TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

From Michael Goldfarb via the McCain for President website.

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

Can this discrimination of people who play Dungeons & Dragons in their dad’s basement end now?

Penalty: McCain -1 (2-1).

Rent Control/Stabilization is a program in New York City where, in exchange for tax breaks, condos set aside a certain number of units for rent-stabilization. These rents can only increase when the city’s rent board says it’s OK and, even then, only by the amount the city allows. The apartment must be stabilized for a certain number of years and, after that period expires, the person in the apartment cannot be evicted. When the person leaves, the building then has the choice to raise the apartment to market rate or continue letting it be stabilized. The Democratic-championed program is sold to New Yorkers by trotting out old people on fixed income, teachers, cops, firemen, and anyone else who provides essential services to a city they could not otherwise afford to live in.

The obvious abuses of this program are rarely mentioned; people who qualify for the apartments when they don’t make much money are not asked to leave them if their income goes above the threshold, people who sublet their rent-controlled apartment for market-rate (say, their rent control allows them to pay $650/month and they rent it out to someone else for your more standard $3000/month… these numbers are not exaggerations), etc. Fewer people still mention that the almost one million rent-controlled apartments in the city help to contribute to the ridiculous rent prices by decreasing the supply of available market rate apartments and thus, shockingly, driving up rents for everyone else.

So it should come as little surprise that in the back-scratching, favor-filled world of New York City that one of our esteemed Congresstrolls has not only one rent-controlled apartment… but four. Congressmen Charles Rangel has three rent-controlled apartments which he combined into one penthouse and a fourth on another floor of the building which he uses as an office in complete violation of the law. Y’see, one of the actual regulations on rent-control is, go figure, that a rent-controlled apartment must actually be your primary residence.

This is two months after the media discovered that our esteemed new governor also enjoys a rent-stabilized apartment. Unsurprisingly, I guess, it turns out that both guys live in the same building in Harlem.

I can’t even imagine the sh*tshow the New York Media would stir up if this was a Republican Congressman. I look forward to both Rangel and Patterson being re-elected. Since, you know, breaking laws is only bad if you’re a Republican politician.

Stay classy, guys. Please, continue the Democratic tradition of telling everyone that they need to take care of the poor while stealing from them with the other hand.

McCain: John McCain believes it is strategically and morally essential for the United States to support the Government of Iraq to become capable of governing itself and safeguarding its people. He strongly disagrees with those who advocate withdrawing American troops before that has occurred.

Obama: Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

For the purpose of full disclosure: when I believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction I was for this. As it turned out they did not and we managed to destabilized something of a stable country and contribute to $4.50/gallon gas. Don’t get me wrong — I realize Saddam Hussein was not a particularly nice guy and all and life in Iraq seemed pretty awful. But, let’s be honest here — really no more or less awful than most other Middle Eastern countries where they may or may not still burn women at the stake for learning to read. I mean, we LIKE Saudi Arabia and they still sentence women to death for witchcraft or, my personal favorite, punishing women for having the audacity to get raped. So, the question is: how does the candidate best clean up GWB’s mess?

For the most part, I totally agree with Obama’s principal for getting the F out of dodge. Here’s the problem: we screwed it up… aren’t we kind of on the hook to fix it?

Most reasonable people (as we think of reasonable people in the US) would say: OK, you have three separate and distinct belief sets in this country. Why don’t you try our screwed up system of states? You’ll have three loose-associated states under one federal government. You can all have your own rules and policies and the federal government will just be there to apportion things and fairly distribute the dead dinosaur juice proceeds. Here’s the problem: religious people aren’t reasonable… like ever. Reasonable people tend to not blow themselves up to make a point.

I appreciate the fact that Obama stood against the war the entire time. In retrospect, he was right and the rest of us were wrong. However, his plan to fix things involving pulling US troops out of the country and expecting an unstable government to not immediately revert back to a military dictatorship is short-sighted. He’s asking three distinct groups (all of whom believe they have God on their side) to agree. This was, fortunately, something our founding fathers realized: government by the Bible is not good government.

On the other hand:

McCain: The answer is not unconditional dialogues with these two dictatorships from a position of weakness. The answer is for the international community to apply real pressure to Syria and Iran to change their behavior. The United States must also bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces and deter Iranian intervention.

