I finally got a shot from the game mailed to me.  This is just after full time–the kids just spontaneously ran and hoisted up Jack, the goalie, who really had a nice day making saves and he was a big factor in the win, which was a total team effort.  It was great seeing these boys get the job done and then realize what they had done.  –Fog

Click here for a must read story from Newsbusters.org that you won’t get in the MSM-it will open in a new window.

The fact that Fox news is the only major network to cover it so far, shows to me that they are the only FAIR news network out there!  That they will actually tell people what’s going on–even if it is politically damaging to the Leftist agenda!  Imagine that.  But to the Left, covering the story of the single biggest scam in the history of mankind means, well…that they’re “biased”, of course. –bah ahahaha.

Here are the MLB team salaries going back to 1993.  Figures are from USA Today.  Notice where the Yankees are each year and by how much.  It’s breathtaking:

August 2009: Just after the trade deadline passed, a caller to Mike Francesa was lamenting that the Yankees didn’t land Halladay.  To that caller, Francesa said, “…you don’t need Halladay, you want it to be somewhat competitive…”

Today was the big game for my nephew’s 10U team.  They played undefeated Bayonne and if they won, they were co-champs, as each team would have beaten the other in the away leg of a home-and-home.

Max was nervous but pumped for the game, which has been the talk for the last 2 weeks more or less.  Some scheming was done to get his cutback move into shape, as he couldn’t cut inside on the speedy Bayonne right back.

We got down there and took some warmup touches and then I had him take some PK’s, and he was awful!  It had me a bit worried.

But then the game started and don’t you know it?  On 1:55, one of our strikers rolls a harmless open footer at the goalie.  I actually turned my head away from it, because it was so slow, but I heard the sides go nuts and turned back that ball had SOMEhow gotten past the goalie.  And this is a good goalie.  He’s given up only 3 goals all season! (One to my nephew).  I felt bad for him.  He was holding his head and fighting off tears.

I never want to win that way.  But the goal set a tone so to speak and 5 minutes later, Max got the ball in the box in just a little space and he quickly took the shot one-time, as he had little margins.  Result?  Goal!  Left corner.  2-nill.  I felt so great for my little buddy.  He was jumping and skipping back to midfield with the guys.

The second half then shifted to a defensive struggle in front of our goal.  The coach shifted Max back to defensive midfield–much as Mascherano plays, and this was not lost on Max, who told me after the game in those exact words!  But the defense held and it went into halftime 2-0.

In the second half, Max was Mascherano again, and about 7 minutes in, some space opened up and he went forward past the center circle about one touch and he launched a long ball at goal.  It seemed in the air for a long time and it slashed left and rippled the net just inside the left post!  Goal!  3-nill!!!  Max had a pair now!  Amazing stuff!

But it was still a game, no question.  In the first meeting of these teams, Bayonne scored 4 in 10 minutes on us, so anything could happen.

The boys made some runs forward but mostly they played tough midfield and defense and kept Bayonne from scoring.  There were some close ones though.  One ball, lofted over the keeper and as he was backpeddling, he just got a glove-tip on it and that knocked it up, off the crossbar and it came back down into his arms with 3 badguys all around him!  Amazing save!

And he also came out and committed himself to an onrushing striker and he timed it perfectly and grabbed up the whole scene.  He was on.  All the boys were.  And the clock ticked down and we thought, “maybe…”

Then, with about 4 minutes left, they netted one and we really fell back and defended well because you know that first one always gets the underdog’s legs going again.  Think Istanbul.  But not today.

Full time.  3-1.  Co-Champs.  They went down an hour South and to a strange field on Newark Bay and took it to those boys.  And I was glad that the laugher goal didn’t decide the thing.  Of  course you never know, but even without that first one, Max’s 2 were enough!

I’m very happy for that little boy.  He’s worked hard at his game this year and done some of the drills I’ve showed him.  He’s coachable.  He listens.  He applies knowledge well.  It was a real joy to see.

