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Taro T

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Posts posted by Taro T

  1. Rick worked with Dave on the album, and there have been rumors that he will join the tour too.  Nick also helped on the album, but I've heard it's unlikely that he will tour.

     

    Now...Roger lives in NYC.  I wonder what the chance is of him joining Dave for a song or two.  :doh:  :D  :lol:

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    I'd put the odds at slim and none, but hope for your sake I'm wrong.

     

    Saw Gilmour in '84 on the About Face tour. Show was very stripped down from a Floyd show, focus was on the music. Excellent show. He played pretty much everything off About Face and the 2 instrumentals off his 1st album. He also played Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell. I had hoped he'd play There's No Way Out of Here but he didn't, probably because he didn't write that one.

     

    Like I said, it was an excellent show. There was one strange thing about the show. Gilmour and the Pretenders were scheduled to play in Buffalo about the same time. Pretenders had their biannual death in the family and cancelled the show. Pretenders had an opening act scheduled, Gilmour didn't. They had the Pretenders opening band Icicle Works open for Gilmour. Bad choice. The band was decent, but totally wrong as an opening act for him.

  2. I forgot to mention that part.

     

    As I said above, Shumer had more to do with keeping the Sabres in Buffalo, or more precisely, "suggesting" to Bettman that the NHL keep the Sabres in Buffalo.  And as for the new CBA, that was mostly the owners' doing.  After his last CBA, I doubt they gave him as much free-reign to screw them over again.

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    Jacobs also had a lot to do with keeping the Sabres in Buffalo as his concessions contract is basically worthless without an NHL team in that rink. That said, for whatever reason Bettman did work to keep the team in town. I'm not as concerned about his reasons for finding religion, I'm just happy he did.

     

    As for the CBA, you had essentially the same group of fractious owners in 2004-'05 that you had in 1994 and in the prior labor negotiation. The difference between the 3 negotiations is that Bettman had been in office for more than a few months this last time and put together a set of goals for the negotiation and a plan to achieve those goals. He managed to have ALL the owners publicly support him, even though the big market owners had to hate the fact that the lockout began.

     

    In '95 he caved to Goodenow because the owners weren't united in what they wanted. (Also, conventional wisdom at the time was that the owners won the negotiations, it wasn't until about a year later that everyone knew how badly Goodenow had screwed them.)

     

    I give Bettman kudos for coming out of the negotiations with essentially everything he said he was going to try to get. Right now it looks like a good agreement for the owners and I believe, long term, it will end up good for the players as well.

  3. And more details about FISA, FISC, changes to the acts, and how everything is authorized under the 1978 law changes and the amendments to that law. 

     

    http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/

    But the bigger question is, after all you "legal libs" read this would you even admit that you're wrong and state that based on the FISA rulings that admin was authorized?  Because as Mickey puts it I do not understand a lot of the "legal wording".  I find that to be offensive to the average US citizens that laws have to be so esoteric that they are not understandable by the layman.

    The statement in there that I see is on page 15.

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    VA, little of the information in the articles you cite are applicable to the current discussion. The "warrant" you refer to is a standard search warrant which must be issued PRIOR to initiating the surveillance of a subject (start reading on page 14, the case in question was prior to FISA's enactment). We are discussing the FISA warrant not a standard criminal search warrant.

     

    FISA is very specific with regards to the circumstances that the 72 hour warrant is not required. The AG stated in his press conference that the Administration believes these requirements were met when Congress authorized the President to use force against Afghanistan and Al Queda. Several members of Congress have stated they don't agree with that assessment and my reading of FISA (not my reading of someone else's interpretation of FISA) lead me to believe that the Congress critters are correct on this one.

     

    Are the wire taps w/out the 72 hour warrants legal due to some other gray area of the law? I honestly don't know that. I do know that the adminsitration has stated that all calls in question involved persons physically outside the US and those inside the US. As others have stated, depending upon where and how the calls were intercepted, the intercepts MAY have been legal. Also, as Mickey has stated, there may be an expediancy aspect to this issue which would make this legal and which the AG did allude to in his press conference.

     

    I don't know if one or more of these other issues will provide justification that the taps were legal. I do not see how the "we are at war" justification causes them to be legal. Personally, I hope that they are legal because I don't want to lose what appears to be an effective tool against Al Queda.

  4. And what do you not understand about what you !@#$ing wrote:

     

    Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces...

     

    Congress did enact a specific authorization.  Why is that so !@#$ing hard for you to understand.  Or do I need to start BOLDING?  :blush:

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    KRC, please let me take a stab at it if you will.

