southsider2k5

QUOTE (gfbaseball @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 10:40 PM) You can drive from Kannapolis to Great Falls if you want, I'm flying. 2177 miles if you take I-94 which just so happens, takes you right through Chicago. Great Falls is the one exception. it is also a half season rookie ball team.

How exactly do you celebrate 102 years of futility? I'd suggest a 102 gun salute, but someone might think Obama was invading another country...

Looks awesome. Any chance at a 1920 X 1080?

QUOTE (flavum @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:13 PM) If you're on the 40-man, and you start the season on the DL, you're pretty much considered a big leaguer until you come off the DL. Viciedo will be optioned to AAA when he comes off the DL. This is it. Milledge is on this team for a while. They will let Dayan go down and keep hitting until something happens.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 12:35 PM) 1. Having fewer people bailed out by the government and more people paying for it would require more people to be able to pay for it. The society that has grown up the last 30-ish years is the opposite...the economic gains since the 1980's, and especially since the mid 90's, have gone to such a small group of people that maintenance of a reasonable standard of living has become more and more difficult. 2. I'm glad you finally acknowledged that the reason you oppose social programs has nothing to do with whether or not they're effective, or whether or not they improve the quality of people's lives, or whether it makes society better off or more equal, it's that you don't want people to vote for Democrats. Because the rest of the nation is stuck on enslavement, er I mean, entitlement programs. These programs don't improve lifestyles. They stagnate them.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 07:29 PM) yeah but he's hinted that it could be situational. I do think Thornton is great but I don't think he's closer great. We'll see. Ozzie saids crap like that all of the time. At the end of the day, it took a lot for Jenks to get yanked.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 04:58 PM) Not necessarily. Sergio might well just pitch well enough to be moved to that spot. The only way Matt leaves the closers role is if he pitches badly. Ozzie doesn't yank his closers very easily.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 01:00 AM) You're right. I had no idea that Kannapolis was located in N.C.. Figured it was just Winston-Salem and Charlotte. So we have 3 minor league teams in the same state? Geez. And it seems like every minor league team is all somewhere on the east coast, with Birmingham being like the further team west. Is that normal? All of our minor league teams are within driving distance of each other, quite on purpose.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 04:53 PM) I still can't believe this guy has lasted 8 years without getting banned He's pretty much the homeless guy on the corner who screams at cars about the end of the world... No one really takes him seriously.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 01:33 PM) Could not disagree more. Certainly some things have to go right for them but they have big time power arms in their rotation as well as their bullpen. And Vmart and Miggy could be do massive damage in the middle of that lineup. They scare me more than a healthy Morneau and Mauer. Both Det and Min had very good springs and seem like they're ready to kick off the season strong. Plus they don't seem to be such p*****s when they play the Twins like the Sox do, and since the Twins are still the team to beat, I would say they have a very good chance in hell. I'm with Wite. I see the Tigers as a .500ish team with huge injury and pitching worries.

I went to Tex's cave and read the carvings in the wall.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 11:57 AM) Every time I look at that Alfonso Soriano contact, I remain in disbelief that Jim Hendry continues to be in charge of the Cubs' roster. Soriano is 35 years old, and his contract pays him $18 million for this season. That's bad enough for a declining outfielder who cannot hit an off-speed pitch and has nothing left on the basepaths. However, this worthless idiot gets paid that same $18 million annually for 3 seasons past this year. He will be 39 prior to his final season with the Cubs. That is going to make for an expensive buy-out if he even gets to that point. Soriano at age 35 to 37 for 54 million or Dunn at age 31 to 34 at 56 million Yeah, Kenny is good.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 09:15 AM) Your reply simply should have been: What has two thumbs and likes the long ball? This guy ^

