JUGGERNAUT

http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTEwdnZjMjFh...gtY3Nz/s/245533 numbers: street traffic $214B N America : 44% of all sales Europe: 33% of all sales Africa: only 4% of all sales heroin + cocaine : 22M problem drug users The $322B figure is greater than the GDP of 88 nations in the UN. It represents almost 1% of the world's GDP. What I'd like to know is where does the other $108B come from? Are those institutional sales? It's probably impossible to do anything about the street traffic but I would think something can be done about the rest.

I agree with the general premise that both Contreras & Uribe can be used as part of a package to get Schmidt & Vizquel. They both have sizeable trade value & assuming the White Sox throw in a few million it equates to a salary dump for SF. They are not rebuilding as much as retooling & looking to save a few bucks when Bonds isn't playing. They've got Barry locked up for 2006 so they definitely will look to be contenders next year. Moving to the NL might be exactly what Contreras needs. With Uribe & Contreras in the pkg KW doesn't need to include top tier prospects. 2 mid tier prospects would get it down.

He doesn't have a prayer of a chance of getting that passed up there. It's a multi-billion dollar a year industry now. Canadian's are benefiting greatly by using price fixing to in fact be the drug store of the world. We all should move to Canada & set up shop because there is no end to the demand right now. The only thing that threaten's the relationship is the American supply. When was the last time any American company turned down a mega contract in an effort to uphold the integrity of their business sector? It's a joke. The supply will never be threatened. If one company pulls out another will take it's place.

Morality is subjective & therefore best determined by the will of the majority in a nation. It's not easy finding Disney's competitors in the list. They do draw a striking contrast to Anhweiser-Busch which owns W&W, Busch Gardens, & Sea World. Universal's parent ownership has had little to do with it's hiring practices because it's changed hands so often. I believe Seagram's was the owner during it's early years & shaped policy the most. I can't find them either. If you were to say which of these mega corps (SONY, Disney, News Corp, Viacom, Time Warner, GE) are more homosexual-friendly from what I could find on that list it's GE. But GE drawfs the rest in that list in mere size of employees so it's probably not a fair assessment.

Did Kotex boy write anything about this? It's definitely what he lives for.

At 51-24 & coming off a BIG 2-1 win to break a 2 game losing streak at the hands of the Cub you need to think realistically of what a trade means. Does this team have enough talent to 1) win the division & 2) secure home field advantage in the ALCS? The team has a 9 gm lead over the Twins & a 4.5 gm lead over the Angels. When you figure Timo will be replaced by Gload in weeks to come the answer to both questions is YES. So the trade only has value for the post-season which all comes down to pitching matchups. The bullpen is strengthened by the fact you never play more than 2-3 gms before an off day so you don't have to worry about using a guy too much. You can pretty much use an arm in your pen for 4 innings/2 gms. With Politte, Hermy, Cotts, Marte, & even Shingo coming around I think we match up well with anyone. The last thing you want to do is weaken the defense for offense. So just say no to trading Crede. There is no 3B option available to the White Sox that will give us any more defensively than Joe & his strong arm & quick reflexes put him at the top of the list in turning DP's. That will be even more important in the post. Vizquel 2005 VS LH .238 / .647 VS. RIGHT: .326 / .800 HOME: .273 / .703 AWAY: .326 / .807 plus 37DP .990F% 4.80RF .890ZR Uribe 2005 VS LH .356 / 1.029 VS. RIGHT: .199 / .511 HOME: .191 / .538 AWAY: .284 / .753 plus 38DP .972F% 4.36RF .838ZR Ozuna 2005 VS LH .400 / .888 VS. RIGHT: .216 / .491 HOME: .258 / .539 AWAY: .333 / .776 plus 10DP .977F% 5.30RF .889ZR Vizquel is exactly what we need to shore up SS. He is strong where we are weak. Defensively his DP's are on par with Uribe's & his ZR is the best of the 3. Only 11% of the balls in the SS zone have escaped Vizquel. Believe it or not but take a look at Iguchi's stats (especially his consistency) & he might be the most consistent 2B in MLB this year. No need for Durham or any one else here. Durable to play every game in the post. Position players wise Vizquel vs RH will greatly improve our chances of winning in the post. Which leaves the 64K question. Can we count on El Duque in the post? His performances in post season are legendary. Going to battle in the post season with a healthy El Duque means you have one of the best competitors on the mound today. If the answer is no, then you must trade for a starter better than Contreras. Contreras could not win a 2-1 game like last night if his life depended on it. Yet that is more likely to resemble the games we will see. A team should not go to battle in the post with Contreras expected to start. Which is why KW is holding off on pulling the trigger. No doubt he's talking to Sabean about Vizquel. The question is whether it's to be a package with Schmidt or just Omar. No doubt Sabean likes what the White Sox have to offer more than Baltimore or most others. Our future is riding on El Duque's health & ability to pitch effectively. Our World Series hopes hinge upon the crafty vet.

