southsider2k5

QUOTE (fathom @ May 3, 2009 -> 12:53 PM) Gathright got signed pretty quickly during the offseason (mid December), IIRC. To compare Owens speed to Gathright is just silly. To a minor league contract. The guy sucks, and has only one aspect to his game. Speed. He is the same guy who we just ran out of town, sorry just because he has a baby hear on his chest, I am not about to turn him into something he isn't.

QUOTE (shipps @ May 3, 2009 -> 12:44 PM) So this was done because of Thome's possible injury status? If it was, it isn't a bad idea. I am really not ready to call up any of the kids at AA until they are a little more seasoned. No sense in rushing them until they are more than ready.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 3, 2009 -> 12:23 PM) Joey Gathright is probably the most athletic man in the MLB, right now. Jerry Owens has nonthing on him That's why he couldn't get a job with the Royals, or a major league offer from anyone during spring training. The dude is a glorified pinch runner. We just had one of them.

Ben is going to go to where ever offers him the most money. In a year when the cap is expected to contract, and everyone is saving for next years class, there might not be any other offers, other than a one year deal from the Bulls.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 2, 2009 -> 11:08 PM) Yes, but Lou doesn't use them well. Correct me if i'm wrong, but while Hill's been hitting well, Lou sat him for about two weeks straight last week. Gathright has become a bondafide pinch runner, and while Hoffpauir hits, he can't do much else. JOey Gathright=Jerry Owens.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 2, 2009 -> 09:56 PM) Because no one's dumb enough to be an investor in the banks when they have an idea of what's still coming through in terms of the loans they made. The government could be doing absolutely nothing and you'd have to be a fool to invest in most of these banks. Hell, just go up a few posts and look at the Alt-A reset peak that's still coming. If I had the money I'd so be shorting these guys right now. Even where they still are. Because the only reason why they exist at all right now is the government, and there are at least 3 huge hits still coming in the Alt-A resets, the collapsing commercial real estate market that is just starting to hit right now, and the credit card debacle that is coming. I'd be shorting the banks, but mostly because of the run that is going to happen on May 7th when the stress test results are announced.

I was going to lose it if JD broke his hand because we had to play the last four innings of a game that was already over.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 2, 2009 -> 09:51 PM) Shocker here...I disagree with you. The dominant post player just isn't the way the league is going. The more athletic guy is how it's going. Even the dominant post guys now are guys like Pau Gasol, guys who are much more athletic than anything. I think you can easily survive with a PG led team that gets reasonable play from its front court...if you game plan to be that kind of team and don't play the kind of ball that requires a post player. The Bulls keep insisting on playing like Orlando, and then they keep acting surprised when they find out they're missing Dwight Howard. The Bulls have NO ONE who can score in the lane if the refs are allowing a physical game to take place. Tonight was the perfect example. And FWIW, you can be a dominant post player and athletic. The two don't preclude each other.

Exactly what I expected.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 2, 2009 -> 09:39 PM) Just last week, the Supreme Court took up a case of a 14 year old girl who was strip searched looking for the evil that is ibuprofen. So you had 8 men and 1 woman sitting there hearing about this little girl having to take her clothes off while other people watched. The one woman was actually basically the only one with any perspective on it, and it just went over the heads of the rest. There are what, probably 500 or so people, maybe 250, in the country who you could easily argue are qualified. But when you have a court that only represents 25% of America...that court isn't going to have the perspective on other issues that by all accounts it should. I thought the Supreme Court was about interpreting laws, not perspective on issues? I thought the issues were supposed to be decided by the legislative branch?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 2, 2009 -> 09:34 PM) And you'll notice...none of them have been able to do so despite wanting to do so for months now. Why? Because they can't raise the funds anywhere else! Goldman keeps saying it's going to pay back the money as soon as it can raise more private capital. And they flat out can't do so. Because no one wants to be a part of the banks while the government is able to tell them what to do at the drop of a hat. My point exactly.

Bottom line, the Bulls still need a legitimate post player. They will never be more than a mediocre playoff team without one. If the outside is closed, they have no other options to go to, and the game breaks down. Go back and look at the second quarter as the perfect example.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ May 2, 2009 -> 11:37 AM) Yes because if Jim Thome's double landed 6 inches higher and got out of the park that would have been a bad thing. That was for the crowd who loves to point out when we don't homer and we lose...

What a great show by the Hawks. The Nucks couldn't do a damned thing 5 on 5, and the Hawks come back to Chicago with home ice advantage. They didn't even fall into the cheap s*** trap at the end of this one. Great game boys!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 2, 2009 -> 10:21 AM) So, I have to say, I think this is somewhat fascinating...for all I know, Kap could be right, there could have been some hidden buyer out there that the public would never have known about. But as far as I can tell, there is zero evidence for it other than Kap's assertions. It wasn't the government that forced Chrysler to go to the government last December hat in hand begging for money. I seriously doubt they'd have wanted to put up with the spectacle of Congressman Sherman if they had any choice. If there was a legit buyer, the government would have jumped at it. The government gave Chrysler plenty of time to come up with a buyer, and they couldn't do so. If there's this secret cabal of people out there who are willing to take less profit to avoid having government interference, that's kind of scary, but I guess I can't rule it out because it's kinda spooky too. Secret Cabal? Hell companies are BEGGING to give up TARP funds, and for many companies those have been pure profit. It's happening right in front of our eyes, just like I said it would when GS said they wanted out.

