Nobody's Fool
New political lines are being drawn in Washington-- and it's a thrilling thing to behold.
The House failed today in its effort to giveaway $700 billion of your money. John McCain and Republicans blamed Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Barney Frank, Chris Matthews, and Arianna Huffington blamed John McCain and Republicans. McCain lost. Obama lost. Bush lost. The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate both lost. Wall Street lost BIG. And the American people won!
Greedy Wall Street speculators, the culprits of our current predicament, went immediately into pouting mode after being faced with, for the first time in memory, a finger being placed in the dike of corporate socialism. The Dow had shed 778 points by day's end, the biggest single day loss in more than two decades.
What we witnessed leading up to-- and immediately following-- the House vote was consistent with the thesis of Naomi Klein's new book,
The Shock Doctrine. She refers to it as "Disaster Capitalism in Action." Wall Street corporatists and their Washington errand boys preach Left Behind-style economics, causing many Americans to turn jittery. Then they attempt to transform their manufactured economic crisis into a public mandate for pushing through radical pro-corporate policies.
But their tactics didn't work in the Congress this time! We may have finally established a ceiling for how much money Wall Street can mug from the American taxpayers-- a number roughly equal to the cost of an economic plan in which we give $100 to each person on the planet. You can steal from the American people 23 out of every 24 months, but don't try to do it five weeks before election day. It just doesn't leave enough time for lawmakers on the take to spin their votes.
I'll be surprised if anybody this week frames it better than Dennis Kucinich did yesterday--
"The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren't we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers' money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?
"Why aren't we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn't it time for fundamental change in our debt based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? Wall Street is a place of bears and bulls. It is not smart to force taxpayers to dance with bears or to follow closely behind the bulls."If you follow too closely behind the bulls, you're going to wind up stepping in it. The corporate media didn't consider Kucinich a viable presidential candidate. They ignored Ron Paul, and are now ignoring Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. But now, upon the most important vote of this year and several years, these individuals find themselves on the side of the American people, and the center podium candidates are scrambling to pick up the pieces.
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The
roll call of today's vote. Iowans Leonard Boswell and Dave Loebsack in support. Bruce Braley, Steve King, and Tom Latham opposed.
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Other Paul Newman movie titles considered for tonight's heading:
Somebody Up There Likes MeRally 'Round the Flag, BoysExodusThe HustlerThe PrizeThe OutrageWinningSometimes a Great NotionPocket MoneyThe StingThe Towering InfernoWhen Time Ran OutAbsence of MaliceThe VerdictThe Color of MoneyEmpire Falls---
Hidden cameras recorded a portion of the Bruce Springsteen concert we saw in Kansas City last month.
The other bailout
Cheers to Barack Obama for continuing to push for Friday's televised presidential debate despite John McCain rather laughably trying to back out due to recent crises in the country's financial industry. Obama is right that presidents are forced to "deal with more than one thing at a time," and that it's a vitally-important time to hear from the candidates.
I would suggest then that Obama take the opportunity on Friday to debate Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney on television, something he has otherwise steadfastly and cowardly refused to do. The networks have already cleared their programming schedules for that evening, Obama would have the unique opportunity he's been waiting for to show the American people how "moderate" he is, and with McCain absent, corporate sponsors would only have to spring for one extra podium.
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As a wise person once observed-- there are no atheists in a foxhole, and there are no capitalists in a financial crisis. Wall Street socialism is alive and well. AIG gets $85 million in taxpayer handouts, Bear Stearns got $29 million, and now another $700 billion (with no strings attached) is about to be broken loose from the national piggy bank if President Bush's treasury secretary gets his way. John McCain and Barack Obama have both promised they'll work in a "bipartisan" fashion to arrive at a solution to recent financial problems, and heaven knows that approach has worked out great up to this point.
The current financial crisis should inspire Americans to cut the cord on both Democrats and Republicans. If ever there was a national disaster that was not only presided over, but
instigated by 'bipartisan' action in Washington, this here's it. Both parties turned their backs on industry regulation and Congressional oversight of the markets. Lawmakers up and down both party rosters have accepted campaign bribes from the crooks and greedy speculators. The millionaire bosses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were appointees from both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The issue on everyone's mind at the moment should be campaign finance reform. According to Zogby, 82% of Americans believe that political parties, presidential and Congressional candidates should be banned from receiving financial contributions from lobbyists or "other representatives from those industries that are vital to the financial and national security of the country." What do you have to say, fellow taxpayers? How about if we pony up $2 billion annually for full public financing of Congressional and presidential elections and put the
$700 billion back in our pockets?
