Northbound

I gotta tell you, I like Nolan Ryan’s attitude:

“We’ll take it step-by-step,” Ryan said. “Will there be some fallout as far as injuries? Probably. Will it be drastic? I don’t know. We still have to get it done.”

Ryan makes it clear he is not interested in excuses and doesn’t believe that Rangers Ballpark in Arlington or the summer heat in Texas are two obstacles that will keep the organization from having championship pitching.

“I don’t,” Ryan said. “Will we lead the American League in pitching? Probably not. But does that mean we can’t have a competitive pitching staff and be effective? No.

“We have to have a different mind-set that the ballpark isn’t an excuse and the heat isn’t an excuse. Then we have to get it done.”

Of course, I’m going to like it a lot less if it turns out that Blake Beavan can’t lift his right arm over his head by the time he makes it to Arlington because he pitched too many innings in Frisco. But still, I can’t think of anybody in Rangers management who’s ever embodied Git-R-Done the way Nolan does. God bless him.

Not to belittle those who feel they are being insulted, but if our biggest national problem today, according to the NYT, is care workers who call elderly nursing home patients “sweetie” or “dear”, then we have truly evolved as a society.  Pat yourself on the back today.

That’s from an Associated Press opinon piece, which dissects Gov. Palin’s comments that Barack Obama goes “palling around with terrorists.”  “A deliberate attempt to smear Obama,” the AP sniffs.  Okay, well, fine.  I think reasonable people can disagree on whether Sen. Obama’s relationship with ex-Weatherman William Ayers is or is not at the palling-around level, or whether you can still call him a “terrorist” or what have you.  But - and there is no getting around this - Ayers is a white guy.  So what makes this comment “racially tinged”?

Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism.

Yes.  This could be because they’re not racist.  But the AP explains further:

But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

Well, don’t keep us waiting, Associated Press, just tell us already.  (And who says it’s “false”?  Obama worked for Ayers and socialized with his family, Ayers was a small-scale terrorist in the Sixties, what’s false about it?)

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago.

Okay.  So I hate terrorists.  I hate terrorists big-time.  I vote Republican because I hate terrorists, and Republicans want to kill terrorists, whereas Democrats seem to be a little wishy-washy on the issue.  This, according to the AP, makes me a secret closet racist.  Not to mention you.

With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

But that’s not what Palin said.  She’s not the one going out and saying that Obama is a Muslim.  (Compare to HRC, when she said Obama was a Christian as far as she knew, and how that went over.)  Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, tied McCain-Palin to overt or covert efforts to question’s Obama’s religion.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

What she said was that she didn’t think Obama saw America the way conservatives see America.  What’s wrong with that?  What’s racist about that?  And you gotta admit, when you hang out with people who admit to having bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol, I think — I could be wrong — that it’s legitimate to question your viewpoint about some things.

The fact is that when racism creeps into the discussion, it serves a purpose for McCain.

A bit of a logical fallacy here.  The fact that racism may benefit McCain does not mean that McCain is fostering racist attitudes.

As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.

The Wright thing came up, if you remember, in the primary - it was the pro-Clinton part of the MSM that gave it life.  And the idea that the “unresolved arguments about America’s promise” comes from pestering Sen. Obama over his past associations implies that the only way to resolve such arguments is not to pester Obama - or to not stand in his way of getting elected.  And, thereby, QED, it is per se racist to vote for John McCain.

You’ll get to hear a lot more about this in the next few weeks, I imagine.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m commissioning a painting about a painful experience in my life where Oprah Winfrey essentially ruined my career, I kind of think I want a little less pink in it.  I’m thinking I want a huge, big-ass picture of St. Oprah of the Afternoon Talk Show holding a big-ass rock directed towards my head.

NYT:

Madonna turned to messages: a save-the-world video that torpedoed its good intentions with overkill, juxtaposing John McCain with Hitler and Barack Obama with Gandhi.

I just like how the New York Times thinks that it’s “good intentions” to favor Obama over McCain, but just “overkill” to basically call John McCain a Nazi.  (If it had been GWB I doubt anybody would have batted an eye.)

Up two pounds this week, to 421, which was not expected, as there were multiple hamburgers involved.  We are going on vacation in the next week or so, so don’t expect any updates here for awhile.

I am, slowly, being dragged, kicking and screaming, into this huge viral timesuck called “Facebook”.  It wasn’t my idea,  But apparently you can use it for stuff that has nothing to do with the Jonas Brothers, so hey.

One of the fool things it has me do is to “confirm” my blog, so if you’re a Facebookian (Facebookster?  Facebookworm?) and if you want to do that, you can.

Rangers Must Find Pitching Help for ‘09

I mean, every single year this happens - the Rangers don’t make the playoffs because they don’t have enough pitching, go through the offseason saying they need more pitching, and then go into spring training saying they need more pitching, and they never get more pitching.  I feel like Charlie Brown lying flat on my back after Lucy’s pulled away the football for the umpteenth time.  Good grief.

The story is about T.O. complaining (nothing new here) but look at the picture.  Holy octopus.

Dowm to 419 this week, which pretty much defies common sense - I was expecting a gain of some sort.  I don’t understand it, but there you go.  The NFL is that way, too - you lose games you think you would never lose, and win games you’d think you’d never win.  I expect to exercise every day this week and then report a gain.  You never know.