Random Musings

Posted on Baseball, Random Musings

down go the yankees

Well…at least they have that gorgeous new ballpark. Today makes two days their starting rotation has been torched for many runs, and it’s only April! 🙂 I feel safe in predicting today’s loss to the Indians, even though the game’s still in progress. Not even the Indians could blow a 20-2 lead in the 6th inning.

This has been a good day for fans of Cleveland sports teams. I mentioned the Indians. The Cavs, led by THE OTHER #23, LeBron James won their playoff game today against the Pistons. Of course he’s not Michael Jordan. There will always be only one of those. But LeBron could get the Cavs to a championship, something the Cavs have never experienced in their history.  If he pulls that off, that alone will set him apart, even if he never wins another ring.

Posted on Conservatives, Democrats, Random Musings, Republicans

happy jackie robinson day!

Well…at least it was around the world of MLB. For the rest of the country, the discussion was about tea parties and the annual rite of passage for taxpaying citizens to fund wasteful government programs for all Americans. Another April 15th has come and gone, but nothing really has changed. The tea parties, while meaningful and important because of the message the participants delivered (no on Washington and the wasteful spending), will not sustain whatever momentum could have been gained from these events. For a political protest to have any staying power in the long run it requires some kind of ongoing commitment to the cause for those who are involved in that protest. Many of the participants have that kind of commitment — to keep fighting for limited government, lower taxes, and reduced government spending — and they will stay involved locally and hold their local politicians accountable in these areas. That would have been true without the tea parties. The success or failure of Tea Party Day should be measured by what happens next. Will this spark lead to more involvement in the political process by those who are disconnected from both parties as a result of finding common cause with these protesters? Or will we all go back to our own lives and forget all the great things that happened today?

Future results are TBD.

Posted on Baseball, Random Musings

happy opening day!

About time there was baseball on TV again.  Happy Opening Day to all my fellow baseball fans, and especially to Mets fans.

My beloved Mets kicked off the regular season against the Reds, beating the Reds 2-1, and it was all working for them on Monday.  Johan pitched well, we got a few hits, and the bullpen held the lead.  Good start.  Let’s keep it going.  Is it too early to worry about the Mets offense,  though?  In theory, yes.  Based on past history — it’s never too early to worry about that.

There will be no anti-Yankees posts (at least not this week), but give it time — they will eventually appear in this space.

Also,  the UNC Tar Heels continue to clock the Michigan State Spartans as of right now.   I think it’s safe for me to skip the second half.  Go Heels!

Great sports day all around.  Lots of baseball, and just enough college basketball.

Unrelated politics posts coming up…stay tuned.

Posted on Conservatives, Random Musings

ringing endorsements

First, we have EU President and the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, and his comments about the stimulus:

From the New York Times (which has sounded rather sensible on fiscal issues lately)-

The European Union’s crisis of leadership during the economic downturn was thrown into sharp relief on Wednesday, as the current president of the 27-nation bloc labeled President Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

But perhaps this guy is an outlier, and all the other Europeans are on board with this new massive spending — that takes the bad precedent set by the Bush administration and explodes the deficit by an outrageous amount.  Or maybe not.

More from the Times:

Mr. Topolanek is not alone in his concern that Mr. Obama’s stimulus package, which will push the United States budget deficit this year to 10 percent or more of gross domestic product, will put a huge strain on global financial markets. German officials have also criticized the evolving American program, and many other European nations have declined to create fiscal stimulus programs anywhere near as large as that of the United States, arguing that too much extra money will lead quickly to inflation.

If even some of the European countries – some former Communist countries, some not — believe that this stimulus is a bad idea, and that more state interference in the economy is an undesirable thing, maybe we should rethink President Obama’s grand plan.
Continue reading →

Posted on Random Musings

reason reviews the “stimulus”

From Reason mag’s original analysis by Veronique de Rugy:

There are many more bad policies and spending decisions in the Senate stimulus bill, but even a cursory glance at the parts outlined above give a good sense of the overall legislation—and what is likely to be signed into law by President Obama.

And here is one more thing to consider: There is absolutely no evidence that any stimulus package in the past 80 years has goosed economic activity—not FDR’s during the Great Depression, not Japan’s during the 1990s, and not George W. Bush’s in 2001 and 2008. If anything, the economic evidence suggests that such spending packages actually intensified and prolonged misery.

Instead of rushing through legislation that will likely have no short-term effect on the economy, is guaranteed to have negative long term ones, and that serves the traditional interest groups that politicians are always busy catering to, the Senate should have cut spending like Ireland is now doing and cut marginal tax rates across the board. That would not only have stimulated the economy, it would have been fiscally responsible considering the massive entitlement crisis that is coming our way. But such legislation, alas, will have to wait for another day. Or another crisis.

Her analysis on the final bill is here, appropriately subtitled “The final stimulus package is the final insult to taxpayers.”

1 Comment Posted on Random Musings

rasmussen

67% Say They Could Do A Better Job On The Economy Than Congress, and 44% believe that “a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress”, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.   I suppose you can make polls say whatever you want them to say, but those numbers don’t look like a vote of confidence in the stimulus / porkulus bill.

Another Rasmussen poll: 62% Want Stimulus Plan to Have More Tax Cuts, Less Spending.

It’s clear to me which side the American people support in the stimulus battle.

Posted on Random Musings

good luck with that

This guy Alec Dubro (never heard of him before either) writes in The Progressive that we won’t make any significant progress toward addressing climate change until we get rid of all the cars.

He says:

Without divine intervention – which seems to be the basis for most energy reduction schemes – there is simply no way to maintain both the atmosphere and personal transportation. Even if the population were frozen at its present level, even if economic growth stopped the sheer number of people wanting – and under the present regime, need – personal transportation makes any plan to reduce car pollution by increasing efficiency is futile. The personal automobile must be abandoned, and quickly.

It would be better to do this in a measured and humane way, easing both automobile workers and users into a post-car world. It needs a societal consensus, requiring major shifts of goals and expectations, and few of us will take these steps on our own. But this change will eventually happen to us whether we like it or not, perhaps in time to stave off climactic disaster.

That’s some kind of fantasy world.  Maybe the Europeans will calmly surrender their cars and use public transportation, but Americans aren’t so easily persuaded.  Getting rid of our cars would be much more of a sacrifice than recycling or using cloth bags at the grocery store.  I seriously doubt that there will ever be a “societal consensus” to ditch our cars for government transports, but there’s something quite refreshing about a liberal who is honest about his desires / intentions for public policy.