Balta1701

QUOTE(juddling @ Jan 10, 2007 -> 09:32 AM) Nothing says funny like a man crying after getting hit in the sac.... ouch "The pillow! His Groin! It works on so many levels!"

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 10, 2007 -> 10:39 AM) I look at it this way ... If McGwire makes the hall, he made BECAUSE he took 'roids. Sosa and Palmeiro, same thing. As much as I despise Bonds he earned a HOF bid before he took roids. You're assuming he was clean until '98 when he started to balloon. I know no one has said so officially, but I see no reason why I should assume he was totally clean before that. There are quite a few drugs you can take which should help performance without making you balloon into a THGmonster.

Coughlin to coach the Giants in 2007. Well, at least the Bears won't have to worry about the Giants next year. This decision just baffles me.

Outside of the world series...favorite memory...the Rally Crede swing. And Hawk's call on it. Worst memory...probably the 2000 ALDS, just knowing we were spent in the pitching staff. Then agian, I'm a youngin' too.

Hopefully, Rob Mackowiak is our backup 1b. Any time he plays somewhere other than CF, it makes the White Sox a better team. Our full bench is Ozuna, Cintron, Mackowiak, Hall, Terrero/Owens/someone else we don't know about yet. That's a 5 man bench. Plus the usual 9 starters, gives 14 people. If we carry the standard 11 man pitching staff, then that takes us to 25.

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 05:35 PM) What I want to hear: How the hell we're going to hold off the Taliban in Afghanistan. We're going to do it by moving even more key troops from Afghanistan to Iraq as part of the surge. See, we'll retreat from Afghanistan completely, and the Taliban will be so confused they'll all just surrender.

Implementing the large majority of the 9/11 commission reccomendations sails through the house. Checking off #3 on the list...

I'm not totally certain that the universe will survive this, but I'll be watching. O'Reilly vs. Colbert. 4 days early, but that's a hell of a Birthday present for me.

Supposedly the iphone is only going to be available with Cingular

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 9, 2007 -> 10:54 AM) The differences in price between towns and states are almost all because of differentiating gas and sales taxes. There's an awful lot in pricing that has to do with local demand and profitability as well.

And yet somehow here in CA, gasoline is actually more expensive by quite a bit compared to a month ago

QUOTE(SoxFan76 @ Jan 9, 2007 -> 09:02 AM) And yes, I've heard people asking for Durham over on the other site. If I recall all of the rules and contract situations correctly, Ray Durham just re-signed with the Giants this offseason, and I believe the rules of baseball state that when you sign a player to a new contract as a free agent, you can not trade that same player until the middle of the next season, like June or July 1, at the earliest. Someone can help if they remember the rule more specifically

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Jan 9, 2007 -> 07:39 AM) OK is a relative term, they probably have to strip down to the shell and rebuild from there. That's still a lot cheaper than rebuilding the entire shell.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 06:47 PM) Yea, that sounds about right. I know this idea is kind of radical, but I would support us looking into breaking up Iraq into 3 smaller countries, one for each major ethnic group. That could make things even worse though, they might start invading each other. They could invade each other and that wouldn't be that different from what we're seeing right now. The 3 problems though are these: 1. The actual migration; these are simply not homogeneously distributed areas. You can't draw very solid lines on the map and say "this area is sunni, this is shi'ite". There are general regions where one group or another is a majority, but in order to get to the ethnic groupe point, basically you're running the India/Pakistan option. If we designate an area as going to 1 sect, we are therefore forcibly removing every single person of another sect from that area. And probably ending a lot of lives in the migration. 2. The Sunni state would be a guaranteed disaster. The Northern and Southern parts of Iraq are the parts with the oil; the parts that would go to the Sunnis would be a desert with very little in the way of resources to stimulate economic activity. Basically, we'd be setting up a state which is virtually guaranteed to turn into a failed state, and it just would happen to belong to the same sect of Islam as Al Qaeda. 3. Iraq's neighbors. They just aren't nice people. Iran thus far has strongly opposed a Kurdish state, as has Turkey. The creation of one could draw in both militaries. Any Shi'a state would be even more friendly with Iran than the current government, and any Sunni state would draw close with the Saudis. And if a conflict did break out even between the small ones, it could wind up being an Austria-Hungary and Serbia type situation, where their religious brothers decide to join the conflict.

So, as the only undefeated team, Boise State is therefore the undisputed national champion, correct?

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 05:35 PM) What I want to hear: How the hell we're going to hold off the Taliban in Afghanistan. QUIET TRAITOR!!!!