Obama: Obama will launch the most aggressive diplomatic effort in recent American history to reach a new compact on the stability of Iraq and the Middle East. This effort will include all of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran and Syria. This compact will aim to secure Iraq’s borders; keep neighboring countries from meddling inside Iraq; isolate al Qaeda; support reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian groups; and provide financial support for Iraq’s reconstruction.

Getting in to a never-ending battle with counties in the Middle East is stupid. Why do we continue to put on this insane posture that these countries on the other side of the world pose some threat to our national security? We have satellites that can watch these people from space. If they launched a nuke, we’d know it practically the second it went into the sky. If there’s one thing that the United States is very consistent in it’s responding in kind when attacked. Responding. Wouldn’t it make far more sense to ensure that someone can’t, I don’t know, climb on the R-train out on Coney Island with a suitcase nuke and detonate it under Times Square? Or get on a Metro-North train in Poughkeepsie and bring it to Grand Central? Or drive halfway across the Golden Gate bridge? Aren’t these all more important — and more likely — then a random launch from Iran? Aren’t these all more important than having this cowboy mentality that we’re going to bring the Middle East in line? How’s that been working out over there for the last, like, forever? Isn’t there a wildly misattributed quote that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? This goes for both guys. Obama’s going to launch a diplomatic mission to make these guys see the light? Really? Have you ever had a reasonable “Creationism vs. Evolution” argument with someone that didn’t end with your eyes glazed over and your mouth agape? Didn’t think so.

So, this pretty much sucks. I agree with McCain’s position on fixing what we screwed up but agree with Obama’s position on not stirring up a hornet’s nest in two other countries.

Point: Draw. (3-1, McCain).

McCain: John McCain believes that the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, individual Constitutional right that we have a sacred duty to protect. We have a responsibility to ensure that criminals who violate the law are prosecuted to the fullest, rather than restricting the rights of law abiding citizens.

Obama: Obama also favors commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. He supports closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. He also supports making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.

This was addressed a bit in a previous post.

As my personal stance on guns is pretty much summed up, in its entirety, in the blurb from McCain’s site — this doesn’t look good for Obama. I’d be willing to listen to a fuller explanation of Obama’s position but, unsurprisingly, you can’t really find it on his campaign site. Because of that, I had to check out his voting record and quotes.
Read more »

If something comes up that needs saying, I reserve the right to mention it in a random interlude.

The Supreme Court correctly ruled on the DC gun ban, calling it unconstitutional based on the text of the 2nd Amendment. The majority decided that the historical narrative both preceding and following the amendment indicated the founders did not intend guns to be regulated.

Writing dissents were both John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer. Steves said the majority: would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.

and Breyer: In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.

Stevens is flat out and disturbingly wrong. He assumes that the framers of the Constitution wanted the ability to regulate every little bit of people’s lives. They didn’t. They had just come from a government where the monarch regulated every little bit of the people’s lives. They wanted the people to be in control of the government, not vice versa. They created 10 guarantees of people’s rights that the government could never and should never be taken away. This bastardized, bloated government that we’ve turned in to isn’t what they wanted. I believe they’d be horrified if they knew we were talking about socializing health care. Clinton’s appointees forget that. It is completely and totally outlined in Stevens’s quote. They didn’t want the state to regulate people’s access to weapons because they realized that law-abiding people don’t just go out and kill people when they feel like it.

Breyer, on the other hand, presumes there is no untouchable constitutional right to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden, urban areas. Why? What is hard to understand about the line: the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. What’s the gotcha in that line? And why single out urban areas? Isn’t urban areas where you most need people to be able to protect themselves? Are people in inner cities going to somehow not be able to get illegal guns? Could this be a gentle form of liberal “we know better” racism? I’m going to go ahead and say yes.

Of the three justices who voted with the minority, two were appointed by Bill Clinton, one by Gerald Ford, and one by George HW Bush. Of the majority, two were appointed by George W Bush, two by Ronald Reagan’s handlers, and one by Bush 1. With Gerald Ford’s appointee approaching 90 (and there should be an age limit on justices), I think that the new president will quickly have a Supreme Court appointee. For everything bad you can say about the Republicans (and there’s a lot, I admit), their Justices do still stick to the Republican ideal of small government and strict interpretation of the Constitution. I like that. Obama would appoint a person who would have voted with the minority in this case. I don’t like that. Democratic nominees have a tendency to increase the function of government and erode property rights. Republican nominees tend to do the opposite.

Point: McCain (1-1 McCain).

