Y2HH

I beg all of you to not turn this into a Digg/Reddit, left vs right, Palin and Fox news cause all of our problems (and this one) festival of stupid. I already see some of you leaning that way, and you're smarter/better than that. At least, you should be. Don't make an act of criminal insanity a political soap box for your opinions, because it makes you a piece of garbage when you do. And I don't care if you agree with me on this or not. Seriously.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 7, 2011 -> 12:58 PM) REPEAL NOW. Or perhaps, even better, employ and apply some common sense to the situation. There are good portions of that bill, do NOT repeal those. There are bad portions of that bill, DO repeal those. Don't ask me which are good or which are bad, do the research for yourself. Anyone that thinks 100% of the bill is good OR bad is 100% ignorant. After which, begin strict oversight on doctors, hospitals and pharma, in what they charge, and why they charge it. If it's justifiable, fine...if not, do something about it. Insurance reform is a good, albeit minor first step. Now, the harder steps must be taken for any of this to matter.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2011 -> 04:17 PM) The full identity of the shooter has been released, and people have found his myspace and Youtube pages. He's a community college student. If you're interested you can find the Youtube videos linked here. Screengrabs: He's bat-s*** insane.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 7, 2011 -> 07:15 PM) Traffic is a motherf***er. I should've been there already but I'm here on the Ryan doing long stretches of 0 mph We were all betting you'd b**** out! Still here...awaiting your arrival!

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 6, 2011 -> 07:32 PM) So is this going to be 6 pm like in the "white people" sense, or 6 pm in quasi-CPT (colored people's time)? Awesome.

I'm going to try to be there, I'd say 90+% chance.

Well, I wasn't...and it's my world.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jan 5, 2011 -> 10:57 AM) He made 3 starts. Two bad ones, one really good one. Fine, but my point was, when we traded him he wasn't very good, and at the time, nobody missed him. This is all being argued with emotional hindsight.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jan 5, 2011 -> 10:55 AM) I agree with everything but the bolded because I'm not really sure how you could make that distinction already. I think he means that by basing it off the short time we saw both.