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Where is the justice system's sense of proportion? Eighteen New York baseball fans have been arrested this week for "possession of stolen property" following the last-ever game played at historic Yankee Stadium on Sunday-- but team officials remain loose on the streets despite looting as much as $826 million in taxpayer subsidies for the construction of the replacement park.
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Entirely unrelated, the St. Louis Cardinals finished 9-4 in World Series games played at Yankee Stadium.
Moeller TV Listings 9/23/08
Tonight on Letterman, Dave welcomes former comedy team Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen. The two guests are the subject of a new book entitled "Tim and Tom, An American Comedy in Black and White," written by Chicago journalist Ron Rapoport. (They're also the subject of
this piece in the September 4th issue of the Chicago Reader.)
The duo broke up as a stage act in 1974, but both went on to highly successful, albeit divergent careers in the entertainment business. A late '70s stand-up comic contemporary and friend of Letterman's, Dreesen was one of the last of the professional "opening act" comedians, serving perhaps most notably as Frank Sinatra's final regular opener during the period of 1984 to 1995. Reid became an actor and television producer, working most recognizably on screen as Venus Flytrap on TV's wildly-popular series "WKRP in Cincinnati," and later as the star of the critically-acclaimed "Frank's Place."
During the last season of "WKRP" in 1982, Dreesen guested in an episode entitled "Changes" as a magazine writer assigned to interview Venus. Dreesen's character was the only white employee at a black-owned magazine, mirroring Venus' situation at the Cincinnati radio station of his employ. One day-- long after I'm dead and cremated-- this episode will be released on DVD.
Campaign update 9/22/08
The Chris Moeller for Statehouse campaign moves forward. Just to let you know what we've been up to-- campaign literature has been printed up that includes a stunning picture of the candidate. On Saturday, I walked the East Village and the downtown areas of Des Moines distributing a few of these cards and posting them on public bulletin boards. I mailed some to Iowa City also where they'll be included in a fundraising mailing that goes out to all the registered Greens in the state. The Chris Moeller Campaign Fund is up and running and Aunt Mary's generous contribution all the way from Great Falls, Montana established the account balance.
The Iowa City/Johnson County branch of the state Greens has been doing what it can to bring presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney to Iowa for a party event before November 4th-- an exciting prospect to say the least, and there will be an opportunity to meet
me,
Des Moines' local Green candidate, on Sunday, October 5th. We'll have a table set up at the Capital City Pride event in the East Village that afternoon from 12-6. Come out and get your Green Party buttons and McKinney bumper stickers while they last!
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These numbers are towering-- the 50 richest members of Congress and their corresponding net worths, compiled by Roll Call (and these are just the amounts they report, as the article explains.) Is it unfair to presume that these lawmakers' financial holdings put them far out of touch with the average American? Do Americans feel better about themselves when they're being led by their financial betters? The former NFL quarterback managed to come in only 35th.
What the wild card hath wrought
It's mid-September and that means it's time for the annual blog feature titled above.
Major League Baseball has employed its farcical wild card playoff system now for 16 long years, each season allowing two second-place teams-- one from each league-- to back themselves into the playoffs. The most positive results of the new system came about that very first year, 1994, when the final 2 1/2 months of the season where cancelled on account of strike by the Players Association. It's been downhill ever since.
On the heels of
last year's debacle, this year's pennant race has been almost equally-damaged by the wild card, yet proponents continue to employ their faulty math in support of the system. The addition of two extra playoff slots, they argue, provides longer-lasting hope into autumn for the league's second-tier clubs. But again, what is being subtracted? This is never factored into the equation.
