southsider2k5

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 1, 2008 -> 12:20 PM) What is odd to me about these NC and IN polls is how all over the place they are. I cannot remember a state where the results of polls from reputable organizations (not Zogby or ARG), and virtually the same time, had such a wide swath. I mean, just looking at polls this week, North Carolina ranges from Obama +14 (which would be a jump up) to Clinton +2 (which would be a HUGE jump for her), and Indiana ranges from Obama +3 to Clinton +9. Trying to determine a trend from those is nearly impossible. Like I said about Indiana depending on what part of the state they are talking to, they will get hugely different responses. I don't know if they balance geography or not when they do these polls.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ May 1, 2008 -> 09:54 AM) Latest NC Polls: Rasmussen... 04/28 - 04/28... Obama +14.0 SurveyUSA... 04/26 - 04/28... Obama +5.0 Insider Advantage... 04/29 - 04/29... Clinton +2.0 Mason-Dixon... 04/28 - 04/29... Obama +7.0 A side note- this form the poll that has Clinton +2: �Our polling generally does not indicate the eventual compression of black voters that Obama usually enjoys just before Election Day." Pesky black people. they get in the way of good polling. Green or not, that really racism really isn't a funny joke.

First place on May 1st. Its not much, but I will take it!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 07:54 AM) Bill Clinton is supposed to be in Michigan City tomorrow... Update. He will be at Elston Middle School (formerly Elston High School for the previous 100 years or so) at 6pm tonight. I don't know if anyone will be going, but doors open at 5pm, scheduled to start speaking at 6pm, more likely to be 6:30 or 7pm according to campaign officials... I am going to try to go, but we will see.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 03:00 PM) This was an interesting read regarding the tax holiday... Read the rest of the article The gas tax holiday is worthless, but it is by far not the worst proposal coming out of this election cycle. That goes to all of the mortgage rescue plans that would turn us into 1990's Japan.

I read the Chicago Tribune daily.

PINNED: for more attention@!

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 07:02 AM) I do not see the hypocrisy unless you know of some laws that the Dems backed to make voting more difficult or where the GOP made voting easier for traditional GOP voters. The hypocrisy would cut both ways, the GOP would not be introducing this bill if they thought it would take away their voters. Fighting all forms of non-paper balloting for one...

Bill Clinton is supposed to be in Michigan City tomorrow...

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 05:05 PM) Actually - and I was surprised to read this - I was reading some law enforcement assessment from somewhere (I forget which state, and obviously I can't link you to it so you just have to take my word for it) and it said that the writings on white supremacist websites have been basically saying Obama is the lesser of three evils because they see McCain and Hillary as being owned by the Jews and Israel. Take that for what it's worth, but remember, we're talking about white supremacists. So they don't want to see them in office and they'd rather see Obama get elected, even though they hate it, because he hasn't been corrupted yet. Wow, that is counter to everything I would have ever guessed. Jew>Black? Huh. Learn something new everyday.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 02:55 PM) Survey USA hits N.C. Obama 49, Clinton 44. Ouch. Wow, that is not good at all. He has got to win by double digits if he wants to have a chance at knocking out Hillary.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:50 PM) Obama basically risked his political ass to try and take the high road not disowning Wright, partially succeeding, and Wright repaid him by acting a fool in a completely arbitrary manner and having his ego undermine Obama's campaign at a critical moment and threatened to torpedo the whole thing. So Obama finally threw him under the bus as if to say "fine, f*** it, I really don't want to deal with this anymore." Seems pretty simple to me, it's like Wright doesn't even care that he's damaging Obama right now by popping off at the mouth, however right he believes he is to defend himself. The interesting thing now is with Obama's HUGE support in the black community, does he now get painted as a sell out? He was in a real no win situation here.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxfan1986 @ Apr 28, 2008 -> 09:58 PM) How many days does a player have to be sent down before he can come back up? I believe Broadway should be on the team anyway, so I would have no problem with Masset being sent down, even though he would probably be claimed on waivers. I believe it is 10 days

