New CBS Slogan: “Bin Laden thought we were fair”

This is so funny it shouldn’t be real.   It should be a comedy skit.  Intercepted communication to Bin Laden reveals how Al-Quaida viewed the various news networks in the USA.  Hilariously, they didn’t like Fox, but really seemed to dig all the ones we know are comically jammed up with bias for the Liberal side.  They even commented that MSNBC was unbiased, but then commented that they didn’t like that Olberman was let go!  Hahaha!!!  Funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.  Wow.  Like a comedy-Christmas.

Opposite of “Drill Baby Drill”

I’ve been reading and hearing folks cry about how the USA is not drilling and is importing too much oil. I understand the jobs aspect, certainly. But I have always had a contrarian thought about this topic and I never hear anyone bring this up: To the extent that we buy and import oil/gas/coal/fossil fuels, we are essentially “conserving” our own and burning that of other nations. By “own”, I mean, that which we can dig up inside our current political borders.

This is a complex issue and I don’t mean to simplify it to say good or bad, but think about it, if we burn every last crumb of what we have here, THEN we will have to import 100% of it and there will be no recourse. If we burn others’, we will end up relatively, with more and more. So, to me, so long as things are politically stable, AND we can economically swing it, buying and burning other countries’ oil/gas, makes our slice of the pie (that we politically control), bigger in the longrun.

Also realize that in some ways, even though we are gluttons and that is not a good thing, it is an astounding fact that 90% of ALL the oil burned on ALL SIDES in World War II, came from Texas.

The scary thing is that unless some drastically new technology (not the stupid battery cars) is developed/discovered, or some serious conservation happens, there WILL be a day of reckoning – out about 100 to 250 years, where modern society will cease to “work”, for lack of a better term, as energy becomes so expensive that things we take for granted, like food and transportation (of food) become prohibitively expensive. I would expect “resource-wars” before that, but you get the idea. I’m not taking a political position on this, either, just making the observation. It’s coming. Those reading this probably won’t have to worry about it, but our kids might; or their kids.

I giggle a little at the fracking issue. Trust me, when the price goes high enough, they’ll frack; everyone, including your auntie, will frack. They’ll frack and frack some more because of what the price will do. Thought experiment: imagine a stream in the woods and EVERYONE knows it’s full of gold nuggets but they’re told, “don’t take the gold out”. How long do you think that gold will sit there? Well, sure, it depends on the consequences, as it always does, but when the price of something goes high enough, people will risk even death, to get at it (and I am by no means equating fracking with death.  Not at all.  The same group that ignores such a basic things as the variability of the sun, is now campaigning against fracking).

And before you get upset at how we are blowing through our natural resources (we are, let’s face it), try and realize how many GOOD things have come out of that. That’s the part the “anti-” crowd never wants to imagine or talk about. All the inventions and medicines and knowledge and industry that using the energy has unleashed. Oh yes, it has. It’s real, but it’s harder to imagine, particularly for the simple folks, which is what makes it easy to demagogue. Most of one side’s positions are conveniently on the “easy” side of the ledger and the other side has the complex arguments to make–the uphill climb.

Anyway, to the extent that we burn others’, we bank our own. That was the original premise. Someday we may be glad we did. God help us then.

Video game players make worse drivers (and make you late)

I read a report on a study while waiting in a deli. I don’t have a link for it, unfortunately. The study measured whether frequent video gamers are better drivers. Findings? They are not.

They are actually more prone to accidents, tickets and road rage. This is something I didn’t need the study to just know in my bones. There are certain cars you see treating traffic on a morning commute like a video game. They take risks all out of proportion with any time saved (usually very little to none). And you can imagine that some of them are very taken with their own “skills”, to the point where they are kind of “showing off” to us lesser drivers.

To them I say, “we know you CAN do this or that, but you really SHOULDN’T”. Even if you are super skillful, there are all sorts of people on the roads and the populations’ skill level is the old bell shaped curve. I call it the rule of “mom”. You must picture every other car being driven by your mom. Would you tailgate then? Would you flash brights? Flip them off? Cut them off? If mom doesn’t work for you, then picture Jesus. Ask yourself the same questions. He died for all the dumb things you ever did: would you still cut him off?