QUOTE (Elgin Slim @ Jan 5, 2011 -> 10:49 AM) He had 4 starts with us, yes we were in a pennant race, but once Peavy went down we probably weren't going to win the division anyway. I think we all wanted to win the division last year, but I also think that we all knew that Minnesota was the better team last season. The only reason we were in it is because of an insane stretch between June 9 and the All Star break. Yes, 4 bad starts. I didn't look this up, so he may have had 1 good start...but IIRC, he gave up like 11 ER in 16 innings or something?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 5, 2011 -> 10:42 AM) Seems like it was a bad trade, but I think its hilarious that some people are ready to call KW an idiot, or that the trade was a fireable offense, before we really know what Jackson and Hudson will turn out to be in their roles. Seems way, way premature and overreactive. Not to mention when the trade happened, Hudson wasn't very good...at all.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 5, 2011 -> 10:00 AM) we should back each dollar with a bag of RICE i tell you. Ahh, yes, the good old 'food standard'.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jan 5, 2011 -> 08:52 AM) Via TPM - I was curious on your thoughts on this. It's stupid. It's a finite material, which introduces massive complexities...not to mention that a gold or silver standard cannot work unless EVERYONE is on that same standard. I won't get into why right now, but if you think about it you'd understand why. Also, there isn't enough gold in the world to cover the currencies that currently exist. Odds are these lawmakers have HUGE positions in gold/silver, and they figure if they shove something like this through, it'll make the prices rise even more (it will). They should be investigated, and if they have ANY positions in these commodities, they should be removed from office and jailed for attempted insider manipulation of commodity prices.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2011 -> 01:46 PM) That is almost 500%. Indeed it is, I don't know why my brain fuzzed that math up. :/ But it goes to show you, when the market "crashed" in 08, you could have picked just about anything and made money on it...Gold was already pretty high back then, and while it went up...it's a s*** investment for people unwilling to let go of the past, and it always will be.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 4, 2011 -> 12:47 PM) Didn't recognize where the exact quote comes from? Apparently not, but what I said still applies.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2011 -> 01:00 PM) Citibank comes to mind too. Surprisingly, Citibank hardly moved. I think it bottomed out at around 1$ and it's still not at 5.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 4, 2011 -> 12:48 PM) OK for one thing, property taxes are mostly the county, and license fees are not the city at all. For another, the property taxes that are the city portion have not gone up for a few years. Sticker fees did go up, as I recall, last year or the year before. I thought they were staying put this year though. So, your claim that the city is increasing all these taxes really just isn't accurate. Let me clarify. Maybe it's not accurate, THIS year, or in the technical sense you seem to be married too. But they've raised fees on many things many times over the years. I guess if they call it a "fee" it's not a tax (this being the technical factor you are married too)...but that's the oldest trick in the political playbook. More that just stickers went up in price the last few years, and in essence, while not called tax, it's exactly what it is. Then I guess we have to involve the County, State and whatever else...who can levy fees and taxes on Chicago whether the mayor likes it or not. So the City didn't raise taxes, but the county did, the state did, and whoever else did. That new law Quinn just signed into IL law is going to raise Chicago property taxes whether Chicago likes it or not...so in wake of their abuse of the Chicago pension systems, IL law is imposing Chicago residents pay for their sins. So while Daley didn't raise my property taxes...he forced the state to do it because of their continued abuse of their pensions...so in effect, I blame their entire administration for causing it...and rightly so.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 05:24 PM) Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner. The question is who would you want to fight. It wasn't who would you want to get your ass kicked by. There would be no fight vs Shatner. He has double axe handles, flying leg kicks, and a plethora of haymakers the likes of which you couldn't begin to handle. This wouldn't be a fight, it would be a funeral.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2011 -> 09:29 AM) IE, if it had been something like Copper or Gold, it would have been multiples. I bought 500 shares of SIRI (SiriusXM) in early 1999 at .13 cents per share. It's up 998.97% since. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I wish I had bought 50000 shares. I bought Ford at the same time at $2.23. It's up 645% since. There were so many things you could have bought when the market tanked and made huge multiples off of, that were WAY cheaper than gold or things of the sort.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) The city raised taxes? Which ones and on whom? I'm genuinely curious, because I thought the budget they passed has no new taxes. Which budget? They sold the meters years ago now, and since that sale they've raised property taxes, licensing fees, sticker fees, etc. I'm not even sure if they raised other taxes, but I know they raised how much city stickers cost (esp for suv/truck owners), licensing fees (drivers licenses cost more). If you specifically mean THIS year, maybe they didn't raise anything, but then again, they didn't sell the skyway and meters this year.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 11:48 PM) I use Schwab. They aren't too bad about the fees and whatnot ($8.95 per trade). I can't really speak intelligently on comparisons between the other ones, and really the only reason I use Schwab is because my aunt had a custodial account for me since I was 12 (I'm the same age as Jenksismyb****) that I didn't find out about until 2007. Right now this is what my portfolio looks like: 2 small-cap financial/real estate stocks, one pays about a 18.5% dividend that will stay that way as long as interest rates stay low Verizon BP Two value/growth mutual funds - the original ones I started off with, lost money in 2008, one is making money like crazy and the other just got back to the break-even point (this is about half my portfolio, between these two) A Schwab international mutual fund (don't really need this anymore, made a few hundred off it and might sell it to get a small cap index fund for growth) Taking Y2HH's advice from a couple of months ago on the S&P 500 I'm going to get an ETF and push most of my money into that, and just play with a few stocks every now and then for something to do. I just haven't gotten around to it because I don't plan on selling stuff I already own to get it, I'm going to start doing that the old-fashioned way. I really wish I had pumped about 5 grand or so into either of those mutual funds in 2008 or 2009 because I'd have gotten it all back by now. The only problem with investing in the S&P500 is you will never "outperform" the market, but stay [mostly] even with it, which is the good side of the risk equation. The biggest advantage of the s&p500 indexes is they cost almost nothing to hold (cost basis). You could have pumped 5 grand or so into just about anything in 2008 and you would have made money.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 12:24 PM) Not to mention the City wasn't making any money off of the meters anyway. Getting value instead of paying for nothing is much better for the city than raising taxes again. Or even better, take the rather simple steps the private company took and start making money? Oh, and they DID raise taxes again, anyway, not to mention the increased sticker fees, license plate fees, drivers license fees, etc.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 09:01 AM) Well to be clear, I'm not saying he can't be replaced - in fact he SHOULD be. Its just that whomever replaces him will likely not be able to be nearly as effective, at least not at first. The city pension mess was not made by him, but he definitely is partly responsible in that he left it to rot like it is. But, he's done some shrewd things financially, such as selling off the parking meters, that will help towards that end. Thing you have to understand about the pension mess is, its bad like that all over the country. Its because the pension system itself was a bad idea, and this was a reckoning a long time coming. Now its a huge monster that will be very difficult to truly fix. Any new mayor will definitely be given a s***ty situation there, and Daley is in part to blame. And the schools by the way, which are still pretty bad, are a lot better than they were a couple decades ago. He already spent almost all the money from the Parking meters...whatever is left isn't enough to cover much for the next guy (or girl) in line. It's pretty known fact that he got ripped off selling the meters...the company that bought them (for 75 years), will make that money back 10 fold. http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/11/17/citi...-did-goldsmith/ According to a report in the Sun-Times this morning, the budget gap approaches $700 million when CPD and CFD contracts are added in. And as for the $1.15 billion parking meter deal? The Sun-Times reports there's only $180 million left after less than two years have passed on the 75-year lease. And then there are the Skyway reserves, a $1.83 billion deal of which there is only $550 million remaining after less than five years of that 99-year deal. Awesome.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 08:40 AM) To whom do you give credit for Chicago undergoing a renaissance from the 80's to today that few if any other cities in the US has had? I mean, obviously it isn't ALL Daley, but he's certainly been a big part of it. I guess it depends on who's shoes your in when talking about a "renaissance". Let's stop pretending this man is leaving the city in awesome shape. He's quitting now because he knows it's over, not because he can't win again...but because he doesn't want to be here when it all implodes (and it's happening now). He's responsible for severely underfunded pensions across the board, so much so that the state JUST passed a law about Chicago's pensions, cutting off the city's ability to continue stealing from them (oh, and we get to pay for these pensions now via taxes, because someone has too). He mortgaged the skyway, the parking meters, and who knows what else, using one and done money from those sales to cover severe financial underfunding and cover holes in the budgets...which of course he doesn't have to care about, since they're funded with the proceeds from those sales for now...but the next guy to take the job can't cover these holes in the same manner. The schools are awesome, too! That said... Will I say the man did NO good for the City? No. But I also won't sit back and pretend that everything is so glorious that he can't be replaced. If anything, he's getting out when this city is about to need it's "awesome leader" the most it's ever needed him. As Clubber Lang asked Rocky in Rocky 3..."Getting out while you can? Don't give this sucker no statue. Give him guts!"

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 3, 2011 -> 07:21 AM) I have to agree with SS2K5. Despite the corruption that was always associated with the city's offices, Daley was an amazingly effective leader of the city in many ways. It would be shocking if anyone could match his leadership. LOL is all.