Yossarian

Oh the hell with it. Who gives a s*** about the shoe, it obscuresand diminishes the major fact of a savage beating. A very savage beating. And by the way, I'm not paranoid. Some people are out to get me.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 08:59 AM) Did you actually see what he was responding to in his post? I find it laughable as well. A shoe as a deadly weapon? How is that not ridiculous? And what on earth does it have to do with left wing or right wing? Not to mention that some "right wing" folks responded in agreement. I'm sure I'll never be able to overcome the dumb as dirt image you seem to have of me. Yes, one might laugh at the DA or whoever calling a shoe a deadly weapon. However, was not the youth attacked by six other boys, and beaten unconscious? If that is not a fact, then yes you are correct, in this instance I qualify as dumb. It's too bad someone listed a shoe as a deadly weapon, it doesn't alter the fact that this was a brutal assault, that was on its way to being a fatal one. I'm glad it wasn't my kid on the end of such a savage beating, I'd surely be in jail now myself. OK I did some checking and I'm not wrong. Schools superintendent Ray Bleithaupt stated that the attack was no ordinary schoolyard fight. "It was a premeditated ambush and attack by six students against one," Bleithaupt said. "The victim attacked was beaten and kicked into a state of bloody unconsciousness." So you and Florida can LOL all you want. Hope something like that never happens to you or yours.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Sep 25, 2007 -> 02:52 PM) You left out the most important point of the story though: You're making light of a very serious and savage beating a young man took. You're very glib and articulate but can always be counted on to take a predictable left wing viewpoint on any given subject.

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Oct 2, 2007 -> 11:40 AM) They are. This is not the Pirates or the Royals. Striving for and accomplishing are two different things though. Practically every team in baseball will tell you that. Too bad for the Pirates and the Royals. They have some good building blocks, but ownership is content to pocket their luxury tax money and screw their fans. I'd like to have some of the players on the Pirates and Royals and see what our strivers for excellence could do with them. I continually underestimate the deep reservoir of good will possessed by our GM and Manager. I hope both of them shut me up next year, and the year after that. I want the Sox to win more than I want to be right, but I'll still call it like I see it. I'm not crazy about what I see now, let's see what Kenny has up his sleeve this winter.

How long are you going to reward him? Is once every 90 years or so good enough for some of you? Why not strive for sustained excellence? I'm glad I lived long enough to see the Sox win. I hope the younger generation, which dominates this board doesn't have to wait so long for the next championship.

All the Dems trail for me, I'm the original un liberal. Ah names and labels, in the 19th century I'd probably be considered a "classical liberal". Some of the questions are problematic too. None of the options on Iraq are attractive, and it leaves out the nuance and depth necessary to define an overall foreign policy. Regarding abortion, I'm personally against it except in extreme circumstances, but feel that it was a matter that constitutionally belonged to the states. Ditto, for gay marriage. So, I voted to oppose abortion and a constitutional amendment to strictly define marriage. It doesn't matter, gay marriage will be a fact in almost all states in a relatively short time. Those that favor a return to traditional morality should acknowledge that ramming laws down people's throats will not work, it will take generations to change people's hearts and minds. Failing that you can always fight to see that you're able to live by your own personal code. Social conservatives fail to realize that will be the real battle ahead for them. As for the coming election, as of today I predict a solid victory for the Dems, and a pickup of another 20 or so seats in the House, and 3-5 in the Senate. There's still lots of time to screw things up.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Oct 1, 2007 -> 08:58 AM) I believe this is a one year fluke Like someone else said, perhaps 05 was the one in 90 year fluke. More than that, the Sox have been wretched for a year and a half now. Also, take away that "fluke" 05 year and the Sox average 82.5 wins under KW. Include 05, and it's a shade under 85.

