IlliniBob72

The hostage is from South Korea. Unfortunately, he's a dead man. It is truly a shame that our country is too civilized to retaliate with ten beheadings for every one of ours they kill. If nothing else, it might have helped to erode any popular support they have in the Middle East. If every time they lopped the head off of a westerner it meant that ten Middle Eastern families who have loved ones in Coalition control could look forward to having their relatives' heads cut off, perhaps the Middle Eastern population would stop aiding them.

Thank God I'm not the only one wondering!

I heard a suggestion that I thought might be possible. Offer soldiers and civilians over there the option of having a chip implanted under the skin that could be used to track them down. The only down side to this, and its a big one, is that if the people who have the person knows about such a device, I'd hate to think what they would do to find said device.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/18/...dnap/index.html

I echo most everything said here. It is just a real shame that he couldn't pitch very well. Otherwise, he was a great guy to have around.

And if we're going to use the world within 30 miles of us as the end all be all, that's fine. One of the biggest employers in the Peoria-Bloomington area is Mitsubishi that has a plant in Normal employing in the thousands. My father works for NTN, Inc., a Japanese owned ball bearing manufacturer. I found a few facts that I thought were interesting... "Over the last 15 years, manufacturing "insourced" jobs grew by 82% - at an annual rate of 5.5%; and manufacturing "outsourced" jobs grew by 23% - at an annual rate of 1.5%." "Over the same period, total "insourced" jobs grew by 117% - at an annual rate of 7.8%; and total "outsourced" jobs grew by 56% - at an annual rate of 3.8%." "U.S. subsidiaries in Michigan have consistently supported a significant number of jobs in the state. They now employ 244,200 Michigan workers-an increase of 50% over five years." America would end up losing in the long run if it went to an isolationist economical policy.

Well, if you're only talking about your community and not tying it to the national situation, perhaps you should talk to your mayor then. Sounds like he's doing a real s***ty job, by your standards. Of course, when anything bad happens in the business world, it is the government's fault. This outsourcing that you are constantly crying about, is this a phenomenon of the last three years? Did Bush get into office and his first day on the job sign a bill to ship American jobs overseas??? I would thought that this would have something to do with NAFTA, signed by Clinton in 1993, but that couldn't possibly be, right? If it is a result of something Bush has done, I'd love to see how. Please, enlighten me. Something occuring on his watch doesn't mean it's a result of him. I've seen a drastic increase in my child production in the last three years, yet somehow I'm not crediting Bush with that. And you're right, I left the first three weeks of 2001 off of "the Clinton years". I figured I'd give you more Bush time in office for him to have f***ed things up.

And a plant hadn't closed down in the years 1992-2000.

Maggs who?

The fact that they aren't worried that we'd do that speaks volumes. I'm just not sure what it says. Either we're civilized and wouldn't do that, or they think we're pussies and wouldn't do that. Or they hope we would do that and that would help their cause.

It fits in nicely with their notion that the world revolves around them and their s*** team.

I don't know, do you think it's possible for a genuinely good guy to do such a rotten thing? I mean, as someone here said, he didn't molest the kid, but I can't imagine someone becoming so deranged by a chance at a foul ball that he would go against every instinct he would normally have towards children and do what he did. Not only that, but even after the adrenaline wore off he still refused to give the kid the ball, even when asked to by a reporter! Foul balls have strange effects on people I guess.

Here's a story from the Trib on the kid and how well he's being taken care of. http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sp...ports-headlines

Well, I guess in Rozner's defense, he didn't say that, an e-mailer did. Still, putting it in his column gives a sort of de-facto approval or agreement with it. It really is a stupid comment because I don't think most Sox fans care a pinch of s*** about the Cubs. I usually don't even know who or when they are playing.

As they say, if old men didn't want to nail 16 year old girls, there wouldn't be a law against it!

I actually thought Clinton was a decent president. Sure, I thought pulling from Somalia as soon as we had a few soldiers killed was a huge mistake, and I disagreed with his policy on getting sucked off in the Oval Office on my dime, but other than that, he was OK.

