Worst. Government. Ever.

Nazis, Bolsheviks, the Khmer Rouge . . . there’s plenty of candidates. But very high on the list, and in close competition with Pol Pot’s regime, has to be the government of Francisco Solano L�pez, who ruled Paraguay from 1862 to 1870. Solano L�pez, placing undue faith in his large and powerful army and completely ignoring geographic and demographic realities, led Paraguay into the catastrophic War of the Triple Alliance against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The war, described in more detail here, left 57% of Paraguay’s population dead and the nation at the mercy of its neighbors:

The Paraguayan people had been fanatically committed to L�pez and the war effort, and as a result they fought to the point of dissolution. The war left Paraguay utterly prostrate; its prewar population of approximately 525,000 was reduced to about 221,000 in 1871, of which only about 28,000 were men. During the war the Paraguayans suffered not only from the enemy but also from malnutrition, disease, and the domination of L�pez, who tortured and killed countless numbers. Argentina and Brazil annexed about 55,000 square miles (140,000 square km) of Paraguayan territory: Argentina took much of the Misiones region and part of the Chaco between the Bermejo and Pilcomayo rivers; Brazil enlarged its Mato Grosso province from annexed territory. They both demanded a large indemnity (which was never paid) and occupied Paraguay until 1876. Meanwhile, the Colorados had gained control of Uruguay, and they retained that control until 1958.

Ty One On

Jason Mastaitis at Always Amazin’ notes that the hype over Armando Benitez closing out the Mets last night ignores the man’s history: “remember, the great Armando doesn’t blow games in June. His mental breakdown comes during the stretch run.”
He also floats a trade theory:

Ty Wigginton may be being set up as trade bait.
McEwing’s trade value is virtually nil but Wigginton has value, especially if he’s additionally shopped as a second baseman. While I love Wiggy, imagine if the Mets made this trade:
Ty Wigginton and either Heilman, Yates, or Ginter for Jason Schmidt and Edgardo Alfonzo.
The Giants are looking for someone to take Fonzie’s salary off their hands and they would need a third baseman in return. While this certainly is not a trade to make them younger, Fonzie would only be a stopgap third baseman for the next four months (who is still tremendously popular in NY) and they’d get a bona fide #1 starter to stabilize the rotation. Seems like a fit to me.


Well, as to point #1, Wigginton’s now a semi-established major league regular who is 100% certain to lose his job the minute David Wright is ready, so of course he’s trade bait. But the trade proposal doesn’t hold water. First of all, why would the Giants be looking to dump veterans? Yes, they’ve started slowly, but when there’s a guy in your lineup who is hitting .361/ .825/.613 and will be 40 in July, the future is now.
Also, even if the Giants wanted to deal Alfonzo for Wigginton – a dubious proposition, given Wiggy’s career .259/.417/.318 numbers and sometimes erratic glovework – why on earth would they deal their #1 starter, Jason Schmidt (who’s 31 and as far as I know doesn’t have any contract issues) for Yates (an unproven youngster who hasn’t shown he can throw 6 innings on a consistent basis), Heilman (who was pounded by major league pitching in his debut last season), or Ginter (a retread the Mets got for Timo Perez)?
I’ve been thinking the team that might be desperate enough to spring for Wigginton could be the Angels after the Glaus injury, but Chone Figgins has hit awfully well filling in at third. I gather Figgins’ glove work hasn’t won raves, though. But I can’t see Anaheim giving up much to “upgrade” from Figgy to Wiggy.

Faux Conservatives For Kerry

I’m calling BS on the “Conservatives for Kerry” website. I’ve looked it over, and all of the apparently “conservative” critiques of Bush are either Kinsleyesque “if he believed his rhetoric he’d do this” charges or flimsy definitions of what’s conservative. Put another way: nowhere on the site does the author actually argue for the validity of any conservative ideas as against the alternative.

You Are Getting Sleepy

One reason I’ve never liked Olympic Stadium in Montreal is the quality of baseball that seems to be played there, or at least the way it comes through on TV. It always seems like games there are quiet, sedate affairs, with the innings sliding by until the game just stops. Florida, ever since the Marlins were founded, has been even worse: with the heavy South Florida air and the Mets’ and Marlins’ historic tendency towards strong pitching and weak offenses, the games are often quite low-scoring, and add in the scores of empty seats you often see in Miami and you’ve got a recipe for some seriously sleepy baseball. Tonight was a perfect example of this, with a few runs early and nothing off Dontrelle Willis or Tom Glavine to alter the end 2-1 result.

NL FIP Leaders

This is a followup post to the one immediately below; courtesy of the Hardball Times, we have the National League “Fielding Independent Pitching” leaders, the (slightly longer) list of NL pitchers with a FIP below 4.00 in 45 or more innings through last night (the stats have now been updated):

Pitcher IP FIP
Randy Johnson 70 2.67
Roger Clemens 57.1 2.80
Ben Sheets 73 2.89
Jake Peavy 53.2 2.99
Roy Oswalt 69.2 3.02
Oliver Perez 45.2 3.03
Carlos Zambrano 61.1 3.43
Matt Clement 60.1 3.55
Joe Kennedy 59.1 3.60
Tom Glavine 67.2 3.65
Josh Beckett 66 3.65
Livan Hernandez 80 3.74
Doug Davis 61.2 3.74
Brad Penny 68 3.76
Jeff Weaver 63.2 3.80
Jon Thomson 57.1 3.80
Jason Schmidt 55 3.87
Jaret Wright 49.2 3.88
Russ Ortiz 56 3.99

Yes, that’s Johnson and Schilling atop their respective leagues, with Roger Clemens close behind; good time for the oldsters. And the youngsters too, like Jake Peavy and Oliver Perez. Yyou can see here why the Peavy injury will hurt the Padres badly, as none of their other starters are in his class (as I noted before the season) . . . Kerry Wood (3.50) missed the innings cut by a third of an inning . . . the three Braves on the list all would have missed the cut a week ago; Atlanta’s pitching is just now rounding into shape.
Caution: some guys on this list, notably Weaver and Davis, have repeatedly underachieved what their K/BB and HR numbers say they should do.
Yes, Tom Glavine (tonight included) has been far better than I had any reason to expect (sell high!).

