Balta1701

QUOTE(gosox41 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 03:46 PM) I think the Sox should get a prospect back for trading JG for Vazquez. Is Steven Drew available?

QUOTE(iWiN4PreP @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 03:32 PM) My dad was saying they were trying to get Eric Moulds... The Bills would be crazy to give him up IMO as a bills fan. Especially with young talent at the Wideout position that's still learning. But then again, if the right offer came along...something that would help the Bills' Offensive line...

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 01:51 PM) Actually my personal view is that if they use nukes, we make them into the biggest parking lot in the middle east. See if the sand will turn to glass. But trust me, if Israel is glowing and we start to build up to go to war with Iran. People will protest. Michael Moore can do a documentary on how the evil americans came to Israels aid. Unfortunately...there's one real big problem with the concept of any sort of a nuclear response to a nuclear terrorist attack on Israel based anywhere in the Middle East...some of you probably can guess it...OIL!!! It is possible to launch nuclear strikes within the middle east. It is almost impossible to do so without putting in huge jeopardy the world's last remaining supplies of what has been our single most valuable limited natural resource. If we nuke Iran...what are we going to do about all of that oil sitting under Iran which will suddenly become inaccessible? What will we do when 1/10 of the worlds supply of oil becomes unavailable for years, if not decades? This is an entirely serious question. Would the U.S. be willing to completely sacrifice a huge fraction of the world's oil reserves in a retaliatory nuclear strike? Would you be wililng to pay $15 a gallon? What would that do to the U.S. economy?

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 02:50 PM) I love how NY is hyping this as the Yankees uniting the trifecta of shortstops on one team. Maybe 3-5 years ago, this would have been spectacular. But now, adding Nomar to that currently overpaid and underachieving team just makes me laugh. Let them have Nomar, their starting pitching is still a train wreck, they have no visible chemistry, and appear to have next to nothing in the minors. And who to blame but the Boss? Thats the greatest part, IMO. But surely if you give enough money to guys who have been badly injured previously (Jaret Wright, Nomar, Johnson, etc.) it has to work eventually, right?

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 03:14 PM) Look at what the Cubs gave up for Pierre. Now, look at what the A's gave up for Bradley. And now, he appears to have interest in Jock Jones. Hendry is a horrible GM. But what would Bradley do the first time a Cub fan tries to grab his hat? You think it was ugly last time...

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 02:32 PM) So does this deal signalize no Frank to Oakland? If Swisher is moving to first base then I assume Dan Johnson will Dh meaning no room for Frank. For all we know though, Beane could be figuring that Thomas may get only 200-250 at bats, and he needs someone to be able to play a couple positions to cover the remainder (that would be an intelligent assumption, btw). Oh, and Frank is still not going to Cleveland no matter how many people say it. That'd be like saying Boston is going to sign Frank to DH.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 09:31 AM) So lets just say we do trade Duke and Young/Sweeney/Owens for Vazquez. Mark-Freddy-Jon-Count-Vaz? I've said this before and I'll say it again... If Brandon McCarthy is not in our starting rotation next year, after what he showed us last year, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

QUOTE(fathom @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 09:15 AM) Garland and Chris Young for Vazquez sounds pretty fair. If Arizona paid Vazquez's entire contract, maybe. Otherwise, that's huge, massive, utterly ridiculous overpayment.

I don't know if anyone else has mentionned this, but does anyone else think that trading Garland could have an adverse impact on our chances to keep #56 when he hits the FA market in 2 years? Jon and Mark are supposedly very good friends. It couldn't hurt our chances to keep the 2nd one if we manage to hold onto the first. And hopefully every little bit will help us keep Mark. I still say that if you put Mark and Jon in your pitching rotation for the next 6-7 years, you're going to have a winning team the next 6-7 years, and that alone is worth paying extra to hold onto them.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 07:21 AM) Yeah, I guess I need to mind my Ns and Qs better... Well, if the President can be forgiven for making that error...I guess we can let you off the hook too. I think the key question in all of this is this one; is Isreal's nuclear arsenal enough of a deterrant to prevent a nuclear armed Iran from attacking it? Israel has enough nukes to turn every other country in the Middle East into a smoking hole in the ground. The real question is...is Iran's leadership willing to sacrifice everything they have...all the power, all the wealth of running a nation...to take a shot at Israel?

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 10:45 AM) You show me without a shadow of a doubt where US Congressmen were bought off to cover up something that might have happened there then you have something. Nuke, I haven't a clue which of you 2 is right on this issue, but you know as well as I do that there's absolutely no way to determine "beyond a shadow of a doubt" whether or not whatever commission heard testimony on this thing decades ago actually was able to do its job, do it well, and do it without outside or higher-level political interference. The only thing which could possibly do that is a criminal/DOJ lead investigation, and if they weren't breaking any laws, or even if someone higher up gave orders to prevent any full investigations, there's no reason to expect that there would be such a DOJ lead investigation of the investigation. (How's that for a tongue twister?)

