Texsox

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 12:54 PM) I think you have that backwards. It's generally the committed, vote-in-every-election base that drives the primaries. QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 01:14 PM) Trump hasn't won any actual primaries. I think Tex is just referring to very early polling, where having a big name and making a splash results in big numbers among political illiterates. Thank you, I messed up by saying primaries. I also should have mentioned the people who only vote every four years. Again, not the most cued in.

Presidential primaries are like New Years and St. Patrick's Day, amateur hour. It isn't Republicans putting Trump up there, it is the every four years amateur voter who responds to surveys that has him there. The folks that wander these forums are every year Republicans and I don't hear any of them really supporting the guy. The only GOP candidate that I match up with a couple key issues is Rick Perry. I'd be selecting him based on his vision for America and track record and a couple key issues. If I wasn't paying attention the past three years, I might be picking a candidates name from media reports and telling that to some survey worker.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 12:38 PM) I looked earlier and we're at IIRC 2 D indictments and 1 R indictment, along with 1 R who resigned before the indictment, so far this year, counting all of Congress. Exactly. I've always said that one of our strengths as a country that corrupt politicians are the exception, not the rule. From the local, volunteer, part time, school board member to the POTUS.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 12:18 PM) From the link..."He will be replaced by Mike Honda, D-Calif., who is currently the subject of an ethics probe." There ain't much difference between D and R in the ethics department. The only difference is who gets excused by which people™.

Along with the steroids causing issues for the HoF, I wish the NL would finally add the DH and somehow allow that to be considered at least in the same way as pitchers. We do not argue that a pitcher shouldn't be in the HoF because of their hitting, we shouldn't hold a DH accountable for not contributing with his glove.

"Doesn't know what PC means" translates to "sucks at being a diplomat"

Thank you. I will check that out. Her birthday is coming and I'm really, really, tired of listening to her frustration with the phone. She gets even more frustrated comparing features of phones.

My wife hates to spend money on cell phones and hangs onto hers for years past their useful date. We are on T-Mo and have had nothing but great service and coverage for years, thus, not looking to change. Any advice on a mid price phone?

Ivana stated it wasn't true that The Don raped her. This is Trump's lawyer not Trump making the statement. I think the media blew this up a little too much.

