lostfan

QUOTE (Capn12 @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 03:28 PM) You knew as soon as Neshek came in, that our guys had no chance. They were lulled asleep by that windup motion, and just waving away at pitches. We nailed Neshek last time out IIRC.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 03:23 PM) Thome may set a new league record this year for K's He is facing some tough competition in Ryan Howard.

QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 03:17 PM) Morenau comes through 4-3 twins......why give him a f***ing pitch to hit there????????? The baseball IQ of this tems is really sad. You know... this is not something a pitcher does intentionally. If a pitcher gets a guy to swing and miss on a fastball right through the zone, it's luck, because pitchers don't throw there on purpose.

QUOTE (bullpenHeat @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 03:10 PM) But I dont mean just him. Joey Gathright, Brendan Harris, etc. all these 170lb. light hitting, quick feet guys murder the White Sox. Gathright is tough for anyone, not just the Sox. Just annoying trying to throw him out before he gets there.

On April 20 Anderson's average was .143, right now it's .276.

Holy crap I didn't even realize the game was in progress.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 09:20 AM) So, Hillary Clinton has a new ad campaign out, hitting Obama directly on two subjects. What I find hilarious is, Clinton's approach to the two subjects is laughably useless. Clinton wants a 90 day moratorium on foreclosures, and she wants a brief "tax holiday" on gas taxes. Both of these measures are of course exactly the kind of useless, temporary fixes that will make matters worse later. They are pure political B.S. Anyway, the ad hits Obama because he doesn't support either one. For reference, Obama prefers a "windfall tax" on oil companies instead, with the monies going towards alternative fuel research (I'd rather see them just stop giving the companies welfare, but this is as close to that as is politically palatable), and on mortgages, favors an array of other alternatives. McCain also favors the tax holiday, along with Clinton. Here is the article. It's the equivalent of putting a band-aid over your chest when you're having a heart attack, exactly. Ad campaigns like that are pretty effective too, because most people don't realize it's just a band-aid, and it's not going to help anything, so you can effectively portray someone as favoring oil companies over the people and they usually take it at face value just because they need something to be mad at.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 09:45 AM) I would be more inclined to believe that Jessie and/or Al would be paying him to keep spouting off. An Obama presidency without their help just hurts them in the long run, and diminishes their 'we are victims' mantra. I cannot stand those guys.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 30, 2008 -> 08:12 AM) The interesting thing now is with Obama's HUGE support in the black community, does he now get painted as a sell out? He was in a real no win situation here. They more or less understand, they are pretty pissed at Rev. Wright for backing him into a corner like that for basically no reason except to get Wright's face in the media and for generally acting like a tool. Now, defending himself and his life's work is one thing, but why he felt the need to make sure everyone knows he thinks the gov't created AIDS after the talk about it started to die down I will never know.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 11:42 PM) Obama sees nothing wrong with Wright for over 20 years, and now all of sudden, he disowns Wright... So, he doesn't get it for 20 years, but finally does get it after 1 day? Obama basically risked his political ass to try and take the high road not disowning Wright, partially succeeding, and Wright repaid him by acting a fool in a completely arbitrary manner and having his ego undermine Obama's campaign at a critical moment and threatened to torpedo the whole thing. So Obama finally threw him under the bus as if to say "fine, f*** it, I really don't want to deal with this anymore." Seems pretty simple to me, it's like Wright doesn't even care that he's damaging Obama right now by popping off at the mouth, however right he believes he is to defend himself.

I really liked this Bears draft, I had some pretty low expectations of Angelo to draft offense and I would've turned in my fan card had he not done the right thing and drafted one of those blue chip tackles with #14. But he went in with a plan, and his plan seemed to work. My only real problems with it were him not taking a G much earlier, and trading out of the 6th instead of taking a flyer on Woodson to see if he amounts to anything in a couple of years. I am not concerned on him passing on Brohm and Henne in favor of Forte. There were multiple needs to be filled and he couldn't fill them all on the first day.