Like last year, the wild card damage of 2008 is most pronounced in the American League. None of the circuit's 14 teams have had their championship chances extended later into the regular season by the open slot. The wild card leading Boston Red Sox, at the time of this writing, have a 7 game lead in those standings. Two races are still alive in the AL with a week and a half left in the regular season-- the Central and the East. Regardless of the wild card, the White Sox and Twins have a close race for the reserved playoff slot as Central Division champion, but in the East, it's already over. Boston, with its $133 million payroll, and the Tampa Bay Rays, with their $43 million payroll, should be locked into an epic battle and a great narrative, separated by only two games. The two clubs have gone head-to-head six times during the last week and a half, with the Rays winning 4 of 6, accounting, in effect, for the difference in the standings, but oops... who cares? Both clubs are safely enrolled in the league's post-season lineup. Remember Boston's 7 game lead in the wild card?
In the National League, this year's wild card has succeeded in extending the post-season chances of two teams, the Brewers and the Astros, who would otherwise be also-rans against the Central Division-leading Cubs. But is that the competitive situation Major League Baseball desires? The Brewers and Astros have no business getting a second life against the Cubs. The Brewers trail Chicago by 9 games. The Astros trail them by 12. The Cubs have been consistently excellent all season. They've won 92 games with 11 still to play. Meanwhile, the Brewers have won only 4 of 17 games during the month of September, fired their manager on Monday, and lost 8 of 13 games head-to-head against the Cubs this year, including 6 of the last 7 after today. The Astros were 46-55 on July 23rd, and despite a remarkable spurt over about six weeks, have now trailed off to lose 5 in a row. Is the jury still out on selecting the best team of this bunch?
Night after night, baseball commentators ask us to bask in the excitement of the pennant race, as if nothing has ever changed over time, but what is actually being decided during September is materially-less than it's ever been. For almost 70 years, a regular season title in baseball immediately translated into a World Series ticket for that club. Then for 25 years, it meant you needed to tally just four more wins to reach the Series. Now you need
seven more wins before entering the Fall Classic, passing muster in
two short series.
Each and every year, eight of 30 MLB teams pop champagne corks at some point during the month of September. They cover their lockers with plastic sheeting and douse themselves with the bubbly. Now I'll repeat that extraordinary number-- eight. That's more than 25 percent of the total number of clubs that make it out of spring training, and equal to the original number of teams in the American League. Out of what can only be habit, teams still celebrate pennant race clinchers as if they mean something extraordinary. In the modern era, an AL West division title means that the champs have battled for six exhausting months and for 162 games to eliminate from contention all of three teams, and that's barring a wild card berth by one of those three. Who came up with this monstrosity of a playoff system? My theory-- Korbel.
September Song/One hasn't got time for the waiting game
I wish I could share in some Cardinals fans' satisfaction with the "overachieving" hometown team this year, but as a full-time rooter and part-time financial contributor, I feel like I got taken to the cleaners. Tony LaRussa, his staff, and the players at his disposal did enjoy a nice season, almost to the man, but I never saw 2008 as a rebuilding year. In modern baseball, for a team with the Cardinals' bountiful resources, there should never,
ever be a rebuilding year.
Management's curious new commitment to sacrificing its short-term success for the sake of developing the long-elusive flourishing farm system is nothing more than a public relations fraud designed to hold down payroll. The Cardinals have had a subpar farm system for a decade and more, and still the team managed to participate in 61 post-season games in the 7-year stretch of 2000 to 2006. This is because they have the financial resources to go out and purchase (or deal for) proven players that know how to succeed on a baseball field at the big league level.
The new build-from-within model is all a ruse by the team's ownership group to keep player salaries down and to ride-- upon the backs of hard-working Cardinals fans-- all the way to the bank. There's been a gradual, systematic dismantling of the team that surrounds the Great Pujols from the time the owners got their new stadium on the fast track early in the decade. The payroll has remained virtually unchanged for the last three years despite the shiny new ballpark, the auctioning off of even the shit that was bolted down at the old park, the nearly annual sharing in of Major League Baseball's post-season television pot of gold, and booming profits from online advertising and subscription access to radio and television broadcasts. They've bought up the radio station that originates the game broadcasts and now
three of their minor league franchise affiliates.
