Yankee Go Home

It's almost baseball season again, the time of  year when all things are possible, when the cold winds of autumn are months away, waiting, we all know, to dash our hopes of pennants and wold series triumphs, the time when we keep high wish that rookies and fading veterans give us one more year of hope.

I am, as all good readers know, a Red Sox fan, one of God's most pathetic creatures. I'm also a rationalist, someone who tries to evaluate the cold hard facts without excessive sentimentality, but even I find myself  thinking, "Can Middlebrooks recover from that wrist injury, can Lackey become again the pitcher he once was, can Victorino provide some occasional power from a position where you really expect some homerun clout?" If all those things actually happen, the Sox could be formidable.

Despite two world series wins in the last decade, rooting for the Red Sox still seems like being loyal to a company that makes a slightly inferior product. It's as if you somehow love the Kia, when you know all the experts say the Accord or the Camry is the standard of excellence in the compact car class.

For years, the baseball standard of excellence has been (cue the Darth Vader march) the New York Yankees. The Yankees grind down opponents, they rely on a superior amount of player talent, on their roster or available to it, thanks to the big fat Steinbrenner checkbook. It's not quite fair, although the Red Sox are not exactly pikers at throwing huge amounts of  money at ballplayers either.

This year looks to be different. The Yankees are hurting. Their centerfielder, Curtis Granderson, has a broken arm. Their third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, has a bad hip. Now their first baseman, Mark Teixeira (Did I spell it right?) is injured. They signed Kevin Youkilis to cover third base until "A-Rod" returns, and could move him to first, but that leaves third in the hands of two men for whom the sobriquet "journeyman" is actually a compliment. "Youk" also is fragile. The shortstop, Derek Jeter, the "face of the franchise," injured his ankle last year and might be slowing down. Only Robinson Cano among the infielders is a quality player in the prime of his career.

Their offense looks to have a "Punch and Judy" aspect this year. Brett Gardner, moving to centerfield to cover for Granderson, is fast and can steal bases, as can the ageless Ichiro Suzuki, playing rightfield. Neither does much about hitting homeruns, long the Yankee staple. Leftfield will also be in the hands of players who cannot reach the bleachers.

With Russell Martin gone to piracy, they must rely on marginal major league talents behind home plate.

As a baseball traditionalist, I believe it's really all about the starting pitching. Have a good rotation and your team is in good shape, but even here the Yankees look brittle and old. C.C. Sabathia is still solid at age 32, though not as dominating as he was a few years ago. Hideki Kuroda teams with him to provide a left-right combination that's very good, though, again, both men are in their thirties, and have logged a lot of innings on their shoulders and elbows. Even more so for Andy Pettitte, forty years old, who has defied the wear and tear a major league pitcher expects, but is a baseball senior citizen.

Beyond that, there are question marks. The oft injured Phil Hughes can throw quality innings unless he hurts himself, which is probable. Ivan Nova did very well last year, but remains an unknown quality for the long haul. The Yankees traded for  Michael Pineda before the 2012 season, and he did nothing for them last year. He might become again the young stud-hoss he was for the Mariners, but who can say?

There might be more talent in their minor league system, but it hasn't become obvious yet.

The Yankee bullpen looks to be a strength. Mariano Rivera is back as the closer, though he is ancient by baseball standards. (He's twenty years younger than I am, but then I'm not trying to throw fastballs past big league hitters.) The corp of set-up men looks solid, but Joba Chamberlain gets hurt every year, it seems.

The Yankees might yet sign someone off the baseball scrap heap and get good service from him, as they did with Andrew Jones the last couple of years. They might swing a trade for another team's veteran player to fill one of their talent gaps. When A-rod, "Tex" and Granderson all return they might be very good again. Possibly there will be a rookie who emerges to give them a lift. Possibly yes, but probably no.

So Yankee haters, take heart. This looks like a down year for the pinstripes.

