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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
End of May Baseball AwardsAL Cy Young: Zack Greinke, Kansas City Royals. He's 8-1 with a sub-1.00 ERA, which is unheard of this late in the season. He's got a strikeout to walk ratio of almost 7-1. He's even thrown five complete games, which would probably lead the league for the year even if he hurt his arm tomorrow. The lowest ERA in the league other than Greinke is three times as high as his, which really reflects his value. AL MVP: Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay Rays. League leader in RBI, hitting .324 with 9 homers, and playing third base. What's not to like? Last year's Rookie of the Year takes his game to the next level. NL Cy Young: Johan Santana, New York Mets. League leader in ERA, tied for lead in wins, 5-1 K/W ratio. NL MVP: Raul Ibanez, Philadelphia Phillies. Appears to be a legitimate triple-crown contender, with the league lead in RBI, tied for the lead in HR and a sizzling .347 batting average. I would be surprised to see if he keeps up this pace at age 37, but stranger things have happened. Keep your eye on: Justin Upton, rightfielder for the Arizona Diamondbacks. This kid is 21 years old and hitting .346. In his last 6 games he's gone 14 for 24, with five multihit games and three games with three hits. As good a player in the game as there is right now, and when you consider that he was hitting around .180 at the end of April, possibly the hottest hitter in the game. The Team to Beat: Los Angeles Dodgers. They have the best record in baseball despite missing their slugger, Manny Ramirez. They're already 8-1/2 games in front in the West.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sotomayor to SCThere will be a minor fight about this, but expect her to be confirmed relatively easily. This is a status quo nomination and will not change the balance of power in the court. I am troubled by this quote: "Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." [U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 10/26/2001] If Samuel Alito had said that the richness of his life experience as a white male meant he would reach better conclusions than a black woman, we'd not be calling him Justice these days. On the other hand, it's kind of like those stupid coffee mugs that women had back in the late 1970s, proclaiming that in order for a woman to be thought half as good as a man she had to do twice the work in half the time; fortunately this is not difficult. Obnoxious, certainly, but not disqualifying. Nate Silver points out that a little over half (29-25) of the Republican senators in 1998 voted against her nomination, including 11 current GOP members. But 6 current GOP senators (plus then Republican Arlen Spector) voted in favor of her. Her bio is compelling; Puerto Rican girl growing up in the Bronx attends Princeton and graduates at or near the top of her class, goes on the Yale Law Journal, then a career as a prosecutor and judge. You can see the danger here for the GOP in a protracted struggle; it will become the mean Republican men against this high-achieving minority woman.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
A Role Model For Girls?I had to snicker at that comment from Shanna Moakler, a former Miss USA who resigned her post as the head of the Miss California beauty pageant in protest of Carrie Prejean being allowed to remain as Miss California. "I cannot with a clear conscious move forward supporting and promoting the Miss Universe Organization when I no longer believe in it, or the contracts I signed committing myself as a youth," she continues. "I want to be a role model for young women with high hopes of pageantry, but now feel it more important to be a role model for my children. I am sorry and hope I have not let any young supporters down but wish them the best of luck in fulfilling their dreams." This of course is the same Shanna Moakler who's been divorced, had two kids out of wedlock with two different men, and posed nude for Playboy. After the divorce was finalized, she threw a divorce party for herself, complete with a cake:  Yeah, she's somebody girls should look at as a role model. Labels: Carrie Prejean, Shanna Moakler
Monday, May 11, 2009
Biden's Speech At SyracuseI guess his putdown of the Obama dog is getting the attention, but it's a crazy, wild, zany speech with so many highlights it's tough to pick only a few: Let me say congratulations to all my fellow recipients of honorary degrees today. You all deserve it. Talking about his graduation in 1968: That was the world I entered when I walked across the stage to receive my law degree. That was the history that up to that point had been written for us, not by us. But in spite of it all, as I walked across this stage like you, I never doubted for one instant that we could change that history. That we could rewrite the outcome we were careening toward.