1919 - Lots of his fans want to exonerate Joe Jackson, but he did in fact take money. The same is not true of Buck Weaver, so in that regard it pains me to see eight players named in the fix. Years after his death, some still fight on to clear his name. He's the only one of the eight that deserves it IMO. 1959 - I can still see Lollar being tagged out at the plate in game 2. You think Konerko is slow? Compared to Lollar he's a track star. The usually reliable third base coach Tony Cuccinello inexplicably waved Lollar home, and he was as they used to say when I was a kid, "out by a mile". It was the most awful running gaffe you'd ever want to see and it switched all the momentum to the Dodgers.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 1, 2007 -> 01:55 PM) Chicago has undergone a renaissance, beginning in the 80's, that has propelled it from being a run-of-the-mill midwestern industrial center to a world class city. It now consistently wins accolades globally for being one of the great cities to live, work and play in. To say it is a semblance of it former 1973 self is, quite honestly, the opposite of the demostrable truth. Oh boy, I just keep taking my lumps in this thread. There is no way any of the major cities in the US can compare with their zenith, which in my view was from the 20s to the 50s. Not Chicago, not New York, not any of them. Suburbia drastically changed the whole landscape. When the US had a total population of 120 million, and 7 or 8 million of them lived in NYC and another 3 million or so lived in Chicago, that was real power. I'll take the Chicago of my childhood (50s and 60s) hands down over the gentrified, yuppified city of today. To be sure, some things are better than ever. The lakefront, the skyline just absolutely takes your breath away. It's far more spectacular than it was in my youth. The museums are more numerous, and the older established ones are bigger and better than ever. In my youth Navy Pier was a dump, and in the 50s the area just due west of the northern part of the Magnificent Mile was dicey. There was no jazz festival, no blues festival, no Taste of Chicago. In many respects, the city is better than ever. In others, hell no. There was no jazz or blues festival, but there was a plethora of real jazz and blues clubs all over the city. Many of them in black communities, and they catered to a mixed clientele. You know, kind of like Bill O'Reilly and his visit to Sylvia's, only the whites who patronized these establishments didn't express astonishment at the ambience and class they were experiencing. I'm digressing, and I've only begun. One such place was the Pershing Lounge in Bronzeville, where a Ahmad Jamal and his Trio recorded a Jazz classic in front of a live audience in January of 1958. There was the grandeur of the Edgewater Beach Hotel, and many classic movie theatres too numerous to mention. There was the funkiness of the restaurant at Sieben's Brewery, Riverview, and a thousand other lost places. But most of all there were neighborhoods. Real neighborhoods with real working people striving for a piece of the American dream. The Germans on North Lincoln Ave, from North avenue all the way up to Foster. The Poles of Milwaukee avenue, centered at Milwaukee and Division. I remember the neatest Italian neighborhood on Chicago Aveune between Kedzie and Pulaski. In 1953, when we first moved to Chicago we rented a nice two bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that was really better than our status for $100 a month. When we left 8 years later it was still $100 a month, factored for inflation about 700-750 in today's dollars. The so called renaissance of the American city is being propped up by young professionals, empty nesters, gays, and to a degree recent foreign immigrants. Mommy and Daddy middle class and the kids started leaving in droves in the fifties. They haven't stopped. Today's Chicago is two tiered, the middle class is pretty much in the suburbs that almost stretch to Iowa now. The population of the city of Chicago is more than 20% off its 1950 peak, and after a brief resurgence in the 90s, is dropping again. The white population, more than 3 million in 1940 and 1950, is now below 900 thousand. I'll probably catch hell for mentioning that, but whatever. Yeah, the Loop, skyline, Lakefront are better than ever. The city and metro area as a whole, hell no. To get a better idea of what I'm talking about read Lost Chicago by David Garrard Lowe, The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America by Alan Ehrenhalt, or a great Chicago guidebook from a long ago era, Chicago an Extraordinary Guide by Jory Graham. The Beautiful Bronx 1920-1950 by Lloyd Ultan, isn't about Chicago of course, but it captures the vibe and energy of those times. Another New York centered book, The Shook up Generation by legendary New York Times reporter Harrison E Salibury, published in 1959 is a classic. You can see how our great American cities were started to fray at the edges in the 50s. I could give more real life or literary examples, but anyone who's read this so far probably has glazed eyes at this point.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 1, 2007 -> 10:51 AM) I have plenty of evidence of the carnage in my backyard. I still see lots of the same trends in other industries as they are dragged kicking and screaming from the stone age, and it has nothing to do with inflationary rates. The auto and steel industries have been falling apart for decades, according to your hypothesis, this last 25 years of zero inflation should have done something for them, yet they have steadly gotten worse, not better. In fact inflation should have helped this, as it pushed the price of the dollar down, and the prices of these imports up, yet US industry couldn't keep up, even with a weakening dollar. Not enough bandwidth to continue. We're going to have to disagree I suppose. Actually, you make many good points, and American industry is far from blameless. I just see the period from 1973-1981 as crucial in American Economic History. I'm not alone (although in the minority) in my criticism of Paul Volcker and his predecessor Arthur Burns. Paul Craig Roberts and John Winthrop Wright were prominent critics of Volcker in the 80s. The Fed overreacted to inflation in the time period mentioned, and my part of the world suffered disproportionally. People, places, things not to mention whole industries often never fully recover from a trauma. Of all the major rust belt cities only Chicago is a semblance of its former self, and that's what it is, a semblance. Like I said, we're never going to agree on this, and I'd just as soon find something we do agree on, as I consider you a top notch internet poster. At least I won't get banned for disagreeing with you.

Not totally sure, but I think it's against the rules for a player to have ownership of any percentage of a team. Perhaps someone here can give chapter and verse on this.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Oct 1, 2007 -> 09:09 AM) What about Razor Shines? Looks like he will go. Razor lost a lot of weight this season. I like Razor, but have a gut feeling Ozzie doesn't.

11-0 in the first game. The Sox looked like a winner for sure. Unfortunately the Sox quit hitting, Dodger catcher John Roseboro wouldn't let them run, and Al Lopez refused to give Billy Pierce a start.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 1, 2007 -> 08:51 AM) It wasn't inflation that killed northern industry. It was superior foreign competition. Sorry, I will in no way accept that simplified explanation, although of course foreign competition played a role. As did fossilized thinking on the part of management and unions. This is chronicled well in John Hoerr's book about the demise of the steel industry, And the Wolf Finally Came. It doesn't change the fact that Fed policies undercut American industry at a time when it was most vulnerable. The country was going to change from heavy industry, but it didn't need to do it so suddenly and so violently. No, I'm not going to throw away a quarter century of my own personal research, and concede this major point with it was just "superior foreign competition." Besides, you have evidence of the carnage in your own back yard.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Sep 26, 2007 -> 08:55 AM) I guess you don't have to be Fed President to see inflation coming... Overreaction to inflation by Paul Volcker, which was heavily endorsed by President Reagan pretty much destroyed the industrial north in the early 80s, and did much to put in place this unhealthy, horsehit two tiered ecnomy that we have now. I never understood the petrified horror our economic hochos have for inflation. This country has no history of hyper inflation like the Weimer Republic of Germany, but does have periodic depressions and severe recessions. I usually steer clear of money talk, since I have so little, but our policymakers have been screwing the middle class since the days of the oil embargo in the 70s.