caulfield12

I finally made it through Paranormal Activity 3...god, except for a couple of "jump out of your seat" scenes, the fact they've already made $80 million (with Halloween showings coming up) is pretty amazing, on an initial investment of only $5 million or so. Must be the most profitable movie franchises in history. "In Time" seems to be doomed by the critics, poor/convoluted trailers and skepticism about Timberlake ever making it as a lead actor to carry a picture. Amanda Seyfried's zany wig doesn't help matters much.

Evans, who most recently has worked as a player agent, would be a good addition to Epstein's staff in some capacity as he is a Chicago native with the type of generational knowledge on Wrigley Field that Epstein had on Fenway when he took over the Red Sox. C'mon, does Evans having worked in Chicago really matter THAT much? By that definition, Kim Ng would be just as good a hire...or anyone familiar with Chicago, for that matter. Heck, they might as well hire Bill Rancic from The Apprentice, and Guiliana.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 30, 2011 -> 05:53 PM) Or a Sith... It's VERY clear the biggest win for the Cardinals was clearing out the drama and clubhouse intrigue in the showdown with TLR. It isn't a coincidence that the team took off after he was subtracted (much the same way the White Sox probably will when Rios is gone)? As far as Jackson goes, they get back Wainright and add Shelby Miller, they'll be just fine in the starting pitcher category.

QUOTE (Pale Sox @ Oct 28, 2011 -> 11:54 PM) I have a hard time believing the Blue Jays regret trading a bunch of non-cornerstone bullpen pieces for Colby Rasmus, a potential star CF. Staying on the Blue Jays as an example, I remember them trading Jeff Kent for David Cone. They Jays won the WS, but the Mets (who were not a contender) received a HOF second baseman. Both teams won. The situations of teams involved in the trade dictated the needs and the therefore the outcome. To say the Cardinals "won" inherently says the other team(s) lost. This is simply not the case. Each team had different needs, and each teams needs were fulfilled. The Cardinals got pitching depth, the Jays got upside future talent, and the White Sox shed payroll (with a slight infusion of young talent). It's a common flaw of those outside the industry to assume one team is trying to fleece another. It makes for a nice narrative when it's time to print some stories, but it's an inaccurate representation of reality. Or we could look back at the Foulke for Koch deal. On the surface, it was a disaster for the White Sox. It led to Gordon/Marte and eventually Shingo as the Sox closer. It also netted Cotts, who flamed out as a starter but had one anomalous season in 2005, which resulted in a World Series. Did the White Sox really "win" this trade simply because they acquired Cotts as well and won the World Series, and the A's didn't?

How can Jose Reyes go to the Marlins? They're going to move Hanley Ramirez to 3B or 1B? Wonder if the White Sox would take a look at JD Drew on an incentive-laden deal if they trade Quentin?

I feel a little bit sorry for Rangers' fans. They've never won a World Series, dating back to the Washington Senators days.

This feels like the 1985 World Series. As soon as the Cardinals lost that game to th Royals (the Denkinger call), they were cooked. Would be shocking if the Rangers lose this game (afte being a batter away twice and blowing it twice) and end up pulling out a Game 7 win. Reminds me of that game this year where Teahen hit the home to tie it and the Sox kept coming back only to blow it in the end.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 26, 2011 -> 04:59 AM) I'm pretty much in the middle on this one. Danks really has no value to the White Sox right now, he's not that good of a prospect, but he's shown a bit of power in the past and plays good defense. If a coach within your system can get through to him and he hits a little bit, you have a 2-3 WAR player on your hands in his good seasons. If I'm Houston or Minnesota - especially Minnesota who pretty much have jack squat in the minors for OFers right now - I'll take a chance on Danks in a second. Depends on how they fit Revere, Span (if he ever recovers) and Hicks (eventually) into the picture. Then you have Cuddyer and Kubel, possibly/probably one of them returning. But I guess you could argue Danks is better than Rene Tosoni.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 26, 2011 -> 06:38 AM) lol. When you reverse it, it looks like it should be a Ben Stiller movie about the game of freeze tag Or Dodgeball. Btw, it seems like Olivia Wilde is in every movie that comes out these days.

