overthere

Pitching remains substandard and inadequate. Still in 23rd place for team ERA. Team ERA is a solid stat for evaluating the effectiveness of the staff overall. And overall, our staff sucks. We rarely win close games, another indicator. Baserunning errors and generally dumb plays abound. Alex A knows he needs to replace Gibbons now, but he also knows that he himself is on very thin ice. GMs usually get one free replacement of the manager/head coach, then they are done like dinner. AA is on the precipice now, having been given a fat budget and nearly free hand to build this team and he has come up with a team that is apparently going to end up where they always do: flirting with .500. That would be acceptable if this was the old low budget Jays, but not with this lineup. His current strategy of bringing up 'depth' players who aren't good enough, and recycling journeymen off waivers won't work. The team needs pitching. It is or was available, note the very good, balanced Oakland A's just acquired an excellent starter from the Cubs. Also not good: team BAA(Batting Average Against) that is 19th overall. That means other teams feast on our pitching routinely. This is mostly a management failure.

A reason that the Liberals struggle hard to win any seats in Alberta(and they usually had a few, including Deputy Prime Minster Anne Mclelland during Chretien times) is that the provincial Liberal leader is a certified idiot. His name is Raj Sherman. I know the fed and prorovincial parties are not joined at the hip, but his presence is certainly no help at all.

I don't know what you are talking about. Finally we have something in common. I reckon it is clear that US-Canada relations have been quite strained recently.

On winning teams you see guys with skill sets of Bautista, Encarnacion, lind etc doing this to win a game. http://m.mlb.com/video/?content_id=21459799 But not on the Jays, it appears nobody has either the basic set of skills ,earned at age 12, or any managerial motivation to try. The Jays are in love with the 3 run homer, have been since the early 90s.

Can anybody on the Jays bunt? Advance the runners, win the game.... Like, anybody?

Agree about old media- and network TV is rapidly become a museum piece.. The mainstream networks like NBC, ABC, CBS are also in big trouble, even though they aren't burdened with much of the parochial nonsense and silly instituionlization dumped on the CBC. That ship is sailing, viewers aren't watching destination TV much anymore, and the old school networks supported by 15 minutes of ads every hour are just not going to survive. That includes CBC. Why would advertisers pay hundreds of muillions of dollars to produce and broadcast ads that everybody simply fast forwards through? Answer: they won't. Buh bye traditional network programming.

A lot of people in Canada think there are degrees of equality.

I urge ypou to check their pitching stats, I guess you did not believe it when I did it last week. Their team ERA is horrible. Their bullpen is unreliable. Loup, Delabr, Jenkins, Santos and whats his name Rasmussen- they've all floundered. Buehrle is exposed, somehting he himself said was overdue. You cannot dominate long with an 85 mph fastball unless your name is Greg Maddox. He is not Greg Maddox Dickey is average on his best days and gets hit very hard. Withouit massive run suppoort earlier this season, his record would be similar to all his time in TO: well below average. Not only that, they have to carry a subpar catcher on the roster to cater to his needs. Hutchison: blah. Happ: average on his best days. Stroman: feast of famine, too early to tell. Minor leaguers or relivers ready to start games: none. They won early because they hit at an unsustaninbable rate, and oh by the way their losing ways began when they had everybody in the lineup. They need pitching bad to make the playoffs. Baltimore has yet to have any kind of winnig streak, but they will soon. And Boston will pour it onj ay some point. They need pitching, now.

I she likes historical fiction, I can suggest a couple of fine ones. The first is a pair of longish books about Tudor England called Wolf Hall and Bring out The Bodies by Hilary Mantel. They are sequential and Wolf Hall must be read first. They are both engrossing and finely written, winners of several significant awards. The second is the 'Master and Commander' series of books aka the 'Aubrey-Maturin' series, by Patrick O Brien, about the Napoleonic wars via a British Navy viewpoint. The (18!) books are all shortish and should again be read in order, starting with the first which is 'Master and Commander'. Wonderful stuuf, very well written with mutiple story lines and as they say " no romantic bilgewater!". It has been described as 'the best historic fiction ever written' and I would not argue with that high praise. My current read is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, an extraordinary view of how we have come to how we are now in society. It's an engrossing read, about 1/2 way through

Ladies and Gentelmen, your Toronto Blue Jays. Now, this is the team we have all become accustomed to for the last 20+ years.

Exactly and precisely what every party does for decades now. Who can forget Chretiens relentless and shameful fellatio performed routinely on the entire ethnic population of the GTA every four years? Did you find that disturbing?

