Balta1701

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 12:09 PM) There is also the potential for some veteran ballplayers to achieve something. It doesn't happen all that often, as you get injuries and egos as part of the equation. Still, when the Dodgers started last season, you could have looked at that team with ease and said "this team dumped a ton of money on people who will spend half the year on the DL" Right now, you can probably say exactly the same thing. The only difference? Coletti doesn't want these guys for the long term, and he's probably expecting them to hit the DL. He's just hoping they stay healthy long enough that their prospects can have another year or two in the minors.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 01:43 PM) Dotel said he doesn't think he will be able to pitch until midseason. The Yankees have the money to toss around. Hmph, when his surgery happened last year they were saying he'd be gone for the full 06 season. Must be some sort of accelerated healing, I guess.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 01:28 PM) Is that flag for him? He's Irish ya know. Well, the Irish have never had a problem with anyone flying the Union Jack as far as I know...

Those who keep bringing up the "Echelon" program...here's a response for you. From CAP. If Tenet's testimony is believable, then this is fundamentally and totally different from what Echelon was doing.

This isnt' the first time this has happened...in 1980 there was a strike that lasted 11 days. I don't think it was in the dead of winter though. I've got a guy I went to college with who I think will be walking like 10 miles today unless he can get a ride.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 08:19 AM) As if I needed more evidence to dislike this clown Personally, I just love how that's the same Senator who threatened to resign if his $250 million bridge to no where was killed off.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 03:38 AM) If you wouldn't cry "Wolf" at everything that can possibly be twisted to make Bush look bad, I'd be inclined to give some of posts more merit and actually read them in there entirety instead instead of dismissing them as more political rhetoric. There are times when my mind can be changed and I do try and step back and see both sides of the issues, But, when someone ALWAYS is slinging s***, I just duck and get out of the way. Sorry man, sometimes I like to post things that fit in with a topic which haven't yet been confirmed just to see where the story leads. When I do that, I usually don't comment on things at all myself. That's all I was trying to do on that one, just posting it so that people could see where a story might be heading.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 04:48 AM) Interesting and troubling to find that the FISSA courts publicly rebuked the GWB administration, Ashcroft and the FBI back in 2002 for providing misinformation to them at least 75 times in their requests for wiretaps. For the secret court to issue such a public statement shows they were pretty pissed at the way the administration was acting in trying to obtain warrants. Here's an archive of the WaPo story that ran at the time: http://foi.missouri.edu/secretcourts/seccrtrebuffs.html The rebuke specifically left open the that the FISA policies can be reviewed and changed by act of Congress if they were truly an impediment to lawful intelligence gathering, and members of Congress sympathetic to BushCo would have been willing to explore that but said Ashcroft was reluctant to do so. Ok, now I find that interesting not in the way you do, in that it suggests a motive, but in that until 2002, the FISA courts said no to a wiretap request exactly 0 times. In other words, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, and Clinton each got the FISA court to agree to thousands of wiretaps without ever having a problem obtainning a warrant. What the Hell was Bush telling them?

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Dec 20, 2005 -> 04:25 AM) With all the jerk-offs in the administration and in the GOP congress the Kleenex people are already rolling in dough. :headshake Ok...air pollution...triggers my allergies more...thus forcing me to use more Kleenex and Claritin. Eureka! It's a gigantic conspiracy!