Way to go, Wildcats!! –Fog

The article below appeared in the Bergen Record and I’d link it but I don’t have the link, only the column as a copy-paste job.  The boy in question is a 10 year old who plays basketball with my nephew.  His dad’s brother and my brother were best friends and I knew him growing up.

You read about these things but it’s always, “someone else”, and in this case, while it is someone else, it is close enough to you that you can get a whiff of what this must be like.  I can only imagine if it was my nephew or, now that I’m a fairly new dad, my little guys.  I’m not sure how that would go.  You put one foot in front of the other, I suppose.  Pray for the little boy.  Pray for the family and his little friends.  Pray for both healing and understanding, insofar as anyone can.

***

Sixteen boys at an Oakland elementary school shaved their heads to show solidarity for a fourth-grader who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor three months ago.

Christopher Brandle, 10, underwent surgery in August and then spent six weeks at a Massachusetts hospital undergoing a special form of radiation treatment, which caused him to lose his hair. He returned to Heights Elementary School on Monday after a prolonged absence, but wasn’t feeling up to attending the rest of the week.

To make him feel less awkward, one of his friends decided to shave his head, then began convincing others to join in. One of the youngsters who participated is in kindergarten.

“A couple of boys got onboard and then it just grew,” said Christopher’s mother, Mary Brandle.

A friend of the Brandles who is a hairdresser volunteered to shave the boys’ heads at her home on a Sunday. “Christopher was able to be there to watch,” Brandle said. “He thought it was cool.”

“I cried when I first heard they were going to do it,” his mother said.

Christopher’s father brought him to the school Friday during recess so he could gather with his shorn supporters. The boys greeted each other tentatively in the school’s gymnasium and waited quietly for their picture to be taken. They finally burst with excitement when Heights school nurse Michele Wall suggested they pretend it was the last day of school.

Arms slung around each other, Christopher was just another fourth-grader — if only for a few minutes.

The boys were expounding on a lesson from her fourth-grade health class, Wall said of the camaraderie. “We talked about friendship during an illness and what people can do to be supportive,” she said

“All of them had really long hair – that’s what’s in style now,” she said. “So it was a dramatic change for them.”

Christopher is scheduled to begin a six-month chemotherapy treatment at a New York hospital on Dec. 3.

Here are the addresses of NJ’s Senators.  Email them.  Tell them not to vote for this absolute SCAM of a healthcare bill.  The Bill is longer by 600 pages than War and Peace.  It’s over 2000 pages of federal beauracracy that you will have to pay for inperptuity.  Harry Reid only wants 8 hours of debate on a bill that would take 34 hours JUST TO READ!

They are playing games with the “cost” estimates, kicking it in 4 years in the future so that it will be less than a trillion dollars.  This is so disgraceful I can’t not even begin to tell you.  And it will surely end up costing 4 or 5 times as much as they state, it won’t work well and I’m not even counting the collarteral damage.

Once they pass this, there will never be any rolling of it back.  You’re not going to get things for free.  You’re going to pay and pay and pay by higher debt and taxes.  This HAS to be stopped!  Email Senators.  Email them in other states as well.   This is your last chance to save your freedom and your healthcare.

Senator_Menendez@menendez.senate.gov
senator@lautenberg.senate.gov

Obama shakes hands while bowing to the Japanese emporer.   Total 100% embarrassment.  Can you imagine what the media would be saying if that had been George W. Bush?  There’s your double standard right there.

Obama, with is 146 days of experience in the Senate before he decided to run for US President, doesn’t know how to do the simple protocol while travelling.  And he has access to the state department’s assets.  But he’s so worldly, we were told ad-nauseum by the fawning media, he’s so worldly that he’s going to restore America’s prestige or respect around the world.  And remember, that’s respect that the Liberal media tore down in a partisan effort while Bush was president.  Anyway, Obama apparently doesn’t think he needs the protocol office and yet he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing.