Also a positive out of yesterday... it was nice to see Ozzie not only play Anderson again, but trust him enough to put the squeeze on.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 12:09 PM) Ok, then let's take your argument to its logical conclusion. The folks who say this law is necessary are arguing that it is necessary to prevent some limited incidence of voter fraud, and it is a worthy sacrifice to disenfranchise a significantly larger number of people than commit the fraud in the process. The arguments in reply have been that it's not that much of an undue burden, that there are plenty of other things that disenfranchise people, and so on. Therefore, I contend that it follows logically from these claims that absentee balloting should be banned. It will disenfranchise people, yes. But you have already said that does not bother you if certain groups are disenfranchised because they are unable to be polled for various reasons, such as not having a valid ID at the time of voting. Considering the factors involved, I claim that absentee ballot fraud is far more likely than the double-voting fraud that you're concerned about, and in fact exacerbates the problem. Absentee ballots make vote buying much more likely as it puts the ballots and the keys to them in people's hands and allows for verification of a vote. It enables mistakes and more fraud because it makes it impossible to determine who actually filled out a ballot, and it is impossible to guarantee chain of possession from the time that the ballot is mailed out until it is returned (And hence, you can never guarantee that the person who's ID you checked is the person actually voting). I can even point to an example in the state of Indiana of fraud happening entirely because of the existence of absentee ballots. Based on your standard, where you are willing to impose a barrier that will disenfranchise a larger group to prevent a smaller amount of fraud, I contend it follows naturally that you should oppose absentee balloting by following the exact same logic. Then by your logic you should be campaigning to ban all polling places and making it absolutely easy as possible to vote (I imagine the government contacting every single person in the country to ask their vote would be the easist thing?) , and getting rid of all forms of security, because they all disenfranchise people.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 11:24 AM) Demand is one aspect, and you are right it has gone up, in great part due to overseas pressures. Also, demand WILL fall in the US if prices stay this high for long, because people will change their behavior. But that doesn't happen instantly. It takes time. I was more referring to other problems that absurdly high prices (i.e. $10/gallon) will cause. You think there is pressure for a windfall profit tax now? At $6, the government will basically walk into the oil companies and just take half those profits straight off. I guarantee it. At $8 a gallon, the whol regulatory structure for oil production in the US will change. The government simply won't allow those prices to stay as they are without acting, even if their actions are stupid. And you can bet that for every dime that price goes up, more and more money will pour into alternatives, and some of those will hit the market. 5 years ago, the idea of $4 gas was more absurd than the idea of $10 gas today. At that time I remember reading things like $60 crude would push people into alternatives and that at $25-30 bbp it was too cheap to make it viable. Now at $115, and the alternative methods are still too expensive? Trust me, I remember studying this stuff and thinking of it in terms of a logical commodity. As time has played out, energy has proven only to be completely irrational to the normal economic behaviors that everything else works according to. The bar has just kept moving up, and yet nothing has changed. I guess I will believe it when I see it.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 11:17 AM) That depends on the perspective. For the government and the nation, clearly, better to invest in infrastructure than not. For the oil companies, it does make some sense to not build out, sort of. There is a limit to that. If they let the prices get too high, they will start to create too many pressures and that profit will dwindle. Prices are up by a factor of almost 4 in the last few years, and that hasn't stopped demand at all. In fact demand has still been increaseing until recessionary pressures set in.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:50 AM) My issue with that statement is fairly simple...how does making it harder for people to vote, by doing something that has been shown conclusively does wind up disenfranchising thousands of voters in states where it is deployed, fix the system? In the decision that the Supreme Court rendered, in an effort to explain why this provision was necessary, Justice Stevens came up with 3 examples of voter fraud to try to show that it does happen. The 3 cases he came up with were a ballot-box stuffing scheme done by Boss Tweed (1800's), a case in Washington State where 1 man was involved in voting a couple times, and a fraudulent voting scheme in East Chicago...but that scheme involved absentee balloting and the Court acknowledges that this proposal would do nothing to prevent that sort of fraud. If its all about ease, why have polling places? Why not just let everyone vote over the internet? If fraud isn't a problem why waste money have poll workers asking people who they are? If we trust everyone, just let me go in and stuff a ballot in the box. Think how many people we are disenfranchising by making them put down the remote control and go somewhere? Think how many people don't vote because they have to stand in a line at the polling places? Damn, I'll bet if we got rid of polling places and election officials, we could add huge numbers of voters! How disenfranshising is all of that stuff? Again, if there are other problems, fix the other problems. These aren't mutually exclusive. The notion that this doesn't solve everything, or has a narrow focus, so it is worthless, is just ridiculous. Its a copout. We have laws all over the country for a very few people, that doesn't mean they aren't needed. Hell, how many people get charged with beastiality in a year? Should we get rid of those laws because of their narrow focus? How about corporate fraud? There aren't that many people who do it, so we don't need laws against it, right? Seriously the arguements are just silly IMO.