They are not equal. Those rights & responsibilities stem from a history of associating marriage with raising childrens BORN from their parents. Yes adoption exists as well as foster parents but those numbers have never been large enough to the challenge this assumption. Likewise there exist childless marriages but again those are in the minority. When marriage benefits first started to become commonplace in both govt & the workplace a childless marriage was considered abnormal. There was little sympathy for those who could not have children despite every effort in attempting to do so. They were considered weaker by nature. Over the years we have become a more understanding society to where we recognize the medical difficulties. But that common place association that people get married to have children from natural child birth still holds today. Likewise, when the benefits first came into being it was abnormal for a wife or mom to work. The husband or dad was the bread winner & therefore any benefit bestowed upon him would have to be bestowed upon his wife as well. Today it's common for a wife or mom to work. Thus weakening the need to retain the benefit system for spouses. That should direct the focus then to the children themselves. Decades from now that might be the case. Marriage benefits would give way to parental benefits. And the guardians (grandparents, god parents, next of kin) would be the beneficiaries. That would be the proper thing to do & it would be good for business as well. If that is the best direction then it makes no sense to extend benefits that exist primarily due to historical norms to a group that doesn't fit that historical norm. It's analogous to 2 wrongs don't make a right. It would be better to further transform the marriage benefits towards parental/guardian benefits & do away with the marriage requirement altogether. Now you might think that homosexuals can be just as good at parenting as heterosexuals but unless you can support it with overwhelming data it's just an opinion. Since I do not share your bias I will look at the data both in support & opposition on the question & make an intellectual decision on the basis alone. No personal stories will impact that decision because they serve only to bias the data. The only fact that should be considered a standard is that which applies on a mass scale.

In your face you stool pigeon of a man. Go call your corporate friends you arse & see if they have a place for you to stay. You are by far the worst USSC justice on the bench today when it comes to protecting the interests of the common man. I hope they target all of their homes & the appelate court members as well. Let them feel first hand the consequence of thier decision.

The courts don't seem to care about anti-trust any more. Their recent ruling that it's ok for the cable companies to say "F-you" to companies that want to use their lines is a testament to that. Those lines were obtained because those local governments granted them the right to lay them. It's much higher to get those same rights today because of urban sprawl & other factors. So the decision by the USSC is basically F competition & F monopolies. Their your lines, so you can do with them what you want. We'd be hard pressed to having any competition in long distance or local phone service if they took that same attitude after the breakup of AT&T into the RBoc's. As it is recent court rulings have made it a b**** for long distance companies to offer local services. This ruling wrt to cable is like a sanctification of their monopolies. Their only competition are the sat dish companies. Less than 10% of the market.

This is to wierd. From bone marrow disease to a spectacular recovery overnight? Miracle aside we need to know why this happened. Is there no trace of the disease left? How often have such people recovered from such a disease overnight? Even if God did work a miracle here on her behalf there must be some scientific evidence as to how he did. I don't believe he just wiggles his nose like Bewitched & poof everything's good. He is far too great a mathematician for that. The first step I beieve is for the Church to validate whether or not this constitutes a true miracle. Which is to say the why can not be explained by modern science. We might still be able to understand the how though.