McCain: This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level. As John McCain has publicly noted, “At its core, abortion is a human tragedy. To effect meaningful change, we must engage the debate at a human level.”

Obama: Barack Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in that case.

McCain believes that Roe vs. Wade was incorrectly decided. I agree with him on that. Individual states should have the right to decide their own course in regards to abortion. It is not mentioned in the constitution and, therefore, should fall to the Tenth Amendment and be decided by state.

That said, the idea of “amending the constitution” to protect the unborn is one of the more retarded things I’ve ever heard. And, frankly, no… the government should have no say in what is, at the end of the day, a personal and moral decision that’s none of their business. I don’t like abortion. I think it’s tremendously sad. I also think it’s tremendously personal and shouldn’t be legislated by people so far out of touch with reality that they do things like rename French fries into Freedom fries.

But yes, it’s an excellent idea to force people to have unwanted children. It really helps to end the cycle of poverty. At some point, it would be nice if Republicans would pull their head out of the sand in this issue. The idea of teaching abstinence in school is great. On the other hand, it’s pretty much putting your hands over your ears and yelling “NOTHING’S WRONG NOTHING’S WRONG NOTHING’S WRONG”.

That said, I can’t agree with McCain on this because he wants Roe vs. Wade overturned as a path to ending abortions nationwide. This is retarded and will never happen. It’s also one of the more brilliant “single-issue voters” things they have at their disposal. Next up: the other one.

Point: Obama (1-0, Barack)

I’m pretty sure I know who I’m voting for in 2008… but in the constant quest for blog material I’ve decided to give both candidates a fair shake in trying to swing me. Some important things to note:

1) I’m notoriously libertarian about almost everything. I can’t call myself a true libertarian because those people are f*cking crazy.

2) I am Generation X… which means I’m cynical about the function of the government and pretty much have joined the “it doesn’t matter who wins, both candidates are out for themselves and for power and will do whatever the Illumnati tell them” club. I’ve realized that the Boomers are going to hold power forever and that by the time they leave, power will have skipped GenX and gone right to GenY.

As part of that cynicism, I’ve accepted the fact that the pissing contest between the Republicans and Democrats and the people who sell hate will probably end up collapsing the system. The 24-hour news cycle and hate-sale business has murdered the idea of compromise and where no idea, even if it’s good, can be accomplished. Social Security is going to collapse. It is. When I’m of age, it will be gone. A legitimate idea to fix the problem was destroyed by Democrats because they didn’t come up with it. I believe this because no one can possibly believe that a system which will eventually see Generation X trying to support the Boomers will hold up when coupled with a system of government jobs (like the Post Office, teachers, and railroad workers) where people can retire with full benefits at 55.

3) I’m pretty sure that most of Frodo Kucinich’s articles of impeachment are hogsh*t and will hurt Obama more than help him.

4) I don’t vote based on social issues because social issues will tend to move left by themselves regardless of who’s in charge. This has been the trend in the 200-odd years this country has been around and I have no reason to believe that will change under the current Constitution.

5) I believe that the government loves the issues of gay marriage, abortion, and illegal immigration because it distracts the masses from the fact China owns our country.

6) I don’t believe that judges who are declaring marriage laws unconstitutional are “activist judges.” I believe they have simply read the fourteenth amendment. Specifically, this bit — nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws — which seems really straightforward.

7) I believe Lindsay Graham should be removed from office based on his idea that the Constitution should be amended to suspend Habeus Corpus because of the Supreme Court’s (correct) ruling that prisoners at Guantanamo have the right to judicial review of their cases.

So, over the next few weeks I’m going to pick random issues off each candidate’s site and decide who I agree with more. I’ll keep a running total until it gets too serious.

Important note: I live in New York. My vote does not matter in the slightest.

I like to think I’m not naive. I realize that when people call David Eckstein a “gamer” they really just mean “white.” I understand that when the NBA pushed Steve Nash to a two-time MVP for a couple of years they were appealing to a lost fan base. I understand when that audience says they don’t watch the NBA anymore because of “that element and culture” they really just don’t like the scary dark kids. So when Willie Randolph asks if there’s an element of racism in the fan’s sudden rejection of him, I’d like to at least step back and think about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m sure Willie Randolph knows racism when he sees it. The man was born in South Carolina in 1954. Between that and playing minor league ball in 1972 (less than three decades from Jackie Robinson’s debut) I’m sure Willie has dealt with more than his fair share of idiots. By idiot I mean anyone who judged him based on stupid things and expected him to act one way because of it.

