Balta1701

William F. Buckley Jr., one of the great voices of conservatism in this country and the founder of the National Review Magazine, has written a piece declaring the Iraq war a failure, and suggests that it's time for Mr. Bush to figure out a way to try to acknowledge defeat and mitigate the failure rather than trying to push for all of his objectives. Naturally, he obeys the 11th commandment and carefully avoids putting blame on Mr. Bush for either launching the debacle or for the incredibly inept execution of the post war rebuilding, but it's hard for me to be amazed by seeing Buckley saying this. It's worth your time to read the rest.

Hey, Republicans, you want to be able to vote your cronies billions of dollars in contracts, be as corrupt as you want, declare war on random disarmed countries, make this country reviled around the world, and still get me to vote for you? Here is how you do it. Right now, I can see no other way to even begin to clean up the morass of corruption that is Congress and the White House other than to totally remove the lobbyists from the equation. As long as there are lobbyists, then there will be a reason for elected officials to work for the benefit of someone other than the voters who elected them. That is where a huge number of these problems start.

Oh, 1 more interesting thought I just had. Who would you rather have on your team if you could pick between them and their contract details were the same...Ben Wallace or Elton Brand?

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 12:41 AM) All good points. It's just Tyson will never be a fifth of the offensive player Brand is, while Brand rebounds just as well. Obviously Tyson is a better defender, but the trade is just indefensible, was then and is now. And I don't see how this will be our conference to lose anytime soon, we are 2 studs away from having a chance, and finding a stud big man scorer and 2 guard isn't easy, and with Brand you have 1 of those on the roster already. Yes, we are 2 studs away from having a very good chance. With luck, those Knick picks will cover at least 1 of them....hopefully the Big, which is harder to find. The other? Well, that's up to Pax and Skiles. Hopefully Tyson can be a part of it. Right now, no one in their right mind wouldn't take that trade back, especially if we could still deal Curry to the Knicks for their pick. But this is still a team that's building and trying to grow, and I just can't say that there never will be a way to defend that trade...a lot of that is hope...but hopefully it won't be missplaced, since I like watching guys who wear the word "Chicago" on their shirts carrying around tropies.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 12:45 AM) I second that. It's gonna be so sweet watchin those two hit back to back this year. THUNDER....

Aside from just Thome's abilities...there's another real good reason why this lineup might have one Hell of a lot more thunder next year...Thome. Trib yesterday Just from watching highlights, it sure looks like Thome is one of those guys with real good power to every field, including a lot of bombs to the opposite field. That is something that every person here knows this team was sorely lacking last year...up and down the lineup, we had person after person trying to pull every single pitch. We had Konerko early in the season declaring he was a "Pull hitter", AJ saying Walker was helping him try to pull the ball, Crede, Uribe, and Rowand constantly popping up outside pitches because they're trying to pull them, etc. These guys don't need to hit the ball the other way every time they're up. But if their goal is to just pull the ball, they're going to turn into outs. When their goal is to drive the ball, they hang back on it just a little bit more, and they take what the pitcher gives them. When they did that last year, we saw Uribe catch fire for a couple weeks, we saw the Rally Crede of September, and we saw Konerko be one of the top 2-3 hitters in the AL after June 1. If Thome keeps it in these guys' heads that they don't need to pull every pitch, that every so often they can go the opposite way when people pitch you away...then suddenly those popups will turn into solid singles the other way...and this team will be absolute murder to pitch to. If every single person in that lineup hit as well as we have reason to believe they can...this team could score more runs than the Yankees. It's not likely, and it'll take a lot of work, but it's quite possible. 1 last thing to remember...last year, there were only 49 runs between us and the #4 offense in the AL (Cleveland). That's not a big difference at all. The difference between the #4 spot and the #3 spot was 75 runs. So we could make a serious jump in how our offense measurs up with just some small improvements.