AL FIP Leaders

The Hardball Times has some great stat reports that, among other things, absolve me from trying to calculate Defense Independent Pitching Stats in-season as I did last year. I decided to take a stroll through the American League “Fielding Independent Pitching” leaders – Hardball Times’ latest riff on a pitching metric based on HR, BB and K, yielding “an approximation of what the pitcher’s ERA would be with an “average” defense behind him.” Looking solely at guys who have thrown 40 or more innings this season (a pretty low cutoff, just below the qualifier for the ERA title, but high enough to keep the list to starting pitchers who have been in the rotation most of the year), here’s the short list of AL pitchers with a FIP below 4.00 through the end of last week (the last time they updated):

Pitcher IP FIP
Curt Schilling 63.1 2.78
Brad Radke 55 3.43
Kenny Rogers 61.1 3.52
Cliff Lee 45.2 3.67
Tim Hudson 68.1 3.70
Rich Harden 43.1 3.72
Pedro Martinez 57.2 3.77
Freddy Garcia 56 3.78
Roy Halladay 69.1 3.94
Tim Wakefield 49 3.94
Jake Westbrook 40 3.97
Mark Buehrle 63.1 3.99

Yes, that’s The Gambler in third place. The man gets no respect (albeit for good reasons). But he’s definitely been a factor in the Rangers’ resurgence. And one of the quiet stories of the season thus far has been the emergence of a competent pitching staff in Cleveland with Lee, Westbrook and CC Sabathia (4.33) all pitching OK. If you’re wondering, the Yankees’ Big Three all seem to fall off this list due to allowing too many home runs. For Mussina and Vazquez, at least, that’s a perennial problem. Meanwhile, Rich Harden looks like he’s ready to supplant Barry Zito in Oakland’s own Big Three (Mulder is just shy of the list at 4.03).

One of the Bigger Lies

NRO looked at the response to Bush’s big Iraq speech earlier in the week, and of course it was full of blather about the need to get certain unnamed countries (France and Germany) involved in the mission. Kerry released a statement saying that leadership in Iraq would “require the President to genuinely reach out to our allies so the United States doesn’t have to continue to go it alone“. It’s amazing what one-trick ponies the leading Dem spokespersonages are on punting foreign policy responsibilities to countries that don’t want them (it’s consistent with calls for drafting people who don’t want to serve into an army that doesn’t want them). But we can argue yet another day about the idea that the United States needs more help from the Coalition of the Unwilling.
What sticks in my craw is the constant abuse by Democrats and by left-leaning bloggers and commentators of the word “unilateral” and the phrase “go it alone” to describe our supposed complete lack of allies in Iraq. I’m sorry, but the word “unilaterally” does not mean “with the support of a bunch of other countries but not all of them.” Argue if you will that we need more help, but these words don’t mean what they’re being used to mean. When the British announce they are sending more troops to Iraq, as they did yesterday, doesn’t that mean that more troops are going to Iraq and that they are not Americans? When soldiers from other nations are killed in Iraq – as many have been – do they not die? Every single time a Democrat describes our Iraq policy as “unilateral” or “go it alone,” this is a knowing and flagrant falsehood. Period. Just stop it.

Continue reading One of the Bigger Lies

Kazardous

Shea Hot Corner, with links to Jason Stark and others, broaches the subject of moving Kaz Matsui to second base when/if Jose Reyes comes back, in light of Reyes’ youth and great range compared to Matsui’s thus far deeply disappointing glove work. Like the Yankees with Jeter and A-Rod, the Mets may be stuck by the difficulty of getting the inferior player to move, in this case because they promised Matsui he could play short when they signed him. Of course, a manager worth what they’re paying Art Howe could make it happen – but putting the fear of God into a veteran player is just not Howe’s style.

“We didn’t want someone to put nipples on the Batsuit.”

Newsweek on the new Harry Potter movie and the transition in directors. Some choice quotes on the new cast members, Gary Oldman (who plays Sirius Black) and David Thewlis (who plays Remus Lupin):

For his part, it didn’t even occur to Oldman that his costars might be intimidated. “I was intimidated by them,” Oldman says. “I still come from that place of insecurity. This whole world is established, and it seems to be working pretty well. I am the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s called ‘The Prisoner of Azkaban,’ so really, the only person who could f�- this up was me.” Thewlis, meanwhile, still can’t stop raving about the lad who plays Harry: “He’s fantastic, remarkably sane and quite eccentric. He’s quite the little punk, and so self- deprecating. We used to joke that he’d be in rehab by the time he was 18, and by 27 he’d be hosting a game show called ‘It’s Wizards!’ He’s very funny.”

