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« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »

Schilling Underperforms Again

The Red Sox squeaked out a win last night in the bottom of the ninth inning due to their heavy bats.  Offense was the name of the game.  After going down 5–0 while Shcilling pitched, the Sox found a way to win.

“We didn’t win this game because of me,” Schilling said. “We won because we scored seven runs, because our offense did a fantastic job and our bullpen did what they had to do.”

Thanks for stating the obvious, Curt.

Posted by on August 31, 2020 at 09:11 AM in Current Affairs, Games, Sports | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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Curt Schilling Hammered In Return And Doesn’t Have A Clue

Let’s see if I understand this right.  Schilling stunk it up so badly early in the season that the Red Sox decided to try him for awhile as a closer instead of putting him in the regular rotation. 

Now they decide to put Schilling back in the rotation because as a closer he, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but really he just plain sucked.

So what happens in his return to the line up?  Schilling gets hit all over the field.  Going 5 innings he allowed 6 runs on 9 hits.  What does Curt say about it?

“I didn’t feel like I had super stuff and I didn’t feel like I had bad stuff,” he said.  “I felt normal.”

Hello?  Are you kidding me Curt?

This wasn’t the Yankees you were facing — it was the freaking Kansas City Royals who are at the bottom of their division, 35 1/2 games out of first place in fact.  The Royals have the worst record in the major leagues.  And they’re cracking the bat off you like you were a little league pitcher, and not one of the pitchers that made it recently to the Little League World Series.

If you don’t think you had “bad stuff,” what exactly qualifies in your mind as “bad”?  If you felt “normal” with that pitching performance, then the Sox are in deep trouble.  With the Yankees only 2 1/2 behind now, and the team getting embarrassed by repeatedly losing to bottom dwellers,  the Sox need every win they can get.

Face it Curt, your pitching was pitiful.  With a 5–6 win/loss record and an ERA of 6.89, you’re just not getting it done this year.  Plain and simple.

This may be the year that the expected big-time pitchers falter.  Look at the Yankees.  The Unit hasn’t exactly shined, but even Johnson has a winning record (11–8) and and a better ERA (4.34) than Schilling.

Oh, and how’s that guy doing that the Sox gave up because he was too expensive, old, injured and nearly washed up?  Pedro Martinez is currently 13–5 with an ERA of 2.77.

 

Posted by on August 26, 2020 at 10:21 AM in Business, Current Affairs, Games, Sports, Television | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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Exclusive Resort Club Membership for $10 Million

The Wall Street Journal reports today on the Montana-based Yellowstone Club which will be the most exclusive resort club in the world with a one-time membership fee of between $4 and $10 million, depending on when you sign up.  Annual dues are expected to be between $60,000 and $100,000.

And you thought your golf club membership was steep ….

Posted by on August 24, 2020 at 02:23 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Travel | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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Connecticut sues the federal goverment for No Child Left Behind

Connecticut has gone to federal court to require the Education Department to give it more money to fund the terms of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program.  The suit alleges that the yearly testing and school-improvement requirements of the law far surpass the funding it receives from the federal government.

Maine is considering this type of lawsuit so I’ll be following this proceeding with interest.

What do you think?  Should the federal government require states to do certain things and then not fund the requirements and force the states to pay for them?

Posted by on August 23, 2020 at 09:22 AM in Current Affairs, Legal | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

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T.O. and the Eagles

Terrell Owens of the Philadelphia Eagles is making the news.  He wants to renegotiate his seven-year $49 million contract and is mouthing off to his quarterback, Donovan McNabb, and his coach, Andy Reid.

Some folks are upset with T.O.’s tantrums — they shouldn’t be.  The fact is that if you can put up the numbers in sports, you can get away with just about anything.  T.O. is allowed his tantrums because he’s so freaking talented.  If he couldn’t play the way he does, he’d be silenced quickly.

No one should be surprised — superstars, no matter what the profession, get treated differently.  That’s life.  If you’re the premier player in your particular world, you rule.

Who said life was supposed to be fair?

Posted by on August 23, 2020 at 08:58 AM in Current Affairs, Games, Legal, Sports | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Why The State Of Maine Is Going Nowhere Fast

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve lived in Maine all my life and love this state.  It’s wonderful oceans, clean lakes, abundant trees and fine people are very special.