Who the hell is going to sign a guy who couldn't beat out Scott Podsednik?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 1, 2009 -> 07:59 PM) Weren't you the one who insisted to me a few months ago that because the government started investments in sub-prime mortgages it was guaranteed that every investor in the world was going to jump in to an infinite degree? The reason why people aren't investing isn't that they're scared of something the government might do, it's that they're afraid of taking massive losses. Which right now is a pretty darn good bet. If there's money to be made, people are going to find a way to make it, regardless of whether or not the government is involved. I did, and it absolutely holds true because the government is f***ing bondholders in the ass in this deal, and others, and trying to give the company to labor instead. They are also afraid instead of having influence in the company, the government is going to throw their weight around and force them into company management decisions that they don't want to make, forcing them into smaller future profits, or even bigger losses.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 1, 2009 -> 08:15 PM) You know, I'm just going to laugh at this rant and leave it at that. I'm sure as soon as someone blogs, or makes a comedy routine, about it, you'll have an answer for it.

Great job by both Mark and the pen in locking in down to a very dangerous offensive team. It was also really nice to see a win without hitting a homer.

QUOTE (Reddy @ May 1, 2009 -> 05:52 PM) what the hell does that mean? /defensive Iowan Nolan Ryan was born and raised in Texas.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 1, 2009 -> 07:44 PM) My key point...without the Federal government stepping in, it would wind up in chapter 7. The only reason why it is not in chapter 7 is the actions of the government. No one is buying a car from a bankrupt company if they think there's a 10% chance their warranty is going to suddenly vanish because the car company went up in smoke. But if the government guarantees to keep the company running and guarantees the warranties and uses its funds as the bridge loan that the company can't get otherwise right now because of the credit market, then the company has a chance to survive chapter 11. In other words, the only reason those bondholders are getting anything is that the government stepped in. Otherwise, it was going to chapter 7 and its doors would already have been shut. And why would it end up in Chapter 7? Because no sane investment group would touch an automotive company right now because they know what the governmental interference in this industry could mean for their investments. Going off of the steel example, investors know there profitable potential in the US auto industry, but they want no part of the government in their pocketbooks. It isn't a coincidence when the last GDP numbers were broke down, the area that had by far the largest contraction was investment spending, even with a rebound in consumer spending. That is a huge red flag.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 1, 2009 -> 06:50 PM) You're causing serious harm to a lot of people's lives if you close the border. Which is why it needs to be a truly dire situation. You can't just close it for days and get the effect, you need to close off the country until the epidemic burns out. That's a period of months. And we're not just talking about the Mexican border...you're talking air travel, and you've got to be talking ship travel as well. Imagine no trade coming in to or out of the U.S. for a period of 3 months. How many people die because of the famine that sparks off when we don't have energy to ship around foodstuffs? How many people's lives are totally ruined? Its really interesting that you mention food and energy specifically in all of this. Energy because the Obama policy is to increase the price of all energy significantly, to the point where alternative energy is cheaper, and the people who are going to suffer the most are the ultra-poor. Food is another interesting mention, because if they start tearing down all of the free trade agreements like they made noise about during the campaign, it means that more family farmers, and even the larger factory farms go out of business, food prices increase, and less food gets grown. How many people would die because American farmers go broke and wouldn't plant? The replealing of NAFTA would pretty much cause a defacto border close for months are the trade wars and tariffs escalated in their usual historical manner. I don't think that has stopped the Anti-Mexico trade groups from trying to kill it. Mainly its crap because we make cost/benefit analysis in pretty much everything. Because the Obama administration wants to look "tough" just in case, and not panicking for everyone else, they are trying to play both sides of the fence. If this isn't a big deal, tell people to quit canceling schools and staying home from work. If this is an ordinary flu, don't ask for $1.5 billion that we don't have. If it isn't a big deal, take a trip down to Mexico to meet with their leadership to try to calm the situation instead of letting a crisis go to waste. If this is important, take some real steps and actually try to stop some infections, instead of hoping that no more cases come in. You think some people want border fences now, let some illegals bring a killer virus over and see how nasty it gets.

I think Nolan Ryan is a great example of why you just can't use numbers to evaluate a player. Sometimes the eye test really does matter.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 1, 2009 -> 02:34 PM) 2k5, found an interesting read for you on the effectiveness of border controls if you have the time (it's a good 30 page+ document from the World Bank on flu epidemic containment properties). The conclusions that affect our discussion are; border controls can have a significant delaying impact on the entrance and intensity of a flu outbreak. But a 90% closure is only weakly effective. You literally need to get up above 99% control of the people entering your country, including border crossings and airports, and combine that with a full scale school closing and immediate, heavy treatment program if you want to do more than delay the peak of the flu hitting by more than a week. A 90% effective closure of the borders buys you an extra 10 days to develop a vaccine before the true peak of the flu hits. That's the data they're looking at regarding closing the border. You have to know in advance that it's going to be absolutely a devastating outbreak, because to have a big enough impact that it actually delays the flu by more than a week, and thus buys you time to manufacture an effective vaccine or implement better treatment methods, you have to shut down all inbound air travel and close the border to keep well over 90% of the people currently crossing from entering. For a cost-benefit analysis, it has to be an absolute disaster of the worst sense. Worse than 1918, before it becomes a reasonable option. So lives are now worth a cost benefit analysis? Interesting change of liberal philosophy.

They have something similar at the CN Tower in Toronto. It is incredible, and I will be going to do it as soon as it is open.