Maybe then this should be a lesson in trying to make a point in a way and at a time when people are willing to listen. I turn off the TV after watching Nancy Reagan weeping on the coffin of her dead husband and flip on the computer. Then I begin to read some bulls*** about Ronald Reagan being the reason we have to deal with Saddam and Osama today. Bulls*** argument, but perhaps at a different time it would be taken better. Now for the way to make a point. Are these points put to the audience in a way to begin a thoughtful discussion? Hardly. It is put to the class in a smug bulls*** guessing game kind of way. I quote... What the f*** is that? What is that other than an attempt to inflame? I see it as an attempt by a guy tired of yelling at the rain to rile people up, and sadly I fell for it. If it was an honest attempt to discuss Reagan's shortcomings politically, I can't think of a worse way or time to do it. If you don't want to wait out of respect for the dead, that's your business, but maybe you should wait for a time when it would be accepted more readily. Comparing FDR and Stalin to Reagan and Saddam is inaccurate? How? How can you know that tanks that FDR "lent" Stalin wasn't used to keep help from the staged Polish uprising in Warsaw? How can you be sure that it was American bullets used to execute over 4000 Polish officers in Katyn Woods? You can't be sure that any or all of Stalin's atrocities weren't committed using weapons and materiel given to Stalin by FDR. Teaming up with enemies to fight a common enemy, while maybe poor policy, has been going on throughout history. Why? Because it is often necessary. Andrew Jackson enlisted the aid of pirates before the Battle of New Orleans, who went on to some more piracy. I suppose he is a rotten guy too. You've got to pick your poison some times. Dealing with Saddam was probably seen as a better option than dealing with a fundamentalist Islamic Middle East. Helping the mujhadeen was seen as preferable to risking the spread of communism through south Asia and to India. Besides, unless I'm mistaken, bin Laden was not a terrorist then and was in fact just one of dozens of mujhadeen leaders. And your points about the Soviet Union self-destructing without Reagan. You point to Solidarity. Lech Walesa wrote an op-ed stating that Solidarity would have never succeeded without Reagan's support. That the Polish people love him and America for the help and strength he/we provided, that without knowing that he had their back that they would have accomplished nothing. Anyway, a lot of people who know far more than you or I do about it attribute it to him. The people directly involved attribute it to him. The people who gained the most from it, their freedom, attribute it to him.

The people you refer to saw a wrong and took action to make things better. They did not take pot shots at a dead man 16 years after the man was out of power on an internet message board. Not only that, but their anger was well placed. They weren't whining like a little b**** about a guy having the nerve to help people fight to keep a Communist invasion from taking over their country. Yeah, one of them turned into an international terrorist, so we should have let the Soviets have Afghanistan. Great f***ing argument. Fundamentalist Islam was viewed as the menace of the times, so the U.S. threw in its lot with Saddam and his secular government. Who knows what would have happened had Iran and its radical Islamic government had its ideas sweep through the Middle East, but it sure as hell must have been the better option, right? Sure, that should have been known then. Again, I point to FDR. In choosing between Hitler and Fascism vs. Stalin and Communism, he chose Stalin. Are we to now condemn FDR as a bad president because he allowed Stalin to stay in power and spawn the Cold War? He also was responsible for the American nuclear program. That son of a b****!!! Comparing Jesus, Martin Luther, and Moses to a guy making ridiculous arguments on the internet is absolutely laughable.

Well cw, if you ever get tired of the clergy, you could always be a shock jock or write Mariotti's column. Maybe the clergy isn't for you anyways. I can't imagine such bitterness and anger is suitable for a man of God. It is too bad that FDR is already dead. You could rip him a new asshole on the day he was buried for giving support to Stalin in WW II, thereby saving the Soviet Union and condemning countless millions to death. I'm sure there are some FDR historical sites around that you could share those thoughts with.

Damn, cw. All you had to do was wait another 30 minutes and he would have been in the ground before you started trashing him. :headshake

My big issue of the day? Hardly. No, my big issue of the day is getting construction work zone plans finished, and then grilling some burgers for the family. Trent Lott and some jamokes in Minnesota booing him off the stage really doesn't register. But if you believe that Lott was treated that way at what turned into a Democratic political rally because he had spoken to racist groups (I'll take your word on that) then you go right ahead. This thread has continued because I think that concept is a joke. I personally don't give a s*** about Trent Lott.

That gave me a good belly laugh!

Did I say that? No. I said they were lightly publicized before his remarks about Thurmond. That is not saying they don't exist. That being said, do I believe he meant that if Strom Thurmond had been elected president that we wouldn't have racial problems today? No, I don't. I think he was just trying to honor a guy who was turning 150 years old and said something thoughtless. And he said that in Dec. of 2002, while he was booed off the stage at the memorial service in Nov. of 2002. But no, to help your comprehension, I did not say Lott doesn't have racist beliefs.

I think the real news in this story is that people are still paying to hear Morrissey sing.

Jesus, Tex! Are you hormonal lately? Next I suppose you're going to tell us that since we love ownership so much that we ought to marry it. No one here has said they care about the owner's profits. Anyone who has ever paid a bill in their lives grasps the concept of money management. Acknowledging such a thing doesn't make someone in love with the idea. Realizing that teams with limited income need to have limited spending habits only makes sense, but you seem to get angry at the idea. Maybe you are footloose and fancy free when it comes to your money, but as someone who can't bring himself to spend $17 on a CD that I know I'll forget about in a month, I am not going to demand that people blow millions to bring me a championship that really impacts me not one iota. If you think that the Steinbrenners of the league would tolerate losing money, you're kidding yourself. The teams that spend big make big. And if I'm wrong about that, I'd love to be set straight. But understand this...recognizing and accepting reality doesn't make me in love with it. I understand that my mortgage company won't let me skip a few payments, no matter how many millions of dollars it makes every day...that doesn't mean I like it.