Jake

What a joke. What should Sweum be fired for? For not losing enough?

Another week, another decision: Vick or RG3?

Hahn pretty much revealed what needed revealing: we "owed it to the fans" to keep the team together and hope to compete this year, but soon knew it was more prudent to look to the future. I take that to mean that most parties involved didn't expect a winner this year and are probably seeing the players as the reason for this season rather than the manager.

In Mariano's defense, I'm not sure that he foresaw the craziness that would follow him around all year. It's pretty much unprecedented. Only in the 21st century, only for a Yankee

I'd be receptive to PK as a pinch hitter extraordinaire/platoon/injury reserve, especially if it is on the cheap as he has suggested. He basically said that he just doesn't want the worst season of his career (both individually and for the team) to be his last if he can help it. It seems like he realizes that his body may not hold up as a full-time player anyway. As to "why wait?" Sometimes as you are grinding mentally and physically, it is extremely easy to get very negative. Winning seems impossible, hitting seems difficult, your body feels like it'll never be the same....but then after you're away and rested for a while, you start to reevaluate. Your legs/back/wrist/whatever come back and feel a little more like normal, you start getting these competitive impulses, and you realize you're not ready to go. ...or those things don't happen and then you retire, knowing that you made the right choice.

I feel like PK really, really hates playing badly.

I love how often Aldous Huxley appears on these lists. One of my favorites.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 27, 2013 -> 10:34 AM) I think this fits better. Kotsay was good in his prime but I don't think people will wax poetic about him 10 years from now 2-time Gold Glove DH

I feel like the thing that struck me the most was just seeing the friendship aspect of that moment.

I have a 42" Samsung LCD that is at least 6-7 years old. Works like a charm.

Let's be real, I'm probably going to cry for his last game at the Cell

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 10:08 AM) Now how much do those percentages change if you start telling people they have to pay more to get it done? Not sure, since they don't have to pay more

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 09:59 PM) So he did a poor job of selling it? Didn't 'get the message out'? That is always the fallback when liberal ideas get rejected. The message DID get out, and it was rejected. The way I see it is this: Americans have a very low opinion of Obamacare. Roughly 52% oppose while 39% are in favor of it. Meanwhile, 57% of Americans say they do not have enough information about the law to know if it will impact them - 67% of uninsured Americans don't know what the law does for them (this was in March this year, 3 years after the law passed). Now, opinion on many aspects of the law are totally different. 52% say they think Medicaid should be expanded to cover more low-income people (41% oppose this idea). 88% support the idea of giving tax credits to small businesses for buying healthcare for their employees. 81% support closing the "donut hole" in Medicare 80% support healthcare exchanges 76% support raising the maximum age of dependents on family insurance plans 76% support subsidies for individuals buying insurance 60% support increasing Medicare payroll tax on upper incomes The only aspect that was polled that drew less than majority support was the individual mandate, which was questionably described as a penalty by the pollsters and thus drawing criticism. Either way, this had 40% support and is essential for the law and all the other provisions to work correctly. Interestingly, despite the high unfavorability of the law in general, only 29% believed that their family would be worse off because of the law. As far as more misinformation, 59% of people say they believe that nationwide health expenditures are "going up faster than usual." It has actually been growing much slower than usual for several years - only 4% of Americans thought this was the case. Only 40% believed that more uninsured people would have insurance, lol. Anyway, the difference between how people feel about each aspect of the law and how they feel about the law on the whole tells me that the law was not well-marketed. People believing in clear un-truths like the supposed rapid inflation of healthcare costs and the idea that this law will not even cover uninsured people tells me that people have been hearing the wrong sources of information. The fact that a huge majority claim they need more information to know whether it will impact their lives in any way, including and especially uninsured people, tells me that the administration needed to have worked harder to disseminate information about the law. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/ot..._plan-1130.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/h..._n_2915826.html http://kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/...-tracking-poll/

QUOTE (SleepyWhiteSox @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 09:18 AM) Can't wait for the new Nexus phone Can't wait for Nexus phones to be available for ATT

I didn't think his little pose was all that insane. IMO every Sammy Sosa homer was more ridiculous than that. The Braves handled it in the absolute worst way, regardless

I'm excited for the return of Rose, even though I won't forget last season. Anything is possible for the future, though, so I hope we kick some ass.

