Monthly Archives: April 2005

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

What is a Liberal?

I can across this commentary last week and it addressed a question I have been puzzling about for a while.

“What exactly is a Liberal?”

I have peripherally been following the Conservative/Liberal clash in the US and am puzzled why the term ‘Liberal’ has picked up such a bad connotation. ‘Liberal’ has been the hallmark of American politics for over 220 years.

Mahablog answers this in a perceptive way, A liberal is one who believes that ‘The People’ can govern themsleves; a conservative believes that ‘The People’ can’t govern themselves, but instead appeals to a higher or singular authority to enable governance. (This makes Scalia’s comment a lot more obvious.)

The conservative approach is to appeal to a higher authority, to deify or sanctify one individual, usually the President in US politics, and say that he is the Ruler and that what he wants is the ‘right thing’ and that all who oppose him are evil. If the President doesn’t come up to snuff, then you can point to an ayatollah or a newt for governance.

Kings, Caesars, Dictators, High Priests, Archbishops, Witch Doctors, Chiefs, Elders, Popes, Jedi Knights. These are all higher authorities that people look to for guidance. So often, it is the cultural background that demands obedience without evidence. And questioning them for the evidence is heresy and undermines the faith of others. Faith. That is the ultimate appeal of the higher authority. You don’t need evidence if you have faith.

When ‘The People’ singularly, or within groups, give up their right to determine for themselves who shall represent them, and instead follow the dictates of a demagogue who is influenced and guided by larger demagogues, then democracy is lost.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Iraq in the next few years. My impression, albeit from sketchy sources, is that the Iraqi people don’t necessarily believe that ‘The People’ should govern themselves. There are learned and wise people who have studied the arts of governance and they are the ones that need to be in charge. How they determine the top dog is their problem, not a problem for ‘The People’. I hope I am wrong. I hope that the Iraqi’s will work out the governance problems and become liberals. We shall see.

Democracy is not pretty. Democracy involves working with people you wouldn’t want within a thousand meters of you. Democracy means being a liberal.

Baseball

Week 1

I have 14 hitters on my team. After the first full week of play, 8 of them are hitting at the Mendoza line (.200) or below. Only two are hitting above .300. The team batting average is .223. On the good side, it appears that 13 of the 14 hitters are playing full time so they are getting lots of At-Bats to strike-out on.

League-wise, the Rocky Coloradans are in the lower-middle of the pack. The last place in average is countered by the first place in Stolen Bases. HR, R, RBI are all in the middle. So, if my guys get on base, they can run.

Pitchers did not have a good week, but do they ever have good weeks? Ha-Ha Rhetorical question. The surest way for a pitcher to ruin his career is to get drafted by the Rocky Coloradans.

No on the roster appears to be on DL or to be sent down to the Minors or to be traded to the National League, so I don’t have to submit any roster moves this week. Also, the guys sent down last week are still down so I don’t need to reactivate anyone.

It’s too early to start making shoring up moves. I will wait another two weeks before looking for Free Agent Moves or trades.

(looks like I need to work on my HTML C&P skills)

Baseball

The weekend in Baseball

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, my batters went 12/52, .231; 16/45, .356; and 11/45, .244. This is not good. 39/142, .272 might do later on in the season, but I need to get the team average up to about .280, or at least .275, to have a reasonable chance at the end of the season. Something is going to have to compensate for the pitching.

