Balta1701

QUOTE(WCSox @ May 11, 2006 -> 11:34 AM) Is this just speculation or is somebody reporting that he interviewed? I've heard it rumored in more than 1 place today, so if it is just speculation, it's being speculated in a lot of places. But supposedly the Royals do have a decent stack of candidates, so it's not written in stone.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 11, 2006 -> 11:21 AM) I'm sorry, but our founding fathers were smarter than that. They build a city without expecting permanent residents? C'mon. I think what they may not have expected was the decay of urban centers that hit in the latter part of the 20th century as the wealthier landowners migrated to the suburbs. If D.C. had a wealthy population living within its borders such that it could charge those folks a fair tax rate & afford infrastructure like most of the country, this wouldn't be a problem. But as it stands now, most major cities are in fact large costs in terms of government expenditures...the states make their tax money in the suburbs. That is both the problem with D.C. and the reason why no state wants it...MD and VA are happy to get the tax revenues from the suburbs of D.C., but they don't want to spend the money on the city itself, so there's basically just no real revenue source for the city except the federal government. And since the Feds don't pay property taxes on their land, and D.C. has had no person in Congress to lobby on its behalf, D.C. winds up constantly strapped for cash for basic needs. That's the big problem here.

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ May 11, 2006 -> 11:25 AM) Yeah I'm sure they didn't plan the mass population Washington, D.C has. James Madison proposed 1 house member for every 30,000 people in the country I believe. That was rejected but everything else was passed eventually if I remember right for the Bill of Rights. Could anyone imagine one representitive for every 30,000 citizens. How many illegal alien representatives would there be, haha. Since illegal immigrants are by definition not citizens, 0.

During the Cuban missile crisis, Nikita Kruschev sent 2 letters within 2 days to Kennedy, one saying the Russians would remove the missiles if the U.S. pledged not to invade Cuba, and another saying the Russians would remove the missiles if the U.S. removed its missiles from Turkey. The Kennedy admin. decided to ignore the 2nd letter and accepted the offer from the first letter. The Iranians may have learned a lesson from that. It appears that one of Ayatollah Khameni's representatives has sent a 2nd letter to the U.S., which both decries some U.S. actions but also offers more sound basis for negotiations than the rambling letter that Ahmadinjad's sent to Bush a few days ago.

QUOTE(Queen Prawn @ May 11, 2006 -> 10:53 AM) Quick question on this. With all this logging, are they listening in to calls or just quantifying who call who and how many times? How can you find out if they are listening to your calls? Based on this report, I think the way to find out if they're logging your calls is to find out if your phone company is participating in the program. If they are, I think the answer is yes, the government has your call records. Some of those helpful bloggers are starting to call up their companies and ask if they're participating. Verizon thus far is saying emphatically they're not a part of it, and USA Today says Qwest refused to participate. If you have AT&T/SBC for your phone service though, along with a bunch of others, the answer looks to be yes. And from what I can tell, it looks like they're at least doing some processing on the content of the calls, otherwise this program doesn't do anything. So there's probably not a physical person listening to your call unless something you say triggers some sort of electronic alarm for something that they're looking out for. QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ May 11, 2006 -> 10:56 AM) Whatever. Echelon, TIA, I don't really care. This particular thing is absolutely dead wrong. if Echeclon was similar, then it was dead wrong too. The Echelon program was basically, as far as I understand it, a worldwide effort to intercept communications for U.S. intelligence purposes. Basically, the NSA could intercept anything they wanted as long as it didn't have either side of the call going to a U.S. citizen. If 1 side was a U.S. citizen, the government still needed a FISA warrant.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 11, 2006 -> 10:50 AM) Seriously? With lobbies and bribery running rampant all of the government why would anyone ask a question about this? Heck I would say the chances of this happening today are probably better than they were 230 years ago. I still can't see how there's the connection between D.C. having an actual representative and lobbying and bribing running around? D.C. not having one hasn't exactly stopped bribery from running rampant. As far as I see, this just creates 2 more representatives to suck up lobbyist dollars, one of which covers citizens who were unrepresented beforehand?

Good for him. Now someone tell me he can perform better than Adkins or Walker?

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ May 11, 2006 -> 10:46 AM) Seems more like a scaled down TIA than an Echelon to me. And Congress denied funding for TIA. Maybe that is why this program has been secret? Actually it sounds exactly like Echelon to me, except Echelon directed at U.S. citizens with no FISA warrant.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 11, 2006 -> 10:44 AM) And historically it has always been known to be that way. It prevents one group of people from receiving potential favor simply because they were lucky enough to have the capital in their backyard. If we are going to takeaway that, we might as well move the capital to somewhere more militarily sound in the middle of the country. I understand that's why the Capitol was originally put where it currently sits, but can you give me an example of how that's actually a major concern today?

