southsider2k5

QUOTE(Controlled Chaos @ Jan 17, 2006 -> 10:55 AM) Mayor Nagin and the Chocolate factory. Nice. Apparently you can be racist on MLK day. Good point. If Chesterton Indiana had been wiped off of the map by a tornado, and the mayor got up after words and said I want to restore my "Vanilla City", you can bet your sweet ass that there would be an uproar. Instead in this case, people are just rolling their eyes. Where is the uproar for diversity here? I don't understand how this is not racist?

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 17, 2006 -> 10:37 AM) thats good to know ^^^ Winger Nice well thought out contribution...

There is no positive for small states here. Due to the fact that their population densities there is no way that you can convince me that a canditate will listen MORE to people whose votes would be more expensive to gather, vs somewhere they can raise both cash and campaign issues to a much larger group of people. I don't understand how you can dismiss the small amount of electoral votes from a state, but then try to honestly tell me that they will be MORE important, with statistically LESS influence per capita? That makes zero sense to me. You are honestly trying to tell me that if Wyoming had 1/3 the influence of a national election that canditates would make more of an effort to win their votes? With limited resources and more limited by time, canditates are looking for the biggest bang for their buck. Dilluding the influence of someone isn't going to help them at all. Plus like I said earlier, these kinds of checks against majority power are present all over our government. We have the filibuster to give the minority a chance to be heard. On budget bills they need a 60% majority for passage, and have to start in a certian house of congress. We have a complex system for updating the constitution to insure that one party getting into power can't rewrite whatever rules for society that they want. Our forefathers were enlightened enough in many respects to know that 50% +1 might not always be the best thing. I don't see this being any different.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 17, 2006 -> 09:11 AM) I just don't think that removing the electoral college will curtail states' rights at all, nor do I think that small states would be marginalized. First, regarding small states being marginalized, let's give this some thought. Right now, if Wyoming goes to a candidate, they get a whole 3 electoral votes (making all WY votes fairly meaningless). On the other hand, if we have an actual national vote (since the Presidency is a NATIONAL office, not a state office), then every vote in Wyoming has the same value as every vote in California. That's the idea, isn't it? The electoral ration between CA and WY is what, 53 to 3? Roughly the same as the population ratio? Except that ultimately, the votes in CA are overvalued in the electoral system because of the bulking of all those votes. Remove the electoral college, and the system becomes MORE fair for smaller states. Second, regarding the curtailing of states' rights, the state doesn't execute a right in the election anyway. The popular vote in each state decides the electoral college vote, so what rights exactly are being lost? Finally, as far as large urban areas becoming more dominant, that's also not the case. Why? Because large urban areas themselves have a specific bias in most cases (generally to the left, as it happens). Candidates won't be campaigning by state anymore - they'll be campaigning to a certain set of political views, which might be urban, or rural. Either way, they are forced to go to those areas all over the country, in either case. Again, removing the electoral college makes the system more fair, and as far as I can tell, increases the importance of votes in the states which are currently considered gimmes for one party or the other (like, say, WY and other small states, as well as some big ones). Actually that is completely wrong. Because of the guarentee of a certian number of electoral votes, the states at the bottom of the population ladder actually are over represented when it comes to people per electoral vote. California had almost 34 million people as of the last election. Wyoming had just under 500,000. So in other words it takes about 650,000 people to equal one electoral vote in Cali, where as it is about 166,000 in Wyoming. Wyoming wouldn't even have one electoral vote if they were a part of California. And please spare me the ideal that people will travel all over the country for votes. In a system where cash is king, canditates are looking for places they can raise the largest amount of cash the quickest. The system is already geared towards the big states as is. Canditates know that they can gather a large amount of people quickly and make a buck. They stop in small states now only to put on a dog and pony show. If you reduce the value of small states even further, why would they stop there at all now. At least the system we have overvalues them in the electoral college to provide some inducement, get rid of that and you water them down even more.

With all of the great work the Sox do in the communities, I expected nothing less from them

I know my first CD purchase was Cloud 9 by George Harrison was back in Nine Teen hundred and Eighty Eight. As for cassette it was either Fore or Sports by Huey Lewis and the News in 1983, whichever one was released first.

And people wonder why we have a savings rate nationally of 0.2 when you subtract out forced and involuntary savings. Yes that's right. $99.80 of every $100 is spent.

Doesn't anyone remember their history? Remember the Great Compromise? Small states rights? The system was set up this way to ensure that large states didn't completely dominate this new union. In today's world, it wouldn't necesarily be large states, but large urban areas would become the only thing that matters. I know someone already alluded to this, but the United States wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for this system that recognized the power of majority rule on one hand, yet gave a nod to the minority rights on the other hand. Also remember that it isn't JUST the electoral college that gives this kind of credence to minority rights... ahem filibuster anyone? Think about it, if you were trying to win only popular votes, why would you ever leave the 6 county area around Chicago? How many rural issues would ever get heard when urban areas would be the only ones that mattered?

I offered a question on premenient domain.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Jan 16, 2006 -> 06:02 PM) What would you guys pay to see what happens if we put this guy, Jesus, and Pat Robertson in a room together? Throw in the President of Iran and Flava Flave and we have a reality show for VH1

Yeah!!!

Fun thread. Count me in. This is me at the ballpark 3 1/2 years old during the summer of the southside hitmen.

We were considering Prior for Contreras I guarentee you. We wanted Prior for 3 years instead of Contreras for one. This isn't a shock at all.

And this guy could own a nuclear weapon in as little as months...

I would much rather of seen him brought to justice for his crimes, but the fact he won't be able to kill anyone else, is comforting in a shallow kind of way.

Looks very nice.

