Balta1701

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 03:21 PM) Damn the Venezuelans for not taking advantage of super high priced profits and instead offering to help those who need it. Oh and by the way, 200 a month would kinda be the cost of three monthly bus passes at 75 a month, right? Oh yeah, right. Would the kids have to buy a bus pass? I thought the same thing, but I didn't want to say anything without knowing more about busing in Chicago.

QUOTE(WinninUgly @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 03:16 PM) Yeah, having 5 starters locked up thru 2007 makes it hard to believe the Sox will re-sign Contreras at all unless they are willing to deal one of the other SP's. Waiting until ST or until the trading deadline seems to be the best time to find desperate teams. It seems like Contreras is trying to break the bank since he probably feels that this is his best shot to get a great contract. The problem with waiting until the trading deadline to find a desperate team is that the desperate teams may very well be the teams we don't want to help out by giving them a dominant starting pitcher. What do we do if we hold onto him and the best offers come from the Red Sox or the Angels? Do we really want to go into a pennant race and give a dominant starting pitcher to our main opposition in the playoffs?

QUOTE(Steve Bartman's my idol @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 01:18 PM) What I find disgusting is, no matter what the catastrophic event, there are scumbags who will find ways to profit from it, and take advantage of people who really need assistance! :headshake One thing to keep in mind is that almost all of the small businesses we're talking about had no idea that they were getting loans out of the 9/11 dollars, they were only applying for loans from the Small Business Administration, and were routed to the 9/11 dollars by people in the SBA. Many of them first learned that their loans came from those funds when media outlets called them for comment. It's also worth noting that when these reports first surfaced several months ago...Senator Olympia Snow (R, Maine), chairperson of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, pledged to hold hearings to investigate the matter. That was back in September. As far as I know those hearings haven't even begun.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 01:40 PM) Actually, Gload plays corner OF as well. He even played 3 games there in 2005 (2 in RF, one in LF) with the Sox. He is a solid defender at 1B or in the OF, with the exception of a weak arm. Gload's arm wasn't just week, last year it spent the whole first half of the year wounded and left him on the DL and in the minor leagues.

Hopefully playing under Girardi may help him improve some of his weaknesses in calling games that we've heard so much about.

A few response points: 1. It makes no real sense to me to evaluate the Administration's statements in comparison to official investigations since the most relevant investigation, the one in the Senate which was supposed to look into whether or not the Administration's statements on Iraq were exaggerated, has barely gone forward (that, if you'll recall, was Harry Reid's reason for shutting down the Senate back in November) 2. This article makes the point several times over that Saddam could have a nuclear weapon within a year if it was able to obtain fissile material. This is a non sequitor. Obtaining fissile material is the hard part. If you gave me fissile material, I could find a way to build a nuclear bomb within a year. The Trib calls those warnings "Menacing", I call them misleading. And highly so. 3. It is interesting how the Trib casually notes Egypt as an example of the advance of Democracy in the Middle East, when just last week Egypt jailed a man for the crime of (shocking) running against Mubarak in the last election.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 12:19 PM) I'd agree ifthey would've asked for donations right off the bat, rather than after they were far in the red. It's my understanding that isn't the case. Also, they'd be wise to offer people something in return for their donation... at least a calendar or a coffee mug. Geez, even PBS does better than that. I'm still missing 1 point...where do you get the data saying that they're "Far in the red"? And as far as I know, they give away bumper stickers, tote bags, and on-air mentions in return for donations...signup page right there says it clearly.

QUOTE(drowninginflame @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 11:58 AM) he'll be making trades & phone calls from the operating table Local anesthetic?

So does this mean Jose won't be traded for the next 12 hours?