Anyone ever see "Waiting"? I caught the tail end of it, and with the cast it looked like it might be funny.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 09:11 AM) I must have been thinking of some other governor. Anyway, I think those union guys are one of the two reasons Obama is even still in this thing. They would normally be Clintonites, except that some of those unions endorsed Barack. That plus the Chicago effect. I think he takes the northern indiana urban areas by 20%, Indianapolis by 10%, and the college towns like South Bend and Lafayette by 20%. Clinton takes the rest of the state by like 30%+, and Clinton ekes out a win. That's my barely educated guess at this point. My guess is that Hillary wins Indiana by about the same margin that Obama wins NC by.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:18 AM) Oh gee, this idea won't solve EVERYTHING, so I guess it is better to have nothing at all. Snark aside, it sounds like you are saying that since it doesn't address everything, it is no good. Absentee ballots are a different matter, so address it with a different law. As for the selling of votes, we have laws against that, but not sure what else you CAN do. Suggestions? That's the part that I don't get. The law is intended to help fix the electoral system. It isn't supposed to fix it all by itself, but that isn't its intent. I don't know why improving our electoral system is such a bad thing? People sure seemed to think it was important 8 years ago. For myself, if it improves it, I am for it.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:18 AM) I bet you dollars to donuts that this is changing before our eyes. The way you can tell this is true is by the slide in people who view Obama as honest or trustworthy, and the rise in the people who view him negatively. This will only continue as the campaign trudges along, and he makes more mistakes.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:00 AM) You've been to Houston. NIMBY Great thought on capacity and investment. LaPorte County Indiana is the King of the NIMBY's.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 08:59 AM) I don't think a Clinton win is a surprise in Indiana. She was carrying huge leads there until recently, she's got Bayh and the Governor in her corner, and its a state that as you say has large swaths of population tailor made for her. The surprise would be a Obama win, which I think is possible but unlikely. Obama picked up some union endorsements, and has a few house reps in those rural areas for him. Plus he should get a small bump being semi-local in the northern part of the state particularly (Chicago TV markets). But ultimately, I think he keeps it close but loses by 5 or 7 points. Add that to a 10 point win in NC, and he pretty much wipes out Clinton's gains in PA, and its back to where it was. Which of course favors Obama. This thing is basically over, unless Clinton can win IN and NC convincingly. The governor is NOT for Hillary. He is a republican, Mitch Daniels. Evan Bayh is appearing with her at every single stop she makes in Indiana, and is the former governor, maybe that is where the confusion is? Anyways, I really think Hillary will blow out Obama in Indiana, winning by more than she did in PA. The demographics here are HUGE for her. Hell there is a good portion of the state that still has Klan memberships... they aren't voting for Obama. One thing to remember in NW Indiana, yes Obama is kind of the "hometown" guy, but the unions are full of the "white/undereducated" category that has been breaking big towards Clinton. I could be wrong, but I don't think he will do that well here.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 07:47 AM) I will need to go find the articles, but as I've read before in the WSJ and elsewhere, the projections are that the ANWR field(s) would maybe add less than a half percent to the current US internal flow of oil. And that would translate into, at best, about a penny per gallon. Plus as I understand it, the biggest choke point is refining capacity. That needs to be addressed. But ultimately, the only real long term solution is to get away from oil to the extent possible. And if its made a priority, that could be done, to very positive results for the economy. That's the fun part... Everyone seems to want more refining capacity, but no one wants it built next to them. The NIMBY factor is huge here. Not to mention with all of the emphasis towards getting off of oil, why would any company look at putting up billions of dollars into technology that everyone is talking about phasing out?