Balta1701

I would think the fact that she lost her election, again, is at least decent evidence that there are more people who care about it than it seems.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Dec 20, 2006 -> 10:15 AM) They still don't have a bullpen. They don't have a dominant bullpen, but they've certainly upgraded over the garbage they had last year, simply by adding a bunch of journeymen.

John Kerry proposes adding more troops to the U.S. Army Bush campaign responds Kerry Campaign proposal to add troops to the army would make America "Less safe". 2 years go by George W. Bush proposes adding more troops to the U.S. Army. Republicans, media thank God that they kept that flip-flopper John Kerry out of the White House. Just another day...

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 07:48 PM) BREAKING NEWS: I do not, in fact, have a Serta. It is a Therapedic Posture Control 6000. I actually can't find it on Google, but that's waht the little corner thing says. Either way, it's damn comfortable when covered with a mattress pad. There's probably a good reason you can't find it on Google. Most mattress companies these days put out probably something like dozens of different names for the same mattress. That way, when you hear a store running an ad saying "If anyone beats our advertised price your mattress is free" or something like that, they can do that without worrying, because every other major store selling mattresses made by that same company has a different model name for the same mattress. I bought a Simmons, spent some decent money on it a year ago. Thoroughly good so far, quite comfortable, nice upgrade from the ungodly old collapsing one I had beforehand.

"I will not rest until every year families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's homo-abortion-pot-and-commie-jizzporium!"

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 09:12 PM) Pitchers are one or two pitch pitchers out of the pen because it's hammered into their head not to get beat on your third best pitch. Which is as it should be, but that doesn't mean they don't have the capability to be a good starter because they don't use more than two pitches out of the pen. Aside from the fastball and the occasional slider, what other pitches does he have? As far as I can recall that's all I've seen him throw, and some brief googling of scouting reports didn't turn up any mention of other pitches.

QUOTE(Brian @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 06:09 PM) With Iverson off to Denver, I think Philly should be shopping Webber and rebuild through pics. I know Webber is on the decline but is still a decent post presence and could fit in the Bulls starting 5. PJ Brown and a 2nd round pick for Webber? Philly will take Brown and his expiring contract like they just did for Joe Smith and a 2nd round pick is all Webber is really worth these days. Hinrich Gordon Deng Webber Wallace I'm not sure I'd even give up that much for Webber, just on the chance that Minny decides to pull the Trigger on Garnett this season. Pretty terrible contract, not much in the way of production, probably less valuable than the guys we already have. He may very well just replace PJ Brown in sitting on the bench watching Noc and Deng holding down the front court. And by next year, that's probably all he'd be doing. Hell of a game tonight by the Bulls too.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 08:04 PM) FWIW, this state likes Edwards. IIRC, until the last few months of the campaign kicked into gear in 04, the leaders in Iowa were Gephardt and Lieberman, mainly because those were the guys that people had experience with due to Joe running in 00 and Gephardt being from the state. Edwards just polls well for now because of leftover from 04. He may hold onto that lead, but right now, I don't put any stock in that.

Matt Thornton simply doesn't have the "stuff" of a starter. Out of the bullpen, he is coming in there with a bit of a funky delivery and bringing gas. You just can't get used to how fast the ball comes out of his hand in an inning or two, and then on occasion he changes speeds and can be pretty dangerous, but for the most part, he seems to be a 1+ pitch pitcher. He is that style that will work well out of the bullpen, but would have a lot of difficulty as a starter just because people could adapt to him after 6-7 innings.

Ah, finally found the other graph I was looking for, or at least a version of it, from the Congressional budget office. The Axes are a bit funny, so bear with me. The X Axis is the year of birth of a random person when they would begin receiving social security benefits. The Y axis is the benefits they would receive their first year of eligibility in Social Security. In other words, the X axis translates to basically the year you start receiving Social Security benefits; the 2 lines are identical until about 1977, and a person born in 1977 would begin receiving Social Security benefits in roughly 2042 under current law, which is the date of the projected trust fund exhaustion. The key feature of this graph is to compare both lines to the current benefits. Even in the event that the Social Security trust fund is totally exhausted in 2042 as predicted by the Trustee reports, the program would still be paying out a higher rate of benefits (in today's dollars) at that date than it is paying out today. Even if the trust fund is used up, with the pessimistic version of the projections and no change ever happening to the funding side, at current tax rates people retiring in 2042 will still receive a higher payout than people retiring in 2006.

