Jake

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 09:05 AM) I don't agree on Roberts being purely aligned with big business. What he is, is aligned against certain extensions of regulation. By nature that is often pro-business, however, his PPACA decision was certainly the opposite of that. Presidents want, and try for, lots of things. You can get into what plans Presidents have, but I am dealing with what was actually accomplished. I would consider the ACA a quite pro-business law. Upholding the part that makes you purchase things from private insurance companies seems pretty pro-business to me QUOTE (raBBit @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 11:47 AM) I get tired of everyone pegging Bush a far-right, conservative. Looking at how he expanded government and tossed money all over the place you cannot really classify him as a conservative. Bush was quite representative of the neoconservativism alive and well at the time. Interestingly, he pretty much killed it. It was all about supply-side economics, big defense spending and war mongering, tax cuts, phasing out federal aid programs, and high federal involvement in polarizing social issues (stem cell research, gay marriage, abortion). These tendencies all still exist, but they are being framed rather differently. GWB seemed less interested in proving his conservative-ness than doing and saying the stuff he thought people and his party wanted. QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 01:02 PM) And most president have terms like Bush, Bush, Carter, Ford, and Obama. Nothing extraordinary, either bad or good. This nation is like a huge freight train lumbering down the tracks. A single president usually can't detour it too much. Obama is trying with health overhaul. We'll see. I'd say the state of the country when GWB took office and the state of it when he got out are quite different. Obama is going to be heavily criticized for the worst case scenario that it is only marginally better. QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 01:46 PM) I don't follow politics like you guys do, but my thoughts are just that you can't compare Obama's Presidency to any in recent history...has anyone ever had to deal with this level of idiotic stubbornness from the opposition party before? Or since Lincoln anyways? Seems to me like the game has entirely changed. Clinton did to some extent, this is where people learned these tactics can have some effect. That group lacked anything like a Tea Party though and came to power after Clinton was wildly popular. There are also weren't any historically big issues in the Clinton presidency and Clinton often took somewhat centrist stances on issues like welfare reform and crime policy QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 02:39 PM) Saddam didn't have the means and groups like aq were not his friend. But they were all Muslims! QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 02:45 PM) That 9/11 commission was horses***. Go watch the HBO documentary on the team that was hunting Bin Laden for decades and all of them were SHOCKED that he was able to plan a domestic attack like that. They suspected he might be planning something, somewhere, but no one in any intelligence community thought he would crash 2 planes into the WTC. The 9/11 commission and all those hindsight conclusions are no different from a corporate injury report that lists a "cause" of an accident. 99.9% of the time it's not proof of any negligence, it's just trying to attribute blame so that people feel better about safety. The Katrina claim is a joke. The state and local governments are to blame. They had all sorts of money for public improvements over the last how many decades and they never fixed the levees. They lined their own pockets. Seriously, if all you have is "the government cut taxes and didn't spend more money!" is all you have, that's a really weak claim. A war based on an obvious lie that wasn't believed by the international community at the time and is believed by nobody now is a weak claim? A record surplus and thriving economy upon entry to the second worst economic crisis in the country's history is a weak claim? A trend toward the loss of privacy, habeas corpus, and personal freedoms is weak? QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 07:08 PM) First, Obamacare is neither a failure nor a success at this point. People don't understand it and the website has been a disaster. The policy itself needs to play out. With that said, comparing a social initiative meant to provide healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans to a war built on a lie is absurd. The only victims of Obamacare are Americans who will see their insurance premiums rise, yet receive a better policy. The victims of the Iraq war are the thousands of American and Iraqi citizens that needlessly died so that Bush could distract Americans while lining the pockets of his buddies as he financed the war machine. This is a strange thread. Indeed. Obamacare can go really badly and be nowhere near as bad a policy decision as the Iraq war. Along with the many lives lost and permanent damage done to relations in that region, which could eventually lead to world war, the cost at home has been significant. Recent estimates say the current costs are over $2 trillion and may add up to $6 trillion by the end of our lives due to financing costs and the extended care of soldiers who wouldn't otherwise have needed it. Obamacare will not pose those costs and is based on a good faith premise to stop people's suffering. The very worst case scenarios at this point are still better than the status quo. I'm not thrilled with how this presidency has gone but it is nothing like Bush's. Of course, much can change in three years! Who knows what can happen. Another recession, war, or other major national event and you never know what will happen.

