FoolBlog

Linking Fool Friday

FoolBlog will be on hiatus next week. Of course, that's not much different than any other week.

Several good items from Glenn Greenwald, particularly the item on the disparity between how one should treat a decorated veteran who's a Republican, and how one should treat one who's a Democrat.

Congrats to Norbiz, who's blog turned three this week. Congrats to his readers, who actually came up with these Simpsons quotes summarizing the Bush administration.

Want to get good and angry? Visit Footnoted.org, which chronicles the obscene world of executive compensation. Example: Home Depot chair gets $245 million over five years while their stock tanks.

Teh sports: Dammit I love Canada!

Lastly, enjoy Cosby Bebop. With their hippin' and their hoppin' and their bippin' and their boppin'...

Boo to the hoo, Frank

After Matt LeCroy allowed seven stolen bases and made two throwing errors yesterday, Frank felt obligated to replace him in the middle of an inning. Oh, he felt terrible about it, since it's one of those unwritten rules--you don't yank a position player mid-inning, because it's so humiliating.

"I wasn't trying to embarrass him in any way," Robinson said haltingly. "It was just a move at the time, at that moment, I just felt like I had to do it," he continued, before pausing again, "for the good of the ballclub, [to] try to win that ballgame."
[...]
"I feel for him," Robinson said. "I hope the fans understand."

Who knew the old guy had such a soft side? I'm sure he feels just as bad when he pulls pitchers in the middle of an at-bat, since that's another thing you just don't do.

"When I come to the mound, you're gone," Robinson said. "You're not going to talk me out of it. Give me the ball, leave the mound."
[...]
"He has this thing that goes back for years that I don't have confidence in him," Robinson said. "He just thinks I have something against him personally, I guess."

No, wait. Those guys are pitchers. Screw them.

A rare and precious win!

Regular readers may have noticed the lack of Nats game summaries of late. I sold off many of my early-season games, due to family responsibilities and greater priority for certain games later in the season. But if you'd handed me my 20-game schedule and said I could only attend one game, this was the one I'd have chosed. The Orioles, frickin' Peter Angelos' Orioles. Oh yeah.

The team came through for my first in-person Nats win since July 23, a span of 302 days. This was the kind of game the Nats played often last year and I thoroughly enjoy--low scoring, good pitching, and the occasional timely hit. Livan looked like the Livan of 2005, pitching 7 innings and giving up only one run. We suggested that for future Livan starts, we set up a pool to guess how many pitches he'll throw--yesterday's correct answer was 120, and I was a little surprised he didn't come out for the 8th.

Yesterday was a major-minor doubleheader, with the P-Nats (aka Cannoons) playing the Salem Avalanche. We stuck around for an inning and a half, and sat about four rows behind home plate. The scene was less than idyllic, however, as the winds kicked up. You couldn't really feel it on the lower level, but the detrius of thousands of upper deck fans started blowing onto the playing field. Freakin' lovely. To their credit, the P-Nats did not report their attendance as 32K, but they're saying 5,000 stayed for their game--or at least the first pitch.

The Nats-O's thing is all good so far--I was hoping for a mascot brawl as the Bird was in attendance, but no such luck. Things won't really heat up until the Nats go up to Baltimore. I'll be wearing the red & white at the Yard on June 24, but between then and now we have the Yankees at RFK, which should be a day of heartwarming human fellowship.

Linking Fool Friday

You know what I'd love to see? Patrick Henry rising from the dead, and karate-chopping Pat Roberts in the neck.

Intriguing item on the immigration hoo-hah: people from states that actually have immigrants are less likely to be all freaked out about them. Makes sense. Few people around here seem threatened by immigrants... except those jackasses up in Herndon.

Two Ezra Klein links in one week? Sadly, I largely agree with him and Sifu over at the Poor Man: rebuilding New Orleans may not be such a good idea. Yes, it would be tremendously sad to lose such a vibrant American city. But rebuilding in the same spot is just asking for another hurricane disaster.

This blog has previously hosted discussions on the more crazed wing of Christianity, and how to differentiate them from more legitimate Christians without getting people all offended. David Neiwert puts up the term Dominionist, which I heartily endorse, and goes into detail as to why these people are so damn scary.

Salon's "Ask the Pilot" is always a good read. In this week's installment he debunks the various 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Lastly, teh funny: this dude loved him some Coors Light. And, the most frightening prospect of the immigration kerfluffle.

Out of Iraq NOW

Haditha. See TBogg, Gilliard, Billmon.

Every time I think the lies and the intellectual dishonesty can't get any worse, they do. Look at the right-wing blog responses linked to by TBogg and Billmon. They believe Murtha, a military man himself, just wants to smear the Marines. That he would come forward with this without being absolutely positive it was true. And worst of all, whether the allegations are true or not, they believe Murtha just shouldn't bring them up. Even if our troops are killing innocent civilians, committing war crimes, we shouldn't mention it because it might be detrimental to the War on Terror.

These people have no honor. None.

Send a message

Want to send your own message to Barry? Visit Fans on Bonds. Most of the entries there are lame, but surely you can create something amusing and post it to comments.

Hard to top the actual banner from the outfiled in Philly: "Ruth did it on hot dogs & beer. Aaron did it with class. How did YOU do it?"