It was obvious to all that the 2008 Cardinals had one glaring weakness-- their bullpen-- that was going to sabotage the whole season, but the front office followed up an inactive off-season with an even more inactive trade deadline period. The post-season was ripe for the picking, as we see now with the Brewers having fired their manager on the brink of another September stumble, and the Mets-- with their Billy Wagner-less bullpen surrendering 14 runs in its last 5 games-- having dropped three in a row and resurrecting painful memories of last year's epic collapse. The Cardinals, by all rights, should be right there to vulture into the playoffs, but instead they've lost 12 of 16 games since August 27th, finally giving out under the weight of 30 blown saves for the season, four shy of the highest total recorded by any team since 1969.
Oh, but who could have predicted all of these late season injuries? It doesn't take a wizard. Every team needs reinforcements late in the year. The last impact player the Cardinals picked up at the trade deadline was Larry Walker in 2004, and the team followed that move by sprinting into the World Series that October. In those heady days, the annual July 31st trade deadline was like Christmas morning for Cardinals fans. It was Mark McGwire arriving in 1997, Will Clark in 2000, Woody Williams in 2001, Scott Rolen in 2002, and Walker in '04. Then the strategy inexplicably shifted, and what do we see? The 2006 club, despite its October spark, went 12-17 during the month of September, the '07 club 13-18, and this year's team 4-9.
Was fixing the bullpen ever a priority this year? Apparently not if it meant parting with any one of 6 to 8 minor leaguers deemed untouchable by GM/yes man John Mozeliak. The old Cardinals front office, with Walt Jocketty at the throttle, would have dealt for a pending free agent stud closer like Brian Fuentes and plugged up that hole-- then for good measure signed the left-hander to a multi-year deal before he was allowed to hit the off-season free agent market. The Jocketty Cardinals were the team in the division that always landed a CC Sabathia-level impact player. Now they watch Milwaukee make the biggest splash, and the 2007 AL Cy Young Award winner, acquired in exchange for an assemblage of minor-leaguers, has responded by going 9-0, with six complete games and three shutouts in just 13 starts for the Brewers (entering tonight).
What do the Cardinals hope to achieve from this new philosophy? What
wasn't working before that required this radical paradigm shift? Do they anticipate a
more successful, extended run than they've already experienced over the last decade? Would I have traded a "blue-chip" prospect like Colby Rasmus to get a proven slugger like Matt Holliday? I would have traded Colby Rasmus to get Mark Grudzielanek.
After tonight's loss, the Cardinals find themselves losers of six in a row, just six games above .500, and trailing three teams in the division-- Chicago, Milwaukee, and Houston-- with a combined zero championships in the last 99 years. It's infuriating.
But kudos to the manager-- "not a long-range thinker" by his own description-- for
calling out his bosses last week. The inactivity by the Bill DeWitt front office this year was a direct slap at the collection of players that did so much to overachieve for five months. It's obvious now there was never any commitment to 2008 coming from upstairs. A feisty and competitive bunch on the field kept the club in contention, but it never mattered. The division and the playoffs were conceded from the very beginning. If the Cubs take the series this year while the Cardinals are in the middle of this counterfeit rebuild, the entire front office-- Chairman DeWitt down to the lowliest accountant in the finance department-- should have his or her ankles and wrists confined in stocks on the grounds of the Jefferson Expansion Memorial for the duration of winter.
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Who could have predicted the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage crises?
Ralph did.
A correction, not a clarification
"Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and independent candidate Ralph Nader did not factor significantly in the poll, with neither candidate receiving more than 2 percent of likely voters."Ralph Nader is polling
6-8 percent in battleground states from New Mexico to Pennsylvania to Colorado to Nevada to Michigan, despite a virtual media blackout of his campaign, but in the Iowa Poll published in today's
Des Moines Register, he's at just 1 percent and reporter Thomas Beaumont included the statement above in his story filed Saturday.
Perhaps the discrepancy in Iowa has something to do with the interviews conducted by the polling firm employed by the Des Moines office of the Gannett Corporation.
The initial question posed to likely voters was: "If the election were held today, and the candidates were John McCain for the Republicans, Barack Obama for the Democrats, Bob Barr for the Libertarians, and Ralph Nader for the Green Party, for whom would you vote?" At least they got the grammar correct. It would be "for
whom", that's right. But as better informed CM Blog readers know, Ralph Nader is
not the Green Party candidate for president, Cynthia McKinney is, and Nader is on the Iowa ballot as a candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party. Nader didn't even run as a Green in 2004. It's been eight years since Nader represented the Green Party.
