Balta1701

So was that Uribe that dropped that easy popup today? I was in the kitchen.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 03:37 PM) You need to look past the sheer numbers. Who's supplying the funding? Who's supplying the weapons? Who's supplying the know-how? Something tells me that Ahmed Average in Iraq who can barely keep his family fed isn't spending hundreds of U.S. dollars on explosive devices. He's not obtaining them from the U.S.-controlled Iraqi military and probably doesn't know how to put them together himself if he could get his hands on the parts. And, hell, there probably isn't a Lowe's down the street from his house, either. There's no doubt that most of the "ground soldiers" in the insurgency are Iraqi-born, but they're not the important ones. The important ones are the ones who supply the money, weapons, and training... and the ones who are inciting the violence. And even though the Suni and Shiia don't like each other, they'd been living on top of each other under Saddam's rule for 30+ years. And now all of the sudden, they're armed to the teeth with machine guns, rocket lauchers, and IEDs. I seriously doubt that they've all just been stashing these weapons in their basements for the past 30 years. And I'll bet that the vast majority of them didn't even know how to use a machine gun until one of Zarqawi's buddies showed them. These people lived right beside each other for 30+ years and are now engaged in a bloody civil war. Why? Because professional (and mostly foreign) terrorists have incited it. It's not because they just felt like starting a bloodbath for the heck of it. OK, so we agree on ONE thing. Do you have any idea of how many munitions there were floating around Iraq, both in the Iraqi army, and outside the Iraqi army, before the war? The amounts are absolutely staggering. I'll give you a couple examples. In the middle of 2003, some NGO's, like HRW, were wandering around screaming to the coalition forces that there were huge ammo dumps that were going unguarded, not just the ones at Al-Qaqaa that we heard about during the 2004 campaign. HRW told the British about a stockpile of about 20 truckloads near where the British were headquartered. The British responded that they didn't have enough men to secure that area as well. Beyond that, the coalition/Iraqi military has been ungodly careless with its armaments. Here's one article about how 200,000 Kalashnikov's somehow managed to disappear as they were entering Iraq headed for the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army was armed to the teeth with weapons. Those weapons are now almost entirely in the hands of whoever got their hands on them during the looting spree. Literally thousands of tons of explosives, enough weapons to equip an entire army for 20 years, and so on. Do you really think that there are convoys with significant quantities of armaments capable of crossing the Iraqi border today? With multiple car bombs per day? That's a pretty remarkable claim on its face, and it really suggests that the people running that war have absolutely no idea what they're doing.

This is an unwinnable debate on all sides. Perot's support probably came in part from people who wouldn't have voted, in part from Republicans, and in part from Democrats. I'd say it's likely more Republicans were in there than Democrats, but aside from that, it's impossible to even really make an educated guess at the real ratios unless someone has exit poll data I don't know about. If someone does, then show it, if not, this debate has absolutely no point.

2-0 kitty cats in the first over Tampa. HR by Dmitri "Punch" Young. Edit: now 2-1, double by Baldelli, 2 groundouts. Zach Miner on the mound for the Cats, some dude named Tim Corcoran on the mound for the Rays. 3-0 Cleveland over Boston in the first. John Lester on the mound for Boston. Sac fly by Hafner, 2 run homer by Martinez. Young Jeremy Sowers on the mound for the tribe.

And Anderson is hitting in front of him.

The problem with your Angels plan is that I count 3 players who still don't have positions in their IF. Casey Kotchman, Dallas McPherson, and Brandon Wood. Yes, Wood is another year away in my opinion also, but Cabrera is also signed for 2 more years.

DeJesus, LF Grudzielanek, 2B Teahen, 3B Sanders, DH Costa, RF Shealy, 1b Buck, C Gathright, CF Berroa, SS Have I mentionned lately how happy I am we're getting out of here while Sweeney is still on a rehab assignment?

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 02:38 PM) It brought us success last night. Let's see if The Rock can regain his fastball tonight. "Can you smell what Freddy Garcia is Tokin'"!?