There we go with that sanctimonious moral high ground crap again. It's your opinion that being a gay-friendly megacorp is the right thing to do & nothing more. Stop speaking like you are the de-facto standard on morality because your not. Your very far from it. As for why Eisner did it in the first place it's no secret. Disney employs more homosexuals than any of the other theme parks. They even rival some of the studios. This isn't something they sought out to do. It's more along the lines of something they discovered. When you compare their salaries for artists & designers to other like companies they are one of the lowest. Their homosexual-friendly demeanor is more a mechanism to control wages than anything else.

It looks like another MJY picture. I don't much care to see a King Kong picture that features a Kong so small that the WTC Kong could punt him across NYC

As for school prayer it represents double taxation to the millions of families who send their kids to private schools because they feel strongly in religious exercise & education in school. It's shocking when you consider that public education started in America under Christian pretense. In my opinion no-God should carry no greater weight than God. Both are philsophies of the creation of life & how that affects our behavior in our own lives. The no-God group should have no greater standing than the God group. When you have two groups of equal quality it's the quantity that should dictate policy. Anything else represents one group imposing a moral highground on the other which is what the very essence of the sep of C&S doctrine tries to prevent. The court's lemon test upset that equality. It stacked the deck against the God group. It imposed it's own moral highground & violated the spirit of the sep of C&S. It made the no-God the de-facto philosophy of our nation. That's the injustice built into the system & the only way to combat it is to manipulate the courts. But that injustice carries a double taxation policy that has nothing to do with religion. People who send their kids to private schools do not benefit from public education & therefore should not be taxed in supporting it. A school voucher system attempts to address that. It is not government sponsorship of private schools. It is government's acknowledgement that these citizens are not making use of public education. The voucher is not based on the cost of private education. It's based on the avg cost a tax payer pays towards public education in their community. Think about it in reverse . Suppose the court supported the God group as the de-facto standard for public education. Then the no-God group would be forced to choose private education. Would it be fair to burden them with taxation for public schools? Of course not.

This is one of the worst decisions the court has ever made. I find myself on the fence of both viewpoints. How can you rule the KC exhibit in the courtroom being a greater promotion of religion than the monument in Austin? In the KC exhibit you have symbols representing the 10 commandments. On the Austin monument you have quotes from the KJV Bible. Austin is ok, but KC is bad? The decision represents nothing more than a win for the GOP. They can now continue their PR campaign against the anti-God court. The common person isn't going to look at the details. When you look at the details this actually is a victory for the God lovers. The court sanctioned religious symbols on government grounds. They caution those goverments to apply the greatest scrutiny in determining if such exhibits go so far as to say the government is promoting the religious context of that symbolism. Of course when these governments apply this scrutiny they will refer to the courts decision on KC & Austin & look over the justice's opinions. So what are the guidelines for that scrutiny? The court ruled there are none. You have to take it case by case. Ok well we no Austin is ok & KC is not. But there has yet to be a lower court decision asking KC to remove their exhibit. So until the lower courts rule the exhibit stands. In the meantime the government in KC has the opportunity to tone down their exhibit some to make the lower court's job easier.

Maybe the Chicago media can will us to a favorable trade. Lilly, Burnett, Jennings, Schmidt, Zito, Batista. I'll take any body that's better than Contreras. He doesn't have it. He's good for the regular season but he has yet to come through in a big game.

Until a state tries it.

Whether they want to admit it or not the growth of broadband & internet services has been spawned by the growth of file-sharing. Music far exceeds movies in titles & movies probably exceed music in terms of bytes. The recent ruling authored by Souter states that if a site by nature of either it's marketing or in failure to take easy steps promotes piracy it can be sued. Up until now the courts have relied on a SONY case in the mid-80's where the court ruled that the legal uses for VCRs far exceeded the illegal ones & felt that only such suits would hamper those legal uses. If these sites should suddenly shut down expect e-commerce to take a major hit. If you don't provide people an incentive to use broadband & surf the net they'll stop doing it. That's just common sense. The court in the 80's just seemed smarter than the one in the 90's & now the new millenium. They looked at the revenue generated by the legal uses of VCR copying & felt the illegal ones were negligible in comparison. Souter obviously didn't do that here. He didn't use common sense. Nor did the people supporting him. He didn't consider the value these sites have to e-commerce in general. He didn't consider the ad market of these sites & how that influences sales. he didn't consider the impact these sites have had on the growth of broadband. He ignored common sense & ruled based on an ideal of his that supports a select few. This case in particular (MGM vs Groeker) will now go back to the lower courts. It remains to be seen how they will rule. This could become a ping-pong. I would home the broadband providers use their media power to drive public debate on the issue.

