Y2HH

The Fox news thing is old already. Same goes for NBC. We get it. And I don't know why people are surprised by it. Rich media outlets get to control which news you get, and how you get it. Acting surprised when they slant -- either way -- is the only "fake" thing I still see these days.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 01:31 PM) Wow, Y2HH just wrote a long post that I generally agree with. William Bell showed me how to cross to a parallel universe where we actually agree on stuff.

I keep hearing people repeat this "we owe China" garbage, and they need to learn how markets work before they repeat this nonsense more than they already do. We never "borrowed" anything from China in a traditional way. I say this because from what I see and how I hear people talk, I believe most of you think we asked China for some money so we could do X. We never asked China for anything. We put bonds on the open market and they bought them. Anyone can buy these bonds. You. Me. China. Germany. Anyone. If Greece decided to buy 100 billion in American bonds tomorrow -- they CAN. They're openly available to anyone who wants to buy them. While this is technically being "lent" money, it doesn't work quite like a lot of you seem to think. If bonds are available (and they always are), ANYONE can buy them. Nobody talks about how much America owes other countries...just China, as if China buying American bonds is special. The only way to stop China from being able to "lend" us money, is to pull the bonds off the open market. Which we cannot do. The reason this is done is simple, if done properly. Selling cheaper future money (with the expectation that inflation continues to rise), for more expensive money now = you make money. Bonds have low yields, and that money can be used for other things that have greater future returns than the 2% you promise to pay on them. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's being done properly. China owns something like 850billion dollars worth of American treasuries. Less than 1 trillion of the 13 trillion we "owe". 80% of what America "owes" is owed to the American people. That said, China doesn't sell bonds on the open market, otherwise they'd have debt, too. They can't do this because they'd lose the ability to manipulate their currency, because if they did sell bonds, the street would then gain some control over what these were worth. What China does is much more awesome. They do whatever they want, because if you don't do exactly as they say, they'll just kill you.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 11:28 AM) Well, while I agree with you about Crawford's contract, this is a matter of the cost increasing for a higher tier of production, even though the increment of production that increases is not equal to the level of the cost. You see this in all walks of life. That slightly faster computer costs much more than the model below it even though it's improvement in performance isn't THAT much faster. Or that more expensive HD tv has a better and faster picture, but it isn't THAT much better than the model below it that costs $1300 less. This is the law of diminishing returns... My slow computer costs 900$. My fast computer costs 2000$. ONCE. Not 20,000,000 per year for 7 years. Contracts are out of control considering the current state of the economy.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 09:39 AM) What?! I can't speak on Carew as much. But Wade Boggs? Dude was a a 5 time batting champion and a liftetime .328 hitter. He had a career OBP of .415! I repeat: .415! He had more extra basehits in 1 year than JP could get in 5. I must be in the twilight zone. JP is not good. I know he plays for us. But c'mon, guys, just be f***ing honest. Why don't we just compare him too Ty Cobb while we're at it.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 09:45 AM) you chose the wroooong person to say that to! I did it on purpose, a carryover from the Crawford thread.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 09:29 AM) You don't know who Jay Bruce is? Hint: He's better than Carlos Quentin. I didn't pay attention to baseball much last year...was busy. And Juan Pierre is better than Carlos Quentin. So what.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 09:26 AM) Oh yeah. It's really that simple! But I digress. I hate JP. I can't help it. I will cheer him because he plays for my favorite team. But I can't be phony. Thing is there's other players I hate more like Jeff Francoeur. I hate watching guys make millions to be mediocre at what they do. IMO, it really IS that simple. That's how much more they're paying for the differences in production. Again, Crawford is better than Pierre -- but IMO, he's not 12+M per year better.

I actually had to look up who this was...

Let me nip this one in the bud, right quick... Nobody here, including Balta is claiming that Pierre is a better player than Crawford... But allow me to do a little math here, which I'm sure you will hate because it's easy to twist. I'm basing this on last season via Baseball Reference. Crawford: .307BA, .356OBP, 19HR, 90RBI, 47SB, 10CS, 104K Pierre: .275BA, .341OBP, 1HR, 47RBI, 68SB, 18CS, 47K We are paying Pierre what, 3M out of his 8M contract this year? So in effect -- Boston is paying 17,000,000 MORE [per year] for: +.032 Batting Average +.015 On Base Percentage +18 Home Runs +43 Runs Batted In +57 Strikeouts I'll ignore the base stealing since I think they both get caught too much, and both steal a lot...so in that effect, they're effective in making pitchers nervous. All I have to say is they can keep him for that.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 6, 2010 -> 02:08 PM) Like that guy in Office Space with the stapler. Well, Kenny "fixed the glitch" with Kotsay, so he assumes he [Kotsay] will stop showing up when he stops receiving a paycheck...but you never know. If he shows up, he's starting over Dunn, though.