Now, can Lester and Buchholz carry the Bosox?

Being Outrageous

This  is  a reprint from the CNN page. I put the part that appeals to me in bold.

Editor's note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is a political comedian and frequent commentator on various TV networks including CNN. He is the editor of the politics blog The Dean's Report and co-director of the upcoming documentary, "The Muslims Are Coming!" Follow him on Twitter: @deanofcomedy.

(CNN) -- Never have so many been so outraged by so little.

We live in a time of instant outrage. The explosion of social media and the demands of the 24-hour news cycle let us immediately express our self-righteous anger about any incident, while the content-desperate media eagerly report -- and repackage -- our rage.

Outrage has become conveniently instantaneous. In the years before social media, people who were truly outraged would have to get a piece of paper, type a letter, put it in an envelope, stamp it and drop it in a mailbox. In contrast, today you can use your thumb to type a tweet on your phone and simply click "Tweet." Your rage is communicated to the world.

Dean Obeidallah

Just this week, we saw instant outrage on full display in response to Seth MacFarlane's jokes at Sunday's Oscars. Amazingly, MacFarlane offended almost every group in America in one show. He was accused of being sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist. (It has to be an Oscar record.) Did Oscar organizers possibly hire MacFarlane to trigger our instant outrage for their own benefit? After all, they knew he'd say outrageous things.

Any chance they wanted the public backlash to make the show, which has seen ratings woes in recent years, more relevant? (And ratings did rise for Sunday's Oscar telecast 11% in the coveted 18-49 age group.) Make no mistake: Our outrage has value.

More recently, comedian Joan Rivers found herself the subject of outrage for a joke she made this week invoking the Holocaust. The media are now filled with people debating the "important" question: Did Rivers go too far? (Will the media ever stop asking that tired question about comedians' jokes?!)

Instant outrage, however, is not just reserved for comedians; it crops up all over the news cycle. We saw it this week over Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's new policy banning telecommuting in the company she's been hired to revive, meaning people have to work from the office every day or quit. Twitter lit up: It's outrageous!

It even happened to me last weekend when I was on CNN with anchor Don Lemon and playfully joked about Canada. Bingo! My Twitter feed was instantly filled with Canadians incensed that I had the audacity to poke fun at their beloved country. Just to be clear, I have nothing against Canada. In fact, it's my third favorite country in North America.

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There's so much more: Beyonce's halftime Super Bowl outfit; Hulk Hogan tweeting a photo of his daughter's legs; Kim Kardashian tweeting a photo of her diamond-encrusted gun; NBA star LeBron James wearing a T-shirt that some claim was about devil worship and/or a symbol for the illuminati.

I get it. We all want to have our opinions heard. When we are mad about something, we want others to know about it. When we are offended, we want to call out the person who has offended us. I'm no different.

But here's the thing: Why not also unleash our collective fury over issues more meaningful than just a comedian's joke or a celebrity's tweet? I'm not suggesting we ignore those -- because even if I did, no one would listen. But in addition to those, take a moment to express your powerful outrage over issues that might tangibly benefit your life and the lives of others.

Joan Rivers' Holocaust joke criticized

Let's get collectively angry that every nine seconds, a woman in the United States is assaulted or beaten. And let's get even angrier that three women a day in the United States are killed by domestic violence attacks.

Let's get really pissed that 22% of American children are living in poverty. And please save some (actually a lot) of outrage for Congress, which has become the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan: We only see it in media coverage doing bad things.

Sure, go ahead and be outraged over Joan Rivers' and Seth MacFarlane's jokes if you must, but let's show some anger about the fact that almost 10,000 Americans died in gun violence last year and still Congress hasn't passed a universal background check to ensure that criminals and mentally ill people can't legally buy guns.

So let's collectively tweet away about the issues that outrage us, be they stupid comments or Syria, comedians' jokes or the growing income inequality in America. But please don't just reserve all your outrage for celebrities. They simply aren't worthy of it.