A "clarification" was included at least in the online story, but I'm not sure exactly how that added statement couldn't be better defined as a "correction," and it's typical of the corporate agenda to ignore independent party movements to such an extent that they can't get their facts in order even when they're trying to be marginally inclusive. Months ago,
the Register made the equally insulting decision to exclude Dennis Kucinich from their sponsored television debate in the leadup to the Iowa Democratic Caucuses. Now again, a high-profile corporate critic bears the brunt of the decision/oversight. And what qualifications does Bob Barr have to be included in the Iowa Poll that Cynthia McKinney doesn't have? Even that decision is a nod to Democrats and Republicans to balance Nader with a right-wing alternative. Barr and McKinney are both former members of Congress from the state of Georgia now heading the ticket for a third party on the presidential ballot in more than 40 states.
There are more registered Independent and 3rd Party voters in this country than there are either Republicans or Democrats. If you are one of these, do you feel your needs are being served in this campaign by the Fourth Estate? Nader is polling as much as 5 percent in nationwide polls-- matching the federal criteria for matching campaign funds (the only legislative standard) and an absolutely staggering percentage considering the almost total media blackout-- yet he's going to be excluded from the televised debates because the debate commission is headed by former chairs (read: party bosses) of both the Republican and Democratic parties. When the League of Women Voters sponsored the televised debates, prior to 1988, a third party candidate like John Anderson (in 1980) was allowed to share the debate stage. But by 1996, after the change, Ross Perot was told by the new commission he didn't have "a chance to win," even though he was fabulously wealthy, had led the nationwide polling at one point in 1992 and finished with nearly 19 percent of the popular vote in that previous cycle.
Big surprise then-- that's why independent party candidates aren't invited anymore. The corporate television networks, despite occupying space on the publicly-owned broadcast spectrum to account for their very existence, aren't in congress with the League of Women Voters anymore. They're in congress with a commission funded by Anheuser Busch, Phillip Morris, 3Com, and the Ford Motor Co.-- each past sponsors of these new exclusionary debates, major network advertisers, soft money contributors to the corporate parties, and-- I'm sure you're aware-- big fans of Ralph Nader. (Although, in fairness, it was General Motors, and not Ford, that once paid private investigators to tap Nader's phone and hired prostitutes to try to lure the citizen advocate into compromising positions.)
Blame the corporate-backed candidates also. Barack Obama and John McCain have shown they don't have the balls to debate these other candidates-- under any forum. (Hoa Lo Prison interrogators must have nothing on Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin) And comically, both Obama and McCain have been trying to convince us that they and their running mates are prepared to face off on the global stage with Vladimir Putin. That must make Ralph Nader the most intimidating man on the planet.
The other war
If the rhetoric at their political conventions reveals anything, the Republican war is the war on Iraq, and the Democratic war is the war on Afghanistan. These are the two battlefields, both literally and figuratively, upon which the two major U.S. political parties attempt to prove their bonafides on the matter of military retribution. For Democrats, Afghanistan represents the justified alternative to the war on Iraq. The Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, they argue, and conflict in this region becomes the Democrats' justification for continuing to back the bloated and growing military budget. On the enormous size of this budget (more than half of the overall federal discretionary spending), both parties are in agreement. There is currently no national debate on the subject.
When October 7, 2008 arrives, the war on Afghanistan will be seven years old. It will have been seven long years since the U.S. and the U.K. commenced the so-called "War on Terror" with that country as target, and seven years since I replaced the crocheted Afghan wrap resting on my sofa with a more patriotic "Freedom Blanket." The war has lasted almost as long as the Soviet/Afghan war, which stretched from 1979 to 1989.
It's well past time to end that bloody battle. 2008 is already
the deadliest year for American servicemen and women in that country-- now outpacing Iraq-- with 113 casualties, steadily rising each year from "only" 30 in both 2002 and 2003. Upon the 7th anniversary of 9/11, there have been 949 coalition deaths in the region. At least 540 Afghan civilians are dead in 2008 alone.
"Afghanistan should be able to rely on its own security within a year," said interior minister Younis Qanooni--
in February of 2002. In the fall of '08, the Taliban is resurgent, their nation's economy is ravaged-- save for the growing production of illegal drugs (Afghanistan provides 92% of the world's opium supply, utilized in the production of heroin), corruption runs rampant, the rule of law is a distant fantasy, and Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan. What's the mission?
