Balta1701

QUOTE(redandwhite @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 11:07 AM) The 2006 Red Sox, in my opinion, are the best team on paper in baseball, and possibly superior to the 04 squad. Although the games are played for a reason. I can see how you'd say they'd be superior to the 04 team, but I just can't say that I see them as the best team on paper. If everyone (Foulke, Schilling, David Wells, Mike Lowell, Beckett) was healthy and performed at 100% of their abilities, they're top 2-3 on paper, but I don't have good reason yet to think that they are or will be for the whole season. Especially that pitching staff.

QUOTE(Soxbadger @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 10:40 AM) You mean, why did Bud Selig without any facts or aid from the players or owners launch a steriod campaign? Because if he was wrong he would of been ran out of the game and shamed? He had nothing to go with. He had no proof, he had no smoking gun, and even more importantly what was he going to start going after? Was he going to launch an investigation on the designer drugs that were coming into baseball that people had no ways of testing for back then? GHB was untestable, as were most other growth hormones because as always the steriods are about 10-15 years ahead of the testing. The reality is, even now that we are passed the "steriod age" we are really only past the age of the drugs that they can test for. There very well may be a drug that is just as good as steriods for strength but there is no test out there. Then in 20 years when people figure it out, are they going to say: "Why didnt more people do something about X" Well its because no one could then. People can only do so much without the aid of 20/20 hindsight. Its very easy to look back and question when you have the facts that the people at the time did not have. Ok, so if he had no smoking gun, what about Mark McGwire's andro bottle in his locker in 1998? What about Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco's steroid admissions in the early 00's? What about the power surge, which was questionned at the time by many people (Remember the years that everyone was saying how the balls were being wound tighter?) You don't convict everyone in baseball without a smoking gun, but that doesn't mean you don't start looking into things. And in terms of designer steroids...who cares? First of all, the fact is that many players were on things like Winstrol, which could be easily tested for (Johnson in 88 was caught using that one, as was Palmeiro). Secondly, there are always people making these things and supplying them. You can track down the suppliers and realize you have a problem even if you don't have tests. Bud Selig's office was concerned enough about Steroids that they re-forwarded Fay Vincent's memo to the owners in like 97, but they weren't concerned enough about them to pay attention beyond that. You say it's easy to look back and say he should have done more...yes it is. But it's also pretty hard to say that by sitting around and doing nothing, his office was protecting the game. Oh, and I think you have your drugs confused. GHB is a powerful depressant. Supposedly it's a pretty common Rave drug. Taking a high dose of that will put you in a coma.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 10:48 AM) If it explodes, it explodes. It will explode if we leave, which would be bad. There's a better shot that it won't if we stay and at least try to improve the situation. I'm not even so sure about that claim...the U.S. troops in that country are a focal point for everyone to complain about, no matter who's command they're under. They're a target for the Sunnis and a scapegoat for the Shi'a. They prevent the Shi'a from grabbing power, and they can't provide security for any party. Clearly there needs to be a significant outside presence from somewhere...but the more U.S. troops stay, the bigger the U.S. footprint, and the harder it'll be for anything to get done.

QUOTE(Cuck the Fubs @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 10:45 AM) He's not a nice person, and it's clear he took the juice Whether that was intentional or not...

QUOTE(Soxbadger @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 10:20 AM) Selig did what he could. The true facts are that both the MLBPA and some owners were creating a very strong bloc to prevent drug testing. Its not like every owner didnt want steriods, there is some evidence from Canseco that many owners he worked for knew that their players were doing steriods and did not care. Therefore prior to about a year ago you had: Owners and MLBPA versus Bud Selig Doesnt seem like good odds But...Bud Selig had many things he could have done to increase those odds. When did Bud Selig launch any investigations into steroid use in the game in the mid 90's, which could have gotten the public or Congress on his side? When did Bud Selig sit down and give an hour long interview with SI about steroids? Prior to the 2002 negotiations, Bud Selig's efforts on steroids, as far as I'm concerned, basically involved reforwarding a memo to the owners that Fay Vincent had sent around in '91.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:59 AM) MB, Paulie, Rock Raines Until Buehrle is resigned...I would go with PK. I know the chances of us letting him leave are remote, but they're non zero.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:57 AM) Maybe Bud was protecting the existance of the game. That doesn't mean he couldn't have done things outside of the negotiations or after the strike in '94, or at least before 2001-2002.

