Backslash wrote:

Jimmy Zig Zag Bobiadis wrote:

but remember what MSL said.. Axl was going to start communicating more openly but doesn't like all the negativity that comes out of everytime he does speak.

I believe that open communication wouldn't draw negativity if it's honest and direct.  The fact that some of the things he's said has misled the fan base (whether intentional or not) does not bode well for his cause.  If Axl came out tomorrow and gave us the exact reason why CD has been delayed umpteen times and gives a legitimate expected release date (if one exists), there would be little to no negativity.  Sure, we'd have people who'd bitch and moan about the reasons and blame everything on Axl, but for the most part we'd accept it as sincere and move on.  News on the entire saga would be better than what we have now, no matter how shitty it is.

Right, I think the reaction right after the letter was more positive than not.  Given, there was also a large contingent of "I'll believe it when I see it" as well, but I think it was more positive than not.  Then as his tentitive release date got closer and none of the proper promotion and other things that he mentioned had started to happen, and there weren't really updates things turned negative quick. 

When I first read the open letter, I looked at everything he said and thought it made sense as things that need to me done before a proper release.  People (I myself was one of them) started doing the math and noticing that March was pretty impossible given all the parameters that Axl had mentioned.  So why did he even throw the date out there?  That was where the negativity came out for me, it seemed like he had to know it was bullshit when he wrote it, even though he went out of his way to say it was only tentitive.

That's why I tend to agree with Backslash, just be honest about what's going on, and I think for the most part people can reason it out as making some sort of sense.

Unless your reasoning is something like an old woman telling you the air doesn't smell right for a cd release this month.

Joe Gibbs resigns as coach of Washington Redskins

By JOSEPH WHITE, AP Sports Writer
January 8, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After the toughest season of his Hall of Fame career, one that tested his leadership like never before, Joe Gibbs is stepping down.

He resigned as coach and team president of the Washington Redskins on Tuesday, three days after a playoff loss ended an inspirational late-season run that followed the death of safety Sean Taylor.

Gibbs will remain as a special adviser to owner Dan Snyder and was to discuss his resignation at an afternoon news conference at Redskins Park.

The Redskins will search for a new coach immediately. Among the certain candidates are two former head coaches on Gibbs' staff, Gregg Williams and Al Saunders. The new coach will be the sixth since Snyder bought the team in 1999.

Gibbs went 31-36, including 1-2 in the playoffs, after emerging from NFL retirement and his NASCAR career to sign a five-year, $27.5 million contract in 2004. He had always maintained he intended to fulfill the contract, but the 67-year-old coach wavered from that stance Monday when asked if he would return for the final year of his deal.

Gibbs' resignation brings an apparent end to a coaching career in which he twice raised the Redskins from mediocrity into a playoff team, although he failed in his goal of bringing the team back to the Super Bowl during his second stint in Washington. Gibbs won three NFL titles during his first stint from 1981-92; the second time he took the team to the postseason in two of his four seasons.

His decision to leave follows perhaps the best coaching performance of his career. After the death of the Taylor on Nov. 27, the Redskins lost a game to Buffalo in which Gibbs was flagged for a vital 15-yard penalty for trying to call back-to-back timeouts in the final moments. Gibbs said he wasn't aware of the rule, giving more fodder to the argument that his game management skills had waned.

But, following Taylor's funeral, Gibbs and his team rallied to win won the final four regular-season games, going from 5-7 to 9-7 to claim the final playoff berth in the NFC. The emotional run ended Saturday, when the Redskins lost 35-14 at Seattle in the wild-card playoffs.

"It was the toughest (season) for me," Gibbs said Monday. "When you go through a season like that, for a while it's kind of hard to regrasp reality."

Gibbs has also endured a personal crisis for a year. One of his grandsons, Taylor, was diagnosed with leukemia last January at age 2. Gibbs frequently talks lovingly about his "grandbabies," and he made an overnight trip to North Carolina on Sunday to be with his family, interrupting the postseason routine of meetings that usually follow the final game of the season.

Still, for much of the season, Gibbs seemed intent on returning to coach. Players and coaches said publicly and privately over the last week that they would be shocked if he didn't stay on to finish the job. Last month, he said he would be open to discussing a contract extension so that he would not return next season as a lame-duck coach.

At a news conference Monday, Gibbs spoke about plans for next season -- the team's approach to free agency, offseason workouts and the possibility of an open quarterback competition at training camp -- as if he were going to remain on the sidelines. However, he hedged when asked if he would definitely be back, saying it would hinge on his meeting Monday night with Snyder.