Guns Again

Yesterday, as I do periodically, I tuned into a right-wing radio station here in Colorado Springs. We have several, plus a liberal talk station from Denver that is hard to receive, as we're about sixty miles from their transmitter.

Colorado conservative Mike Rosen was on, pontificating about the proposed gun control legislation under consideration by the state legislature here. The bill under discussion would require a background check before any transfer of a firearm, even a lender. Rosen was beside himself. "You have to have a background check just to lend your gun to someone else to go hunting, or face a possible prison sentence!" He was in high dudgeon.

It struck me that the way to avoid breaking such a law would be to refuse any requests to borrow a gun. Even if a gun owner did lend a gun, how would the authorities know it unless the borrower committed an illegal act, for example hunting out of season or exceeding bag limits. In that case, it does seem to me that the person who lent the gun does deserve some form of penalty.

Frankly, it's very unlikely that any judge would want to clog up the prison system with someone who merely lent a gun to a fellow citizen. I think the law is intended to curb straw purchases of guns or "loans" which are apt to be permanent.

Not being an attorney, I'll not explore the legal nuances of implied responsibilities here. Suffice to say, any gun owner does bear a moral  responsibility to protect the weapon and keep it away from anyone who  might be dangerous either to himself or the community.

If a gun owner keeps his gun in a locker at home and locks his house when he's away, and someone breaks in, and defeats the locker, and steals the gun to commit crimes, the owner bears little or no moral responsibility for what has happened. On the other hand, if that same gun owner leaves his weapon lying around the house and leaves the house unlocked, and a neighbor child wanders in and takes the gun, there is some moral culpability, even though the child was not invited in, and even though the child's parents are ultimately to blame for not attending to the child. Then suppose the gun owner's own child invited the neighbor kid into the house, and a tragedy followed. Certainly then the gun owner must be held to blame.

If, as happened here in Colorado in 1999, an adult buys guns and ammunition for juveniles, and the juveniles then shoot up a high school and kill a dozen people, that adult (she was eighteen at the time) should be held accountable by law. That's really what the bill under consideration here would provide, in my opinion, and Mr. Rosen should get off his high horse about it.

Science and Faith

The following story is reprinted from a Facebook posting. I have a personal story after it.

It’s happening in Oklahoma – again.
A bill that would prevent teachers from marking down students who turn in papers that dispute ideas like climate change and evolution was approved by the Oklahoma Common Education committee on Tuesday by a 9-8 vote.
HB1674 states that students in science classes would be able to make totally unscientific and unfounded faith-based claims, and not be penalized for it. This is a horrible travesty of education, one that I’m sure most teachers would protest vigorously.
From Mother Jones:

Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. “I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks,” says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. “A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.”

Really? So I can declare that God created the world around six thousand years ago, even though my textbook says something quite different, and get an ‘A’ in science class? Whatever happened to the inquiry method, in which students are required to develop a solid argument based on proven facts?
Of course, this is Oklahoma, the same state that has brought us Senator James Inhofe who famously stated, “Climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that mandated religious instruction in science classes, lawmakers in many states are still trying to water down the teaching of science and push creationism into the public schools.
It’s not just Oklahoma. Just a few weeks into the 2013 legislative session, there are already anti-evolution bills circulating in Missouri, Montana, Colorado, Indiana, in addition to Oklahoma. And in some cases, like this one, climate change has taken a prominent place, along with evolution, as a target for creationists.
These lawmakers have also changed their tactics. Take the bill proposed by Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin: HB291 would require that intelligent design and “destiny” get the same amount of textbook coverage in Missouri schools as the theory of evolution. Brattin insists that his bill is not influenced by religion. After all, the legislator has declared: “I’m a huge science buff.”
Again from Mother Jones:

Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, says Oklahoma has proposed more anti-evolution legislation than any other state, introducing eight bills with academic freedom language since 2004. (None has passed.) “The problem with these bills is that they’re so open-ended; it’s a kind of code for people who are opposed to teaching climate change and evolution,” Meikle says.

