Balta1701

But the grey snow in NW Indiana is sure safe.

Shame...the Pirates looked like they might have at least been able to stitch together a pitching staff this year. Well, at least we wont' be h earing his name as much on the trade market.

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Feb 27, 2006 -> 07:57 AM) He was a very divisive person in the clubhouse which really hurt a team atmosphere. That could be a big reason why a lot of the teams with really good/great players on it have never won a thing. Well, to be fair that certainly isn't the only reason, nor is it even one of the main reasons in a lot of seasons. In '93, for example, the Blue Jays were just the better team. That's hard to deny. '94 was probably more Reinsdorf's fault than Thomas's. In a lot of the years after that, we didn't have the players around him to make a run, especially on the pitching staff. And then in the last few years, we've made plans with Thomas healthy, but then his body couldn't hold up. That's not his attitude either.

Couple good ones not from politics...the usual "a billion people are watching" the Super Bowl or the Oscars. Usually it's like 10 million outside this country for both of them. A billion people have it transmitted to television sets that they can watch. Most don't. Quite a few people sleep through it, for example. Here's one from the left we talked about a few days ago...The American Prospect seems to have come out with a study trying to say that Abramoff's tribes gave less to Dems after he was working with them than before, but they screwed around with the number of years they sampled on each side to make it look better. Oh, there's quite a few obnoxiously misleading ones about ANWR from both sides. The left has a habit of saying that ANWR could only supply 6 months of oil for the U.S., but that's if you could possibly pump the whole thing out in exaclty 6 months and have the U.S. use no oil from anywhere else. In reality it would last for decades, but not at nearly that high of a rate. On the other side, there's a few others. Like how the Republicans like to say that the bill only allows for development on 2000 acres of land in ANWR or something like that. Yeah, that's fine, but that's permanent development. They don't count the area in-between buildings, they don't count temporary frozen roads, they don't count all the other area that animals will suddenly not go because they're surrounded by oil rigs, etc. They also like to say that it'll displace our oil imports from Saudi Arabia for decades...which is true, but is only true because only a very small sliver of Saudi Arabia's oil actually comes to the U.S., most of it goes to countries closer to the Middle East, like Europe or Asia. Saudi Arabia would still export almost exactly as much oil per day whether or not we drill in ANWR, and they'll still get almost as much money, just a question of how much each side is buying.

If its the one near Tampa, I've been to it. Nice water park across the street too.

My personal favorite is the unemployment percentage numbers, which don't really reflect how many people in this country are actively looking for work very well at all.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 04:03 PM) Then Theresa Heinz Kerry lent his campaign a few million dollars, he unleashed some particularly nasty attack ads in the early states, and the rest is history. A decent chunk of those dollars which helped finance those early anti-Dean ads in Iowa also came from a guy named Steinbrenner, I believe. Just something to note. Yes, that Steinbrenner. Actually, there were a lot of reasons why Dean fell apart, not just the scream. While Dean was able to raise a ton of money and put a lot of ads on the air in Iowa, the people who he had running his campaign were quite terrible at actually making ads, and it's generally thought he had the worst ads of any of the major candidates in Iowa. On top of that, their ground game was incredibly disorganized. They bused in thousands of people who were willing to help out on the ground, going door to door, etc, and then the only places they put them was in the cities...they never mapped out anywhere out in the rural areas. So you had people in cities in Iowa having Dean people come to their door 5-6 times, and people out in the rural areas never hearing from them. And strangely, it turned out that Dean performed a lot better in the cities, while the rural areas helped Kerry and Edwards carry the state. And on top of that, there's all of the different avenues he gave the press to attack him. He never had good handlers to check speeches and make sure he didn't say anything they'd focus on. I mean, come on, why the Hell is he even alluding to the "theories" that the President knew about 9/11 before it happened. So yeah, there were a lot of things that brought him down, not just Kerry's money, not just the scream, but a whole mess of organization too.

MY GOD...MATT DRUDGE HAS A TIME MACHINE!!!!

As long as he doesn't take that bat and try to beat up Konerko...standing O. Without question.