I found an article similar to what I was talking about, not exactly the same though. http://www.tnr.com/toc/story.html?id=90727...49-e95b7293d6a0 David Duke was on the phone, talking about Barack Obama. Yes, that David Duke: After a query lodged at his website, the infamous ex-Klansman had responded via a mysterious e-mail address--he appeared in my inbox as "info45." (Duke regularly changes address to combat hate mail--the kind he doesn't like, that is.) Duke said he was traveling in Europe, where he often meets with fellow Holocaust deniers, and agreed to discuss the possibility that the United States might soon elect a black president. Logo from an anti-Zionist website Logo from an anti-Zionist website Putting it mildly, one would not expect Duke to applaud this development. During Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, after all, Duke said Jackson's election "would be the greatest tragedy ever to befall this country." Warning that "the white majority in this country are losing their rights," Duke announced his own counter-candidacy, one whose main purpose seemed to be hounding Jackson. Yet, far from railing at Obama's rise, Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explained cordially, "don't see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton--or, for that matter, John McCain." Sure, Duke considers Obama "a racist individual," citing his Afrocentric Chicago church. But soon the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People was critiquing Obama as overhyped and insubstantial in terms you might hear from, say, Clinton strategist Mark Penn. "They say he's for change. What change? He's become almost a cult figure. I don't see any shining light around Obama's head. I don't see any halos," Duke said. Sure, we may not see David Duke strolling around with The Audacity of Hope under his arm any time soon. But his mild tone is still a curious reaction to what white supremacists have long considered a sign of racial apocalypse. "Does Race Still Matter?" asks the latest issue of US News & World Report, which features Obama on its cover. Undoubtedly, it does. But, thus far, Obama is largely delivering on his promise as a post-racial candidate--and hilariously confounding the worldview of white supremacists at the same time. After Obama won the Iowa caucuses last month, Mark Potok, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, decided to survey the latest writings of the major right-wing hate groups he regularly monitors. How would America's vilest race-mongers respond to a black candidate's victory in a white Midwestern state? Again, the response was counterintuitive. "It was extremely weak," Potok says. "You could find people saying nasty words about Obama, but it wasn't red-hot at all." That has remained the case even as Obama has become the front-runner. On several websites, forums, and online journals that promote the view of white superiority over blacks--the types of outlets that rejoiced over Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the Lower Ninth Ward--there is precious little discussion of Obama's campaign. The day after Obama's blowout win in Wisconsin, for instance, the home page of the poisonous Vanguard News Network featured stories on Serbian nationalism, home schooling, Holocaust-denial, and Pat Buchanan--yet nothing about Obama. It turns out that, although the white right certainly has no love for Obama, its hatred of him is muted--and directed less at Obama himself than at other nefarious forces behind him. To be sure, it's no challenge to unearth racist invective about the man. One bilious anti-Obama blog's URL, for instance, seamlessly conjoins his name with the N-word. Elsewhere, Obama is cast as a covert black-power agent. An essay by a David Duke compatriot compares Obama to Malcolm X and likens his slogan of "Si Se Puede!" to chanting "Kill the whites!" There are rumblings about mass slavery reparations (even though, in 2004, Obama said he opposes "just signing checks over to African Americans"). And some even see hints that Obama may be leading a national black uprising. "Are blacks becoming more hostile towards whites?" asked a recent entry at the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens website. The author, citing the early February rampage by a black gunman near St. Louis, Missouri, advised that "the success of the Obama campaign might be emboldening blacks to be more aggressive towards white on a national scale." (No word on whether such hostility subsided after Hillary's New Hampshire and Nevada victories.) Yet, for every instance of loony racist paranoia, one finds a countervailing explanation for why Obama's rise is not a story about black America rising up. White supremacists are less inclined to hate Obama than the white race-traitors who are enabling him. "If you are a white supremacist who is dedicated to a biological understanding of racism that says blacks are inferior, the only way [Obama] could be elected is with the conniving of unseen forces," explains Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a Boston-based expert on white supremacists. Thus, a recent essay by one John Brown on the website of the racialist journal American Renaissance attributes Obama's rise to white liberals in search of an idyllic post-racist society (which of course they will never actually find): "The reality is that white America has more invested in this candidate than does black America." For Brown, Obama's success against Hillary should actually comfort anyone wringing their hands over a White House beholden to black America: "f Clinton wins, she will be more beholden to African Americans than Obama will be if he wins. She will owe them in a way that Obama [never] will." There's an even bigger culprit in this world than white liberals, however. Naturally, we speak here of the Jews. It turns out that what truly animates the white supremacist contingent these days is not racism but anti-Semitism. The black man is of trifling concern next to the "Zionist Occupation Government," or ZOG, a term that describes puppet regimes of the global Zionist conspiracy. As one commenter on the popular white-power Web forum Stormfront explains it: "The blacks would be a non-factor if it weren't for the ZOG's legislations and skullduggery (civil rights act, hate crime laws, affirmative action, welfare, forced integration, etc etc ...), allied with a compliant media that promotes black worship." Thus, when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published an anodyne article on Obama's support among American Jews, white-power sites like National Alliance News ("your single source for worldwide pro-White news") quickly pounced. "Barack Obama: The Jewish Connection" came the breathless headline. (Never mind that Obama has had a rockier relationship with the American Jewish community than has Clinton.) "ltimately he's just another Jew puppet," concludes another Stormfront commenter. "I look at his foreign advisers," adds David Duke. "[They're] Israeli supremacists. He's even got Dennis Ross!" All this contorted rationalization suggests that white supremacists feel compelled to explain away the confounding notion of an immensely gifted and appealing black man. Yet it also reflects the fact that, unlike Jesse Jackson, Obama simply lacks certain cultural signifiers--not to mention an urban-centric policy agenda--that would viscerally threaten racist whites obsessed with maintaining "white rights," ending affirmative action, and cutting off nearly all non-European immigration. But there may be one more factor at work: hatred overload. It's a testament of sorts to Hillary Clinton that, by virtue of her cartoonish image as a leftist man-hating shrew, she manages to arouse more vitriol among white supremacists than a black man. Meanwhile, white racists absolutely despise John McCain for his support of George W. Bush's immigration reform plan, which they view as a dire threat to America's European-based culture. "I don't think Obama will be any more negative for the United States than Hillary or John McCain," explains Duke. "In fact," he added, "we probably have less preference for a European like a John McCain or a Hillary who has betrayed our interests, our heritage, our rights." Edward Sebesta, a Dallas-based expert on neo-Confederate groups, says that, in a match-up against Obama, McCain might wind up suffering the brunt of the hatred: "They really hate McCain," he says. "They're suffering from emotional exhaustion. They might not have the energy to be infuriated by two candidates at the same time." Amazingly, some commenters on racist websites are already debating the grim choice between Obama and McCain. Who knows, maybe David Duke can form the oddest MySpace group of all time: Klansmen for Obama. Now that would be post-racial.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 11:55 PM) I know I am in the vast minority here, but I'm starting to think Uribe should be the one playing shortstop with OC at second base. I don't think you're in the vast minority... I think most of us agree here that despite the fact that he is one of the 10 worst hitters in MLB, he is a better SS than Cabrera, Gold Glove or not. I guess the only reason I could see Cabrera being at SS over Uribe is the fact that Cabrera's bat is going to pick up eventually, and he will probably play the whole season there while there's a pretty good chance Uribe eventually gets sat for Richar, and it's easier to not have to bother re-adjusting Cabrera.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:25 PM) Pitchers are attacking this team low and away to keep the ball from leaving the premises. So if they pound the zone ( not walk people), and spot low and away how exactly with the worst BA in baseball how exactly are we mounting an offense. Sonnenshine, Blackburn, Bonser are all examples of pitchers who pound the zone, spot low and away, and use their breaking pitch to offset the fastball. These are pitchers that will shut this team down because our lack of a hitting attack outside of the lift and pull lock and launch offense. No. You're being irrational and overly emotional.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 11:15 PM) I could actually see it if he continued developing (he honestly might just be too streaky though) but either way he's still probably a month away at the earliest, assuming he performs well when his minor league rehab stint starts in a couple weeks. Give him another 200-300 PA's before really considering it, unless we are out of contention IMO.

