Balta1701

By Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Confucious, and Zoroaster, I have no idea how there was no foul called on Nevada there at the end. I'm not sure it was a foul, but I really have no idea how one wasn't claled. And I'm rooting for Nevada and I have absolutely no idea how that was not a charge. Or at least a block. in the OT.

On notice: Butler Maryland Winthrop UNLV VCU Michigan St. Vanderbilt Nevada Dead to me: Old Dominion Davidson Notre Dame Georgia Tech Duke Marquette George Washington Creighton

$5 to anyone who predicted that Texas A&M Corpus Christi would run out to a 10-0 lead on Wisconsin.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 12:19 PM) This is all a semantics game. People knew who she was, BEFORE the White House people supposedly got involved. Otherwise, there would have been a lot more charges brought up by Fitzgerald. I think the reason there were no more charges brought by Fitz is actually pretty well established. The law about outing a covert CIA operative requires not only that the person outed be a covert CIA operative who has done work overseas in the previous 5 years, it also requires that the leaking be done with the intent to harm national security. The first point I think seems to be established pretty well as correct, but, based on the statements from Mr. Armitage, the first leaking appears to have been accidental. Both Bob Woodward and Robert Novak have testified that Mr. Armitage appears to have accidentally leaked Mrs. Wilson's employment status to Novak. Without witnessed who could testify to intent, it would have been impossible to charge Mr. Armitage. And once Mr. Armitage let the cat out of the bag, that law couldn't be applied any more. Once she was outed by someone, the White House was legally allowed to do whatever they wanted with her name, because that law was no longer applicable. They may not have even known that they weren't the first group spreading around her name, but nothing mattered with respect to that law, as long as they didn't lie to the people doing the investigatin.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 10:26 AM) Works superior than mlb.tv for me. Albeit the quality of the picture isn't as good as mlb.tv. And interestingly, it's actually MLB.tv technology that the NCAA is using to broadcast this thing. Look at the bottom of the video screen...there's an MLB logo.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 11:56 AM) I think right now it is just for flying IIRC. Under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) The proposed implementation timeline has two phases: * Beginning January 23, 2007, ALL persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling by air between the United States and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda will be required to present a valid passport, Air NEXUS card, or U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Document, or an Alien Registration Card, Form I-551, if applicable. * As early as January 1, 2008, ALL persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda by land or sea (including ferries), may be required to present a valid passport or other documents as determined by the Department of Homeland Security. While recent legislative changes permit a later deadline, the Departments of State and Homeland Security are working to meet all requirements as soon as possible. Ample advance notice will be provided to enable the public to obtain passports or passport cards for land/sea entries. The passport requirement does NOT apply to U.S. citizens traveling to or returning directly from a U.S. territory. U.S. citizens returning directly from a U.S. territory are not considered to have left the United States and do not need to present a passport. U.S. territories include the following: Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Swains Island, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

QUOTE(FlaCWS @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 12:00 PM) Why exactly is that the case? Doesn't Pablo fill the same role (backup 3B, corner OF) as Mackowiak? Mack is better at both of those roles than Pablo, IMO.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 11:46 AM) Maybe it wasn't Waxman - but someone asked her "were you told that you were covert?" and she said no. So maybe my "definition" here is off. Ok, I think that closely tracks with the first bit I excerpted there, the question by Tom Davis.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 11:28 AM) As a matter of fact, she had to admit that she wasn't "covert" in the hearing as well, because Waxman asked the question, and she had to say "no" to that question. USA today is liveblogging the event, and I think that their summary disagrees with how you're presenting it, so I'd like to know your source.