The study posited that perhaps the video gaming removed the thought of real world consequences from these folks. Sure. I’ll buy some of that.

Add to all this, the fact that in other studies I have read, volume tie-ups are actually CAUSED by the most selfish drivers. Yup, because they go too fast and travel too close to the guy ahead of them, they have to over react to speed changes, and that slowing down propogates backwards through traffic until someone is stopped dead and traffic piles up behind them. Once that happens, the only way to undo it, is one car at a time, from the front.

So the guy flashing you the brights and passing you with inches to spare to shame you; he’s not only endangering your life (and property), he’s actually making you late on a good many days. And you thought he might be a good guy because of that big, giant, NY in the back window of his black SUV…

Misinformation on O’Reilly re price of oil

Tired of it. Bill O’Reilly gets a lot of stuff right, but he is wrong on this item and is spreading complete populist hooey on the price of oil.

He says that “Speculation drives up the price of oil”. That’s wrong. It can NOT drive up the price of oil. It both drives it up AND DOWN equally. Speculation WORKS BOTH WAYS. It can not ONLY work in one direction. For every price increase it causes, it will cause a price decrease at some point. The difference? You won’t hear folks like O’Reilly talking about the price GOING DOWN! It’s a built in bias. It’s not news.

So O’Reilly: STOP spreading this hooey! You’re completely 100% wrong. The idea that the government needs to step into the free market to somehow curtail speculation is a disaster. Keep the government away from the free market wherever possible, and you’ll have better outcomes.

He also happens to be wrong about our “exporting” oil to China. He even had Rove on who explained to him, on his own show, how he was wrong. We refine it and reship it. But we are NOT a net exporter of oil. Stop misinforming us Bill.

And no sooner do I see a commercial on O’Reilly and it’s a Volt add and it’s lying through it’s teeth about the myth of the electric car. The guy in the spot ends with the big finish line that he, “…rarely puts gas in his car”.
Is this a lie? Narrowly? No. Not necessarily. But what he doesn’t say is that he plugs his car in. That makes his electric bill go up. And it goes up about the same as if he was buying gas. And that electricity is generated overwhelmingly by burning fossil fuels. But we aren’t supposed to talk about that. It’s a big lie.

People are so misinformed about things and we end up with idiot congress and senate people trying to write bills that manage hopelessly complex things and we wonder why we are broke. Sad.

Downing: John Henry in a white suit

Robbie Fowler still has the white suit. He is blase about it saying that if they’d won, no one would care, and I think he’s right about that. So much of media stuff deliberately manufactured and manipulated. Have a look at newsbusters.org any day to read examples from bias to outright lies.

Anyway, my brother and I have a fascination with Fowler and I had not seen the white suits in years. I still recall the sting of Cantona’s goal. I was at O’Donahue’s on 1st Street in Hoboken, NJ. I recall the ball brushed Ian Rush as it went by and I always thought, “…how odd that his last touch in Red was that one.” Cruel really. Things like that made yesterday all the more sweet.

There was one alarming piece of news regarding the Downing transfer. It is theorized that Werner and Henry were duped by this video of Downing putting balls into trash cans willy-nilly, from 30 yards. If you play footy, you know instantly that this is doctored footage. Once or twice you could get lucky, but it’s clearly not real. And even if it were, the game of football has so many different skills, that even if you could do that, it wouldn’t guarantee that you’d be a top EPL player!

So the urban legend that is building is that the stupid Americans got duped by this video and overpaid for Downing. While I’d like to think there was SOME explanation for it, this is bad. This will turn the fans on the American owners and now, as soon as anything negative turns up, the ire will be directed at John Henry. The Yanks need to do some serious damage control asap! This is not a good thing longterm. They’ll never live this down. They have gone from the guys who swooped in and, with Liverpool 4 hours from bankruptcy, saved the team and righted the ship. It was a great platform from which to start, but, I’m afraid, is pretty much undone in this one story, true or not.

