lostfan

Well...

Psh, both parties race bait, just for different reasons. edit: it'd be more accurate if I said "elements of both parties" cuz it'd be unfair if I said it was part of either's official platform, although it was pretty much an open secret that the Republicans did it a few decades ago.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 13, 2009 -> 12:19 PM) Well, I think when you start designing a system penalizing someone for having money, all while not holding any expectations to low income people that receive that money, you're effectively just taking a chunk of money from person A and giving it to person B. Thus I think the phrase is entirely accurate. My problem with that is because of this label (which may be technically accurate but is such a reckless oversimplification) I have friends who honestly think that Democrats raise taxes specifically to take money from their paycheck and give it to some woman on welfare. Also they seem to assume that everyone who is on welfare actually wants to be and is doing nothing about it. In reality this is a tiny fraction of what the federal government does, and it's just a massive red herring that prevents actual discussion from taking place.

QUOTE (Texsox @ May 13, 2009 -> 11:45 AM) And you won't. We've accepted labels regardless of accuracy. Liberal media, known lier, activist judges, etc. Sure does beat actually thinking Last part didn't really need to be in green, since it's mostly true and it's deliberate.

QUOTE (Texsox @ May 13, 2009 -> 11:51 AM) I love the whole redistribution of wealth concept. Do we really want to live in a country where the budget is based on the poorest taxpayers and what they can afford? Do we really want to live in a society that allows people to starve? Stop financial aid for education? You earn more, you pay more in taxes, you live better. When we stop public health programs that target low income people, TB rebounds and guess what, the wealthy catch it also. Nice phrase, but meaningless when analyzed. If we want to oversimplify the concept of progressive taxation like that, we might as well go all-out and say Adam Smith (the guy who basically founded modern economics and the idea of free markets) is a socialist because he supported it too. "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more in proportion." -Smith

They already have that one covered.

QUOTE (Texsox @ May 13, 2009 -> 10:32 AM) violence in Iraq or Iran stopped? He's talking about the Shia militias.

It's kind of unavoidable actually since there's areas of mutual national interest, and it would've been sooooo helpful to engage them right after 9-11 when we had their attention (and they were actually being helpful) but they decided to go the exact opposite route and publicly call them the enemy. I'm not sure what the point of that was, since everyone already knew that.

Not really comparable unless the DNC came out with a resolution labeling the RNC as the Republican Fascist Party. As a political strategy, it was comparable up until then.

"Socialist" is a pretty ineffective pejorative anymore, also. That worked fine to label someone that when everyone was scared of the reds.

Steele has said a lot of silly things lately but here, he is right. What's the point of this? What's it going to accomplish? Republicans have actually made the idea of socialism more popular somehow which I think is hilarious.

So on Baseball Cube, somehow Lillibridge's power is 84... that makes me laugh. For reference, Brian Anderson is an 85 (sounds about right) and Fields is 93 (also right). Getz is a 25. Who the hell thinks Lillibridge is a power hitter? He hasn't been since college.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 11, 2009 -> 10:15 PM) Let's make this as clear as we can make it. Scott Boras is never going to allow any of his players to sign a contract that would allow a team to terminate them based on a steroid admission or suspension. Actually that's somewhere in the CBA, a team can't take any kind of punitive action or terminate a contract for a PED-related incident.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 12, 2009 -> 10:20 PM) Who are you referring to? Brian Anderson

QUOTE (fathom @ May 12, 2009 -> 10:18 PM) The power is there, but the swing has to be completely re-tooled. Sounds like another player... hmm...

QUOTE (daa84 @ May 12, 2009 -> 06:17 PM) brent lillibridge is the greatest and most feared hitter this team has ever seen He is definitely most feared - by us.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 12, 2009 -> 03:52 PM) I've found this season, in one of those games recently that you knew was over by the 3rd or 4th, that the best therapy was to turn on the Barons game through milb.com or "watch" it through gamecast. I realized it's completely futile to start threads or even comment on a game-by-game basis, pretty much. I haven't taken any losses that hard this year...the exceptions would probably the game we blew about 3-4 leads to the Royals and lost in extra innings and then the game that Thornton game up the GS to Zobrist, but that game ended without much drama. If you add up ALL of our losses this year, I was MORE upset about the game at the Metrodome last September that Carlos Gomez must have accumulated 1/5th of his season's total for XB hits, the game we led most of the way but slowly let the Twins back in inning by inning...and eventually ended up with Jenks blowing the save. That game and one Keith Foulke lost to Denny Hocking, for some reason, are the ones that stand out as the most agonizing. Man, check out Gomez's splits vs. the Sox, and then compare it to other teams... it's pretty sad actually. He is an All-Star against us, and he is absolutely awful against just about everyone else.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ May 12, 2009 -> 02:01 PM) The best thing about this story is the agency saying they had to meet a strict mid-June deadline to mail out all checks, and that didn't leave them much time to clean up all their records......THE WOMAN DIED 40 YEARS AGO Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Another couple of weeks would've helped you clean that up?

I have no information to base that on, just what I think is an understanding of how their government thinks. Now the ball is kind of in our court and they expect us to do something, I read it as a response to Obama's overtures a couple months ago.

lol http://www.wbaltv.com/money/19435100/detail.html

I'm surprised there's been no discussion on this. Iran overturned the espionage charges on her and gave her a suspended 2-year sentence, and let her leave Iran if she wants to. The whole thing reeks of a PR stunt on their part though, from start to finish. It's like they deliberately chose a random person to throw some BS charges on so they could overturn it later and look like they were sending a goodwill gesture to the United States. I really didn't ever think they were actually going to hold her.

QUOTE (BearSox @ May 11, 2009 -> 11:28 PM) No, the ideal is: Ricky Henderson (LF), Micky Mantle (CF), Babe Ruth (DH), Lou Gherig (1B), Joe Dimaggio (RF), Roger Hornsby (2B), etc Where's Mays?

Cut taxes not defense? That's f***ing retarded. Where do they think the deficit (that they blame him for) comes from?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 11, 2009 -> 12:27 PM) He did the same thing back in '07 if I'm remembering it accurately. Yeah, and nobody would talk to him either.