Balta1701

The Mets are in good shape...IF, if Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine stay healthy and have no major issues with their pitching during the year. They have an offense that can carry them, but I don't trust that pitching staff yet. Their top 2 guys aren't exactly young, especially glavine, Pedro's alreayd had injury problems, and their other starters are Brian Bannister (Who?) Steve Trachsel and Victor "I got the s*** beaten out of me last night by the Braves" Zambrano. If either of the top 2 guys make less than 30 starts, that's not a playoff rotation.

God damn Sox...only letting Illinois Residents buy raffle tickets for those rings. Had to come up with something.

It's also worth noting that you can't tell everything about a pitcher and his ability to stay healthy just from looking at their delivery. Back in 2003, everyone on the north side was saying that Prior would certainly stay healthier than Wood, because Prior had a better delivery - he led with his legs and didn't put as much stress on his arm. Then Dusty Baker got his claws on Prior, and we all know how that ended. If BMac stays healthy, he's got a good bit of help from his coach, who actually knows how to use pitchers without destroying them.

They dropped by a funeral in Portage about a year ago. Same funeral home as we used for my grandparents.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 01:00 PM) Housing has already started to slow to flat or below, regionally, in the West and the South. Midwest and Northeast are still steadily growing. But the hug boom on housing is over, at the large scale level (all housing markets are local markets of course, so I am talking aggregated levels here). Therefore, something else needs to sustain the growth. My fear is that $71 a barrel oil isn't a top - its a stop. It will approach $100 this year, probably even go over here and there. Then it will rest back, and play around just below that level (at $80-$120 a barrel, various new sources of oil become viable). The market for oil will stay where it won't immediately prompt those new markets, but some will still open. Not enough to lower the price, though. So as much as I like this market right now, I am not as optimistic as others for the full year. But...on the other hand...housing started to slow exactly when you'd expect it would start to slow; when interest rates were rising. Higher interest rates should slow down the growth of housing prices. But...if interest rates hold steady, it's possible that housing prices could resume moving upwards as people feel more secure in ARM's again.

QUOTE(jasonxctf @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 12:30 PM) that $71 oil cost will lead to some serious tightening across the board and will hinder the fear of substantial growth. The wild card in any projection right now is going to be housing prices. A huge fraction of the growth we've seen in the past few years has been due to Americans taking equity out as the prices of their homes increase. The housing sector as a part of the economy has basically made up for the collapse of manufacturing in terms of providing jobs that pay well, and the lack of any savings remaining for the average U.S. consumer means that the only $ that is left available is in home equity. If housing prices stagnate, then that will dominate almost everything else in the market, even if oil were to drop. If housing prices continue to rise, then the economy will be able to absorb the next oil shock as well as it has endured the shock from $20 to $70.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 11:56 AM) No doubt they are way better savers than Americans who savings rate is something like 0.5%. Actually...last year the average American's savings rate was not 0.5%, it was -0.5%. link

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 11:41 AM) The DA is pushing this only because of the political issues at hand. If this was cook county and the DNA testing came back negative for genetic material found in the rape kit then you drop the case. Its not like they didnt get the right genetic drops from these guys, she positively identified them. So if the genetic material doesnt match them, then where did it come from. Once again, supposedly all of the DNA results are not yet back, despite the statements of the defense attorneys.

One of these 2 is also facing charges in D.C. for assault. If he completes 25 hours of community service those charges may be dropped.

San Antonio has given the Marlins a May 15th deadline to commit to moving there. Ryan Drese, pitcher for the Nationals, will not need surgery but will be out 4-6 weeks with an elbow injury. The Astros have sued the insurance company that denied their $15 million claim on the final year of Jeff Bagwell's contract.

Bonds's current trainer has reportedly been subpoenaed by this grand jury.

Let's go big Jon. Suck it up and find some Marbles!