You know, like expecting a manager to go out and kick dirt and throw bases at people to get calls overturned… even though calls never get overturned.

Met fans are little bit of a crazy group. I understand this. They are fickle, over-sensitive, and turn on people quicker than wrestlers. Nothing illustrates this better than last season’s Lastings Milledge saga. When Milledge came up, he was a hero. He got a standing ovation the first time he took the field. By the end of the season he was traded. The media (and the Mets) framed it as “addition by subtraction.” Milledge was a diva and he was black.

Racism or a young player’s bad attitude? Who knows. We know it’s not unprecedented for the Mets to trade away young guys who exhibit diva tendencies. Supposedly that’s one of the reasons I have to watch Scott Kazmir mow through the AL East.

The thing is I’m more apt to listen to Willie Randolph’s views on racism in baseball because he lived it. We don’t know how many Ty Cobbs there were in baseball in the 70s. We don’t know what kind of segregation Willie had to deal with. We don’t know what kind of awfulness he faced in the Carolinas in the 50s and 60s. The problem I have with his statement is this — in his quote to the Bergen Record he says:

Asked directly if he believes black managers are held to different standards than their white counterparts, Randolph said: “I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but I think there’s something there. Herman Edwards did pretty well here and he won a couple of playoff [games], and they were pretty hard on Herm. Isiah [Thomas] didn’t do a great job, but they beat up Isiah pretty good. … I don’t know if people are used to a certain figurehead. There’s something weird about it.

“I think it’s very important … that I handle myself in a way that the [African-American managers] coming behind me will get the opportunities, too … .”

Emphasis mine.

This is the problem I have: if Willie wanted to make a point that African American team leaders are held to a different standard than their white counter-parts; he has to do better than Isiah Thomas and Herm Edwards. Isiah was in charge of one of the biggest disasters in basketball history. He built up a $100 million payroll in a league with a salary cap and ruined the franchise so badly that they won’t recover from his five year tenure for another four years. The team never cleared .500 with him as the GM or the head coach. And Herm? I won’t argue that Herm was treated fairly here; but I don’t think that it had anything to do with race. New York Jet fans are a special breed of crazy and treat EVERYONE unfairly. That’s what they do. People are already calling for Eric Mangini’s head after one bad season. They want to jettison Chad Pennington who’s never done anything but turn in over .500 seasons for them. Herm also can’t manage a football clock to save his life and might still be wanted in New Jersey for the murder of Curtis Martin’s knees. Herm also asked to get out of here because he wanted to coach the Chiefs and add LJ’s knees to his swath of carnage. New York fans don’t care about race. We care about winning. Does Willie think that New York Giants fans treated Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning fairly at the beginning of the 2007 season? There were more articles than I care to count about how the Giants needed to fire Coughlin and trade Manning for someone else. In their first two seasons, Manning and Coughlin went 11-5 (with an NFC East title) and 8-8 with consecutive playoff appearances. They wanted these two guys run out of town because Eli didn’t win a playoff game by HIS SECOND YEAR IN THE LEAGUE. This is what the New York media does. They’re hyperbolic and, when they can’t think of anything reasonable to fix a team, they call for new managers.

Randolph’s treatment has been no different than any other coach’s or manager’s treatment in New York. Fans, especially New York fans, don’t care about race. We don’t. Race is a really stupid distinction in a city of eight million people. We care about 2 things in our sports figures: honesty and winning. If you win enough the honesty doesn’t really matter. There isn’t a person on the planet that New York fans won’t give a chance. We love Darryl Strawberry. If 45-year-old, drug-clouded Doc Gooden came out of prison tomorrow and struck out ten per game we’d love him. One of the reasons A-Rod found it so hard to be accepted here is because he wasn’t honest. For his first couple seasons here he tried to always say the “right thing” and ran everything through a PR filter. That might have flown in Seattle and Texas. Here we’re assaulted with a constant stream of media BS and can smell it a mile away. Two A-Rod stories come to mind. In 2004 he was caught at an illegal poker club and couldn’t apologize enough and made it a point to tell everyone how bad gambling is and that he’d never do it again. It reeked of PR nonsense. Last year, A-Rod relaxed, said what was on his mind, let himself get photographed with manly-looking hookers in Toronto and said “yeah, whatever”, and the fans almost immediately started liking him more. That’s how we work. Be honest or be awesome and lie… either way gets you in.