The stand around and wait for that one guy to score offense looks like this when the one guy can't score It's like post-NCAA championship Illinois

If Kep wasn't here, I'd think about it

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=...0&sort=17,d Players with a better wRC+ than Mauer since 2009: Cabrera, Trout, Votto, Braun, Pujols, Bautista, Fielder, Holliday. Since 2005, his rookie season, among players with 4500 PA or more: Pujols, Utley, Cabrera, Wright, Holliday

At first, I thought this was going to be "my photog was horrible, here's how to avoid my pain" Then...you said you got the "engagement session" and I thought it was going to be a deal like "so the photog was going to film us...consummate." But then it was just a nice story...

He has a career 134 wRC+. Paul Konerko's is 120. Paul Konerko's best was 158, Mauer's was 170. Depends what you think a prime PK was worth, I suppose

I'm not convinced that Mauer has been a good defensive catcher for a while now. He's being overpaid now, but there is no need to fret about him being at 1B. He's going to hit really well. The trick for the Twins is to find a supporting cast now.

I like how he got an endorsement from his cousin in Iowa, who anyone else would have presumed to be a prominent local ex-politician by the same name

I like how he got an endorsement from his cousin in Iowa, who anyone else would have presumed to be a prominent local ex-politician by the same name

I like how he got an endorsement from his cousin in Iowa, who anyone else would have presumed to be a prominent local ex-politician by the same name

If I wanted leverage, I'd sure say that I had no more money to spend and that I'm happy with all of my players

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 04:54 PM) whoops, forgot the link to the article. http://inthesetimes.com/article/15849/teac...er_the_problem/ I think it's the latter. The original study from the SEF is more helpful. You're basically seeing something that I've seen since moving to the South. When I first got to the South (coming from Illinois) for college, I was shocked at how the vast majority of the people I met from the South went to secular private schools. I literally can't think of one of those in Illinois. Of course, in Illinois, a lot of non-Catholics go to Catholic schools so that they can have a private education, but that is beside the point. In the South, though, everyone just said "the public schools are terrible." Oh, okay. I realized later that "terrible" meant filled with poor black kids. What I have observed, especially in Memphis, is a great deal of hostility toward public schools that is rooted in fear and bias against black folks. You get all kinds of people sending their kids to private schools to get them away from the "bad public schools," and then you have a bunch of people who hate funding their local public schools. No s***! Maybe if you sent your kids there and let them mingle with other kinds of people, the entire community would feel invested rather than just making it a factory to poop out people for those quasi-segregated communities to remain in poverty. There is absolutely no coincidence that the South looks the worst in so many of these metrics, especially that 76% of school districts are majority low income in the South. There is a sense of desperation among people there to invest any amount to get their kids into a private school. I worked with a girl in college whose parents made less than 100k/year, yet were paying 20k/year in tuition to send her to an academy in her rural town.

FWIW, most of my life has been supported financially by a trucking business and the government is not perceived as a challenge to its existence. Conglomeration and vertical integration is a much bigger problem.

The only thing that makes any sense is that perhaps by charging it again, I recalibrated the battery. I just don't know why it would have been at a point where it was completely useless and suddenly, magically, gotten all of its juice back.

I think the team and the team-related press benefits by the Sox having interest in free agents. We may or may not try to sign Salty, but either way you want articles like this so that fans are constantly checking for more news and thinking about the White Sox during free agency.

I think the most progressive thing we saw from Bush was his funding of AIDS-related initiatives in Africa. With little to gain politically within his own party, that seems to be a thing that simply meant a lot to him.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 04:46 PM) JR isn't going to pay 7-15M for a prospect. The only way Hahn trades Dunn is if he really wants and thinks we can make a run at the World Series next year and he decides Dunn's general performance is counterproductive to that goal. Which is a legit possibility but I'd say not likely. If we trade Dunn that means we are in it to win it baby! Just teasing!