War Links 5/27/04

*You’ve doubtless read this somewhere before – it’s been linked all over – but if you haven’t, go read this plea for a computer game that simulates the frustrations of real war, complete with weathervane politicians, hyper-negative media, fatuous celebrities, and all the other horrors of modern PR in wartime. It’s sidesplittingly funny precisely because it captures the tragic reality so well.
*Daniel Pipes reminds us that we’re still at war with Hamas and Hezbollah.
*The Wall Street Journal, LT Smash and Cori Dauber have more on the continuing stream of emerging evidence of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda before the Iraq war, including some intriguing links to the September 11th plot (a linkage I’ve always been skeptical of but that seems here to have some potential substance to it). The Saddam equivalent of the “there is no Mafia” crowd will continue to deny, deny, deny, but Saddam’s multifarious ties to terror groups were always cloaked in uncertainties, and the question was always how much of a chance we were willing to bet on his good will.
*Hitchens defends Chalabi
*Tim Noah, attacking a recent statement by Attorney General John Ashcroft, tries to argue that bin Laden wouldn’t care about influencing the election to defeat George Bush. Noah throws in a totally gratuitous comparison of Ashcroft to bin Laden (“Chatterbox thought Ashcroft would show a greater aptitude for imagining the thought processes of an insane religious fanatic.”). He also assumes, erroneously, that bin Laden would understand American politics well enough that “surely he would know�or someone would tell him�that the overwhelmingly likely political result of an attack against the United States in the months leading up to Election Day would be a landslide victory for Bush.” This seems inconsistent with bin Laden’s prior actions and statements, which suggest a guy who thinks the U.S. is weak and will fold at the first sign of trouble.
Now, I can understand why the idea that bin Laden could be rooting for Kerry – something Kerry can do little enough about, at this point – would rankle a Democrat like Noah. But get real: everyone outside the U.S. will read a Kerry victory as a defeat for an aggressive U.S. foreign policy, much as the contrary conclusion was drawn in 2002. The Islamists Bush has tangled with will declare victory. To some extent that happens whenever the incumbent loses, but it will be greatly magnified in the current circumstances. Trying to deny this makes Noah sound desperate.
*Wartime humor only from the mind of Laurence Simon: “Hey. Cool. Pandas.”
*Shades of Larry David: Time Magazine gives Don Rumsfeld crap for calling himself a “survivor,” but Tim Blair is ready with examples of Time reporters calling Bill Clinton a survivor for surviving nothing worse than oral sex and Newt Gingrich. Unmentioned here: uh, Rumsfeld also survived a terrorist attack – don’t forget that he was in the Pentagon when it was hit by American Airlines Flight 77.
A slight tangent: maybe I’ve paid too little attention or maybe it’s the media here in New York, but has the 9/11 Commission focused awfully heavily on the World Trade Center and ignored the Pentagon? Of course, the Pentagon’s victims and survivors are a lot less sympathetic to Democrats, but still . . .
*Kevin Drum links to an article making the obvious point that the World War II Memorial shouldn’t be criticized for having been built in a style that was popular during, well, World War II.
*Warblogger Dan Darling shows how blogging can be a great career move – if you’re a college student. I just loved the part where he couldn’t get recommendations from his professors because he wanted to work at the American Enterprise Institute.

Wolf At The Door

I’m not ready to write about tonight’s Mets game, which completely wasted a brilliant outing by Matt Ginter, who threw six shutout innings at the Phillies. Let’s talk about something else we’ll see with the Phillies.
There’s been a lot of attention paid to Dontrelle Willis’ batting this year (not that his pitching of late has lived up to his bat), but there’s another NL pitcher hitting the tar out of the ball: Randy Wolf, who’s batting a booming .294/.588/.333 this season, after driving in 11 runs last year in 33 starts. Then, of course, there’s Roger Clemens (4 RBI in 9 starts) and Tom Glavine (.263 and 3 RBI). (Brooks Kieschnick doesn’t count).
At the far end of the scale, I’m not sure who’s the worst hitting pitcher in the business; Al Leiter is pretty helpless looking up there, and his career line is .087/.107/.147 with 255 strikeouts in 469 at bats. But even worse is Ben Sheets. Hitless in 17 tries this season, Sheets is now batting .073 for his career, with an .078 career slugging percentage and a .118 career OBP. No wonder the Milwaukee staff ace is five games under .500 for his career.

Landslide?

Chuck Todd argues that the election won’t be close and Kerry will trounce Bush. He has to offer an exceptionally strained reading of the evidence – for example, he points to high turnout in two primaries and ignores sharply lower (by historical standards) turnout in numerous later contested Democratic primaries. Still, I have to agree that the odds are rising rapidly that this election will be a blowout one way or the other, as events in Iraq are drawing oxygen away from all other issues, and the public may well just decide either that Bush has screwed up or that Kerry can’t be trusted. The fact that both candidates have been dropping in the polls recently seems to suggest that there are a lot of voters not too happy with how things are but not rushing to Bush.
Then again . . . suppose you had an employee (let’s call him Joe), and you basically liked Joe and he did good work and you trusted him, but one morning he screwed up a big project. At lunch that day a colleague asks you, “how’s Joe? Is he doing a good job?” You’re probably not going to give Joe high marks.
But let’s say instead that at lunch you meet your boss, and he says, “it’s time for evaluations, and you have to decide which employees get bonuses and which ones get pink slips.” Suddenly, you have to choose: do you really want to fire Joe? Of course not; you trust him and like him and he does good work, notwithstanding having that screwup on his record. Everybody makes mistakes, after all, and you can’t be sure you’d get someone as good.
My point here is that when pollsters ask for job approval ratings, people are likely to vent about whatever good or bad is goinng on right this week – and they may not be thinking about the president’s (or another public official’s) overall record. And that’s particularly true right now: there’s been a lot of bad news from Iraq lately, especially the Abu Ghraib story, and it’s not unreasonable for people to be unhappy with that news and express it to pollsters. But that’s still rather a different thing than voting the president out of office.

A World of Alberta

Dean Esmay makes a point that seems obvious to most North Americans, but nonetheless seems to evade European doomsayers: we are so far from the world being overcrowded that you could put the world’s entire population as of 2010 in the Canadian province of Alberta, at a population density roughly the same as New York City, and have the whole rest of the world to play with.
(Link via Joyner).

Around The League

*An auspicious start for the Mets’ string of games against NL East contenders, as Steve Trachsel shuts down the Phillies. You really could not ever have asked more from Traschsel than what he’s given the Mets since recovering from a rocky start in the first months of 2001. Of course, I’ll believe that this is a contending team when I see it; more on that to come.
*Through April 20, Bobby Abreu, one of the Phillies’ stable of notorious slow starters, was batting .108 with just two extra base hits. His numbers over the 30 games since then, actual and projected to 162 games:

Stats G AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB SB AVG SLG OBP
Actual 29 116 41 10 1 9 32 31 23 7 .353 .690 .460
Projected 157 626 221 54 5 49 173 167 124 38 .353 .690 .460

That’s a month; in fact, that, my friends, is a ballplayer. Nobody gets less respect for being a great player than Abreu.
*Jimmy Gobble continues his experiment in not striking people out. Through last night’s matchup with K-impaired Mike Maroth, Gobble has struck out just 13 batters in 54.2 IP, 2.14 per 9 innings. Gobble has showed good control and kept the ball in the park, but it’s really, really hard to win with that strikeout rate.
*I forgot to link to this earlier, but if you have any way to help the son of the late Gonzalo Marquez find memorabilia from his father’s career or the 1972 A’s, Bruce Markusen tells you how you can help.

