NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 09:38 AM) Sen. Barack Obama has launched a new Spanish-language TV ad that seeks to paint Sen. John McCain as anti-immigrant, even tying the Republican to his longtime conservative talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh. As first reported by the Washington Post, Obama's ad features a narrator saying: "They want us to forget the insults we've put up with...the intolerance...they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much." The screen then shows these two quotes from Limbaugh: "...stupid and unskilled Mexicans." --Rush Limbaugh "You shut your mouth or you get out!" --Rush Limbaugh The narrator then says, "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote...and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that Will the media go apes*** over Barry's new immigration ad like they did last week over McCain's sex ed ad? This one definitely crosses the line I was discussing recently. This is just dishonest and s***ty.

QUOTE (YASNY @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 09:52 AM) Finding it dispicable is the politically correct stance. Ramp it up ten fold if it was Obama. No, I don't believe I'm paranoid not do I believe my statement is unfounded. Have you been reading the over the top Obama love in this forum for months? And believe me, I toned down the question. Over the top is mild compared to what I wanted to say. Also, just because its politically correct, that doesn't mean that some people don't mean it.

QUOTE (YASNY @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 09:52 AM) Finding it dispicable is the politically correct stance. Ramp it up ten fold if it was Obama. No, I don't believe I'm paranoid not do I believe my statement is unfounded. Have you been reading the over the top Obama love in this forum for months? And believe me, I toned down the question. Over the top is mild compared to what I wanted to say. I've definitely seen the over-the-top Obama love, as well as the over-the-top Obama hate. They are both here in spades.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 10:05 AM) New Mexico: The Bernalillo County clerk has notified prosecutors that some 1,100 possibly fraudulent voter registration cards have been turned in to her office. Some cards in New Mexico’s most populous county have the same name as a voter who’s already registered, but carry a different birth date or Social Security number; some list someone else’s Social Security number; some have addresses that don’t exist, Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said Wednesday. In one case, a series of about nine cards appears to have been taken directly from the phone book, she said. “Those are sort of the big red flags,” Toulouse Oliver said Some of the estimated 1,100 registrations list Social Security numbers for people who already are in the county’s database of registered voters, Toulouse Oliver said. Other cards list the same name — but a different birth date — of already registered voters. Some of the people whose names appear in the list of possibly phony registrations, when called by the clerk’s office, said they never filled out the new cards changing their voter data, Toulouse Oliver said. In addition, “We do have a series of cards identified that appear to be (names) taken straight out of the phone book, Toulouse Oliver said. Toulouse Oliver said the potential scope of the problem has mushroomed since late last month, when the Journal reported on a forged card for Rebecca Sitterly, a former state District Court judge from Albuquerque who has been voting in the same place for nearly two decades. That card was submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a controversial nonprofit organization that says it has handled 72,000 new voter registrations in New Mexico since January. Matthew Henderson, head organizer for the group, said the Sitterly card was set aside as a potential phony by ACORN itself and turned in to the clerk’s office with a batch of other possibly bad cards. Toulouse Oliver said she did not know how many cards in the current stack of questionable registrations were submitted by ACORN, though she said that group this year has done the majority of so-called third-party registrations — those that aren’t turned in by the voters themselves but are submitted by groups organized to enlist new registrants. ACORN contract workers in 2005 were investigated in connection with forged signatures on a minimum wage ballot petition, though ACORN supervisors have said political organizers now oversee the registration gathering and the group has beefed up its own quality control. Nothing to see here, just community organizing. Some of those instances (i.e. same name, different address/DOB) are probably quite common and not likely to be fraudulent. Some of those do sound pretty ridiculous, though. Just sayin', I doubt all 1100 are fraudulent. But I do hope they chase all 1100 down to check them.

QUOTE (YASNY @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 10:27 AM) I can't help but believe that if it was Obama's personal email account that was hacked and made public, this thread would be 10 times longer and filled with indignation about 'dirty Republican tactics". And yet, this thread has multiple Dems and independents (I'll include myself here) that find this dispicable. That would seem to indicate your paranoia may be unfounded.

