Balta1701

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 11:05 AM) I have no problem with the vetting the media has done of Governor Palin on the issues, because there is a lot there to look at and I'm not sure the McCain camp even looked at all of it. It's when you get into the area where some people are asking if Palin can raise a family and be VP that I find the comments a bit over the top, although hell, apparently such ignorance is coming from both sides. Aside from commenters @ DailyKos (You get them and I get the right wing commentors and those are usually quite a bit more fun)....I'll ask again, who on the left has said that?

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 11:02 AM) Thome pinch hitting. Indians bringing in a lefty. Major league debut for this Rich Rundles guy.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 12:00 PM) The point is, the vast majority of the silly family criticism of Palin comes from the left, and the vast majority of the dumb race based criticism of Obama comes from the right (even though it's more veiled than the former). Ok, now you've set yourself up, I'm going to ask you to prove it. Who exactly is it on the left who is making a claim like the one Dr. Laura made that I highlighted there? Who has claimed that because of her family issues she won't have the time to govern or that she has more important things to do or anything like that?

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 10:47 AM) This answer to my question (another question, and a silly one at that) tells me all I need to know about Obama's accomplishments. Of course. If a woman had run for VP on the left and even a single person on the right asked the question, it would be another case of the right being sexist, elitist pigs with no plans for broadening the horizons of their party. But it's ok for the left to ask the question apparently since Palin isn't experienced, and the left is the exclusive bastion of feminist thought. Hypocrisy is beautiful, and the last sentence of yoru post said it beautifully. 2 points to make in reply. If it's a bad thing for the Dems to supposedly cower behind every criticism of Obama as a racial attack, then is it equally bad for the other side to cower behind every criticism of Sarah Palin as an attack on women? Secondly, you make that statement quite readily blaming the left for the family-based criticism of Governor Palin. This leaves me an obvious route to undermine your attack...simply find a prominent figure on the right that is attacking Governor Palin for those reasons. Now, frankly, I disagree with those sentiments. But they're posted now...because you want to pretend that all these anti-feminist attacks against her are coming from those evil liberals, and you're simply wrong. I'm sure there are some going after her for those reasons, but you're trying to pretend that one of the major problems the right wing folks might have with her is coming entirely from my side, and that's just incorrect.

Wow, Steroids Betancourt coming in to replace Steroids Rincon...never thought I'd get to say that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 09:59 AM) So wait, you can learn this stuff? So why can't Palin? Because she has 1 month to do it.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 09:04 AM) That's the problem IMO, the bolded text. I think he wanted Lieberman all along, was convinced that was who he would pick, but buckled at the last second for whatever the reason might have been (too "liberal" of a ticket, no good/young speaker to balance out McCain, couldn't beat Obama with that ticket, etc). I don't think McCain was moving slowly or didn't take advantage of his head start, I just think he buckled and didn't take his guy (Joe Lieberman) at the last second and was left scrambling to find somebody else. I think that he was told by a number of people last week, including the God of Darkness (Karl) that if he actually announced a pro-choice running mate, there would be a floor fight over that nomination and his VP nominee would probably be rejected.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 10:00 AM) Anyone know what Dye is hitting with RISP since August started? Coming in to today, .182.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 08:51 AM) Obama didn't actually get as big of a bounce as I expected for such a well executed speech, but your point is well taken. As for your point, it is 110 percent accurate. That is why I think they should have announced Palin a few weeks to a month ago if this is their strategy, see if it works or not. If they really knew all this was going to come out, i'd have been better to announce her, see how it goes, and if it doesn't work, you always have the "she has changed her mind and wants to drop out to support everything going on with her family back in Alaska" excuse. There is one other issue to consider when thinking about how they did this rollout...it kind of lumps in with the experience one but not exactly... Governor Palin has spent the last 2 years in Alaskan politics. While that has various issues I'm sure, in a lot of cases they're going to be no where near where the other national issues are. She has a vice presidential debate coming up in a month. Basically now, she has a month to learn every single bit of the McCain campaign's policy points on issues she's never had to deal with...along with spending time doing actual campaign events. John McCain's been campaigning for years now and he still can't get all his policy statements right. Unless Governor Palin is ridiculously bright, I have no idea how she could possibly be prepared to get all of that info down. I couldn't do it in a month. She suddenly has to go from knowing about how oil issues relate to alaska to being able to talk intelligently about energy issues nationwide. Think she has much experience dealing with solar power plants? Think she knows much about McCain's climate change policy? His tax policy? His healthcare policy? And perhaps most notably, his foreign policy? Just compared to either Biden or to any of the other major Republican candidates, she's in a position where she simply wouldn't be expected to be working on these topics. Now she has to pivot completely and within one month be prepared to go toe-to-toe with Joe Biden, a man who's been on the campaign trail nationally himself as recently as January and who is a Senate Foreign relations guy. Here's a little thing I'm going to be watching for...I want to see Governor Palin actually take questions from the press. Never mind how hostile they may be to her right now, if she's not taking unscripted questions from the press about various issues and where she stands on them, then that's telling you how prepped she is. She's already been cutting back on scheduled events since stuff has started breaking. She's probably got a long, long way to go to be ready for even that debate.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 08:45 AM) and frankly the averages from toby, cabrera and even ramirez are very empty batting averages ? I disagree.