At this point, I only care about this for 1 reason: our entire team is going to get asked about it. For days, this is all we're going to hear about. When the A's, the team that annoys us the most, comes to town, again, this is all we're going to hear about. I really hope this doesn't cost us games. That's the only thing I care about. We got through the Magglio thing last year because the team rallied around each other and let Ozzie deal with it. I just hope our locker room, which has had a lot of turnover, is strong enough to do so again. If our team holds together through this, I could care less what KW and Frank have to say to each other, and Frank will still get a nice statue about 510 feet from home plate some day. But if this costs us games...i will be very, very, very angry about it, and that anger will be directed at KW, since he's the one escalating it now.

Please Guys...we have a damn trophy to defend. Shut your damn mouths and get ready for the season. Let the other team be the nasty guys. Frank can b**** all he wants...Kenny, you built a championship team, just shut your mouth and let your team speak for itself through its play.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 12:31 PM) In 1994, nobody was talking about Dole. Is that seriously true? He was the Senate Majority leader, he'd made a big push for the nomination in '88 and '96 was the first chance without an incumbent. I figure almost everyone thought Dole was going to win then. Hell, if you go back to the reruns of the series "The Critic" which aired in 94 and early 95, there's an animated clip of Bob Dole telling one of the characters that the nomination is his. Also, Until Dean came onto the scene with his fundraising, before his implosion, Kerry was the prohibitive favorite on almost everyone's scorecard in mid 03. And I'm pretty sure GWB had a very solid power base in his party built by at least 99. It was all those funds that Bush raised in 98-99 that helped him beat McCain in 2000. Hell, there are quotes out there asking Bush what he thought about the Kosovo operation, so clearly he was being talked about in national politics by that point.

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 12:30 AM) Democrats have to run on a 100% anti-corruption platform. It doesn't matter if they made money off Abramoff or not they just have to have like 4 or 5 main points to eliminate corruption, and run on those points. It's better to run off a 100% bulls*** platform than no platform at all. It would be very, very nice if somehow they could run on an anti-corruption platform and actually, you know, not have it be B.S.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 05:18 AM) Most Democrats supported the war. Most Democrats got angry when they found out the President they trusted was wrong and might have lied. Small difference here...I think you're wrong in saying that most Democrats trusted the President and supported the war at the start. Yes, the majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress voted for the "Authorization for the use of force", but that doesn't mean that every one of their constituents believed in it. I sure didn't think the facts I knew supported his words at all in 02-03. If I had believed him, I would have supported the war on those grounds.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 10:00 AM) Now I'll quickly highlight a few things that will be coming in the near future: - Wallpaper page (this way you'll be able to find all the great Wallpapers that the people on Soxtalk have made) - Salary page (this was already mentioned, but it will detail the salary each player makes as well as there contractual status) - US Cellular page (talking a bit about the stadium and the area around the park; this one will take a little more time to put together) With that said, is there anything else people would be interested in? I don't know how doable this would be, but would it be possible to keep either stats for the team available somewhere on the page itself? Or at least game results?

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 11:47 PM) Did you click on the link at the top of the 1st post? Ah, there it is.

So, I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to be seeing here. The whole site looks exactly the same here on my PC. What am I missing?

QUOTE(crazyman26 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 02:18 PM) I wonder what you will all be saying in September when Orton, or a free agent, or draft pick is the starting QB. "Ouch Rex, God I never thought a leg could bend like that and still stay attached."

