Sssshhhhh . . . . . It's the Texas Rangers

Among all professional athletes, none are more superstitious than baseball players. (This is a good article on baseball superstitions.) And I think the same is true of baseball fans. It's certainly true of me. I have not mentioned my favorite baseball team yet this season in the blog--at least as far as I can remember. I definitely remember talking about them several times last year. But I'm reluctant to say anything about them this year lest I break the spell the team seems to be under. I.e., the Texas Rangers are one of the best teams in the American League this year. And the fact that the mainstream press is beginning to notice them makes me nervous. It could jinx us big time.

What's happened to this team this year? What's gotten into them? It's a different year, and not for reasons that most knowledgeable baseball fans would think, that the team is scoring gobs of runs. That would be the usual description of the Rangers, a team that has no trouble scoring runs. It's been true of them for years. But coupled with this ability to score was an equally predictable quality: terrible, awful pitching. And this was usually coupled with defense that seldom rose above the level of average and was frequently mediocre. This is not the recipe for a winning team. Indeed, the Rangers have had only one winning season in ten years. If the adage that better pitching is always preferable to better hitting is true--and of course it is--the 2009 Rangers are Exhibit A.

Unbelievably, for long-time Ranger fans, the pitching staff--all of it, starters, bullpen, and closers--is what is carrying the team. Ranger pitching is third best in the league. Texas has one starter (Kevin Millwood) in the top ten in ERA in the league. He and Doug Feldman both have ERAs under 4.00. The rotation that will take the team through the rest of the year has a couple of great young starters in the 4 and 5 slots: Tommy Hunter and Justin Nippert. Hunter has an ERA of 2.26 in 9 starts; Nippert has 3.52 in 6 starts. Wow. This is awesome. (And then there's Neftali Feliz.)

The Rangers just took two games out of three from the mighty Boston Red Sox to inch a half ahead in the wild card chase in the American League. Of course, I spurn the idea of the wild card on principle. I want the Rangers to win their division outright, a task proving extraordinarily difficult with the Los Angeles Angels playing lights out ever since the All-Star break. But this team can do it. I'm very quietly getting very excited.

Update 1: The Rangers blew a 5-run lead on Tuesday evening, August 18. The bullpen blew up.

Update 2: The Rangers blew a 4-run lead on Wednesday evening, August 19. Do you see why there are superstitions in baseball? I should have never made this original blog entry.

Harper Index Tidbits

Actually these little statements are much more like massive signposts or utterances from a prophet. These were taken from the September 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine.

• Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large U.S. health-insurance companies: +87
• Percentage Change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428
• Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 8
• Number of states that have run out of money for unemployment insurance: 16
• Date on which Illinois stopped paying to bury the corpses of the indigent: 7/1/2009
• Year by which Atlanta plans to have destroyed all its public housing: 2010
  
• Percentage of total U.S. home values that Americans currently own as equity: 41
• Percentage in 1945: 84
• Estimated value of troubled assets bought last fall by the federal government from U.S. banks, for each $1 spent: 66 cents
  
• Rank of the United States among the world's most peaceful countries, according to the 2009 Global Peace Index: 83
• Number of states in which a plurality of voters currently identify as Republican: 5
• Chances that a U.S. conservative displays an "implicit preference" for white over black people in psychological study: 4 in 5
• Chances that a liberal does: 3 in 4
• Chances that an African American does: 2 in 5

Really uplifting, no?