QUOTE (almagest @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 11:04 PM) Straw man. The point of his post was to show that OPS isn't that useful, unless this is opposite world. I merely asked what was more useful. EqA is a good metric, but it's debatable as to whether it's more useful or not, since SLG has been shown to have a larger correlation to runs scored. I'm not really going to bother arguing semantics on what a straw man is or his reason for making that post, but OPS has its usefulness. It just has its limits, like any other stat. It's one part of a bigger picture. GPA was being talked about not too long ago.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:01 PM) i think the other concern here is how long will John Danks, Gavin Floyd and Jose Contreras be pitching the way they currently are? I don't see any reason to worry about that right now.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 09:55 PM) Point what out? You said we are constantly choking with RISP which couldnt be more wrong. We were in this game from first pitch to last out even with their guy pitching way over his head and us missing HR's by inches. We had bad at bats, Gavin didnt have his best stuff and I never felt like we were out of the game and I dont think the team did either. Every time this team loses its the same crap over and over, fire this guy, bring this guy up, bench f***ing Thome, all ridiculous awful emotionally crappy posts. This team is a good team, they were beat tonight, but not by much. its going to happen people, get over it. You didn't address a single thing I asked you besides pointing out that one thing I overreacted about (which I should have known better than to say, it's actually something of an anomaly that the averages go up with RISP for some reason). The rest of your post is just a blast at me for being in this thread and saying something negative (however true, saying that the offense is inconsistent, has been for a while, and looks like it will continue to be and that's a problem) that doesn't apply to me so I'll just disregard it. Never once are you going to find me saying something like "trade Konerko" "Thome sucks" or "I hate you Dye." But whatever.