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 07:59 PM) But the Murtha plan isn't very good either. We are there, we just can't 'redeploy'. Anything that looks like a loss, or a surrender, or that we are running away, will BE a loss because it will further embolden the enemy. Since we are there, lets win. I will be the first to say things haven't been run there as best they can be. Hindsight is always 20-20. How about some foresight? Ok, so let me just deal with this part here...You say since we're there, let's win, without telling me exactly how we're going to do so? We've done the stay the course thing for 3 years now. And it just keeps looking worse. More casualties on all sides, more shi'ite militias killing sunnis, more sunnis targeting shi'a religious sites, less oil flowing than before the invasion, less electricity than before the invasion, and the U.S. has basically stopped funding reconstruction & is starting to say they're on their own. The government is losing respect because the people feel it can't protect them, and they're turning to sectarian militias as the only thing which can hold together law & order. We're training troops left and right, yet the security situation isn't improving, and the U.S. has been unable to withdraw troops despite the additional Iraqi forces. And now there's this Mosque mess. We've imposed daytime curfews across the entire country and somehow people are still dying left and right. So, you say let's stay there and win. How exactly are we going to do that? We've run out of time to gain the Iraqi people's trust. We haven't provided security, electricity, or hope, in 3 years. The people of Iraq don't want us to stay any more. Hell, the Iraqi parliament endorsed attacks on U.S. soldiers last year as a method of getting us to leave. How exactly do we "Win"? What happens if by staying there and trying to "Win", we just wind up making ourselves the target for longer and longer until we don't have a friend left in the whole middle east? That's not the guaranteed outcome, but it's sure a possible one. And it would make us look even worse than something regarded as a "retreat". Edit: let me toss in a little bit more: if I could think of an easy way to "Win" this mess that we got ourselves in to, I'd have supported it in a second. I still would if I saw that. I think at most places since we got ourselves in, I've tried to hope for what I thought would do the best for the U.S. and the people of Iraq. It's for this reason that I tried to point out the mess of idiotic planning, fraud, waste, and corruption that Iraq turned into under the CPA. That's why some Democrats put forwards an alternative to Bush's blanket $87 billion request which would have required Mr. Bush to actually make sure he knew where the money was going, instead of having billions of dollars of cash just disappear. That's why we complain when, say, the U.S. ships over a few hundred million dollars worth of power generation equipment which is totally unusable because it's incompatible with the power plant where it was supposed to be set up, so the generators just sit there idle. Etc. Yes, there are some out there who genuinely want the U.S. to lose. Almost no one you'll ever meet will be a part of that group. Once we got into it, there were things we could do that would have actually helped, and if I'd seen us doing those I would have cheered. Things like actually planning the reconstruction, or actually having oversight over what was done with all the money. Or making sure we weren't re-opening torture chambers, or encouraging splitting of the country along ethnic lines, all of which we wound up doing. So for at least a year now, I've been sitting around hoping someone would present an actual plan that would lead to real victory. But the only thing I've seen is "Stay the course and win." This just doesn't make sense...we've tried staying the course for 3 years, and it hasn't brought us any closer to winning. It may have made winning even farther away, because the corruption has just continued and things have failed to improve. So, the thing I'd advocate right now is whatever would make things over there the least bad. I personally don't see any good option. Staying there will just keep the whole country focused on removing us, will serve as a rallying cry for every anti-American SOB out there, and may very well start a Civil War that the U.S. can't stop. On the other hand, pulling out could also start a Civil War that the U.S. can't stop. So I have to admit...I don't have a clue what we should be doing. I don't see a good way to fix it, now that we've been so damn negligent and let these people in the government screw around by trying out their fancy flat tax proposals when the power grid was falling apart. My goal right now in advocacy is, I think, to try to find some path that will allow the U.S. to get out without sparking a civil war. Without concrete steps to make things better up and down the list, and an actual plan about what we're going to do at every step, from reconstruction to military options, including actual steps that will significantly improve the lives of the Iraqi people instead of just wasting time and money, I don't think that's possible. Could the Murtha plan lead to civil war? Certainly. But so could just staying there and trying to "Win". So the question is...what else can we do?

QUOTE(WHarris1 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 07:10 PM) Yeah, I said 51 before we started fouling intentionally. Tyson finished with 8 boards in 17 minutes of play. I bet if Tyson hadn't been in foul trouble we win that game. Damnit. I figured we'd lose to Detroit, but I really wanted that game. Well, at least the knicks lost. And somehow Charlotte's up on Phoenix at the half. Come on Bobcats!

So if Young did score that lowly...do you still draft him if you're Tennessee or someone else up there?

QUOTE(WHarris1 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 06:58 PM) Bulls lose. Tyson's 10+ board streak comes to an end because he only played about 15 minutes. Ahahaha, the Sixers shot 51 FT's. :headshake It had to be more than 51 FT's, they had shot 50 before the Bulls started fouling with like 1:30 left. They had to get close to 60. Tyson got himself in Foul Trouble early, and that team really missed having him out there. Without him, they're incredibly small. Man they need another big guy.

Man, the Bulls are really screwing a game they needed. Chandler only has 5 rebounds with only a little time left, so his 10 rebound a game streak is probably coming to an end.

QUOTE(sayitaintso @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 05:31 PM) This offseason went by so fast. For some strange reason it was about a month shorter than usual. Hopefully it will be a while before we have another long one.

Ordered from PapaJohns.com quite often. Works just fine. They send you an email with an estimated delivery time, and things there seem to be just as fast as when you talk over the phone. Only problem I've had with PJ's is that they don't have an option to pay with a credit card online, so I usually wind up calling in order to charge the thing.