Life Imitates The Onion

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports:

As food companies look for ways to cash in on the nation’s obsession with healthy eating, an increasing number are copying marketing tactics that long have been used by the pharmaceuticals industry: They are pitching their products directly to doctors. The hope is that doctors will start recommending specific foods — and even brand names — to patients.


The follows on the heels of the story broken earlier in the week by The Onion:

At a press conference Monday, drug giant Pfizer formally introduced Hoagizine, a pharmaceutical-grade Turkey-Bacon-Guacamole Melt so delicious, it’s only available by prescription.


It just gets harder and harder to do satire these days . . .

A Shiite Sakharov?

The Washington Post identifies Hussain Shahristani as the likely prime minister of the new Iraqi provisional government that will rule from June 30 until elections can be held. The Post profile makes Shahristani out as a sort of Shiite Sakharov:

Shahristani, who has a doctorate in nuclear chemistry from the University of Toronto, served as chief scientific adviser to Iraq’s atomic energy commission until 1979, when Hussein became president. When he refused to shift from nuclear energy to nuclear weaponry, he was jailed. For most of a decade, he was in Abu Ghraib prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He escaped in 1991 and fled with his wife and three children to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and, eventually, Iran, where he worked with Iraqi refugees. He later moved to Britain, where he was a visiting university professor.
But unlike other exiles, Shahristani was not active in opposition parties, choosing instead to focus on humanitarian aid projects. He does, however, have a critical connection: He is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, whose support is essential for the viability of an interim government.


That would be the nuclear weapons program that didn’t exist, of course; Saddam put scientists in jail for refusing to participate in it even though it didn’t exist.
Shahristani’s ties to Sistani are a double-edged sword, although there’s really no denying Sistani’s positive influence (or, more importantly, his influence, period) thus far. You can read Shahristani’s own thoughts, in one of his Wall Street Journal op-eds urging faster elections, here:

Al-Sistani is perhaps the only person who can realize both the dreams of the majority of Iraqis, and the declared goal of the U.S.: to create a stable democracy that could potentially transform the Middle East. The U.S. should value the role the Grand Ayatollah is taking to lead the Iraqi people away from militancy and toward the international system of democracy. If Washington plays it right, this path that Al-Sistani spearheaded in Iraq could prove to be the most significant victory in a war on terrorism. Let us hope–and pray–that Washington has the wisdom to seize it.
The most practical way to help Iraq now is to allow the U.N. to work with representatives of all constituents of the Iraqi society to develop a formula for early direct elections–an achievable task. Elections will be held in Iraq, sooner or later. The sooner they are held, and a truly democratic Iraq is established, the fewer Iraqi and American lives will be lost.


Interesting side note: the WaPo article says that another one of Shahristani’s WSJ op-eds (subscription only) was what called the attention of U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to Shahristani. I’m sure the WSJ op-ed editors are smiling at the opportuinity to play kingmaker, as it were. Here’s a selection from that article:

Continue reading A Shiite Sakharov?

Clarett Runs Out Of Time

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which previously lifted the injunction ordering the NFL to permit Maurice Clarett to participate in the NFL Draft, has now rejected Clarett’s contention that the antitrust laws require the NFL to let him be eligible for the draft. The opinion is here, but it’s pretty dry reading unless you’re a labor antitrust lawyer (and believe me, that’s coming from someone who reads a lot of judicial opinions). Clarett has 90 days to file a petition with the United States Supreme Court, although unless he can convince the Court to issue an injunction providing for new emergency relief, the Court’s usual schedule won’t permit his appeal to be heard and decided until December at the earliest, and quite probably after the NFL season.

Mora The Same

Aaron Gleeman, writing at The Hardball Times, has some astonishing numbers showing Melvin Mora’s last five healthy months, amounting to a .367/.597/.466 line. He also explains why “there’s a good chance that Esteban Loaiza’s 2003 season will go down as one of the strangest, completely-out-of-nowhere seasons in baseball history.”
Also, Brian Gunn takes on Chris Kahrl’s endless negativity on the St. Louis bench. I do enjoy Karhl, but I agree with Brian that he does ride the same hobbyhorses endlessly, and he packs so many inside references into each sentence and clause that his columns can be like reading a statute.
Then again, a note to Brian and his commenters who hold out some hope for a Roger Cedeno revival: trust me, I spent the past two years watching the guy. It ain’t happening. Although it wouldn’t hurt to get in better shape and have his eyes checked.

Hearts and Minds

Matt Yglesias misunderstands the basic point about winning hearts and minds in Iraq that I make below:

One stable [sic] of “Iraq’s all good, man” commentary has been to note that Muqtada al-Sadr is very anti-American while Ayatollah Sistani is not a fan of al-Sadr. Since Sistani is a very influential figure, this could be good news indeed. Good news, that is, if the fact that Sistani is a Sadr opponent implied that he was a fan of the American occupation. But it doesn’t and, in fact, he isn’t. So we’re screwed either way. Less screwed, admittedly, under a scenario where we undercut Sadr military and Sistani undercuts him politically than we would be under the alternative, but still screwed.

The fact that Sistani’s “no fan of the occupation” means nothing. Heck, George Bush is no fan of the occupation – what sane person would be? What matters is that Sistani does not appear to be supporting attacks on coalition troops or on his fellow Iraqis, and for the moment he doesn’t appear to be pushing a jihadist theocracy.
Remember: the war for “hearts and minds” isn’t about making them love us; it’s about making the Iraqis and others in the Arab and Muslim worlds take responsibility for their own back yards, stop blaming us for everything and stop encouraging and assisting people to try to kill us . . . just because the Germans don’t much like America doesn’t mean we didn’t win the “hearts and minds” war after World War II. Iraq for the Iraqis is good news for us.