Being that Henry made millions in farm futures, you are pretty sure that there is no grass growing under him. I don’t believe that their due dilligence was limited to this doctored video. I don’t doubt that the video might have piqued their interest, but I would like to think they did more homework, but, with the fans we’re looking at, it won’t much matter once this becomes accepted as “the version” of what went down. They don’t need much convincing to buy the “Americans are stupid and know nothing about soccer” meme. Henry might just as well show up at Anfield in a white suit next time. Is he Fowler’s size? The suit still hangs and is a phone call away.

Tell us: What did you do with the LAST TRILLION???

Obama is going to speak tonight and probably ask for another 300 to 400 billion for a “jobs program”. Well, he’s not going to actually “ask” but rather, say that this is what should be done and then add that those mean Republicans in Congress will prevent this and thus, the rest of the recession is “on them”.

First of all, we don’t HAVE this money.

We borrow 42 cents of every dollar we spend at the Federal level.

That’s insane.

That’s unsustainable.

That will collapse the dollar eventually.

So, if he were actually telling the truth, he would say, “…I want to borrow or print, another 300 to 400 billion”, because that’s what’s really happening.

If I were a Republican running for President, I would jump up and demand, at the top of my lungs, that he stand before the nation like a man, and detail for us what he did with the last 787 Billion dollars that he spent (that we didn’t have either). Where is it? HOW did we spend it? On what kinds of things? Obama himself said that his “shovel ready” jobs weren’t so shovel ready. Oh really? Tell us where this money went! Where are the jobs? If it was a success, Obama ought to have many, many examples of them.

I would say we won’t vote a single dime of new money until he gives us a full accounting of the last one. It’s what any leader would do at the beginning of any meeting in which he was coming back and asking for more money. You want venture capital? You better have a good business plan. You want MORE venture capital? You better be prepared to show what you are doing and did with the money.

I think that’s fair. I don’t think that’s harsh or partisan. It’s OUR money, err, it’s our names he’s ringing up this insane debt on. Stand and deliver, pal. I keep reading what a great orator he is–get up and tell us? Where did the money go? Why will it be different this time?

That aside, if he wants to end the recession we’re in, he needs to do 2 things: Completely repeal the healthcare bill that is frightening business into sitting on cash. You rammed it down the American people’s throats out of a smoke-filled room. It’s 2000+ pages; you never read it. Nancy Pelosi ADMITTED she didn’t read it. It’s a budget buster. Businesses don’t know what their labor costs are going to be when this kicks in. Repeal it and businesses would breathe such a sigh of relief that it would be audible.

Cut spending. A LOT. Do it NOW.

These two things would send a signal to business that the government “gets” it. Then, they might take some risks. Until then? Nope.

Ultimately, our form of government has a major flaw in it. It will be our undoing unless it is fixed at the Constitutional level. Our system rewards politicians only for SPENDING MORE and never for spending less. Government will always grow, and that’s not a good thing. Spending will always grow and that’s about to destroy us. I think they called it “Bureaucratic Inertia” in my IR class in 1984: government always gets bigger–never smaller.

Since our currency is not backed by hard assets (and I’m not taking a position that is should or should not be), it is a “fiat” currency. It exists by government fiat ONLY. It has no other value other than “the government says so”. If politicians are allowed to deficit spend the stuff, AND to PRINT the stuff, then it will not end well. There has to be a hard limit tied to a verifiable metric like GDP, beyond which, the government can not spend. This must be an amendment to the US Constitution and it must be sacrosanct. Otherwise, sooner or later, it will not end well.

Don’t believe me? Your president will get on tv tonight and tell us we’re stupid if we don’t want to borrow and/or print another .4 TRILLION of the fiat dollars, so that he can spend them and tell everyone he’s a big hero. He’s already done this before.

Enjoy the game
–fog

How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Sawdust Samwich

I tried to take some photos of the dust that gets generated from the sculpting process. Even though I’m nearer to the end, I’m still taking out a shopping bag of dust almost every night. These aren’t real bad scenes overall. When it gets bad, you don’t tend to want to stop and get the camera and take any photos. There have been one or two times when I’ve thought that I should take a photo because no one would believe it.