QUOTE(tigerfan @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 11:16 AM) After I typed that it seemed to work itself out. Haven't really had problems since then. Same here. I think I jinxed the problems by writing about them. Which means it'll commence crashing as soon as this posts.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 10:44 AM) Why on earth would we keep Perez and get rid of Mack? I think the rationale is: 1. He never plays CF again 2. While his versatility is useful...we do have other people who can cover the exact same spots as him, and he doesn't cover the 1 or 2 spots where we really seem to need a roster spot for another backup. 3. It would be preferable to hold onto him and let either Ozuna or Erstad walk and then at the same time use that spot to hold onto Perez or Terrero, but for some reason, our team has gone insane with "Grinding", and thus, we're forced to keep people of lesser talent solely because of the way they play. Mackowiak as a backup 3b, LF, RF, and 2nd b, along with Cintron covering SS and another backup, right handed OF/DH would be a hell of a lot more useful than Ozuna, who covers all of those spots moderately well and can play SS but doesn't hit or defend as well as the other guys...but we just won't drop Ozuna. QUOTE(thedoctor @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 10:49 AM) i've been out of the loop on our games, but wasn't perez hurt at some point this spring? is he back? Strained a calf muscle on Wednesday. No news on how serious it was...couldn't finish rounding the bases...but if it's just a mild strain, he probably won't be out for long.

QUOTE(tigerfan @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 09:58 AM) Looks like it's back on the fritz again. Every time I try it, it's works for a bit but then dies. Doing the same thing for me today.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 10:29 AM) Dude, Sweets never plays so if you want to argue skiles is ruining Tyrus than at least make a valid argument and don't give me this crap he plays Sweetney more than Tyrus. Skiles has done a good job with Tyrus. We've seen him grow a ton as a player in just his rookie season. We all knew he'd be raw but the improvements he's made have been tremendous as of late and call me crazy but I'm going to credit Tyrus for his hard work and Skiles and the rest of the coaching staff as well. Given that Mr. Skiles has 2 different priorities with Tyrus, #1 being to win as many games as possible this season, and #2 being to continue the development of his players so that he can win as many games as possible in future seasons...I think Skiles appears to have been doing a dynamite job. It might have been nice to see Tyrus and Sef get some more minutes earlier in the season...but if our goal is to win games...then the margin for error if a rookie comes in and starts turning the ball over is pretty darn small.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Mar 8, 2007 -> 07:05 PM) "covert" and "classified". Learn the difference. The end on Valarie Plame. So...Mrs. Wilson is testifying before Congressman Waxman's committee today. Part of her opening statement included this paragraph: The same statement, as I understand it, has been repeated a couple of times so far. Therefore, if Mrs. Wilson was not actually a "Covert operative who had traveled overseas" and who's ID was being protected by the CIA as has been claimed by supporters of the President...as far as I can tell, she would have just perjured herself.

Damaso Marte.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 10:14 AM) And none of the Fair Tax projections I've seen are predicting a 75% tax rate. Edit to add: OK, how about re-purposing a leaner IRS to process tax refunds for the lowest 25% of earners? It It wouldn't have to require filing for anybody who gets a W-2 at least, and only a little bit of work to file an annual income disclosure in other cases. So, where did I come up with that 75% number...pretty simple. Made it up. But here's the facts as I see them...most of the estimates I've seen say that to do a national sales tax, you'll wind up needing to push the tax rate to something like 20-30%. Give or take. Then...you start making exemptions. And with every little exemption you make...the tax rate on something else will need to go up. And therefore, a company gets a huge benefit in cost if it can get the tax rate reduced on its good...thus pushing the tax rate higher on everything else. What happens when some Administration decides to declare that the auto industry is very important to American survival, and offers up a tax rate decrease on certain American brands? The rest of the rates go up. Or we decide to encourage domestic oil production and offer up tax bonii there. And so on. And as we keep raising the prices on some goods, the purchases of those goods would be naturally driven down, thus requriing even higher taxes in order to stay in some sort of equilibrium. If you jump the price of a yacht by 50%...they just sell less yachts. And so on.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 10:00 AM) Maybe not a voucher system. How about waiving the tax across the board for groceries and certain other essentials? I don't see how that winds up being any different from the mess we've already got of lobbyists...to my eyes it might even make it worse. Suddenly you have lobbyists who can cut the price of a good by 75% simply by getting it moved into a different tax classification.

