They remain the true home run kings...if the game is to have any value, any credibility whatsoever, Selig has to unilaterally restore Roger Maris and Hank Aaron to their positions as the all-time home run kings. Maris' record of 61 home runs in a season has not been surpassed, and Aaron's record of 755 home runs has not been shattered. Not really. Not in any sort of athletically credible way.
As for A-Rod, maybe he'll do the honorable thing and go into film and TV...something medical perhaps...Grey's Anatomy? Private Practice?
I'm not stunned by the revelation...Is anybody?...it's really gotten that bad for MLB. I read an assessment of the steroid situation online somewhere that was as chilling as it was concise...a sports columnist whose name I forget quoted his teenage son as saying of A-Rodgate with a shrug, "If I've heard of him, he's juiced."
To put it politely, there's almost two decades of major league baseball achievement that's of dubious value...I'm really not sure how we're supposed to ever take the sport seriously again.
Feeling pretty good about the Cs after two-thirds of regular season games...44-11, most wins in the league, two big comeback victories on the road against decent Western Conference teams...
The overtime loss to the Fakers at home was disheartening to be sure, but I remain resolute in my conviction that L.A. can't consistently play strong D over the course of a seven game series...plus, Bynum is out until the playoffs AT LEAST...they can't win the title without him.
Losing to the Spurs at home was a downer, but they're a skilled and classy franchise. I don't know if the Celts would have prevailed in the Finals if they'd faced S.A. I still think they're the team to beat in the West come playoff time.
Ultimately though, the Cavs remain the most fearsome adversary for Gang Green in either conference...I just don't know if Boston has enough to stop King James and Company...
As a homage to President's Day, Gallup came out with its annual survey asking the American public to rank the presidents and offer up their vote for the greatest president. The survey is interesting, if silly, reflecting partisan preferences and historical ignorance more than anything else.
This year though, Gallup kept the scope of the question especially limited. They gave respondents a choice of five presidents (Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and Reagan) and asked them to pick the greatest of the five.
We'll come back to that in a minute.
The results of the poll were as follows...
Reagan came in first with 24%. Lincoln and JFK were tied for second with 22%. FDR finished third at 18%. The Father of Our Country came in last with 9%. The remaining 5% were unsure or didn't know. I'd like that five percent removed from the voter rolls please.
Ponder the absurdity of the choice for a moment. OK, now ponder the obscenity of the final result...
Nearly three times as many respondents picked Reagan or Kennedy over Washington. There is no other word for that than obscene. The man who led us to independence and nationhood, the man who singlehandedly prevented the rise of monarchy or dictatorship in the aftermath of our Revolution, the man who created a national government out of nothing, is swamped by the Twin Hairdos?
Furthermore, what are Reagan and JFK even doing in the question? Really! I yield to nobody in my admiration for Kennedy, but he was at most, a great president...Top Ten, sure, Top Five maybe, but a stretch...and why is Reagan in the mix AT ALL??!!??!!
The question should have been posed with regard to three, perhaps four presidents...Which of the following was the greatest president? Washington, Lincoln, FDR, TR?
The legislative branch has just mustered all of its intestinal fortitude to give away a trillion dollars of borrowed money. The executive branch's justification/exhortation for this exercise, in credit-card fiscal policy is that it will stimulate the sluggish economy and thereby forestall some manner of "catastrophe."
Well.
Set aside for the moment whether we are truly on the brink of economic oblivion (call me Calvin Coolidge, but I don't believe that we are), would the trillion greenbacks soon to be sprayed forth from Washington accomplish anything beneficial for the Republic? Will the stimulus of Obamanomics restore us to the sunlit uplands of prosperity, and more importantly, ravenous consumerism?
I refer you to a February 6th New York Times article on Japan's similar adventures in "stimulus." Obama and the Democratic Congress are taking us down the same path that Japan took in the 1990s with massive social spending to stimulate economic growth and erase a painful recession. Did it work for Japan? Read the Times article to find how much it DIDN'T work for Japan...and also read it for a hearty laugh...
To paraphrase Homer Simpson on Ted Koppel, " I found it witty AND informative..."
The prevalent ideology of the majority of Californians, indeed most Americans, is infantilism...One of my heroes, George F. Will, manufactured the term in a column back in the mid 1970s, and it remains the reigning political philosophy in the Land of the Brave (Consumer) and the Home of the Free (Lunch)...
Will described infantilism as the ideology of the six year old, willing expensive ends while simultaneously rejecting the means to pay for those ends...Infantilists are found in both parties, and call themselves "conservatives" and "progressives" with a straight face. They are equally allergic to common sense, and like a child, become downright Vesuvian when confronted with any sort of limits.
Specifically, infantilism demands a society where a large and energetic government provides LOTS of services AND tax rates approaching zero. The G.O.P. rarely likes to admit what they know is true: most voters and a majority of Republicans, LOVE big government and the services that it provides. However, those same voters don't want to pay for those services. They just don't.
Government is extremely expensive, often rightly so. What politicians have been doing since the late 70s is accomodating the public's infantilism by keeping government programs and services in place and keeping taxes absurdly low. Reagan was especially gifted at this sort of dreamy fiscal irresponsibility...Reagan NEVER sent Congress a budget proposal that was remotely balanced...He offered up tax cuts, increased military spending, and social spending that was largely unscathed...As a president Reagan could get away with enabling infantilism because he ran a federal government that could print money...Interestingly enough, when Reagan was governor of California, he was far more realistic, raising EVERY conceivable tax to cover the Golden State's budget shortfall in 1967...perhaps that was because as a state, California HAS to balance its budget, lacking the feds' magic printing presses for manufacturing currency and debt...He also didn't have to contend with Proposition 13's absurd legislative supermajority requirement for tax increases
But I digress...Californians are currently confronted with the consequences of their infantilism, and much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has ensued...A forty-two billion dollar budget deficit requires gigantic cuts in spending, and equally gigantic tax increases...
For too long, we as a state and as a country, have been allowed to believe that we can have massive government largesse and not pay for it, that, as Victor Davis Hanson said, we of the broad middle class can live like eighteenth century French aristocrats and never face any manner of reckoning...
Infantilism is about to get run over by the Humvee of hard facts...there will be less government, and it will be more expensive...It is the long overdue dawning of sense, and the return of reality...
Love conquers all...even recessions...I was struck yesterday by how the youts at my school rose up en masse to defy the grim recessionary climate and expend huge amounts of disposable income on equally vast quantities of candy, balloons, flowers, gift baskets, stuffed animals, and other assorted V-Day paraphenalia...Granted, that same day Congress was voting to heroically give away hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars, so perhaps that colored their decision-making as consumers...but somehow I doubt their current-events gathering was that acute and finely honed...
I asked a number of the Children of the Corn how much the average Valentine Day's gift basket cost (a typical gift basket includes a zeppelin-sized balloon in the shape of a valentine, a stuffed animal, enough candy, cookies and cupcakes to trigger a diabetic coma, and a rose). The median price was sixty dollars...
Hmmm...yes indeed, it really is 1933 all over again...