And the next day, he shook hands with the prime minister of repressive Myanmar during a group meeting.  I knew someone from Myanmar.  Someone who knew people who were shot in the 8/8/88 rally.  The bullets were real.  The handshake was real.  Thanks, Mr. Gravitas.  Thanks.

Did I see a story where the Chinese were warning Obama that he can’t afford the health care ripoff plan that he’s still pushing?  Even the communist Chinese understand he’s wrecking the economy, which is, to be fair, their investment portfolio.  Heck, we can’t even afford the trillion dollar stimulus that isn’t working and to which 300 pages of material was snuck into the bill at 3am.  This guy is shaping up to be a DISASTER.  What he told Joe the Plumber was actually pretty accurate.  But with the media on board mostly, he will do far more damage before he’s done.

***

Palin.  Hate.  The Left HATES Palin.  It’s clear.  Her treatment has been abyssmal.  Really bad.  And the takeaway is simple: They FEAR her like you can’t believe.

Remember this simple thing.  And this is true of really anything in life.  They wouldn’t waste their time and energy doing the HATE on you, if they didn’t feel very threatened by you.  Never lose sight of this.  You go to a new job and it soon emerges that someone you work with just LIVES to give you a hard time.  That person is jealous.  That person feels threatened.  Or, they wouldn’t bother.

So if someone asks you what is the single biggest fear the Left has, the answer is simple: Palin.  I hope she runs.  I hope she wins.  I hope she’s Conservative and I hope she fights back against the ridiculous media bias that so distorts politics in this country, and, probably, the world.

I was talking on the sideline of my nephew’s soccer game with a yankee fan I know quite well, and who I razz about the salaries and the “pro-wrestling” feel that they have brought to MLB.  He can give as good as he takes and he isn’t upset by any of it.

Another fellow, who was a nice guy and who had bleacher seats, was chiming in and finally, when the Yankee-party was winding down, I said I had just one comment: “when you add the Angels’ and Twins’ payroll together, you are still 22 million short of the Yankee’s payroll.

That hit the new guy hard.  My friend is used to it but it bugged him.  So he piped up the way all Yankee fans do and they go right over to the Mets.  I didn’t say anything about the Mets, but to them, if you criticize their ridiculous, sledgehammer payroll, it has to go right to the Mets.  I told him the Mets have nothing to do with the Yankees.

To that he says that teams like the Mets pay their squad a lot of money and they don’t win it.

To that I say that the trailing 5 year average is 57 percent.  The Mets pay their squad, on average, only 57% of what the Yankees do.  That’s a little over half, so no, I’m not buying.  But it always goes to the Mets.  It’s like engraved in their minds by some death-star, mother ship.

Then, when he realized the Mets tack wasn’t working and he still felt goofy, he did the next thing that they all do, he said, “well, how much of that money that Anaheim and Minnesota pay their guys is “…OUR money, from the revenue share…a LOT of it!”

ahh, yea, ok.  hahahahahaha….

Think of the arrogance and childishness that this represents!  It’s the idea that we can pay our squad more than 3x’s your squad in the case of Minn, and it’s ok, because, well, we pay you a lot of that money anyway!

I mean, isn’t baseball supposed to be entertaining because you don’t know the outcome?  Because it’s a basically fair contest between two teams?  But not to Yankee fans like this.  To them, it’s a sheer beatdown in salary that translates into a beatdown on the field and so what if there isn’t an ounce of true competitiveness to it?  And if they have to pay out what is effectively a “guilt-tax” to other teams in order to feel good about outspending them 3.2 to 1, then so be it.  They’ll pay.  And they’ll go out and pay the big bucks to watch the Yankees beat the snot out of smaller market teams and they’ll feel a little less insecure for those moments, I suppose.

Remember, you can’t gamble on baseball because it might undermine the public’s faith that the games are on the level.  THAT would be detrimental.  THAT would make them head for the exits.  But if you can read a P&L, you KNOW that the games are not on the level, and yet, the urge to root for the winer is so strong, that it’s a look-away.

And remember kiddies, the Mets spend a lot too! hahahaha….what a waste of my time.  –Fog