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Here's
Ron Paul and Ralph Nader on Wednesday appearing jointly on "The Situation Room" (stupid name) on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. What a newt that Blitzer is. Pure horserace B-S despite the candidates' best efforts to talk about their key positions.
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An extraordinary political independence movement has mushroomed this year behind a collection of notable leaders and shared national principals. Here's video (posted chronologically) from Wednesday's joint press conference featuring
Ron Paul,
Ralph Nader,
Chuck Baldwin (of the Constitution Party), and
Cynthia McKinney (You go, girl), followed by
questions. The combined runtime of the links is about 43 minutes. Vote your values.
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Gina Gershon has posted
a video online channeling Sarah Palin.
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A Florida newspaper
tracks down a transplanted resident of Wasilla, Alaska.
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How "The Big Lebowski" impacts our lives today.
Selfish demands
There was an old-fashioned
display of civil disobedience in Chicagoland last week-- what one might call "a teaching moment"-- and the results appear to have been outstanding. Fourteen hundred students from the city's public schools, mostly poor residents of the inner-city, were bused on the first day of classes to the wealthy northwest suburb of Northfield and to the campus of New Tier Township High School. The protest was designed to draw attention to the gross inequities in school funding in the state of Illinois, an issue with resonance in states all over the country, including the one bordering to Illinois' west.
Largely financed by property taxes, Chicago public schools spend an estimated $10,400 per student each year on education, and in New Tier Township, it's an estimated $17,000 per student. The New Tier school boasts four music orchestras, a rowing club, advanced placement classes in French, Chinese, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Latin, as well as a class called "kinetic wellness." In the city, the dropout rate is 50 percent.
The protest, organized by Rev. James Meeks, a member of the state senate, was described as "very selfish" by Chicago Mayor Daley, who played both the 'children as pawns' and 'the children should be in school' cards with the media, but out in Northfield, staff and volunteers seemed to accept the protest in kind. Roughly 100 local men and women took to the gymnasium, along with the protesters, and symbolically signed the visiting kids up for classes at New Tier. Snacks and water were also provided on a day that saw warm local temperatures.
Disparities in funding between school districts have been an accepted part of life in America for generations and it's wholly unacceptable now as it has always been, and we still wait for either the Democratic or Republican Parties to take up the cause of leveling the most important playing field of all. The inherent unfairness of the current system stretches nationwide, is the predominant catalyst for the cycle of poverty, and makes fools of anyone who would attempt to argue that all boys and girls have the same opportunity for success in this country.
62
On September 8th, 1998, Mark McGwire set the world ablaze by launching his 62nd home run of the season just over the boards in the left field corner of Busch Stadium. The Cardinals slugger was en route to an end tally for the year of 70 home runs-- a new single-season standard for Major League Baseball. In 1961, Roger Maris had toppled Babe Ruth's 32-year-old record with his 61st home run in early October on the last day of the Yankees' season. In 1998, McGwire broke Maris'
37-year-old record with #62
the day after Labor Day.
Lifted on the shoulders of millions of passionate Cardinals fans, who shared Mac's intensity and concentration on each pitch from opening day through the season finale, McGwire was catapulted into the highest stratosphere of sport on that extraordinary Tuesday night.
I was thrilled to be even a tiny speck in the portrait of the historic spectacle that culminated on a single night but that lasted an entire glorious season. I listened live to 35 of those 70 home runs on the radio, watched 26 more on television, and was there to witness six at that old beautiful ballpark in downtown St. Louis. A big man with a big heart-- and an extraordinary work ethic and commitment to his craft-- claimed baseball's most hallowed record 10 years ago tonight, and he did it with great spirit, humility, and character.
The Lord's work
Jane Addams lived from 1860 to 1935. She opened the country's first-ever "settlement house" for the underprivileged at the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets in Chicago in 1889. "Hull House" was host to two-thousand people every week, with kindergarten classes and club meetings for children and teens, and what amounted to the first-ever night school and adult education program in America. Under her leadership, Hull House also came to add an art gallery, a boarding school for girls, a gymnasium and swimming pool, an employment bureau, a music school, a circulating library, and a public kitchen to help feed the city's needy. She served on Chicago's Board of Education and participated in the founding of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, to say nothing of her leadership later in global bodies such as the Women's Peace Party and the International Congress of Women. She became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
As a civics lesson then to the self-satisfied twit John McCain chose as his running mate, Ms. Addams is what you would call "a community organizer."
