Balta1701

"Moving quickly through the minors" - probably the most important thing right now, since it looks like we will be down to 5 starters either this year or next, and if he have a decent middle of the order guy in AA...that would be useful.

Opens closet door...finds old 2000 AL Central champs shirt Puts on 2005 AL Central Champs shirt Smiles

I'm just sure the Dodgers are thrilled that Nomar will be getting extra playing time this season. I'm sure it'll do wonders for him in overcoming all those other freak injuries he's suffered over the past few years.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jan 14, 2006 -> 09:45 PM) Tampa Bay did very well here. If there's one thing they need more of, it's quality pitching prospects. Tiffany's a good one, and I think if Jackson's handled properly, he can maybe produce what everyone thought he was originally going to do a couple of years back. I'm not so sure about that...Jackson "if handled properly" might be able to produce, but he's already pitched in the big leagues so I believe his arbitration clock has already started, and he's only on 1 down season, so it may well be possible that Coletti thinks his stock would be dropping lower in the near future and dumping him now.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Jan 16, 2006 -> 09:02 AM) Probably would've been Count, Sweeney, and Woodson. As long as none of those prospects are named McCarthy.

Back in the fall when this first came up, Buehrle said his sore arm was mainly due to actually having too much rest during the playoffs, not too much work. In his words, if I remember correctly, the extra time off let things heal up a bit too much. Kinda like when you take 2 weeks off and then go back to the gym for the first time.

Pretty much as expected...the new line is that he's not among the dead. Damn.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 05:22 PM) It'd be neater to give him the head lice inspection and humiliate him. Bin Laden is the one that we need to capture alive, because capturing him alive humiliates their whole organization. Zawahiri...we can do whatever we want to him, whether its killing or capturing, because he's not nearly as much of a symbol as Bin Laden.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 04:37 PM) I would almost dispute this. Bledsoe was getting good protection in our early games, no doubt. Then Flozell Adams got injured. So you've got Torrin Tucker and Rob Pettiti as your Offensive Tackles. Marco Rivera never recovered from his back injury before training camp. Al Johnson still gets pushed around by huge nose tackles because he's not big enough. And Larry Allen is just getting too old now. Exactly the point...Bledsoe was sacked 20 times in the 1st half of the season and 29 times in the 2nd half. His QB Rating in the 1st half was 97, in the 2nd half it dropped to 70. Bledsoe's season looked decent for the time he was getting decent protection. He would not have gotten any protection at all with the Bills, because their O-Line was constantly terrible. He may very well have wound up hurt. He probably would have been better than Losman because he's a veteran, but it wouldn't have been by much because he'd have had no protection and he'd be on the ground all the time. Personally I think that, especially once Spikes went down, it became a good idea to just start getting Losman more playing time so that maybe he can develop into something. Bledsoe wouldn't be QBing the Bills to a title 2 years from now even if we held onto him. Losman, however, is still a piece that can grow into a system, and he did show some promise at the end of the year.

Pakistani sources are suggesting that a U.S. airstrike a few days ago inside of Pakistan on a suspected Al Qaeda safehouse may very well have killed Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the #2 man in that organization and the guy who probably deserves most of the credit for its construction. No confirmation yet and there probably won't be any for a couple days, and I think it's been reported a couple times that he may be dead and none of them have panned out thus far, but this would be a wonderful victory if we got him.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:32 PM) That might be true because the precedence had already been set, if you know what I mean. I think this has been done for 20 years or more, and was just now blown out of the water because Bush is the man they want to take down. JMO, of course. If that's the case, can we send Tenet to jail now for lying during his testimony before Congress a few years ago where he said they were getting the FISA warrants?

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:30 PM) First, I don't see how this is a youth movement. This was the same exact players that played in the ALCS, just in different positions. So this is more smoke and mirrors. There actually is no change. The Angels will be 2nd in the West next year. Kotchman, McPherson, and Mathis played in the ALCS?

In other words...there are more people on the East Coast than on the West Coast.

Oh god, there's a #4?

QUOTE(KevHead0881 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 01:46 PM) Paxson: No Gordon deal If that was KW, I would interpret the article to mean "3 days from now the deal will be complete." I don't know about Pax yet.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 01:46 PM) I actually agree with the fact that some fringe eco-groups are blocking GM crops and some developments like that for no good reason. Yeah there are some groups blocking GM crops, but I wouldn't in all cases say there's "no good reason." One of the big concerns about GM crops in general is that even if you have a perfectly designed GM crop, you've inserted genes into it which are out of equilibrium with the natural system. Given how easily plants can cross-breed, or how many different varieties of animals might eat them or transport them, it's entirely possible that at some point there will be some very severe downsides to GM crops. I'm not opposed to the development or use of GM crops, but I think that we should be very careful in how we introduce them to the environment. All it takes is 1 little mistake to develop somewhere along the line and we could find tens of thousands of acres of land overrun by some sort of weed that picked up a GM gene and suddenly becomes incredibly hearty and pernicious or resistant to a predator that used to keep it under control.