These lineups you are all posting will never happen. Neither of you made room for Teahen or Lillebridge...both who will play a lot.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 6, 2010 -> 01:50 PM) I'm sure Ozzie will carefully examine those particular stats while completing his lineup card. Of course he will. His ideal lineup with our current roster would be something like... 1) Pierre 2) Lillebridge 3) Teahen 4) Vizquel 5) Teahen 6) Teahen 7) Teahen 8) Vizquel 9) Pierre Bench 1) Konerko 2) Dunn

Guaranteed LineSTINK posts a 5-0 record with a 0.98 ERA this year.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 3, 2010 -> 07:35 AM) Dunn hasn't played the OF in a couple years. However...the last time Dunn played the OF, he was just about as bad as Quentin. But unlike Quentin as of late, he makes up for it with the stick.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Dec 1, 2010 -> 04:45 PM) I've seen it, that's why I believe. No, you saw something, but it wasn't paranormal anything, nor was it psychic.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 1, 2010 -> 02:14 PM) Briefly googling for worldwide conviction statistics I found this about the UK. This can't be possible though, every show on TV, they solve every crime!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 1, 2010 -> 01:40 PM) Wait, the prison terms for murder wind up being way too short? Are we breaking this down by race or anything? can you back that up with data, that prison terms for murder in the U.S. are shorter than in other western democracies? With the number of people we have in prison compared to the rest of the world I find that hard to believe without data. (And anyway...the death penalty note is relevant there because one of the main arguments in favor of it is that it is a deterrent to serious crime, aka murder). My brother has arrested multiple people here in Chicago with past murder convictions on their records, and I'm not talking about him arresting old men that served 50 years, got paroled, and then got caught again. I'm talking about convicted murderers that did just 7 years time and were paroled. I can't speak about the rest of the worlds sentencing, but I HIGHLY doubt it's as low as ours. I believe last I heard from him that if you commit a murder in Chicago, you have about a 75% chance to get away with it. I assume that means that murder investigations are solving just 25% of them right now. Then when it comes to sentencing, some of the sentences he's seen judges give are so much of a joke that he wonders why they even bothered arresting people. This is the problem with "data". I'm sure "data" shows that if you murder someone there is NO WAY you could be paroled after 7 years in Chicago. Reality is, it happens. Data means nothing when it's massaged the Daley way.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Nov 26, 2010 -> 11:01 AM) They're murder rates. So compare California to England (California about 40m, England about 60m) and you probably get mostly the same result. Better yet compare Illinois to France (IL 12m to France's 65m) and it still holds. Matter of fact if size and/or population is the issue just count all of western Europe vs. the United States... same thing Yeah there are countries with higher violent crime rates (Mexico, Brazil etc.) but not among the countries that are advanced as us. Less consequence for murder here, pretty simple.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Dec 1, 2010 -> 12:27 PM) Anyways, Cats + Christmas Trees = Most annoying thing in the world. FIXED.

Mine is up.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 30, 2010 -> 12:34 PM) It's a perfectly reasonable business move for Comcast if Netflix is taking up a significant chunk of their network. If Netflix customers are taking up a large enough chunk of their data, even if they lost all of their netflix customers, cutting the data they're transmitting would save Comcast money in the long run. Of course...the hippie in me would say that business benefits be damned, we ought to have a content-provider-neutral internet rather than one where the service providers can sell off advantages, but every day that goes by, that seems less and less likely. It's also illegal. You cannot charge more for certain data, regardless of what it is, over other data. The CAN impose bandwidth caps and higher charges for going over said caps, but they CANNOT charge extra for the type of data, which is exactly what they want to be able to do.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ Dec 1, 2010 -> 11:39 AM) I don't believe in it at all. I think many are con artists and some are people who genuinely believe they have that type of powers. This. People would be better off worrying about real life and living it, than not living now because they're busy worrying about possible maybe afterlife(lives) that were promised to them by people or books written by people who have absolutely no authority or right to make such promises.

Because comparing the entire US to countries that are barely as big as single states is fair.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Nov 14, 2010 -> 12:12 PM) I saving my book buying budget for when Grayson releases his memoirs I really disliked that guy.