NorthSideSox72

We won the FLA series 2-1. Need to go at least 2-1 here, a sweep would be great. For guys like AJ, Jenks and others likely to be traded, it comes down to this next week to two weeks of games. If by beginning of June the Sox are still 7-8 games out and well below .500, the show is going to be over.

QUOTE (docsox24 @ May 24, 2010 -> 03:41 PM) so we are now 2 months into the season and we still haven't figured out that kotsay should not be hitting 5th Oddly, this was true until a couple weeks ago. But now the past couple weeks he actually has a hot bat - so I hated it for the first 1.5 months, but I'm OK with it at the moment.

QUOTE (knightni @ May 24, 2010 -> 02:43 PM) How can a company go bankrupt if they are worth billions? Their debts more than out-number their income. They have 100 mil profit and 300 mil loss. Tom Hicks is a financial idiot. Someone else can fill in the other answers. A company "worth" billions won't go bankrupt, more than likely. If they were "worth" that much, they would have no need to. They may have billions in assets however, which is not the same thing. Also, most companies' debts are greater than their income - that's not really a determining factor. Usually its that the SERVICE on debt is more than they can handle, as well as other factors such as debt/asset ratios, income ratios related to future cash flows and pending debt payments, etc. And you cannot have 100 million in profit and 300 million in losses - that would simply be 200 million in losses, no profit. Greg775, you have to understand a couple things. One, USUALLY, a company goes into bankruptcy to get out from under debt in some form or another. By going through bankruptcy, they can typically clear themselves of most debt obligations, as well as any other contractual obligations, that would put the company in financial peril. And going bankrupt does not have to mean liquidating and going out of business - it basically means crying "mercy", and starting over. Its not that simple really, because there are all sorts of negative consequences, but I am trying to generalize here. In this SPECIFIC case, much like with the Cubs and TribCo, sometimes they may go through bankruptcy to restructure and make themselves appealing to a buyer.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 24, 2010 -> 01:28 PM) here's the solution: our society stops being PC p*****s about EVERYTHING and then this crap wouldn't happen. You think middle school hispanic kids gave a flying f*** what these idiots were doing? But now that there's a major uproar over it we just gave kids the incentive (attention) to be a bunch of teenage assholes. This country makes me so f'n sick sometimes with having to appease EVERYONE about EVERYTHING. Can't we just go one day where someone gets direspected and instead of crying like a bunch if p*****s we just say "ya know what, EVERYONE gets disrespected about SOMETHING. That's life. Shut up and deal." This post is even better when read next to your avatar. It looks like Hillary is yelling your post at me.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 24, 2010 -> 01:02 PM) We all said the same thing last year about Beckham, and now he is old news. Sometimes guys hit the league on fire and flame out, others are able to maintain. Some of them get the sophomore jinx, others are Derek Jeter(offensively, not defensively) And I still think that Beckham ends up being very good.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 24, 2010 -> 12:16 PM) 3rd paragraph above: LOL, if that contract is the highest unsecured debt on the Rangers' book, I'd say there is a 95% chance that the Rangers will exit the contract, forcing NYY to either take full assumption, or dump the contract entirely. And no way they do the latter, even though legally I think they could, since the contract counterparty defaulted. The only reason I could see that the contract would survive the proceedings as-is, is if the Rangers want to hold onto inter-team credibility, and not lose that political capital.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 24, 2010 -> 12:22 PM) Hard to argue the success of Castro and Colvin so far this year though. Never would have thought they'd be more successful than Quentin and Beckham. Castro looks like he'll be the real deal to me, given some time. Colvin, I think, ends up being nothing more than a 4th OF. Just my opinion.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 24, 2010 -> 12:17 PM) Ok, then let me elaborate a bit on 1... Do you think a serious clean energy bill, built on the hulk of the APA, will pass? Or will all of the clean energy componets be stripped out, giving us yet another "drilling" bill like the 3-4 of them that the Bush administration passed (each of which solved our energy problems completely). It won't be either - it won't be the joke that the Bush efforts were, but it won't be as good as I'd like either.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 24, 2010 -> 12:12 PM) I wonder if this means the Yankees won't get all of that Arod money now? Is A-Rod still on the TEX contract? If so, it, like every other contractual obligation of the Rangers, will now be subject to the filings and hearings associated with the bankruptcy. So it could go either way.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 24, 2010 -> 11:43 AM) 2 simple questions in reply: Do you think the American Power act will pass the Senate? Do you think it will have more than 1 Republican vote if it does? 1. In its exact current form, no. In some form, yes. 2. Probably yes.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 24, 2010 -> 11:32 AM) I believe is a an excellent check. I don't know constitutional law well enough, but as long as Congress has the ability to override each line veto individually, it should be OK by me. In this case, they'd have to override all or none per bill. In other words, it would go like this: 1. Congress passes bill 2. President vetoes one or more specific spending items in the bill 3. Congress has to vote 2/3 to either override veto on all for that bill, or if they can't, then all veto lines are removed

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 24, 2010 -> 10:55 AM) Really? So why did Lindsey Graham pull his support for that bill and stop negotiating after Obama announced he'd support drilling? MIght be interesting if that actually happened. He pulled his supoort when Immigration reform was bandied about as being before energy. Its just posturing anyway. Also, you have to realize that part of negotiation is knowing that you are willing to leave the table. Obama is offering a branch, but is willing to walk away from that if necessary. He's going to try it first though. Seriously, look at this latest veto power thing, look at what else he has done - this is part of his approach to these things. Make an approach to compromise first, and then if people reject it, they can hang themselves on that rejection.

