For some reason Juan Gonzales of the NY Daily News thinks that it was somehow unseemly for the Yankees to hold their people accountable for the incidentals they had on the road.

What alot of crap.

Players, the manager, coaches and trainers recieive a significant amount of meal money per day in cash prior to a road trip. This is to cover such expenses.  For as long as the game has been played everyone has been expected to pay their own incidentals when on the road. 

Most folks leave a credit card at the front desk. But alot just leave it on the bill and expect the club to deduct it. I’m doubtful that a single person-including Torre-was the least bit upset that the ballclub took money out of their check for this. 

I also found nothing unusual about Torre’s desire to stay seperate from the players. This is routine as well.

This is a poor job by the News’ editors on this one and is really a cheap hit job that has no basis for indignation whatsoever.

Its been so long-seems as if a lifetime best measures. For me life has been indescribably hectic with the return of my world as a teacher and full-time athletic trainer for our football team at Crestview High School. But its good. Somehow more real that many things I’ve done in my life.

Every year I start back teaching I realize how lucky I am…and have been. For most of my adult life I’ve been able to make a living at something I felt was an identity. Not just a job. When working for a PT outfit became a job, I got out.

I’m getting older, too. This morning as old family friends visit from Chicago I realized I only need to teach for 15 more years then I can-for me anyhow-comfortably retire. The generous work of old friends Ron Darling and David Cone to get assistant trainers on the MLB Players pension netted me two years in the system. Not nearly that much, but a nice little supplement to my teacher’s pension. Life will be ok.

Its not always that way though. Stress prompted by the same pressures you all have is part of my life. I’m often down to loose change at the end of the month and have rediscovered Ramean Noodles.

So when my compueter crashed last month, out went the blogging. I’ve missed it, but maybe the obssessive compulsive in me made it too much a part of my life. The break has been good. Today I hack away on my mom’s computer. Perhaps tomorrow, too.

At any rate, about those Mets.

Unlike the folks that run the Yankees, I would not have been disappointed with play-off failure by the Mets. Even getting swept in the first round wouldn’t have shaken me. I really believed in the 2006 club much more than this one. But the collapse at the end was too bear and was a demonstration of many personal failures. Not so much by those in uniforms, but by the suits that run the place.

Whe Frank Cashen dismissed Sam Perlozzo and Bill Robinson after the 1989 season, he emasculated Davey and was one of the events that lead to the end of the era. When Omar Minaya fired Rick Down during the season, its served in the same manner. The act immediately weakened Willie Randolph’s clubhouse cred. By most observations the addition of Ricky Henderson was a disaster. The September slide might well have been turned by a manager who’d clearly been in  charge.

But sadly, Randolph isn’y really in charge anymore. If reports are accurate that Omar Minaya and his staff are in the clubhouse far too often and throwing their weight around, its a problem.  Many feel that Down’s ouster was an appeasement by Minaya to a few on the players who did not like the hitting instructor’s style. This by itself is fine, but a move during the season is and always has been a bad idea. And it was here.

Minaya has made this club more about him with his clubhouse medling and heavy handed moves. Much of the energy that prompted the slide came from Minaya. Any success less than a World Series appearance next year will signal that Minaya’s style isn’t working.

A story today that an anti-Mafia force in Italy stopped a sale 105,00 rifles to Iraq. The sale was organized by someone in the Iraqi Interior Ministry who said it was needed fore the Iraqi police force.  Sources from the US-led coalition said the Iraqi police force have received plenty of arms .All sales have to approved by the US military. This one was not.

The Interior Ministry has been a mess, with competing departments and political factions. There are indications that Moqtada Al Sadr controls aspects of the Ministry and it might be that these weapons were intended for his Mahdi Army. An LA Times story from two weeks ago details the chaos that exists in the Ministry.

This story will give the US coalition the ammunition it needs to prompt Maliki to clean up the Ministry which he is certain to desire to do. One look at the LA Time article and its easy to understand how someone in the Ministry could attempt to make an illegal sale.

Its been quite for a week. Even the FBI poo-pooed it for awhile. But Michelle Malkin has word today that the investigation has taken an unusual turn.  A Tampa area home has been searched who’s owner has ties to organizations that fund terrorists.

I wonder why AP always has to run to the Council on American- Isalmic Relations (CAIR) to get quotes. They’ve proved time and time again to be a propoganda tool.

Also, I think I figured out that the FBI has learned to downplay things as not to give a heads up to terrorists cells working here. This raid in Tampa in which additional PVC pipe was found has raised more questions not only about the two Muslim students who were arrested in South Carolina, but also about a possible terrorist cell in Tampa.  