No real surprises here, but the TPM folks have tracked down the last few donations they couldn't get a handle on yesterday. Know how much money has gone to this candidate by anyone other than Republican donors? $30. All from the Candidate himself. The Democrats are also going to challenge the signatures submitted to get that candidate on the ballot. They allege there's a history of fraud on the part of the company that did the collecting, and:

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 02:05 PM) GA-04 Dem Primary Runoff (Insider Advantage) Johnson 49 McKinney (Incumbent) 34 I wonder if she'll run as an independent since the party is leaving her. FL Senate (Rasmussen) Nelson (D, Incumbent) 61% Harris ® 33% If she went Green, I'm sure she'd get plenty of Republican support .

But here's the problem with both the examples of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories; both of them are failed states. Lebanon suffered through decades of civil war and occupation by both Israel and Syria, and had only had its own, functioning government for about a year. The Palestinian territories have never really had a functioning government; Hamas literally does more for the people there than the PA under Arafat ever did. Both of them are failed states, where people are unemployed, hungry, surrounded by corrpution, crime and death, and so on. In other words, those 2 states were in no position to be able to crack down on the terrorists in their midst, because they're in ruins, and they're not being given any chance to pull themselves out of ruins. For an alternate example, we can go right next door to look at a non-failed state, Egypt. Egypt was at war with Israel for roughly 30 years, until the Camp David Accords. Now, a fairly strong terrorist group actually formed in Egypt, with one of its goals being the destruction of Israel; Islamic Jihad. You may have heard of one of it's founders; Ayman Al Zawahiri. Now, what happened when that group started working in Egypt? Egypt cracked down ruthlessly on it. There have been no major attacks in Egypt for many years, now, and it's members have basically moved on, to places like Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories; other failed states. Do the people in Egypt like Israel? Of course not. Do they march against the country? Yes. Are they blowing themselves up to stop Israel? Not so much. The state there has actually contained the cancers growing inside it, and it is cutting off the lifeblood of Islamic Jihad, by giving the people there the alternative option of a better life. And where do their remaining Egyptian recruits come? From the slums in Cairo, the areas where the people still don't have a shot. Despite the far larger population of Egypt, it produces far fewer terrorists than the Gaza Strip does. The real key here is whether or not these people have hopes for better lives. In failed states, like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, they really don't, which is why Hezbollah and Hamas have thrived there. But in countries which have had time to develop actual strength, institutions, and economies, there are far fewer terrorist recruits, and they are far more effective at confronting them. The only way you're going to put an end to this problem is to put an end to the failed states. You literally have to fight the poverty and suffering that gives rise to these groups. And you can not bomb people out of poverty either. Lebanon was at a very early stage along a path that would hopefully one day take them away from being a terrorist-causing failed state after the Cedar Revolution. They had an army, their economy was growing, and there was starting to be some impetus for disarming Hezbollah. It would have taken years for this movement to actually bear fruit, and I can give you no guarantees that it would, but I can guarantee one thing now; it never will. Lebanon has been raized to the ground again by Israel, and it has another decade of rebuilding to even have a chance to get to the point it was at before this operation began.

