NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 06:27 PM) We only really spent a pittance on construction jobs in the stimulus too. Highway construction alone was $30B. That's more than 10 times what we are spending on this latest energy package. Wrong priorities, IMO, and short term thinking is going to kill us.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jan 9, 2010 -> 02:07 PM) Exactly, Thome is no stud by any means. As long as he NEVER plays against a lefty, I'll take his 2 strikeouts, 1 weak selfish groundout to the shift, no speed, and 1 walk per game against good pitching, and his 3 for 4 with a HR once a week during a blowout. Dude... did Thome kill your puppy? On what planet is Thome as bad as you are trying to make him here?

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 10:12 PM) Hopefully not. He's done enough damage as it is. LOL, I assume this was meant to be green? One could argue that the moves he has made haven't been great. I personally think he's improved the team. But "damage"? You seriously think this is now a worse team than it was?

Hey look, Reid is an asshole. Shocking.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 06:27 PM) We only really spent a pittance on construction jobs in the stimulus too. Now I'm curious - what exactly did all the money get spent on? I know some of it, but I'm wondering if anyone has found a good financial accounting of it, by category, anywhere.

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 9, 2010 -> 09:25 AM) Who is the backup catcher option if Flowers goes to AAA? Armstrong? Or some vet we sign.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 05:57 PM) What about somewhere like Morton Grove? They have a Metra Line (Milwaukee North I think, it goes into Union), and 94 runs through it (or just next door in Skokie, I can't remember). In good traffic, it's 20 minutes to the loop, tops. In rush hour, probably more like 40 or 45. A quick glance at prices makes it seem like it's in your price range, depending how big of a house you want (it looks like there are some places between 250-300K with anywhere from 1200-2000 sqft). It's a nice town, not really far from anything. If you want night life, Evanston is 10 minutes away, and Chicago is either a quick Metra ride or a not too bad commute on the Edens. It's not a dangerous or crime ridden town, either -- I'd feel safe walking the streets at night. Morton Grove also has very good schools.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 05:18 PM) Saving and Creating, Baby. I don't care what the exact number of jobs is. That sort of thing has to be our future, or we will be in deep s*** long term (as opposed to short term, where we are already in deep s***). We should be spending 10's of times this amount on similar efforts, and should have spent that much less on temporary construction jobs in the Stimulus.

QUOTE (jphat007 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 04:29 PM) .304 .353 .412 = $1.75 mil .308 .365 .392 = $4.5 mil WHAT!? Except Pods had an aberrantly good year and was healthy, neither of which are likely to happen again in 2010. And Pierre is a better defender. So, yes, Pierre is worth more.

This is a good start, but not enough: Obama unveils combined public and private spending plan to inject about $8B into clean energy tax credits for tech and manufacturing companies, said to create 58,000 jobs. Linky.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 03:42 PM) well that's the thing. many jobs are "fixed jobs" not "variable jobs". Meaning that regardless of a company size or growth, no additional positions would functionally be added. (CEO's, CFO's, IT Manager's, etc) Now other jobs, are definitely variable jobs based upon sales/volume etc. (Customer Service, Line Personnel, Sales People, etc) A crude example... you have a company janitor. His job is to keep the office clean. Regardless of the companies size/growth/increase, that position remains stable. He's still cleaning the same space. Now if the company adds more variable workers or grows in space, then there may be a second fixed position added. But until then, nothing changes. You are working from the assumption of the number of companies being static. Often, one of the primary drivers out of any recession is new, small businesses cropping up or growing.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 03:27 PM) Be prepared... Most people will see their take home amount slightly lower in 2010 vs 2009. The reason behind this is simple. When nearly all of us got tax cuts in 2009, under the stimulus, it amounted to approximately $400 per person. Because this law went into effect 3 months in 2009, the $400 per person credit was spread out over the remaining pay check periods in 2009. (9 months worth) So the credit is still in effect here in 2010, but now it's being spread out over 12 months worth of paychecks. (24 or 26 in total) Thus you are getting a lower tax cut more times in comparison to 2009. On my wife's first paycheck, it amounted to $7/check less. I will look for that, and blame you.