The National Black Journalist Association held its annual conference in Las Vegas this week. Clinton like Barak Obama made their stump speech and then answered questions from the audience. Kiara Ashanti, a black free-lancer and admitted Republican asked the following:

Senator Clinton, at a time when the world’s two biggest examples of socialized medicine, Britain and Canada, are moving away from the system and the people who are in those countries on the lower economic rung, those systems hurt them most, why are you still insisting upon moving that system in here, particularly when it will hurt African American communities more than anybody else?

Ashanti, a brave fellow, cut to the chase with the comaprisons to the failing policies of Great Britain and Canada and labeling Clinton’s policy as socialized medicine. Nothing in the manner in which Clinton responded will help her with the political center or with undecided.

Here’s Degree of Madness’ cover of Clinton’s response:

Oh, man says Hillary.  That’s a string of “misrepresentations about me and about, ah, ah, the systems in other countries….I have never advocated socialized medicine”.  Hillary asked Ashanti if Medicare is socialized medicine.  His answer, “To a degree, it is”.  Watch the video for Hillary’s response.   Apparently Hillary thinks socialized medicine simply means the government tells you which doctor or hospital you have to go to.  And since, presumably, her plan doesn’t do that then it’s not socialized medicine. See?  It’s an “attack by the right wing” against her, for 15 years!

Hillary ends her comments by telling Ashanti to “come introduce yourself to my staff and we will try to give you come information if you’re interested in being educated instead of being rhetorical”.  How freakin’ arrogant.

Arrogant indeed. But where should we start?

Lets start firsrt with the video. I’m sure Clinton’s handlers are not happy a video exists of the way she handles the question-not only in her responses but in her tone. It indicates that she has not learned to control her temper  and is extremely vulnerable to the tough question. While Ashanti was rude and did interrupt her, she demonstrated she wasn’t prepared. It was a friendly crowd. She blew it.

Now on facts. Her response to Ashanti’s assertion that socialized medicine in other countries were misrepresentations is troubling. All Ashanti said was that those countries are moving away from their sysytems and that the systems in place hurt those in the lower economic rung the worst. As Clinton responded that they were misrepresentations, she either feels that these events are not happening in those countries or more diturbingly, she is advancing a false narrative.  If President Bush or Cheney were accused of similar statements, she would probably say they were lying to the American people.

Now on to Medicare. Ashanti when asked by Clinton said that yes, Medicare was socialized medicine to a certain degree, Clinton disagreed. Medicare itself has little to do with actual care, although it does by law include all Americans over a certain age. Any healthcare provider will tell you its guidelines are burdensome and is a money loser. If a provider provides care to a Medicare patient by law thay have to abide by all Medicare guidelines with all of their non-Medicare patients.  Adminstrative costs are heavy and often overwhelming to many providers. Essentially Medicare is dictatorial in the application of healtcare in the US.

Its hard to see the monster that she and Ira Magaziner designed during the first term of her husband’s presidency as anything other than socialized medicine. She and Magaziner were smart enough not to call it that. Anything program the government totally administrates, controls and pays for is socialized. The great late stateman from New York, Senator Pat Moynihan called it fantasy. When the Congressional Budget Office ran the numbers, it gave congressional dems the cover they needed to let the proposal die.

Finally, Clinton again demonstrated that anytime she gets backed into a corner she’ll  trot out the right-wing conspiracy mantra. Only the most radical of the liberal base-maybe 10% of all voters buys into this. And they were there in force among the NABJ Las Vegas when they cheered Clinton’s arrogant condesending dismissal of Ashanti.

Senator Clinton’s Healthcare policy is a loser for her and she knows it. Here failure in a simple debate with a contrary voice in Las Vegas. She and her handlers will continue to keep this under their hat for as long as they can until even her allies in the MSM will force her hand. The Republican candidate will certainly flush her out during debates on it. But one must remember former Hollywood supporter David Geffen said, “the Clintons lie with such ease, its troubling.”

 

 

As the Marlins were on, I was unable to see the game. Blackout. So I didn’t see any video of hear of Paul LoDuca’s injury until later last evening. So he makes it to the DL with his hamstring afterall.

Aggravating a hamstring that’s previously been injured is not good and usually increases in severity. More fibers in the muscle itself become torn. It will take the 15 days and probably a little more to get LoDuca well.

I’ve always felt that this one was LoDuca’s fault. He browbeat everyone to keep from going on the DL. Maybe he was even less than candid about the way he felt. His motivations are understandable, but yes, cooler heads should have prevailed the first time. Matt Cerrone’s criticism that the Mets try to float injured guys along with putting them on the DL is a fair one.

Fortunately for the Mets, they play well with Ramon Castro behind the plate and the club has alot of confidence in him.

There has been no better source for the most recent and accurate news about the disturbing situation in Pakistan than Bill Roggio’s, The Fourth Rail.