QUOTE (mreye @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 08:30 AM) Does it really matter at this point if one of them is Bolt or not? With the air of suspicion around two of his 3 teammates he's guilty by association in the court of public opinion. This sucks. Quite frankly, yes it does matter.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 05:06 AM) This was pretty much Obama a couple of years ago... the only different being he had a little more time to sell his story. But...he also has had more time to learn the national game. That's an important point too.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 08:38 AM) The best thing to me is the democratic rallying cry that McCain is "another 4 years of George W. Bush". Look I don't like McCain's pandering to the right that has gone on in the last several months, but to me that is all it is, pandering, not him changing who he is. If you like Obama, well that's fine, and if you don't like McCain, that's just fine too. But McCain is not the same thing as George W. Bush, it's a myth that I am shocked continues to spread. People seem to forget the 2000 GOP battle for president, and just assume they are the same person when they aren't. But there's a huge flaw in that thinking...and it's thinking that the John McCain of 2008 is the same John McCain as we were sold in 2000. Considering that they oppose each other on so many different issues...basically everything related to domestic policy, tax plans, immigration, social security, abortion, torture, you name it...about the only thing that seems constant between the early 2000 McCain and the 2008 McCain is an incredibly aggressive militaristic foreign policy platform. A great summary I read the other day that describes this current candidate...the 2008 version of John McCain is the man George W. Bush has been trying to be for the last 8 years, right down to the flight suit.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 06:30 AM) Thanks, you just made my point. Now, onto another question. I wonder why MSNBC decided not to have Olbermann do the republican convention? Didn't he do a great job with the Democratic convention? I wonder what they were afraid he would say? Or do? Considering the repeated on-air meltdowns of the MSNBC staff at the DNC, I don't think a shakeup is a bad move. Hell, if Olbermann's ratings weren't so high I wouldn't have been surprised if MSNBC suspended him for a while after the DNC.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 06:15 AM) Could it be that with the massive consolidation of newspapers today and the shrinking market, even at firesale prices, not many of them are attractive buys? Here's the rub of that statement though...2 of the biggest right wing newspapers in the country, the Washington Times and NY Post, are pretty darn unprofitable, especially the Washington Times. Their owners, 2 guys named Rev. Sung Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch, have dumped an awful lot of money in to them to keep them running. Rev. Moon has dumped somewhere over $2 billion in to running the Washington Times to this date.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 07:14 AM) I thought Bush was a really good leader at first and then he completely blew it. He's been 2 different presidents since he's had to deal with a Democratic majority. So wait, help me understand this...are you saying he's become a worse leader since 2007 started and was never a good manager?