Another problem:

Randolph excluded Ozzie Guillen from the conversation, but wanted to know why the traits often admired in the calm, cool and collected likes of Joe Torre are portrayed as flaws in Torre’s former third base coach.

Because Torre never did anything but win. Torre was run out of town because the Yankees are owned by an insane man and his two children. Look, Joe Torre is not a firey guy. In fact, there’s a pretty solid chance that he’s sound asleep in the dugout every time he’s wearing sunglasses — but whatever he was doing worked for the Yankees. The Met fans insistence that the team’s problems are part-and-parcel of Willie’s stark refusal to rave like a lunatic at an umpire is dumb. His point is valid: Torre never did it and Torre won a lot. But that’s the difference — Torre won a lot. If Joe Torre, before he won any championships as Yankee manager, blew the division like Randolph’s Mets blew the division last year is there a remote chance he’s still the manager the next year? Overturning blown calls doesn’t get you wins. Motivating your players behind the scenes gets you wins. The Mets are playing unmotivated, sloppy baseball right now. If you don’t put that on the manager… who do you put it on?

Here’s the disconnect between fans and players/managers: players forget losses. They have to. If Aaron Heilman held on to the Yadier Molina home run, he’d be Brad Lidge. Fans don’t let go that easily. For Randolph (and I’m sure for a lot of the players) they’ve turned in decent years in 2006 and 2007… they’re 290-241 as of 05/23/2008. That’s pretty good. In New York, though, your 50 games over .500 record doesn’t matter because the last two years have ended in heartbreaking fashion. We live in a city where we’re conditioned to only care about results. As a group, most of us are even OK with the way 2006 ended. It sucked, but it was a good season. Last year, however, was unforgivable and no one on the team seems to get that. The players and the manager are looking forward, as they’re conditioned to do, while fans are looking at all the same warning signs that cost them 2007: a shaky bullpen, starters that can’t go 7, sloppy defense, the complete inability to collect timely hits, a mentally broken Jose Reyes, a David Wright who’s beginning to realize that his team cost him the MVP last year, a Carlos Delgado who is standoffish to the media’s questions about him falling apart even though he’s actually falling apart, and a Carlos Beltran that disintegrates under pressure like Trevor Hoffman. Met fans don’t about the 2006 season anymore. They’re concerned about watching the same team that fell apart in 2007. They desperately want proof that they’re not.

The difference is completely outlined in this quote:

“My track record speaks for itself,” Randolph said. “We had a horrible meltdown last year, but prior to that we were the best team in baseball.”

There’s not a Met fan in the world that cares about how the team was really really good until September 15th. This has nothing to do with race. The resurrected zombie corpse of Connie Mack could have been in charge of the Mets last year and neither his preceding 3,700 wins nor the miracle of his resurrected zombie corpse would have mattered. The fans are not over last season as evidenced by Shea Stadium’s poisonous environment. The fans are on edge. They’re sensitive to failure. They’re paying record prices to go out and watch a $140 million payroll lose. This is not an indictment of Randolph’s race; it’s an indictment of an underachieving roster coupled with a touchy fanbase.

It’s reached the point where I don’t know if the relationship is fixable. The way for Randolph to address the fans would have been something along the lines of “Yes, I know we are getting off to a slow start, we just need fans to remember it’s a long season and we’re going to be in it all the way. Everything will settle down eventually.” Joe Torre had to do this on WFAN and YES for the last three years. Randolph’s (and all the Mets’, for that matter) bull-headed insistence that nothing is wrong has fueled the problem. Part of being a good manager is properly massaging your fans via the media. Randolph hasn’t done that; instead he laid down the one gauntlet that’s really hard to pick back up. The Wilpons have backed away from him. Minaya has backed away from him. And now following a terrible performance against the Nationals, followed by a four-game sweep at Atlanta, and now travel to a ballpark in Colorado that has been terrible for them (22-37) since its opening — things aren’t looking good for Randolph’s future here… especially with Lee Mazzilli sitting in the SNY studio with nothing to do but slide in.