“An extremely high percentage of scientists will tell you that evolution doesn’t have scientific weaknesses,” says the NCSE’s Meikle.

As Bill Nye the Science Guy puts it, denial of evolution is unique to the United States. The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades — and yet, defying Darwin, creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Let’s hope this egregious bill never passes.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/need-that-a-grade-try-denying-climate-and-evolution.html#ixzz2LrIFm2iU

Back in 1999 when I was working on a Masters Degree in education, I also  worked as a substitute teacher, and one day I covered in a middle school  earth science class. The teacher had left a lesson plan that called for the students to cut out maps of  the continents and paste them together as Pangaea existed millions of years ago.

The kids got to work with more or less good graces, except for one little boy who insisted that there is no such thing as continental drift and the earth has always looked just as it does today. I told him to go ahead and paste the continents as he thought they had always been and to write his  justification for the teacher. He did.

When I checked his paper, I saw that he had written a diatribe. Only an IDIOT (his capitalization) would believe such a thing, he wrote. God created the world as it is now.

I'm sure he was parroting what he had been  told by his parents, minister and others. I guess the theological premise is that the world is only as old as the number of generations mentioned in the Bible. Also, change such as continental drift or evolution or climate change suggests an earlier imperfection, and what kind of God would make an imperfect world?

I still wonder how I would handle a situation  like that if I was that boy's teacher. It hardly seems fair to penalize a twelve year old for believing what he has heard from the adults he trusts most. On the other hand, his argument is just bad, contrary to what verified scientific fact says is a great fact.

(And I thought teaching history was controversial!)

Remember Kent State!

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  The Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT) was founded in 2010 upon the emergence of new forensic evidence regarding the May 4, 1970 Kent State Massacre. KSTT is a non-profit organization focused on revealing truth and bringing justice to Kent State massacre victims and survivors.

  
  

  On May 4, l970 members of the Ohio National Guard fired between 61 and 67 shots into a crowd of unarmed anti-war protestors at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, killing four and wounding nine students. For over 40 years, the government has claimed that the Guardsmen did not fire on command, and instead shot in self-defense after hearing sniper fire in the crowd.
  
  In 2010, new forensic evidence emerged debunking this theory. The evidence consisted of a tape recorded by a Kent State student during the shooting. Though the original tape, known as the Kent State Strubbe tape, was destroyed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) in 1979, a bonafide copy of the tape was located in 2007 and was analyzed in 2010 by an internationally accredited forensic expert. The analysis, derived using state-of-the-art technology that was not available in prior investigations of the shooting, demonstrates that there was a ‘command to fire' at the protestors. Moreover, the enhanced tape identified four pistol shots fired 70 seconds before the command as coming from an F.B.I. informant’s pistol to create the 'sound of sniper fire.' Although the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) received this new evidence, the Department declined to re-open its investigation of the Kent State shooting.
  
  The victims of the Kent State massacre and their families have been unable to obtain access to meaningful redress. In 1974, federal charges against eight members of the Ohio National Guard of willfully violating the rights of the dead and wounded students were dismissed because, according to the judge, the government had failed to prove its case. In 1979 a civil rights settlement was reached with the issuance of a signed Statement of Regret and $15,000 for Allison B. Krause, one of the victims of the Kent State shooting. However, the settlement did not include an apology. Moreover, the federal charges and settlement were centered on civil rights and constitutional violations - there has yet to be a criminal indictment for murder. Additionally, as investigations of the shooting have thus far only been conducted by government entities, there has yet to be a credible, impartial, and independent investigation of the Kent State shooting. Moreover, the U.S. military has failed to address the use of live ammunition on college campuses and whether appropriate force was used on protestors at Kent State.
  
