jasonxctf

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30846.html

The Marlins signed infielder Danny Richar to a minor league deal, tweets Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. Richar elected free agency after being outrighted by the Reds back in November. The 26-year-old hit .290/.330/.438 in 181 Triple A plate appearances this year. The second baseman had labrum surgery in July. He came to the Reds from the White Sox in July of '08 with Nick Masset in the Ken Griffey Jr. trade.

that's the downside of having a "big tent" and not having a "purity test"

yeah, that's a lot of walks.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/36-states-re...set=&ccode=

someone on here had posted a question a while ago about how many weekly jobless losses would show job growth. Some had said 500,000 others 400,000. Saw this blurb in an article today. But the four-week average dipped to 467,500, the 15th straight decline. By comparison, jobless claims peaked this year at 674,000 in March. The improvement is seen as a sign that job cuts are slowing and that hiring could pick up early next year, boosting the economy. Analysts say initial claims for jobless aid would need to fall to about 425,000 for several weeks to signal the economy is beginning to add jobs.

im so confused by the wins/losses in this battle. Where can gay people be "legally" married? Iowa and DC?

love it. glad illinois won this.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 15, 2009 -> 01:32 AM) Um, OK? What's this supposed to mean? that they both perform very similar in the NL East

Career vs NL East Teams (except Philly) Halladay 8-4 3.31ERA (38ER/103.2IP) Lee 5-1 3.24ERA (18ER/50IP)

i'd pull Garland off the list and include Pods.

Dow closes at 10,501.. closing at the first time above 10,500 since 10/1/08.

is their a bios password on the machine? you can always wipe the hard drive clean, reformat and re-install the OS

QUOTE (smalls2598 @ Dec 11, 2009 -> 07:08 PM) "Putz can make another $3.25 million in incentives, but that figure is based on him closing games all season." ESPN link so if they trade Jenks and move Putz into the closer role, we've got a 6.25 million closer. how much is Jenks making?

I love Daley. He's the best.

interesting stuff. bolded the highlights. The emerging narrative in political circles is that the White House has a deficit problem. Glenn Beck, over at Fox News, insists that Obama is "spending us into oblivion." Politico called the recent round of job-stimulus appropriations a "spending binge." Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) deemed this an era of "fiscal recklessness and irresponsibility," the extent of which is "shocking to the American taxpayer." The drumbeat is loud enough to put Democrats on notice. The president has increasingly discussed the need to get the deficit under control in recent speeches. And in Congress, a proposal to set up a bipartisan commission to force deficit reduction is gaining steam among the party's more conservative members. All of which may be vital, say budget analysts say. But the hysteria over the deficit misses a fundamental point: the country's fiscal problems largely aren't due to Obama but rather his predecessor. A forthcoming study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes that the $1.4 trillion annual deficit run by the government has little to do with current White House policies and much to do with George W. Bush's actions. "What we have looked at were several major contributors to the deficit: the tax cuts between 2001 and 2003 (on the assumption they get extended in 2010), the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the effects of the recession as well as the legislative response to the recession," James Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the Center, told the Huffington Post. "When you take those things into account -- in other words, if we hadn't enacted the tax cuts, had the wars, if we hadn't had the recession and needed the legislation to deal with those problems -- the deficits are much, much lower. And basically none of those represent Obama's policies. He didn't run saying he wanted to pass a stimulus to deal with the recession or that he wanted to continue the war in Iraq or escalate [to this extent] in Afghanistan. He inherited these issues once he took office." "Now we still have a big budget problem in the long run," Horney added. "It is not inappropriate for people to say we have to deal with that. And it is not inappropriate for them to say Obama is president and has the responsibility to deal with this. But it is not appropriate to say that Obama's policies have contributed to the deficit problem." Horney said that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' analysis will be released in the next few weeks. But already, there is data available to supplement its findings. In mid-November, the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress put together an analysis of its own, in which it concluded that the so-called "Obama spending spree" paled in comparison to the checks written by Bush. "It's true that spending in 2009 was much higher than it was the previous fiscal year, by about $602 billion, excluding payments on the national debt (which actually declined in 2009 because of low interest rates)," wrote Michael Linden, an associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center. "But it turns out that a huge chunk of that increase actually happened before President Obama took office. In fact, fully 41 percent, or $245 billion, came in the form of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the rescues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, actions taken in the fall of 2008 under President George W. Bush. As for the deficit that conservatives decried, Linden concluded that it was the recession, not Obama, that was to blame. In 2009, federal tax receipts were $419 billion below 2008 levels -- the largest decline from one year to the next in seven decades. "The overall cost of the decline in tax revenues was four times larger than the cost of Obama's initiatives," wrote Linden. The decline of tax revenues due to the recession may not be a development tied to Obama. But it has become a perplexing problem for this administration. The White House has raised spending levels by roughly $600 billion in FY2009 -- almost exclusively through temporary programs such as the stimulus -- in order to spur economic growth and increase that revenue base. But spending money to make money can be a costly venture in the short run, especially as the recession is prolonged. Unemployment benefits that used to expire after six months, for instance, have been extended by Congress at a heavy but morally defensible cost. And even when GDP rises, the government is still operating off a largely reduced revenue stream, complicating its efforts to pass pieces of domestic legislation. "It is not like when the recession ends, people's incomes bounce back to where they were before the recession," said Rob Shapiro. "You will be behind where you were before the recession for a while... There has been a real economic reduction in the base of GDP. So GDP now, when it goes up three percent, it is off of a lower base. It's not off of, say $15 trillion but off of $14 trillion."