Obama now trying to deploy a Lite Line Item Veto through Congress. It will probably fail there, but at least he's trying to do something (along with the program cuts he made last year) to cut out the pork barrell B.S. that Congress keeps shoving into bills.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ May 24, 2010 -> 08:48 AM) My only concern right now is the battery drain of 4G that I'm reading about. It does have a removable battery so maybe I'll try finding a spare on ebay. Either that or just make sure to get a car charger. I saw that same concern in reviews of the Droid Incredible, and its 3G. Seems like the trend lately has been smaller and lighter devices, sacrificing battery life. I don't really care as long as it makes it through a day OK - my current Blackberry can go a day, get turned off, and then make it through most (but not all) of a 2nd day.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 24, 2010 -> 08:36 AM) If that were true, then they are incredibly bad negotiators. They offered it up without any pledge of getting anything back in return, and then went out and tried to sell hard on the other side's position. By blatantly lying. On what planet? They basically said "look, we're doing an energy bill that will include a lot of green/clean energy stuff, which we know you guys hate. So in order to make it more politically palatable for some of the centrists, we'll throw in some nuke plants and some offshore drilling allowances". That was the opening salvo. They are getting back in return is the ability to overcome the Senate filibuster, so they can get 75% of what they want.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 24, 2010 -> 07:44 AM) I don't know if I'd exactly say Campaign Contributions would be my expected reasoning. I'd say it's more a matter of philosophy. Regardless of what Kap says, this is a very "Centrist" administration...at least in the current spectrum definition, where being as corporatist as possible is defined as the center. They're not jumping on BP because they don't want to jump on BP, because their instinct is to be trusting and friendly towards big business. They worked to protect wall street for their whole first year, they used the same lies as Bush in trying to sell more offshore drilling, and they trusted that BP wasn't openly lying to them when they said "it's a small leak" for the first week or two until satellite measurements became available I think your tendency to apply your own fears about corporate protection isn't reality for this administration. They didn't offer offshore drilling because they liked BP - it was a political tactic, a way to bring more centrists to the table (as you point out, this is a centrist administration).

This has not been handled well by the administration. I see a lot of theories flying around as to why. One is about campaign contributions - this seems thin, given that the main reason he got so many from BP is because they count each employee's individual contribution as somehow being done for the company (which makes no sense). Another is that he WANTS this to go badly, so that he can push the clean energy agenda harder. Interesting theory, but that would mean he'd be gambling away political capital at a time where he needs every cent of that - so I kind of doubt it. I'd suggest instead there are two, simpler reasons. One, unlike Katrina, no human is dying as a result (after the explosion) - this not only means people are less quick to respond, but it also means that agencies like FEMA simply aren't prepared or trained for this type of event. Two, I think that this is ObamaCo being administratively immature. They are faced with a situation they don't know how to handle, and that the agencies aren't used to handling, so they are stumbling. Much the same as what we saw from BushCo on Katrina, this lack of administrative abilities is hurting the response. Katria was worse in that people were dying, and BushCo was a little more crass in its treatment... but otherwise, the situations are eerily similar in terms of what is making them fail.

Serafin and G Johnson both had their first bad outings of the year, gave up a combined 10 ER (13 R total).

QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 22, 2010 -> 04:55 PM) Yup! Yup! We are a bunch of ignorant, hate, racist motherf***ers. Way to label 20,000,000 people with one fell swoop. Either you didn't bother to read what I wrote (where I was clear it wasn't all Texans, or all conservative Texans even), or... QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 22, 2010 -> 06:17 PM) Nice of you to volunteer that you're one of the extremists he's referring to. Go Jefferson Davis!

QUOTE (knightni @ May 22, 2010 -> 08:30 PM) What about the Confederate States of America or Germany's flag from 1932-1944? Those aren't countries right now, are they?

QUOTE (flavum @ May 21, 2010 -> 10:26 PM) Punk Carlos Gomez hit a 3-run homer for the Brewers when the score was 15-0 Twins. He dropped the bat like the punk that he is, and it made contact with Mauer behind the plate. Expect something to happen tomorrow-it should. The game is on MLB network. Watched the video. Looks like Mauer said something to Gomez after he tagged home plate, Gomez gave some dumb-ass reaction with his hands.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 22, 2010 -> 02:45 PM) A league is which Carlos Silva and John Ely can dominate = AAAA. Look at these hitters, they act like they've never seen an offspeed pitch. I'm not saying that Floyd doesn't look good though. Picking out two pitchers is pretty meaningless. Also, Ely hadn't even seen the majors yet, so you can't really use him to make that comparison.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 22, 2010 -> 02:41 PM) Gotta love the NL. With the Cardinals starting pitching falling apart, be interesting if they get interested in Buehrle come June/July. That sort of performance is well beyond league differential. I really think the league difference tends to get waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overblown. Its not as if the NL is a AAA league for the AL, they are a lot closer than that. If the Sox staff ERA was, say, between 4 and 5 in the weeks prior... the NL is not so bad that it suddenly drops to zero. MB and Floyd have both looked good, and the bullpen has looked good for a few weeks now and most of the season.

Sox pitching has gone 18 innings without allowing a single run.

QUOTE (daggins @ May 22, 2010 -> 02:36 PM) I would think Danks, Rios, and Thornton should all make it. Paulie is having a great year but Morneau and Cabrera deserve to be there. almost zero chance for Thornton. He's actually have a good but not spectacular season, and he's not a closer. How many non-closer relievers make the ASG?