A Piper Cub Lands in Philistia

A bit of background for those less in the know. Jim Thome was first baseman for the Phillies the last few years. He spent a lot of time on the injured list in 2005. Ryan Howard, who filled in for him, knocked the cover off the ball and wound up winning NL Rookie of the Year. Thome was recently traded to the White Sox, with Philly opting to go with Howard at first base.

In a story about this (and related stuff) on ESPN.com:

A refreshing change from many star athletes who bad-mouth their former franchises and cities the second they get traded.

From a Lowe’s in Texas:

Apparently, political correctness doesn’t translate out of English, because the lower part of the sign (in Spanish) reads:

Hat tip to Wizbang, where I first saw this.

In his blog, Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, wrote about some things that he was thankful for. Most were humorous, a couple serious, and the last one thought-provoking:

I am also thankful to be so blessed that I have “too much on my plate” to be thankful for. But, Lord, please give me a bigger plate.

From a recent Excite poll:

So what does it say about the effectiveness of the MSM when 2 years of incessant bad-mouthing has produced no results in nearly 90% of the public?

Many parts of the soon-to-be-leveled Busch Stadium are being auctioned off to the die-hard Cardinals fans out there. There’s flags and plaques honoring those whose numbers have been retired (including Slaughter and Musial), signs, pictures, stadium seats, and player lockers. Even some slightly eclectic items, like LaRussa’s desk, the door to the locker room, and a laundry bin.

However, this takes the cake. If the link is gone, here’s a screenshot.

I trust that any steroid stains have been bleached out.

Update: It went — no pun intended — for over $2000.

Quiz time. Who said this? A rabid UGA fan? A recruiter for another school trying to sway a player to his team and away from GT?

Bzzzz… Time’s up…

The answer is Dave Braine, Athletic Director for Georgia Tech.

He gave this statement as an excuse for why he gave Chan “six-wins-and-a-no-name-Bowl” Gailey a 5-year extension to his contract. What player in his right mind would want to play for Georgia Tech, when its own AD has no faith whatsoever in your ability to rise above mediocrity?!?!

I’m a GT alumnus, and I’m now glad that my football-playing nephew is a UGA fan. God forbid he should even consider playing under Braine when he’s older.

More recently, rumor has it that Braine is going to suspend the entire football team for making him look foolish — like he needs any help — for beating #3 Miami on Saturday.

In high school, three of us ran around together alot — Steve, Juan, and me. Depending on who you got perspective from, we were either the Three Musketeers or the Three Stooges.

One day, I went over to Juan’s house, and he introduced me to his mother. She spoke little (if any) English, so Juan spoke to her in Spanish. I crammed 3 weeks of Spanish into my sophomore year, so needless to say, I didn’t know squat. But I did catch the word “amigo”, and for some reason — that I still can’t account for today — that gave me a warm fuzzy — even moreso that if someone had introduced me (in English) as their “friend”.

I have unfortunately lost touch with Juan, but he’s still mi amigo.

It used to be that anything of a conservative ilk got labeled with the word “hate” — particularly, conservative talk radio was dubbed “hate radio”.

And, in retrospect, it’s not very surprising, as these labelers are the same people who gave us the concept of “hate crime” — as opposed to, I guess, “love crimes”, in which the assailant and victim are of the same demographic. But I digress…

More recently though, these same people have been trumpeting hate as a good thing. There are actually — quite literally named — Hate Bush Parties (where I would imagine everyone gets drunk while listening to Streisand tunes) and other similarly named events and attitudes.

I obviously missed the memo that said that hate wasn’t a bad thing anymore. Can someone please forward that to me? And if there’s a planned change back for some point in the future, I’d appreciate knowing that, too. I would hate (pun very much intended) to be hating when it was no longer en vogue.

Go watch this video. It is too cool. I’ll wait.

After Murtha’s idiotic grandstanding and call for immediate removal of troops from Iraq, Rep Jean Schmidt of Ohio passed along a couple messages from Marine Colonel Danny Bubp.

The Dems went ballistic and the House suddenly sounded like British parliament. But why? No one called Murtha a coward. (OK, he is one, but no one called him one.) Rep Schmidt didn’t even make the statement. She just passed along a message.

The only thing that Murtha can be upset about is that Schmidt is more of a man than he ever will be.

Let’s see — 2005 awards in MLB:

Voted on by players:

Voted on by managers/coaches:

Voted on by fans:

Voted on by writers:

But hey, I’m sure that the 18 writers who gave Pujols their 1st-place votes are much smarter than the players, managers, coaches and fans!!