Comments on BHO Faces Angry Mob @ Townhall

Say what you will about George W. Bush, he never got into trouble by showing too much respect for the American people. He took two wars "off budget", let Wall Street run wild with the concept that debt is an asset, and fed the people pap at scripted "town hall meetings" where the toughest question was something like "is this the greatest country ever, or what?" Then, when the party was over, in the finest tradition of the Bush family, he lit out of town leaving the mess to be cleaned up by a person of color.

Read more at Wonkette: Obama Faces Angry ‘Quite Frankly’ Lady At Odd Newseum Town Hall 


The problem hopey has is one of perception= reality. He's percieved as detached because, quite frankly, he is detached. Now, it's okay to be detached (see Bush in the initial hours after 9/11, during Katrina, well, pretty much most of the time) but it's a mortal sin for a President to look and act detached. Bush figured that out. He went to Ground Zero, grabbed a bullhorn, gave a fire fighter an uncomfortable hug and screamed at the wind. It didn't do shit to help the situation but Wolf and Timmeh and Matthews wet their pants. After that, it was all sunshine and rainbows for Bush.

Read more at Wonkette: Obama Faces Angry ‘Quite Frankly’ Lady At Odd Newseum Town Hall 

So You Don't Have To--Although You Should

The latest from the internet this afternoon, or, what's being posted on Wonkette.com (same thing)...

Commentator bobwurst on the cabbie stabbing/"Ground-Zero Mosque" in NYC:

This isn’t going to stop until some teabagging terrorist (sorry, I mean lone wolf patriot, acting on his own with no encouragement from politicians or new orgs who want to profit from hate)goes McViegh. This is just like what happened back in the early 90’s. Waco happened, and Fox News, and Rush and his spawn, spewed non-stop hate against the gov, and Clinton, and republican pols went to the well of Congress and attacked the president, and big gov. and eventually McViegh sucked it up and killed 165 people. He’s dead, the people who egged him on are rich. Why would they not rinse and repeat?
Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/417717/today-in-anti-muslinism-no-mosque-nimbys-tennessee-terrists-and-cardboard-hatreds#ixzz0xjFfkzVO

Commentator Boobies! with a two-fer on the SHOCKING revelation by former GOP National Chairman Ken "Kenny Boy" or "Larry Bud" Mehlman that he's a--gasp--homoSEXual and his comment, "The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person.”

I don’t give a rat’s ass if you are a happy and better person, Ken. You made a fortune making other gay people miserable and disenfranchised. You helped elect the most incompetent boob that ever walked into the oval office. That Texas turd made a mockery of our Constitution, turned medical research and science back a quarter century, destroyed our financial system and created a foreign policy responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, Iraq citizens and Afghanistan citizens. He wasn’t qualified to mow the lawn at the White House and Ken, you used hate, bigotry and deliberate lies to elect the bastard. You don’t deserve to be a happy, better person. You are a disgrace.

And...
This should be a lesson for Michael Steele. One day that man will wake-up and realize his is black and that he has been black for a really long time. He will have to come out to his friends, family and colleagues and acknowledge his blackness. He will have to admit that the years and energy he wasted attacking the nation’s first black President was really self-destructive.
Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/417707/ken-mehlmans-official-gay-coming-out-party-is-happening-right-now#comments#ixzz0xjHDas4m

Wonkette Sez

(Because I know most of you don’t hall all day to sit around and read Wonkette.com.)

Ruppert Murdoch's News Corp (Fox News Channel et. al.) has donated a million dollars to the REPUBLICAN Governors Association. FNC will be "fair and balanced" just as soon as they donate the same amount to the DEMOCRATIC Governors Association which I am sure will happen any flipping day now. A commentator from teh Wonkette sez it well!

Bordo says at 3:20 pm, August 17th, 2010

•  Wow! Slap me on the ass and call me Charley. You mean, Fox News favors Republicans? Oh my God. I have nothing to believe in any more.
  

weejee says at 3:41 pm, August 17th, 2010

• The Repubtards are accepting monies from Oz? Murdoch became a US citizen just to meet the rule that only US citizens can own US teevee. Can’t imagine what Faux Newz would do if a naturalized muslin wrote the DeeTards a 7-figure check. But start writin’, start writin’, we can’t wait to find out.

Read more @ Wonkette :

This, just because I like it:

Mild Midwesterner says at 12:53 pm, July 28th, 2009

• I love the name “DeMint.” It sounds like the South Carolinians elected a French breath freshener.
  Read more @Wonkette :

Later ‘n all.

