Balta1701

A bloggity response...

QUOTE(qwerty @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:57 AM) This is several days old by now. This guy is so good but such a damn douche. I think we're just learning about how bad it got...Link

Well, he'd been good for several months, I guess he was overdue.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:44 AM) Hilarious! I agree, Republicans bashing a business for exploring a revenue stream is absolute hilarity. P.S. Thanks to whichever host moved this thread!

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:37 AM) If AA is asking for "donations" they are in serious need of financial help. A conservative offers a service or product for a fee. A liberal sticks his hand out. 1 year of the "Limbaugh Letter" - $34.95, gets 13 issues. Subscribing as an Air America associate: Free stuff = bumper stickers, tote bag, mention on the air. Pay if you're willing.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:34 AM) That depends which poll you look at. Also, the errors in many of these polls overlap, which would mean that the numbers aren't statistically different. Gas prices have also gone down signficantly since October, which has undoubtedly helped. As opposed to the "PR offensive" from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that called Bush a liar and a criminal? What a joke... :rolly As soon as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can request and get free air time on all the networks for speeches to try to bump up their approval ratings, we can talk about their PR Offensives, ok?

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:30 AM) It seems to me that you bashed O'Reilly, then gave kudos to AA for asking for donations while giving away bumper stickers and stuff as a thank you. This discussion of AA Opened with others bashing AA for taking donations. I responded by pointing out that all of the other media guys do almost the same thing - it's just a question of what they're giving away. O'Reilly can do whatever the heck he wants or sell whatever he wants, I could care less. If people are willing to pay that fee, it's a smart business move, and I have no interest in bashing him for it. But I find it totally contradictory to say that AA is clearly losing money because they're asking for money when guys like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, etc., are all doing the same thing, and that the statement I've been trying to respond to.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:08 AM) http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIADS...ml/301605.shtml? I blame the Dutch. Can't really explain it but its something to do with their wooden shoes. "400 years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihoods threatened by automation flung their wooden shoes called Sabot into the machines to stop them."

QUOTE(Felix @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:21 AM) And again, since this has been asked at least 3 or 4 times, what happens if one guy gets hurt? We don't have anyone in our minors to take their place. A valid point, but it should be weighed against another point...what happens if we lose Contreras for only draft picks at the end of the year, when we could get something immensely more valuable for him right now while we do have him?

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 10:18 AM) And one last fun bit of trivia: Bush 43's approval ratings have gone up ~10% over the past four months, coinciding with lower gasoline prices and further removal from this summer's record-breaking hurricane season. ??????????? He's gone up relative to mid-November, thanks in no small part to the Iraqi elections and his PR offensive associated with it, but that's because he was down even further in November. Compared with September, he's basically right back where he was.

QUOTE(sayitaintso @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 09:59 AM) That was unbelieveable, only about 4 guys went to the DL. (el duque, pods, frank, gload, im not sure if that is it but i think it is) Marte also hit the DL for a stretch. Also...it's not really that unbelievable for your team to stay that healthy...if you're mostly working with a young team, and you're not overworking people (i.e. Ozzie's "Sunday Lineup" which gave people a chance to sit down, rest, and avoid turning any little tweaks into nagging injuries)

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 09:53 AM) A lot of that is because they sold areas like the PSB and the Patio as regular tickets instead of add ons. The regular season capacity is more like 39k. Which means that for us to hit 3 million, we'd have to be near capacity at almost every single game - if we have to average 37,000+ and our capacity is 39,000, then you need 1 sellout for every game that you have a crowd of 35,000 fans, or you won't make it. 3 million just seems too high for us right now...I just can't see us selling out enough ballgames and drawing in enough big crowds during winter/after school restarts for games against K.C. or Tampa Bay.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 03:06 AM) It happened on Clinton's watch. It was his responsibility to respond. If Bush had responded two+ years after the fact you would have screamed bloody murder. I'll tell you something, in all honesty. The rhetoric you guys put out here has about driven me to the point that I won't even consider voting for any democrat for any office. Except of course, according to the 9/11 commission, we didn't really have good, solid evidence about who did the bombing, evidence that we felt would have held up in court, until like Jan/Feb of 01. Edit: Let me add in, Clinton probably had enough preliminary evidence to respond in Dec of 00, and he didn't. That was a mistake, but it's much more of one in hindsight. Both Clinton and Bush had ample opportunities to respond.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 02:33 AM) What? O'Rielly has to give everything away? Or is being successful and making a buck against liberal principals? So Air America gets bashed in this thread for selling exactly the same sorts of "Memberships", but then when I try to turn it around and point out how O'Reilly, Limbaugh et al. do exactly the same thing, I get that as a reply.