But, really, it has to be one of the most backward-thinking state I know.  For example, a recent study of Maine tourism (which account for around $6 billion annually to the state) concluded that folks believe Maine is a safe, family-friendly place with excellent outdoor activities.

On the other hand, tourists apparently don’t like the lack of things to do at night, you know, just too little organized entertainment like casinos, nightclubs, and live music performances. 

So what’s the response from folks in Maine?  Jim Brunelle, a writer for the Portland Press Herald says, in essence, tough luck you lowly tourists.  Instead of trying to strengthen our ability to draw more tourists in a state that is losing manufacturing, fishing, forestry and military jobs, he writes:

We don’t need to subject Maine to an extreme makeover in order to accommodate visitors who would be happier vacationing in Las Vegas, New York City or Orlando.

Wrong!  This is the same thinking that has kept Maine from growing for as long as I can remember.  Sure, low wages and high taxes are also to blame.  But not catering to what tourists want is just plain foolhardy.

I went to a convention once in Calgary.  It was, by far, the most tourist-friendly city I’ve ever visited.  For a week, all the folks going to the convention got to use the public transportation for free.  Third graders drew pictures in school which were delivered to visitors at the local hotels.  Cab drivers and waitresses went out of their way to give directions and make recommendations of places to visit.  The list goes on and on about all the friendly ways I was treated as a guest in that fine city.

Things are just the opposite here in Maine.  The local feeling is that tourists are something to be put up with — and hopefully when Labor Day comes, they’ll all leave the state until next year. 

With the type of thinking by Jim Brunelle and many, many others in the state, is it any wonder that the population of Maine was approximately 1 million people when I was 10 years old — and 40 years later the population remains about the same number?

Maine should do everything possible to welcome tourists to this state.  The tourist industry is fast becoming the number one industry here.  To tell folks who want to have a nightlife that they should spend their holidays elsewhere is terribly short-sighted — unless of course you want the stagnant economy and mass exodus of high school and college graduates to continue for another 40 years. 

If folks in Maine want more tourism for the state, they should listen to what visitors want.

Posted by on August 22, 2020 at 01:34 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Travel | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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Gas for 5 cents a gallon

Excuse me?

Gas is around $2.50 a gallon around where I live in Maine.  But I read on-line yesterday that gas in Iraq is currently 5 cents a gallon.

Why don’t we have oil tankers lined up like 5 o’clock traffic hauling that precious cargo back here to the U.S. for us folks paying through the nose?  After all, isn’t oil what this war is all about?

What am I missing?

Posted by on August 18, 2020 at 01:36 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Legal | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

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AP reports that the GOP Is Paying Legal Bills for James Tobin In Vote-Thwart Case

On August 11, JOHN SOLOMON, an Associated Press Writer, reported that the “Republican Party says it still has a zero-tolerance policy for tampering with voters” even as it pays the legal bills for James Tobin, the president’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England.  Tobin is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with other GOP officials to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

The GOP has “already has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly.” 


Excuse me!  $722,000 and the case hasn’t even gone to trial yet!  I’d like to get a look at those legal bills to see what has been done so far to justify such a bill.


Solomon goes on to report that “Republican Party officials said they don’t ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin’s defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes.”


Oh, I see how it works.  All you need to do is say that you’re a long time supporter and the GOP will pick up $722,000 in legal fees.  Oh sure, that makes sense.


The article states that a “telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire’s newest senator.”


Sweet.  Overwhelm the phones for the other side and win a squeaker.  Nothing unethical about that — right?


It’s interesting to note that at the time, Tobin was the RNC’s New England regional director; then he moved on to President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.


Two other GOP consultants have pleaded guilty and implicated Tobin.


Charles McGee, a New Hampshire GOP official who pleaded guilty, told prosecutors “he informed Tobin of the plan and asked for Tobin’s help in finding a vendor who could make the calls that would flood the phone banks.”


Solomon reports in the article that “Allen Raymond, a former colleague of Tobin who operated a Virginia-based telephone services firm, told prosecutors Tobin called him in October 2002, explained the telephone plan and asked Raymond’s company to help McGee implement it.”