My favorite die grinder died yesterday. A Milwaukee, 1/4 inch, 4.5 amp job. The first big purchase I made back in 1992 or so do these large figures. I’ve changed the brushed numerous times and even sent it back to have the bearings repacked. I won’t send it out this time even though it cost over $300.00. The reason? The die grinder to the left with the orange handle is a cheap made-in-China job that goes for $50.00 and if it ever dies, I will toss it and buy a new one. Tools that I only dreamed of in the 1990′s are now so cheap they are virtually disposable. And that’s because of all those inefficient, polluting manufacturing plants over there in China that are not going to stop belching their carbon gases no matter what silly laws Arnold passes in California to hoodwink gullible and mis-informed taxpayers about the cause and solution to the current warming trend that’s in all the papers.

The Pinetar Three (Thanks for the Shirts, McBean)

In these times of Photoshop, where a skilled operator could easily put Dr. Zaius’ head on my body and make is seamless, you never know if you are looking at a real photo or a doctored one. I assure the readers that this photo is real. We really have the Pinetar shirts, his/hers/baby. They are compliments of a very silly man down in Atlanta, Georgia who likes to go by the name McBean. I don’t know what I like better, the gags or the 2nd row, behind-the-plate seats to the Red Sox (or Dodgers this year?). He’s a true old friend. In high school, we worked many jobs together; cleaning toilets, painting etc. Scarily, he can recite the lines to “Battle of the Planet of the Apes” almost verbatim and while doing it, he’ll crack himself up at the same time, perhaps out of embarrassment? One of the last times I was down at his house in Atlanta, we made deep fried twinkies. I have proof:

And yes, that’s a Norman (Chubby) Chainey t-shirt I’m wearing. Another of his creations. If you are goint to eat like Chainey, you need to honor him. Chubby would have like the twinkies.

***

Bonds game on: Already I have heard Charles Barkley on the radio being interviewed re Bonds and already he has played the race card FOR Barry Bonds. Has anyone heard of Martha Stewart? (Would it matter if they had?).

My initial thoughts on this were that if the feds take 4 years aim at you, you have nowhere to hide (cue the Barretta theme song), but now I think that Bonds and his attorneys will remain defiant and sling mud at MLB and the US DOJ, playing the race card and any other card they can play. The facts, as I understand them are this: Bonds took roids. He admitted to taking the roids. He DIDN’T admit to KNOWING they were roids. To prove perjury, they have to get inside his head and prove that a reasonable person would have KNOWN that they were taking roids all along and that to say he didn’t know would be a lie. As we have seen in the OJ case, even facts that cry out for common sense can be obfuscated to dopey jurors with racial agendas, pretty easily by lawyers. If they got the right people on the jury, they might be able to convince them that a priest doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s consecrating the host in The Mass. In other words, it ain’t all about common sense. Put your political G-Suit on and get ready for all-Barry, all the time, particularly if it is a slow news day.

I would venture that within about 6 months, you’ll “know” more than you ever dreamed about Barry Lamar Bonds. Question is, “who will play Kato?”.

***

Babe Ruth statue goes on despite a wicked cold and sore throat I’ve picked up after having a flu shot at work. I’m never getting the flu shot again. I don’t think they do a damn thing and in this case, I think they pushed me over the edge into this thing I have now. Now I have to spend hours with my stuffy face in a mask that’s uncomfortable at best on a good day.

The statue is coming along and I’m excited about it. I just had a nice talk with the buyer and we are on track to get this thing installed when the Gaylord opens in January.

Grand Ole Babe Ruth

I’m back after a pause of several months.  As I explained in my last comment, I was curtailing the blogging activities in favor or regaining some kind of time/impulse management for my life.  A lot has gone on in the past few months and many have written emails to me ask why I’m not commenting and what do I think of this and/or that?  I’ll try and cover the basics and also try to post at least 3 things per week, so those who got out of the habit of coming here, may want to swing by now and again.

The Tommy Show: Going strong and now in its 4th sold out month.  Tommy is getting bigger and smiling and laughing and grabbing things.  He looks around.  He likes to do the “assisted sit up” and he makes faces.  We love him.  He’ll be rolling over any day now.  And, he still has the long arms.