QUOTE (1977 sox fan @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 06:23 AM) A great rotation ? That is a bit much i mean what have they accomplished to be consider a Great rotation ? I notice a lot of people here putting all the hopes of this team into the 4 or 5 starting pitchers . Well i hope you are all right because if these 4 or 5 guys don't pitch great we will be seeing another sub 500 year . for me trading one of them of Danks or Floyd in a package to get AGON i would do in a heart beat especially Danks 1 13 win season is not greatness . Your perspective here is strange to me. First, your logic of if the rotation doesn't pitch well we'll have a bad season, applies to every team in baseball. It also applies to every position in baseball. So instead, tey this perspective - how many teams in baseball look to you like their rotations will be better BASED ON WHAT WE KNOW NOW. Not "if this guy does unusually bad/good". Also, starting pitchers like Danks are a lot harder to replace than 1B's.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 02:46 PM) notice from the graph that the longest recovery cycles have been the most recent recessions. Now that may be a factor due to this chart being modeled in %'s. With a larger population you need a larger number of job additions to move the % numbers. Mathematically speaking. 2001 took longer than 1990 which took longer than 1981 My personal opinion is that the longer recovery cycles, and the less job-full ones, being recent, is a function of the types of jobs we are adding versus losing. We lose all manner of jobs, but only replace service and technology (and not a ton of NEW tech hardware, but smaller technologies and software). Manufacturing doesn't come back. Now, heavy manufacturing isn't per se the way to grow for this country anymore anyway - but this goes to one of my big harping points. We have, and have had, an opportunity to give ourselves a 90's-like run up - to be in FRONT of something again. The opportunity is alternative energy and fuels. Meanwhile, we keep falling behind. We cannot compete globally with older technology. Its not happening. We need to get in front, innovate, and spread new tech. That, combined with improving out education system, are the keys to future economic growth in the next decade.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 12:55 PM) Who do we seriously have left that would be of significant interest in our upper levels? I feel like right now we're back to "Wait until midseason where a couple guys have really started to shine" territory on everyone except Huddy. As far as guys near major league ready, its not a pretty list. Charlotte's starting rotation will probably look like: Hynick, Marquez, Shirek, Harrell, Torres. Bullpen probably Santeliz closing, then Rodriguez, and a collection of flotsam. That's pretty much a collection of guys who have a decent chance of being major leaguers, but none of them profile to be terribly great. Nothing that would get you a lot back in trade.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 12:06 PM) lol, this is the difficulty (and benefit) of having so many houses available. There's like 30 different suburbs that I've been told are nice and great for what we want. But what makes suburb X better than suburb Y? Someone with time should create a website devoted to this. The Chicago Metro has something like 300 different municipalities. Lots of suburbs. But if you narrow down your choices based on some of the thoughts expressed in here first, that will help you dig deeper into a few specific ones. Researching 300 of them would be a bit difficult.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 11:47 AM) I think you're confusing length with speed. This may be an economic recession, but make no doubt, this is an employment depression. You may be right if we can't improve in the next couple years, but right now, in terms of unemployment by ANY of the measures, this is nowhere near the Great Depression.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 11:49 AM) It's not amnesia. This is on purpose. He said last week that the shoe bomber was pre 9/11 and he's the third Republican to forget who was President when 9/11 happened inside a month - not to mention the anthrax attacks. That's pretty disgusting. All politicians in positions like this try to play the game, but in this case, to outright factually lie, about situations that ended up in people's deaths, to make your party look better... that's pretty low. Not to mention that when these things occur is not really something you fault the President for anyway, whether Bush or Obama. Unfortunately, there is a significant chunk of the population who doesn't understand that, and they'll take statements like this and leap to unfounded conclusions.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 09:28 AM) Marriotti is f***ING retarded http://deadspin.com/5443162/presenting-the...l-of-fame-voter Unreal. Same goes for Conlin. Please, please, please, let's remove Mariotti from voting, just as Cowley was removed from various voting privileges previously. There are some decent sports writers in this town, let's have one of them in there instead.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 10:38 AM) How'd you get in touch with your realtor? And how do they work generally? Do most of them have specific zones, or can I literally tell them "anywhere within an hour train ride without getting shot or mugged" or something and they could have homes in every direction? Ours was the agent for the condo we bought, we didn't even have one before that. But she's been awesome, she's helping us on selling and buying this time, and has worked with other friends and relatives now. I can PM you her info if you want it. The agent could give you ideas based on those criteria, but, I preferred to do some of that research myself. I felt it was more reliable. Then gave her the criteria to search for. She then gives us tips and advice, helps on looking at homes and selling ours, suggests ideas, refers to mortgage people, etc.

