Hope Springs Eternal

I am a Texas Rangers fan.

When I first began paying attention to baseball when I was 8 or 9 living in Maryland, I was not attracted to the successful Baltimore Orioles, but to the hapless, hopeless Washington Senators.  I don't know why.  Maybe I like the idea of being the perpetual underdogs, fighting against larger market teams and the bottomless pockets of some AL East teams, especially the "Damn Yankees".  I watched on TV as they lost their final game to the hated Yankees by forfeit in the 9th inning while actually winning.

I followed the team to Texas in 1972 and for the last 40 years I have loved this team.

When I was in college in the 1980's, I was a regular "bleacher bum" in the old Arlington Stadium, enduring the sweltering heat of August in those old aluminium benches, cheering on my team to repeated last place finishes.

In the late 1990's I thought we had arrived, but again, the Yankees shattered our dreams.

I watched great players, Mike Hargrove, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Sundberg, and of course, Nolan Ryan.

I saw management trade pitchers for hitters then hitters for pitchers, year after year, never finding the right balance.  The seemingly endless parade of Managers and the ridiculous A-Rod fiasco.  Still I watched, went to as many games as I could, bought the merchandise, and prayed for "next year".

The last three years have been ones of emotional highs and lows.  Thrilling victories and heartbreaking defeats.  Losing the AL West in the last game of the season was especially hard.  I am not a "boo-bird", but if anyone has a right to be disappointed, I do.

That being said, baseball is a game of hope, and each spring is a fresh start.  Only 5 months until pitchers and catchers report and Spring Training will be a time of joy again.

Here's to next year!

P.S.  I'm not sure whether I will be supporting the A's or the O's in the playoffs yet.  Both teams played with lots of heart this year and deserve to do well.

P.P.S  If Josh Hamilton wants to leave the team that gave him a chance when no other team would, then I wish him better luck than Albert Pujols has had with the Angels.

P.P.P.S.  No matter what, I still HATE THE YANKEES!!

A Plague on both their houses...

Almost every day, I read comments to this or that news story and I am struck by the number of people who seem to think that the problem with our government is not enough cooperation between the parties, or that both parties are equally corrupt and ineffective and to blame for the problems in our country today.  You know those people.  What I call the "plague on both their houses" types or to coin a moniker: plaguers.  The offer no solutions to the problem, but heap condemnation.

I have come to the conclusion that, in reality, these people are lazy citizens.  Not lazy in the way that they are not hard working, but lazy in their thought processes and political awareness.

Let us take for example our current economic "recovery".  The plaguers would have us believe that: 1. The Democrats haven't done enough to help the economy, and 2.  The Republicans have prevented solutions to the problem.

Let's see, when the Democrats poured almost 1 Trillion in borrowed money into the economy promising that unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, the Republicans had no power to stop them.  Obviously, just by basic observation, it is clear that this money did not do what the Democrats promised that it would do.  Yet, the plaguers don't seem to attribute blame for this failure to the Democrats.

When the Democratic Congress tried to come back for a "second bite" in 2010, the people rose up and gave Republicans control of the house.  It is at this point that the plaguers say the the Republicans became the party of NO!  Blocking the President's "effective" policy solutions.  You know, the ones that worked so well in 2009 and 2010.

Now really, seems to me that these people are either: 1. Stupid or uninformed, or 2. Really Democrats who like to pretend that they aren't.  While I can understand that, the are being disingenuous.

I had a conversation online last night wherein a fellow challenged me, insinuating that I had never voted for a Democrat, therefore making me some kind of a hyper-partisan biased against one party or another.

I tried to explain to him that I was a Conservative, not necessarily a Republican, and that I tried to vote for the most conservative candidate available.  I also tried to explain to him that in many cases in Texas, particularly in county or local elections in the rural area where I live, there is ONLY a Democratic candidate and that I had, as recently as this year, voted for that person.

At that point, I turned the question back on him.  He admitted quite quickly that he was a liberal Democrat and had NEVER voted for a Republican.  Yet, he could not admit the hypocrisy of his question.

When I was in boot camp many years ago, when we were marching and someone messed up, turning the wrong way or getting out of step, the Company Commander would stop us and provide some corrective "motivation".  But if EVERYONE in the company did the wrong thing, no one noticed, and even the CC was left scrambling to catch up.  Thus I learned the lesson:

If everyone is wrong, no one is wrong.

There must be responsibility.  In our two-party system, there has to be political accountability.  You cannot blame everyone for every problem.  You must discriminate the noise and attenuate the message.

There is Right and Wrong in the political spectrum.  Stop being lazy and uninformed and FIND IT!

What were they thinking?

Yesterday on the steps of our nation's capitol, a group of activists held a rally that they entitled "We are Women".  The poorly attended rally...

was billed as an opportunity to tell Congress, who by the way is currently in recess, to stand up for what the feminists claim are their "rights" to free contraception and free abortions.  Some of the more creative women, shall we say, dressed the part, literally.

Donning the costume of, well, their private bits.  They were joined by others from the group Code Pink later to reinforce their demands.

Now let me make something completely clear:  I am a man who fully supports EQUAL rights for women.  There is no reason that women shouldn't be treated, hired, fired and promoted on an equal basis with men.  The law has NO business discriminating against anyone because of their gender.

That being said, I have a question.

After years, no decades, of being told that women do not want to be treated as sexual objects, WHY are then now presenting themselves as nothing more than SEXUAL OBJECTS?