My admitedly limited knowledge of the laws of evidence is that information obtained by an illegal act is only inadmissable if the perpetrator was acting as an agent of the government (law enforcement). If they were not, I think, the evidence COULD be admissable.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 08:58 AM) Biden says paying more taxes is 'patriotic' So this would only affect people making 250K+ but I dont like that statement at all. It's basically saying that if you are fortunate enough to be wealthy and if you do not want to pay more taxes then you are an unpatriotic American. Broken link.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 11:53 PM) Where is Adam Russell? I mean if we're doing late year tryouts for RH relief lets get him an extended look. Scoreless outings against TB and BOS amidst some clunkers recently. Has a K-rate, if nothing else. He's just not pitched well this season. Of course, most of the bullpen has sucked lately too, so we'll probably see Adam a time or two in the next few games. Right now, they seem to be leaning towards MacD (which is a little scary, but understandable given the numbers) over Russell or Wassermann. Logan has all but disappeared.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 04:28 PM) But you know what? That gets back to that weird trend that no one has ever been able to really figure out...75% of the years, the stock market does better under Democrats than under Republicans. Prior to this cycle, the only years that broke those trends were election years with Republicans in power...where the stock market does better in those election years and goes back to being stagnant after the Republican wins. No one's ever come up with a solid guess about how that happens, but the reality is it does. Economic changes occur regardless of who is in power. And what effect Congress/Prez do have, can sometimes be immediate, but more often would come down the line. So, I wouldn't read much into that. Bush Sr was right when he said the Prez can do only a little about the economy - he just shouldn't have said it until after he left office.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 03:03 PM) I'll put this here rather than the economy thread. Anywho... If, in January 2000, you'd said to yourself "Finally, a Republican President. We've got an MBa and a CEO in the White House (their slogan). We're finally going to have someone who doesn't screw around with the markets. I'm going to invest a bit" Let's say you'd invested $1000 in a fund that followed the DJIA. Yes, not the biggest number I know, bear with me. If you'd invested $1000 in the DJIA on January 20th, 2000, today that investment would be worth: $1002.08. The DJIA is barely 20 points above where it closed on January 20th, 2001. Which means you've lost money. Inflation and opportunity cost suck. Of course, this is not something I blame on BushCo. I'd say they have only a very small amount of the blame for the current conditions.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 01:59 PM) The White House response is less than thrilled. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/white.house.energy/ And most of the country is less than thrilled with the White House. I guess that makes sense. Idiots. God forbid this administration be willing to compromise on anything.

Dow down another 4% today at close, 500 down almost 5%.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 11:49 AM) So the one place there is oil for sure is off limits. Nice. So all the places there is oil that they have leases for ALREADY are being allowed for drilling. So yes, I'd say, very nice.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 11:44 AM) Does that mean that they can tell the EPA and so on to go take a flying leap? Many lands with leases can't be drilled because of pending cases by the EPA, PETA, and so on. I don't think this bill does enough, and is suicide for Republicans. No where near enough drilling, but enough so that Democrats can say 'See? We allowed drilling, and it isn't helping!'. Remove the SPR release, i agree that is bad. Drill more. Its not 100% clear on the lease issue. It could mean, no new leases - drill where you are already leased. Or, it could mean, any current leases are released for production, so go for it. Or, as I took it, it means both. So that's a good compromise as well, I think.

House passes their version of the energy bill. Main points include: --Allow offshore drilling between 50 and 100 miles out --No ANWR drilling --repeals tax cuts for oil industry --States have to grant permission for drilling within their borders --Tax incentives for renewables, for consumers and businesses --Companies need to drill on already-leased federal land --Release of oil from SPR I haven't said this in a long time, but... this is a pretty good bill. The last item I disagree with, but otherwise, I think its a good compromise. Allow offshore drilling on the continental shelf, incentivize alternatives, no tax breaks for big oil, keep new drilling to already-leased areas.... I have very few complaints. Nicely done.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 10:07 AM) That goes all the way back to like 1975 or something and I thought the opening of their markets was supposed to rectify that. Their financial markets on MICEX and MISE have been more than open in the last decade - they have been begging for foreign capital. And they've gotten some, but not nearly what they were looking for. Western businesses and financiers have been hesitant to jump in a whole lot because of instability, political unpredictability, and rampant corruption. You just can't do business over there without paying off a lot of people a lot of money, which is costly and in violation of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (for US businesses).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 10:06 AM) In reality if capital is evaporating that quickly, they won't be able to stay in Georgia much longer. This is exactly how the Soviet Union collapsed. It wasn't politics, it was a complete lack of money to support the state. Well, plus a huge military budget, insane costs assocaited with maintaining an empire that large, and the inability to reap the enormous natural resources they had.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 09:55 AM) The era of Russian regional dominance appears to be drawing to a quick close. That lasted what, two or three months? A few years. But still, yes, HUGE blip for them. Lots of reasons behind it. Russia is a strange market.