Hope Has Faded

Other people can say it with less passion, and therefore perhaps more convincingly than I. Something is terribly wrong with this administration those of us hoping for real change installed by our votes. You've read about my reservations on this administration before. But now I'm encountering more and more sentiments like these. These people aren't nearly as radical as I. These are the together Democrat types who placed an awful lot of faith in a guy who promised us that he was for us, not the special moneyed interests who had their hands around our government's throat. What they counted on and voted on, hope, has in the course of six-plus months of the Obama administration turned to resentment and anger. The bill of particulars is familiar to anybody who's been paying attention:

• In health care reform: a sweetheart deal sealed with Big Pharm to severely limit the government's ability to negotiate for lower drug prices.
• Appointment of dyed-in-the-wool Wall Street types to head up treasury and serve as O's chief economic advisor
• O's caving to the Republicans on tax cuts in the $800 billion stimulus package, the same kind of tax cuts that led to the massive deficit Bush left us
• Allowing the predatory credit card practices that the so-called "reform" bill of the industry stopped to continue for a 10-month grace period before the reforms took place, time the industry has used to engage in extraordinary gouging of millions of consumers. Allow me to quote: "Funny, I don't remember a similar grace period for homeowners who can't pay their mortgages. Couldn't we have had a homeowners' equivalent of the student loan program, through which the federal government would give homeowners no-interest loans for a couple of years to get them through the tough times so they don't lose their homes, particularly when the unemployment rate is near 10 percent because somebody else gambled with their incomes and assets, instead of giving banks zero-interest loans and allowing them to charge usurious rates on existing debt?"
• Refusal to prosecute the perpetrators and planners of the American torture system

The list could be extended, but this is enough to raise serious questions about this administration. As the writer of this piece points out, the White House has steadfastly refused to focus the anger of millions upon millions Americans on the places it belongs: a fat cat banking system still making profits and paying huge bonuses on the backs of the taxpayers; the drug industry which has managed to negotiate itself out of any trimming of its exorbitant prices; mortgage brokers; regulators who did not regulate; the health care insurers who profit hugely by denying coverage to those who need it. And most of all to the soulless Republican party operatives who are willing to do anything, anything, to achieve their political ends. Which are twofold: to ruin Barack Obama and to advance the agenda of huge corporations, the very entities who are squeezing the life out of the rest of us. These are last bunch of bastards it makes any sense to snuggle with and play "bipartisanship" with. But these are the very people whose asses Obama seems all too willing to cover with kisses.

Stunning

Sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its nearest point. Somebody sent this to me today in email. It's too starkly beautiful not to share. I like to think that's heaven smiling down on us.

Arianna's on Top of It

I've been catching up on all the "Colbert Report's" I've not seen because of the recent trip, and tonight I watched one from a few days ago had Arianna Huffington as a guest. Now, aside from her alluring accent and looks, I have to say I pretty much agree with her whatever she says about politics. Plus, I've seen her many times on television, and I don't think I've ever seen her lose her cool. (Of course, she doesn't sit down and chat with a-holes such as Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, or people of that ilk.) She and I almost always agree, so is it strange that I consider her a truly sensible person of the left? Take the latest piece in the HP. She takes Obama to task--complete with numerous quotes from the campaign stump and documents--for fudging away the promises he made on health care reform. I.e., cutting a deal with loathsome Big Pharm, toeing their line on the extent of price cuts they are willing to take over the next ten years--which basically means giving up the option for negotiating drug prices for Medicare; Big Pharm denies this--plus expressing willingness to scuttle the public option on the whole plan. She points out, as I have, that to do these things is to throw away the cost savings that are so essential to making reform mean something. Apparently, she's like me: afraid that the administration is going to cave to the mindless but increasingly loud and nasty opposition. I think this is a well-placed fear.

So Many Fools . . .

I've withheld comment on the ongoing health care debate deliberately. For a couple of reasons. First, this is an ongoing story, and it's changing every day. Every day I read another piece, hear something on the radio, or see something on the TV that nuances my feelings about this whole question. I'm not even sure "nuances" is the proper word, because it suggests that there are delicacies in the discussion that have to be weighed and considered carefully.