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 11:50 AM) You can sit there and insult this person for being a horrible human being. For having a stupid nick name. For being a pox on his society and the world at large. But you don't have the right to take his life away. Only one being has that right, and last time I saw you weren't that being. I am not a believer in that being, but I know at least a little about religion, so I must ask...doesn't the Bible in fact say that only God has the right to judge a person, not that only God has the right to take a life? The Bible is filled with people taking lives in a form that God may very well have considered Just.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 11:22 AM) Can someone please explain to me how celebs can justify keeping this guy from the death penalty? The guys has contributed and personally killed several people in his life, did those celebs ask the parents and relatives of the victims if it was ok with them if he lived? I dont understand getting behind a killer just because he may have reformed himself a bit. Great, hes better now, I guess we can go ahead and forget about the lives that he took... WTF is wrong with people? If you're opposed to the death penalty on principle, then you think this guy should not get the death penalty...and those books he wrote are just another argument you can make as to why the Death Penalty is inappropriatel

QUOTE(BHAMBARONS @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 10:53 AM) That is why the states need to adapt the Federal criminal punishment guidelines and takes out judicial discretion and mandates prison terms like this case was a Class A felony which means the perp would have served a term of no less than 11 years and no more than 22 years. For every judge who does a stupid thing because of mandatory sentencing guidelines, there are other judges who are prevented from doing the proper thing because of overly stringent mandatory punishment guidelines. In a lot of cases, it should depend on the crime that was convicted, but I still think there should be a decent amount of discretion in the hands of judges. If you just watch, within a few months, we're almost guaranteed to see a perfect counterexample posted here...someone who goes to prison for 20 years over stealing some acorns from a squirrel or something like that.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 09:22 AM) So tell me, how does white flight, the loss of manufacturing jobs etc...etc... justify the commission of crime? You make it sound like people pimp hoes, sell drugs, steal cars, beat people up, rape women etc, etc, because they lost their job on the assembly line somewhere and want to buy Christmas gifts for their starving kids. f***ing spare me. The fact is that crime is committed by a bunch of sociopaths who have no regard whatsoever for the well being of themselves or those around them. Nuke, I think here you're oversimplifying things by conflating justifying a crime with methods of preventing crime in the future. Studies have shown overwhelmingly that the tendency to commit a crime is linked directly with things like living in underpriveledged homes, not receiving quality educations, having broken families, etc. These things happen in places where people lose their jobs...and while these things in no way justify going out and killing someone, the numbers are out there which show conclusively that if you cut down on the severity of these problems through whatever means, you cut down on the violent crime rate dramatically. There is a big difference between justification of an action and understanding where the action is rooted so as to try to prevent it in the future. Yes, people who go around shooting people are psychopaths, and you'll get no argument from me on that. But that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to work to prevent the creation of more of those sorts of people.

QUOTE(SoCalSouthSider59 @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 09:25 AM) Exactly, and that's why after Tuesday, it will be done and forgotten, just another murderer off to meet his maker......... Well, I think it may very well last a little bit longer than Tuesday, and amongst certain groups it may last much longer, but I doubt you're very far off with that estimate. At least I hope you're not...hopefully if the execution does go forwards, it will not generate much in the way of civil unrest out here.

QUOTE(Steff @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 08:57 AM) No need. Right now I don't give a s*** about this bs. Just stating a fact that the g'ment has effed up in the past. I will fully agree with you on that point. But here's the question...does the fact that the government has screwed up in places before (Illinois and Texas obviously come to mind) mean that it is enevitable that the government will screw up no matter what safeguards are in place, or is it possible for the government to actually design a system that actually does "Get it right"?

Just in case anyone other than me cares...there is an episode of "ER" being filmed 1 floor above my head today. Update: Just walked past a chair labeled "James Woods." Now singing "I'm with James Woods" in my head.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 08:53 AM) exactly punishment designed to persuade and prevent people from committing crimes. Is it just me, or does that statement open up the whole additional can of worms of "well, the Death Penalty really hasn't been shown at all to prevent crimes" ?

QUOTE(Steff @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 08:17 AM) Or, by some miracle, retests the evidence and finds that the wrong person has been in jail for years and years.. The system is not free from errors. I don't know enough on this case to have an opinion from that view. If there's any state in the union right now where you can have confidence that they've got the right person when they put someone to death, it's California. Why? Because basically every safeguard you can imagine (unlike Illinois a few years ago) is in place in this state. Let me cite for you a powerful statistic to support this fact: There are currently 648 people on death row in California, according to the California dept. of Corrections homepage (could be slightly wrong if they haven't updated lately). Since California re-instated the Death Penalty, 31 inmates have died on Death Row from natural causes. There have been a grand total of 11 executions. 11. In several decades. California is damn careful about these things. These guys get appeals that people in other states could only dream of. They take forever. If there's a test they could do to prove their innocence, they do it. Courts overturn these things when necessary. This is not Texas, where people wind up on Death Row when their lawyers sleep through the trial. This is not Illinois, where people ended up on death row after confessions were beaten out of them. This is California, the "Left coast" if you will. The people of this state have decided they want the death penalty legal, but they want it done correctly, and if there's any state in the union doing it right, its this one.

QUOTE(SnB @ Dec 11, 2005 -> 11:13 PM) ps: calculus is made up. Dude, last friday I turned in a final filled to the brim with "Imaginary" numbers for my complex analysis class? What does that say?

Happy Birthday Sir!

I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word of Van Gundy's "I love my family" defense. I just don't. If you had predicted the exact second that you first heard Pat Riley might want to coach again that he would wind up with that job within a year, you'd have been 100% right. He may not have been forced out, but he has to be out because of Riley. That's the only part that makes sense to me.

QUOTE(timotime @ Dec 11, 2005 -> 08:02 AM) not a bad move for the dodgers. alomar is a good mentor. he's been around the block. it cant hurt. the dodgers sure are making a lot of moves. they are trying to make LA a dodger town again The Dodgers have a pair of young catchers on the way up too...Navarro's already up and there's another guy, probably better, working his way up too. I like TJ Simers's LAT quote this morning..."This just proves my theory that a warm body could easily have replaced Jason Phillips"