Markets down another 2.5% or so today. Currency trading is going wacko. Feds looking for $40B in auctions. Yikes.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 16, 2008 -> 07:03 PM) AIG isn't what I'd necessarily call a failed insurance company, they just weren't anticipating a s***load of debt coming due because they couldn't hit the debt covenants. It all came down to a s***load of bonds going bad and them finding themselves in a world of hurt. Is there blame, sure, but they aren't near as dumb as Lehman. Hell, Lehman brothers had every opportunity to get themselves squared away but they were dumbasses, turned down that Korean money and are now s*** up a creek. You are missing another BIG bad component for AIG - they were a big player in credit derivatives on those same bad debts. They swapped out the anticipated risk and even bought some new risk. Once those started being written down in reflection of the bad debts, their asset numbers tanked. And even now that the write down reflects some put-side CDS risk, there is still the reality that some of those swap buyers may not be able to meet AIG's calls, and that gives further risk. So, AIG saw their assets dwindle quickly, and their risk profile skyrocket, in part because they engaged in unregulated swaps.

QUOTE (jackie hayes @ Sep 16, 2008 -> 05:04 PM) I'm confident that they will get regulated more severely from here on out. The problem is, the government can't by taking them over rewrite contracts that have already been agreed to. So the deals with the executives are pretty much set. We always have dictated the terms of the loans. That won't change. Fannie and Freddie are pointless without the implicit guarantee. It's a false choice, asking them to choose about regulation. Let's just do some hardcore regulation while reducing their size. (Although I don't support a complete decommissioning.) FannieFreddie need the guarantee and the sweetheart credit arrangement, and the gov't cannot credibly allow them to fail. I don't see what the problem is in deprivatizing the two while reducing the role they play in mortgage markets to that of a bit player in normal times. Like they (actually, it) were (was) originally intended -- an emergency stabilizer, not something to replace a true market. On the bolded, this is not the case. No contract is binding that is in violation of the law. If a federal law is passed as I stated earlier, then any compensation occurring after the law passes can be subject to it. Any contract stipulations in violation of the law, even if the contract was written prior, are null and void. ETA: I should note that said legislation COULD stipulate that all current contracts are exempt.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Sep 16, 2008 -> 04:43 PM) I think that is slightly harsh. They should receive exactly what their lowest paid employee gets. And maybe if I'm in a generous mood, I'd even consider going double based on their tax contributions through the years. Oh, and if they had outsourced any of those jobs overseas, that would be the lowest paid. These people make gobs of money. Which I have no problem with. But you can't make gobs of money for years, run a company into the ground, and then expect taxpayers to pay you even more. Sorry, I have zero sympathy in those cases.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 16, 2008 -> 02:14 PM) Did I hear right this AM that the Feds were going to not allow the golden parachutes for the former CEO's of these two? That would be a good thing. Haven't heard that, but, good. I've said before, I'd like to see Congress propose a lead parachute act. Basically, it goes like this. If C-level executives want to run their companies in to the ground, fine. BUT, if they should do anything that results in the federal gov't stepping in - bankruptcy, bailout, etc. - they should all be let go, with ZERO compensation from that point forward. No parachute, no severance, etc.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 16, 2008 -> 01:04 PM) Republician policies, huh? I notice a bipartisian effort on this one, including some very key names such as Chuck Shumer, Chris Dodd, and one VP candidate from the lower 48. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-t...2008-09-16.html http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/pos...Tk5ZDYyNGJhZjE= Zero doubt that both parties can take some pie to the face on the mess out there right now. Then, there is also even MORE that can be put on actors not even in the political system.

Chevy does official rollout of the Volt. 40 miles electric-only on a charge, then 300 miles on the gas engine.