasing paperwork due to recent mortgage issues. Up 3 of last 4 months, despite no new government incentives and mortgage rates that are actually rising a bit. Earlier this week they reported new home sales up only slightly, but staying near their record bottom. Foreclosures have been reinitiatied across the board, but new delinquencies continue to fall. That is pretty much the ideal set of trends you want at this time, and for a while.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 07:45 AM) I was in 7th grade or something but I remember it was a compromise (Clinton wanted to let gays in the military, back in the day it used to be a crime) I was in college. Anyway, yeah, maybe it was a compromise. The underlying UCMJ can only be changed by the executive if the military OK's it, and its not in violation of any legislated law. DADT was a policy either set by XO and then confirmed, or set by Congressional action. Either way, I think, if Congress acted on it, then it can't be undone by another XO.