I'm not a Cardinals fan, but I like this particular Cardinals team if that makes sense. They seem to be a bunch of good guys, so I think I'm pulling for them this postseason. Also, as far as a fan base goes, there isn't really a better one in the MLB than St. Louis. The fans in St. Louis are loyal and smart about their baseball, which also makes it enjoyable to follow.
I've never cared much for Morgan, but I must have missed the latest controversy. What happened?
Nothing new. He's been know for being pretty incendiary and has voiced his hate for the Cardinals in the past. Also his antics on the field can get pretty tiresome. Just the classic "emotions on his sleeve" guy.
I think it would be a good idea to start a thread that will take us through the World Series. My first question: What do you make of the Brewers? And do you feel strongly either way about Nyjer Morgan?
I love the idea of relegation and promotion. The big schools would be like the biggest teams in European football; they would get the players but that doesn't necessarily mean they would stay at the top of their conference year after year. Look at Texas last year. If there was relegation, with a 5-7 record there would been some Texas anuses tight as a snare drum.
Everyone has a different idea about how to get this country on track but most people do agree it is off track. Something needs to be done. One guy is talking about the tax rate, another is talking about regulations on businesses, another is talking about media bias, another is talking about the need for a new president, and so on and so on. The problem is there aren’t too many people actually addressing the problem. We are pointing out all of the different layers of the problem–some of the by-products of the underlying problem–but not too many are really hitting on the core problem.
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.†I have never been able to find where or when he said that but the quote provides a pretty good summary of what de Tocqueville discovered during his first-hand study of the United States.
In all fairness, he did say "...is commonly quoted as saying" instead of "...said". That at least lets us know that he did the same google search I did. Still though, it's funny how these "quotes" take on a life of their own.
I didn't mean for that article to be a thread killer though. He makes a good point by saying that people are all just pointing fingers and not addressing any problems we currently face, and therein lies the greatest problem. It's definitely a fair point.
VT will lose by two touchdowns. Logan is a converted tight end playing QB. The receiving corps is banged up along with the o-line. David Wilson is having trouble finding holes to run through because there are few holes to run through!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the starting eleven from the New England Patriots would have trouble moving the ball in the VT scheme.
VT rolled in the first game and struggled in the next three a lot of times. Everyone knew to stack the line and that would make the offense sputter since the App St. game and it's working. Granted this probably the worse defense that VT has faced along with App. St., but the is only the best offense too.
Let's see how the VT D holds up. If that side of the ball starts dropping players; look out!
Gotta love the Deprecating Fan.
1.) Logan Thomas played QB all his life. He's a converted QB-to-TE-back-to-QB.
2.) Wilson has 516 yards already on 87 carries. This O-Line is strong and experienced.
3.) Thomas is coming around in his ability to read blitzes and defenses. I think he'll be fine against a secondary that starts 3 freshmen.
4.) That's a pretty strong "if" you bring up and I never acknowledge speculation such as this... but "if" we start dropping players, we're pretty deep this year on D. So not only are you making ridiculous conclusions based on hypotheticals, you're also simply wrong.
You may be right. We may get blown out because our coaches don't have the transcendent foresight and play calling abilities that you have, but at least have the decency to base an ounce of your claims on fact.
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.†I have never been able to find where or when he said that but the quote provides a pretty good summary of what de Tocqueville discovered during his first-hand study of the United States.
Yeah... It's a nice sentiment but Tocqueville never said it. A quick google search came up with this article from The Weekly Standard: http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is a beloved, canonical text; the urge to quote from it is understandably great. Politicians ever seek to demonstrate familiarity with it, from Bill Clinton to Pat Buchanan. One of their favorite quotes runs as follows:
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerc - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it vas not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
These lines are uplifting and poetic. They are also spurious. Nowhere do they appear in Democracy in America, or anywhere else in Tocqueville.
The authenticity of the passage came into question when first-year government students at Claremont McKenna College received an assignment: Find a contemporary speech quoting Tocqueville, and determine how accurately the speaker used the quotation. A student soon uncovered a recent Senate floor speech that cited the "America is great" line. He scoured Democracy in America, but could not find the passage. The professor looked, too - and it was not there.
Further research led to reference books that cautiously referred to the quotation as "unverified" and "attributed to de Tocqueville but not found in his works." These references, in turn, pointed to the apparent source: a 1941 book on religion and the American dream. The book quoted the last two lines of the passage as coming from Democracy in America but supplied no documentation. (The author may have mistaken his own notes for a verbatim quotation, a common problem in the days before photocopiers.) The full version of the quotation appeared 11 years later, in an Eisenhower campaign speech. Ike, however, attributed it not directly to Tocqueville but to "a wise philosopher [who] came to this country ...."
One may conjecture that Eisenhower's speechwriter embellished the lines from the 1941 book and avoided a direct reference to Tocqueville as a way of covering himself. Speechwriters do such things from time to time. In his wonderful primer on politics, Playing to Win, Jeff Greenfield presented a model stump speech complete with a fake quotation from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. "If you are worried about being found out," Greenfield wrote, "change 'Heraclitus' to 'The Poet.'" (See page 117 of Greenfield, if you'd like to check.)