If there is 1 person in baseball who could hang a sign saying "The buck stops here", it's Bud Selig. Don Fehr's job is not to protect the integrity of the game. Bud Selig's job is. That is the key difference. Don Fehr's job is to represent his players and make things as good as possible for them. Bud Selig's job is to protect baseball. Fehr takes his share of the blame because he was wrong, but he's certainly no where near the man at the top of the blame pyramid in my book.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:49 AM) It has bben taken to the grand jury. Today. Waiting for news on it now. If it's gone to a grand jury...an apology should make no difference. The only thing that would make a difference is a prosecutor or the cops themselves deciding not to go ahead with charges.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:44 AM) That's a great question. Internationalize our operation. Fly under the flag of NATO, or the UN. I don't know that we can get enough cooperation from the UN because of our previously poor diplomacy there, but having an internationalized force (at least in a name basis) may go a long way to help stem the violence. Get the Arab League involved to help with reconstruction. Actually make reconstruction efforts work. Get more Arab speakers into Iraq that can improve our PR scheme. There are plenty of things that we can do that people way smarter than me have come up with. But its up to our administration to listen to them. So far, they've turned a deaf ear to ideas from outside the inner circle. I agree that basically all of those are good ideas. The problem is...things have gotten so bad over there that there's really no guarantee that even if we do all of them...things won't wind up in a full scale middle eastern war. It'd at least be an improvement over the "Stay the course" mess we've already gotten ourselves in, but there's a good chance that if we did all of those, the whole area would explode anyway. But given that the whole area seems almost sure to explode if we do "Stay the course", at least trying that would be better than nothing.

LOL, now here's a nice T-Shirt.

2 Republican Congressmen, who the American Taxpayers should consider to be Heroes...have signed on as cosponsors of a bill to create a "Truman committee" for the Iraq war. The original Truman Committee investigated fraud and abuse among contractors during WWII. Given that we've already had well over $10 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars completely disappear, and almost certainly a lot more than that (that $10 billiion is just the part we already know about), the sooner that something is done about it the better. I still think nothing will be done unless the Democrats get back 1 house of Congress and get subpoena power...because a lot of the money that has disappeared has wound up in the hands of people who are big republican campaign contributors.

Next we have folks from NOAA complaining that the Administration has been editing their reports and removing references to things like Global Warming, keeping them from speaking, etc.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:35 AM) She just apologized on the floor of the house. We'll see if it was enough or if was too little, tooo late. According to the APthis morning...it may or may not be too late...the police have finished their investigation and given their information to a federal prosecutor. That prosecutor now has to decide whether there's enough information to head to a grand jury. Even if there is an apology, she should probably go to court anyway...and she should probably face an ethics charge in the House ethics committee too, but of course, that thing has been completely shut down.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:25 AM) Turns out that this was an NIE assessment leak. Which is legal. Ok, I think we already knew they leaked that, and casually left off the last section where all of the doubts were outlined.

Linky.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 09:16 AM) IIRC, steroid use had been going on in MLB since at least the late '80s. The owners had to know about it by the early '90s or so. I don't see why Selig couldn't have pushed for steroid testing after the '94 strike. He did, but the Union wouldn't have had it. But that doesn't mean that there was nothing he could have done...his hands weren't tied. Congress was already involved in the strike through talking about the anti-trust exemption...he could have voiced concerns there. He could have used his "Bully pulpit" commissioner's chair to actually make it an issue. He could have talked about it in interviews. Or started an outside investigation like he just did. Hell, in like 88, fans in Boston were chanting "Steroids" at Canseco. There was plenty of time for Selig, plenty of time for every owner, and plenty of time for the Player's union to take steps to prevent things from getting "Barry Bonds" bad. And since none of them did anything...there's more than enough blame to go around.