And the #1 threat in America...BEARS!

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 11, 2006 -> 10:38 AM) I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised by this... Doesn't anyone remember Echelon? Former CIA director and current Presidential Medal of Freedom winner George Tenet, testifying under oath before Congress in 2000.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 11, 2006 -> 09:59 AM) I guess the whole history of having the capital of the country in a nuetral area is getting tossed aside then? I don't think that's worth having the district's residents having no voice in matters that directly concern them, or having no ability to have a Congressperson bring back money to the district, or work on its behalf, etc.

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ May 11, 2006 -> 09:50 AM) Chances are it'd be 1 Republican and 1 Democrat, not much of a difference but I guess I'm for it. Which is why they're adding one to Utah...you can't add a certain Dem seat without the Repubs being pissed, so they'll add one to both spots, and that way D.C. finally gets some sort of voice.

QUOTE(CardsJimEdmonds15 @ May 11, 2006 -> 09:24 AM) Pujols 18 HR Montage Rooney...

Congratulations!!!

This would, IMO, be a very nice thing to see.

QUOTE(LVSoxFan @ May 11, 2006 -> 09:23 AM) Hey, look at it this way: we are 4-1 against FREAKIN ANAHEIM thus far. Until the ALCS last year, people forget, playing them was like a GUARANTEED loss. Like with Oakland. Not only did we SWEEP them OUT THERE--!!!--but if we take this series, I'd say things are looking pretty damn good. Fixed that for you.

The DOJ has reportedly begun investigating Rep. Jerry Lewis (R, CA), head of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, in connection with the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. If someone like that, with that much power over appropriations, was open to taking bribes, then basically we might as well just assume the entire budget came about through bribes.

So if they are calling this the "Terrorist surveillance program" and it's intercepting every call in the U.S., does that mean that everyone in the U.S. is a terrorist? It's also worth noting I think that USA Today is strongly suggesting that the government is basically bribing the telecom companies to go along with this, and even the government itself is unwilling to let this be seen in court because they know it'll lose.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 11, 2006 -> 06:34 AM) Al Gore's biggest mistake was for whatever reason, not utilizing Bill Clinton at all. Love him or hate him, the guy has drawing power. Al Gore made a f***ing ton of mistakes in 2000. That was one of them. Flip-flopping on which personality he wanted to show every 2 weeks was another one. Listening to too many different advisors and refusing to be himself was another one. I wouldn't mind it terribly if he did run for the nomination again, but I'm not sure yet whether I'd vote for him or not. He's done a bang-up job of pissing off conservative commentors since about 2002 or so by giving some really good speeches, but I've still got a bad sour taste in my mouth from 2000 that he'd have to overcome.

QUOTE(Texsox @ May 11, 2006 -> 07:37 AM) We have established a small fund to send a deserving Scout to camp. We are hoping to raise $500. If you were to say, create a method by which folks online could contribute a small amount via paypal...well let's say you wouldn't wind up with 0 contributions.

The Sox and Angels both have offdays on May 25th, July 27th, and August 7th. In case anyone was wondering.

QUOTE(hammerhead johnson @ May 10, 2006 -> 09:07 PM) .000 winning percentage = f***ing brutal Although, I actually place more blame on the dude who started the game thread. You see, he named himself after Timo Perez. That's just bad karma. Timo went 3-5 with 2 home runs on Monday.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ May 11, 2006 -> 08:40 AM) See Kyle Farnsworth Go look at his walks/innings pitched numbers and see how they correlate with his ERA.

QUOTE(LVSoxFan @ May 11, 2006 -> 08:36 AM) Who keeps perpetuating the delusion that one day Chicago will become a "Sox" town? The Cubs will always outdraw us and will always be the "Chicago" team. Because: they're more of a cultural phenom than a sports one. Plus the whole "Wrigley" experience/location. And you know what? That's fine with me. One of the bonuses of being a Sox fan is not being one of the herd. Yeah, because fan-staged protests, daily bad press, and 100 year anniversaries of world series victories are exactly the way to motivate a fanbase. You may be right or you may be wrong. But let's stop trying to jump to conclusions based on 1 year. Let the Sox win and the scrubs lose for 3-4 more years, and we'll see what happens, ok?