But I ask you, how much weighing and consideration must be given to what the opponents of health care reform are saying? Take, for example, what the Alaskan bimbo, the former governor of that state Sarah Palin, wrote on the subject:

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

So what are we to do with this idiocy? Take it seriously? Hardly. How can you? Palin is playing on the same theme that outraged bands of citizens have been screaming at various town hall meetings: that the health care reform will ration old people out of the system when they get near the end of their lives. Some even screech that euthanasia will be mandated under the reform. To spend much of my time refuting this would be to waste my time. As one commentator has it: "Can we really live in a country populated by so many fools, people who can so readily, proudly and belligerently be made into tools of their own destruction? Can the greatest political, economic, cultural and military power on the world's stage possibly be so incredibly backward at its core?"

Yes. I'm afraid we can. I have long argued, indeed, it's become one of my principal themes that the American people are too dumb to know how they're being screwed. They are so dumb that they readily hit the streets and do the dirty work for the people who are screwing them. I'm not at all sanguine about this health care thing. Stay tuned, brothers and sisters. The current state of things will either get worse or it will get better. Either way, I don't have much hope the American people at large will benefit.

I'm really proud of myself for not going really crazy about the magnitude of the outrageous behavior we're watching every night on the tube lately. So many fools. Way too many. Way, way too many.

Insanity Anniversary

This is the mushroom cloud from the atom bomb the United States dropped on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, 64 years ago today. Three days earlier, the US had dropped a similar bomb on the city of Hiroshima. (Wikipedia has an excellent, informative piece here.) The combined death toll for these horrific weapons was somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000, if post-war cancers and other bomb-induced maladies are figured into the picture. Nobody really knows. The estimates are all over the place. Suffice to say, the populations of these unfortunate cities were basically wiped out, for all practical purposes.

To date these are the only nuclear weapons that have ever been detonated in a war. Most Americans have conveniently forgotten or filed away in some drawer never opened the recollection that this country is the only one to have ever employed these awful, inhuman weapons. I remember how causally Air Force guys would talk about using these accursed things on the communists. It was then and there, if not before, I concluded that this country had gone mad. Things have not improved since then.

What we're looking at here is the reason the Cold War never went hot. No one in their right mind would ever want a repeat of the destruction wrought on these two cities. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate terror weapon. That a weapon so indiscriminate in its destruction and lethality would actually be employed is simply beyond the imagination of any sane person. Thankfully, the leaders of the nations who possess these weapons have until now been sane.

Tangentially Related

There was a complete mob scene today at Abbey Road in north London. It's the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road, the last album produced by what is probably the most influential, and certainly most famous, band in popular music history. I'll never forget the sinking, almost despairing feeling I had when I heard that the Beatles were breaking up as a band. This was in 1970, as I recall. It was impossible. How could this group that had brought us all through the '60s with a sense of sanity in those insane times . . . how could they be leaving us? Only six years before had they come to my attention--in 1964 when they burst into the American consciousness like an explosion in the skulls of everybody from about the age of 12 to 25. I was a junior going on senior in college in 1964, and I can remember the first Beatles album released in America, Meet the Beatles. Somebody got a copy of it, and we played the grooves off the thing in the dorm. Over and over. Everybody knew all the words. You could hear the album playing when you were walking to class or cafeteria. It was in the atmosphere, just like the band itself would be for the next several years. I loved the Beatles from that point to this point, a long, long time later. Part of the so-called British Invasion, the Beatles were better than all the rest put together. And that included some pretty good bands: The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, et al. Kids today, who swim in a sea of media, will never understand what the Beatles were back in those days. There won't ever be anything like it again. Abbey Road is my favorite Beatles album today. Ask me tomorrow and it could be any of three or four more: Rubber Soul, Help!, Sgt. Pepper, The White Album . . . Hell, they didn't make any mediocre, much less bad, albums. I think if I were in London, who knows I might have been part of the mob; I'm with them in spirit anyway.



And in keeping with one of my recurring subjects here, and not necessarily out of place at the end of a piece about the Beatles, I should note this article that points out five reasons we should be growing hemp. All of the reasons are solid and some of them pressing: better paper, fiber, fuel from hemp than what we use now, and more. The piece isn't long. Read it.