He has at least some interesting thought lines, but I don't think he's taken them to their full extremes. For example, he cites one possible benefit of global warming being more arable land for trees. Well, that is one possibility, but on the other hand, you can also enlarge deserts with global warming, thus removing arable land by cutting off the rain supply. Or you can shift weather patterns to the point that the areas getting moisture are impractical places for growing. Or for that matter, you can make several arable areas significantly colder, to the point that it has a large negative impact on the land. I think he's fallen into the classic trap of "global warming", which I think is just thinking that the whole world gradually warms up, and ignoring all of the little variations it can produce, like significant cooling in some areas, large shifts int he climate patterns of others, etc. For that reason, I still prefer the term "Climate change", since it is probably more accurate.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 01:19 PM) I wonder how things will change after the Abramoff scandal and what role lobbyists will play in Washington. Seems like the environment was very low on the lobbying depth chart. The environment is almost always going to be low on the lobbying chart, because there's very little profit in it. For example, what would you expect to be more profitable, the coal industry or the people who want to cut down on air pollution from coal? The mining industry or people cleaning up abandoned mines? etc. Nothing would make me happier than to see the lobbying environment overhauled in D.C., but given how it's developed in such a way as to keep the people beholden to it in power and remove those who aren't excessively beholden to lobbyists from power, even the Abramoff scandal probably won't be enough to shake it, even if it takes down 60 congressmen like Jack said.

QUOTE(Soxy @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 01:01 PM) Um, it would be The Hitler Youth (I can see why you're not able to think of that. . .). And it was pretty much compulsary (I'll save you looking that up: it means required). I believe that the Pope also left the HY about as soon as he could, even while the war was still on, in order to do church work, if my memory serves.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 12:39 PM) Did we forget that the ABA said he was well qualified? Oh, they are part of the Bush cabal, I forgot. Does anyone actually know what standards the ABA uses to judge a candidate as well-qualified? I honestly don't, and without that, for all I know is that means he passed the bar exam.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 12:41 PM) What is his view on abortion??? The phrase he used, which Alito refused to endorse, was that Roe v. Wade was "Settled law".

Also from the Church thread... QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 12:15 PM) Who's this Satan person? Does he exist? QUOTE(zach61 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 12:18 PM) I believe he is #81 for the NY Islanders. Yes, he does exist.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 12:26 PM) The Twins are probably a year away from having a rotation as good as the White Sox, and their bullpen will almost always have live arms in it. Rebuilding would be dumb. Retooling would be smart. The question with the Twins is probably going to be the same for the next few years...do they try to stay close every year and hope their pitching gets hot enough and people stay healthy enough for them to make a run @ the end, or do they at some point trade some of their young pitchers for 1-2 big bats to really make a run for the title? Right now, they're sort of hanging inbetween, which I don't think is smart. Case in point Torii Hunter...if they want to just hang around and hope it all comes together, he should be traded before he becomes a FA, because they won't be able to afford to sign him. On the other hand, if they were willing to trade away some young pieces, they could try to make 1 last run this year while they still have him. Hanging inbetween ends up just giving you draft picks.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 11:10 AM) *ding ding ding* winner!! You could see this coming the moment Levy was brought into the fold. I thought that too, even though I'm not sure I like it. Penn state, eat your heart out.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 10:27 AM) Your post also got me thinking about this. Are you telling me that you agree with every blank of every canditate that you vote for? Or are you telling me that you should agree with everything that a canditate saids, if you are going to vote for them? I am also curious as to what you disagree with your party and canditates on as I don't think I have ever seen you actually say something like that? Of course I don't agree with everything either a candidate or a party says or does. Best example I could give is that I actually agree with you on the budget-deficit issue, and for example I thought that the Medicare drug bill the Democrats wrote was basically worse than the one the Republicans passed. The question I think you have to consider overall is...how important is each issue to you? If I genuinely felt I had a candidate who would advocate a balanced budget, barring him being like a neo-Nazi or something like that, he or she would probably wind up getting my vote, simply because I think the idea of paying interest on debt to cover normal expenditures (and not recovering from a disaster like Katrina or launching a large infrastructure building program) is ludicrous. But like you, I don't see any candidate out there willing to do that. The best alternative I could give in that case would be the split-Congress solution, where each party controls 1 house, and each side has a chance to genuinely knock out the stupid handouts that the other side tries to write in. Actually, when I was in the Dean camp before his meltdown in the primaries, I had 2 main reasons for being in his camp...#1 was Iraq, obviously, but #2 was his skills with Vermont's budget...Vt is the only state in the union not required to find a way to balance its budget every year, and it was badly out of balance when Dean took over that state, but he actually moved the budget back into balance and set aside reserves so that when the economy tanked in 00-01, Vt was able to weather the storm quite readily. After that, well, then it came down to choosing between 2 people I wasn't thrilled with at all, but considering how I view Bush's performance, it wasn't really a contest. If it makes you feel better, just to prove I can be bi-partisan, I did vote for Lugar in 00 when I was still living in Indiana, and I'd probably do that again in 06 unless the Dems ran someone dynamite against him.