The Babe Ruth Statue: (This is one big reason I’m no longer posting) is sold.  I have a tentative agreement at this point to complete and deliver The Babe to the Gaylord National on the Potomac, Hotel in Washington DC by Jan 1.  This is the reason that I spend every night at my “second job” and get full of sawdust until midnight or 1am, if things are going well.

The photo above is from last Feb, about the time that I had halted work on him to coach 8U baseball with my nephew (and write this blog–but since the blog is apparently how the folks at the Gaylord found me, my lack of impulse control paid off in this case).   My point is, the statue is well beyond this point and per our discussions, I have concentrated on the head so that I can get that finished and send some photos down to the buyer so they know better what they are acquiring.   To that end, the head is 80% finished and it looks like a disembodied Babe Ruth head–a ringer.  And a bit unnerving due to the realism.  Already, it has freaked out Mrs. Pinetar and grandma.  Tommy doesn’t seem to register it yet.  In a week or two, I should have some shots of it fully painted and looking like The Babe.  I should also have some better progress shots up soon.  Stay tuned.  We’re excited and the further into this I get, the more convinced I become that The Gaylord Hotel folks are going to be floored by the finished Babe.  This thing will be turning heads for a long time.

A word about the Gaylord properties.  Click here to launch their site in a new window 

I had not heard of them prior to their contacting me.  Their original property is the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, or, Opryland.  This is a major, signature property in Americana.  Now I know that most of my readers are NorthEasterners who know nothing of country music, but trust me, this is baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and American music all rolled up into one.  They also have top shelf, first cabin properties in Dallas and Kissimmee, FL.  The newest property is the DC property and the hotel has 5 or 6 restaurants, one of which, is the sports bar in which The Babe will reside.  I’m excited to see it.  I’m also excited about the Nationals opening their brand new ballpark next April.

Which brings me to the next topic.  The Mets.  Most thought I was despondent when they lost in spectacular fashion.  Truth?  I was not bothered at all.  The older I get, the more I watch baseball for individual and team stories.  I do not just root for one team.  That worked great up until 1986 and then as I got older and realized the business side of it and what was really happening, it became less and less important to me that the Mets “win”.

I’m also annoyed at how the team is run.  I don’t feel any connection to the Mets of my youth.  When I go to the game at Shea with my 8 year old nephew, I am afraid of where they are going to park me (mostly a riddle inside a puzzle), annoyed at the $14 parking charge.  Then, when I get into my seats, the PA system literally deafens me.  I can’t even speak to my nephew in the seat next to me because the jackass marketing wizards at Los Mets think that I paid $75.00 to hear 25 year old Bachman Turner Overdrive music blared at pain-threshold levels.  After that, the Mets usually put on some type of Spanish-themed dance or musical act (also ear-splittingly loud), to the point where, I feel like I might be in Puerto Rico or the Caribbean.  Now I have many Hispanic friends, and I’m not prejudiced at all, but going to Shea now makes me feel like I’m in a foreign country.

And the players now dance, seemingly after every base hit.  I don’t want my little Tommy thinking that celebrating after every play is ok: It isn’t.  It’s unprofessional and it shows up the other team.  It is insecure.  It says to the world, “I’m so insecure, that I have to try and remind you that I just succeeded”.  To me, there is nothing cooler than just doing the bit on the field and letting the crowd cheer.  To do anything else is to be an a**.  But Los Mets would rather dance, at times, it seems, than play.  And don’t think the other teams and especially the umps, see this.  Think you saw the Mets get a lot of close calls down the stretch?  Hmm?  I saw them get jobbed.  I don’t blame the umps.

And now I hear that the Mets are looking at getting  A-Rod.  Nothing more needs to be said.  I’m not surprised.  He has no class and the Mets are long devoid of class.  He’s probably taking the dancing lessons from Reyes right now.

