Controlled Chaos

Those 3D ones look so cool. We asked the doc about it and he said they don't have it there. I was looking in to going to a place and doing it. Stork Snapshots is a place I found in Naperville. Are those prices around what you have found? We're not finding out the sex, but the ultrasounds are so amazing to me. Seeing the heartbeat and the baby move and yawn and stretch. I pretty much finished the nursery this past weekend. When I first started it was just white walls with light beige carpeting. The carpet was pretty trashed from when my friend rented the room from me about a year. I painted, put up the border, put down a new laminate floor from dupont(which is one of the nicest ones I've seen) and then my wife and I added all the little wallpaper things. We still need the mattress, the bedding, and the window treatments. It's all coming together. June 15th is the due date. http://csmaster.sxu.edu/djones/ben/IMG_2059.JPG http://csmaster.sxu.edu/djones/ben/IMG_2060.JPG http://csmaster.sxu.edu/djones/ben/IMG_2061.JPG

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Feb 17, 2006 -> 02:57 PM) I am probably in the minority here, but I actually agree with him on his last line. Face it: These Olympics are little more than a marketing plan. Besides hockey the winter olympics suck ass. I am not saying that they aren't athletes at the winter olympics, there just aren't many good events or events that I find interesting. I'm not that interested in all the olympic sports either, but the athletes that are in these olympics bust their ass just as hard as any other athlete. As for the marketing plan...I don't get it. The Olympics aren't some new event generated for marketing...they're the f***in Olympics....

QUOTE(mreye @ Feb 17, 2006 -> 02:56 PM) How soon before this gets sent to "The 'Buster"?? I was debating where the hell to put it. Sports Pub....SLaP....Fillibuster

HBO message board comments http://boards.hbo.com/thread.jspa?threadID...rt=435&tstart=0

I guess this story will be on O'Reilly tonight. Tony Snow is hosting.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Feb 17, 2006 -> 02:23 PM) Link? And which Gumbel? Bryant Gumble.... I can't find the quote from HBO, but the quote is here

"Try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the games look like a GOP convention. And try to blot out all logic when announcers and sportswriters pretend to care about the luge, the skeleton, the biathlon and all those other events they don’t understand and totally ignore for all but three weeks every four years. Face it: These Olympics are little more than a marketing plan.” If a white announcer said " The paucity of whites makes it look like a NAACP convention" He would be fired the next day. Gumbel is a f***in douchebag. Some of these atheltes work their entire lives to be on the olympic team and they are not the world's greatest atheltes cause it isn't a black dominated sport??

http://www.trojangames.com/

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 02:13 PM) Dude, just go read the articles before you try to bash the conclusions, would you? You're the one who spun this thread into things about Gitmo to steer away from Gore....

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 01:15 PM) No room. Cheney shot some guy, and Bode Miller sucks. True...accidents and assholes sell....

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 11:37 AM) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=48827 Wow someone put that guy on 60 minutes or Dateline or 48 hours....

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 10:47 AM) May an independent wade in? First, the quotes used by this author were actually taken (it appears) from the JEF website (Jeddah Economic Forum), who was paraphrasing Gore. I see nothing anywhere that tells us what he actually said. We have double heresay here. So I am skeptical. And I may be OK with him saying that the US has committed terrible abuses against Arabs since 9/11. Why? Because we have. Iraq, anyone? But I hope the context was correct. If he was intimating that it was happening in the US, then I'm insulted. While there have undoubtedly been a few isolated criminals committing hate crimes, that does not make it widespread. If he is talking about our foreign policy towards the Middle East, however, I agree with him completely. Now that all said, I think he goes over the line (if he really said what is being paraphrased) when talking about indiscriminate rounding up of people, and people being kept in unforgiveable circumstances. For one thing, to use the word "indscriminate" makes the US look like they just rounded up folks who looked Middle Eastern, which is untrue and makes us look like buffoons. And the only people being kept in unforgiveable circumstances are the really bad folks. As for comparing this to the Cheney hunting accident, there is no comparison. The current VP shooting someone is a much bigger story than a questionable speech by a former VP and talking head. Thats pretty clear to me, and apparently, most Americans agree. Who the hell are you to decide what most Americans agree on??? The majority of Americans have only been fed one story on the national news. That f***in speech should not have been made over there. Lead the news off with that...let the people decide what they think is more important.