It's fun to joke about wars.

2 interesting graphs in response, from the 2005 and 2006 OASDI reports. 2005: 2006: In the space of 2 years in those reports, the projected deficit almost 75 years from now has decreased from nearly 6% to 5.35%. The fact is, every time they put out one of these estimates, it keeps showing that the situation in the previous year was better than the trustees report had predicted it to be in every case except for the stable case above, and because of that, the projections get progressively less bad every year.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 03:15 PM) both the 04 and 06 proections show complete exhaustion of the SS trust fund. both show that only a massive tax increase will solve the problem if the system is not changed. The upper line is not the "Massive tax increase" line. First of all, even if the worst projections were right, the tax increase required would be equivalent to roughly 2% of GDP; hardly massive. The upper line there is in fact the higher-growth higher-productivity model, which in reality has been far more accurate, and which makes much more likely assumptions about growth (1.6% GDP growth vs. 2% GDP growth for the next 40 years)

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 02:54 PM) This information is intriguing to me. Where did you get it? The second graph comes from the 2004 Social Security Trustees report. The first graph is a compilation of the projected dates shown in line 2 in that report for the 10 years before 1994, and the confirming data for that chart (something whipped up during the social security debate back in 05) can be found here, although they're often in PDF form. For example, just so you may be inclined to believe me more without having to scroll through several 200+ page pdf reports, here is the identical graph from the 1997 OASDI report. You can compare it to the 2004 version which is copied from the link above. You'll note that the line 2, which is generally the line the media cites as the "Doomsday" line for Social Security, has moved from 2029 to 2041 within the space of 7 years.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 02:32 PM) sorry, but you're totally wrong. from the SSA "Social Security's financing problems are long term and will not affect today's retirees and near-retirees, but they are very large and serious. People are living longer, the first baby boomers are nearing retirement, and the birth rate is low. The result is that the worker-to-beneficiary ratio has fallen from 16.5-to-1 in 1950 to 3.3-to-1 today. Within 40 years it will be 2-to-1. At this ratio there will not be enough workers to pay scheduled benefits at current tax rates." http://www.ssa.gov/qa.htm Actually, you're the one who's totally wrong. The key word there is "Scheduled benefits". With Social security as it is currently structured, the "scheduled benefits" actually rise at a rate faster than that of inflation, so if inflation were 0 for the next 50 years, Social Security payments would still increase every year. If the worst case scenario in the Trustees prediction comes true, once the Social Security trust fund runs out, Social Security will still be able to pay out 85% of the "Scheduled benefits" at the time. But because Social Security grows faster than inflation, 85% of the Scheduled benefits 40 years from now is actually greater than 100% of the benefits now. Furthermore, there is still significant reason to doubt the "worst case scenario" projection, the exhaustion of the social security trust fund, because previous evidence has shown that the system is actually more stable than the projections indicate. In 1994, when they predicted when the trust fund would be exhaustsed, they predicted 2029. In 2004, they predicted the same even would happen in 2042, in other words, 12 years passed, and the exhaustion date moved 13 years into the future. How could this happen? Very simple...the Social Security administration in making those predictions assumes something like a 1.6-2% GDP growth per year. Any time that growth beats that number, more money comes into the system than was predicted, the date winds up moving farther into the future. In fact, if we average just over 2% GDP growth for the next 40 years, the Social Security trust fund NEVER goes bankrupt, and Social Security never misses a payment. Graphically, here's that same fact: The upper line on that graph is the "low cost" projection, the same one which has been consistently the most accurate for the last 10 years.

The actual article 2k5 posted doesn't even mention property taxes as far as I can tell.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 02:26 PM) a lockbox fixes the problem for tex, when he retires in 10 years. but you're right...for us, it doesn't. For us, just letting the program proceed naturally, under the worse case projections 50 years from now (assuming that the next 50 years is no where near as prosperous as the last 50 years), leaves Social Security able to pay out a higher amount of money per recipient (inflation adjusted) than it does today.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 01:08 PM) LOCK BOX! In about 10 years, people will be wishing that they had kept the social security money in that lockbox rather than spending it.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 01:21 PM) Wow. If Oden goes, Philly did, assuming they get TWO lottery picks? Interesting. I don't think the 2nd pick is a lottery pick, I believe it originally started off as Dallas's pick. Dallas moved it to Golden State in the Dampier deal, then Golden State moved it to Denver in the Nikoloz Tskitishvili deal.