The Mets are also spending 120 million.  That’s the most in the NL, kiddies.  I don’t want to root for dopey Fred and Jeff Wilpon’s real estate wallet.  Face it, most of what people think of as pro sports is rooting for a non-sporting, rich (nothing wrong with being rich) guy’s wallet.  Kids might-as-well be on the playground taunting each other, “…my owner’s got more assets than YOUR owner…” Because that’s what it comes down to.  That’s why I like to see new stories each year.  Stories like the Rockies and Tulo and Braun and Fausto.  Great stuff.  And Cleveland.  Haven’t won since 1948 when they had the last, good, player manager in Lou Boudreau.  That’s exciting.  That’s fun.  Not the Yankees spending 220 million every year and pummeling everyone.  That’s pro wrestling.  That’s the Harlem Globetrotters. 

I’m this close to being a Washington Nationals fan.  Long live Joel Hanrahan!

Many asked me about Torre.  He turned down a LOT of money.  I never understood why the Yankees overpay for the manager.  The job is unique in all the world.  Geez, take a micro economics course.  The people who do that job are fetted by kings and emporers.  Why would you OVER pay a guy to hang out with McCartney and Rudi and get a table at LeCirque just for walking in the door?  All the endorsements and perks?  My goodness.  Why do they pay Joe Torre 7 million when the next highest paid guy is 2.5 or 3 million?  Collossal stupidity.  Joe should pay THEM to have that job.

And get this straight.  I don’t think Joe Torre is all that.  Look kids, he wasn’t Miller Huggins with the Mets and Braves.  Repeat after me Yankee fans: He managed the largest payroll in MLB EVERY SINGLE YEAR HE WAS THERE, with the exception of 1997, when Baltimore edged the Yanks by like a million or so.  I think 72 million to 71.  He ALWAYS had the highest payroll in the industry.  Winning with the 1996 Yanks doesn’t make you Houdini.  You SHOULD win with all that talent.  His biggest skill, for my money, was having the thick skin to take all of George’s insults and degradations over the years.  But George was stupid enough to pay him f***-you money and eventually, he had enough money to be the first guy to tell Big Stein, “Shove it”.

And that’s the beauty of Joe Torre (and old New York baseball Giants fan btw).  He was the only guy to tell George, “I’m not your boy…” and for that we love him.  And now that he has taken Mattingly out of moneystripes, I mean, pinstripes, and put him in the NL, in Dodger Blue, I love him even more.  Go Joe!  Win it all!  Ethier, Kemp, Loney, Broxton, Saito, Martin, Penny…win it all and laugh all the way to the bank that George has missed the playoffs without you! hoo hooo.

Last point that has been driving me buggy.  During the world series, when I was carving the Babe Ruth head hour after hour.  I kept seeing this advertisement on TV about how people wanted their cars to be more “green”.  They said that they wanted to “plug their car in” and have the car’s fuel “grown”.

Because the media is being completely slanted politically on this, people are being misinformed.  And now the car companies and oil companies are reinforcing the myths surrounding the hybrids and “green” fuels.  And folks like Al Gore are either too stupid (I know, a guy who invented the internet?) or just too calculating to set the record straight, so people continue to be misled.

While it’s admirable to drive a smaller car and look to curtail personal fossil fuel consumption, one glaring thing is missing.  Many folks think that is something is electrical, it is somehow non-polluting.  That’s nonsense.  It doesn’t pollute locally, where the machine is being run, but somewhere, to be sure, there is a coal or oil, or gas-fired generating plant that BURNS FOSSIL FUELS and converts the chemical energy stored in the fossil fuels to mechanical energy that turns dynamos to generate electricity.  ANYtime you are using electricity that didn’t come from a solar cell or a hydro plant, you are burning fossil fuels, genius!  The actual carbon emissions might be in Oshkosh, but they are there.

And we’re not done yet.  Anytime that you convert energy from one source to another form, you LOSE in the conversion.  Add to that they electrical engines are less efficient than gas, and what you have is that the “green” person is actually burning MORE fossil fuels than if he had a traditional, gasoline engine.  Now that doesn’t figure in the disparity between the huge SUV and the little hybrid and I get that, but how many people really understand, or are being told, what lays behind the phrase, “plug my car in”?