President Musharraf’s been a willing ally of the west in the war against Al Queda, but he has his own problems. His army has demonstrated fecklessness against the well-trained Taliban/AQ forces in the northern provinces in his country. They’ve taken a significant beating over the years and usually deploy defensive postures. And it continues to appear that elements of his own intelligence and military have tipped them off in the past.

They in fact may have done so recently as Taliban/AQ  evacuated their 29 camps in the area, obviously fearful of a US-led strike. Clearly we would have done so, if Musharraf had asked, but his own political situation is tenuous. The recent reappearance of former PM Banazir Bhutto as a possible power sharer with Musharraf has given hope to a significant political positive in Pakistan. He would perfer a power sharing situation with Bhutto, with him holding onto control of the army. Sources have indicated that Bhutto balked at this.

Musharraf said today that he wants Bhutto and another former PM to stay away before parlaimentary elections which are due within the next year. Polls also indicate that Bhutto’s Pakistan’s People’s Party is ahead. Bhutto’s return to power in Pakistan may be ok as according to this ABC/Rueters report she has already signalled that Pakistan needs to work with NATO, the US and Afghanistan to help reign in control of the country’s NW territory.

The political situation is Pakistan is delicate and is certainly being monitored at the highest level by the State Department. Perhaps they are attempting to broker a deal. At any rate, is elections are held in Pakistan its interesting to note that in the last election a few years ago Islamists received only 10% of the vote. One wonders how elections would be monitored in the northern provinces that the Pakistani government has no control. Lets hope Jimmy Carter doesn’t get involved.

Nonetheless, its clear the Islamists fighting in Northern Pakistan are feeling considerable heat as they would never have emptied their camps and transfered operational control to local commanders otherwise. Several of their leaders have been either captured or killed over the last six months. Feckless or not, the Pakistani army’s presence does cause problems for them as they are ceratinly outgunned by Pak artillery and airpower. The fact that US armed forces are just over the border doesn’t help either, as special ops are probably active already against them. Garrisoning in camps just made them too easy a target for anyone.

The largest concern for the region clearly is the Pak’s nuclear weapons. Its one of the reasons why Musharref forcibly routed out the miltant Islamists at the Red Mosque in Islamabad. He could never allow the enemy lodgement that close to the political center of the country. Roggio’s report indicates that the US is believed to have good intelligence as to where Pakistan’s nuclear warhead’s are located.

Its also certain that Musharref has a handle on these as well with those responsible for their security loyal to him. And while there are intelligence and military loyal to the Islamists, there is an equal likelihood that a number of them are loyal to keeping Pakistan a secular society.

Still, as Roggio’s report clearly lays out, Pakistan is a troubling region. Barak Obama’s statement that he would go after AQ in Pakistan without Musharraf’s permission is naive, but he did a service in pointing out that Pakistan and one that bears watching. But it should be watched with the notion that secular politics-whether it be lead by Musharraf or Bhutto-needs to be sustained.

comes from my friend, Rick Moran in Pajamas Media. He remembers day game’s at Busch Stadium in St. Louis as I do:

I can recall my days in St. Louis going to Cardinals games this time of year and watching the players on the artificial surface at old Bush Stadium bouncing around uncomfortably on a field that would achieve temperatures of close to 140 degrees. The heat wafting up from the ground was incredible. Between innings, players would wrap ice cold towels around their heads while some would even immerse their fully cleated feet into pails of ice water. In weather like that, pitchers wilt after 5 or 6 innings, and playing the game becomes a test of manhood and endurance.

Moran’s becoming one of the blogosphere’s hardest working. While being PM’s sports columnist, Moran also has his own successful blog, Right Wing Nut House. He also has recentlky agreed to help edit American Thinker.

C-SPAN is televising the event. Luara Ingraham is the MC. I love laura and am obviously a supporter, but this event is horribly correographed. There seems to be two scripts or an incomplete script. The music is the only thing that seems to be working, but the rest is shabby. Dems are better at this. Hopefully they’ll get their act together.

Al Gore says, “the debate is over.”

Aside from being dangerous, the statement is patently false. As a science teacher, the debate itself  is what I try to teach students. Naysayers among the science community are starting to object to the rush to create new scientific law. Global warming is essentially a theory. In today’s American Thinker, James Lewis pens a wonderful paragraph that describes science’s reality. Its one I will share with my students:

 

What most people don’t know is that real science is a giant debating society, filled with skeptics. It is only mature science that is stable and agreed-upon. But mature science comes only after centuries of cumulative evidence, and constant, heated debate. It took 20 centuries after the planets were observed in the night sky, before Newton and Copernicus settled the nature of the solar system. Einstein’s Relativity Theory happened three centuries afterwards, and even in his own lifetime, part of Einstein’s universe was overthrown by Quantum Mechanics, which Einstein fought all his life. (He was wrong on that).

Be skeptical folks whn it comes to science.