I agree with your comments from a baseball purist perspective. Selig was selected by the owners. The steroid era brought fans back to the game and made money for the owners. Was Selig a disaster to his bosses? I don't think so. MLB is a business and it is run for the benefit of the owners. Most of the time everyone's priorities and ethics are lined up. But not always. I'm not certain if it because baseball is my favorite sport of the big 4, but the baseball HoF has managed to be the only one I really care about beyond seeing if my favorite players get in. For the stats heads the old LPGA formula was the cleanest and most difficult to achieve to be in a HoF.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:16 PM) You are assuming that Graph Expo is a small convention. It is not. Quite large, and has visitors and exhibitors from all over the world. I likened it to banks, cable companies, etc that give awesome giveaways and deals to lure new customers, and completely forget about their current customers. As for how busy McCormick Place is, I recall about 5 or 6 years ago they were complaining that they were losing gigs all over the place and were blaming the excessive set up fees and union charges even back then. I don't know how busy their schedule is now, but still seems silly to piss off someone who has been with you for 20 years. I am just looking at the bookings. Graph Expo takes up one building. The other convention running concurrently is using three buildings. The schedule is available on line. There are no small conventions at McCormick Place.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Jul 28, 2015 -> 03:49 PM) Bill Shaikin ‏@BillShaikin 35m35 minutes ago Hall of Fame decides BBWAA members more than 10 years removed from actively covering the game can no longer vote for Hall of Fame. Hard to see this as anything but good news. I'd rather see a more selective removal. If you believe this is a good idea, then anyone here also would not have a clue in voting because they did not cover the game. And we know that is false. You don't have to cover the game to vote To have to actively study the game. There is a difference. Making a blanket policy like that may get rid of some terrible voters, but you also may lose some good ones.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:11 PM) I'd imagine it would be quite the disorienting situation with people running everywhere and many not even being able to quickly and accurately realize 1) what's going on and 2) where the shots are actually coming from. As Balta pointed out, at some point, the shooter in this case walked out with the crowd and was attempting to blend in before he spotted the police. That's a whole theater full of people who didn't recognize the man who was just trying to kill them. People get really bad tunnel vision in situations like that. Police and military (and private security forces) train in these high-stress, active shooter scenarios and they can still fail. I don't think you can expect the person who took a 6 hour class on a saturday and goes to the range to shoot at paper occasionally to perform in a situation as crowded and disorienting as an active shooter in a movie theater. OK, I agree with you now. In your world, people should not have guns, they are way too stupid. Where I've been from people duck from danger. It's an instinct. I am laughing out loud at people running around arms raised bumping into each other, bumping into the guy with the gun. They didn't recognize him? You are comparing recognizing someone shooting a gun with someone just walking and no sign of the gun? Well, you got me. If those two scenes are equivalent, I can't argue with you. In my world people can recognize that someone is shooting a gun and that he is dangerous and you should avoid him. You may wish to teach that to the people around you. You are right, later, when he isn't shooting a gun, they might not. What exactly then is your point? Hey I don't recognize the guy shooting at me so I'll just randomly walk over to him? As a gun owner if I see someone kill two people in front of me, and I'm his next victim, is it ok if I shoot even though I might not recognize him later? I'm probably looking at the gun, his chest, the backdrop, where his eyes are. I'm not trying to memorize his face so we can get together later at Starbucks for a coffee. But no, if he's across the room I'm too busy ducking and getting out of there to memorize what he looks like. Wow. You believe that people will just start running around not knowing where the danger is coming from? Are they running in circles like carnival targets I'll tell you what, you run in circles or directly at a person shooting, I'll duck down and hide with the intelligent people. Again with the strawman. I don't think you realize that I wouldn't try to do the job of a cop. Criminals randomly fire into crowds, normal people do not. You keep making these worst case scenarios that a normal gun owner with a license to carry would not do. Maybe you would suddenly start acting like a criminal but normal people do not. A motherf***ing killer is standing over you with a gun, you shoot. You don't shoot across a theater with idiots running towards the shooter. You call it being a vigilante. If someone is about to kill one of my kids, I'm shooting. That's personal protection, not being a vigilant.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 03:09 PM) Is McCormick pretty much at capacity year-round? I have no idea. That's what I'm thinking. I'm certain they didn't push dates because they wanted the place to be empty then. I believe there is a pretty good chance that a bigger convention wants those the dates a smaller convention has. Plus y'all are looking at September and October dates which are great for Chicago weatherwise. And I will agree with Alpha, it is much more expensive to hold a convention in Chicago than Orlando. For a national convention Chicago wins for cheaper travel for most people, middle of the country, major airport, etc. Rosh Hashanah moves in the calendar all over the place. I wonder how you would have had a conflict in September one year and October another year? Here is a clue, this year you have one building assuming it is the Graph Expo, the Process Expo has three buildings. Any bets they want to go to four or five buildings?

And let's think about what the theater will look like during the shooting. Has anyone ever looked around a movie theater? I might have special vision but I can see almost everyone in a theater. It's pretty bright with that movie going and everything. Your eyes get adjusted once you are in there for a while. Now, I'm guessing a lot of people are hiding and still others are running away from the shooter. How many people are running towards the gunman and standing really tall to be shot? Is the gunman surrounded by dozens of people standing there waving their arms? What do you think it looks like?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 03:22 PM) Those doctors, lawyers, professors, truck drivers, construction workers, and secretaries also aren't likely to be extremely well trained at aiming firearms in a dark movie theater, yet we get presented the fantasy that they would be. No, you keep presenting that fantasy. You set up a situation and show how a hypothetical idiot with a gun would react.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 03:09 PM) the only way to reduce gun violence is to continually increase the number of people carrying guns everywhere they go The way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the number of criminals that are carrying guns. If you removed all the guns from people who will not commit a crime in their lifetime, how will that reduce gun violence?