     

    VA, you are correct that Congress did authorize the use of force. Do you agree though that they did not "declare war"? This is the key concept on whether paragraph 1811 of FISA is applicable. If war was declared, then 1811 is applicable. 1811 is the only part of FISA that allows wire taps without the "72 hour" warrant.

     

    If war was not declared, then 1811 is not invoked. The applicable portions of FISA are from 1802 and 1803 which DO require the AG to request a warrant from the FISA court justice pool w/in 72 hours of approving the wire tap.

     

    This all still may go to one of the gray areas brought up by other posters on the board. But Gonzales appears to have been saying the taps were legal under FISA because the US is at war (perhaps his justification will change as time goes on). That does not appear to be correct because technically the US is not at war because Congress never issued a Declaration of War.

  5. The problem arises in the fact that war was never declared by Congress. Military action was authorized, but there was no declaration of war. Therefore, 1811 does not apply, IMO.

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    Interesting point. The bad guys declared war on the US and the US responded back by declaring authorization to use military force. So although we are at war and everyone knows we are at war, we technically aren't at war because although Congress said we'd fight a war they never actually said we are at war.

     

    It appears you are correct KRC that 1811 is not applicable, but it also appears that 1811 is what Gonzales is using as justification.

  6. I like the deal too, but I'd love it if we still had Ballard.  He should be mentioned when talking about that trade.  Calgary wanted Reinprecht badly, and the only way to get him from Colorado was by sending them Ballard.

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    If the Sabres had been able to make the deal Warrener for Drury it would have been a good trade for Buffalo. But as you mentioned, Calgary wanted Reinprecht. In order for Calgary to get him, Sabres had to give up Ballard. By getting Reinprecht into the mix, Buffalo also got Begin in the deal. They subsequently lost him in the now defunct waiver draft, but he is a solid player and would have been an asset on the current team. When Begin is added into the mix, it was a very fair trade IMHO.

     

    I'm not sure who would still be in Rochester (probably Pominville) right now, but the Sabres would have one more 2nd / 3rd line quality forward to include with a goalie for a potential D-man upgrade at the very least. A trade consisting of say Biron, Max, and Mair / Begin would probably bring back a useful D-man. One adding one of the Sabres lower tier D-men would probably also bring an AHL quality forward back to help ease the pain in Rachacha due to their never seeing Pominville again after the trade.

  7. I took a look at the FISA. It appears that the reason Gonzales referred to Congressional authorization for the war in Afghanistan and against Al Queda is it would kick the surveillance taps over to paragraph 1811 "Authorization During Time of War".

     

    This states: "Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress."

     

    1811 doesn't mention anything about the 72 hour time limit for the AG to certify / send the certification to the FISA court and also limits the time period for the tapping to 15 days down from 1 year.

     

    I may be misreading this, I'm sure Mickey can help clarify; but it sounds to me that as long as the correspondence originated/terminated outside the US and was expected to be directly related to the war w/ Taliban / Al Queda (which is my understanding based on Yahoo's version of the NYT story) that Gonzales and Bush are correct in stating no FISA court warrant was required.

     

    Taking a look at the Statute, I'm starting to understand why Condi was stating she isn't a lawyer when asked for clarifications. It seems a bit more convoluted than the typical environmental / labor regulation that I have more experience deciphering.

  8. Thats pretty funny, for 2 games straight I had to listen to the pitts. announcers rave about how fast and mobile buffalos D. was. I guess they haven't watched much hockey over the years and probably don't know chit about it! :(

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    Well, compared to Pittsburgh's D, Buffalo's IS very fast and mobile. That's not saying too much.

     

    Pittsburgh has the worst defense in the league. Buffalo's is middle of the pack (9th penalty kill unit, 11th most shots against / game, 15th goals against / game, 25th in 5 on 5 goals for / goals against). Buffalo definitely needs to upgrade the defense to be considered a legitimate Stanley Cup threat. It's not as bad as Allan makes it out to be, but it isn't top 5 (or IMHO top 10) either.

  9. What is the current "in the crease rule"? 

     

    On the no goal, there were three Penguins in the crease at one time or another.

     

    Does anyone know the current rule?  It used to be that you could not be in the crease unless you had possession of the puck (and unless it was game 6 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Buffalo).  I recall that they changed it so that it is not as strict as it used to be.

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    The rule as it now stands is that you CAN be in the crease but you can't initiate contact with the goalie and you can't impede his movements to try to make a save. As long as you don't interfere with the goalie it's basically "no harm, no foul".

  10. Why do people here generally hate Bettman?  :unsure:  He helped keep the Sabres in Buffalo after the Rigas debacle.

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    Here's my take on why people in Buffalo hate Bettman. Before I start, let me note that I don't "hate" him but I'm not thrilled with him. (I used to "hate" him but I am now fairly neutral to a slight supporter of him.) I also will state that some of these reasons in and of themselves would not be reasons to hate him, but they all contribute to the general sense of dislike.