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 05:39 PM) While I am sure there are exceptions, I find it unlikely that the newly-crowned Dems will want to waste their political capital on a PR drain like a tax increase. I think it will be almost impossible for the next 2 years to get the Dems to extend any of Bush's tax cuts that were targeted at the upper classes if any of those do come up for extension. There might be enough support to push through extensions on some of the middle class targeted cuts if those come up, but its also questionable whether the leadership would allow them to come to the floor (a negative vote on those type of bills would be something easy to put into an attack ad against a candidate in 08). On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if one or more of the major 08 Presidential candidates went ahead and advocated a rollback of Mr. Bush's tax cuts to balance the budget and accomplish whatever it is he or she wants to accomplish. And anyway...it's not like if the Dems decided to push through a $3 trillion tax increase tomorrow, the President wouldn't veto it anyway, so large-scale measures should just be tossed out. There might be some successful movement though if the President were willing to negotiate (I won't veto x bill if you insert proposition y into it), but that's something that this President has totally avoided during the last 5 years of a Republican majority and something I'm not even sure if he's capable of doing (no negotiation with the enemy!)

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 04:31 PM) the Dems only have a slight majority in the Senate. they won't get the large tax increases they want. if they try to push legislation for huge tax increases the republicans should filibuster. Obstructionist!

QUOTE(soxwon @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 04:43 PM) i hear a Mccain-Lieberman ticket is in the works. Now that could really be good. Appeals to reps n dems who think the Iraq war is going spectacularly. Fixed that for you.

QUOTE(Hideaway Lights @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 02:46 PM) because most prospects don't pan out. First of all, we lose Buehrle after 2007 anyway. The White Sox will not re-sign him. He will want more than 4 years. Reinsdorf has said he does not pay pitchers for more than 4 years. There you have it. Second of all, 8-9 potential fifth starters? How many combined major league wins do these 8-9 potential 5th starters have? We also had 8-9 potential fifth starters in 2004. On a simplistic level, yes you're right, having multiple 5th starter candidates did not work for us the last time it was done. However, there is one potential point you may be missing...look at the people who were filling that "potential 5th starter" role back in those years. Mr. Offday, Mr. Rauch who has never recovered from surgery, Jason Grilli, a guy who at the time was already 28 and who doesn't have the pitches to be a starter, I believe Neal Cotts was thrown in there and he doesn't have the pitches to be a starter, Felix Diaz - a now 26 year old who wound up released in Japan, and Arnie Munoz, who I believe is still hanging around our minor leagues somewhere and might someday turn into a serviceable bullpen guy. This year, we now have the guy who was drafted right before Mark Teixeira, a first round pick of the Rangers, a knuckleballer who just keeps winning and getting better, our 2nd round pick from a few years ago, our first round pick from 05, a lefty who put up a 2.96 ERA at charlotte last year. Just in terms of talent, the only guy from the 04-03 5th starter black hole who would even be on the same board as any of our potential 5th starters right now would have been Rauch before he was injured. Simply saying that sticking rookies into the starting rotation doesn't work because it didn't work for us in 03-04 ignores a lot of other things. Look what penciling in rookies like Verlander, Liriano, Weaver, Reyes, Cain, and so forth did for teams last year. These guys we now have are hopefully either at or near the same level as those rookies who turned into stars rapidly. Just because they're rookies and rookies sucked for the Sox in 04 doesn't mean that no rookie will ever succeed in the major leagues again. Ok, again you're ignoring the actual situation. Did Crede have a sh*tty september last year? Yes. Was it because Crede was doing something different or regressing? No, it was because his back was hurting and it flared up big time in September. Could Crede regress just by picking up some bad habits next year? Of course. Could Crede regress because his back goes out on him? Probably even more likely. But let's not pretend that Crede suddenly became a .230 hitter again in September because of anything but his back...that's a specific issue, one which hopefully rehab will help with. But we'll see on that.

QUOTE(PAUL KONERKO 14 @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 04:59 PM) In five years, our rotation will be awesome. And hopefully, at no point between now and 5 years from now will our rotation be anything less than "Good" to "Very Good".

QUOTE(longshot7 @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 01:49 PM) Who cares if Iraq falls into worse Civil War and they all kill each other? Not me. America First. You will if Oil screams to $150 because Iran and Saudi Arabia decide, quite correctly, that their interests are at stake in Iraq and join in the fight.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 12:52 PM) So they are saying its OK to remodel a house that was emmerced completely in water for a long period of time? I guess that means they don't need nearly as much aid as they though they did then do they? Its much cheaper to remodel than to rebuild. A lot of that depends on what type of buildings they are and what exactly happened to them. Current will destabilize things a lot more than just slow moving or standing water, houses with a significant amount of brick might survive things a lot better than houses with a lot of wood, I'd guess some things probably depend on the type of wood, etc. Also, one other thing of note on the subject of rebuilding...the other thing that may be keeping people from even considering moving back to rebuild is the whole insurance situation...the largest insurers are basically pulling out of the city now because they've decided, correctly, that they have no confidence in the rebuilding work that is being done on the city's protective Levee system.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jan 8, 2007 -> 01:15 PM) Is this part of or separate from his State of the Union? Just curious. Definately separate from the SOTU. This address will be almost fully about Iraq. The SOTU will be in late January, and from what we've heard so far, the rumor is he'll be talking about energy independence again for like the 5th straight year, and he'll probably spend a lot of time either trying to work with or infuriate the new Congress, depending on what he wants to do.