One of those things you should get right

Rep. Deborah Price (R-OH) had her name spelled incorrectly in one of her own campaign ads. I bet somebody got in trouble for that one.

Immigration

It looks unlikely that Congress will pass any sort of immigration bill this year. On balance, I'd say that's a good thing. The Senate bill was a mess, with a barrel of bad for every drop of good. The House bill was good, but stood no chance in the Senate. The amnesty being offered was a bad idea, all it does is encourage further illegal immigration. Promises of increased enforcement seem less than reliable; we've had those promises before with little to show for it. The Senate bill was also unconstitutional, which I think I addressed in a previous post. The best approach, and the only approach with any kind of accountablity would be to increase enforcement now, and to only address the issue of illegals currently here after increased enforcement was effective. As always, I find it amusing that Mexico has tougher immigration laws than the United States does.

In which I complain about my fantasy team more

I dropped Matt Cain from my team recently, and what does he do in his next start? He no-hits the Angels for 7 2/3 innings. He ended up with one hit in eight innings (and four walks). If he had managed to finish the no-hitter, it would have been interesting because, even though the Angels were being no-hit, they were not being shut out. Chone Figgins walked in the first, stole second, and scored on a throwing error by Eliezer Alfonzo, the Giants' catcher.

Earlier in the day, Dusty Baker brought in Ryan Dempster, the Cubs' closer, with an eight-run lead. He'd pitched on Sunday, so it wasn't like he hadn't pitched in a week or anything, so it was a pretty unusual move to bring in the closer; usually you bring in some of the, er, lesser relievers from your bullpen who don't get a lot of work. Anyways, he gave up four runs on four hits and two walks. Not very helpful to my ERA (or WHIP, really). Dropped me out of the lead for ERA, but I maintained first place in WHIP.

In early May, I considered trading for Joe Mauer (who was on the trading block), but I decided the Barrett was good enough, and, at that point, their stats were very similar. Since then, however, Mauer has been one of the best hitters in baseball, and Barrett got a ten game suspension. (It would not have been a Mauer for Barret trade; it would have involved me giving up a reliever (possibly Dempster, which would have relieved me of yesterday's headache-inducing outing), and quite possibly been a multi-player trade; I'm just comparing the catchers because that would be the only significant impact on my team.)

More links and stuff

TruthOut reported several weeks ago that Karl Rove had been indicted. When no announcement appeared in the timeframe they'd given, and, in fact, the opposite occurred -- it was announced that Fitzgerald would not be seeking charges against Rove (this was after the initial timeframe offered, lest I confuse anyone) -- TruthOut was forced to say, essentially, that they'd look into why their reporting was wrong. They released a statement today saying that, in fact, they were right, and the indictment is merely being kept secret. The whole statement can be found here, and is more than a little loony. They don't address in that statement, but may have in some previous statement (I'm not a follower of their website), problems with the timeline originally outlined (i.e., people were not where truthout claimed they were when they claimed they were).

Connie Chung singing at the end of her show's run on MSNBC. No comment.

An old piece from the Onion dealing with sports loyalties. Yes, it's old, but it's still good.

A couple of links and commentary

Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson calls for the U.S. military to overthrow Iran's regime. It's apparently not the first time he's done so, but renewing his call after three years is noteworthy. Ayatollah Khomeini, for those who don't know, lead the revolution and overthrow of the Shah, along with the capturing and holding of American hostages from our embassy, in 1979. He, along with Iranian rulers since him, called the U.S. the "Great Satan," so that his grandson should support a U.S.-led invasion and overthrow of the regime is noteworthy. Not that he's a great supporter of the U.S., but, as he says, "If you were a prisoner, what would you do? I want someone to break the prison [doors open]." He further says that the regime has abused its power, and one of his first actions if he were to assume power would be to make wearing the hijab optional. It's a case of "my enemy's enemy is my friend." As for the feasibility of an invasion, the Iranians are very nationalistic/patriotic, so the thinking in many circles states that an invasion would unify them against the invaders, but, of course, the chattering classes have been wrong before ...

This story is bothersome, but the link headline from the FOX News main page, "Cops: Web Con Forced Coeds To Give Up Nudie Pics," seems a tad strongly worded. This guy got over fifty women to send him nude pics or videos, most from his fellow students at Hunter College, but many from an assortment of other colleges as well. While I do not in the least bit approve of his actions, what really gets to me is how naive these girls were. He posed as a female who needed the pictures for an art class project to avoid a failing grade, but, really, is that all it takes for these women to give up nude pictures of themselves? Whatever happened to common sense? Same deal with the girl who met a guy on MySpace and went to the Middle East in an effort to meet him. I'm not using this to knock either Facebook or MySpace, but I am shocked at the complete lack of common sense kids have these days. Although, I guess it's part of a more general dumbing down of our culture, with food companies being compelled to create warning labels saying "Caution: Item will be hot after microwaving," along with many other such examples.

UPDATE: Now there's this, a 14-year-old girl is suing MySpace for $30 million after she was dumb enough to give out her phone number to a 19-year-old who had claimed to be a senior on the football team in his profile. He then apparently sexually assaulted her, in which case fie on him. However, a little common sense could go a long way in preventing these occurances. Yes, the scumbag males (predominantly; some females) should be punished. However, crime prevention starts with common sense. Want to keep potential burglars out of your house? Close and lock your doors and windows. If you're an underage girl who wants to keep adult perverts away from her, try not giving out your contact info over the web to strangers. These aren't foolproof methods, but most criminals like an easy target.

What I'm Reading

I just finished reading The Party of Death by Ramesh Ponnuru. It deals mostly with abortion, but also euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and even infanticide (it does have its advocates, believe it or not). It is a logical defense of the pro-life position and doesn't rely on an appeal to religion to make its point (mostly so that it cannot be dismissed as a simple religious tract, although that hasn't stopped some people ...). I know some people who would dislike the lack of a religious appeal, but it's a more effective appeal to non-believers when it doesn't rely on that (at least not primarily). It also exposes some of the extreme positions of NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and others, and knocks down some of their false arguments (for instance, the prevalence and medical necessity of partial-birth abortion). For those who read past the title, the party of death is not the Democrats, although there is significant overlap between the two; he uses the term to describe advocates of a political position rather than a political affiliation. Anyway, it was a good read, and I recommend it; available from Amazon or I'm always willing to loan books locally.

Also, I've recently read the first two volumes (and am working on the third) of The Complete Peanuts, covering every Peanuts strip from 1950 through 1954. It's interesting to see how different many of the characters were (Snoopy was more dog-like, Charlie Brown pulled practical jokes, et cetera), but also how early certain traits and gags appeared. While I remembered several of the strips, some had never before appeared in book form. Interestingly, they had problems locating quality copies of some strips, as circulation of the strip was much lower in those days and many newspapers rid themselves of their hard-copy archives for microfiche, which does not quite do the art justice. One Sunday strip, they were unable to find a copy with the top line intact, and an editor had to re-create it based on what they did have. Speaking of Sunday strips, they didn't begin until 1952, something I did not know (I did know the Sunday strips ended after the daily strip, but the difference then was about a month instead of a year). The Complete Peanuts is being released at the rate of two volumes per year (each volume containing two years of strips), to be completed in 2015, so it's something I intend to be sinking money into for some time yet (though it's not really all that expensive -- Amazon has the first three two-volume box sets for $31.47 each).