I've got a lot on my mind this week, but A-Roid is up first. Some writers just say it better. Like Craig Calcaterra over at HardballTalk.
The takeaway:
"A player who tests positive for a performance-enhancing substance, or otherwise violates the Program through the possession or use of a Performance Enhancing Substance, (emphasis Calcaterra's) will be subject to the discipline set forth below. 1. First violation: 50-game suspension; 2. Second violation: 100-game suspension; 3. Third violation: Permanent suspension from Major League and Minor League Baseball."
After you read Calcaterra's whole piece, tell me how in the world Major League Baseball or the arbitrator can possibly justify a 162-game ban. I've expressed my feelings about the persecution of Rodriguez in this space before. He may be an asshole, but even assholes have rights.
When a workplace (MLB) and a union (the MLB Players Association) who agree on specific punishments for specific violations--in this case the stepping-stone 50-100-lifetime bans for PED use--an arbitrary 162 games, no matter the arbitrator's pained (il)logic in reaching that number, just does not seem fair--or even sane.
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And speaking of other writers saying it better, I cannot add much to what Fred Kaplan at Slate has to say about former Defense Secretary Robert Gates's new book.
The takeaway:
Gates also went to bat for the troops. Some readers might roll their eyes at Gates' many recitations of his love for the troops, of how teary he gets when he visits them in hospitals or how he writes condolence letters to the relatives of those killed. But these emotions are genuine. He singlehandedly shoved $16 billion in a supplemental budget so that several thousand heavily armored MRAP troop-carriers could be built and sent quickly to Iraq and Afghanistan, against the objections of all the service chiefs--and, as a result, several thousand soldiers' and Marines' lives were saved. When he read of the horrors at Walter Reed hospital, he fired the secretary of the army and cleaned up the mess at once. He also fired the Air Force chief of staff, a four-star general, for slowing down production and delivery of reconnaissance drones, which in Iraq helped the troops spot roadside bombs and track down the insurgents who planted them.
The book just arrived here yesterday. It is sitting on my desk, barely skimmed, like a slab of mutton. (As Twain once noted, "Once you put it down, you can't pick it up.") So I don't feel too comfortable commenting until I get around to reading it in depth. But I will say this--from all the media coverage of the memoir, Gates seems to take an inordinate amount of jabs at Fightin' Joe Biden, particularly for Biden's early advocacy for a counter-terrorism, or CT, approach to Afghanistan (think SEAL and Delta raids and snatches) as opposed to Gates's (and General Petraeus's) counter-insurgency, or "Coin" program (think nation building).
Gates's and Petraeus's arguments ultimately carried the day with the President. But I've been Downrange multiple times, in both OIF and OEF theaters. And in my opinion Biden had it right. And I think history will show this. Unfortunately being on the right side of history doesn't mean much to the families of the nearly 2,500 American service members who have so far paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan.On a (much) lighter note, would all of you who believe in such things please throw up some positive energy for the Niners and Broncos this weekend in the Conference finals?
This is a purely financial plea on my part. You see, since lo those years ago when I ceased dialing Rocco and "Mr. Black" nearly every football Sunday morn, I've been making little side bets with my brother each summer before the start of the NFL season. He took me for $200 in the regular season, but I can make all that back if San Francisco wins the Super Bowl. I can even cut into his winnings by $50 if Denver wins the Super Bowl. And he can add $50 to my tab if the hated Belichick and Brady win the Super Bowl.
C'mon, nobody wants to see Belichick hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in two weeks. (And I wonder how many New England readers that just cost me?) So let's will the Niners and Broncs into the Big Game. I'd even take the financial hit and settle for a Denver victory, as Peyton manning seems like a pretty cool dude.
You with me on this? Of course you are.
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And finally, a word about the George Washington Bridgegate and the "Round Mound of Wolfhound" who is the governor of my home state. But first, check this out; hilarious.
But even before the pettiness and bullying of Bridgegate--President Chris Christie? Really? Let me tell you a story.
Last winter, when the insurance adjustors descended on Jersey in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, a pleasant enough kid showed up at our door one day to take a look at the heavy, wooden French doors that were blown off our 80-year-old garage when a 100-foot oak was airlifted into the structure.
The insurance companies were so strapped for adjustors because of the overwhelming damage up and down the coast that they were flying them in from all over the country. Ours was maybe in his late 20's, and he had never been out of the Midwest.
After several pleasant conversations with both my wife and some of our neighbors, the kid gushed how he couldn't wait to tell the folks back home about the wonderful people, nothing like he expected, that he was meeting in Jersey.
When my wife asked him what in fact he had expected, he looked at her kind of sheepish and admitted that his only previous impression of the state had come from the idiots on "Jersey Shore."
You think that kid is alone west of, say, the Poconos and south of the Mason Dixon line? Throw in an older generation of voters who may not know from "Jersey Shore" but are certainly familiar with "The Sopranos," add that to Christy's pre-Bridgegate image as a made political man, and the fanciful idea of Republican voters from the South and flyover country giving this guy a primary look, much less voting him into the White House, is a fantasy.
Why not just nominate Snooki and be done with it?
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