Balta1701

Eek...according to a secret Pentagon study that has been leaked to the NYT...a whopping 80% of the deaths suffered by the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq (and presumably this would therefore apply to the Army as well) could have been prevented by equipping our troops with Body Armor that has been available since 2003 but has only begun to be purchased by the Marines this year.

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 05:01 PM) -Second--the outfield was already full without Abreu; not it's overcrowded. I can't believe Cubs wouldn't give Murton the opportunity to start. Makes you wonder whether or not he's part of a deal centering around Zito. Oakland's outfield situation is equally as crowded, but he's their type of player and I certaintly wouldn't believe Beane avoids him because of crowded outfield. With Dusty Baker managing the Cubs, there's no reason to think that Murton will get the playing time he sh ould get, so I could easily believe they would put someone else in front of both him and Pie.

WAR!

QUOTE(sayitaintso @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 01:25 PM) I think he signed a minor league deal but could win the starting job depending on how he does during spring training. And depending on what they wind up doing with K. Matsui (has that been finalized yet?) Boone's a lot cheaper than Matsui, but may very well put up worse numbers.

To me, this says 1 of 3 things. 1. Mark Prior will not be fully healthy in the next several years and Jim Hendry has not told us this 2. There is a lot of money going to the Cubs along with Abreu 3. There are a lot of players going to the Cubs along with Abreu (Gio?) Personally, I would wager on the 1st. This happens...it screams the Cubs knowing something we don't about Prior's arm. Just comparing the prices of the contracts...you could sign DLee for 3 years with the money you'd save by holding onto Prior compared to Abreu.

Vick is officially kicked off of Va Tech's team.

QUOTE(hammerhead johnson @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 01:53 PM) The Pistons want him to assume the starting PF role in 2009 after Rasheed's contract expires. He gets hardly any playing time as it is right now, but he gets to practice with Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, and Antonio McDyess. I'm assuming that he has been hitting the weightroom something fierce with those three giving him advice. If McDyess wasn't on the roster, I think that Darko would be getting 10 to 15 minutes per game. As it is now, there really is no opportunity to get him in there unless they are up by like 20+ to start the 4th quarter. If McDyess or Rasheed Wallace were to get injured, Darko would most likely get those 10 to 15 minutes per contest. Isn't he almost to his restricted FA Year? I can't imagine the Pistons being able to hold onto him if they're not able to give him a shred of playing time.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 01:10 PM) Even though he isn't working right now...I'd put Theo Epstein up there. Maybe not top 3, but definitely top 5. I don't know about that...guys like Theo, Cashman...they were in the advantageous position of being able to make mistakes at will and still having the money to overcome them. If the Red Sox waste $10 million on a guy, will it derail their franchise that season? Of course not. If the A's or Braves or White Sox do? Probably will. I think that the real skill in the GM job is in finding a way to build a team at a lower cost that can continually win. It's easy to just point at the best guy on the FA Market and say "Wer'e going to spend $15 million a year on him" and do that every year. It's a lot harder to decide what positions to spend your money at, what prospects to trade, what positions you can fill with young guys, what positions you need a FA for, what FA's are available at below market value, what guys fit into your puzzle best, etc. That's what guys like Schuerholtz, Beane, and KW have done so well.

QUOTE(rventura23 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 01:03 PM) Im guessing no tejada trade, is there any chance we resign contreras for a longer term contract (2 or 3 more years)? Id still rather have Jose than Tejada if they both have more years on their contract, but Id take Tejada with years over Contreras with only one year With Brandon ready to go? I just can't see that happening.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 12:06 PM) I always heard it was frowned upon. I believe it is specifically frowned upon unless a base stealer can successfully swipe at above a certain rate (something like 80%), because the numbers supposedly state that you're vastly more likely to score an additional run with the runner on 1st and waiting for a home run than you are by trying to push the runner to 2nd and potentially wasting an out.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 11:31 AM) I voted for McCain in the primaries over Bush. I've said it before and I'll say it again...I might be a Republican right now had McCain been nominated instead of Bush.

Has anyone else wondered at all where exactly Novak's sources on these came from? Why exactly would people leak things like this to, say, Bob Novak? Or maybe, for example, there's a Democrat or two in the House who want to move up in the leadership, and anything they can do to weaken Pelosi helps that?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 12:25 PM) The irony is that this isn't any different than the stock market driven bubble that was allowed to go on for years too long. Much of the good times in the 90's were driven by equities that put tons of money in peoples pockets just like housing prices have. People also ran up tons of debt in the 90's, and the savings rates haven't changed at all. Not without coincidence, when the stock market burst, so did the economy. The one thing that saved things from being WAY worse and us feeling the full effects of the burst, were the tax cuts saving many jobs. Given that the amount of money pumped into the economy by the tax cuts was relatively marginal compared with the amount of money pumped in by the boom in home equity and refinancing, I would disagree with that last statement...the one thing that saved things from being way worse was the massive stimulus pumped in by the Fed of lowering interest rates to be practically zero, allowing people to massively expand their debt holdings and pumping that cash back into the economy. Edit: The effect of the tax cuts was not zero of course, and I don't mean to come off sounding that way...but the effect of the Tax cuts was in the shape of a normal keynesian stimulus - it wasn't just that the country was cutting taxes, it was that the country was cutting taxes while at the same time printing money while it was going out of style, thus pumping money into the economy in 2 ways - more money in people's hands through the tax cuts, but also more money in people's hands through the growth in government, combined with vastly more money in people's hands through the interest rate environment.