  Failure to ensure justice and accountability for the Kent State massacre has set a precedent that the U.S. can continue to harass, abuse, and even kill protestors. Just ten days after the Kent State massacre, two student protesters were murdered by state police as they protested the Vietnam War on the Jackson State University campus. American authorities have stated ‘snipers’ prompted the firing of military weapons at student protesters, just as at Kent State University. Unfortunately suppression of peaceful assembly continues today. Since the ‘Occupy’ movement began in 2011, protestors have been labeled as ‘domestic terrorists’ by the F.B.I. and have been arrested in massive numbers for peaceful protests and assemblies. Until the U.S. conducts a credible, impartial and investigation into the Kent State shooting, and provides redress for victims and their families, protestors in the U.S. will continue to be at risk of being deprived of their fundamental rights without accountability.
  

Sunday Morning Thoughts

I like President Obama. I haven't felt the same affection for a president since John Kennedy was murdered. Moreover, I think he has done a very good job in the White House, especially since he has to deal with such a strident opposition. I respect his judgement as a professional politician concerning how much legislation he can get through Congress and his reluctance to push too hard. He has tried to be reasonable with unreasonable people.

I am glad he has ended the Iraq imbroglio, though some troops remain, and is preparing to end the American commitment of soldiers to Afghanistan, albeit with some residual presence there.

He has implemented a very tough policy against al-Qaida, including the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, without any prior notice to their government. In truth, the Pakistani government has given lip service to helping with anti-terrorist work, but done nearly nothing except take a lot of American aid.

The drone aircraft strikes trouble me a lot. I think it's more than time to reconsider whether the enmity that they provoke outweighs any successes they achieve.

Worse, I am profoundly disappointed that the president uses drones to kill Americans abroad who are suspected of working with al-Qaida. Any American, no matter how odious, deserves due process of law, unless the threat is imminent and there is no other way to prevent an overt act of murder. Allowing a president - any president, since this will serve as a precedent for Obama's successors - to kill anyone he thinks is a threat makes our democracy much weaker, not stronger. Again, though I trust this president, it's vital that we remember he will be leaving office on January 20, 2017, and who knows who his successor will be.

Now, since I'm sitting in my living room typing this instead of going to Mass as a good Catholic should, I think I'll say a few words about the church and my own religious convictions. I'm a lapsed Catholic. It's seven years now since I attended Mass.

Part of the reason is that it's just very pleasant to stay home, drink coffee and read the Sunday paper. Part of it too, is the sex scandal that has enveloped the priesthood in the last twenty years.

Pedophile priests are terribly disturbing. As shocking as the revelations of child abuse were, almost as bad was the news that the church could afford to make large cash settlements on the victims, an amount of money now known to top $100 million. Every parish I ever was part of seemed to be on the edge of solvency and priests periodically cajoled parishioners to make larger donations. And all that time they had enormous investments squirreled away!

Finally, and egregiously, it is now known that church administrators - that is, bishops - orchestrated cover-ups of the sex abuses, transferring pedophiliac priests, and tried to squelch any reports of their crimes. I'll leave it to prosecutors to decide if there were obstructions of justice, but regardless, it was a great moral failing.

It also greatly bothers me that several prelates of the church sent letters to Catholics, telling them in effect that voting for a political candidate who wants to keep abortion legal is a sin. I admire and proclaim the church's positions against war and in favor of worker dignity, but I cannot agree with a religious leader telling the faithful they sin by voting against a church position.

The messenger may be flawed, but that doesn't invalidate the message. Priests who preyed on children needn't mean that the gospels are any less true or good. So to say it briefly, I think there is some sort of God, a prime cause of all the matter in the universe, but that spirit does not involve itself in human life at all. I believe there was a Jesus, a wandering preacher who proclaimed a coming kingdom after history ended, and urged that we forgive and love each other. I cannot make myself believe he did miracles or was any more divine than you, dear reader, or I.

That's it for Sunday morning. Today's LA Times crossword was very inventive.