"Everybody's situation will be taken into context here -- including mine, and my future here and all that," Gibbs said Monday.

Gibbs went 124-60 during the regular season and 16-5 during the playoffs during his first term with the Redskins. He won Super Bowls following the 1981, 1987 and 1991 seasons with three different quarterbacks.

Having said repeatedly that he did not intend to coach again, Gibbs was inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1996. Snyder lured him out of retirement four years ago to rescue a franchise that had floundered for more than a decade, having made only one playoff appearance since Gibbs' first retirement.

Gibbs' last four years were down-and-up, down-and-up. He had his two worst seasons as a coach -- 6-10 in 2004 and 5-11 in 2006 -- but he also led the Redskins to the playoffs with late runs in 2005 and 2007.

His final career totals: 171-101, including 17-7 in the playoffs, a career .629 winning percentage that ranks third all-time behind George Halas and Don Shula among coaches with more than 125 wins.

dave-gnfnr2k wrote:

The ending is fine since that is how much "grunge/instrustrial songs end

hard end is fine.....ending it on an off key musically is weird....but...if something else follows it immediately...then it sort of makes sense....

Clinton fights back tears as emotions run high in New Hampshire race
Module body

Mon Jan 7, 8:25 PM

WASHINGTON - It's bare-knuckle time in New Hampshire, where a grinding campaign and Democrat Barack Obama's stunning streak in the polls left Hillary Clinton battling tears Monday, while John McCain's surging popularity invited sharp attacks from his top Republican rival.

Clinton, fighting increasingly long odds in trying to stop Obama's march to the party's presidential nomination, grew emotional when she was asked how she keeps going while remaining upbeat.

"It's not easy. It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do. I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall back," she said, her voice breaking and her eyes welling up.

"This is very personal for me," she told a small crowd of undecided voters in a Portsmouth, N.H., coffee shop after she was able to continue.

"Some people think elections are a game. It's like, who's up or who's down. It's about our country. It's about our kids' futures. And it's really about all of us, together."

Clinton's misty-eyed moment was applauded by the group. But it was labelled a campaign ploy by some and criticized by former Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, who's trailing in the second state to weigh in on who'll be running for president in the November general election.

"I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve," said Edwards.

Clinton, regarded as unlikable by many Americans who find her stiff and reserved, later told CNN she was touched that a supporter had asked how she was doing.

"I actually have emotions," she said, noting that her husband Bill and current president George W. Bush have also teared up on occasion.

Clinton showed her more recognizable tougher side later in the day as she continued to portray Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois vying to become the first black president, as ill-suited to run the country.

Obama, the Democratic front-runner who's been attracting overflow crowds and comparisons to John F. Kennedy since he knocked Clinton out of the top spot in the Iowa caucuses last week, rallied with his message of hope and changing the bitter partisan divide in the United States.

"You're the wave, and I'm riding it," he told voters.

"In less than 24 hours ... it will be your turn to stand up and say to the rest of the country: 'The time for change has come'."

"In one day we can say that we've had enough of the partisan food fight. We don't like the trivialization of our politics. We don't like the petty point-scoring."

Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife late Sunday, suggested her troubles amounted to sexism.

"We can't be a new story," he said. "I can't make her younger, taller, male."

Some surveys gave Obama a double-digit lead in support over Hillary Clinton.

She was hoping McCain's maverick appeal would steal some of Obama's thunder among the large number of independent voters in New Hampshire on Tuesday, when they vote for their choice of who the Democrats and Republicans should nominate.

Surveys had McCain leading Mitt Romney, the former governor from Massachusetts, who was hoping to put his campaign on track after losing to Baptist minister turned politician Mike Huckabee in Iowa last week.

McCain, said Romney, would never win a showdown with Obama for the White House.

"I think Barack Obama would be able to do to John McCain exactly what he was able to do to the other senators who were running on the other side," Romney said.

Romney has run several TV commercials against McCain in New Hampshire, arguing that the senator's immigration plan would offer amnesty for illegal immigrants and painting him as a disloyal Republican for twice opposing President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

McCain carried the state in his 2000 Republican nomination fight against Bush, when he was favoured by political independents who accounted for 41 per cent of the vote.

But now he's battling Obama for the support of people who aren't affiliated with either political party.

McCain, who has received the support of almost every major newspaper in the state, was almost grounded last summer when funds dried up over his unpopular stands on the Iraq war and illegal immigration.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, was running a distant third in polls and wasn't expected to do well in New Hampshire given the lack of social conservatives in the state.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has been concentrating his Republican campaign in other states with more voters.