mmmmmbeeer

So if you're Iguchi, you gettin' nervous?

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Mar 17, 2006 -> 06:19 PM) Does everyone watch Malcom In the Middle, or is "lighten up francis" a term I've missed which has been around for a long time? Too many people are saying it. I think that came from Pee Wee's big adventure

I can't believe I'm registered with this party. The ideological shift within the GOP in just the past 10 years is absolutely astounding. Conservatives trumping state laws. nice.

Some really impressive quote work in this thread.

Best intro music to a sitcom, ever.

Similar deal actually happened to my roomate while in the Air Force. Obviously laws differ between the military and the public, but I was still amazed at how everything went down. My roomate was quite skillful at taking someone's military ID and simply changing the last digit of the birth date with a carefully cutout digit from a printed sheet of paper. He would remove the laminate, paste the digit, and relaminate the ID. The things were impeccably done. He wouldn't sell them, just do it as a favor to those who were under 21. I'd say he fixed a total of 7-10 IDs. So one day I'm at work and my first sergeant comes and pulls me away and says we need to take a walk. As we're walking he tells me we're heading over to the OSI office (office of special investigations). I'm freaking out at this point because he tells me nothing about WHY I'm going and there were certainly some other indiscretions I had been involved in that could have warranted the attention of OSI. So I get there and I see a couple of our buddies there and then I'm really freaking out. I go into the office with 3 investigators and they immediately read me my rights. I'm then asked about my roomate, if he's been doing anything suspicious, etc. Finally, after about 5-10 mins of beating around the bush with me sitting there s***ting myself, they come clean on the ID "scandal". They're accusing my roomate of a widespread fake ID business and want to know what I know about it. So I explain that there may have been a couple of date adjustments but certainly never any kind of business and certainly nothing widespread. They kept really pushing this "business side" of the IDs and, apparently understanding that I wasn't going to talk about a "business side", they let me go with my first sergeant. So I head back to the dorm after work and, sure enough, my roomate and a couple of friends are standing outside of our room on the balcony while OSI is going through all of our s***. They found the laminate with cutouts the size of IDs, an xacto knife, a printout of various digits... Great stuff. So it ends up that they gave him a letter of reprimand and about 2 months of community service (as in he doesn't go to work, he goes and works 12 hour days at the s*** plant). Ends up that the one who was running a true "business" had given them my roomates name. Apparently she was actually making pretty good loot selling IDs. She wasn't around much longer and I never did hear what happened to her. I can only assume that she was discharged and may have done some time before being dismissed. Of course, none of this is really relevant to the public example you gave, but I thought I'd share anyway. They could have really jammed up my roomate for forging federal documents. Although his punishment was s***ty (no pun intended), he got off rather easy in my estimation. Seemed as if leniency was a driving force in his punishment.

So are they going to make fun of Isaac or, out of respect for his years with the show, will they just let his hypocrisy slide?

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Mar 8, 2006 -> 12:08 PM) who the hell keeps a player on the bench strickly to be a late-inning defensive replacement at 1B? end of argument

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Mar 4, 2006 -> 05:54 PM) Im still dissapointed with the lack of fundamentals we are showing on defense, and the lack of control by the pitchers. Granted the games dont count. But in some way they do count, and we are getting crushed. They count for NOTHING. They sucked ass last spring too. Pitchers on concentrating on certain aspects of their game. D and O are just getting warm, they're only in what, the 2nd or 3rd week of ST, not even a week's worth of games yet?

Mariano Rivera or A-Rod

It's not like he said Jenks is a fatass, and fatasses don't pitch on my team. He's obviously commenting/answering a question which he handled quite comically, with atleast 2 jokes embedded in the answer, while still getting the point across that, yes, Jenks's weight is a slight concern. He's a big league ballplayer who plays for Ozzie Guillen. He knows Ozzie better than anyone on this board. I doubt Jenks took offense.

I always thought it would be cool to get a Don Cooper jersey.