It's not a perfect comparison, but Avisail reminds me of Maggs a little bit at the plate. I mean this in terms of the way his swing looks at times. Results might be more like Carlos Lee

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:28 PM) Voter registration isn't easy NOW? f*** it all, why not just have them be able to vote when they go to the doctor as well? And screw you and your supposed racism in every damn thing that happens. Republican didn't bipartisan support the program because they think it is a BAD PROGRAM. Not because Obama is black, or a Democrat or that they want to put registration in it. However much you think he 'gave in', the bill still sucks. If all his 'capitulation' still caused moderates and such to lose, maybe it is because the bill still sucks. I'm happy for you to disagree with my thoughts on the law, but I didn't introduce racism into my argument because I don't think it had anything to do with the healthcare law. You wouldn't like it if I cried racism to distract (so much so that you thought you saw it when it wasn't there) so I'd like if I don't get accused of talking about racism when that had nothing to do with what I was talking about. As far as voting goes, I still don't see the objection. Why should it be hard? It's one thing to think there should be qualifications for voting (I don't agree with it, but at least that is a position to have) and another to think that pretty much any citizen should be able to vote, but it must not be too simple to do so. In this case, worries about fraud don't make sense either since it will be a government institution providing the service and will use the same verification processes as any other place that offers that service. If you want what many liberals think Obama did wrong on this bill, beyond the aforementioned capitulation, I would tell you that he did a very poor job of selling it. He didn't spend time or resources trying to correct misconceptions and fears about the law, presumably out of some half-brained strategy to avoid doing so. Critics on the left are still upset that he isn't doing more to educate people on what the law is and encouraging the enrollment that is central to its success. The inattentive public heard very few things about Obamacare and that was pretty much "death panels" and other overt lies about what the law does. In political communication circles, we think the conservatives were brilliant in the way they were able to control public discourse about that law. As a citizen, it is very upsetting. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:45 PM) Actually, there are a few issues that have come up with implementation that we'd really like to tweak by passing small laws through Congress, but the party with the majority in the House is refusing to do anything which could improve the bill on the grounds that they want as many people to hate it as possible. For example, the way the bill was written it wound up excluding clergy members from receiving subsidies to purchase insurance through their churches. A simple, couple-line legislative fix would fix that. However, the Republicans will not allow any such fix to come up for a vote, demanding that clergy must suffer in order to demonstrate that the bill is a bad bill. As a consequence, several hundred thousand clergy members could be forced to make purchases on the exchanges and drop their current coverage as a consequence. We'd be happy to fix this and could do so without a problem if the bill were allowed to come up for a vote. One party will not allow any such things to happen. Many Democrats also want to tweak the employer mandate, one of the most unpopular features of the law among conservatives, but haven't been given the opportunity to do so. Most Democrats recognize the issue in that hard employee cutoff in that the marginal cost of employee #50 will have unintended consequences. There hasn't been any serious consideration of remedying this beyond scrapping the whole law.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 02:36 PM) Republicans didn't care about that they weren't going to vote for anything, so Dems protected themselves from "too expensive" sniping by coming up with a bizarre round number to say it wouldn't be more expensive then so had a bunch of mechanisms to raise revenue that weren't really important in terms of fixing health care but important to go below the magic round number of CBO scoring. President Obama saw how important this law can be (and will be) to the future of the USA and thus bent over very far backwards to try to get it passed with bipartisan support. Unfortunately, he had no idea that the only attempts at cooperation by the right were going to be disingenuous (such as them having basically promoted the current law until Obama capitulated, at which point they no longer liked it). Likewise, he had no idea that this great degree of capitulation would still cause the moderates and other members of competitive districts to lose in the mid-terms. I have a feeling the Dem leadership would have approached things much differently with hindsight, by enacting either a single-payer system or at least implementing the public option. There is another, not often spoken about aspect to this law: voter registration. Per federal law, Obamacare exchanges and other providers must give citizens the opportunity to register to vote (ala DMVs). I believe this is a huge, unspoken aspect to the Republican opposition to this law. This makes voter registration much easier for a lot of folks that are currently struggling to get registered and thus not turning out. These people will also presumably like having healthcare and will vote to keep/enhance the institutions that provide them with healthcare. The current Republican establishment hates when people vote and they really hate it when people like a government service. Unlike voter ID and other voter-suppressive movements from the right, there is no good way to talk openly about the aforementioned issue. They can't complain that people can register to vote, because that is the process that helps to prevent the fraud they are so worried about. There have been a few cries about identity theft, but these haven't been picked up by mainstream voices because they don't make sense.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 01:10 PM) Nobody is more clutch than Jose Valentin He never, ever made an error that hurt the Sox