Duke Cunningham wore a wire.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 12:07 PM) There's no question right now that the economy is very strong right now. The talking heads on CNBC are using the term "Goldilocks" over and over again. Last time it was like this was back during the best of the Clinton years. Things are good right now. Well, that seriously depends on where you look. The GDP is growing, but the median income has fallen 5 straight years. The job market is improving, but health care costs are rising. Consumer spending is up, but consumer debt is also through the roof and savings are through the floor. We're in a Goldilocks economy in the technical sense - low inflation at the same time as economic growth. But there has been something fundamentally different about this Goldilocks time as compared to the last time, which makes me very nervous about its future. It's been sustained in such a large part by the low-mortgage rate, high home-equity situation that it just doesn't seem as solid as the last one. Then again, maybe that's just my impression because I don't own a house. Edit: 1 more point...the last Goldilocks seems to have had something similar to these concerns that I express, in the tech bubble - eventually it burst, but when it was going good, on the outside everything looked great. The expansion in the late 90's was sustained by venture capital being pumped into tech industries, which led to massive growths in employment in those industries without them producing any major profit. Edit the 2nd: Decent summary table of some of these issues.

So JT Snow now = John Olerud. Makes sense to me.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 10:05 AM) And nowhere did you say anything about the jobless number from November being revised UPWARD by 90K, either, which results in a net effect of how many jobs they thought were going to be there are there any way - and the resulting umemployment rate down to 4.9%. Keep picking... Yes I did. Read the first paragraph of my first post. And I just dealt with the "resulting unemployment rate" by dealing with the fact that I consider the unemployment rate statistic the DOL publishes to be a totally worthless statistic.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:55 AM) For s***s and giggles. Does anyone have any specific examples of NSA spying on Americans inside of the country. Or hasn't that been leaked yet. It seems were taking the word of the unbiased NYT with no evidence of specifics. Help me out here. There are plenty of examples of the NSA Spying on Americans inside the country...but using FISA warrants. No examples have been leaked yet of the NSA using Bush's program allowing for spying without FISA warrants, although there have been rumors that NBC and other networks have been looking into possible spying on Journalists (i.e. Christianne Amanpour). Aside from that, we don't have a clue who it's been directed at.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:45 AM) And of course no where in there did you mention that the jobless rate actually FELL to 4.9%. Of course, you should know by now that I put absolutely no stock in that number whatsoever, because that number could very well be due to the continued decrease in the recorded number of people in the work force as people continue to drop out at record rates while on some sort of disability/government assistance, attend some sort of school, or simply stop looking for jobs. I think that number is garbage, to the point that I don't even bother comparing one month's number to another, because there is rapid change in the things not being measured. According to the raw BLS numbers, the number of people classified as "not in the labor force" Rose by 250k during December. That alone is enough to push that number down...when you cut the total number of workers you're counting, even a constant number of jobs would produce a decline in that number.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:42 AM) No, but you bet your ass they should pay the insurance rates and not get taxpayer money when the obvious happens. People can live wherever they want - just don't make me pay for their mistake. There should be national-level zoning, jus like municipalities have for flooding. If you live on the coast of Florida, you are sure as heck in a hurricane zone, and the stipulation should be that no emergency assistance money should go towards your loss of property if that hurricane happens. Unfortunately though, that doesn't happen. When there's an earthquake, or mudslide, or hurricane, what things do you expect to happen? You expect the police to show up, the fire dept. to show up, do their job, etc. There are dozens of areas in this country where people live in areas of massive geologic hazards. Based on the potential for hazards, there should be no one living along the Pacific Northwest, in Hawaii, on the East Coast, or in Tornado Alley. Everyone should huddle together somewhere in North Dakota. Any time there is any sort of disaster in any area, the taxpayers are going to foot some portion of the bill simply for the rescue, police presence, and other associated government tasks (rebuilding roads, etc.). Even if people pay the higher insurance rates, the taxpayers are still on the hook for a significant portion.

Ahem..."FOR DEMS ONLY". I stayed out of your guys's thread. We really need more firm rules for these.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 6, 2006 -> 09:43 AM) I have no idea. As some liberals. See previous post.

The December monthly job creation totals are in...108,000 new jobs. Predictions were for roughly 200,000 jobs in December. This is quite a bit less than what is usually taken as the number of jobs needed to keep up with population growth. However, the number for November was revised significantly upward in this report. As I pointed out a few days ago, there's quite a few caveats to be taken with this data...the numbers for winter months are heavily seasonally adjusted to try to look at core job growth - they expect a significant number of temporary hires in November and December and layoffs of those temporary workers in January. So, This could very well be an artifact of people being more cautious during the holiday season and not hiring as many temporary workers, or it could be an artifact of them hiring more temporary workers earlier (which would push the November number higher). Either way, I think the usual rule I've seen with these XMas season numbers is this...if the temporary job growth in the pre-christmas months disappoints, it will usually make the job number look better in January, because there will be less total layoffs (due to less people having been hired in the first place). Either way, at least there's still growth, even though the growth still is sluggish. The real question though...is how these reports play into the federal reserve's decision on when to stop raising interest rates. That, at this point, is anyone's guess.

Is anyone else really annoyed how any statement that any government agency wasn't doing a wonderfully perfect job is immediately translated into Oh those people just hate Bush? The Government seriously can do no wrong for these people with Bush in office.

The more time goes on, the more I like having Thome - Konerko - Dye, for a couple reasons. 1. It spreads out the lefties more - you put Thome at the end and he's 3 guys behind Pods, and right next to AJ. 2. It massively increases PK's chances for RBI's through Thome drawing walks. 3. It gives our best 2 hitters the best protection we can offer (If Thome or Konerko bats 5th, we better hope Crede, Iguchi, or AJ turn into 25+ home run guys, or they can just pitch around our 5th place hitter). 4. Thome and Konerko are bigger threats than Dye, and the closer they are to the front of the order, the more times they'll hit this season.