QUOTE(RibbieRubarb @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 09:47 AM) Nice! Here's a safer link.... Great find steff!!!!!!!!! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8400730120188776481

BY JAMES TARANTO Monday, February 13, 2006 12:44 p.m. EST Our Friend Al Gore The man who came within a hair's breadth of the presidency in 2000 is denouncing his own government on foreign soil, the Associated Press reports: Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment. Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications. "The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States." There is a comical element to this, as Glenn Reynolds notes: "Only Al Gore could come up with the idea of criticizing Bush for not sucking up to the Saudis enough. Sigh." Heh. Indeed. But blogger "TigerHawk" makes some serious points: This is asinine both substantively and procedurally. Substantively, the idea that cracking down on Saudi visa applications is "playing into al Qaeda's hands" is laughable. Had we scrutinized Saudi visas a little more carefully in 2001, thousands of Americans who died on September 11 that year might well have lived. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on that day were Saudi nationals. If we had denied some or all of them visas, exactly how would that have "played into al Qaeda's hands"? . . . Procedurally, Gore's speech is repugnant. It is one thing to say such things to an American audience in an effort to change our policy. . . . It is, however, another thing entirely to travel to a foreign country that features pivotally in the war of our generation for the purpose of denouncing American policies in front of the affected foreign audience. It is especially problematic to mess with Saudi political opinions, which are subject to intensive influence and coercion by internal actors and the United States, al Qaeda, and Iran, among other powers. Supposing that some Saudis were inclined to be angry over the American visa policy, won't they be more angry after Al Gore has told them that they're being humiliated? How is that helpful? Finally, Gore's outrage at the American treatment of Arab and Muslim captives may be genuine, and it may even be worthy of expression in the United States, where we aspire to do better than press accounts suggest we have done. But whatever nasty things we have done in exceptional cases in time of war, they pale in comparison to the standard operating procedure in Saudi Arabia. So this is what Gore has done: he has traveled to Jiddah to explain to the elites of an ugly and tyrannical regime that the big problem in the world isn't the oppression of Arabs by Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the mistreatment of a few hundred Arabs in the United States. This is like visiting Moscow in 1970 and denouncing the United States in front of a bunch of Communist Party deputies for the killings at Kent State. . . . There is simply no defense for what Gore has done here, for he is deliberately undermining the United States during a time of war, in a part of the world crucial to our success in that war, in front of an audience that does not vote in American elections. Gore's speech is both destructive and disloyal, not because of its content--which is as silly as it is subversive--but because of its location and its intended audience. The only consolation is that Gore likely would have done a lot more damage had he spent four years in the White House. And given the precedent set by Jimmy Carter, it isn't hard to imagine Gore as an embittered one-term ex-president giving the same speech in Jeddah.