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 11:11 AM) Guest worker program. Do it legally and people like me no longer have a problem with it. The real problem here is that there are so many issues that have to be taken into account in order to come up with a real solution that everyone, no matter whether they're a congressperson or a blogger, winds up having something to snipe about even in a perfect bill. We've got a problem because we have a ton of undocumented immigrants already here. We've got a problem because people keep hiring them. We've got a problem because they don't want to pay workers more. We've got a problem because we have no means to stop the flow across the border. Etc. No matter what we do, some group is going to be pissed off. In fact, a lot of groups will be. And it will cost money. A few pages ago I tried to outline what I thought would be the best strategy for a comprehensive bill to deal with things for the future: 1. Recognition of the illegals who are already here, along with guest worker status and a path to citizenship in this country, albeit a long path. 2. Creation of a fair guest worker program...one which involves a path to citizenship which is significantly shorter than the method in #1 (to give some encouragement for current illegals to return home). This program should be open worldwide, and must not be subject to the whims of whatever congressman/DHS employee who decides he doesnt' like the Thais, or something like that. 3. More intense punishments for undocumented immigrants, starting at a date which would give reasonable time for those immigrants who are already here to register before the punishments take hold. 4. Much more intense penalties for hiring undocumented workers. Random searches of businesses, a national electronic system allowing for quick-check of working status, fines that are large enough to actually harm the bottom line of companies (hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per worker), and rewards for people turning in these employers (green card, etc.) 5. Strengthening of border security, to slow down future crossings. Probably a few more details that need to be included, but that's the best I can come up with. Is it going to cost money? Yes. Is it going to piss people off? Yes. But for the future, if you assume this country needs those workers, I think that's both the closest to a fair method I can come up with and the cheapest method as well.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 10:57 AM) Another thing - if these people aren't counted, how do we know it's 12,000,000? That makes me laugh. It's almost certainly somewhere between 10 and 20 million. But that's more typing than just saying 11 million.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 10:23 AM) Ok. I read where they arrested 2 of the players for their alleged involvement in this incident. Here's my question though. Why would they attempt to charge these kids with something when there is a reasonable doubt already built in ( the DNA ). Unless there's some new and highly compelling evidence linking these 2 to what happened the DA is simply grandstanding, wasting the taxpayers money, and ruining the lives of 2 innocent boys in so doing. Now that is the correct question, and there are 2 possible answers to it. 1. The D.A. is an idiot. 2. There is more evidence we don't know about. Until proven otherwise, the safest bet is that its the latter; if it was only a he said/she said case and there was nothing else, I don't think this case would have been filed.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 10:25 AM) Has anyone thought about the national security issues of forcing more and more agriculture outside our country? That is my biggest worry in all this. Mow your own yard and cook your own meals, but we need agriculture. Ancient wars were won by cutting off food and water, and we are slowly making it easier and easier to cut ourselves off from our food production. At some level, you can think about this, but on the other hand, there are a lot of problems with thinking about that as an argument. First of all, there simply are vastly more products we'd have to worry about more than the food supply in the event of war. Steel comes to mind, but there are a huge number of resources that simply aren't produced in the U.S. any more because the manufacturing has gone overseas. It'd be a lot harder to restart manufacturing of all the little electronics that are currently built in Taiwan/China than it would be to re-seed some fields. Oh yeah, and then there's oil. But even beyond that...strategically, it seems like it would be nearly impossible to cut off the food supplies from the U.S. given its access to both oceans, the rest of this continent, and the U.S.'s own food supplies.