I would agree except for the justification the court used: economic viability. They basically stated that if a state has a clear economic interest in annexing lands it's ok. It will be hard to uphold that justification against private citizens & not apply it to federal lands as well. It's seems like a tug-of-war will ensue.

It remains to be seen if state & local governments are going to respect this decision. The decision itself did not declare such things as being unconstitutional or in violation of the sep of C&S doctrine. Instead it stated that such things demand scrutiny to determine whether their displays amount to government promoting religion. This is why I have little respect for those who voted in favor of this ruling. First of again it separates religion from philosophy. So it's ok for scientologists to put a doctrine in a court room because they are not a "religion" per-se? It's ridiculous. But even worse is their reference to "religion" in general. The doctrine for sep of C&S pertains to a predominance of any one religion over another. It does not imply that religion in general be treated as a taboo. Yet that is exactly what these recent rulings amount to by the USSC on matters of religion. The ramifications are great. The conservative groups just got a shot in the arm now to be more aggressive in getting out the vote. There have already been two attempts at ratifying an amendment supporting school prayer & the last one was narrowly defeated. I can imagine this decision to broaden that attempt by amending the doctrine itself to clarify how it is to be interpreted. The doctrine as it has been interpreted by the USSC amounts to nothing more than censorship & discrimination against those who CHOOSE to believe in a spiritual world. What is the difference between religion & philosophy? One is based predominantly on a spiritualistic moral point of view & the other is based predominantly n a humanistic moral POV. The judiciary has no right to censor or discriminate against either.