Perahps the stalling is their way of acting repsonsibly......as is their duty with taxpayers money. Why make a decision knowing that it will end of in court because whatever you do, it will piss off somebody and end up with taxpayers being sued? It's a no win situation for the meat in that sandwich: us.

Funny that CBC is not mentioned ........

False. There are presently five bitumen upgraders operating in Alberta: four in Fort Mac and one in Edmonton. There are two more under construction. At the end of 2012, over half the bitumen produced in Alberta went to local upgraders. There are also four refineries operating at present.

Because the OP is from Quebec, where some believe that provinces are equal to the feds. It's a recessive gene.

How is Harper attacking helath care?. He is not Chretien after all. I don't understand why 'loathing for Toronto' is not on this list of unifying elements.

While y'all are arguing about high wages, big pensions and expensive hydro costs the automotive and other industries in Ontario are slowly but surely leaving town permanently. I wonder if there is any connection? Probably just coincidence.

They should dig up the bodies of the two dead ones and give them both tickets for driving in the left lane. Last time I was in Montreal I was driving 15km over the limit on a narrow two lane road in moderate to heavy traffic. I look in the side mirror, a gravel truck that had been tailgating me is passing me on a double yellow line, starting to head up a hill. JUst as that hideous fact hits my lizard brain, I realize a car is passing me on the right at the same time, doing perhaps 70km over the limit on the narrow shoulder. They managed to miss each other when they converged in front of me, and the car coming down the hill only got halfway into the ditch in his successful attempt to avoid a headon with the gravel truck. Always an adventure on the road there..

I hope Greece loses because their very presence in the knockout round is based on a fraud.

Assessment of 'success' in pro sports is and should be based soley on profitability of the franchise.

Most of what you quote is not fact, it is somebody elses opinion that you have adopted and present as Gospel. And that is a fact. Here's one that you apparently invented yourself, in this very thread: That's a complete load of twaddle. Mcdonald was removed from his post because he had completely lost track of his role. He was supposedfly in Israel as a reporter, not a participant. Nobody wanted or sought his opinions, what was required was his observations in an unbiased and factual manner. he could no longerer do that or pretend to be a reporter since he had picked a side, and thus was relieved of his duties. In classic CBC fashion, he was eventually promoted to a plum job in Washinton, where agin he is up[ to the same old tricks. He jumped the shark again recently when he blamed the mess in Ukraine on the Jews. Slow learner I guess.

already noted that 'medical issues' refers to loss of incomne by being unable to work for medical reasons. Ironically, they still get health care despite not having a job. Hard for an American to imagine, but.... Has any US study calculated the billions it must cost the US economy due to lack of job mobility related to insurnace issues? You know, how many folks cannot start a business, change jobs etc becuase they cannot leave a company with good insurance for an uncertain future? I also wonder about your 'wait until you're dying" meme. If that is true, why do Canadians live on average 2.7 years longer than Americans, despite being nearly as fat and living the same crappy life styles? It's OK, I'll save you some floundering around on this one. It's because we - all of us, not just the rich and insured- have access to preventative medicine from prenatal to geriatric care. If you feel sick , you can see a doctor without user fees, copays, or a fight with a bureaucrat. Try it some time, you'll like it and hey! You'll live a couple years longer.

I see the Virtual Hand of God here.

An eye for an eye? How very Biblical. Perhaps she should be stoned to death by the victims relatives, using chunks of asphalt from the patch of raod where she died. Her actions were not malicious. They were extremely stupid, but if she had thought for a moment and pulled to the side there would be nothing to speak of. I am not at all soft on crime, but nothing is served by a long jail sentence except to ruin more lives.

No, I don't think so. But....soccer is the same as hockey in that supplemental discipline can be given after the match when the officials miss soemthing or fail to apply the proper penalty. Soccer is a joke. The World Cup referees are frequently second or third rate mutts who are on the pitch only to satisfy some dopey vision of ethnic diversity and/or FIFA politics. Any other sport deploys the best officials at the best events- period. FIFA also fails to provide any reveiew mechanism to ensure the officials get it right. They finally and belatedly have goal line technology, but there is no reason they could not have an immediate, on field appeal mechanism when an official gets it wrong. By appeal mechanism, I don't mean the handwringing and wailing on the field we see hundreds ot times per game. I mean a video review by people not involved on the field. It's every simple stuff. If they'd had it yesterday, Ivory Coast would not have been cheated.