It’s too bad, really. I like Randolph. But he seems over-sensitive this season to the scrutiny of the New York media. You’d think he’d understand it; he’s been in New York his entire career. He had to understand that the only option the fans would accept this season was a strong performance out of the gate. And that’s not to say that the Mets’ start was unacceptable. It’s not. One game under .500 and 3 games back before Memorial Day is completely OK. He should be saying that things will probably be better when Pedro comes back. He should mention that Johan Santana carries a 4.02 ERA in April and May but a 2.63 ERA in June. He should be talking up the fact that Johnny Maine is throwing the team on his back after losses and pitching 8 inning gems. It would be completely reasonable for him to tell people to settle down and, honestly, most of us would probably be OK with that.

I’m still hoping Randolph can recover from this and turn it all around. I stuck with Tom Coughlin through the media nonsense and was rewarded. But in my privileged white opinion, the fan’s treatment of Randolph has very little to do with race. It has to do with watching a .500 team that should be a .600 team play sloppy baseball.

Fix that and you could be purple.

I missed the meeting when communist dictator Hugo Chavez became the crazy left’s favorite world leader. I guess, somewhere along the line, they gave up pretending they just want to be super-liberal like Europe and just put their socialist cards on the table and they were all RED!!

As such, you’ve begun to find praises of Hugo Chavez’s awesomeness in the most random of articles, like This One from Z-Net. I hadn’t happened upon Z-Net before, but their tag line is “The Spirit of Resistence Lives On”. I assume this means “middle class white people with guilt blog about the injustices of the world from their Iowa McMansions”.

You’ll recognize the format

Can’t Knock the Hassle: Chavez Challenges Baseball

Communist dictator who has celebrating the impending doom of the United States and who is trying to destabilize other countries in Central America to serve his own agenda: hero. Major League Baseball: baddies.

Owners love Latin America for the same reason Disney can’t get enough of Haiti: they, can sign children for pennies, treat them like trash when they’re finished, and face contact lens-thin regulations for their troubles.

So…. basically…. just like they do in the US? You think bottom-of-the-barrel college kids are treated any better? We’re attacking the Mouse, too? Well… maybe we can get along.

The impact on the athletes can be devastating. “Super Mario” Encarnación, once the most prized prospect of the Oakland As, was found dead in a Taipei motel room in October 2006, after an apparent drug overdose. He had been playing at the margins of the semi-pro baseball circuit desperate to not return home a failure to the DR. He returned, only when his friend former AL MVP Miguel Tejada, paid to have his body shipped back to their village from Japan.

Again: waiting to hear the difference between how Latin players are treated vs. how every other baseball player in the league is treated. If some random minor league player from the US ODed on horse steroids in a hotel room, how quickly do you think the team and baseball would distance itself from that player? Do you think they’d pay any funeral costs? The answer: not unless he left baseball to join the military after September 11th.

Encarnación did do better than Lino Ortiz. The nineteen-year-old pitcher was about to be called up to the Majors when he died from taking an animal steroid in the DR looking for an edge. Steroids are actually legal and available over the counter, but their cost makes them prohibitive. Lino bought his from the pet store and met an all-too-early-death.

Not sure what this paragraph is supposed to evoke. Am I supposed to feel bad because some random Venezuelan pitcher saw dollar signs, tried to take a shortcut, and paid with his life? Am I supposed to be outraged because steroids are too expensive in Venezuela? Am I supposed to feel different emotions than I do for Len Bias - a guy who had everything ahead of him and stupidly killed himself before hitting the big time? Am I supposed to feel happy that American teenagers have been able to figure out how to safely use steroids and Venezuelans have not? I’m not sure.

These two examples are retarded. In one sentence, it tells us how much we should care for these sovereign nation and the sanctity of their people. In the other, it tells us that we Americans should apply our moral values to them and insist they live by it. We think steroids are bad - so should they. We think cockfighting is bad - so should they. This always works out well. Remember when we thought Iraqis should be free whether they like it or not? That’s worked out smashingly.

After the DR, the country that supplies the most talent in Latin America is Venezuela. There are now more than fifty players from Venezuela in Major League Baseball, including superstars like Johan Santana, Magglio Ordoñez and Miguel Cabrera. In the last twenty years, 200 Venezuelans have played in the Major Leagues with more than 1,000 in the minors. And yet despite this bounty of talent, the idiots are starting to scamper from Venezuela because Hugo Chávez is demanding that owners pay for the privilege of their pillage.

Just so we have this straight: “privilege of their pillage” is “scouting the country for talent and offering the best of the best $350k/year.” Some might also call this “college” or “high school”. The “idiots” might also realize that doing business in a country with socialized business is a defeatist proposition. You idiot.