Virtually identical offensive players. Crisp .277 lifetime avg, 30 years old, 74% SB success rating Pods .277 lifetime avg, 33 years old, 75% SB success rating So do you want the older guy, coming off a career year with poor defense who is a fan favorite or Do you want the younger guy, coming off of injuries, better defense who may be slightly cheaper I think this could go either way.

lets hope that he doesnt take it out to the desert with Aaron Rowand.

great restaurants (not chain related) Breakfast Paris Hotel Buffet Lunch Serendipity (by Caesars) get the frozen hot chocolate Forget the name, but the make your own burger place in Mandalay Bay Shops Dinner Batistas Hole in the Wall

www.fivethirtyeight.com Although the GOP's coalition is still the more monochromatic of the two parties, is it possible that they, rather than the Democrats, are now the party paralyzed by identity politics? A recent 60 Minutes segment about the costs of end-of-life care suggests that maybe they are. I would encourage people to read/watch the report in full, but if you don’t have time let me explain what I mean. The segment is about the needless financial costs of end-of-life care. The US government spends about $50B each year on patients at the very end of their lives, much of it to little or no health or quality-of-life benefit. Because a lot of the procedures and medicines are authorized by doctors and hospitals worried about possible liability—pay attention now, tort-reform advocates—a lot of this money is being spent in medically-needless ways and thus ineffective because the treatments are unnecessary. Worse, because a lot of these procedures and medicines are administered by hospitals, where costs are higher--as NPR’s fantastic Planet Money team recently explained--these ineffective actions are also procured inefficiently. In short, it's wasteful, which is bad enough, but expensively wasteful to boot. But because Medicare is there to pick up the tab, the disincentives against ordering irrelevant, expensive treatments are few. Now, given that conservatives keep complaining about tort reform as if that were some miracle cure to our health care costs; given that they are also up in arms about rising government socialism (“one-sixth of the economy!”); and given their broader worries about government growth and spending more generally, we might reasonably conclude that Medicare—one the largest and fastest-growing programs in the entire budget—would sit atop their target list. Instead, Republicans point at Democrats in Congress and the White House and charge that they and they health care reform plans must be stopped because (a) they are going to cut seniors’ Medicare; and (B) they are going to institute “death panels” to pull the plug on seniors. In other words, although the end-of-life use of Medicare is a government problem that violates almost every philosophy they espouse about the proper role of government—public sector over private; easily exploited by, rather than protected from, trial lawyers; a moral hazard, consequence-free billing system as opposed to rational, need-based spending; a program with rising outlays as opposed to slow or zero growth outlays—Medicare is instead the very program they are rallying behind. And why? For votes—specifically the votes of those angry, mostly-white seniors upon whom they are betting their electoral fortunes in 2010 and beyond. In short, the GOP has now become so wedded to its dying, white majority that it is willing to sacrifice not only good public policy and smart long-term budgeting, but its very own core principles. Their politically-motivated, 180-degree defense of Medicare and their inflammatory rhetoric about death panels proves that the GOP is now the party paralyzed by identity politics.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Dec 8, 2009 -> 03:32 PM) It's difficult to enforce. Roughly half the employers in New Jersey don't have their corporate base in New Jersey, so they can argue they are exempt from recognizing civil unions. The argument that they'll take to the court is "If it was supposed to be marriage, they'd have called it marriage." It took weeks of arm twisting to get UPS to recognize civil unions and that came direct from the Governor himself. If the Governor had to do that with every company that chooses not to recognize civil unions but does business in New Jersey, it would be a nearly 24/7 job. Vermont voted to change its law from civil unions to full equality this year, because civil unions just aren't equal and they never will be. There was a state commission on this issue to measure the law's effectiveness and whether it provides an adequate measure of equality. They said it doesn't. http://www.gardenstateequality.org/civilun...0the%20CURC.pdf i guess i dont understand that argument. if you are a DE incorporated business, but reside in CA, do you have to follow DE pollution laws or CA? does that mean that if I drive my car in a state where the MPH is 45 on the highway, I can go 55, because I've got an Illinois Drivers License? I would just think that you have to play by the rules in the state you are in, not one where you "artifically" call home.

why isnt the current law being enforced?

Defense Sec. Robert Gates said today that “it’s been years” since the U.S. has had good intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos airing Sunday, Gates said “we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go get him" STEPHANOPOULOS: "What was the last time we had any good intelligence on where he was? GATES: "I think it’s been years." STEPHANOPOULOS: "Years?!" GATES: "I think so." STEPHANOPOULOS: "So these reports that came out just this week about a detainee saying he might have seen him in Afghanistan earlier this year, we can’t confirm that? GATES: "No."

its funny how people have no idea on how the legislative process works either. i swear, probably 40% of the people in this country probably think that the President makes the laws.

on a side note, i personally love those who will attack these numbers. its almost as if they would prefer if the % went up, or the number of job losses got larger. It's not great, but realize that its better than what we've been experiencing.