In her speech last night at the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin proclaimed, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities"-- denigrating Barack Obama's inner-city relief work during the 1980s with a group called the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
While Palin has called the war on Iraq "a task from God" and once said of a natural-gas pipeline-- "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built," she obviously thinks decidedly less of Obama's spiritual mission during his stint as an organizer-- efforts which included job training assistance and finding housing for laid-off steel workers on Chicago's industrial south side.
Twenty-first century Republicans are more apt to sneer or spit on the poor than to ever get their hands dirty lending a hand to such a Christ-like mission. Palin's entire introduction to the country last night-- sarcastic and ugly-- indicates that she might be ready to helm the fundraising department for the party's national committee, but that she's obviously been holed up inside that gated community in the wilderness for too long to understand and share the core human values of the American people. It should have already been apparent that she was unfit to carry water as anybody's running mate on a presidential ticket, but the boat is sailing as well on her closer walk with thee. You stay classy, Sarah Palin.
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The 17-year-old daughter of their VP nominee is knocked up and Republican operatives and party bosses are almost unanimous in their public posturing that the pregnancy is a private family matter for only the Palins and the Johnstons of Wasillia, Alaska. The irony of that position is that the right to privacy is the very Constitutional mandate they wish to destroy by overturning Roe v. Wade.
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Sarah Palin is the Clarence Thomas of the women's movement.
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She's the new Phyllis Schlafly.
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How would the country's right wing have reacted if Michelle Obama had a 17-year-old daughter that got pregnant?
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Since he's fallen in line behind the VP nomination of an unqualified woman chosen because of her gender, does that make Rush Limbaugh a "femi-nazi"?
Spaceman
I'm still ruminating on the Labor Day connection, but I've put the together today a little bit of the best of Bill Lee. Affectionately known as 'Spaceman," Bill was a left-handed pitcher in the bigs from 1969 to 1982 first with the Boston Red Sox, and later with the Montreal Expos. Bill is and has always been an outspoken baseball purist opposed to the designated hitter [1973 was "the year (commissioner) Bowie Kuhn took the bat out of my hands"], AstroTurf, night games, and the "planet-polluting owners." He has simultaneously possessed the type of countercultural opinions about marijuana use and American military policy that often gets a person saddled with the label "free thinker."
Consistent with his democratic principles, he shunned the common reliance on throwing fastballs during his career in favor of a series of junkball pitches that included the Leephus, or Space Ball, a variation of the Eephus pitch thrown slow and with a high trajectory. There's little doubt he was an influence on the formulation of Kevin Costner's existential ballplaying character in "Bull Durham," and Susan Sarandon's as well.
Long before Don Zimmer was regarded as a lovable comic foil for pithy New York sportswriters and Biff Henderson, the veteran baseballer was the pointman for a bit of Lee's ire as manager of the Red Sox. Publicly feuding over Zimmer's handling of the Red Sox pitching staff in 1978, Lee dubbed his 'old-school' manager "the designated gerbil," and Lee was dealt to the Montreal club immediately following the season. The pitcher responded to the transaction by offering up one of the great lines in baseball history, in reference to the Red Sox having just surrendered a 14-game lead and the pennant to the Yankees: "Who wants to be with a team that will go down in history with the '64 Phillies and the '67 Arabs?"
Now a 60-something resident of rural Vermont, Lee barnstorms on diamonds from Alaska to Cuba ("I don't want to look fat when they bury me," he says) and he believes that baseball leads the path of all social progress. "(It's) the belly button of America," he wrote in one of his books, "If you straighten out the belly button, the rest of the country will follow."
Here are three Bill Lee gems, courtesy of YouTube--
first, a sample of Lee's contributions to Ken Burn's PBS miniseries "Baseball,"
next, a clip of Lee being interviewed by a guy with a Canadian accent after an Expos game in 1979, and
finally, a chat with the man in the new millennium.