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 11:55 AM) No, not setting up new exchanges. Using the existing exchange for Federal employees and allowing any American to participate in that exchange. Also, instead of mandating coverage by employers (which is worthless since it creates tons of loopholes), just give tax incentives to businesses to provide coverage to the point where nearly every employer will want to provide coverage. Also, by being able to participate in the Federal employee exchange, the cost to businesses should be lower. The main reason this had to be done because using things like tax incentives changed the math of the law. Requiring employers to provide health insurance doesn't affect the federal budget (at least, not in a direct manner) while giving them tax credits does. Republicans are very keen on the math.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 12:28 AM) My coworker's dad works for HTC. He's had 4.3 on his One for 3 weeks now. The real question is if AT&T and other carriers are going to string along their end of the update for several months

I have found that many people are not very convinced by comparing to other countries. A couple factors - we tax less than many other countries, especially on the highest earners. Also, we have a giant defense budget while many of the people providing better services are essentially relying on our military for their defense. Mostly, though, we are generally far less willing to implement government services for some reason or another. There is a strange fear of anything that could be called socialist, which is how we failed to implement universal healthcare while Truman, JFK, and Nixon thought about implementing these things. The Nixon administration, cooperating with Ted Kennedy, actually got pretty close while marketing it as "Medicare for all" after people really started to love Medicare.