QUOTE (almagest @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 09:53 PM) Okay, so tell us a better metric for evaluating offensive production. You must have one, since you seem to know for sure that OPS isn't that useful. Straw man. The post he made actually said "despite its usefulness." Nobody said OPS isn't that useful. However, the fact that the Sox rely on home runs so much partially explains why their OPS is high despite having a wildly incosistent offense.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 09:50 PM) HAHAHA you are awful. Constantly choking huh? We are 5th in the MLB in avg with runners in scoring position. SLG .498 with them in scoring position leading the MLB. WHERE IS THE CHOKING??? Mmkay. Point that one thing out and ignore everything else. Why does the offense disappear? Seriously. It shows up, all at once, then just completely goes away.

QUOTE (Wanne @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 09:50 PM) Agreed. He's been in a mini-slump it seems the past couple of games...but he'll be fine. I love the "sky is falling" mentality around here sometimes. It's actually pretty entertaining. Swisher's actually been great there, mitigated by our useless (for who knows how long) 2-3-4. He's just sucked the last week or so.

I like the starting rotation so far. Lots of pleasant surprises. I actually look forward to Floyd starts, Danks is what I thought he would be, and Contreras doesn't make me cringe when he takes the mound.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:38 PM) Yeah, every time this team loses red flags are waving, we should NEVER lose. Come on now, don't give me that fanboy comeback, it makes it difficult to reply with anything intelligent. "The best offense in baseball" does not get blanked every other game, does not consistently choke with RISP, does not rely solely on SLG%. Sure, this team has really good starting pitching, and sure, this team scores a lot of runs... but the runs come all at the same time, all against the same pitchers. This is not anything new.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 10:32 PM) nope, someone who apparently knows that your arguments are awful. The red flags have been waving for a while now actually. I mean I've been trying to stay optimistic, but it's more of the same.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 29, 2008 -> 09:15 PM) So, before the Bush tax cuts, they were calling for larger, even more bankrupting, and even more directed at the top 1% tax cuts than the ones Bush proposed? Actually, that's probably true. Republicans have always been about low taxes which in and of itself isn't a bad thing and I would normally support, but they act like big defense spending isn't costing that much and the deficit isn't really that big of a deal, then while pushing budgets that would give most big government Democrats wet dreams, cut taxes as well. All the while pushing the idea of the magical tax fairy that's somehow going to revive the economy, all we have to do is cut taxes. I mean, let's just be honest - war is expensive, we don't have the revenues to cover it, we need tax. There's no way to hide it. I wish more people would stop taking all these tax promises at face value. That includes Obama and Hillary, they're just downplaying how much exactly we'd have to raise taxes by.