     

    The biggest reason people don't like him is because of "No goal". There are people that will probably never forgive him for that. It wasn't a conspiracy to screw the Sabres, but was a series of mistakes and misjudgements that ended up causing the Stanley Cup to be "awarded" to a team rather than won. He was the top man and was in the building, he could have done the right thing (call the media off the ice and continue the game) but chose instead to do the easy thing (just give it to them).

     

    Additional reasons he isn't liked. He comes across as a smug arrogant prick. Buffalo tends to be a blue collar town and he doesn't come across well.

     

    For 3 consecutive seasons, in the round the Sabres were eliminated from the playoffs there was a game that had a HORRIBLE or multiple horrible reffing / linesmanning / replay reviewing that cost the Sabres a game. In each of those 3 seasons, the rules pertaining to how replay works was modified because of the massive screwup. In only 1 of those 3 seasons did Bettman even come close to saying the league screwed up. That didn't sit well with fans.

     

    Also, and I don't think this is a reason most Buffalonians but it is a reason I wasn't happy with him, he was the guy that negotiated the horrible 1995 CBA that nearly bankrupted the league and led to the Sabres hemorraging money for about a decade.

     

    My personal opinion of the guy has improved over the past 2 or so years, because he did work to keep the Sabres in Buffalo and he negotiated a new CBA that gives the Sabres a fighting chance to compete and quite possibly thrive.

  11. We deserved that big time.

     

    I almost woke up my son when I screamed when they scored.

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    I had just put my kids to bed ~20 minutes earlier and let the 8 year old come out to see the "save". Even though it was a goal (and if you look closely, the webbing of the glove in the net does appear to move, but I didn't notice it until the replays after the game), it was an incredible effort by Marty.

     

    I still think Marty will be traded before the season is over, but hope he gets the league record for consecutive start wins (17) before it happens.

  12. Maybe we could get a new mascot for him.

    Geez, there has to be a better mascot somewhere in the AHL.

    Better yet, trade Mika and Sabertooth for a fax machine.

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    Didn't Mike (fax machine) Zigomanis get sent down to the minors this week?

     

    I know Barrett (I'm too good for the Sabres measly contract offer) Heisten just got suspended for doing something stupid in the ECHL. (Yeah, the league below the AHL, which is the league below the NHL.)

     

    It's a darn shame Darcy didn't sign either guy to a big $ contract. :doh:

  13. Oh there is plenty more where that came from.  It's like clubbing baby seals.  Real easy targets of opportunity.  :lol:

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    Speaking of which, does anybody else know the "seal song"? The chorus goes something like this:

     

    "You don't bludgeon a seal 'cause you want him for a meal.

    You do it 'cause you want to hear that litter f***er squeal.

     

    You club him in the head,

    and you do it just for kicks.

     

    Then you poke out his eyes with your eye pokin' sticks."

     

    Sorry for the interruption.

  14. that was the reason they lost that series..  the team came out so so flat...  they only had like 10 or 12 shots total..  terrible

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    The problem wasn't that they came out flat. They came out too pumped up. The 1st 5 minutes they were absolutely flying around the Stars, but darn near every shot they took either hit a leg or the stick broke as they took the shot. After Dallas weathered the initial burst, then the Sabres looked flat or exhausted or something.

     

    Buffalo did end up with only something like 12 shots, but Dallas blocked something like 20 shots, and in the only game I can ever remember seeing it, the Sabres broke at least 3 sticks in the 1st period, 2 on 1 powerplay IIRC. (Talk about being too pumped and also about gripping the stick too tight!)

  15. It seems to me that your stance is libertarian, aside from wanting economic individualism, the ill-defined charge of "blight" in these cases seeks to return non-performing properties to the free market sector. Or as O'Connor said a "Robin hood in reverse, stealing from the poor to give to the privelidged." I do see your point though but I still believe a good Marxist interpretation of this system would still say that the peasant is getting his ass kicked in this class system :P

     

    Untimately, as for libertarian capitalism for groups such as the Cato institute, the danger in this case is not individual rights for the homesteader per se, but case law that could eventually be turned against private corporations. My bet is the Cato institute spends very little time in East Buffalo, although they did write an excellent brief.

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    You are correct that the little guy is taking it up the keister on this one. I would expect though that a Marxist or socialist that believes in communalism would be willing to sacrifice his proletariat brethren in this instance in order to further the overall socialistic "good" of expanding the legal justification for eminent domain takings.

     

    I did not read the Cato Institute's brief in this matter but would expect that, as a matter of principle, they would be opposed to the property confiscation of the homesteader or the corporation.

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