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 10:11 AM) Out of curiousity has anyone done a study for how much it would cost to add 12 million people to our social entitlement programs and the subtraction from the tax base it would result in? Not to mention adding in the lost purchasing power from the resulting wage inflation price increases for industries that take up a higher percentage of income of the poor, such as food stuffs? Well, presumably, if this was done as some sort of a "Guest worker" program, they wouldn't necessarily be winding up gathering huge amounts of support from social programs like unemployment or welfare, because they'd be "Working". And of course, on top of the inflationary pressure on the cheapest goods, there's the other side of the token that the "Guest workers" will also be purchasing additional goods, which would drive profits/job creation higher. If nothing else, let me say this: through the cowardice of our elected officials and the idiocy of our immigration laws, we've put ourselves into as bad of a situation as we could possibly be, and if nothing is done, it's going to just keep getting worse. In my opinion, the worst attempted fix for this mess is a gigantic, hugely expensive, massively disrupting deportation. A much better method would be to realize that this situation exists not because of the people looking for jobs, but instead because of the inadequate laws, and we should find a method of addressing the problem in a forward looking manner, not a backwards looking one. If we obsess over "These people broke the law and must be punished!", we're just going to wind up making the future worse. There are going to be costs associated with whatever choice we make, so we might as well try to find the best option and just deal with the costs as they ahppen.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 08:27 AM) It wouldn't cost that much. Estimates run from something like $200-$250 billion, over about 5 years, to round all of them up and send them off.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Apr 15, 2006 -> 09:56 AM) Now that would be some justice there. Here's hoping the LaCrosse team puts the squeeze on this politician CALLING himself a District Attorney. I'm going to disagree with you 2 completely here, but I'm going to put a "This disagreement is a temporary one pending further information." I'm personally in no position whatsoever to know what sort of evidence the D.A. presented to the grand jury to get it to issue 2 indictments. I'd say it's safe to say that you 2 aren't either. Without knowing that, I think it's lunacy to sit here and say "Oh the D.A. is just doing this for his career" or "He's just playing to the blacks" or whatever it is you think. You may very well be right, and once this goes to trial, we'll see that his evidence consists of her testimony and nothing else, and he is just playing to the crowd. But you don't know that, and I don't know that. This may go to trial and 40 Duke Lacross players may come forward to testify against those 2, or something wierd like that. We do know that the D.A. thinks there is a third alleged rapist, and he didn't feel he had enough evidence yet to bring charges against that one, so the investigation part is still ongoing, and there is believed to be more DNA evidence of some sort which has not yet come back that we don't know the results of. So the D.A. does still have some bits in his pocket we don't know about, if nothing else. If the D.A. doesn't have a rock solid case, and he brings this to trial anyway, he should lose his job in the next election. But it's way too early to say that he doesn't have a rock solid case.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Apr 18, 2006 -> 07:33 AM) I know this wasn't that long ago, but It's funny how quickly I get used to things. Prior to DNA evidence being used in court, what evidence was used to prosecute rapists? Bruising? Medical evidence of penetration? How was it linked to the specific individuals that were convicted? I think it was nearly impossible to prove in those cases without witnesses. Which is probably part of the reason why charges are still brought in only a very small portion of rape cases, and why there was such a stigma attached to bringing those charges for a long time. It turns into a he said/she said case, and you just can't convict on that alone, so things get to the point that there really is no recourse for most accusers.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Apr 17, 2006 -> 07:03 PM) Count is at 101 pitches, I'd let Thornton and then Clifford each get an inning now. Jose is just awesome. When is the last time the legend of boone logan threw an inning?

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Apr 17, 2006 -> 06:50 PM) You can just hear the collective groans of major league baseball: "uh oh, pods is starting to hit again. " No, that's actually the sound of Pods's legs when he tries to stand up after a weekend with his wife.

Scott Podsednik has a 3 game hitting streak.

QUOTE(jphat007 @ Apr 17, 2006 -> 06:25 PM) I think this is a good time to mention that i think jose is gonna revert to his old form Presumably you mean the form that dominated Cuba for many years and got him $30 mil from the Yankees after only facing 1 MLB team?

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Apr 17, 2006 -> 06:16 PM) Count is mowing em down again!!!! Whens the last time he even came close to losing?! ALCS game 1. Before that...like August.