There is distinct philosophical difference between HP, SW, LOTR, & Narnia as to how they relate to magic. SW & LOTR draw a distinction between the dark side of the force & the dark arts. So does Narnia. It's a belief that certain realms of our existence are best left alone. HP on the other hand has no such distinction. All forces & arts are treated as neutral & the evil is determined by the individual. Simpy put LOTR, SW, & Narnia have taboo's & HP does not. For those having taboo's there is a clear sense of heaven & hell, good & evil, & right & wrong. Such things are not so clear in HP. Taking a page out of D&D I would say there are no lawfully good characters in HP. There are chaotic good & certainly lawfully evil but no lawfully good. In SW, HP, & Narnia there are distinct lawfully good characters (Yoda, Gandalf, & the Lion). Gay pride day in the parks, & the extension of benefits to same-sex partners was not the major reason for the boycott. The major reason had to do with some films Miramax released that clearly offended Christians. It's pretty easy to look up the titles. At the same time Disney films & programs seemed to ignore faith entirely. This was a stark contrast to other films coming from SONY, Dreamworks, & FOX that featured Christian prayers in their films (Spider-Man, X2, etc.). Disney has not changed it's policies in terms of gays & it probably never will. But they have changed their attitude towards Christians & that's why the boycott has ended. First it came in 2004 with King Arthur & now Narnia. If Narnia is a hit you can expect more. On the gay-marriage thing there is the ideal & the reality. The ideal is that govt has nothing to do with marriage. No licenses, no recognition, no tax filings, nada, zero, nothing. In this ideal world since there is no such thing as state recognized marriage divorce does not exist either. In this ideal world these things only exist so far as communities & parishes CHOOSE to recognize them. Otherwise marriage is strictly personal. The reality is that it is so entrenched in the fabric of our society & our system of government that the ideal is impossible. That being the case debating the issue on the basis of the ideal is meaningless. Absolutes only apply to ideals. Our Bill of Rights, Amendments, & the US Constitution does not represent an absolute. It was never intended to be an absolute. The founders believed it to be nothing more than a framework for a system of government & that over time amendments & revisions to it were expected. What that means in reality is that no group has a moral high ground to stand on when it comes to the system. Our founders understood this. That's why they defined a separation of Church & State. They had experienced how easily Europe had corrupted such a union & the influence it had on the masses. By doing so Europe always afixed a moral high ground to the ruling class. The definition was not intended to single out religion or penalize religion. It was neither intended to be limited to JUST religion. It was intended to deny any group a moral high ground in the system. So what then determines the morality of the nation? The citizens. You & I. We express that morality not just in the people we vote for but the things we say/write to those who are work within the system or one day hope to. Federal laws & practices that have nothing to do with national defense or commerce represent a moral high ground & would be frowned upon by the founders. Such matters are best left to the states. Marriage is one of them. But again that is the ideal & not reality. Reality that such matters are not being decided by the citizens or the elected officials but rather the judicary. A group of 9 people serving life terms are defining the morality for a nation of 300 million. I suppose if you share their views you might embrace their moral high ground. For the rest of us whether we share their views or not we do not embrace their moral high ground. We see it as nothing more than tyranny & injustice & the very reason why some in the world are questioning the merits of our system today. When you think of America's democratic system as it has been emulated the world-over what's it's greatest weakness? The power of the judiciary. We look OFF as the world's biggest scandal to date because of the $ figure. But when you look back at the involvment of the IMF & the World Bank in regions like Argentina even OFF pales in comparison. Why were so many foreign banks allowed to steal billions from the Argentine people? Because they controlled their judiciary. People are not absolutes. They are easy to manipulate & corrupt. History has shown us this time & again. That will never change. The best system of government in the real world is one that transfer as much power as possible to the citizens. A nation's morality should be defined by the citizens & not it's judiciary. There is no moral high ground in America. That is the basis for equality.

Absolutely. I'd give them Dye, Anderson, & BMac right now for Hunter. Pods, Hunter, Rowand - best OF in MLB After we win the WS will offer Prior an offer he can't refuse to take BMac's place in the rotation.

No he's not. Look at their ZR over the years. It's how much of your position that you cover that matters most. Alou beats Everett hands down. Offensively Alou gives you more. As for Jason, let's not forget that he had two bad starts, went on the DL, then had 4 bad starts & now has had 2 dominant starts. Is he a health risk? Are we trading for damaged goods? KW needs to consider that.

I'm reminded of Gonzo's $140M contract offer from the Tiggers when he was the RBI man of the AL. Lee is now the RBI man of the NL & he's still not hit his stride where he can produce a .300A. When considering Pods he's likely to outperform his contract worth for several more years with the WSox. You can't simply ignore what it's likely to cost you to keep his talent.

After yesterday's loss I don't feel like writing too much. But I will say this. We are still 6 gms better than any one else in the L column including STL. We are going to lose more games with runners thrown out at home, guys getting picked off first, bad pitches, & errors in the field. It's inevitable when the season is a marathon. But I wouldn't change a thing. Aggresive play is what got us this big lead & it's what will keep us winning in the 2nd half. BTW, Milw beat Santana & the Twins. With a 4 gm winning streak, they are looking to sweep the Twinkees today. Lee's been an impact player in that series. No damage from Sat's loss to the Cub.

You can call it coincidence or you can say it's had an effect. But today will soon be w/out Miramax & Eisner. These were the 2 major reasons why the boycott went into effect. The movers & shakers were at the lead of moving the shareholders into issuing a vote of no confidence against Eisner & that eventually led to his near future exit. This year Disney is courting these same people to push the Chronicles of Narnia in their hopes that it will be their answer to WB's HP franchise. They have met with all of these people including the Focus on the Family group. They are looking to use these people to promote Narnia like Mel used them to promote the Passion. So it would be nieve to say Disney doesn't care. The overall impact of the Eisner shakeup has been to downplay that which is controversial & strengthen that which is core to the busines: the family ticket.