What Matters

Chicago took the measure of the Detroit Tigers 4-1 tonight to go 8 games up on 3rd place Detroit…

It’s important at times like this—times like this being the immediate aftermath of yet another painful Tigers loss—to remember that what happens out there between the white lines doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter at all—not a whit.  It never has.  It never will.

It’s nice to win and all, nicer than losing for sure, but win or lose it just doesn’t make a bit of difference in this world.  It’s all exactly as meaningful as make-believe.

It’s fun to watch and that’s all it is.  And mind you, all of this, this heresy, comes to you from as big a fan of baseball and of so many sports as there is. 

But the games, they don’t matter. 

What matters are things like that court ruling today that says that the majority cannot take away fundamental rights of the minority, even in a free election.  That matters. 

We have a choice of the direction which we want to take our state: more of the right wing cut-taxes-on-the-rich and watch, watch as the benefits trickle-down to the rest of us bullshit, or a candidate who knows that you cannot run an economy by having the rest of us give each other haircuts.  We had an election last night.  That matters.

I had to get off the freeway last night on the way home from the ballpark on account of an accident that had the freeway down to one lane and me being unwilling to sit in my car for the hour or so it would have taken to clear the wreck.  I saw that which I see every time, and it happens from time to time, that I have to drive the surface streets in the City of Detroit.  It’s a terrible shithole.  It’s a goddamn sin.  It’s a sin that we will, all of us, be held to account for.  We’re willing to let our fellow citizens in this, the greatest country that ever was or ever will be, live in abject squalor and poverty without giving it a second thought.

That matters.  More than a stupid baseball game, anyway.

It Feels Dead Around Here

There may have been a couple thousand fans left here at Comerica Park when today’s Tigers game ended, there certainly weren’t any more than that, and by “ended” I mean by the time the final out was recorded.  The game itself had ended, in a defacto sense, long before Detroit made their 27th offensive out. 

The final score was 12-2.  The game was probably over when Chicago, now 36-12 (.750!) since the Tigers beat ‘em in Chicago in June 8 to put the White Sox a season’s-worst 9 games under .500, scored four in the 3rd and another in the 4th for a 5-1 lead.  It was certainly over when the White Sox added two more in the 5th off Rick Porcello, the Detroit starter who on this day failed to survive the 5th, who fell to 4-10 on the year and who saw his ERA jump to an altogether unhealthy 5.91.

As a team, Detroit is now 11-19 (.367) since they were last in first place on June 28.  Since the All Star break, the Tigers are 4-15 (.211).  Play an entire season at a .211 clip, you are not just be bad, you are the worst team in Major League history since .211 ball means a 34-128 record.

The Tigers have fallen now from first place to 8 games out of first place in the span of 5 agonizing weeks and one ugly day. 

The White Sox and Tigers play again tonight and I’m going to go out on a limb here and call this one a must-win for Detroit.  Win and they will be where they were when the day began: 7 games out of first and in trouble big.  Lose and they are 9 off the pace and in a truly desperate fix.

Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice. Please.

When the Tigers 7-game home stand began a week ago tonight I was thinking Detroit was only one quality pitcher (Roy Oswalt, anyone?) away from the AL Central title. In fact, I was hoping I’d run into Detroit General Manager Dave Dombrowski in the Press Box (which you sometimes do) just so I could ask him, quietly, under my breath even, “”Oswalt? Roy Oswalt? Don’t he win you the Division?” before he walked away from me. Honestly, that’s how close I thought the Tigers were: One front line starting pitcher away from the division title and the playoffs and all that it entails.

By early Sunday evening, only 6 days later, I figured the Tigs were toast even if they had gotten Oswalt, which, in the interest of accuracy, they had not.

From that Monday night to that Sunday twilight—in less than a week—what had been, arguably, the best 3-4-5 hitting combination in baseball, Magglio Ordonez, Miguel Cabrera and Brennan Boesch was history and half the Detroit infield was, too: The Tigers lost both their third baseman Brandon Inge and their second baseman Carlos Guillen to extended stays on the Disabled List in the same time frame.

Too much, too fast.  Too many quality players gone for the Tigers to contend any more, I thought.

And on a related and indeed on an even more important note, Detroit had lost 9 of 11 games and was a mere dozen offensive outs away from making that grim toll 10 of 12 in a game in which they trailed Toronto 4-0 heading to the home half of the sixth.

But, the boys fooled me yesterday.  Maybe they can fool me some more.

I thought they were a lock to lose that game to Toronto but they came across with a couple in the 6th on, like, the one-millionth big hit of the season by Cabrera and then won it in the 8th when Ryan Rayburn—embarrassed by bouncing into a rally-killing double play in the 5-3 loss the hung on Detroit earlier in the day by the Jays—cleared the loaded bases with a double to give the Tigers a 6-4 lead. They won 6-5.