QUOTE(Soxbadger @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 12:12 PM) My problem with the idea that the Lebanese were going to do something to Hezbollah, but just didnt get around to it is: Why are they doing nothing now? I havent heard one story that went something like: Lebanese police officers, capture Hezbollah leaders. or Lebanese army captures Hezbollah militants. or Lebanese govt declares war on Hezbollah. Those are the reactions you expect when a govt really condemns something. What I see is tacit condonation. Why are they doing nothing now? Because they're scared to go outside because they will probably be caught in an exploding building. And because Israel's invasion has sparked a massive surge of support for Hezbollah throughout that country, which has taken the conversation in their government from "is there anything we can do to disarm Hezbollah" "what else can we do to support Hezbollah". Just remember this, having Israel bomb the crap out of Lebanon will make the Lebanese hate Israel, not Hezbollah. You can not bomb people enough to make them like you and hate your opponents.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 12:09 PM) Rollins would fall into the KW mode of "buying low", with his down yr. If his defense was solid and above avg, [he does have low errors] his speed and offense [consistent avg, OBP, as well as XBH] would bring a nice lift to the sox that Uribe's bat doesn't. Rollins could also be a #2 hitter, moving Iguchi down. Pods could also stick around while Sweeney or Fields start 2007 in AAA. Though if the Sox think one of those could start the yr in LF, Pods could be dealt. Depends on how ready the sox think Ryan or Josh are for the bigs. Though trading for Rollins might take dealing Fields--which could happen if the sox sign Crede to a 3, 4 yr deal which I would do first thing in the offseason. Looking at the numbers, I'm not sure Rollins makes a decent leadoff hitter at all, his OBP is even lower than Podsednik's in almost every year. A #2 hitter? Maybe, but his numbers still seem on the low end even for that. It would add some extra speed, but as an upgrade over Uribe it's not a huge one IMO. The real key problem to my eyes is that he signed a 5 year, $40 million deal last year, which is backloaded somewhat, so I really don't think he'd be worth the money he's paid.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 12:03 PM) You're right. Not all of the insurgents in Iraq are Shia who are being supplied with manpower, weaopns, and money from Iran and Syria. Quite a few of them are Sunni Al Qaeda. And not all of the terrorists are foreigners. But quite a bit of the money and weapons that they're getting are from abroad. And, yes, quite a few of the insurgents in Iraq are VERY loyal to Iran, which was the entire basis for Saddam's invasion back in the '80s. I didn't suggest that ALL of the insurgents in Iraq are foreign fighters, but feel free to continue misrepresenting my posts and using those false statements as evidence that I understand "little" about the situation. Ok, so I shouldn't have used the word all, or even most. But I think the evidence is strong that the foreign fighters have played almost a miniscule role in the insurgency. The U.S. efforts at closing the border have done nothing to stop the insurgency, despite the fact that the U.S. has done a decent job securing most of those borders (it's actually fairly easy to secure some of these areas, since most people trying to cross them wind up dead anyway). Most estimates of foreigners present in the Sunni part of the insurgency have been in the hundreds, while estimates of how many Iraqi Sunnis were part of the insurgency have been in the tens of thousands. Including estimates by the U.S. military. And furthermore, there is as far as I know very little evidence that their arms are actually coming from abroad, or that they'd even need to bring them in from abroad, given how many of Saddam's munitions were around at the time of the U.S. invasion and disappeared afterwards. The one thing you do have partially right is that while the insurgency doesn't need a lot of funding, the Sunni part of it has tapped into some of the same pipelines as Al Qaeda. The Shi'ite part of it is just an arm of the government, which is where many of its supplies have come from. Kidnapping and corruption have also dumped huge amounts of cash into both sides.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 12:03 PM) And apparently the Lebanese government was on the verge of kicking Hezbollah's ass into submission, completely removing Syria and Iran's influence, and becoming a utopian-like decmocracy before those stupid Israelis started this war. They were a lot closer a month ago than they are now.

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 11:46 AM) What is the Yankees' current payroll? And how much money do they have coming off of the books after this year? $198,662,180 now, I think including Abreu. Sheffield definately ends this season, has an option that won't be picked up (12 million). I believe they have an option on Rivera as well, but he ain't movin'. Posada has an option for next year also, I think they'll hold onto him, but he's paid more than he's worth for the numbers he puts up (12 million). Octavio Dotel's deal ends this year. Bernie Williams is on a 1 year deal I believe. There's probably a few guys in their bullpen who are on one year deals, or some of their backups, but nothing really big beyond Sheffield.

QUOTE(My Dixie Normus @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 11:36 AM) Why do I get the feeling that Zito and/or Oswalt are going to be Yankees next year? Zito is set up perfectly to wind up on one of the NY teams, with Boras as his agent and still decent but not spectacular numbers. But there will, IMO, be a lot of teams shooting for him. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cardinals, the Rangers, and maybe the BoSox or Blue Jays threw their hats at him as well.