I'm fairly surprised that Philly didn't hold out for JR Smith.

Larry Sherry , the Dodger relief pitcher who won the 1959 World Series MVP award after closing all 4 games of the series, died Sunday at the age of 71.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 11:39 AM) We haven't had any successful attacks on us since. You are assuming that would be the case with Gore in office. I'm not willing to jump to that conclusion. Since we're doing this theoretical exercise, it's also entirely possible that with Mr. Gore in office, the 9/11 plot could have been disrupted by our governnment in the summer of 2001 before it happened, and thus either the Bin laden group would have had to arrange for a different operation to hit the U.S. before the U.S. would have taken action against them, or the Bin Laden group could have remained in Afghanistan working to destabilize other countries in the region without any real effort by the U.S. to stop them. And who knows what that could have done. QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 11:41 AM) That's my point. You are stepping out saying Gore would have been so much better, but there is absolutely nothing any of you can base that on. A few more years of the results of the Iraq debacle, and I think that we'll actually have plenty to base it on.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 11:31 AM) I don't even want to know what would have happened post 9/11 if Gore was at the helm. You can be upset about the Iraq fiasco but Bush responded admirably and did as good of a job as I think you could have following 9/11 and the tough economy he was handed. And thats something a lot of people have forgotten. I will give him those first 2-3 months after 9/11. But the rapid change of focus away from actually finding the people in Afghanistan who did that deed and onto people who weren't involved at all, and thus letting the 2 men most responsible have 5 more years to walk free? That is far beyond what I'm willing to forgive.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 10:38 AM) This was an interesting read. I wonder what the causation and correlations really are, or if they are onto something. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p09s01-coop.html It's sort of amazing what you can do with Google and a few minutes of time. Simply using Google, I was able to get data on poverty rates in the U.S. by state for the last 5 years, Here. I was also able to get good estimates of the total tax burden of states on their citizens, for 2005, Here. Simply by plotting those data up, we get this: As far as my eyes can tell, the state tax data are virtually uncorrelated with poverty rates in those states. The state tax burdens fall in a fairly limited range, while poverty shows a much higher variation, basically giving you a cloud. The reality is that the Hoover institution is cherry-picking data as much as humanly possible, and making use of stereotypes of states when doing its evaluation. Everyone knows California has huge tax rates right, so if poverty goes up there it must be because of the taxes, right? Well, that excludes the fact that California's property tax system is unbelievably backwards thanks to Prop 13, to the point that it massively offsets other portions of the state tax burden and forces sales taxes through the roof. And New York has high poverty rates and high taxes, so they must be correlated right? Well, that totally neglects the south, which has ridiculously high poverty rates but generally medium to low overall tax burdens. Furthermore, if you only look at the first derivative, the change in poverty rates, you will almost certainly find that in a time of economic expansion, the states with the highest poverty rates should see the largest decreases in poverty, because there is simply more room for them to decrease. When we actually go ahead and plot the data the Hoover Institute wants to cite, the change in poverty rate, versus that measure of state tax burden, the result is a similar total lack of correlation. . There really is no story here except that the Hoover institution is willing to spin numbers in a way that will convince people who accept their claims at face value that their political positions are correct.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 19, 2006 -> 10:39 AM) So IF someone goes down with an injusry or IF we losew Dye next offseason, then you bring up Sweeney? How can a guy ever get a chance to prove himself as being big league ready unless there is some disaster? I don't have a problem with giving him a chance in the big leagues, I just think that it would be better off for everyone involved to wait another season on him. The kid's only 21 years old right now, he'll be 22 in February. There is nothing wrong with letting him wait until he's 23 to reach the big leagues, especially given that the Sox have been watching him gradually develop a power stroke while they've had him. There is no reason to rush him. He may be better than Podsednik, but he's hopefully not going to be that much better, and he may be better than Anderson, but especially in 200 at bats, he's not going to be that much better, and just being able to take another year and get ready to move up will probably be the best thing even for his career, let alone the team. He can earn a spot in 2008 by having a good 2007 at AAA. And even If we don't lose JD after 2007, well, then he looks like an idea LF candidate or trade bait.