Lou Meléndez, MLB’s vice president for international operations, was more than miffed to receive documents that called for instituting employee and player protections and requiring teams to pay out 10 percent of players’ signing bonuses to the government.

In fairness… if the people were American they’d be paying a third of the signing bonuses to the government. This does seem like a good deal.

Chávez wants to tax MLB for what they take from the country. “We don’t pay federations money for signing players anywhere in the world, and we don’t expect to do so. It’s certainly not a way to conduct business,” huffed Meléndez. “When you see certain industries that are being nationalized, you begin to wonder if they are going to nationalize the baseball industry in Venezuela.”

Y’see, when you pay a foreign government to scout their players, that’s kind of like supporting a style of government you may not agree with. If you fund it, you start to run into the whole problem of “paying for death camps” and “paying to imprison people who speak out against the government.” But, I know, Mr. Chavez does no wrong. Only our government does. Mr. Chavez has certainly never participated in torturing of protesters or anything like that. He’s perfect. Only the US Government would stoop so low as torture. LA RESISTANCE!!!

Major league baseball pays players who then pay their government taxes. Why is this a problem? Could it be, maybe, that once the players can get out of the country they no longer want to fund their government? Basically, Toolface is arguing that baseball should pay a posting fee to Hugo Chavez to look at a player. Remember when everyone made fun of the Red Sox for paying $50 million to have a conversation with Dice-K? This is that… but for every player that comes out of Venezuela.

As ESPN wrote, “There has been speculation, more internal than public so far, that Chávez, a socialist and self-proclaimed revolutionary who took office in 1999, will turn Venezuela into the next Cuba. In other words, some worry that baseball in Venezuela will serve to illustrate (once again) how politics spills over into sport.”

The hypocrisy is stunning.

Just because you use a forceful single line paragraph doesn’t make it true. Especially when there was no hypocrisy in the previous two sentences AS THEY WERE THOUGHTS FROM TWO DIFFERENT ENTITIES.

Heaven forfend, there is nothing “political” about a multibillion-dollar business running roughshod over an entire nation with no accountability for the dashed dreams of the 99 percent who don’t make it stateside. And there is surely nothing political about shutting down your baseball academy for fear that the natives might demand business practices that might approximate the humane.

The 2007 baseball draft featured 1,453 picks. Of those 1,453 young men, maybe 1,400 will ever make it to the big leagues. Of those 53 that make it to the big league, maybe… MAYBE… 25 will some day make a very good living at the sport. Of those 25, 2 may get one of THOSE contracts. Where is your worthless diatribe against Bobby Joe Smith whose dream of leaving the cornfields of Iowa to stand at the plate of Yankee Stadium so he doesn’t have to work in a textile factory for minimum wage until his back gives out? Are those people beneath your notice? Could it be the gentle form of liberal racism that decides “those people are too stupid to make their own decisions. We have to make it for them.” There is nothing humane about making to big league baseball no matter what country you’re from. Guys in the minor league would kill your mother if it meant opening up a roster spot while you’re at the funeral. It’s competitive, unforgiving, and only the best even have a chance to make it out. Do you think anybody cares about your country of origin?

Already, the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, and San Diego Padres have cut and run. “We just figured we might as well do it [then] to avoid some of the hassle of having to deal with some of the legislation that Chávez passes down there in hiring coaches, worrying about severance pay, and just getting in and out of the country,” Juan Lara of the Padres told the media.

“This country is making it hard for us to do our job. Cuba has been doing this for years. Yet, Cuban players that want to play in the US always find their way here. You know what… do what you gotta, Hugo; we’ll be over here.” Also: where is the problem with this? You’re expressing your complete disdain with baseball interfering in the hopes and dreams of the baseball players in this country. The three teams you’ve mentioned have decided not to do that. No hopes and dreams will be crushed with the support of the Red Sox. Oh wait, it’s probably only OK if they do it on your terms, because that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? You want business to do things on your terms, because that’s RESISTANCE, BABY.

This tension exposes the rot at the heart of this relationship. Chávez dares demand regulation and the first instinct of the owners is to flee toward more exploitable ground. Not only is Chávez right to pressure baseball to actually give something back, other countries-the Dominican Republic, in particular-should follow his lead.

They should… and then we won’t get players from there, either.

Every year, millions of Latin American children are shredded as they reach to escape poverty with a bat and a ball. It’s long past time MLB gave something back to the nations they so blithely upend. Even an idiot can see that.