That's all I have to say about this one. http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbc.../601130327/1071

I do really like the ones that have the ST logo in them somewhere. That way we could use the ST even without the full logo and it would still look very nice.

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:50 PM) PLease explain what you think my views Cause persona I feel that everyone should be equally treated.. NOOOOOO the humaity.. Why would we want that? Except for obviously the Mexicans like you said earlier. The funny thing is that the the God you keep denying demands that all peoples be treated as you would treat yourself, that no one is any better in his eyes than anywhere else. But I am sure the bible got that from Goebles or something...

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:37 PM) Just cause Hitler was bad doesn't make the group bad.. Isn't that your logic of priests? So you are telling me that Goebles was a good guy? Besides I thought it was your logic that one bad apple makes the whole bunch bad? Hmmm, maybe you are waking up? Nah, after seeing your views on minorities, it makes much more sense that you would be able to quote Nazi leadership so easily.

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:06 PM) I was waiting for you to come up with the statement of " you can not define a day" I laugh at that statement, for the simple reason it is an easy cop out. Now you can make-up any claim you want and of course you are right. Which then makes your arguement to you correct. When in fact it is nothing further from the truth. Thank you for showing your true colors. So asking a priest why Dinosaurs are nowhere to be mentioned in the bible is a question they can't answer.. Other than the obvious answer (which it is not to ou) Why can't they answer this? I have lived on the otherside.. What makes me need to look at the lies and decent that are religion? I know them, I was like you in my youth. Man created God..I have given you evidence on the turnside, on how God- created man is untrue, that we have evolved. If that is true.. Then one can use that muscle in between your ears and state, if god never created man.. Then one had to create the other. Why would dinosaurs be in the bible? Baseball isn't in the bible, yet here we are all talking about it. And you want to use that to prove something? Thank you Carl Everett for that great piece of logic. Call it an easy cop out if you like, but it is the truth. A day is never defined as 24 hours. Do you really think that God who created the heaven and the universe would be subject to a man made calendar millenia after the fact? Now that is laughable all by itself. It also AGAIN goes back to the imperfections of man trying to understand the universe he lives in with their relative level of understanding. That STILL DOES NOT PROVE GOD DOES NOT EXSIST. All that proves is what we are told repeatedly in the bible that man cannot possibly understand. And again, you still have not proven that man created God. All you have proven is that you built your house on a sand foundation as usual, and like every single other arguement you have been in, that house has been washed away.

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:09 PM) If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. -Joseph Goebels, (1897-1945) Hitler's Minister of Propaganda I guess it shouldn't surprise me that you keep quoting a Nazi, should it?

QUOTE(Steff @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 03:17 PM) We know its funny, because its true.

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 01:59 PM) Other than you have no idea what it is you want to say.. You have no POINT. What is that trying to come down to your way of thinking? How can you sit there with this Garabge and then call me out with no facts? Darwin proved that we evolved from single cells.. Which goes agains the theory of "God" created everything in 6 days which the bible states. Right here there should be a little light going off in your head (HMM if this is untrue, what else is) But no.. You sit there and throw the word God into everything. You even make excuses for this nothingness. You have been pre-progammed to think that there is a GOD when there is right there proof that Man created God.. FYI.. I was raised on Catholic schooling most of my life till I was 14,I did all the traditonal BS that goes along with it, till I ask a priest a simple question, when he did not have the answer, I look elsewhere. Answer what questions? What show, I am being 100% honest with you. showing you the path to the truth.. A man can bring a horse to water, but can not make them drink it.. 90% of what arguement.. You are throwing out claims without backing them up.. BUt to your defenese, that is what religion is, throwing out claims and telling their followers to have faith in what they say is truth. The main issue is, I have lived on both sides, you are stuck on one side and refuse to see the truth laid out in front of you.. If you have read the greek Philosphiers as you have claimed to have, how is it that you are so narrowminded to the truth.. Only willing to accept the wrong answers and the right ones. Facts? You're the logic thinker, I am the believer, remember? Its your job to deal in facts, remember? I have faith. The bible doesn't go into detail about how God created man exactly. Just because Darwin MAY HAVE proved where we came from, doesn't mean a thing. All it means if it is true, is that we still after all of these millenia are fallable... Tell me something I don't know. If you actually read the bible you again, you would understand that instead of having it regurgitated through your biased sources. Does the bible define a day as 24 hours? Did I miss that verse. And actually the bible saids that a day is as a thousand years to God, just to emphasize his timelessness. Again with your example of the priest you are showing that you really need to actually sit and read your bible. Just because a priest doesn't have an answer, that doesn't mean that God doesn't exsist. You have repeatedly ducked my questions, does that mean that your philosophy is totally wrong? No, that is determined on its merits, not on the biblical knowledge of a priest. That is unless I missed the chapter on a priest being God, instead of being created in the image of God. For the tenth time, the imperfections of man do not prove that God does not exsist. You call me stuck on one side, yet you have been completely unwilling to look at the otherside for yourself. You have chided people for what they have not read, but yet you have taken the word of your own side's teachers, and have not read for yourself to try to find out the truth. What does that say? And as for man creating God, you throw that around as a fact, when you still haven't begun to approach proving that. You haven't offered any evidence that hasn't been completely blown out of the water yet.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Jan 13, 2006 -> 01:47 PM) 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. All right, I probably read to much into your post then. I think basically we are saying the samething about how we pick canditates. Myself I would have been solidly for something other than Bush first off in 2000. McCain was definately my first choice. Once it got down to Bush and Gore, I saw too much connection to the Clinton corruption and went with Bush thinking he would end up something like his father. To be honest I wanted to crossover in 04, but somehow in John Kerry they found a canditate I disliked more than Gore, and he was involved in most of the same scandals as Gore/Clinton.