A second DHS employee was busted last fall for exposing himself to a minor in a mall. The kicker: he used to run Operation Predator, a DHS program to track down child sex predators.

This one's pretty cool...transitional fossil basically containing some parts of a fish but containing several adaptations that would be required for it to be able to function on land. Link. And from right around the time when we'd expect the first animals to be colonizing the land too.

She also needs paper.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 08:34 AM) Exactly right. I should have broken that sentance in two. Politicians and pundits (of all colors and religions) are fanning the flames, and many are using (white) unemployment as a device. It's a white US for the most part and that gets action faster. They are linking terrorism with illegal workers, which is such a thin link. It seems impossible for anyone is this to not see it as a racial thing. Mexicans vs. Americans, etc. The undercurrent I feel is that Latinos of all countries are exploding in population and becoming more political. Businesses are working overtime to sell to this market and advertising in Spanish, which makes people who do not speak Spanish uncomfortable. We are already the worst world power in terms of being mono-lingual, yet we want to further retreat. It isn't some obscure government document being in 12 languages that most people fear, it's walking into The Gap and hearing the clerk sell a pair of jeans in Spanish. It's being at lunch and the conversations around you are in Spanish. That's what people fear. No offense...but I for one think it's only a thin link until some terrorist is smart enough to notice that they can pay a few thousand bucks to get across the border without the government noticing. What to do about the immigrants who are already here is a separate question from this; if over 90% of the people who try to cross the border without documents succeed...and you can probably assume that the numbers are higher for the people with lots of cash...that's almost as large of a hole as the lack of security at U.S. ports.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Apr 5, 2006 -> 07:20 PM) She needs to be charged and punished. Cut and dried. Members of Congress are not above the law.........no matter what color they are. She will be...and I think the fact that she decided to make this a racial issue has only hardened the resolve of the capitol police. Had she just come forward the next day and apologized, I bet they would have dropped it, but it's going to the grand jury, and it's what she deserves.

QUOTE(ChWRoCk2 @ Apr 5, 2006 -> 04:12 PM) Im probably the few who likes Barry. And why because yes he did use steroids but that only helps your power not your eye contact, he has to make contact with the ball in order to put the ball out of the yard. Regardless of his future hes one of the best hitters and will be a hall of famer. There are multiple reports that taking steroids can also help sharpen your visual acuity. Now, since there's no one out there giving gigantic doses of steroids and placebos to 100,000 people and testing their eyes simultaneously, I can't prove this...but it's been reported more than once. It's even said in Game of Shadows somewhere that as Bonds started taking them in 98-99 (right around the time his expanding bicep blew out) he also noticed his eyes getting sharper.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Apr 6, 2006 -> 01:32 AM) I think they almost HAVE to be better just because of how putrid they were last season. 2005 Red Sox: 24th ranked pitching staff in MLB 19th ranked starting rotation in MLB 29th ranked bullpen in MLB They're also a year older than they were last season, except for Beckett, and well, he was hurt all last year anyway.

So are people seriously saying that they'd want Borchard to have come into the game yesterday instead of Mack? Seriously...Rob Machowiak is the first guy off the bench for almost every outfield position, as he should be, since he's the best backup outfielder on our bench. If we need a 2nd outfielder, then we have Gload. If we need a guy who can play outfield with decent speed, then we can throw Ozuna out there. And it's way too early to start saying "Ozzie will never use Gload off the bench". Ozzie has barely used anyone off the bench. When Thome or Konerko get days off, Gload will get plenty of time at 1b too. This is what is called extrapolating from too limited of a dataset. If Gload has 2 at bats at the end of April, then we can go ahead and talk about how Gload never gets used.