Rallying The Troops

If President Bush’s latest effort was less than inspirational, you can always count on the internet for a pep talk. Bill Whittle has a tremendously long two-part essay starting here reviewing the case for going to war in Iraq and why we must press on to victory. (Link via Instapundit) Not a lot of new information here, but uplifting nonetheless. Whittle’s analysis of Fallujah bears repeating:

We ran from Fallujah, we hear; those murdering bastards are laughing at us. We�re not tough enough to win. Uh, not quite. Hundreds of those murdering bastards are dead. They are not laughing at anything.
The Fallujah bridge pissed off a lot of Americans. It really made us see red. Would we be disgusted enough to walk away, or furious enough to go in and indiscriminately slaughter thousands? The architects of that atrocity must have thought they nailed that perfect tic-tac-toe move: we go one way, they win on the other. Quoth Den Beste: the object of Terrorism is to provoke an overwhelming response. And the response to that response is the political and strategic goal of the terrorist.
Al Sadr, you less than magnificent bastard! We read your book!
Blah, blah�war is lost�blah blah blah… disaster, wreck and ruin� Only it turns out that the United States military may have produced a few life-long professionals who actually hold victory more precious than crowing loud. Many of us value reason over emotion, and reality over wishful thinking. Well, we did not level Fallujah, and we did not do it because those bodies on that bridge were bait, pure and simple. We didn�t take the bait. Or, I should say, our military didn�t take the bait; I took it, hook line and sinker. I wanted to level the goddam city and then walk away and let them kill each other. Now, as Al Sadr�s support evaporates; as his militia thugs are being hunted and killed by shadowy Iraqi ghost armies and extremely corporeal Marines; as his fellow Mullahs condemn him; as Iraqi demonstrations against him and all that poison and ruin he represents continue to rise; as his headquarters are destroyed, his most vicious �soldiers� killed in their own backyards, playing defense in an urban environment by Marines whose skill and tactics stagger credulity for their expertise and success � now, we must ask ourselves: did you want to feel good or did you want to win?
I want to win. I was an idiot for taking that bait. And I thank God daily that America makes better, smarter people than me.

* * *

The threat of the vast Shiite uprising that loomed in early April has largely evaporated. Things are still very tense. They may again get worse; they may become horrible. But we will win this because we are not going home until we do. This is slowly beginning to dawn on some of the hardest heads in Iraq. When Iraqi leaders start saying things like we�d better help the Americans stabilize the country, because they will not go away until we do � well, that is precisely, exactly the kind of victory we need. We need that attitude. There is a shred of can-do self-reliance in those words. Al-Sadr will either end up like Uday and Qusay or Saddam. Those are his remaining choices.


Emphasis in original; read the whole thing. On the same note, NRO provides some choice words from Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis:

Continue reading Rallying The Troops

Hillary Is Right!

Yes, I’ll say it: Hillary Clinton is right to call for a larger Army, in an ironic joint statement with former House impeachment manager (now Senator) Lindsey Graham (the Senate’s too small for grudges). You don’t have to believe that we need more troops in Iraq today to conclude that, on the whole, the demands of the War on Terror require us to expand our capacity to fight wars and/or occupations/insurgencies on multiple fronts at once to preserve our credibility in dealing with multiple problems at the same time.
What will Bush do? He’s thus far resisted calls for a larger Army. But he’s reversed course before after initially resisting calls for, among other things, a Homeland Security department, and left his critics outflanked on all sides as a result. If Bush decided to veer rightward and demand a bigger Army, the Democrats – as usual – would find themselves with no room to move, since many of them have gotten to Bush’s right on this issue and couldn’t flip far enough to get back to his left. Presumably, their only response would then be to call for more taxes to pay for more soldiers, but Democrats call for more taxes in just about any situation, usually without effect.

The Fireside Chat

President Bush spoke to the nation last night to lay out the case for staying the course in Iraq. The president’s delivery sounded awfully flat on the radio, and the speech was hardly a stirring one. On the substance, though, some good points were made.
Mickey Kaus, in his crusade quest for faster elections, is of course thrilled at this line, as I knew he would be: “The fifth and most important step is free, national elections, to be held no later than next January.”
In a key passage, the President surveyed the security situation on the ground:

Continue reading The Fireside Chat

Learning To Take

I’ve lately been reading Allan Wood’s marvelous book Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox; more on that later. One point that fascinated me from Wood’s book is his portrayal of Ruth, in his first season spending significant time as a position player, as a tempermentally impatient hitter, one who loved swinging at first pitches, something his teammates usually avoided and for which he was sometimes reprimanded.
Take a look at Ruth’s batting numbers broken down in three parts: 1914-17, when he was a full-time pitcher who got extra at bats mostly by pinch hitting; 1918, when he was new to the lineup; and 1919 and 1920, his first two years as a regular; I’ll run a projection to 600 at bats so you can really see the changes:
Actual Batting Stats

Years AB BB K
1914-17 361 31 68
1918 317 58 58
1919 432 101 58
1920 458 150 80

Projected to 600 At Bats

Years AB BB K
1914-17 600 52 113
1918 600 110 110
1919 600 140 81
1920 600 197 105

When you look at these numbers in light of the portrait painted by Wood, two things emerge: (1) the rapid rise in Ruth’s walk rate is a compelling testimony to how quickly fear of the Babe’s power caused pitchers to work around him; and (2) the very quick improvement in both Ruth’s BB and K rates shows what a quick study Ruth was. This wasn’t a guy who gloried in waiting out the pitcher; Ruth learned to wait. And he learned that lesson in just a few years, while lesser players can take their whole careers to get the point.

Not The Same

I haven’t seen him enough to diagnose the problem, but there is something seriously wrong with Johan Santana (btw, didn’t his first name used to have two “n”s?) – after his shellacking yesterday, the league is hitting .301 against Santana. His K/BB ratio (48/17 in 54.2 IP) is just fine, but he’s been tagged for 10 home runs in 10 starts (1.6 per 9 IP) and averaging less than 6 innings a start.