I can't live without the extra innings package. Through Cox Cable down here in OK it's costs between $130 and $140 for the season, but if you don't want to lay down the cash all at once they'll split the bill equally into 3 payments. Actually that price is based on the "early bird discount" with the regular price being $10-$20 more for the season. This will be my third or fourth year subscribing. In the past I experienced the blackouts on WCIU but last year, for whatever reason, the only games I had blacked out were those played in market (TEX and KC, TEX I just flipped to FOXSPORTS Southwest) and games played on the Fox national broadcast on Saturdays. I'd contemplated the computer based stuff but I enjoy being able to sit back on my couch and catch the game, or being able to cook in the kitchen while watching the game. Plus I can actually see the game as opposed to watching on a small 19" monitor. The mlb radio I had never considered being I want to watch the games, but if radio suits you that would be your most economical choice. I think it's one hell of a deal for the cost. I know that the NFL package, 16 games or whatever, is like $100 more for the season. I believe the NBA package is more expensive as well, with neither package offering nearly as many games as you get on Extra Innings. And besides the pleasure of gettting to catch nearly every Sox game, I really enjoy getting to hear different broadcast teams from around the country. Always interesting to hear other baseball people's perspectives on your team and players. Good stuff.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 04:59 PM) ^^^^ Not saying Frank is innocent in all this -- far from it -- but it's ironic how, in the days of big paychecks and guys not staying loyal to their teams, Frank is being (and will be) blasted for wanting to stay with the only MLB team he's ever known. He certainly hasn't gone about saying it the right way (and again, I'll use the expression, far from it), but this is dissappointing to see it end this way. In 2008-'09, I want to be celebrating having a new statue in/around US Cellular, along with a new jersey number on the outfield wall. This isn't a good start to that dream... The Sox winning last season sealed Frank's fate. If we were a .500 ballclub Frank would have been invited back. We're trying to defend a championship, hardly the atmosphere to be sentimental to washed up, injured players.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Feb 26, 2006 -> 04:56 PM) I wish it were that easy. We were sounding like the NE Patriots. Everything was about the team, and everything was right. Players were all saying '05 was in the past, and they have to realize that it's a new year, a new prize to go after. However, this is just wrong. I don't want to ignore the fact that Frank's wrong too, but KW isn't right for getting this out in the media either. I think that's exactly the point of Kenny's statements. He is obviously extremely proud of the "team atmosphere" or, as you put it, the NE Patriot attitude, which this team had last season and is taking into this season. KW's point wasn't so much to badmouth Frank's abilities but to highlight the REAL difference between Frank and Thome and why the move had to be made. Jim Thome would NEVER make comments like Frank did today or has in the past. KW reinforced everyone's suspicions that Frank was nothing more than a cancer in the plans KW has for this franchise.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 03:03 AM) He's a good option to have at Charlotte if either Konerko or Thome go down, that's for sure. Here are some videos of the homers he hit with the Mariners in 2004: http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/team/player_...layer_id=430944 Dude's definitely got some power. That first upper deck shot was monster.

QUOTE(bmags @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 05:20 PM) could i have the link for this i want to send it to my dad and i couldn't find it on the washington post website... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6021702499.html

"But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy." I loved this line. Rings true in many situations around the globe.

Why I published those cartoons... By the editor of Jyllands-Posten. Why I Published Those Cartoons By Flemming Rose Sunday, February 19, 2006 Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech. I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression. But the cartoon story is different. Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn't to provoke gratuitously -- and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter. At the end of September, a Danish standup comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran. This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children's writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my book is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding. Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.) Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam. So, over two weeks we witnessed a half-dozen cases of self-censorship, pitting freedom of speech against the fear of confronting issues about Islam. This was a legitimate news story to cover, and Jyllands-Posten decided to do it by adopting the well-known journalistic principle: Show, don't tell. I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them "to draw Muhammad as you see him." We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet. Twelve out of 25 active members responded. We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims. The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs. Another suggests that the children's writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People's Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal. One cartoon -- depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban -- has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet. On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those. Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy. This is exactly why Karl Popper, in his seminal work "The Open Society and Its Enemies," insisted that one should not be tolerant with the intolerant. Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. In Saudi Arabia, you can get arrested for wearing a cross or having a Bible in your suitcase, while Muslims in secular Denmark can have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, TV and radio stations. I acknowledge that some people have been offended by the publication of the cartoons, and Jyllands-Posten has apologized for that. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material. You cannot edit a newspaper if you are paralyzed by worries about every possible insult. I am offended by things in the paper every day: transcripts of speeches by Osama bin Laden, photos from Abu Ghraib, people insisting that Israel should be erased from the face of the Earth, people saying the Holocaust never happened. But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper's ethical code. That other editors would make different choices is the essence of pluralism. As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic. The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants. Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people's beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue -- in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them. In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy. A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People's Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between "them" and "us," but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not. This is the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate when it chose to test the limits of self-censorship by calling on cartoonists to challenge a Muslim taboo. Did we achieve our purpose? Yes and no. Some of the spirited defenses of our freedom of expression have been inspiring. But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated, much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten's headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship. Still, I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons. [email protected] Flemming Rose is the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 09:55 AM) And our defense too low. Man, that's what I'm saying. How in the hell did we go from an A or A+ last season to a B this season by only losing A-Row? Interesting.

You're all out of your elements....you're in Donny's Element now.

I was in league 3 last season and would be interested in playing again. If that league is filled up then a different league would be fine.

I hope he does come back to the AL and have a contender look upon him as the savior only to watch him get knocked around all season.

I only watched yours and two others, but your film deserved the vote.

I think any action, military or otherwise, will receive widespread support from around the globe. France has already stated their displeasure with Iran's actions and the rioting outside Paris last year didn't help any muslim sympathies. The rest of Europe, thanks to the ridiculous rioting and burning of embassies, is also more than likely running short on patience. Russia offered a very fair opportunity to Iran by opening their doors to allow Iranians to produce nuclear power on Russian land. I doubt Putin is very pleased with the Iranians dismissal of his generosity. China, they'll veto any action. I don't think that there's any doubt that we're headed toward some sort of serious conflict in the middle east. Whether that conflict is nothing more than a strong aerial bombing campaign or a arduous ground campaign remains to be seen, but I don't see how conflict can be avoided when dealing with that f***ing lunatic Ahmadinejad. Edited to add, I don't believe that a single middle eastern government outside of Hamas or Syria cares for Ahmadinejad's antics either.