Linking Fool Friday

What a wonderful week it's been. The government is eavesdropping on everybody, and meanwhile our brilliant President says his greatest accomplishment in office is catching a big-ass fish.

So how come folks aren't up in arms about the wiretapping program? My theory is that most Americans think "The innocent have nothing to hide." Despite vast evidence that this power will be abused, if it's not happening to them personally, people don't care. Those protestors and peace groups are all kind of hippie freaks, so no biggie. We've become so polarized that Americans are no longer able to comprehend the idea that any violation of civil liberties is wrong.

Oh yeah, our health care system is shamefully suckful, too.

On a lighter note, via Wulad, hand farting taken to the next level.

Fire Frank Robinson

What Needham says:

Only in Frank Robinson's senile old mind is replacing a guy with a 0.92 ERA with a guy with a 5.59 ERA and replacing HIM with a guy with a 9.58 ERA logical. WTF Frank? WTF?

Due respect for his playing career, but seriously. The man is not a good manager.

The Pittsburgh Pirates owe me money

If you read this blog, you are surely familiar with The Mascot Photos. One of the more popular pictures there is of Pittsburgh's racing pierogies (a photo in which I appear to have Shane McGowan's teeth):

So popular, in fact, that the Pirates themselves apparently cropped it and used it--sans attribution--on their community relations page. They've since changed it so the picture isn't there, but it comes up on a Google image search, and the JPG is still on their file server:

I would gladly accept All-Star game tickets as payment.
Thanks to Sharon for the tip.

PC CDs

Interesting Slate article on the campaign by two journalists to label Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields a racist, because he doesn't like hip-hop, and doesn't like other black artists enough to their liking.

This hits close to home because I once had someone look over my CD collection and tell me it was overly dominated by white males. I found this charge somewhat ludicrous--I own some number of CDs by people of color (I'll spare you listing our counting them). I would have to say my collection is male-dominated; I'd chalk that partly up to taste, and partly up to the music industry's inability or unwillingness to promote talented women (I know they're out there, but for every Sarah McLachlan the industry gives us, there are three or four Britney Spearses).

So is the content of one's CD collection proof of racism or sexism? If one actually said "I don't like hip hop because black people make it," then of course. But could it be that someone just doesn't like certain types of music? Or collects music made by people he or she identifies with? If you reviewed a young African-American man's CD collection and it was dominated by hip-hop, is he a racist because he doesn't have any Toby Keith albums? How about a young woman who has every disc by Ani DiFranco and artists of her ilk--is that prima facie evidence that she hates men?

I say no. There's no accounting for taste.

Yeah, I still hate guns

That police station shooting? All of two, maybe two and a half miles from our house. That's the cop shop where we had our kids' car seats inspected.

Not many details to be had. Apparently some dumb bastard thought it would be a perfectly fine thing to come out of the woods and start shooting cops in the parking lot. No known motive, at least not yet.

Dammit.

Eat Food (It's Good)

Last Friday I was downtown for work, and I made a point to go to Ben's Chili Bowl for lunch. People are usually quick to state that DC has no city food like Philly cheesesteaks or Chicago pizza and hot dogs, but when pressed someone will usually suggest the half-smoke sausage, frequently citing Ben's specifically. Food writers whose opinions I respect tend to enjoy the place. And yet, in over a decade in or around the Beltway, I had never eaten there. It was time to rectify that situation.

I had the recommended half-smoke with chili, mustard, and onions, and an order of fries. The verdict: pretty freakin' good. Not life-changing--I'll go back if I'm in the area, but I'm not going to make special trips like I would for a top-notch cheesesteak. But hell of enjoyable in that oh-so-greasy kind of way (though it did not lead to any sort of gastro-intestinal dismay as one might expect).

Saturday I went up to NYC to see a group of old college friends (Hodge is getting married next month, for those of you who know him). We made an event out of it by going to The Capital Grille. I had a hefty sirloin, perfectly cooked, rubbed with Kona coffee and spices and served with carmelized shallots (that would be the first item under Chef's Suggestions).

Now, I'm not a big steak guy--if I'm going to splurge for a meal, I'll usually pick seafood, a good ethnic place, or a more creative venue like Vidalia or B. Smith's rather than a big dumb traditional steakhouse. So the sample size is smaller than it could be, but nonetheless: this was the best damn steak I have ever eaten. I certainly paid for the privilege, but I gotta say it was worth it, just this once.

Linking Fool Friday

I was stuck in a training class all week. No time for bloggerating.

Some months ago I was all pissed off about the administration apparently nixing a plan to knock off Abu Musab Zarqawi, known terrorist with ties to al-Qaeda. But cooler heads said "This hasn't been definitively documented or proven, you shouldn't assume that it's true." Well, now it's been definitively documented. How you like that shit now? Yay war on terror!

Radical conservative logic is self-contradicting, part 1,008.

Support our troops: send them food. Because Halliburton, which loves loves loves our troops and is run by good decent Republican Americans, can't do the job.

Format and playlists aren't all they're cracked up to be. If I was obscenely wealthy, I'd create a radio station just like KCDX.

Finally, I link to this Yard Work item purely for the reference to York, PA.