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 09:27 PM) Did JFK and LBJ do this as well? Possibly. We know that Nixon did and that's why we have the laws regarding eavesdropping on US Citizens in the first place. Again, it doesn't matter what JFK and LBJ did. The law was passed after their time. Campaign finance laws have changed since the days fo Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon as well. You can't just go and say "Well JFK did it" as a legal defense for something if you violate a modern campaign finance law. If a new conspiracy statute appears on the books, you can't just say "Well it was legal 5 years ago" as a justification for why you did it 2 years ago.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 08:27 PM) Ehh I still think their guards suck ass, although Strickland has looked pretty good. They are definitely a top 20 team though, probably top 15. Just based on tonight...all that IU looks like it needs to actually be a top 10 team and genuinely be able to challenge people in the tourney is White and Killingsworth playing well together and healthy. MK has been tearing up games in the lane already on his own. If you stick another big guy in the middle, and allow for rotation between the two, extra fouls to give, another set of hands in the way of shots, that team is just going to own the lane on both ends of the floor. If the guards can make open jumpers, that team will shred a lot of people by just going inside and taking the play if it's open or passing out to the guard open because of the doubleteam. Simple fundamental basketball...but they've got the people to make it work.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 08:48 PM) Echelon and spying on your own people is not something new. The system was built in the 70's, and the biggest upgrad happened under Clintons watch. Only a fool would believe that this is something unique to the evil republicans and their leader George Bush cooked up. Clinton seem to love this spying thing. I guess its okay if a Dem orders the spying I am pretty sure that all US presidents have acted in this manner. They have all had some sort of survelliance in some sort of manner behind the closed doors. Do you really believe that the military under FDR wasnt spying on japanese americans, or that Eisnhower or JFK didnt do the same thing. Come on. The only difference is today we have better technology. What is the difference between those presidents and Bush. Bush admits it. Why because he feels he is doing it for the best interests of the US. Just like all of the presidents before him probably thought. Get over the conspiracy theories and the "OMG MY RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED". Dude, 2 points. 1...can someone prove to me that Clinton didn't go and get FISA warrants for the people who were monitored through that program? Between the establishment of the FISA court and like 2003, there were roughly 0 requests for a warrant from that court which were turned down. Secondly, the Foreign Intelligence Service Act was passed in the late 70's. So what Kennedy did, or Ike Did, or FDR did...none of that matters. The difference between Bush and the others is not that Bush Admits it, it's that what he is doing has since been made illegal. The question here is not the surveillance. I don't care at all about the surveillance. The governnment obviously needs the power to obtain wiretaps, and it would be stupid to suggest that they don't. The problem here is that Bush is openly flaunting the law of the United States. This is not about surveillance, that's just the avenue through which he chose to violate the law. He didn't choose to ask that the law be "Fixed", he didn't go to Congress and ask for authorization, he just decided that the law did not matter because he was the President and they were at war. The Republicans in the late 90's had a saying. I believe it went something like..."It's not the sex, it's the lying." They were right in that saying. Right now, the saying should be "It's not the spying, its the lawbreaking." This is not an issue of wiretapping. This is an issue of open defiance of the laws of this country. You cannot defend this by defending only the wiretapping, and to do so simply ignores the real issue here. You have to defend the President's declaration and the Attorney General's statement that the President is above the law in a time of war. The spying is not the issue at all. The issue is that Bush could not be troubled to go to the FISA court to obtain warrants as spelled out quite specifically under the law, and he didn't want to bother with changing the law, so he just decided to defy the law.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 01:45 PM) The Browns almost beat them Almost doesn't cut it. Against every team this season in every game that mattered, the Colts stepped up and did what they needed to do to win. When teams were dropping 8 guys into coverage, Manning just handed the ball to James every play. That led to some low scoring games, but it also won those games by keeping their defense off the field.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 02:53 PM) However, there is a big difference between running a college football program, and running an offense. Witness: Cam Cameron.

Here is the letter that Sen. Rockefeller wrote in 2003 to the White House expressing his concern over the program. He says he is worried about the program, and he's even more worried about the fact that he can't consult with his staff or anyone else in Congress about it. Edit: Statement by the Senator:

QUOTE(Texsox @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 03:06 PM) There outta be a law that eliminates adding unrelated items to a bill. And interestingly enough, that law would be passed with a Congressional pay raise, a suspension of Habeus Corpus, and a few tax cuts paper clipped to it.

QUOTE(VAfan @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 01:57 PM) I must say, I should know precisely where Crede is in the arbitration/FA cycle. I'm sure he's not a FA next year, but I assume he would be in 2 years, correct?? That being the case, if Crede eliminates his terrible months, he's going to crack 30 HRs, with an OPS in the mid-.800s. At that point, Boras is going to start demanding $8-10 million/season, and he'd certainly get it the last year of arbitration and the first year of free agency. So a 3/15 deal seems pretty reasonable for the Sox to me. Remember, we can always insure the contract in case Crede's back puts him on the DL. We have Crede for I believe 3 years under arbitration.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 01:54 PM) On a serious side note, what's wrong with a parliamentary system anyway? Maybe that should have its own thread. I'm curous to see what you all think about that. You know, that would be an interesting topic to consider. I'm personally not a huge fan of most parliamentary systems, on the grounds that in general, it tends to set itself up where neither of the major parties has enough votes on its own to form a government, and this winds up putting an excess amount of power in the hands of smaller, often more fringe parties, because they become necessary in order to forge a ruling coalition.

Harry Reid's statement:

Bobby better make sure he's working out...end of October next year he's gonna have a big man to lift into the air again.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 11:33 AM) Not if you look at the stats. Keep in mind, Crede also plays in a great hitter's park. Doesn't Blalock also?

That sound you hear? Yeah, that's the city of Anaheim swearing.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 11:08 AM) A team has to offer KW a "best package" deal first. KW shouldn't just settle for any players thrown his way. Esp. as he offers fair value in his trades [even overpaying in some deals]. KW knows that holding onto Jon for the entire 2006 yr would help the sox chances of repeating--even if it didn't help the sox long term. But the sox don't have to trade Jon if no deals are out there that help the sox. Billy Beane has done it in Oak. holding onto guys in their walk yrs. Yes Beane has held onto people (Tejada), but he's also traded people (Mulder and Hudson), and that Mulder trade will probably make them a very good team for several years too.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 11:18 AM) Good deal, considering what Ramon Hernandez got (4-years, $27.5 million). AJ better stop swinging for the fences though. I'd rather have the Pierzynski who hit less homers but put up a .290 AVG and .330 OBP. If I had to pick I'd pick that one, but I would prefer the AJ who hits with power to merge with the .300 hitting AJ and form one super-duper-monster-Pierzynski

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 11:10 AM) His numbers should improve this year as well.. AVG wise. Last year was his worst full season with the bat since he got into the big leagues overall, in every category except HR. If he finds a way to put last year's power with the batting average he had 2-3 years ago with the Twinkies, he could be the 1st or 2nd best offensive catcher in baseball.