Balta1701

Personally, I'd rather the Bulls made a run at Big Ben this offseason instead of Peja (think of the defense with Ben & Chandler in the same lineup) but that's just me.

QUOTE(MurcieOne @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:24 AM) well in that case... lets just hand the colts the lamardi trophy... they havent had a history of failing to win the big game or anything... I too agree the colts are the favorites to win the Super Bowl, but to say the Bears have no chance of winning it... is short sighted at best. Just remember this one thing about a Colts/Bears matchup: Almost every time that a #1 ranked defense has met a #1 ranked offense in the Super Bowl...the #1 ranked defense has won. The latest example was Tampa vs. Oakland. Not a guarantee...but don't count out teams based solely on defense in the playoffs.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:57 AM) Tejada has 4 years and $54 million left on his contract. He can also demand a trade one year after being traded. Mark Prior & Rafael Furcal (even at what the Dodgers signed him for) > Erik Bedard & Miguel Tejada The Cubs would have also won more games with Prior and Furcal than with Bedard and Tejada. You know, I don't know about which way the Cubs would be better...because it would all depend on whether either of those pitchers could stay healthy. But of course, given that the Cubs can't get Furcal no matter what, that's pretty much a moot point.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:46 AM) http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/5192008 I didn't really think that losing Damon was the death knell for the Red Sox, but if the BoSox not only lose out on Glaus, but at the same time lose him to Toronto...then the Red Sox will be in serious trouble.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:34 AM) I agree that signing Furcal and keepign Prior makes a ton more sense I'm sorry, but with the Dodgers offering $13 million a year...beating out the price for Furcal for the Cubs would just have been silly. He's simply not worth that kind of money.

QUOTE(SoxFan562004 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:04 AM) I just get the feeling that with all these names floating around and rumors of 3-4 team trades (the A's from yesterday, now the Sox, etc...) it seems Angelos isn't jumping on any of the Cubs offers, or it would be done. I dont' think Angelos is in any rush to do things, since their preference would almost certainly be to keep Tejada happy and hold onto him. If they can't make that happen within a month or so, depending on whatever private things they're being told, then they'll probably have heard enough offers to know which one is best. When you've got a bargaining chip like Tejada, there's very little reason to rush into things. A better offer might come screaming along all of a sudden, if someone were to get hurt or someone else were to request a trade, or if someone else (manny) were to be traded.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:16 AM) And YAS is going to continue to ride you for it. Fight the Good Fight. I'm not fighting any fight here, I'm just seriously worried about this...this is exactly the sort of thing which can encourage even more Sunnis to turn to violence...if they feel they turned out and should have won more than they did (many Sunnis in Iraq feel they are genuinely a majority in that country no matter what the real facts are) then that's even more motivation to turn to violence. Especially if old CIA guys like Allawi and Chalabi start encouraging the Meme to try to bring more power to their parties by breaking the religious Shia groups who dominate that country.

QUOTE(Pierzynski 12 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:15 AM) No matter what,the Cardinals will still run away in the NL Central.No matter what the Cubs are doing this winter. Pujols. That's all you need to say to explain why. Pujols.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:15 AM) I love that some retard regurgitating on a keyboard got 8 responses and my two solidly cited quotes from reputable newspapers are ignored. Yours was vastly less entertaingly stupid. Honestly though, I can't figure out why we'd want to do Bedard for Garland in any way shape or form, simply because we already have 6 starting pitchers, and that wouldn't solve the problem. If we're trading Garland for pitching, then I want pitching who's arbitration clock hasn't started yet.

QUOTE(bmags @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:05 AM) i have a question about this bedard fellow, its the first i've heard of him, whats he like? Decent pitcher, lefty, decent fastball. Very cheap - only makes league minimum. Probably the O's best pitcher when he's healthy. Had some problems staying healthy in the past though. The O's really started to fall apart when he went on the DL last year. Pitched about 140 innings each of the last 2 years. Had Tommy John surgery a few years ago.

Does this remind anyone else of those annoying threads people made during Sept. and Oct. where it seemed every week someone decided it was a good idea to post those photos of AJ in a bar as something we should all be embarassed about?

QUOTE(Mercy! @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:02 AM) I think it will be interesting to follow Obama's career. But he certainly needs some seasoning on the national stage so that everyone can get a better idea of the sort of leader he would be. I can't imagine him leading the ticket in 2008. There is another side to that token though...Obama is a Senator. The last Senator to run for Pres. was John Kerry. What did his long, "Seasoned" record as a Senator get him? Dozens of allegations that he flip-flopped, was a liar, had no convictions, etc. Why? Because that's what you have to do when you're in the Senate. You wind up seeing things like 1 version of a good bill that's bad because someone stuck some stupid thing in, and voting both for and against the same bill, and suddenly you're a flip-flopper and weak on defense. The long record in the senate is not always a great thing. Personally, if Obama runs for the nomination in 08, he's got my primary vote already. No matter who else runs against him. Unless he does something really stupid like marrying Jeri Ryan and divorcing her or somehting like that. He's the best speaker our party has not named Bill Clinton, he's the best representative of what our party should be, he has vastly less baggage than someone like Hillary, and he is just a wonderful story.

Flasoxx seems to be doing a self-chronicle in another thread, and I seem to be doing one here, but I continue to think This is important...