And we did. Five years later I sat in a room across from President Ford and Dr. Henry Kissinger, along with my colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee, demanded that the war end and it did within a matter of weeks after that. It would have to be six years later, at least, as Nixon didn't resign until August 1974. And the idea that Joe Biden ended the war... well, it's certainly the first time I've heard that argument. In it, there was a line that's more applicable, in my view, to today than it was to his Ireland in 1916. He said "The world has changed. It has changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born." Well, it’s clear things have changed utterly in the last 12 to 15 years. A terrible beauty has been born. It's a different world out there.
But we have an opportunity to make it truly beautiful because we're at an inflection point. Absent our input and leadership, the world will continue to careen in the direction the momentum is now taking. That folks, is an inflection point. Do nothing, or take history into our own hands, and bend it to the service of a better day.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
My BS Sensor Is PinnedBy this story from the old John Edwards Campaign: Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.
They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign. How? By disclosing the affair?
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Obama On a Bun!Well, with all the attention Obama's given lately to Dijon mustard on hamburgers, I thought I'd try it. After all, I'm an arugula-kind of guy and always willing to try something different. So I ordered one and when I looked at the way they'd spread the Dijon on the bun I was absolutely spooked:  I mean, it's he, it's the one, on a bun, no less. In Dijon! I mean, this could be worth millions on ebay. I've already got folks standing outside my house begging to see the Obama bun! Labels: Barack Obama, Dijon
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Brutal Student Executes Underprivileged MinorityJust trying to think of a way to make this story palatable to gun-grabbers: Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.
“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.
Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey. That's pretty chilling. Fortunately somebody had a gun in a nearby backpack and exercised the kind of gun control that everybody (except gun-grabbers) can applaud.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
John Edwards: Still Lyin'And perhaps sadder, his wife still believes him: It didn't occur to me that at a fancy hotel in New York, where he sat with a potential donor to his antipoverty work, he would be targeted by a woman who would confirm that the man at the table was John Edwards and then would wait for him outside the hotel hours later when he returned from a dinner, wait with the come-on line "You are so hot" and an idea that she should travel with him and make videos. The other woman as a "stalker". And get this: And the next day John and I spoke. He wasn't coy, but it turned out he wasn't forthright either. A single night and since then remorse, was what he said. There were other opportunities, he admitted, but on only one night had he violated his vows to me. Except: A single night, another opportunity, but that was it and he had wanted away from her.... It turned out that a single time was not all it was. Labels: Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards
Monday, May 04, 2009
Andrew Sullivan, Still on the Trig Truther StoryIt is sad to see how low he can go: She explains above what she describes as her "fleeting moment" of temptation to abort Trig when she found out she was pregnant at an out of state energy conference, and her decision to keep the pregnancy secret for seven months (an endeavor made easier by the fact that no one seeing her had any idea up to the very day she announced). I tend to assume that everything Palin says is untrue until proven otherwise, and in this case, have no basis to confirm or deny anything. But it is also only fair to give her own explanation for her secrecy an airing. He seems too young for senile dementia. Would it be tacky to suggest that AIDS has unhinged him? Update: See also Power Line. Turns out that Obama's reading the Demented Dish.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Two Terrific Posts at the Daily HowlerThis has always struck me as a very liberal site, but they're on the money today on Olbermann's sexism: Criticizing Prejean for this stance, and for her new affiliations, is perfectly OK, of course—although she simply isn’t an important public figure. But Prejean’s stance has nothing to do with her “boobs,” or with Olbermann’s undying need to denigrate women’s intelligence and joke about women’s bodies. The fact that this keeps occurring on a “progressive” TV show is a truly amazing fact about an amazing corporate era. Even more amazing: The fact that a screaming mess like this would then be thrown to a woman host. The fact that few progressives on the “liberal web” will ever say boo about this. And on No Child Left Behind (Scroll down): In our view, we’d all be better off if our newspapers and TV shows paid more attention to the actual data produced by this ballyhooed testing program—data which fly in the face of the gloomy portrait our president offered, somewhat strangely, just last month. If we actually care about low-income and minority kids, we might want to teach ourselves the facts about their historical progress—even before we renew our tedious, often self-involved fights about a highly politicized program. (But teacher! We want to criticize Bush!) Highly recommended!
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