I Want My Taxpayer Funding!

Yeah, I know, picking on Air America is beating a dead horse. But this item really captures one prominent reason why conservatives have argued all along that openly liberal radio would never fly as a for-profit business:

Die-hard liberals tuning in to Air America couldn’t believe their ears last week when they heard a commercial for the oil company Royal Dutch/Shell.
“Air America is trying to posit itself as anti-corporate, left-leaning radio, and they’re running ads where Shell says it’s a great corporate citizen?” kvetches an environmental advocate.
In the spot, about a scientist studying a coral reef, Shell comes across as environmentally concerned. Shell-bashers complain that the fossil-fuel dispenser is anything but. In a class-action lawsuit alleging complicity in human-rights abuses in Nigeria, the family of the late Nobel laureate Ken Saro-Wiwa claims that his protest against Shell’s drilling led to his execution by the state. (A Shell spokesman told us the allegations were false.)
A source tells us the station inherited the ad commitment for a limited period when it took over WLIB (1190 AM).


It’s hard enough getting sponsors without having to have them vetted by every environmental group out there to see if somebody has a beef with them.

No-Hitterless

As The Mad Hibernian notes below, yet another chance missed for a Mets no-hitter. (As you may recall, Tom Glavine also had another, more tenuous brush with a no-no for the Mets last August). It would have been ironic indeed to see the Mets’ first no-hitter thrown by Glavine, who had a great career with the Braves but never threw a no-no there. After all, recall that Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden and David Cone all had their best years at Shea but went on to throw no-hitters for other teams – Seaver and Gooden in their first years for a new team, Gooden and Cone for the Hated Yankees. Nolan Ryan, who spent four full seasons in Flushing and started 74 games for the Mets, threw four no-hitters in the four seasons after leaving the Mets. Here, as far as I can assemble it, is the full list – check here and correct me if I’ve missed someone:
Pitchers Who Threw No-Hitters After Leaving The Mets:
Nolan Ryan (seven times, including for every other franchise he pitched for)
Tom Seaver
Mike Scott
Dwight Gooden
David Cone
Hideo Nomo
*Octavio Dotel (1 inning in combined no-hitter)
Pitchers Who Threw No-Hitters Before Coming To The Mets:
Don Cardwell
Warren Spahn (twice, albeit long before he was a Met)
Dock Ellis
John Candelaria
*Alejandro Pena (1 inning in combined no-hitter)
Bret Saberhagen
Kenny Rogers
Al Leiter
Hideo Nomo (got ’em on both ends)
**Scott Erickson (not that he’s pitched for the Mets in the regular season, or is likely to)

Moore Again

Heard on the radio in the shower this morning: Michael Moore described as “humbled” by being given an award at Cannes. Followed by audio clip of him saying he intended to make sure the soldiers in Iraq had not died in vain.
Even before the audio clip – dripping with self-importance and self-satisfaction, as always, to say nothing of hypocrisy – my wife could hear me laughing at the concept of Moore being “humbled” by anything.

Quite Contreras

Jose Contreras yesterday had his second good outing in the last three: 6 IP, 3 H, 2 BB, 7 K, and 1 run on a solo homer. As bad as Contreras started the season, I wonder how many other teams would have pulled him from the rotation and sent him to the minors; the Yankees have particularly little tolerance for struggling pitchers, and always have. (Then again, the Mets have also used such early-season demotions to straighten out guys like Steve Trachsel and Bobby Jones). It’s debatable which is the better approach, but Contreras does seem to be in the process of righting the ship.

Five Songs, Vol. I

I’m kicking off a new intermittent feature here on the site (bearing in mind the unfinished nature of many of my prior serieses of posts): Five Songs, in which I’ll post about five selected songs that I’ve been listening to lately. Hope you enjoy.
1. Forgotten Years, by Midnight Oil – “Who can remember, we’ve got to remember” – a heartfelt tribute to the tribulations of generations that fought wars (written in that whole “end of history” mood of the early Nineties), with a driving beat and a moving video shot amidst rows of crosses. Of course, it’s no longer entirely true of America (though for the moment it remains true of Midnight Oil’s native Australia) that “Our shorelines were never invaded, our country was never in flames”.
2. Night Train, by Guns n’ Roses – The Gunners at their best. One funny thing: there’s a line in the song where Axl, in full “see how much of a badass I really am” mode, sings, “I got a dog eat dog sly smile.” But until I read the lyrics, I thought he said, “I got a dog he doubts my smile” (listen some time and you’ll see what I mean), which conveys a much more menacing thought – a man whose dog doesn’t even trust him. Two bonus Guns n’ Roses items. First, the band did a demo cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” that got leaked to New York’s Z100 back when I used to listen to the station (hey, I was in high school), and it went in heavy rotation for a few weeks until some sort of legal action quashed it. I hope they find a way some day to unearth this one – it was just dynamite, fast-paced full-tilt rock that made the classic original sound pokey by comparison. Second, and listen closely before you laugh at me: listen to the “sparks flying” part of the bridge in “Welcome to the Jungle” (the part leading up to where Axl screams, “you’re in the jungle baby, you’re gonna dieeeee); then listen to the sound of Satan’s fiddlers in The Charlie Daniels Band’s 1979 novelty country tune “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” Tell me they aren’t basically playing the same sound.
3. Comfortably Numb, by Van Morrison – The Pink Floyd original is definitive, of course, but Morrison’s interpretation, from the concert at the Berlin Wall, is quite different; while David Gilmour’s purposely flat vocals give expression to the singer’s drug-induced distance and emotional alienation, Morrison invests the song with a lot more emotion, singing about the pain of loss rather than portraying absence.
4. I’m the Ocean, by Neil Young with Pearl Jam – Young, famously, is a master of both heavy metal and easy listening; this is in the former vein. The “Mirror Ball” album he did backed by Pearl Jam is uneven, but has some good stuff, this song among it.
5. Human Wheels, John Mellencamp – Another song for just the right mood – melancholy, without being depressing, and with a hypnotic, cycling beat. Should rank with Mellencamp’s best.