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 11:41 AM) (1) I'm not saying that it can't work. I'm just saying that most people who listen to talk radio are closer to conservative than liberal. (2) Why is liberal talk radio 15 years behind conservative talk radio? Have they not tried before? I'm sure they've had to... they're not stupid. Or do the demographics in point (1) just not support them? 2. There have been a couple of attempts. For example, Thom Hartmann I believe attempted to launch a national show about a decade ago, but well, I for one still am not a big fan of him, and he wasn't that successful. There's never really been a good chance for liberal talk radio to actually "Grow" in the way Limbaugh's show did...he started off in the early 80's & was able to go national by handing his show out for free to station execs. He was rapidly able to build a solid audience out of that, and that audience has really helped the conservatives hold a strangle over talk radio. Give you a few examples...lots of networks have attempted to see what would happen if they put a centrist or a liberal on during daytime hours to provide balance, but they end up hearing angry responses immediately from Rush's listeners, and so the shows don't have time to build into an audience. Think about it this way...if you have the choice of putting on Franken or Hannity right after Limbaugh...which one is going to better hold Rush's audience? Furthermore, there have almost certainly been simple ideological barriers - a guy named Mike Malloy used to have the late-night shift on WLS in Chicago, and he actually had the highest share of the audience of any radio show in Chicago (fewer listeners than rush because of hte hour though), but WLS fired him, supposedly because he wasn't drawing enough listeners. They replaced him with shows which have since then continued to garner lower shares of the audience than he did. So you have a number of elements...you have attempts to launch nationwide things like the Hartmann show which failed, you have a lack of access to local channels because listeners don't like to hear the topics change, and sometimes you have outright ideological moves. That's why Air America probably has the best chance to succeed...they're not pushing it rapidly onto 500 stations, they're letting their hosts get used to the medium, removing shows that aren't working, building on the shows that are, and they're gradually expanding outwards into new markets. They're limited right now by the quality of their signal in many places, which was a necessary disadvantage of launching in places like NY - you can't exactly launch a new network with the world's most powerful transmitter if you don't have the funds, but those things will likely come with time. On the rare occasions I'm in a car these days, I listen to Air America since I get it. But back when I was in Chicago selling vacuums, I spent hours each day in my car, and wound up having to listen to the conservative talk on WLS because there often wasn't anything else on to listen to, if the sports channels didn't have an interesting host on and Q101 was playing garbage. I was an unserved market, and at least for now I no longer am.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 09:44 AM) Oh, and Kudos to Al Franken and Randi Rhodes for out-drawing O'Reilly's mediocre radio show in ultra-liberal New York City. How are they doing against Rush and Hannity in more moderate parts of the country? :rolly Given that, once again, Air America is only on in some 80 markets in the country, while Limbaugh and Hannity are on in something like 500 a piece, I'll let you know once we have time to actually get the network fully developed, integrated, and launched everywhere. Seriously, are you still trying to argue that liberal talk radio cannot work when there is a network out there right now proving that statement wrong? And are you actually arguing that Liberal talk cannot succeed because it is only doing well in liberal markets, yet somehow Conservative talk seems to do fairly well in those same markets? And if you were trying to build a liberal talk radio network, would the first place you set up shop be NY, San Francisco, or some county in the middle of Alabama? You're trying to judge their growth and demean their ability to be profitable less than 2 years into the project because they're only really successful in liberal markets? Are you surprised by this? If I were running a network that's the exact business plan I'd use too - get myself a foothold in the likely best markets, and then use that to fund expansion into smaller markets.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 11:24 AM) No, actually, it's pretty typical of liberals. Actually I'd say that I didn't know that myself, I just grabbed that from a press release. Does the money from his $50 memberships go to charity as well?

"Hello Mother. Care to partake in one of your ever so exciting games of Peek-a-boo?"

QUOTE(WinninUgly @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 10:59 AM) That kind of makes sense, but why wouldn't everyone just take Winstrol so it doesn't look so obvious. It's easier to test for than some of the "Designer" drugs like our friends the cream & clear (which were designed specifically to evade tests), and frankly, who's numbers would you rather put up...Sosa/McGwire/Bonds or Palmeiro? And then there's the third issue...sometimes a weaker one may just not do well enough in a particular person's body...we've never really had controlled trials of any of these drugs, so we're only going off of anecdotes of the guys who used them. Who's to say that THG would turn everyone who took it into a monster like Bonds? Who's to say that Winstrol would have been enough to turn everyone wh o took it into a 40 HR a year guy.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 10:30 AM) Just like he reacted when the WTC was bombed in 1993. Or the ... s***, I can't remember the name of the US Navy boat that was suicide bombed ... but you know which one I mean. Sure ... Clinton would have invaded. But he would have been invading Monica Lewinsky instead of Iraq. And thank God George W. Bush righted that wrong and launched an invasion of the people who were responsible for the Cole when he took office. What a brave act that was, and it certainly saved thousands of American lives from future attacks.