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Oct 26, 2011 -> 02:08 PM) Got the entire series on DVD. Best gift that I ever got from a girl. Does everyone remember where they were when Uribe made the throw to end it? Man, I was on Division outside a bar. I remember everyone looking around in stunned disbelief. It seemed like everyone was thinking "Did the Chicago White Sox really just win the World Series"? It was almost surreal... like a dream. It took awhile, but everyone finally warmed up to the fact that the Sox won it all and it got pretty crazy on Division. Chicks were flashing everyone. In Cali, Colombia, in a hotel room by myself while I was chaperoning my students for a Model United Nations conference for the country's international school students. Thanks to ESPN Deportes and DirectTV, I was able to watch every single game live. But I still remember most vividly waking up one morning after we'd blown a huge lead to the KC Royals...and the Crede homer off Riske...my g/f at the time and her brother were watching their favorite program and I kept making them flip back during the commercials and you just knew when they won that game the tide had turned. But I do remember playing some really crappy games against the Tigers early in that final week...thankfully that rocket hit off Jenks the final out in the clinching game didn't fly into the RF corner and over Konerko's head or we STILL could have ended up blowing the whole thing. And the Grady Sizemore blown catch in the sun in KC, that was the other big turning point in the final 2 weeks. Then we just steamrolled through the Indians (I think they still had wild-card aspirations at the time) at Jacobs Field and flew into the post-season.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_leagu...urn=mlb-wp25446 http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseb...0,1012635.story Phil Rogers...on Epstein, Pujols, Fielder, Quade, Francona, Sandberg, etc.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 09:38 PM) BTW, I mentioned this in the films thread, but anyone seeking to get a better idea of some of the things that were going on with the banks leading up to the crash should check out Inside Job. Pretty solid explanation of the bs that was going down. Margin Call isn't too bad either. If you want to join the conspiracy theorists, try to watch Collapse. If I lived in the U.S. and didn't vote for the Republican administrations that were primarily responsible for running up the score on our national debt from less than $1 trillion when Reagan took office to more than $14.7 trillion today, I would be really angry about that. And if I watched as the Republican Party tried to make it seem like it was the fault of "both parties" while they turned the routine business of raising the debt ceiling into a cynical political gambit, I would be incensed. And if I watched the Republican Party then try to use the debt ceiling fiasco they created in order to lay the whole thing at the feet of a President who inherited an epic fiscal and economic mess from Bush, I would be livid. yahoo message boards

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 10:29 PM) You can struggle in the minors, but if you want teams to buy in, you have to show some tools. Hit for average. Hit for power. You can't strike out once per three ABs without showing 40 homer potential. Defense is not enough to make up for that. Hence, the Brian Anderson/Torii Hunter comparisons that KW always made when extrapolating his potential results out over a full season. Let's say Danks is even a notch better than Anderson, for argument's sake. Because he plays CF, a team should at least consider it...what's the risk if the most you can lose is 50 grand? That you're blocking a phenom that could be putting up a 900+ OPS? Not in the SD system. Hoyer traded everyone to Boston.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 05:52 PM) Pa3 was good, not great. Pa2 is still one of the best horror movies ever. 3 was certainly not near that level, but still good enough to watch. Wow, I thought the original first one (without the alternative endings) was much better than the 2nd. I'm 1/4th of the way through the 3rd and getting so bored already...I know, be patient! Scariest of all-time? Wow...so many, from past or more recent history.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:09 PM) Really though...the White Sox have been in the bottom half of MLB in attendance every year for the last 5 years (last year they were in the top 10 was 2006)...and yet they've been in the top 7 (or higher) in payroll every year since the Series win except for 2009. That behavior is not the norm. Which is all balanced out by the immense media rights (WGN/Comcast), higher average ticket prices (#4-6 in MLB across the board), parking, access to the Chicago market for advertising/sponsorship/marketing/promotions, etc.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 10:23 PM) And that is clearly beyond a limited government's role. And that is clearly what's f***ed up about our country now. Again, that's not supposed to be the government's main role. Now, that is all the functions that socialists want. Wear the label proudly, because if this is what you support as a main role for our government, then you're a socialist. It doesn't take a Michael Moore lecture to realize capitalism/free markets/zero regulations and oversight simply doesn't work for America right now. What incentive do banks have to raise capital requirements, stop using excessive leveraging or simply avoid moral hazards? Perhaps the country would have been better off had all of those banks been allowed to fail...GM, Chrysler, etc. Nobody gives any credit to government for being a stabilizing force and stepping in at a point where no private entity was capable or willing in those days.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 09:14 PM) I never had any problem with him. Once every 7-10 outings he'd blow up big time and couldn't find any of his pitches, but pretty much every other time he was filthy. He was a lot like Linebrink (when he was actually effective in 2008) in that sense. When you moved him from the 7th to the 8th or 9th, or tie games, or closing situations...you were just waiting for either one of those guys to implode. LaRussa giveth and taketh away in this series. After being universally-termed a "mastermind" in Game 1, the bloom has quickly come off that rose the last couple of games.