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 09:59 AM) Not to mention that the Yampa/Green river complex has a lot of federally protected wilderness, park area and other restricted space. Plus that area is an gold mine for archaeologists, paleantologists, etc. Yeah, I actually visited a privately owned mine in that shale complex last summer, got myself a couple of really nice well preserved fish fossils. None of that would survive the process of extracting oil. None of it. You'd have to destroy the entire region to get the stuff out. You ever see a countertop with a fish fossil in it? That's where they come from.

QUOTE(Adam G @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 09:57 AM) Contreras, Garland, and Sweeney for Prior? Gag me. That would be absolutely Horrific. You'd have to make it Prior and Santana somehow before I'd think that we were getting fair value. And I'm talking the Santana up north, not the rookie out here.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 08:40 AM) Torii just had a freak injury last year, I'm sure he'll be fine. They improved an infinite amount at 2nd base because Nick Punto and Luis Rivas suck, White is an upgrade over Lecroy but like you said he has to stay healthy. Mauer and Morneau will both be better this season and their rotation is going to be improved as well imo. There isn't a team in the AL that scares me more then Minny to be honest. Yes, Hunter's injury was a freak injury...but so was Magglio Ordonez's Injury. So were all 3 of Prior's injuries. So was Mauer's injury the year before. You know as well as I do that when a person suffers a serious injury, there are always reprocussions long into the future. Hell, both my knees keep telling me that. Mauer and Morneau are, IMO, the keys to their lineup. If they're both "Better" as you say...and if other key people stay healthy...then that team could beat the crap out of everyone except us.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 09:16 AM) I just read an article a couple of weeks ago that said there may be in excess of 100 billion barrels of oil in the shale deposits of colorado,utah and wyoming. Yes, there probably is something like that much stuck in the Eocene age Green River formation. However, it's even less concentrated than the stuff in Canada. Which means...higher costs for extraction, more pollution, and it even has the negative part of being right in the middle of the U.S., so that all the pollution those plants would belch out would float east and wind up right over Chicago.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 08:43 AM) Fixed/ OK, the pressure's on you now. So if I got the joke but don't want to spoil it, what 17th century monk should I explain it to?

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 08:37 AM) Revenues have increased dramatically since the tax cuts were enacted. States are seeing a likewise increase in revenues flowing into their treasuries. It must be because the DEMS voted against the tax cuts. Dude, there are a ton of reasons why revenues have increased, and it's not just the tax cuts. First and foremost, the population of the U.S. has significantly increased since the first tax cuts (The working population grows by like 100,000-150,000 a month in this country on average). You increase the tax base by 5 million people, you're going to increase revenues. Furthermore, yes revenues have increased, but at the same time, government expenditures have increased (as has the size of government). The more money government spends by hiring people/letting out contracts/pumping money into the economy, the more the government is going to get back in total revenues. This is Keynesian economics in a nutshell I believe...the government runs a deficit, and it causes economic activity to increase for a time because extra cash is being pumped into the economy. The risk with that sort of economic plan is not the short term, it's the long term - i.e. the Great Society & Vietnam war spending packages were directly linked to the stagflationary economy of the 70's. You cannot just say "Oh revenues have increased, the tax cuts did their job" totally in a vacuum. If you were to do that, I could simply respond by saying "Yes, revenues have increased, but they have increased significantly less than the magnitude of the initial tax cuts, so we must be on the left hand side of the "Laffer curve"." No matter how much either side wants to narrow down the current economy to a slogan or a simple proof, it will not work. There are way too many variables at any given time - this doesn't even consider the dramatic rise in consumer debt encouraged by the fed, or the housing boom, or the refinancing boom, all of which may have dramatically increased revenues by creating jobs but all of which may significantly weaken as interest rates continue to rise (in part because of the massive tax cut related deficits)

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 08:36 AM) I heard the Creationist Science Fair begins every year at nightfall in the evening preceding October 23rd. . . [/erudite joke grenade for PA or Soxy]

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 08:23 AM) That's an improved lineup with their fantastic pitching, they scare me more then the Indians. That's an improved lineup...IF people like Hunter, Mauer, and White can stay healthy and if Morneau can produce. In baseball, the more "IF"s you have, the less likely they all are to come true. They're counting on an awful lot of things to go right, which I guess is what you have to do when you're a small market team.

Morneau and Mauer are still going to be the keys to that lineup. If they perform, they're a threat.

QUOTE(Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 22, 2005 -> 06:02 PM) Why sign a roid monkey? Well, he should still only be facing a 10 game suspension, so it doesn't hurt them as much. And at least he's been seemingly a lot more forward about it than anyone else...said yesterday that he was struggling as a yankee, so he went a head and took them and was tested the next day, calls it a mistake, may very well be lying but at least seems on the surface to be more honest than Palmeiro.

Does anyone think that Milwaukee might also be a potential candidate? I know it wouldn't have that nice SoCal location we keep talking about but they do need pitching help next year, they have a fairly deep minor league, we have a good recent trade relationship with them, and they may very well want to risk making a push next year. Just another name to toss out. Btw, good to see that this thread's length has surpassed the previous thread's already.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 01:37 AM) This year's draft class is meant to be pretty weak. Here are the top 5 at the moment; 1 - Rudy Gay - SF - Conn 2 - Adam Morrison - SG - Gonzaga 3 - LaMarcus Aldridge - PF - Texas 4 - Andrea Bargani - PF - Italy 5 - Rajon Rondo - PG - Kentucky Has there been a draft class that hasn't been described as "Weak" since the turn of the century other than the one with Lebron, Melo, Wade, & Kirk?