Texsox

Great thread idea! At age 47, the Rolling Stones' bassist, Bill Wyman, began a relationship with 13-year old Mandy Smith, with her mother's blessing. Six years later, they were married, but the marriage only lasted a year. Not long after, Bill's 30-year-old son Stephen married Mandy's mother, age 46. That made Stephen a stepfather to his former stepmother. If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father's father-in-law and his own grandpa.

QUOTE(Random @ Jul 31, 2006 -> 01:37 PM) Hes not a white sox fan, he just wants to Swear!!! If anyone gets nostalgic, they can always come back here and read.

pedicures are cool. I've been wearing Tevas since about March, and my feet have gotten in very sad shape. Pedicures are sooooo cool. If I wasn't so terminally white, I think I could dance.

We have some pretty smart people around here, from SS QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 02:40 PM) How exactly would you propose finding a labor force to build a city of about 500,000 people in a really poor city, where half the city has not returned, much of the city is still in ruins because many residents are using their constitutional rights to resist wholesale demolition of their buildings and property in many instances, meanwhile resisting such historical tools of segregation such as quick bulk housing projects which are getting torn down in the rest of the country? There are a ton of factors at work here. Its not just as simple as the article wants to make it. Read between the numbers here... -You have to find enough people who have the ability to build, and all of the different skills that it takes to do so, for both commericial and resident facilities. You aren't talking about the usual building that goes on perpetually in a city, but literally the largest sustained construction project ever undertaken in the history of the United States. So on top of needing a way larger construction force than ever did exsist in New Orleans, you are talking about a city that has lost half of its residents by most estimates. In other words your labor pool has just fallen by half, while needing an astronomical amount more labor. How many people just have the ability to uproot and leave to work in New Orleans because that is where the labor is needed? Most people working construction are probably pretty fixed into their labor market, as are most people. They have a solid job, with a good salary, family, friends etc. Basically to cut between the lines there are going to be two types of people who will go to NO work, and that is either people who can't resist a bunch more money, or people who need work really bad and have the ability to just up and leave for it. That means a lot of illegal labor, and a lot of high wages. It only makes sense that home prices are going to go way up, because it is going to cost a lot more to get extra labor to build NO. -Materials have to come from somewhere to build all of these places again. Once again, when demand surges for something, the cost of it is going to go up. No one planned on Katrina happening in 2005, including the people who supply homebuilding materials. With a fixed supply and a jump in demand, once again that means higher costs, which means higher home prices. -Much of New Orleans is still a disaster area, which means there are still big areas that aren't being built in. large swaths of NO still don't have basic infrastructure such as passable roads, electricity, phone, etc, which limits how many areas can be built in at one time, even if you were to have enough labor to meet demands. Again there is yet another limit, this time on housing supply. -If New Orleans were predominatly poor before the storm, and these poor people lost what little they did have, where are they going to find the money to buy into a market that costs way more than when they left? The answer is, they aren't. There is going to be a demographic shift towards the people who can afford to buy in New Orleans, which by and large isn't the former poor black residents.

SS, Great post, that was worth my annual subscription fee. There is a lot of unskilled labor, close by, who would love to build homes and eventually buy one. Problem is, most American's do not want them here. So we need another plan. I was just listening to a NPR report that basically stated the government and its planners are trying to avoid a jack-o-latern development. That is, flying over at night one sees lights on here and over there and ong stretches of darkness in between. The two competiting factors here are A. The cities ability and resources to bring utilities to every neighborhood and B. People wanting to rebuild their home in their neighborhood. It seems that not only is New Orleans facing the problems you have just described, but there is no master redevelopment plan of which areas will be rebuilt and in what order. The idea of telling someone not to rebuild their home because the government wants them over there smacks of failed Russian social planning. But unplanned will result in slower, more expensive growth. This is unprecidented in our history. I wonder what Japan did after WW2?

QUOTE(jasonxctf @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 02:08 PM) good point. those were the 2 things that came to mind first. I'm sure we drop billions in aid to other areas of the world too. its not that i'm against helping others, its just that our priorities are backwards. shouldnt we be spending us taxpayer dollars in the us first before giving it away to other areas of the world? i commend aids relief in Africa... but we have an Aids problem here in the US. Why not work on relieving/reducing this problem first before solving the rest of the worlds problems. (homelessness, education, public works, etc) We do spend the money here. As a percentage of our national budget, foreign aid isn't all that much. I have read through the years that we actually rank behind many countries as a percentage of our GNP. Here's some links, pick what you want to believe http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...113/ai_18864338 http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_..._4/ai_n11832668 I dn't have time to vette this last one, it could be a very biased site, but I'be also heard a large percentage of our foreign aid is spent on Israel. http://www.washington-report.org/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm

The biggest adjustment I had to living in the deep south was no winter to kill off or kill back pests. Everyting from ferel cats to bugs live and thrive year round. Every once in a while we get some ants, but I grab some scary looking pump spray, dowse all the edges, and go to town.