My wife and I are in a very similar position - we put our condo up for sale recently, and are looking to move to the suburbs. I will PM you more specifics, but, here is what I looked at: --Metra schedules, as SSI said - we set a boundary of 1 hour train ride (average). Anything outside that circle, forget it. --Further narrowed to suburbs that actually have, or are very near, Metra stations. The housing market is so weak, we have our choice of homes, including many in WALKING distance to a Metra stop. That is huge, as it means we don't have to buy a second car, which is a big cost. --Then there were schools - narrowed to suburbs with the better school districts. You can research this online. We have a daughter and will probably have another kid, so, this was important for us (also tends to help home values) --Further narrowed it down based on my wife having to drive to work in Northbrook, so that eliminated the south, southwest and most west suburbs. --Eliminated suburbs where the home values were so much higher than our range that we knew they weren't realistic (North Shore). That established our list, which I will PM you, of suburbs to look at. We sent that list, with our other requirements (number of bedrooms and bathrooms, garage, basement, price range, etc.), to our realtor, and she set us up on a website that sends us listings that fit our criteria automatically. We just go on the site once a week, and rate the homes (interested, maybe, not), and keep a running list of the ones we like.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 10:23 AM) The very graphs you cited show the recovery has been steeper than, from what I can tell, any other to date since the Depression. I think you are confusing the speed of recovery, with the length of the recession. Two different things. We went DOWN for a lot longer than others, which is of course why it was such a deep recession (chicken and egg there, but whatever). From the point we actually started recovery in the job losses, the curve has been very steep. Its right there in the graphs you provided. Oh crap, disregard this post, I was looking at the wrong line. Which make sense, since the recovery has been very gradual, as I've been saying for months, and everyone else knows as well. That's what made me scratch my head and realize I was looking at the wrong curve.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 09:39 AM) Ok, I have to totally disagree with you on this one. Please cite for me which fronts you're talking about. It has already been 2 years from the employment peak and we've done nothing but go downwards since. We've gone so far down the hole that if you repeated the Clinton expansion in jobs, it still wouldn't get us back to where we were in December 2007. GDP is only being sustained by massive efforts from the government, and even then, those efforts have only been enough to make things level out (at least temporarily) after 18 months, not to start pushing them upwards. Look at that last graph I posted. 18-24 months in, just about every recession had turned around completely and had unemployment back to where it was pre-recession, except for the 2001-2003 event. This one, we're just starting to level off. Even the 2001-2003 event, things were turning around much more rapidly than this. The very graphs you cited show the recovery has been steeper than, from what I can tell, any other to date since the Depression. I think you are confusing the speed of recovery, with the length of the recession. Two different things. We went DOWN for a lot longer than others, which is of course why it was such a deep recession (chicken and egg there, but whatever). From the point we actually started recovery in the job losses, the curve has been very steep. Its right there in the graphs you provided.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 09:20 AM) I think what is entirely possible is that the stimulus impact will start declining in the 2nd half of 2010, and because the stimulus included so many tax cuts it wasn't really designed to boost job growth as much as GDP growth, so when the stimulus impact starts to decline off, we're going to find ourselves having lost a lot of jobs and having done nothing to set up for future growth. Thus, the tax cuts go away, the government decides to focus on deficit concerns, unemployment benefits dry up for a lot of people, and the bottom drops out again. (Not saying I know for certain this will happen. Just saying, this is how the jobs situation could filter back and cause the 2nd dip) One other point now that I reread your post; by the standard of past recessions other than 1930, the "recovery" hasn't been that fast, it's been very, very slow. It's a combination of the deepest employment hole since 1930 and the new modern slow-job-recovery recession together. That's what we've not seen. Its been a fast recovery on many fronts - but not all. All recessions are not the same, of course. The simulus package, which I've said before was not all that well thought-out, will see its biggest kicks in 2010 and 2011, from what I have read. That, combined with the tendency lately to do targetted tax credit incentives, SHOULD help things a bit (just focusing on the gov't input in this case).

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 09:15 AM) For all the people who thought the Royals were acting more competently than in previous offseasons… look no further then this offseason. This White Sox 2.0 thing should be a blast to watch. I actually wouldn't be surprised to see Getz and Fields do better than they did with the Sox. Getz in particular. Pods, though... not so much.