BASEBALL/OTHER SPORTS etc.: Great Sports Moments

Michele asks for greatest sports moments. I’ll repost my thoughts here. I’ll agree with some of the moments cited by her commenters – Jose Canseco getting hit in the head with a ball and turning it into a home run is still the funniest thing that’s ever happened. Bill Mazeroski’s homer – ten years to the day before I was born – is tough to top for sheer instant drama and finality, especially when you consider the aura of invincability of those Yankees and the back-and-forth nature of that game and that series. And yes, I once had a poster on my wall of the famous Starks dunk over Jordan.
My personal favorite, of course, is still the bottom of the tenth inning of Game Six, 1986 World Series, specifically Bob Stanley’s game-tying wild pitch. Close behind are Robin Ventura’s “grand slam single” in the rain in 1999 and virtually every minute of the 1991 Super Bowl.
Probably the most electric moment from a sport I don’t follow or, ordinarily, even like that much was Sarah Hughes’ gold medal winning figure skating performance, because she single-handedly did what I thought couldn’t be done in figure skating: overcome the expectations and grab victory through the sheer brilliance of a single performance. In other words, for one night, she actually made figure skating a real sport.
The most memorable ones I’ve seen in person: (1) Game Six of the Knicks-Heat series in 1997, when half the team (including Patrick) was suspended and the MSG crowd just tried to will the skeleton roster to victory; (2) Brad Clontz’ wild pitch in the last scheduled game of the regular season in 1999 to send the Mets to a 1-game playoff with the Reds.

You’re A Loser Baby, So Why Don’t You Vote For Me?

Joshua Wolf Shenk at Mother Jones has an astute observation, albeit couched in the usual anti-Bush screediness, about the Left’s inability to weave a positive narrative, as exemplified by the Kerry campaign’s Shrumian rhetoric:

What’s the story here? It puts forth two main characters: There’s this greedy, powerful character named “Special Interest” who has been kicking ass! Special Interest runs the political and corporate worlds. Hell, Special Interest runs the world. S/he has a penthouse in Trump Tower, a chalet on Aspen Mountain and a ranch in Montana. S/he spends the morning on the phone with Wall Street, making a few billion, and the afternoon on the phone with Washington, making the money tax-free. Then, at night…
Up against “Special Interest” is a perennial loser called “Everyday American.” Loser has a nagging spouse and impeccably average kids and a long commute to and from a cubicle. At home, the toilet leaks but it’s hard to find a decent plumber. The cell phone keeps blinking out, but the new ones are so expensive. But then again, Loser thinks, “I’m worth it.” So s/he logs onto to Internet – wants to save the sales tax – and goes to bed excited, wondering whether UPS will take two or three days, and whether there will be someone at home to sign for the package, and whether s/he is as truly, deeply pathetic as it seems.
Which of these characters would you rather be? John Kerry and Bob Shrum don’t condescend to give you the choice. They tell you, “You’re Loser.” You secretly hate them for this. You may hate their opponents more, and vote for Kerry with clenched teeth. Or you may vote for Nader (at five points in the May Gallup poll). Or you may (like huge chunks of the core Democratic constituency) just not vote.
Whereas the right-wing has a good story that they believe, liberals have a lame story–and they don’t even believe it. One of the highlights from Bob Shrum’s reel is when he dressed up former Senator Bob Kerrey in a uniform of a hockey goalie and had him say that he was going to defend America from foreign imports. Kerrey went along with it, then later said that he hadn’t believed a word of what he said in the campaign.
The same must be true for John Kerry. This wealthy Washington insider may tell us–but surely he doesn’t believe–that he’s going to lead us in a fight against “Special Interest.” Anyway, even if Kerry gets elected telling this story, who will want to follow him? Americans don’t want to fight the rich and the powerful. They want to be rich and powerful.


Ouch. In some ways this is also where John McCain went off the rails, when he stopped using his campaign finance crusade and his anti-pork tirades as credibility-building examples of his fearlessness and tried to make them the centerpiece of his campaign.
Of course, Wolf Shenk’s own proposed narrative doesn’t hang together so well, either, as it basically degenerates into a litany of “BUSH LIED!!!!” and carping about budget deficits. Actually, if you buy the narrative, the one that does work for Democrats is tying the same sex marriage issue into the civil rights movement . . . except, of course, that the public isn’t buying same sex marriage at this point and the Democrats are afraid (probably justifiably) to try to lead them there. Plus, of course, the fact that weaving a civil rights narrative leaves them with nothing to say about war or the economy. But that’s still better than having nothing to say at all.

End of The Week Non-Baseball Links

An accumulation:
*Gen. Anthony Zinni has a new book out this summer, entitled “Battle Ready,” co-authored by Tom Clancy and chronicling Zinni’s career. Sure sounds like a guy auditioning for VP to me.
*Michael King has some thoughts on a recent Bill Cosby speech that didn’t go down so well with an assemblage of ‘civil rights leaders’.
*Kevin Drum gets in a huff about the Texas state controller ruling that Unitarian-Universalists aren’t a real religion. This is indeed pretty dumb, but only people on the Left could blame it on what evil cretins all Texans are. The problem here is one that’s common throughout government: idiotic decisions driven by fear of litigation, in this case fear that the absence of a clear standard will render the controller vulnerable in future litigation with genuine crackpots. Horror stories are common of government officials – especially at the public school level – overreacting to stuff, especially where religious liberties are concerned, out of misunderstanding of the applicable law coupled with fear of litigation. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the Texans but in our courts.
*Daniel Drezner comes down hard on education school programs.
*Dana at Note-It Posts has some thoughts on abortion (via NGD).
*The MinuteMan comes down real hard on Brad Pitt’s Troy.
*Pejman seeks to correct the common misperception that “being a law student is like being a Jew during the Inquisition.” He has and links to some good advice; I’d heartily second the idea that law school is still less work than having a job (personally, I found that the stress of job-hunting was actually the main anxiety-builder in law school) and that it’s just crucial to spend time with people who are not law students.
*Those swift boat vets just won’t let up on Kerry.
*Venomous Kate is a good place to start for strange theories about Nicholas Berg (link via An Unsealed Room). I just want to know if this Zelig of the Terror War was related to Moe Berg, catcher and spy.
*Speaking of Berg, Michele tears into his father’s fatuous editorial for the Guardian, the left-wing London rag. Read the whole thing. It’s the Guardian that should really be ashamed for printing this drivel. I love this line, which is one of the best things I think I’ve ever read: “let me tell you, Mr. Berg – if George Bush had looked into your son’s eyes, it wouldn’t be while he was slicing his head off.” A sample of the foolishness:

[S]tart honouring and respecting every human’s need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.


