Sharing all info: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

Arlen's Darlins: Lawyers & Terrorists

Arlen Specter's new bill will help trial lawyers and terrorists.

Climategate Heats Up

The left is always screaming "follow the money." Well, follow the money on Climategate. It leads to the "consensus" builders. Unfortunately, the consensus was built on manufactured and hidden data, lousy computer modeling and men who had a great financial incentive for hiding the truth.

This is a scandal that won't die. Nor should it.

Base Hits: In the Company of Felix Pie, Risky (Arms) Business, More Japanese Imports and Minor Transactions

Hey Oriole fans! Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Not a ton went on in Birdland last week but there were a few things I would like to comment on...

MASN's Steve Melewski reports that Andy MacPhail is willing to take a chance on some "high risk, high reward" arms like Erik Bedard and Ben Sheets this offseason. By proxy, I think you can include Rich Harden in that discussion.

If you can't get John Lackey, (and my other favorite to throw money at this offseason, Tim Hudson, is back off the market) this is not a bad way to go. A rotation of Erik Bedard, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Jeremy Guthrie and Brad Bergesen is actually, at least, a competent rotation to open the year with.

The Orioles can afford to take a chance on a short term deal on an injury-prone pitcher due to a lot of money coming off the budget and that there are the likes of Jake Arrietta, David Hernandez and Jason Berken in the wings to fill in those potential missed starts.

Besides, how funny would it be to bring back Bedard with Adam Jones patrolling center, Tillman following him in the rotation and Kam Mickolio warming up to relieve him?

*****

Speaking of trades, the Cubs have traded RP Aaron Heilman to the Arizona Diamondbacks for prospects.

What does this have to do with the Orioles? Last offseason, the O's traded SP Garrett Olson and RP Henry Williamson to the Cubs for Felix Pie. The Cubs in turn sent Olson and IF Ronny Cedeno to Seattle for Heilman.

So the Cubs traded away Felix Pie and Ronny Cedeno and netted minor leaguers Williamson (a minor league career 4.46 ERA), RP Scott Maine (a middling relief prospect) and 1B Ryne White (career minor league OPS .754). Hmmm. That's not a great haul.

Of all the players that traded hands in these deals, the Orioles got the best player. And it's not really close.

*****

The Orioles claimed C Craig Tatum off waivers from the Reds last week. The guy has a good defensive reputation and lately has hit lefties well. May be an interesting guy to watch in Spring Training since the backup catcher spot is currently unoccupied.

*****

Farewell to P Rad Liz who was removed from the 40-man roster and claimed off waivers by the Padres.

Liz certainly had his issues and may never develop the control to pitch at the major league level but the O's did him no favors last season by declaring that he would be groomed as a reliever and then procedded to jerk him back and forth from the rotation to the 'pen.

Good luck Mr. Liz.

*****

In my last installment of Base Hits, I wondered if Japanese pitcher Hisanori Takahashi would consider joining his former teammate Koji Uehara in Baltimore next season. Well, according to NPB Tracker, the Orioles are indeed interested in speaking with Takahashi about pitching for Baltimore in 2010. However, scouting director John Stockstill said that the Orioles would not offer him a contract until January if interested.

*****

I love flipflopflyball.com. In this graphic, you can see that Oriole starters pitched fewer innings than any other starting staff in baseball. Which is hardly surprising...

Tiger II

The Tiger crash story gets more interesting.

As predicted by Spencerblog, it appears another woman was involved. The National Enquirer has the story. And let's face it, they got the John Edwards "Love Child" story right.

What is lame is Tiger's attempt to blame the supermarket media for being curious about his extra curricular love life while obviously hiding the truth about what occurred.

In a statement on his website, Woods (or someone authorized by him) wrote:

As you all know, I had a single-car accident earlier this week, and sustained some injuries. I have some cuts, bruising and right now I'm pretty sore.
This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I'm human and I'm not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn't happen again.

Notice, he doesn't mention how he managed to drive into a fire hydrant, then and a tree, at a speed slow enough not to cause his airbags to deploy.

This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.

Fine. But notice he doesn't deny an inappropriate relationship with the woman in question. In the most round about way he seems to admit it while telling everyone it's none of their business.

The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.

Translation: "I got caught cheating. My wife came after me with a golf club. I took off in my Cadillac Escalade to avoid a confrontation. She followed me and smashed out two back windows as I tried to drive away. It distracted me enough for me to plow into a fire hyndrant.

"If I hadn't been cheating, she wouldn't have had to do that. She's brave. She was just protecting her family when she attacked me and my Escalade. I was horny and stupid. I won't cheat again. I promise. Now everybody else, mind your own business. Especially you bastards at the National Enquirer."

Tiger has declined to discuss what happened with the police. I don't blame him. My favorite part of the story is the police chief saying Mr. Woods is under no legal obligation to give a statement. That's damn right.

Meanwhile, the world will construe according to its wits... and Tiger should "no comment" it from here on. He's already in enough trouble.