Whatever its origin, the passage found its way into circulation. President Reagan used it in a 1982 speech, though his speechwriter hedged by attributing it to Eisenhower's quotation of Tocqueville. Two years later, Reagan declared that Tocqueville "is said to have observed that 'America is great because America is good.'" Thereafter, his speechwriters grew less careful, and several subsequent Reagan addresses quoted from the passage without any qualifications. At this point, it started showing up with greater frequency in political rhetoric.
In 1987, Rep. William Dannemeyer quoted the passage's final line, adding that "America ceased to be good in 1971, when America's promise to pay ceased to be good." He was referring to President Nixon's decision to close the gold window. Apparently, Dannemeyer disapproved.
The day after President Clinton's inauguration, Sen. Jesse Helms performed an ecumenical paraphrase on the line about churches: "As the remarkable French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1850s, the source of American virtue . . . will always be found in the churches and synagogues of America."
In 1994, Bill Clinton tapped the passage to temper his "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" speech in Boston. "I believe fundamentally in the common sense and the essential core goodness of the American people. Don't forget that Alexis de Tocqueville said a long time ago that America is great because America is good; and if America ever ceases to be good, she will no longer be great."
And now, synthetic Tocqueville is appearing in the 1996 campaign. Pat Buchanan used the "America is great" line in the speech announcing his candidacy, and Phil Gramm invoked the flaming pulpits in his May address to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.
It's a shame that politicians are using a knockoff product when the real thing is so fine. Democracy in America offers profound analyses of the roles of religion, morality, and voluntary action, though its insights are subtler than the purple prose of the counterfeit.
Why does faux Tocqueville thrive? It took only a modest effort to expose the quotation as a phony, so how could it have circulated so widely for so long? We could make a nasty crack about politicians who cannot tell Alexis de Tocqueville from Maurice Chevalier, but that would be irrelevant since they seldom write their own material anyway. The lyrics of politics come from staffers, whose tight deadlines often keep them from checking original sources. When they need a quotation (or a statistic or an anecdote), they lift it from a speech or an article by somebody else. That somebody probably got it from another piece, whose author got it from . . . you get the picture. Bad information tends to linger and spread.
Here is a personal brush. In 1992, I served on the staff of the Republican platform committee. We came across the "America is great" line in an old Reagan speech. Though we could not verify it, we still wanted to use it in the platform, so we attributed it to "an old adage."
Of course, after decades of repetition, it has in fact become an old adage. It just isn't Tocqueville's.
Yeah, I care. These past couple of years have been a ton of fun. Better talent spread throughout the league than I have ever seen. Plus, NYC gets pretty fired up for basketball season, and it sucks that it won't happen this year.
Yes the Braves blew the wild card, but to win 89 games in the same division as the best team in baseball, and to do it with way too many injuries is a heck of an accomplishment. Fredi Gonzalez did a great job.
The tired arms in the bullpen were caused by injuries to the starting rotation. IF Jurrjens and Hanson had another 10-15 starts each the bullpen would've had a lot more rest and the Braves likely would not have blown the wild card.
Saying Chipper needs to "hang it up" just makes me scratch my head. Yes, he only played 126 games (McCann, Heyward, and Prado all played the same number of games) but he was still 2nd on the team in BA, 3rd in OBP, 1st in slugging, and 2nd in OPS and OPS+. They would not have won 89 games without Chipper Jones and likely wouldn't have had a wild card lead to blow. I've followed him long enough to know that he will quit when he feels he can no longer produce. Obviously he still can.
I've said it all year (to deaf ears) the Braves DO NOT need another "big stick!' They were 3rd in the league in HR but 3rd from last in the statistic that matters most, on base percentage. Solo homers don't win many games. They were also below league average in nearly every other offensive category. If anything they need to trade some of those home runs for some singles, doubles, and walks.
Not sure I understand the defensive complaints. The Braves had the 2nd best fielding percentage in the league.
Braves pitching was above league average in nearly every pitching statistic. What they need there is to find a way to cut Lowe loose and then keep everyone else healthy. Leo Mazzone was pretty good at keeping his guys off the DL. Maybe McDowell should bring back his (touch and feel) system.
The Braves have a ton of good prospects and I think they will be back on top in a few years... but don't expect them to stay there like the did in the 90's. They just don't have the money for that anymore.
So do we know how many Roughing the Passer calls he gets compared to Brady and Brees? If we had those numbers, we could see if he was making a valid point.
I'd love to try my hand at doing a radio broadcast of a game some time. Those of you who know me know that I have a good voice. I'm knowledgeable about the game, and I can keep it professional. Why the heck not!
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Two things of note from the VT-Miami game...
in College and Pro Sports
Posted
Hey now. EVERY VT fan has pissed on themselves while jumping to Sandman.
No? Just me?