There's one more point I keep bringing up in these threads talking about mid-season trades. Let's assume for a moment that we're going to be in contention next year for the playoffs. Let's also assume that there will be other teams in contention, but who discover that for whatever reason, their starting pitching is not what they hoped it would be. It happens every year - it'll happen for the Yankees sometime in April this year, it'll probably happen to the Red Sox the first time Beckett's blister shows up, it'll happen to the Angels when they realize they have only 4 starters, it'll happen to the Braves when one of their guys goes down, it'll happen to the Rangers, it'll happen to the Cubs, it'll probably happen to the Dodgers, the Cardinals, the Padres, the Giants, hell it'll happen to almost the entire league. So...which team do we want to help beat us? Let's say Vazquez comes around and pitches like he did in 2003. Can someone out there point to the team that they'd like to give a massive shot in the arm to at midseason? The teams in the market for pitching are going to be the exact teams we don't want to help, because those will be the teams we need to beat. The Royals and Devil Rays aren't likely going to be wanting to acquire expensive pitching at the trading deadline. If we give up a pitcher, especially for some combination of ML guys and prospects, we're making the team receiving the pitching better, and that could very well come back to bite us later. If we want to put ourselves in a situation where it doesn't hurt us, then we're not going to get value back on it. Think about this...which teams are likely to be willing to give up the most for 1 pitcher? The Yankees, the Red Sox, the Angels. Teams that want to win now while their perceived window is still open. They'd be the ones likely to give us the most in return for a guy. Does anyone think trading with any of those teams would be a good idea? I sure don't. Not if we want to beat them.

Just what the Red Sox need...another guy who can't play SS or CF.

QUOTE(SoxFanInDallas @ Dec 30, 2005 -> 06:45 AM) What do you think the 2006 season will bear? 3,000,000 (37,073 avg.)? Lower? Higher? What is the max capacity @ the ballpark these days? How close would that average be to a sellout every game?

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 03:21 PM) Damn the Venezuelans for not taking advantage of super high priced profits and instead offering to help those who need it. Oh and by the way, 200 a month would kinda be the cost of three monthly bus passes at 75 a month, right? Oh yeah, right. Would the kids have to buy a bus pass? I thought the same thing, but I didn't want to say anything without knowing more about busing in Chicago.

QUOTE(WinninUgly @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 03:16 PM) Yeah, having 5 starters locked up thru 2007 makes it hard to believe the Sox will re-sign Contreras at all unless they are willing to deal one of the other SP's. Waiting until ST or until the trading deadline seems to be the best time to find desperate teams. It seems like Contreras is trying to break the bank since he probably feels that this is his best shot to get a great contract. The problem with waiting until the trading deadline to find a desperate team is that the desperate teams may very well be the teams we don't want to help out by giving them a dominant starting pitcher. What do we do if we hold onto him and the best offers come from the Red Sox or the Angels? Do we really want to go into a pennant race and give a dominant starting pitcher to our main opposition in the playoffs?

QUOTE(Steve Bartman's my idol @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 01:18 PM) What I find disgusting is, no matter what the catastrophic event, there are scumbags who will find ways to profit from it, and take advantage of people who really need assistance! :headshake One thing to keep in mind is that almost all of the small businesses we're talking about had no idea that they were getting loans out of the 9/11 dollars, they were only applying for loans from the Small Business Administration, and were routed to the 9/11 dollars by people in the SBA. Many of them first learned that their loans came from those funds when media outlets called them for comment. It's also worth noting that when these reports first surfaced several months ago...Senator Olympia Snow (R, Maine), chairperson of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, pledged to hold hearings to investigate the matter. That was back in September. As far as I know those hearings haven't even begun.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 01:40 PM) Actually, Gload plays corner OF as well. He even played 3 games there in 2005 (2 in RF, one in LF) with the Sox. He is a solid defender at 1B or in the OF, with the exception of a weak arm. Gload's arm wasn't just week, last year it spent the whole first half of the year wounded and left him on the DL and in the minor leagues.

Hopefully playing under Girardi may help him improve some of his weaknesses in calling games that we've heard so much about.

A few response points: 1. It makes no real sense to me to evaluate the Administration's statements in comparison to official investigations since the most relevant investigation, the one in the Senate which was supposed to look into whether or not the Administration's statements on Iraq were exaggerated, has barely gone forward (that, if you'll recall, was Harry Reid's reason for shutting down the Senate back in November) 2. This article makes the point several times over that Saddam could have a nuclear weapon within a year if it was able to obtain fissile material. This is a non sequitor. Obtaining fissile material is the hard part. If you gave me fissile material, I could find a way to build a nuclear bomb within a year. The Trib calls those warnings "Menacing", I call them misleading. And highly so. 3. It is interesting how the Trib casually notes Egypt as an example of the advance of Democracy in the Middle East, when just last week Egypt jailed a man for the crime of (shocking) running against Mubarak in the last election.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 12:19 PM) I'd agree ifthey would've asked for donations right off the bat, rather than after they were far in the red. It's my understanding that isn't the case. Also, they'd be wise to offer people something in return for their donation... at least a calendar or a coffee mug. Geez, even PBS does better than that. I'm still missing 1 point...where do you get the data saying that they're "Far in the red"? And as far as I know, they give away bumper stickers, tote bags, and on-air mentions in return for donations...signup page right there says it clearly.

QUOTE(drowninginflame @ Dec 29, 2005 -> 11:58 AM) he'll be making trades & phone calls from the operating table Local anesthetic?