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 11:26 AM) The Angels are definitely waiting to grab Aramis if he becomes a FA. Excellent, another player to stick in front of their kids that they won't trade!

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 11:26 AM) Now all we need is a Sox win and losses by Boston and NY. I wouldn't mind a win by Tampa Bay as well.

Katherine Harris breaks House rules by receiving a subpoena and not informing Congress. Normally this would be referred to the Ethics committee as an ethics violation, but that committee is still blocked after the last attempt by the majority to dramatically weaken the committee.

QUOTE(iguchi=dank @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 11:20 AM) MOURNEU AGAIN with an error! 3 now... i don't know if they counted the first one as a hit or error, it was a slow dribbler that i don't know if they woulda got the runner anyway There are only 2 errors on the scoreboard. One credited to Morneau, one Credited to Punto.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 11:11 AM) You mean innocent until proven guilty, right? Keep up with that kinda talk and we have a nice facility down in Cuba for folks like you!

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 10:47 AM) Baghdad gets electricity 8 hours out of the day. There are 24 hours in the Iraqi day. Actually, if you average over the whole year, it's down to less than 6 hours per day, with several months coming in around 4. QUOTE(WCSox @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 10:57 AM) Terrorist proxies of Iran and Syria destroy the infrastructure of Iraq every day. They were not doing so in Lebanon until Hezbollah baited Israel into a war. Again, it's a ridiculous comparison. If you really think that Iran and Syria would allow a West-friendly democracy in Lebanon, you're living in La-La Land. In just the past year and a half, Damascus ordered the assasination of Hariri and Tehran provoked the Israelis into a war via Hezbollah. Both of these incidents were staged to send the nation into chaos and prevent democracy. Suggesting that the insurgents in Iraq are all either foreign fighters or are even on the side of Syria and Iran really shows how little you actually understand that entire situation, given that the insurgency which did so much damage, sparked the civil war, and had the Administration talking about foreign fighters was a Sunni-based insurgency, and Iran is the dominant Shi'a country and would like nothing better than for the current government in Iraq to become entrenched. Oh, and I assume you meant Iraq, not Iran, so I fixed that.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 10:29 AM) Javy Lopez? Didn't they already trade David Riske for him? Seriously, a.) you think they'd really go for him and b.) you think he could clear waivers? I think he'd get through waivers, but I'm just not sure Boston's willing to panic and give up anything and take on that contract all at once.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Aug 2, 2006 -> 09:47 AM) So spin that the other way around... What have 60 years of attacking Israel gotten the rest of the middle east? How many Muslims have died because of the repeated invasions and attacks on Israel? How many Hamas/Hebollah etc young men have strapped bombs to themselves and killed innocent Israelis, and what has it gotten them? Nothing. As a matter of a fact, at times it has made things much worse for the average Palestinian or other people who were occupied at times by Israel. None of this has stopped Israel from exsisting, which is their clearly stated and repeated goal, so if 18 years of history are clear enough to learn from, 60 years must be WAY more than enough right? Why don't the groups who insist on perpetually attacking Israel learn their lessons and leave them alone? You're 100% right, and if somehow that happened, this would all be over, and that'd be quite nice. But the reality is, that's just not going to happen as long as the area surrounding Israel is dotted with these failed states that just dump out terrorists. The sad truth is that this is just a cycle. Israel levels an area in response to terrorism, the leveled area produces more terrorists out of those who lost everything, and those terrorists wind up causing the next Israeli incursion. If we could expect everyone to behave logically, things would be a lot easier, but we just can't, and expecting people to do so only gets you into worse traps. That's where the whole "Yes, we're bombing you, but you should support us instead of Hezbollah because that's the only way the bombing will stop" idea comes from. It sounds wonderful in a message board, but to the person with the planes flying over his head and his house in ruins from an Israeli bomb, he's just not going to blame Hezbollah.