Well, there was finally a happy ending for Thome in CLE, although the Phillies were an NL team. And you might want to revise your prediction of the Cardinals winning the World Series, Milkman. Game 6 will be Colby Lewis vs. Jaime Garcia Certainly the Cardinals would be in trouble with either Lohse/Jackson for Game 7 against Harrison but just as likely Holland (3 days' rest) after last night.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 09:36 PM) Why does "universally popular" have anything o do with anything? If this program worked it would have outraged other people. People here would complain about "paying their neighbors mortgage" and such. But it would have helped a lot. Maybe Obama would have been better off starting his term in 2001 with this one... The Second Bill of Rights was a list of rights proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then President of the United States, during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944. In his address Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognize, and should now implement, a second "bill of rights". Roosevelt's argument was that the "political rights" guaranteed by the constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." Roosevelt's remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" which would guarantee: Employment, with a living wage, Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, Housing, Medical care, Education, and, Social security Roosevelt stated that having these rights would guarantee American security, and that America's place in the world depended upon how far these and similar rights had been carried into practice. Later in the 1970s, Czech jurist Karel Vasak would categorize these as the ‘second generation’ rights in his theory of three generations of human rights.

Never thought I'd see Octavio Dotel pitching in the 8th inning of perhaps the most important World Series game. Crazy, I wasn't that comfortable when he was pitching the 7th inning for the White Sox. Yet there he is...

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 08:15 PM) Basically, people applied for "trial modifications". Once they did that, they were told to make lesser payments. But if the modification wasn't approved, and only a handful were...then anyone who followed the instructions wound up in foreclosure. If you applied to the hamp program and did everything you were told to do, you wound up with like a 90% chance of being foreclosed upon, even if you were fully current when you applied. As epic of a clusterf*** as you can imagine. So basically, Cash for Clunkers has been the only successful, "universally-popular" program in the last 3 years?

Kapkomet, what would you suggest they do? That, for the "greater good," over the long-term, it would be best if every single American behind on their payments was foreclosed upon more quickly, further adding to the 2.5-3.0 million inventory of unoccupied homes already without a market of buyers? Don't you accept the fact that 80% of the damage was caused by companies like Countrywide and by reckless oversight from Alan Greenspan? Or you prefer to blame it all on Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Bill Clinton/Richard Rubin? And it's essentially the same problem in Europe, isn't it? Taxpayers don't think it is fair to subsidize either bankers or reckless homebuyers/speculators. The banks won't take a "haircut" even if the risk of the entire system falling apart increases by the day. Especially in Germany, they're being asked to subsidize the rest of the continent...if they don't, it will eventually have a direct impact on their economy as well, because much of Europe will be ruined in the coming years as an export market for German products. France will literally be insolvent if they contribute any funds to the banks, which will decrease their Moody's ratings and send the markets into another freefall. The one thing they can't do in Europe is print more money, like we can do in the US (not that QE has had much more than a negligible effect)...instead, they're forced to borrow real money from Germany or France. The actual number will be in the 1-2 trillion dollar range, not the low hundreds of billions.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 08:43 PM) You don't think there is a relationship between who you trust, and who you do deals with? I don't think KW is quite as philanthropic/altruistic as he makes himself out to be. It's usually self-serving, whatever "nuggets" he provides to the press...I mean, was it really necessary that he publicize something like this? I get the idea behind it, but I would rather see results than idle talk.

"I try to send my support to other general managers in the league to tell them I see what happened, you're not alone in this and (your team) is lucky to have you," Williams said. "That is the message I sent, that I hear the criticism. This is not an easy job to do." Lovely, KW. How about worrying more about your team's future and less about playing MLB psychoanalyst/therapist/GM support group mentor guy? Or maybe you can delegate some of your responsibilities to Hahn....

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 08:03 AM) Huh? Simple, Ricketts/Epstein get their new ballpark/luxury suites, etc., and they'll be able to expand their payroll by at least $25 million, if not $50, per year. That's a long ways off, and in the current "anti-tax/anti-government" period we're in now, would be very difficult to pull off. But, as everyone who follows politics knows, Emmanuel's a big Cubs' fans and he'll choose the most opportune time to strike.