Reed has faded at the end of each of his seasons. This makes me wonder if he is simply tiring out. Could be an issue of experience, as this is a much longer and tougher season than what he had in college. His drop-off took a bit longer this year, which is encouraging.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 24, 2013 -> 09:23 PM) Oh healthcare, its the one issue I flip back and forth on the more I think about it. I just can't seem to nail down what fits within my personal opinions on government. On one hand, I support at least the public option but really more towards an NHS style system. I've said on this forum a million times, governments's only job is to protect our rights to life, liberty and economic freedom from those who would infringe upon those rights either domestically or from abroad. Insurance companies and healthcare providers have crossed this criminal line in the sand where the system they've been in charge of has become so bloated and broken that they're actually violating our right to life (obviously) and our right to economic freedom. The first one should be clear, the second will take a sentence or two to explain. When confronted with the cost of healthcare people do not do a cost/benefit analysis, the value someone puts on their own life is infinite. Insurance companies and providers know this, so they go absolutely apes*** with these prices, its all just arbitrary--the market has no say because people will spend every cent they have if it means saving themselves or a family member. Healthcare happens to be that one thing we all need universally, rename healthcare to the more apt label life care and you get the true meaning: We are all alive, we all need something done to preserve that condition. So is it within the government's purview to provide healthcare? Probably, I mean maybe, I mean... no? The problem is causation, the idea that government should pass laws against the act of our rights being taken away but not the circumstances under which they are taken. Ban murder, not thr instruments of murder. In this case I have a very difficult time figuring out if the current system is actually engaging in act of killing peope or just a cricumstance behind which murder happens. Does that make sense? Also, the government should never pass a law protecting one set of rights by violating another. This gets so muddled in my head I cannot even articulate into the written word without being even more disorganized than I usually am. Either way, Obamacare is an awful law because it empowers rotten institutions with taxpayer money (enough of which they get already via outrageous premiums) and then forces us to buy stuff from them. I can't get over the second one, its just wrong on so many levels and shows that were headed down this brutal path of corporate socialism, were all forced to buy stuff from a set of government protected highly subsidized companies who have zero incentive to compete because they are fool proofed by our money. Then on top of that we are forced to contribute to their profits by law. So we get put in a state of wage slavery where our bills perfectly match our paychecks and the part that gets taken out in taxes is filtered through the state to be handed out in whatever corrupt way they can think of before being brought back to the very people who we are already paying mandated money to. You cannot defend it. I don't care how in the bag you are for Obama because he's you Great Liberal Hope, this law of his is f***ing evil on a vast array of levels and has to be stopped at nearly any cost. There's some good stuff here. I think you've made a compelling libertarian argument about the healthcare issue. I say libertarian and not free market because you rightly see that there is an issue of liberty at hand. The markets have infringed upon our right to life - and your reasoning is very good, I haven't tried to put this in market terms before but you're exactly right. We can't be rational actors in the market when we will say yes to any price to save our life. Even in free market theory, these things don't work if we can't act rationally. This is why libertarian god Friedrich Hayek advocated for a strong social safety net, arguing that the poor are too likely to be coerced due to their lack of resources to be rational actors. As far as this issue of circumstance, I'm afraid I can't help you there. Instead of trying to balance this complicated argument just to fit your normal model for political thinking, why not just try another angle? It is clear that it may meet your condition for needing policy. Let's think about from a utilitarian viewpoint, instead. Right now, we're terribly inefficient at health. Advanced measures say that 1. we spend more per person on healthcare than anyone and 2. the healthcare received in the USA is not as good as many other developed countries. This suggests we have to do something. From there, still thinking as a utilitarian, what can we do to improve things? Getting everyone insured and doing it without great financial peril to those that are most vulnerable seems like a top priority. We can agree that Obamacare meets this need. I also agree that there are some serious issues with this law and that is that we are still married to a private system. The funny thing is that while I am certainly more anti-business than you are, I don't see this as so immediately dire. For one, I can see a potential stimulus here, though it is sadly (in effect) a stimulus of businesses rather than people, at least in some cases. On the bright side, maybe I can justify this as a stimulus from the bottom if it is saving people money on their health costs. It will do this for some people for sure, I am just uncertain as to those people's buying power. I am not ready to wholly embrace that this law is less competitive. The system, as it is, is not very competitive. For people with pre-existing conditions that cause them to be denied coverage, they have no choices beyond a casualty program. Many people lack the capacity to "shop," which is what this law is making easy. It has been difficult for people to act rationally in the marketplace when it has been highly inconvenient at best to comparison shop. This should help with that. Beyond that, the fact that subsidies don't cover everything still causes everyone to act as a consumer and make choices based on how much money they are willing to spend. In the near term, with so many new consumers, there should be a race to the bottom as well. My parents are excited to be off of casualty insurance (neither has a pre-existing condition by the way, they are just a bad mixture of slightly too old and slightly too fat) and have the ability to use the exchanges. They won't even get a subsidy. I think the main reason we feel differently, though, is the way we interpret lawmaking. Your distrust of the institution leads you to believe that the only way the law might be amended over time is to make it worse, more pro-corporate, anti-choice, etc. I am optimistic that this can be a step in a different direction, towards a Canada-style single-payer system that keeps the medical industry innovating in the market but keeps healthcare consumers from being victim to an oppressive insurance scheme. I am hopeful that over time, we can see healthcare as an essential right in a thriving democracy (I wonder if the ninth amendment will be used to argue this) and that private institutions are eroding that right.