Well, we can respect other humans, or we can respect sovereign states. We can’t have both, not when other sovereign states are run with not the slightest regard for our fellow humans or for us.
Likewise, we can expect others to live up to the same rules we do – or we can accept that they don’t. Again, we’ve gotta choose between the two. It’s astounding how often the Left looks at homicidal dictatorships and assumes that this is how their subjects freely choose to live. If you start with the (rather indisputable) premise that the Saddams and the Zarqawis of the world wish to impose their will on a population that does not want to live that way, all the talk in the world about respecting how other people choose to live falls away to nonsense.
*Anything that gets William Donahue to blast the Vatican is pretty misguided. That’s like Terry McAuliffe ripping Clinton.
*The NY Daily News’ headline from Rudy Giuliani’s testimony before the increasingly farcical September 11 commission: “We did all we could” (Underlining in the print headline on the front page). But that’s not what he said; what Rudy said, which was much wiser and encompassed the failures of 9/11 and why we shouldn’t rush to place blame for them, was “we did everything we could think of … to protect the city.” Ponder that one. We, as a nation, and our governments, federal, state and city, did not do everything we could. We did do, as Rudy said, everything we could think of. The problem was a collective failure of imagination.

He Will Be Missed

Via David Pinto, some horrible news: Doug Pappas, the indefatigable business-of-baseball writer who tilted endlessly at the windmill of Major League Baseball’s opaque finances, has died suddenly:

Doug Pappas, attorney and writer, died Thursday while hiking in Big Bend National Park, apparently due to heat prostration.
Doug died while taking part in one of his passions, traveling the country and taking pictures of it for his Roadside Photos web site.


That’s scary; Pappas was only 43. Pappas did great work; I never met the man, but I enjoyed his writing, which often broke new ground. You can check out his Business of Baseball blog here (last entry was Tuesday), and his article archive at Baseball Prospectus (last article, part of a series on ticket prices, ran Monday) here.
Hopefully, someone will take up responsibility for preserving his writings on his blog; it’s the least that can be done.

Rocky Finish

Yes, I’m aware that this blog has been (a) a bit too quiet lately and (b) in particular, quite short on baseball blogging of late. What can I say? I’ve been traveling the past two weekends and busy at work.
Tonight, i got to watch some actual baseball for the first time in a bit, specifically the Mets and Rockies. A few random thoughts:
*The Rockies pitching staff . . . not good. Not at all good. The Mets looked like they were taking batting practice out there.
*Is Royce Clayton auditioning for Milli Vanilli? (Well, Rob’s dead, after all). Like the Vanillis, Clayton can’t get a hit without a lot of help . . .
*How sad is this? The Mets radio announcers were waxing nostalgic for the one week last season when Jose Reyes, Cliff Floyd and Mike Piazza were all healthy at the same time.
*Matt Ginter is not terrible. Which is about all you could ask from him, but it’s better than, oh say, giving a game ball to James Baldwin every fifth day (the Mets signed Baldwin because Scott Ruffcorn was unavailable).
*Tonight, we saw the Braden Looper we all remember from his Marlins days, wild and living on the edge. In fairness, two of the ninth inning baserunners got on on fluke bad bounce grounders that ate up Kaz Matsui and Ty Wigginton. But he did manage to get out of the jam.

BASKETBALL/ Sports Guy & Wiley

Bill Simmons faced off with Ralph Wiley on Monday, talking basketball and other stuff. As Aaron Gleeman noted, Bill “did the unthinkable” and “made Ralph Wiley seem almost likeable.” He did the even more unthinkable by playing the first race card in a chat with Wiley – that’s like winning the tipoff against Wilt Chamberlain.
There’s a mountain of interesting arguments to be had over their lists of the top basketball players of all time, but one that got me was Bill choosing Moses over Kareem. I know he hates Kareem, but c’mon here – if titles are everything, as the rest of his list seems to suggest, how can you rank Moses that high? He was basically just a rich man’s Ewing who only won the one title. He couldn’t score with Kareem, pass with Kareem, block shots with Kareem, he was at best even as a rebounder, and he didn’t have a single killer offensive move.
NOTE: SOPRANOS DISCUSSION AHEAD

Continue reading BASKETBALL/ Sports Guy & Wiley

Prediction Holding Steady

With the news that the Attorneys General of Connecticut and Rhode Island are following Elliot Spitzer in deciding that they are obligated to recognize same-sex marriages from Massachusetts, my prediction from February looks better every day:

Gay marriage will become the law of the land without any state legislature ever having voted it into law, without a majority of either house of Congress ever having voted in favor of gay marriage, without any statewide popular referendum ever having voted in favor of gay marriage, and without any state or federal constitutional provision ever having explicitly authorized it.

As I’ve noted before, the way in which this is being done is what I find most problematic. It’s one thing for democratically elected legislatures to enter into a radical social experiment like recognizing same-sex marriage; if there are unintended consequences or things just don’t seem to be working out, you can change. But by judicially imposing a no-compromises, all-or-nothing, one-size-fits-all solution and having it enforced administratively, the proponents of same-sex marriage are giving the people no room for compromise, balance, or reflection. That’s no way to run a democracy.