So it was 3-4 on the home stand and two games out of first when all was said and done and all in all it could have been much, much worse. Of course, you also think about it and you figure the Tigers really could have gone 6-1. They lost the first game of the home stand in 12 when they had the ballgame won in 11 had Johnny Damon scored from second on a single by Boesch. They lost the game Saturday to the Jays by a run when they had chances to win, and on Sunday in the first game Detroit had the bases loaded with one out in a tie game in the eighth and failed not just to score the go-ahead run, but failed to put the ball in play at all.

Tonight, heartbreak in Tampa: Max Scherzer was a strike away from taking a no-hitter into the 7th inning when he allowed a grand slam to former Tiger Matt Joyce that looked like it was fair by a foot, perhaps less. The bases had been loaded on 2 walks and the rarely-called Catcher’s Interference. And that was that. The Tigers offense didn’t muster a hit all night long against Matt Garza and instead of a double no-hitter which really would have been big news, instead we get another no-hitter thrown in the Majors which is getting to be a bit routine in this summer of 2010. Congrats to Garza, the first Ray nee Devil Ray ever to toss a no-hitter. For the Tigers, 6 wins now in their last 25 road games (.240) which is most assuredly not going to get it done. Detroit falls 3 off the pace in the Central race with 3 more to play in Tampa before a trip to Fenway over the weekend.

Fundamentally Unsound

The Ernie Harwell Media Center

Comerica Park Detroit, MI

(Sunday, July 25, 2010) -- The Detroit Tigers sustained a season-ending injury here Saturday night in a 3-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened when Magglio Ordonez—second on the Tigers in home runs (12) and RBI (59)—fractured his right ankle sliding into home in a vain attempt to score the game-tying run from first base on a double to right by Miguel Cabrera.

Ordonez is done for 6-8 weeks and, likely, so too are the Tigers.

As usual, the whole thing was eminently preventable and, as usual, there is blame aplenty to go around. The “what-ifs” abound and astound:

If Cabrera (what was he thinking?) had simply hit the ball 5 feet further it would have gone into the right field seats and Ordonez would have trotted around on the homer. If, when they built this baseball stadium they had not made the ill-advised decision (what were they thinking?) to recess the wall 10-15 feet in the right field power alley, again, the ball Cabrera hit would have gone into the stands and Ordonez would have scored in the manner described above. If Detroit third base coach Gene Lamont (yeah, what was he thinking?) had realized that his man was 15-feet out if he sent him and had held up the stop sign instead of the “go-for-it!” windmill, Ordonez stops at third and never slides into home base and never snaps his ankle.

All of which is to be duly noted, but the truth of the matter—and it sounds cruel to say it since he was the one who had to endure the pain—is that most of the blame must go to Ordonez himself. I’m sorry, but it was a simple slide. I don’t know about Mags, but I know they started to teach me how to slide when I was about 8. Sure, it’s a little scary at first, but you get used to it, and they keep on teaching you how to slide until you are done playing organized ball. In my case, that meant high school, by which time I could pull off a pop-up slide with the best of them. (Your pop-up is one of several types of slides and is useful in case there is an errant throw as it leaves you ready to bolt for the next base and carries the additional benefit of looking cool as hell.) Sliding is an elemental, a fundamental part of playing baseball. Seeing a player—especially one of your top players not to mention one of the highest paid players in the game—injure himself perpetrating a routine and run-of-the-mill hook slide is infuriating. Infuriating in the way you feel when you see a player at the Major League level who can’t bunt. Only in the instant case instead of failing to move the runner(s) along, your whole season is ruined. That’s all.

Detroit lost third baseman Brandon Inge to a broken hand (hit by a pitch) earlier this week and an inning or so after Ordonez left last night’s game, second baseman Carlos Guillen was lost to a pulled leg muscle.

That meant that in the first of the two games being played here today against Toronto, the Tigers had a .203 hitter, Ryan Rayburn, hitting third in a batting order which featured five rookies. The thing of it was, the Tigers still had a good chance to win the game. It was tied at 3 in the 8^th and Detroit had the bases loaded with only one out, but two of those rookies, Scott Sizemore and Jeff Larish, struck out and that was that. Then, Jose Valverde (and why he was in there in a 3-3 tie I do not know) gave up a two-run homer to Lyle Overbay in the top of the 9th and the Blue Jays had a 5-3 win. It had been 41 appearances for Valverde since his last home run allowed dating all the way back to the second game of the season at Kansas City. He’d been money since then. But that’s just the way things have gone this weekend here at the ballpark.

The fans are filing in for the second of these two games against Toronto today…