Reading through the comments one thing becomes clear. Most of the non gun owners believe that non criminals with guns will act like criminals with guns. Criminals do not follow the same laws as the rest of society. Some criminals have severe mental disease or defects. You also assume non criminal gun owners will do the stupidest possible thing. In the theater they will just stand up and start shooting in any random direction like some cartoon character. Remember these are really normal people. They are doctors, lawyers, professors, truck drivers, construction workers, secretaries, and from every walk of life and background. They don't suddenly veer their cars into traffic, they don't randomly start killing people. But somehow many of the people here suddenly think I'm as crazy as the criminal that is killing people. It just isn't so. There are millions and millions of very responsible gun owners who just would not do the things that some people here think they would. Your caricatures would be laughable if they weren't so wrong.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 02:49 PM) Great post. Another great post. Tex is right. If the bastard comes up to you and you have a gun ... bang, the perpetrator is DEAD. Tex is the man. Maybe dead, but at least you have a fighting chance instead of hoping he doesn't see you in the dark or decides that you should live instead of die that day.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 09:21 AM) We've been over this before and you're still wrong. Laws don't have a singular purpose. They can be for punishment and prevention, or something else (e.g., money). We pass laws all the time to curb behavior X with the goal of preventing Y. Again, when we say that a law did not prevent a crime from happening discounts what you've mentioned in punishment, money, curbing behavior. Too often people claim we do not need a law because it would not prevent a crime from happening.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 09:27 AM) Yeah, discounting the deterrence and cultural/social signaling effects of laws to zero seems pretty silly. I'm reacting more to the idea that since a law didn't prevent something it's an unnecessary law.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 09:34 AM) I don't think this is necessarily true. Only one of you is going to care about collateral damage and actually hitting what you are aiming at. While you may not have a shot, he can just point in your general direction and get lucky. No doubt the criminal has the advantage, they always seem to. But the criminal also isn't always aiming. They tend to be spraying bullets and hoping to hit something. But no reasonable person would take a shot across the theater and if they did, they deserve to be punished, severely. As they say, it's personal protection, not crowd protection. You have to leave that up to the professionals.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jul 26, 2015 -> 06:41 PM) Regarding LaRoche, I think we need to start playing him at 1B more frequently to see if that can help him get going. Worst case scenario it improves the defense a bit. And we definitely need to start platooning him. I don't care if that's a shot to his ego, but he should not be facing LHP under a normal circumstance. And as far as anyone knows the ego thing is purely conjecture on the fan's part.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jul 26, 2015 -> 10:00 PM) and if that is the case, why go to the game when you can see it on tv. you can to admit that the price of the games, esp in season ticket holders are $$$$. again, if your fav team is always screwing up thru bad management, why would someone go and spend the money??? Again the casual fan really doesn't live and die by the results of their team. They go to see the show. Attending the game is a special event. The sounds, the sights, the food. There are family traditions to always go on a certain birthday, or to see X team when they come to town. I hope this example doesn't steer this too far away. It's like saying I'm a Brad Pitt fan and I will only go to a movie if it's a great film and Brad Pitt is in it. If you want to see a movie you go see a movie. People attend a circus, not because they are "loyal fans of that circus", but because they want to see a circus. Same with casual fans and a baseball game. Those pick games for other reasons, the promotion, something else to do in the city, and of course that the team is winning and it's exciting to be a part of that. So bottom line, if you really enjoy baseball and are a fan of baseball you go to games. Like I said, In then past decade I've watched every level of baseball played. I couldn't even tell you the team names or the schools of many of the games. Why should I spend my money to see two college teams I don't care about? Because it was fun. And I enjoyed it live way better than on TV. I enjoy live shows. I'll pay to watch a concert or play that I could easily find a recording of.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jul 24, 2015 -> 11:14 PM) this is no pun on your name but the sox fans have heard all the b/s lip service that the sox FO has spewed. so why should they want to or feel motivated to spend their hard earned money on a product that reaks of incompetence in the front office and their narrowmindedness of hiring lackeys for key positions such as Managers. Because major league baseball is a damn entertaining thing to watch. I've been to stadiums all over the country watching games played by teams I could care less about. If you love baseball, how could you not attend a game? I've sat and watched minor league, independent league, college and junior college games. Baseball is great to watch.