^^^^^ sweet, thanks for the link

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 01:19 PM) Is it worth pointing out that 1 of the 2 examples you gave is an order of magnitude or two more expensive than the other? In 2004, the U.S. Gave about $3.4 billion in aid to Sub-Saharan Africa (there's some that goes to Egypt otherwise because of the Camp David agreement). That same year we spent what, about $100 billion on Iraq? But now we don't have to worry about terrorsists and WMD

Over budget for projects of this scope and scale? I'd be shocked if they got to within 15% either way. Too hard to project out 3-4 years. Currently cement is sky high, which pushes concrete prices high, then the trucks that haul to stuff are running on $3.50 per gallon fuel and not $2.50. Private projects run into the same problems. The US government (you and me and the people we hire to do the work) are no smarter or dumber than the private sector. The private sector also has a lot less rules that we have insisted that be followed for spending public funds.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 12:37 PM) I was stupid enough to spray raid in my room to kill some aunts Did it work?

Beane should also get credit for knowing which guys to keep. It isn't just being at the helm when a guy is drafted, but the longer development cycle as well. Frank? I am so glad to see him pounding baseballs. Not first ballot. He spent too much time as a DH. Not saying it's fair, accurate, or the right thing to do. Just saying that would be a breakthrough (DH) that Frank's media relations would not help happen.

QUOTE(mreye @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 11:04 AM) So people can say, "Look what this GOP candidate thinks..." I'm just laying the groundwork for when I say why the hell does it have to say DEM?

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 12:30 PM) (knock on wood). Is that a euphemism for bopping the balony?

QUOTE(BDavisFutureHOF @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 12:28 PM) Why is that in green? Cause I'd be doing that even without the alcohol

Linky Kap, was that you wating your time watching a web cam of a street in London?

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 12:24 PM) Yep so consider yourself very special right now. I've hit double figures on the amount of beers I've had tonight, and I also had some Jager Boms, and some other Vodka / Cocktail stuff mixed with Pepsi. So let's just say don;t expect to hear from me from at least another 12-18 hours from now. At my age, if I had that much to drink, I'd be surfing porn site and looking up entertainers in the yellow pages

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 12:21 PM) We are very likely the only Sox website around with a drunk Aussie right now. soxtalk.com #1 with drunk Aussies! That's the slogan we were looking for

I was looing through who posts in this thread and how can Nuke only have two posts? Of course it's obvious who the most prolific, everyone must want to read what I have to write, pain in the ass, poster is.

QUOTE(Steff @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 11:06 AM) I was clarifying for my own soul cleansing... And if you submit that in triplicate, with a $250 donation, you can be saved . . .

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 12:06 PM) I had an assorted greens salad with plum tomatoes, warmed goat cheese and a raspberry vinaigrette. that is just sooooo errr healthy bratwurst leftovers. No special Milwaukee County Stadium brat sauce, but I'm making do with some good Boar's Head spicy mustard. I wish I was having, and possibly enjoying, a nice salad like Rex. I have been trying to drop a few pounds.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Aug 24, 2006 -> 05:45 PM) Artery-clogging double with cheese from Wendy's today. They are a customer of miine, so I feel obliged to eat there once in a while. I'll pay for it later, but damn, it was good. Thay have quietly moved into my second fav. fast food burger/sandwich joint. I like the choice of sides, plus the frescata sandwiches are really good. I also see Quiznos passing Subway on my list because of the salads.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Aug 24, 2006 -> 06:48 PM) Dude, the worst part is that you might have to put your lips on another guy's! The hetero-nightmare is you'll enjoy it

QUOTE(Steff @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 08:10 AM) Me not part of that we. Someone who does that s*** is, regardless of their race or gender, an effing moron. I don't even hear what the reportd excuse is. Didn't need to imply a personal "we" more a societal "we".The reason, of course, was to prepare the children for God. Salvation through sex with a pervert.