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 09:36 AM) Here's my view of this whole thing. Tax the piss out of the rich. I have no problem with this. Maybe not the 90% tax rate we had before, but get it up to 50-60%, whatever. But at the same time, allow small businesses to flourish. Get people to be business owners again, not just workers. You guys have posted all of these graphs about the rise in CEO/top 1% pay. I wonder what the correlation is to the "big box" stores and other large businesses gobbling up the smaller shops. Basically without the successful (though not insanely rich) business owners, their wealth has gone to a few people. I'd love for the government to somehow devise a way to make small to medium size businesses the preferable way to own a business. I think we'd get more people employed at better wages. Obviously you can't do it retroactively (forcing huge companies to become smaller), so maybe you just offer a ton of financial incentives for companies under a certain number of employees. I have no idea how we'd switch to that kind of economic system, but I think that should be the goal. Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume that the greatest years for the middle class was back in the day when we had a lot more small to medium size businesses that were local or regional. That is exactly where most small business falls.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:43 AM) Wait a second...the biggest jolt that the Middle Class ever got was the end of the 2nd world war. That was the largest, most stable middle class we've ever had, and that was associated with a 90% top tier tax rate. As the top tier tax rate has gone down, as regulation of the financial industry has been dismantled, income has become more and more concentrated. Do you really want to argue that the regulatory and tax systems on the top tier are more stringent right now than they were int eh 1950's? There have been peripheral changes (Medicare, environmental legislation) but on straight income and financial shenanigans, it's been the exact opposite direction of what you say it has been. The thing I find jaw-dropping is that you're posting an article about how bad it is that states have to rely literally on the fortunes of less than a thousand people for their income because they so totally skew the nations' income distributions, but your conclusion is "those people should be taxed less and everyone else should be taxed more. That way their incomes go even higher". Two things here. #1. I never made that conclusion. YOU made it. I pointed out the simple fact that we have put more and more people on to depending on the government, with less and less people actually paying for that. When things go bad for that ever narrowing, and on purpose by Democratic plans, group, things for those dependent people are going to be worse. #2 I am glad that earlier you finally acknowledged that change in philosophy that instead of social programs being a safety net like they are usually, that they are a straight up class warfare money grab. That has been the philosophical change here. The more people that are enslaved into social programs, the less people that can afford to vote against the party that supports them. It has been the trend for 75 years now. Its not about improving people it is about making them unable to move up on their own. If they somehow succeed, they are a part of some sort of evil elite that controls the world, and need to be punished for doing so. Its not some sort of vast right wing conspiracy to keep people poor, it is a left wing one. If you limit opportunities for success, you limit chances to vote against the Democrats.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 12:19 AM) I would say that the best compromise would be to go 4 years with a vesting option that should be easily reached if Danks stays healthy. It becomes a regular team option with a large buyout if not reach so that, assuming it isn't reached which would also assume that Danks did not pitch particularly well, he would still go into free agency with a bit of change so he can still get a 1-year deal and not need to make a killing on it. Somewhere around $16 mill a year at full value, so like... '12 - $12 mill '13 - $15 mill '14 - $16 mill '15 - $17 mill '16 - $20 mill or $4 mill buyout, vests with 90 starts between '13-'15 or 25 starts in '15 Total guaranteed value is $64 mill over 4 years while the 5th year, if reached, pushes the total value to $80 million (maintaining the $16 mill per year value). If Danks is healthy and pitching well, he's worth that contract and, again assuming health and all that jazz, he is still young enough that he can secure another pretty sizable deal and push his career earnings well over $100 mill. If it was that easy, I think it would have been done already.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 07:31 PM) He wasn't. That wasn't a Cooke style hit. He got a major and a game, which is what he deserved. But yes, injury/length of injury should have an affect on suspension length, and it does. I don't think that makes a bit of sense. Why would you essentially punish bad luck more than intent?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:29 AM) How does "spreading wealth around more evenly" not fix the problem? The problem has nothing to do with the bulk of society being undertaxed, it has everything to do with an incredibly wealthy overclass. The more you depend on "spreading the wealth around" aka making people's existence entirely dependent on a narrowing amount of successful people, the worse recessions get and the harder hit those now government/rich dependent classes will be. Not to mention the idea that taxes are going to create a middle class somehow is just insane. We've been doing this for like 75 years now, and all we have done is created a much larger dependent lower class instead of a functioning independent middle class. People don't move up the ladder from "spreading the wealth around". That is a myth.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 02:42 PM) Lol. No, I meant for that link to be there. Goes back to my earlier argument that instead of spending 600 million and counting on this Libya situation, we may be better suited to spend that money back here at home, where, you know, people still get shot at by rogue gang members. I think ssk5's comment might relate to this article, comparing Obama's speech with Bush's second inaugural address (the source of my quote). Honestly I hadn't seen that story at all. When I heard the quotes from Obama, all I could think of was that this was a speech Bush would have given in 2001/2/3/4, which would have been derided by most of the MSM.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:26 AM) Then the answer is to make it so that 400 people do not have more accumulated wealth than 150 million people, not to tax the 150 million people and let the 400 people off the hook. That doesn't fix the funding problem at all. If anything it builds the house of cards taller.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 05:11 PM) Ryan Johnson said he didn't think it was on purpose, and he isn't mad about it. But I don't believe for one second that the fact that Johnson didn't get injured didn't have everything to do w/ the ruling. Had Johnson been injured in miss the rest of the season, then Bertuzzi would be right there along w/ Cooke. Which is complete crap. You shouldn't need to injure someone to get penalized for trying to injure someone.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 01:19 PM) That's actually impressive. They wrote a whole article about how high-income earners are affecting state's revenue situation without ever acknowledging that having all of your income growth concentrated in the top 1%, while the remaining 99% stagnate or get worse, might be a bad thing. It is a bad thing when you have built the house of cards on something that volitile.

QUOTE (flavum @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 01:56 PM) Like I said in the other thread, Humber should start the 9th and 19th, and Peavy should shoot for the 24th or 29th. Heck his rehab schedule would put him on track for the April 19th slot.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 01:42 PM) OBAMA: “For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.” George W Obama

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 12:13 PM) I'd rather take the first couple of months to see if Quentin can rake on his own. If he can't, I have no problem with a platoon. If he can, though, I want him getting regular AB's. Q at his best >> Half-time Q and half-time Milledge. I'm with this. The best possible Sox team is a good TCQ. We have to give that a chance to happen.