The media's Cheney hunt Feb 15, 2006 by Brent Bozell Once it was clear that the man sprinkled with birdshot would survive, Vice President Cheney's hunting accident was widely expected to become a late-night comedian's bonanza, a frenzy like Wal-Mart shoppers scrambling for $29 DVD players. As "Today" replayed the comedian clips on Tuesday, NBC's Matt Lauer asked, "Had a feeling that was coming, didn't you?" Katie Couric replied: "Well, I mean when you heard the story you just knew they were gonna go crazy with it, so they did." With apologies to the Cheney friend who received the pellet facial, the incident was funny. Now we learn the vice president received a warning citation from a Texas Ranger for not buying a $7 hunting stamp in advance. As a friend e-mailed me, "Where else can you shoot a lawyer in the face with a shotgun and get off with just a warning?" What really shocked people was the way our Cheney-hating press corps went crazy with it. The Big Three networks aired 34 stories in the first 48 hours of evening and morning newscasts. They treated this not as a mishap, and then a punchline, but as a brewing national scandal. The 18-hour delay in alerting the media! The failure to pay a $7 hunting stamp! "Questions remain"! "White House under fire"! "Growing political fallout"! The focus of the story quickly shifted from an embarrassed Cheney to the shamelessly egotistical press corps. Look no further for a poster boy for egotism than NBC White House reporter David Gregory, who was captured in an untelevised morning "gaggle" in the briefing room Monday morning yelling at Bush spokesman Scott McClellan. First, he accused the spokesman of "ducking and weaving," leading McClellan to quip that he should emote later, when the cameras were on. "Don't accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras!'' Gregory shot back. "Don't be a jerk to me personally when I'm asking you a serious question!'' McClellan said, "You don't have to yell," and Gregory replied, "I will yell! If you want to use that podium to try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong!'' In how many ways is this a joke? These reporters take shots at McClellan and the rest of the administration on a daily basis, in the briefing room, and in their news coverage. Some of those shots are quite personal. But how dare the president's spokesman lecture them! The incivility of it all! Then came the televised briefing on Monday afternoon. It's been a while since the cable networks aired one live, but it's not every day that the vice president caps his friend, so they made an exception. In retrospect, I bet they wish they hadn't. These reporters looked like a "Saturday Night Live" skit with the goofy questions they asked. They started with huffing and puffing about their own territorial prerogatives, that the survival of America is hanging by a thread, and that thread is the press, which must be updated minute by minute. Terence Hunt of the Associated Press insisted, "Isn't there a public disclosure requirement that should have kicked in immediately?" (Quick answer: There is no "requirement," period.) Gregory protested, "The vice president of the United States accidentally shoots a man and he feels that it's appropriate for a ranch owner who witnessed this to tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper, and not the White House press corps at large, or notify the public in a national way?" Several questioners fussed over how it was not "appropriate" for a "private citizen" to alert the media. The outrage was palpable. How dare the Corpus Christi Caller-Times get the scoop before we did! We are the national news media, and we must not be overlooked on a major breaking story on quail hunting. The divas were denied, and they were cranky. From there, it just got sillier and sillier, with questions like: "Is it proper for the vice president to offer his resignation, or has he offered his resignation?" And: "Scott, under Texas law, is this kind of accidental shooting a possible criminal offense?" By this time, you just wanted to buy McClellan a beer. Meanwhile, over the weekend, former vice president Al Gore went to Saudi Arabia and denounced the U.S. government for committing "terrible abuses" against Arabs after 9/11, that Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. Gore made no mention of the "terrible abuses" the Saudi tyrants commit, perhaps because it would be unseemly to insult his host on his home turf. So instead he used his host's home turf to insult his own country. No one asked about that at the White House. Most media outlets had no time or space for it. They were too busy covering the far more important Dick Cheney Quail Shooting Scandal.

QUOTE(The Critic @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 06:59 AM) I greened it to show CC that I'm just messing with him. I think The Wall looks cool. I got it critic. I was just looking for like a defending the crown or some kind of wallpaper with the trophy in it.... I don't know...all you peeps are the graphic artists here....I used up all my creative energy getting parts of those newspapers in that frame!!!

Anyone have anyting for the upcoming season? With the trophy in it and some players or whatever... I need something new. HELP!!

Every day.

Since we're talking tacky.. We are registered at babies R us...under Ferenzi. Thanks in advance for all the wonderful gifts!!! You guys are the bomb!!!!

http://www.meish.org/vd/

I'm pretty sure tehy are working on something to display it for game three for all the fans. I'm not sure if what they do that day will be permanent, but I read somewhere that it will be on display fot eh fans that day. Game 1 - banner Game 2 - rings Game 3 - trophy

QUOTE(Soxy @ Feb 13, 2006 -> 01:09 PM) Except Hillary, Carter, Kerry, Clinton, Gore. . . Usually the only time I see stuff on them is when people are commenting on what they said about the administration or things the administration did wrong.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Feb 13, 2006 -> 01:03 PM) I didn't realize you two were so tight and that he actually confides in you, telling you his true motives. I never said I knew his true motives. I'm saying I believe in the inherent good of most people and I don't belive his true motives are evil. Most democratic leaders preach otherwise.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 13, 2006 -> 01:02 PM) Thank you for further illustrating my point with your post: open with the "good people of America" statement, make some wild accusatory statements and attribute them to Democrats (even though no on here is saying those things), throw in some hyberbole examples, and close with the labeling of the all Dems as not deserving of your opening statement. I guess you think I had some sort of agenda with my repsonse. I wasn't making statements regarding any dems on this board, I was referring to things Democratic leaders have said...Carter, Clinton, Pelosi, Kennedy. Who gives a flying f*** what you or I say on soxtalk.com...I was just giving my opinion on what turns some of the middle, but whatever dude.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 13, 2006 -> 12:56 PM) But you seem to believe the exact opposite about Dems. We never even talk about specific Dems...