Home Sweet Home

Well, I'm home after another unpleasant encounter with the torture that is flying in the United States. I'm almost to the point where I'm not going to do any more flying. No matter how great the trip, and this was a really fun trip I'm just getting home from, you can bet the frigging airport/airline experience is going to screw it up. Said experience on my return from Utah was no exception. It began first thing in Salt Lake City airport when so-called Homeland Security confiscated an $18 bottle of Colorado Syrah because I had it in my carry-on luggage and it was more than 3.5 ounces. DAMN! I didn't want to forget the wine, and several days before I had put it in the carry-on bag. I had already forgotten another bottle of nice wine at my brother-in-law's house in Denver, and didn't want to repeat the same performance. In the meantime, my wife, on another airline (trust me, there's good explanation as to why this happened this way--wife on same trip, different airline) has an unopened bottle of chocolate-raspberry Pinot Noir syrup and a jar of honey confiscated by TSA for being over 3 oz. So keeping the country secure from wine, syrup, and honey cost me about $40 this trip. Little enough to pay knowing that I'm helping thwart terrorists armed with chocolate syrup and honey. And the thought of some knuckle-dragging TSA slug drinking my wine just really frosts me. (I was assured that they would "dispose of" the wine. Yeah. Right. Down their gullets is more like it.)

And then the raft of other delights: cattle car seating in the aircraft; ditto in the waiting area; the waiting itself; proving your identity several times; taking off your shoes, belt, hat, emptying your pockets; being scanned; in general being treated like you're a criminal because you have no other choice other than to subject yourself to this when you travel because this country in its great wisdom tore up the best railway system in the world fifty years ago. Unless you want to subject yourself to the joys of driving a long distance. But that's another post. Tell me I'm not pissed. Yet another delightful flying experience.

The airline industry is tottering on the brink of ruin, I'm reading. How much you wanna bet we bail them out too because they're too vital to the economy to have them fail?

Neither Rain, Nor Snow . . .

Just noticed that the US Postal Service has decided to close hundreds of post offices across the country. Reason: people aren't writing letters anymore, businesses aren't sending as many circulars, people aren't paying their bills by mail, and magazines have skinnied down so they are lighter and therefore cheaper to send. And of course, USPS is losing money. $7 billion projected for this year. And according to the GAO, they're not innovating nearly fast enough--despite the regular and, so it seems to me, more frequent increases in rates.

All perfectly understandable, except maybe the business flier part. Don't know about you, but you couldn't deduce this from what appears in my mail every day. I can honestly tell you that there are probably fewer than one in a hundred of the pieces of junk mail we get that gets read or even glanced at. Junk mail goes automatically into the recycle bin. This cannot be a unique procedure. Doesn't everybody do this? And one other thing: how much waste and environmentally destruction is represented by junk mail? To me, it's on a par with bottled water, 98 percent of packaging, and disposable anythings as symbols of our profligate late-capitalistic lifestyle. (FYI, you can get great instructions about how to reduce your own personal level of junk advertising right here. By the way, no, everybody doesn't dispose of junk mail without reading it. According the link just cited, only half of the junk mail goes in the trash unread. And are you ready for this? Amount of junk mail sent each year: 400 million tons!)

Of course people aren't writing letters anymore. They have email. Even people without computers have email. Have you checked the banks of publicly accessible computers in libraries lately? Always jammed. The days when people would sit down and actually handscribe a letter to family or friends are as gone as the dodo bird. But, boy, don't you love getting them? I think the future of Christmas cards, another huge category of mailed matter, is also grim. Everybody's noticed a drop in their numbers of cards, simultaneously with the paring down of their own Christmas mailing lists.

And skinny magazines? Like newspapers, magazines are struggling to stay alive. As advertising shrinks, so does the bulk of magazines. Pretty soon, not many of them are going to be around either.

Everything we're talking about here is emblematic of the post-modern world we now inhabit. Old ways go, new ways come. The intrepid mail-carrier in the snow, sleet, and rain going about his appointed rounds, even he won't be able to survive the way the winds are blowing now.