QUOTE (Soxy @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 08:26 AM) Of course the most interesting question is if those types of questions would be asked if she was a man. Especially anything related to her daughter, I'd expect the answer to be no. On top of that add in anyone who's freaking out over how big her family is or how she's supposed to juggle taking care of them with the demands of the VP job. Etc. On the other hand though, I'm still wondering how the media would have reacted had someone like Chelsea gotten pregnant at age 17. That would have been a tabloid explosion if nothing else...they just loved covering her. It's probably also worth thinking about whether or not she'd be having the same discussion if she had a 17 year old son who was having a child instead of a daughter.

QUOTE (Wanne @ Sep 3, 2008 -> 12:45 AM) I can't believe people who are actually b****ing about the OC trade don't realize that if that trade's not made...Gavin's not in the rotation to start the year. Hmmmmm....what's Gavin's record? OC's been a pretty solid addition. Is he an ideal leadoff guy...not really...but he's raised his avg pretty steadily throughout the year and has provided solid D...what more do you want. So you'd prefer Garland over Gavin right now. Seems like at the least a wash and we got a starting SS out of it...so in my opinion...that argument is a pretty moot point with Gavin's arrival. Actually, Gavin would still have been in the rotation. Gavin didn't have any options left, and they weren't going to let him walk for nothing. The only guy in our starting rotation who had a minor league option left was John Danks. So, quite simply, if you kept Garland, until Jose got hurt, Danks was in AAA.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Sep 2, 2008 -> 06:11 PM) last game jerry owens starts in a white sox uni, is my bet Until 9/3/08, that is

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 2, 2008 -> 06:09 PM) He looks so much better defensively in LF than he does in CF. Seriously, this team really does need to do something this offseason to clear the logjam, other than just letting Griffey go. We just have more OF's than playing time for them.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 2, 2008 -> 07:06 PM) We have a few more years though to see how the Swisher trade was. It's hard to complain about an offseason that gave us a lot of pieces to compete this season. I know it, but really, if he'd hit like advertised in Oakland, we'd be 3-4 games up on the Twins or more right now.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 2, 2008 -> 06:58 PM) Seriously, it's like a recruiting class. You might have a 5 star recruit, a few 4 stars, etc. If the 5 star recruit doesn't pan out, and the 3 star recruits turn out to be studs, then it's still considered a great recruiting class in retrospect. Doesn't mean you don't get pissed if your first round pick busts. Especially with the signing bonuses for these guys these days. (Sorry to flip leagues on you there, thought that worked better, considering how much we gave up to get him.) I'd have no problem at all with any of those moves if Swisher had simply hit like he did last year.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 2, 2008 -> 06:38 PM) And another fine nugget: LINK Rudy is on tap for tomorrow.

North Pole icecap note.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Sep 2, 2008 -> 01:41 PM) During his 19 months of campaigning I can only recall Obama being asked about Rezco and his role in the purchase of his house once. Obama said, its a coincidence and that he may have mentioned the developers name to Tony in passing and that was all that there is to it. Now, I know libs will say its beating a dead horse, but that is irresponsible journalism. I know more about whats going on with a VP candidate of less than a weeks 17 year old daughter than I do about this. Since the media has such a hard on for Obama he never has to answer the tough questions. If theres anyone that thinks that there wasnt more to that real estate transaction than mentioning the developers name in passing I would like to hear about it. Also, if someone hasnt heard the story behind that deal, which would surprise me, I would be happy to elaborate and theres no way thats all that there was to it. Then, when we think we have Obama in a position to answer the tough questions, "That question is above my pay grade" I mean seriously, this guy is running for President, is it too much to ask for him to have at least one interview where he is asked the tough questions and has to answer them? McCain aside, its insane that Obama has gone this long without having to address the Rezco situation, his relationship with Ayers etc. For what it's worth, you're wrong. The Obama Campaign actually dealt with this about as well as they could. To try to make sure you can't truthfully say exactly what you just said, Obama sat down back in March with the Sun Times for 80 minutes and the Tribune for 90 minutes (the 2 papers in the country that quite frankly would know all the details of the story).