Now get this, here’s Tobin’s defense:


“Raymond’s lawyer told the court that Tobin made the request for help in his official capacity as the top RNC official for New England and his client believed the RNC had sanctioned the activity.”


Are you kidding me?  $722,000 for a defense that says: “Whoops, I did it in my official capacity and my Republican bosses said it was okay.”


Sweet way to snag outrageous legal fees if you can get it.  The clear lesson here is that President Bush takes care of his own.

Posted by on August 15, 2020 at 03:16 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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New Look For May It Please The Court

Craig Williams was kind enough to let me know that May It Please The Court has an entirely new design, animated features and sound.

Slick.

 

Posted by on August 15, 2020 at 10:04 AM in Business, Current Affairs, Legal, Weblogs | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais

The Forgotten Man

By Robert Crais

Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

$24.95 hard cover, 342 pages; ISBN 0-385-50428-4 (2005).

 

 

 

            At four in the morning, Elvis Cole receives the phone call he’s been waiting for all his life.  The LAPD has found a man that has been shot to death in an alley.  Just before dying though, the man told the officer on the scene, Kelly Diaz, that he was looking for his long-lost son: Elvis Cole. 

I put down the phone but still did not move.  I had not moved in hours.  Outside, a light rain fell as quietly as a whisper.  I must have been waiting for Diaz to call.  Why else would I have been awake that night and all the other nights except to wait like a lost child in the woods, a forgotten child waiting to be found.

 

            Having almost no knowledge about his father, Cole searches for the dead man’s killer in the hope that he’ll find answers to questions surrounding the blank spaces in his past.  Is this his real father?  If so, why did he wait so long to try to contact him?  Why did he carry around clippings from the Times about Cole?  Why was he murdered?

Cole enlists the assistance of his longtime partner and trusted friend Joe Pike to help him solve this crime.  In addition, he gets plenty of help from LAPD detective Carol Starkey (a character from Craig’s earlier book Demolition Angel) – who secretly holds a crush on Cole and struggles with her desire to let him know about it.   Robert Craig does an excellent job of ratcheting up the suspense as Cole wavers between doubting and believing the dead man is his father.  Each clue into the search for the man’s killer brings Cole closer to the truth.

The dead man is hiding many secrets.  Cole must uncover them quickly because each step he takes brings him closer to revealing the man’s identity, and it also brings him closer to a madman who will do anything to protect the dead man’s past.  Cole is so emotionally wrapped up in his investigation that he doesn’t realize a psychopath who has murdered in the past is stalking him – and is intent on making Cole his next victim.

This case is especially difficult for Cole because he’s psychologically a mess.  The clippings that the dead man was carrying were newspapers stories about how three men had stole his girlfriend’s son, Ben Chenier.  Pike and Cole managed to rescue the boy, but not before the three kidnappers were killed.  Lucy Chenier, his girlfriend, decided that life with Cole was just too dangerous.  She took her son and moved back to Louisiana, leaving Cole alone and adrift.

Craig captures the anguish Cole feels when his former girlfriend Lucy briefly visits him during his investigation into the dead man.

“Hey, would you like a drink?  You want something to eat?”

“Yes to both, but let me see your hand.  How is it healing?”

She turned my hand palm up to inspect the puckered scar that sliced across three fingers and part of the palm.  I had been cut when it went down with Ben. Forty-two stitches and two surgeries, but they said I would be ninety-five percent, no problem.  So long as I didn’t mind chronic pain.

“It’s fine.  They put in bionic motors and steel cables – I’m like the Terminator now, me and the governor.”

She studied the scar, then folded my fingers, and gave back my hand.  She pushed out a smile we both knew was fake.

 

Robert Craig’s previous novel The Last Detective was delightfully suspenseful and brimming with action.  I assumed that his next book would be somewhat of a letdown.  I’m delighted that I was wrong.  The Forgotten Man is every bit as entertaining and intriguing as his last book.  If you haven’t discovered Robert Craig’s novels yet, pick up any of his previous eleven books.  They’re page-turners that will have you reading long into the night.

Posted by on August 09, 2020 at 07:45 PM in Book Reviews, Books, Current Affairs | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

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