General

Helpful Advice

If you want to clear the non-internet junk and spam from your life…

From Mark Atwood on the Rec.arts.sf.fandom list:

  • Put all your phone numbers on the national Do Not Call list at < http://www.donotcall.gov/ >
  • Go to < http://www.optoutprescreen.com/ > to put a notation in your credit reporting file that you don’t want credit solicitation offers. This stops almost all the “you have been pre-approved for credit” junk.
  • Go to < http://www.dmaconsumers.org/offmailinglist.html> and print out and mail the forms to put your name on the “Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference Service” list. This stops most random catalogs and other assorted junk mail.
    • Baseball

    When hitters can’t hit

    Thursday’s are usually a slow day in baseball. It’s normally a travel day and a lot of teams don’t have games. I only had fours teams on my roster playing, giving five hitters a chance to bat. There were 16 At-Bats between the five of them. 1 hit. A .o625 Batting Average for the day. After 5 days of the season, my staff is hitting .163. Pathetic wimps. Now I really am in last place in the league in average.

    Of course, I know that by the time these guys have had 10,000 at-bats they will have at least 2,850 hits, but that’s way in the future. That’s the way averages work.

    I want satisfaction now!

    Let’s see how they do over the weekend. All teams should be playing Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

    General

    Sights to see

    On my way into Amarillo from Tucumcari last week I saw a couple of interesting things.

    The first looked like a short woodhenge, from a distance. But, as I came up to it, I saw that it was a very strange cattle loading pen. Normally, the loading pens are made of panel fencing; this was made out of poles driven into the ground, quite close to each other.

    The second was a Stuckey’s billboard advertising “Mandellas and Dream Catchers for sale” up ahead. I wonder if Nelson gets any royalties from this? (A dream catcher is an Indian stick and string mandala, for catching dreams)

    Baseball

    Yahoo! Sports – MLB – White Sox 4, Indians 3

    Yahoo! Sports – MLB – White Sox 4, Indians 3

    This is the sort of game that breaks your heart. My Cleveland starter pitched the first 6 innings and left with a 3-0 lead. The Cleveland closer gives up 4 runs in the top of the ninth and my starter gets nothing, except a nice ERA for the afternoon. Of course, one of my two relievers picked up the win since he finished the game after the 4 runs were scored, without allowing Cleveland to score any runs. An interesting turn of events. I bet Millwood is a bit upset with Wickman.

    Baseball

    Teams

    Something I haven’t looked at yet, what teams are my players on?

    Minnesota 2H 1P
    Toronto 1H 2P
    Baltimore 1H 0P
    Cleveland 1H 1P
    Yankees 3H 1P
    White Sox 3H 1P
    Tampa Bay 2H 0P (on purpose)
    Boston 1H 0P
    Angels 0H 1P
    Texas 0H 1P
    Seattle 0H 1P

    Seems like a fair mix, 1 TB hitter and 1 Cleveland hitter are replacements for a Toronto hitter and a Kansas City hitter. I just don’t understand why my team Batting average is below .200, even if it is only three days into the season. (At least I’m not in last place in average.) These are highly paid professionals, what, they can’t hit a ball? Later on in the season I will probably look up the salaries of my team and then start ranting about paying that much to a bunch of incompotents. But that’s later in the season.

    Baseball

    Pitching-

    One of the other issues with Fantasy pitchers is that they don’t produce stats every day. Starters usually only get stats every 4-5 days. The reliefers may get stats daily or maybe not. Yesterday looked good for my staff. I just wish we used “holds.”

    Active Pitchers
    Name Tm IP H R ER BB SO BF ERA WHIP
    Randy Johnson NYY 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
    Bartolo Colon LAA 6.7 6 1 1 4 5 28 1.34 1.49
    Kevin Millwood Cle 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
    Kenny Rogers Tex 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
    Kyle Lohse Min 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
    Gil Meche Sea 4.3 6 4 4 2 4 20 8.37 1.86
    Justin Speier Tor 0.7 1 0 0 0 0 3 0.00 1.43
    Damaso Marte CWS 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
    Gustavo Chacin Tor 5.0 3 1 1 1 3 19 1.80 0.80

    Totals 16.7 16 6 6 7 12 70 3.23 1.38

    Wins: BColon 1(1), GChacin 1(1)
    Losses:None
    Saves:None
    Blown Saves:None
    Holds: JSpeier 1(1)