So, to switch the topic of this thread in a different direction, I'd say it's become quite clear from this whole mess that there is a serious problem in the way U.S. attorneys are chosen and seated, and it's not just due to the clause they inserted in the Patriot Act. It certainly seems inappropriate at this point to allow any administration the ability to fire any U.S. Attorney they want without cause, particularly when they're choosing to use that power to fire U.S. attorneys for the offense of investigating their own party. So, anyone else have any suggestions about how we could fix this system and try to build in some insulation? My suggestions would be thus: 1. Extend the term of U.S. attorneys to 10 years from the date they start serving. This pushes many of the seats beyond the length of any single administration, and would therefore keep any administration from stuffing the entire box full of political appointees. 2. Require all U.S. attorneys to receive Senate approval, regardless of how an opening appears, as was the case before the Patriot Act revision. 3. Require firings of U.S. attorneys by the Executive branch to receive approval by the Senate, thus giving a minority party the chance to publicize inappropriate firings or even filibuster a firing.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 06:48 AM) I kinda figured that would be the reply. The article is pretty techinical and statistical, but it makes the points in detail with tons of sources. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/02/07/ala...ution-heresies/ I'll grant that I don't understand roughly 2/3 of the things cited in that paper, but at least the simplistic numbers I do have seem to disagree with their conclusion. For a citation, I can give recently released numbers from the IRS that cover through the year 2005. The data behind that graph, and a more detailed graph showing the stagnation of wages for the bottom 99% over the last 30 years and the effects of adding in Capital Gains can be found in the spreadsheet above. I'm too lazy to copy all the graphs myself.

QUOTE(bschmaranz @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 08:40 AM) So does this mean in 6 months when people forget about Pete Rose again and he wants to get on TV, he'll say he betted AGAINST his team? Just seems like the next step. Depends. On when someone gives him his next big payday or book deal. Or when he decides he nees more publicity to keep getting money for autographs.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 09:43 AM) but hell I don't even know what the word means anymore. Non-communist. That's the key.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 09:40 AM) Erstad is coming for two reasons...OF and 1B. If anyone is left out, it's going to be Perez, IMO. Remember, Ozzie loves players that can play multiple positions. And Erstad is better than Perez defensively. Exactly my point. Erstad is coming for OF play - Mackowiak can probably cover backup duties at 1b for the 10 or so games per year where we actually need a backup 1b, and is almost certainly better with the bat than Erstad. If we're just picking who would be the best backup OF given our needs and supplies, right now, I'd go with Terrero. But there seems to be no chance of that happening, because we need our "Grinder" and backup 1b and so on.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 09:28 AM) Anyone think this is a good thing? I mean, we have 7 viable candidates for the OF. Any one of them could make or not make the final roster. Dye is a given. But, Pods, Erstand, BA, Terrero, Mack and Perez in a pinch. This is a good thing. And I'm not even including Sweeney and Owens. THIS is a good position to be in. Better to have too much talent, and yes, there is talent, than scraping by with whoever can hit the damn ball twice every ten times. If I thought that we'd actually wind up taking the best guys for the OF, then I'd agree with you. I'm really starting to think the best options might be Posdednik, Terrero, Anderson, and Dye for those 4 roster spots, with Erstad just left out in the cold, and there seems to be zero chance of that actually happening, despite the fact that I think we have a much bigger need for a backup right handed hitting OF who can come in for Podsednik than we do a left-handed hitting OF who can play CF (not to mention the fact that I think Terrero will be better defensively than Erstad). But we must have our pepper mill grinder, so what else is there?

QUOTE(Y2HH @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 06:18 AM) My problem with Anderson isn't his defense -- although I do think he could be better than he is. It appears to me that Anderson only gives about 85% defensivly -- and if he pressed the petal to the metal, and gave 100%, he could be one of the very very best there is. Just because a person seems to move with an amazing amount of ease in CF doesn't mean that he's not going 100%. It just means that he doesn't need to go 100% because he's gotten such good jumps on the ball. On the plays where Anderson needs to cover ground out there...my God does that kid ever cover some ground. I can think of a couple diving catches and that grab against Hafner in June where he just seemed to come out of no where.

QUOTE(supernuke @ Mar 16, 2007 -> 08:08 AM) 100% agree. I think Ozzie actually want this guy to succed and not handing him the starting job is probably the best thing for him. If BA actually is a lazy primadonna he needs a kick in the ass to realize that he needs to work to get the starting job and I think that is what Ozzie is doing. So, the guy goes to winterball despite not wanting to because the team asks him to, loses 20 pounds when he contracts a digestive illness, spends the rest of the winter working with Konerko to fix the holes in his swing and regain all the weight he lost, and we're still calling him a "Lazy primadonna"?