What's the Big Idea?

Jacob Weisberg writes that Obama's first year in office was "brilliant." I was going to post about it myself until I read Roger Simon's brilliant demolition of Weisberg's utterly ridiculous analysis.

Take away Roger.

Mr. Smith and Washington

Salena Zito goes to Indiana, Pa. (birthplace of Jimmy Stewart) where people still find a "wonderful life" despite being ignored by the federal government.

More and more such residents are declaring themselves independents.

"These are the people that might not attend a Tea Party, but they find them aligned with their concerns," says pollster G. Terry Madonna. "They are less and less happy with government ... so they end up unaligned."

But this is especially bad news for Democrats, which is the party of government.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

A Blast From the Past

Good news, bad news from an old colleague last week. A message of encouragement and faith. My print column is up.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Party Crashers in Perspective

As for the White House gate crashers story it brings to mind a poem read to me by my mother when I was 8 years old and recovering from surgery in the hospital.

It came from a tomb call The Big Book of Jokes and Riddles and it went like this:

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jumped over
a candlestick.
Big deal.

When my mom read that I laughed so hard I nearly popped a stitch.

Crashing a party at the White House may not be quite as funny, but when it comes to "big deals" it's about as impressive as jumping over an unlit candle.

Tiger By the Tale

The Tiger Woods 2:30 a.m. crash story has more holes in it than Augusta National. (And that includes the par 3 course and putting greens.)

UPDATE: TMZ has a more plausible (yet still unverified) story. It involves another woman, a furious Mrs. Woods and a golf club. This isn't just a great story. It's the punchline to my favorite golf joke.

COP: So, Elin, how many times did you hit him?
ELIN: I don't know four, five... put me down for a six!

Friday, November 27, 2009

Welcome Home Cpl. Houser

Nice!

Howling Into The Wind

Daily Howler Bob Somerby takes his fellow "liberals" to task for their brainless hatred and willingness to believe the worst about people from outside their "tribe."

Money Q:

For decades, a large amount of “liberal” politics had really been tribal hatred. This helps explain why there’s nothing resembling a progressive politics in this benighted, laughing-stock nation. In all honesty, pseudo-liberals are in this game so we can vent at the unwashed masses—at the tea-baggers, the redneck racists, the people whose limbic brains don’t work right.

Global Warming Chicanery

"Climategate" leaves the impression that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.

Charles Krauthammer made an excellent point the other day when he reiterated that the language used by the warmists and their acolytes in the media to discredit skeptics is meant to marginalize them socially as well as politically.

They are called global warming "deniers" the same phrase used to describe "holocaust deniers" to put them all beyond the pale. This is ridiculously unfair and inaccurate given that the holocaust already happened and disastrous global warming is "speculative" based on theories and computers models that have been proven less than wholly accurate at best.

These activists and scientists are NOT rigorously, dispassionately and objectively admitting what they DON'T KNOW. They are acting like they can predict the future when THEY CAN'T. Many of their predictions from just 10 years ago have already been proven wrong. Nonetheless, these people want to impose draconian environmental regulations and costs on a world that is undergoing the worst depression in 80 years.

These people are very close to meeting the definition of fanatics.

Polanski Bailed Out

Child rapist Roman Polanski is being released on $4.5 million bail from from a Swiss detention facility pending a decision on whether to extradict him back to the U.S. to be sentenced.

He will be under electronic monitoring at his chalet in Gstaad.

I have no problem with this as long as Swiss officials don't go soft and decide his recent incarceration is enough in the way of justice. Justice requires he be returned to the U.S. from which he fled to avoid sentencing for his crimes back in the late 1970s.

It is not the Swiss government's job to punish Polanski. It IS it's job to return him to the scene of his crimes so that he might get his just desserts.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Congressman Copperfield

John Stossel writes:

When you knowingly pay someone to lie to you, we call the deceiver an illusionist or a magician. When you unwittingly pay someone to do the same thing, I call him a politician.

Not quite.

We don't unwittingly pay politicians, we KNOW we pay them. We also know they as a group they lie, or least evade telling us hard truths and make tough decisions.

As for magicians, in the 80s a comedian used to do a bit about how he didn't like magicians because their job is to make fools out of us.

As in: "Here's a quarter. Now, it's gone. You're a jerk!"

Magicians have more in common with politicians than they should.

The Mess That Joe Made

How much sympathy did Ponzi-schemer Joe Forte get from his victims? Nunn.

My print column is up.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

60+ Best Blogger Templates

Hi friends as we all need some blogger templates that really are best and need to use them on our blog to make our blog look proffessional.As i too have started making some templates but i would for sure like to review or make a collection of some best blogger templates that are designed by our great blogger designers in blogosphere for us in the last few months,to make our blogs look really great.

Just all the 60+ templates i will review will be all from my personal likes and collection,i think them as really of different type and i am sure,one of the design out of these will meet your needs,as all layouts will be different and best.

Image Source:- techtreak

0)Irresistible