If the Crede of September and October decides that he can't cut his hair and he needs to stay around for about 6 more months...he will be hitting 6th or even 5th before you know it.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 12:12 AM) Jermaine realizes that it's time to let 2005 go. I like it. The fans can savor 2005 for as long as they want. The players realize they almost have to act like 05 never happened. Their job is not to rest until the amount of added weight they're carrying on their hands increases again. And somehow I think they won't.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Feb 25, 2006 -> 12:08 AM) Elton has a serious chance at the MVP if the Clippers can get to 50 wins. My top 5 canidates for MVP to this point are Nash, Brand, Dirk, Billups, Lebron. I don't like him any more than anyone else, but you're fooling yourself if you think Kobe isn't top 5 in MVP right now.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 09:48 PM) I like Tyson as a player when he plays like he has the last what, 6 weeks now? But I will never truly get over that Elton Brand trade, and it will only bet worse in this years playoffs. I hate you Jerry Krause. I will get over that deal when Tyson Chandler puts a ring on his finger during the introductions of the first Bulls game of a season. Before our friend Hammer gets here...it's still worth noting that Tyson has like 5-6 years before he gets to the age Brand currently is, so there's still tiem for him to mature, adapt, and improve. With some luck...he'll make us proud of that deal before the end. Even if we had Brand right now, we wouldn't be able to challenge the Heat or Pistons. 2-3 years down the road though...if everything goes right with every player, that could be our conference to lose.

Damn I miss Jimmy Johns...

So, according to UPI, this deal would actually affect 21 ports, and not 6. I find it hard to believe that UPI isn't wrong here, since I just think that in the week since I started this thread, SOMEONE out there would have noticed "Hey, there are another 15 ports involved here" and written that up. Well, we'll see. They are owned by the same wonderful folks who own the Washington Times, but they usually do very good work.

QUOTE(minors @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 08:53 PM) And I really don't care I might just suprise you. I believe the Filibuster was created entirely so that people like Minors could have a place to chime in alongside people like me, where both of us can make arses of ourselves without being banned.

See, this is what happens when you're watching Family Guy DVD commentaries...Kip beats me to posting things. Yeah...so on it's own this is a bad sign. But on the other hand, if there was a simultaneous increase in level 2 or level 3 ready units compared to level 4, that would still be a positive sign, despite the fact that category 1 has declined from 3 to 0 in about a year. The problem is, the Administration has decided to use the moniker "In the fight", which has no technical definition, in order to come up with some statistic which makes it sound like things are improving, without telling us what "in the fight" means. So, on it's face, this is a bad sign, but it's possible that this could be a pointless bad sign...if the decline in readiness of those 3 units were associated with a rise in the average readiness level, which is something we can't evaluate based on the data we have, since all the administration has given us is the pointless phrase "in the fight".

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 05:14 PM) Duly noted. And the Knicks have scored 0 points in 4:17 of basketball so far. Welcome to the Madness Mr. Franchise. You'll fit right in. C'Mon Bobcats....

National Review's Michael Ledeen

QUOTE(minors @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 03:19 PM) Of course one solid answer is adpotion there are many loving families who can not convceve, who are just waiting for a child. It is really sad that we treat our convicted murdering thugs better than our unborn children. At least the thugs have tons of rights while the child has none real sad. As long as they're not Gay.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 02:35 PM) People who equate the 2 are completely clueless and stupid. Something tells me Nuke doesn't like the Catholic church

QUOTE(Be Good @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 09:54 AM) Dolphins, and Lions targeting Brees, who is set to be a FA in March, since the Bolts decline to tag him. Both teams would be making very smart decisions, IMO, if he can come back remotely healthy.

QUOTE(Yoda @ Feb 23, 2006 -> 04:09 PM) Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan vs. A Day In The Life - The Beatles

QUOTE(ZoomSlowik @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 12:37 PM) Garland also cut his walk rate considerably from previous years to this year. If you're pitching to contact while putting that many guys on, you're playing with fire. On that I won't disagree with you. The only part i took issue with was talking about his strikeout numbers.

Dang, now my Soxtalk Firefox plugin is out of date.

QUOTE(ZoomSlowik @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 12:33 PM) As for Wang, he was decidedly mediocre last year. His ERA was respectable, but he had very few strikeouts and put a lot of guys on base. That's not a good sign for the future. Wang is a sinker-ball pitcher, so just like for Garland, Strikeouts aren't necessarily that important for him.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 12:27 PM) i worked some girl that thougth the onion was a real newspaper The Beijing Evening News once ran with an Onion Article for its 1.25 million subscribers. Link

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Feb 24, 2006 -> 12:16 PM) Wang is only 26 and has put up fairly solid numbers throughout the minors, and while he may not be able to crack the Sox 6, he isn't bad...probably better than mediocre. Given, it was his rookie season, and the league hadn't seen him yet, so perhaps they will adjust to him and start hitting him harder next year...just have to wait and see. IMO, the big concern with Wang is that despite being quite young, he's never thrown more than 122 innings at any level as far as BP tells me. Which to me, suggests that he might be a wee bit of an injury risk. BMac, for example threw 172 innings in 2004, between the 3 levels he played at.