Jake

Well if we can arm the black folks well enough, the NRA might start supporting background checks and such like they used to

Get rid of that stupid f***ing flat tax. I now live in Ohio, which has some similarities to Illinois in the strong blue metros/strong red rural areas and traditionally competitive governor races. We at least have a progressive income tax scheme. How does a state that has recently been blue at every level still have a regressive tax structure?

Stand Your Ground proponents say the law shouldn't apply to people being abused by their romantic partner

Richard Posner, conservative hero and federal judge who approved the 2008 Indiana voter ID law, has completely changed his mind about voter ID laws and wrote an epic takedown in his recent dissent.

PFF Bears Highlights Top Bears O yesterday: Jay Cutler (+6.6 overall, +6.4 pass) Roberto Garza (+3.6 overall, +2.9 run block) Brandon Marshall (+2.1 overall, +1.8 pass) Worst Bears O yesterday: Jordan Mills (-6.1 overall, -3.8 pass block) Santonio Holmes (-1.3, -1.0 penalties) Michael Ola (-1.1 overall, -2.3 pass block) Top Bears D yesterday: Stephen Paea (+2.9 overall, +1.7 run defense) Jared Allen (+2.0 overall, +2.0 pass rush) Tim Jennings (+1.2 overall, +1.0 pass coverage) Worst Bears D: N/A Nobody had a meaningfully below 0 grade. Let that soak in for a second... Bears team O ranks 5th in NFL in cumulative grade. Cleveland (!!) is number 1, on the strength of fantastic line play. Bears D is 13th. Bears ST ranks 31st, edging out Lovie's Bucs

Bears D played pretty damn well. They clearly entered the game with the strategy of trying to get into ATL's heads with hard hits, which makes sense given our safeties in particular. It worked like a charm. We also saw a lot of productivity out of the D line and general pass rush. With our best 4 LBs out, our best CB out, our starting FS out/hobbled, another starting CB missing some time, and a D line fully intact for the first time since the middle of game two, that's a really impressive performance from that group. The defense has exceeded expectations this year - not that that is saying much - and they are doing it without critical personnel every week. Great to see the offense do what we thought it could. Jay was still pretty frequently looking to the check-down, but he balanced that with picking some smart spots to be aggressive and delivering the ball. We dialed up some great run plays at perfect times as well. O-line play in general could have been better. ST was looking fine and then we had the obligatory giant f*** up

Bears have gotten benefit of the doubt on everything today

Your RHSP for the 2015 White Sox is starting for San Fran tonight

I'd be shocked if, other than bat left-handed, Jordan Danks can do anything that Trayce can't do.

Alejandro is a good player. He's not amazing, he has some flaws, and he's not super conscientious on the field. But he was usually among our more valuable players while he was here.

My dad, who I regard as the quintessential average upper-middle-age consumer, killed his iPhone 6 Plus pre-order and grabbed an LG G3 that he'd been admiring for a while. He's had a couple "huh?" moments thus far but I think he likes it. One thing I don't think iOS or Android do well is help new users learn all of the features of the device - but iOS has the advantage of being the de facto reference system for most people who have used a smartphone before. So my pops has really enjoyed his G3 more since I've walked him through a few things over the phone (which isn't super easy, I might add). It sounds like he's getting some use out of watching YouTube videos created for that purpose as well. He'd been wanting a bigger screen since he saw one of his buddies with a Galaxy Note (Dad was using an iPhone 5). So he was willing to reward Apple for building a phone that addressed his concerns. Already liking the G3, though, he realized how much smaller the actual device was with the same screen size as i6+. He also has a couple irrational grudges against Apple for various feature/design changes implemented over the years, I think (typical consumer, I tell ya)

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 12, 2014 -> 10:30 AM) I love not hearing Boozer screaming anymore That was actually one of my favorite features of the Booz Cruise

http://theweek.com/article/index/269549/wh...from-socialists Roger Scruton, conservative philosopher, released a new for-the-masses book. I would agree with the above article's author's sentiment that he's one of, if not the only present-day conservative thinker whose work will have real staying power. I am not myself conservative, but there's nobody who can explain and argue on behalf of this worldview like Scruton. He has a way of explaining conservatism that nobody in American politics can, where it sounds like a discrete, coherent, and logical ideology. Full disclosure, I've met Roger and am a fan of his work on aesthetics, so I have some reason to like his stuff beyond just thinking it's good.

If the Republicans don't take the governorship, this proves that they are just completely inept in IL. My totally anecdotal read on things is that nobody likes Quinn

So, the story is that everyone's a f***ing asshole?

Switching teams, the ultimate under the radar move

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2014 -> 03:23 PM) My personal favorite prospect. Haywood is a real good kid.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Oct 10, 2014 -> 03:51 PM) I don't think so. There is like Pro Football Focus, but I don't think the bases anything league average. The +/- goes around league average in 2009 when they started. This would make it possible to make some judgments about league trends since they started grading, but their intention isn't really to make league/year/context-based adjustments. In some ways, it embraces the contingent nature of the grades

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 11:45 PM) That 2012 team basically SHOULD have been at 84-78 with Peavy, Rios, Dunn, Sale, Quintana, Konerko, Alexei, Viciedo having a strong rookie year, AJ's offensive performance, a pretty solid bullpen. Tha main argument in Robin's favor was blending in all of those inexperienced pitchers/rookies and keeping the team together until the very end, as well as whatever magical pixie dust he spread around the diamond to get above-average defensive play for most of that season. The bigger enigma is how the 2013 team fell so far off from what they were capable of producing...at least based on their historical performances coming into that year. Of course, there were injuries, but that's only PART of the story of why the team imploded in the 2nd half. And trading our two best players, having our best RP get hurt and traded (Crain), another RP get traded (Thornton), and somewhat intentionally tanking for a draft pick

At midseason, it wasn't outrageous to predict that Ned Yost would be fired

I prefer the Oliver projections so I don't have to fool around with thinking about playing time. In my mind, I want to think about "what will this player do compared to that one if they both play full time?"

Hmm...this is a ploy to get us emailing our friends about Marqana!!!

I still like Trayce.

I think it is an absolute must for tablets, though, so I'm glad they're developing it.

I love Barry Melrose. Picks the Hawks every year