QUOTE(WinninUgly @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 10:20 AM) I am pretty sure that he did take some type of performance enhancer, but he never looked like a true roid guy like Giambi, Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, or Canseco. Those guys looked like they were on roids, Raffy never did, but his numbers definitely reflect something happened to him in the early 90's. He went from hitting 8 HR's in a full season in 1989 to hitting 37 in 1993, then hit 38 or more HRs from 1995 - 2003. One of the things about steroids is that you can find different steroids which will do different things to your body. There are steroids like THG, which seem to make your body explode like happened to Bonds & Sosa, but then there are others like Winstrol which supposedly help you add muscle mass and strengthen your body but without making yourself look like the governnor of California - your body doesn't explode. There's lots of ways to be a "true" roid guy, and I believe even Canseco's book says that the reason Raffy took Winstrol was that he didn't want to look like a monster.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 09:10 AM) I dunno. There are more fun things to do in Vegas than watch baseball. Plus it'd have to be an indoor stadium because when I went there in July once it was 118. I think they'd do ok but their current stadium is only 8 thousand people so they'd need to build it before a team could come. I guess its better to have baseball there than South Florida though. Whether or not there are more fun things to do there...I think the real desire of having a team based in Vegas is that the Casino's money would be pumped into that team...you'd have the casinos buying tickets for people to comp, owning all of the luxury/skyboxes to bring in high rollers, buying up every ad possible, and so forth.

And yet both of them somehow came to agreement that Clinton would have invaded Iraq as well.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 07:33 AM) Given that said network was losing so much money that they accepted misappropriated funds to get themselves out of the red, the answer appears to be "yes." IIRC, they're now soliciting donations on their website.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 07:52 AM) McCarthy has a hell of a lot of promise, but he hasn't proven jack in the majors. He's pitched a whole 67 major league innings. Wooooo! :rolly He hasn't shown as much as say, a Johan Santana has, but given that he's only pitched 67 innings, he's probably proven as much as any pitcher could. See: Dominating performances against Boston, Texas, Minnesota, Cleveland coming down the stretch.

QUOTE(Harry&JimmyRocked @ Dec 28, 2005 -> 04:16 PM) nope. the yanks are always favored. if you go by the odds Which just makes those of us putting $$ on the Chisox more money.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Dec 28, 2005 -> 03:36 PM) I'd say that even if he pitched as a league average pitcher (100 ERA+, something like a 4.40 ERA, I'd guess), he'd still be a Type A free agent, which would mean two picks, I think. Both picks would be in the top 40 overall, but neither would be in the top 15. And, if Kenny Williams isn't overwhelmed with an offer, this isn't a terrible fall-back option. Of course, I'd much prefer the Sox to get something done with LA, with a package built around Joel Guzman. Guzman + Brazoban + Broxton/Miller/Jackson/Elbert might be a good deal... Ok...the reason I was thinking about that is this...if Contreras does start the season with us, it may not be a good idea to trade him, because once the season starts, you'll know which teams are contenders and which aren't fairly soon. Right now, you could send Jose to a team like the Dodgers with the Dodgers having no idea how many people might get hurt this year, whether they'll be in contention, whether Bonds will drive the Giants to 105 wins, etc. But 2 months into the season, you've got an idea who's in the race, and if we're also in the race, then the teams interested in paying a lot for pitching would be the teams we'd be directly competing with for the trophy...and helping their pitching staffs might not be the best idea in the world.

Question: If Contreras pitches for the Sox throughout 2006 and then leaves as a free agent, do we still get draft picks? If so, do we know how many and what round they would be in?

QUOTE(JUGGERNAUT @ Dec 28, 2005 -> 03:24 PM) Any one of these guys can be expected to beat Santana, Halliday, Zito, or Mussina. Can that be said of BMac? No. September 23rd, 2005: Johan Santana: 8 innings, 4 hits, 1 run. Brandon McCarthy: 8 innings, 4 hits, 1 run.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Dec 28, 2005 -> 03:20 PM) I figured, but where is the Gathright is better than Brian Anderson information. Certainly isn't something I agree with.