And not a moment too soon...
First off, I had a pretty good time on my vacation, save for a number of idiot drivers out there. For some reason, Kentuckians top the list. Love it when a guy changes his mind literally at the last second on an exit ramp and cuts in front of me. Happened twice - once in Indianapolis and once in Lexington, both Kentucky drivers.
Anyway, I did make it to 4 ballgames in 4 cities (here in Salisbury Monday night; Chillicothe, Ohio Tuesday night; St. Louis on Wednesday night; and Cincinnati on Friday night) in 5 days and got to see my aunt's branch of the family for a couple days, so it was good. Home teams even sent the fans home happy in all three of my travel games. Plus got to meet a couple nice folks from the baseball boards I partake of in Cincinnati. All in all a nice trip, just need a better car next time.
And, a short standings report: while I was gone, the Tigers helped themselves out a bit by winning 3 of 4 over Boston and Toronto, so they're going into today's game at 59-62, still 15 1/2 out in the AL Central, but sneaking back to 8 1/2 out in the wild card.
Meanwhile, Toledo has cut its magic number for the IL playoffs to 7 and the IL West division title magic number to 10. Their 78-49 record gives them a 6 game bulge in the division over Indianapolis. Should they hold on, it will give them a date for a series with Norfolk, who's already won the IL South.
Delmarva has cut its magic number to clinch the second half in the SAL North to 13 over Lexington as they lead with a SAL-best 33-19 record. Their margin over the Legends is now 5 games. If Delmarva does win it, they'll get one home game against Hagerstown (first half winner) then have to travel cross-state to face the Suns in games 2 and 3 for the North Division crown.
Now, on to more weighty stuff. While I was gone, it seems that Ohio's Governor Taft has found a lot more trouble - trouble that could lead him to resign in disgrace, or at the very least, cripple him for the remaining 16 months of his term. And it looks right now that the golden goose that has enabled the GOP to win an unprecedented 4 consecutive terms in the governor's chair has laid its last egg. That egg may end up on the face of Ken Blackwell, which is unfortunate because I think he'd be an excellent governor for Ohio (and I thought so in 1998 as well, but the GOP brass didn't want a contested primary so they convinced Blackwell to run downticket.)
Taft pled guilty to 4 counts of ethics violations stemming from unreported golf outings and gifts. I think he should plead guilty to screwing up what was once a great state with reasonable taxation and a good business climate. By playing moderate, he's combined the worst facets of the Democrats (tax and spend) with the public perception that all politicians are crooks and slapped the Ohio GOP with both monikers. While they're not blameless, the state GOP is still going to pay bigtime for all these transgressions.
In 2006, I think the next governor of Ohio will be a black man. But it won't be the right black man for the job. I don't see Michael Coleman doing anything but trying to grow the government and kowtowing further to Ohio's union thugs. The scary thing is that there's a chance at least one of Ohio's legislative bodies goes Democrat, more likely the House. It only takes a flip of 11 seats to erase the Ohio GOP's 60-39 edge in the House, with all 99 seats up for grabs and some House members term-limited out. It's a lot less likely in the Ohio Senate, where the GOP has a 22-11 edge, but 8 of the 11 Democrats have to defend seats in 2006...so the D's would have to go 13-4 in 2006 to get control (keep their 8 seats and flip 5 of 9 Republican ones.)
This leads me to a gripe I've been having for awhile. It was echoed in this commentary by Jeff Crouere. Simply put, I'm getting tired of the party that stood for less government as recently as the Contract with America now simply going along to get along.
Whatever happened to eliminating the Department of Education? Now we've federalized education with "No Child Left Behind." While federal standards may be a good thing, whatever happened to state's rights? For contributing less than 10% of the education money in America, the feds sure have a lot of say! As far as I'm concerned, the more kids that are homeschooled, the better - it's where tomorrow's leaders are going to come from. The public schools are simply becoming madrasas in manner - teaching the secular religion of politically correct left-leaning bilge that's given the government stamp of approval as long as they meet some artificial standard of rote memorization. Kids need to learn how to think for themselves, but instead they're force-fed the latest NEA/AFT propaganda (like these AFT "hot topics".)
If we had the cajones we'd started with in 1995, federal support for the arts and public broadcasting would be eliminated, helping to let the market decide what's good art and good television. If the state of Maryland wants to sponsor public TV and "art" like "Piss Christ" then that's their proper perogative (although I'd still object to state funding as well.)
Reagan was blamed for massive deficits that happened during the 1980's even though federal revenues actually came close to doubling during his tenure. But Tip O'Neill would annually declare his budget "D.O.A." and throw on as much pork as he could. Reagan would get his military spending, but the guns came with a lot of butter and a ton of deficit. The opposite happened in the 1990's when Clinton's big-spending ways were tempered by the Gingrich Republican Congress, a body that made a big deal of deficit spending and worked to slow its growth. Meanwhile, unfettered growth in certain segments of the economy managed to increase federal revenues despite all the steps the Clintonistas took to screw it up by raising taxes. Once that bubble burst at the decade's turn, the deficits came again and the economic dip enhanced by 9/11 didn't help.
But now we have GOP control of both Houses and the Oval Office. Yet we can't turn a surplus, in fact, our last four budgets have been the nation's four largest. I'll grant Homeland Security has been a budget-buster, but no one has the guts to cut spending in nonessential areas (like public broadcasting and the arts!) And, if we dropped a copy of the highway bill on a Islamic jihadist, not only would it kill him, but he wouldn't see his 72 virgins because he was unclean - all the pork in the bill would ensure that!
Sometime this war on terror will end, stupid comments like this one by Senator Hagel notwithstanding. At that point, it's my hope that we've taken care of some of these monetary issues. There is a place for federal spending, but a lot of it we have now is so unnecessary, and no one seems to take a stand and scream, "Enough!" Or if they do, they're savaged by the partisan media as a "bomb-thrower", and, "women and minorities will be hardest hit."
I know I'd never win a political office because I'd have the meat-cleaver ready to cut spending. My opponent would simply tell the people the pork would keep coming under him and they could continue to suck at the government nipple. For now, the job is just to stem the tide as best we can and try to work on the next generation. The liberals know this too, which is why they spend so much time and resources trying to brainwash the next generation through the public schools and through the mass media.
Bush needs to be a leader in this fight to cut government, but unfortunately he's not always in the right camp. While he does create somewhat of a legacy for the GOP candidate in 2008 to follow, it's sometimes surprising that he's got as high of a job rating as he does with the beating he takes from the partisan media.
Lots of work needs to be done between now and...well, perpetually. As Benjamin Franklin noted, we have a republic, if we can keep it. The trick is keeping this a republic and not a democracy, which in history has always turned to tyranny.