I would do a Hector for Rosario flip. I'd think about Q instead of Hector. I actually wonder if that's enough.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 12:33 PM) That should make the crappy players play better. Good luck down there Dale. Rick Renteria interviewed to replace him, but was turned away

Bush also implemented the PATRIOT Act, which will rank up there with the Alien and Sedition Acts in history. No Child Left Behind, which anyone in education knows has had far-reaching and terrible effects on our public education. This was an Obamacare-like law in its scope, but has been far more damaging than just a bad website that will eventually give people discounted health insurance. Obama's Race to the Top Initiative did a very good job of bringing education back, but much of NCLB is still there. Created Guantanamo Bay's prison for terror suspects, which is another international symbol of the loss of freedom. There is so much fear surrounding the people here that closing it is political poison. Slashed taxes, lowering revenue to its lowest since income taxes were first implemented. These cuts added 1.6 trillion to the deficit by themselves. Cutting capital gains in half for wealthy earners was a particularly redistributive measure that led to a troubling growth in income inequality and generally helped lead to the recession that began in 2008. Deregulated the banking industry, another fun and redistributive measure that had an even clearer role in the system failure in 2008. Meanwhile, he vetoed multiple attempts to enact stem cell research and prevented expansion of the children's health insurance program.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 08:41 PM) I laughed out loud at that article. Local bureaucrat: "7.8 million? Thats like one smaller sized contracting favor. How am I supposed to get all my nephews jobs holding the "Slow" sign with $7.8m?" But you liberals got the answer, tax em more. Yea, that'll do it! Levy 10,000% taxes on something that is literally in every product you have ever bought and everything you physically own. It protects the precious roads so your rolling deathtraps held together by duct tape and one working brake you get irresponsibly wasted on will have a slightly easier time. You want this plush life of yours where youre comfortable enough to give a s*** about starving Africans or run around with some pretentious "Save the Planet" petition? Thank the trucking industry. And yea, the point of the IHS being a defense project is that it wasnt set out to be some pork laden work project and contracting sweepstakes. The people in charge of it where discplined, smart, and resourceful which is a far f***ing cry from the idiotic, wasteful, spoiled, lazy, entitled ingrates who make up the unnecessary side of the public sector now. "But they maintain the roads, Duke!", no they dont. They go to the capitol begging the legislature there to increase their budget then use that money (after giving themselves big fat raises of course) on private contractors to do the actual work. Its a sham, theyre like big crooked brokers leeching taxpayer dollars without doing jack s***. So what you're saying is that with an essential service like trucking, we should all pitch in to make sure it happens without burdening that industry with too many expenses. This is what governance is all about. There are things that are dearly important and we are all willing to pay a little bit to make sure they don't pay so much that the activity is no longer economically feasible. Since the government owns the roads, it serves the democratic function of allowing people to move around without too much expense as well - not as cheaply as high speed rail, for instance, but still cheaply and independently.

For those wondering... Rosario: Home - 96 wRC+ (.817 OPS) 19% K Away - 113 wRC+ (.785 OPS) 27% K Wonder if that K difference is common for Colorado players. In 2012, he walked 7.7% of the time at home versus 3.9% away as well. This year it was 3.3 versus 3.0, respectively. Not sure why he quit walking or why that is different based on ballpark either.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 06:51 PM) Upside: Young, cost-controlled power hitter at premium position Downside: Trade cost / Plate disciple / Defensive liability I like to think we're all plate disciples, in one way or another...

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Nov 9, 2013 -> 10:33 AM) The dude won a conference title in his first year at freaken' Kansas State, their first one in 36 years. I would wait more than one game to jump to conclusions. QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Nov 9, 2013 -> 10:43 AM) True. I'm just saying there's nothing to draw from that one game. Love him or hate him, Weber is a flawed coached who has had some awesome successes as a basketball coach. I agree. He isn't someone I'd want to hire at this point, but he's clearly not entirely useless.

I guess we shouldn't get rid of the interstates, as we need them there in case we are attacked. ...what is the most efficient way to keep them up? I've got it! We won't let heavy trucks on them. After all, one loaded semi damages the road nearly 10,000 times more than a car. We will only allow them to be on there if they accept a tax burden 10,000 higher than me for their gas and registration.