Major League Baseball is responsible for Johan Santana making $200 million. Magglio Ordonez, because of Major League Baseball, is making about $100 million. Wouldn’t one think that the players being paid the money should take care of their country of origin? I’m failing to see why it’s baseball’s responsibility to happily donate money to possibly corrupt governments. Baseball’s unfair. Life’s unfair. Get over it. Not everyone gets to play baseball.

I love when writers make a point and then insist that you’d be an idiot not to agree with them. It’s a very convincing argument. As a matter of fact, I insist that Drillbit Taylor should be nominated for Best Picture next year and you’d be an idiot to disagree with me. Idiot.

VIVE LA RESISTANCE!!!

Hillary Clinton won Ohio and some other states last night. I saw her on the Daily Show on Monday and heard some of the campaign lines she was feeding to the people of Ohio. I had a moment of deja vu. She’s with the blue-collar people of Ohio, you know. She told them that she’s their candidate and she supports the blue collar worker since they’re the backbone of the country. Hillary Clinton cares about the areas being decimated by lack of blue-collar jobs and she’ll work to restore those areas.

If i could just remember where I’d heard all that before.

Y’see, I heard this entire campaign strategy in 2000. I was still living upstate at the time and someone had decided that she wanted to get in to politics. She then proceeded to descend on a foolish state who had a weak Republican candidate running for senate. She bought a million dollar home in Chappaqua and was suddenly New York through and through. She was a Yankee fan. She was a Giant fan. She was just one of us. To solidify her position, she went on a “listening tour” through Upstate New York. She went through Albany, Syracuse, Schenectady, Troy, Buffalo, and Rochester and told everyone who would listen that she’d help to revitalize upstate. She’d create jobs! She’d revitalize the region! Jobs would return! Forget New York State’s absurd business taxes… I can do it! I feel your pain!!

And the morons in this state drank it up. Twice.

Surprisingly enough, she did nothing of the sort. Upstate’s still dead or dying depending on the region. Albany is run by the same corrupt forces that were running it before I left. Clinton’s suddenly no longer a Yankee fan. The mythical “50,000 jobs” that were going to be created upstate were quickly forgotten. Albany to Buffalo is still full of empty factory. And we were so impressed by this as a state that we re-elected her in 2006.

The only thing that will save Upstate, at this point, is to split into a separate state from downstate. Of the 60 state senators, 40 of them are from the city. How much of a majority is an economic revitalization plan for Buffalo going to grab? Or Albany, for that matter. Upstate has been fighting a losing battle for years and the shrew played on all those fears and hopes… won an election in a weak race… and is now bailing out on the state faster than she came here. The worst thing of all of this: SHE WON THIS STATE IN THE PRIMARY. Not only did she lie to our faces twice but we voted for her again!

What is it about lying politicians that make people forget? I mean… she all but said “vote for me and the streets of upstate will be paved with gold.” She’s not done one thing for Upstate New York. She just sold exactly the same bill of goods to Ohio. Of all the ways to fight her in the known universe, can’t they just play clips of her promising to revitalize upstate New York… and then pan through the empty iron shells of factories in Rochester, Troy, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Utica? Show some speech of her riding through Albany followed by the hell-hole that is the public housing there?

With all the media that we have now, why is there not one news channel that lay into the candidates for things they deserve to laid into for? Why does EVERYTHING have to be us vs. them partisan? Why does NO STATION take Clinton’s/Obama’s tax plan and put numbers up? If you make X to Y, you are currently in this bracket… the proposed tax plans would put you in this one. Why do no stations mention that the only thing Clinton has really successfully pushed for in the senate is getting post offices named for certain people? Why are we OK with candidates picking and choosing their own questions in interviews? Why does no one ask her “you said you were going to do this in New York and it didn’t happen… why?” Why is no one asking the Democratic candidates how they are planning to pay for their health care plans?

If anything, this election is depressing me more than any of the previous elections. Because, now, we’ve reached a point where even good ideas are destroyed and knocked down on the basis of partisan politics. Bush has not been the greatest president of all time (obviously) but he was right in that we needed torte reform and social security overhaul. Both good ideas that were brought down by politics. I hate this country’s political process and the media, instead of doing what they can to make it better and call out hypocrisy and lies to keep them honest, choose a side and are willing lap dogs to their chosen candidate. It’s sickening.

And we’ll be left with the government the majority deserves. Good luck with that.