Easy There Icarus

I think all of Boston needs to cool down a tad in the aftermath of the big Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford signings. Are they really that impressive?

Gonzalez could be but he's been playing in a zero pressure environment in what is essentially a quadruple A baseball. It vaguely reminds me of the Giambi signing by the Yankees. He may hit a lot of homers but I seriously doubt he goes into the pantheon of hitters. They didn't sign Pujols.

Crawford is also an above average player but should the Yankees care much that he plays for Boston? They've had to deal with him for years in TB, when he was in a better lineup. His biggest attribute is wrecking the base paths but Posada can't throw anybody out, fast or slow.

Let's break down the team and see if we can pencil in a 100 wins a World Series trip:

OF- Ellsbury, Crawford and Drew. Good defensively, fast, not tons of power, nobody that scares you at the plate. I'm still not sure Ellsbury doesn't suck out loud.

IF-Gonzalez, Youk, Scutaro and Pedroia. pretty good, not great. Scutaro sucks, Pedroia is ok but injury prone and ripe for flash in the pan status. Gonzo should love the short porch in right and Youk has seen better days. Put it this way, would you rather have these four or A-Rod, Jeter, Cano and Tex?

C-Holy god, Saltalamacchia and Varitek. Neither one should be starting in the AL.

SP-Lester and Buchholz are solid but Beckett, Dice-K and Lackey are serious question marks. lackey would love to be a question mark instead of washed up.

RP-Thank god they didn't trade Papelbon! Otherwise the far superior Bard would have been closing games and been unhittable. Paps gives everyone a chance.

DH-Did Ortiz get those "Dominican Vitamins" in the mail yet? Seriously.

Overall, the Red Sox should be really good but you'd think Dunkin Donuts was having a 2 for 1 sale with how excited Bostonians are. Lets not forget that it's the same team that finished third in the AL East with a faster outfielder and more power at first. That's an upgrade but that O is still weak and one injury puts them right back into the pathetic mode they were in last year.

Meh & Double Meh

I'm actually kind of glad that the Yankees didn't sign Cliff Lee.

Signing a 33 yr. old pitcher for seven years is an iffy proposition. After all, lee has only had 3 real good years and a couple horrific ones. Last year, he lost 2 games in the World Series and was generally hittable by everyone except the Yankees. Why pay 138 million for a guy who's 2 years away from being Andy Pettitte?

Furthermore, the Yankees are old. Real old. At some point they need to try and get some exciting young blood in there. Zack Greinke fits that bill but I'm not sure they should trade a real catching prospect for a guy who was being treated for personality disorders in Kansas City. I'm guessing there might be a wee bit more pressure in the Bronx than there was in KC. Guy might just have a Charles Whitman-esque breakdown and start picking people off from Monument Park.

Besides, do you really want a guy on your team that is "really excited" to be going to Philadelphia? No way.

Reason #1,287,043

As if we needed any more proof that the West's philanthropic efforts in Africa go largely unrewarded, Sudan rounded up a bunch of women protesting the government.

Arresting protesters and limiting free speech is bad enough but the fact that they were protesting the very public flogging of a woman being punished for wearing pants is far worse.
Gotta love that sharia law. Feel free to read up here then take a rape shower.

How long do we continue this charade regarding Africa? Rather than actually try and correct the political, social and economic problems they have over there, we just keep dropping off bags of food and mosquito nets.

Thank god everybody is well fed and malaria free. Can you imagine how hard it is to rape and ethnic cleanse without three solid a day? Rough sledding.

We need to stop this middle of the road nonsense and go to one of the extremes. Option one would be to just do nothing and let this mix of poverty, ignorance and intolerance destroy itself. That may sound extreme but it would be extremely effective and cheap. The second path would be to organize a massive, UN approved, world wide participated military campaign to go in, clean out (kill) all of the people who think wearing pants is a floggable offense for women. Or anyone who thinks public flogging is a good idea. We should do a similar thing here, incidentally. Whenever they do a Turn in Your Guns for Raider Tickets event, they should just arrest everyone who shows up.

Whatever way we pick would be sufficient. All the world is doing now by dropping off food and medicine but no security is making sure that the rapists and death squads have an extra spring in their step. No need to continue down that path.

Politically Nuts and Retard Strong

Thank god we have lame duck Congressional sessions. Otherwise we wouldn't get to witness the spectacle taking place now.

It's been amusing to watch the reaction to the supposed "compromise" on the tax rates that has been revealed this week. Republicans are in danger of dislocating some elbows if they keep patting themselves on the back. I'm sure they hope no one notices that all they achieved was keeping income taxes level for the next 2 years while agreeing to only a 35% increase in the death tax and another extension of government sponsored vacation time. Maybe once all the conservatives who won elections this year get to Congress, we can talk about more tax cuts and an across the board slashing of the budget. Dreams do occasionally happen.

Liberals have gone absolutely bat shit loco, proving themselves to be liars and hypocrites in the process. I realize that sticking it to small business owners and relatively successful people is a liberal tradition but is it really worth all this strife? Besides, after screwing people with money, the second most popular liberal pastime is getting people on/keeping people on welfare. With another extension some people will be able to be on government sponsored sabbatical for nearly three years. After that long not working, I'm sure their brains will just be mushy enough to vote democrat. I think more liberals need to focus on the death tax. If they were honest enough to admit/intelligent enough to understand, they would realize that the death tax is the pinnacle of liberal belief. Multiple taxation! The money is taxed when it's first earned, then numerous times as it's invested routinely in the process of wealth creation, then one more big tax just because you happen to die before you could blow it all in Vegas on working girls and buffets. The same dollars are taxed a minimum of 3 times and possibly many more. Liberals rejoice!

Either way, we have been told that the best thing to come from this tax plan was that it would stabilize the economy as people and business owners would know what to expect. After being given this dose of political Xanex, it's believed that business may try and grow finally as they can make some reasonable plans for the future. This growth would conceivably help the fed start to dig out of its massive debt-hole, as low taxes increase government receipts.

How did liberals in Congress decide to celebrate this nerve calming, responsibility restoring move? By trying to pass the DREAM Act baby! Yeah!

What is the DREAM Act, you ask? Simple. If you're an illegal alien (or de facto Americans as leftists now call them) and you volunteer for the military or enroll in college, you get a clear path to citizenship. Leftists somehow claim this isn't amnesty. This is laughable since their are schools out there (and there will be more is this passes) that anybody with a credit card can get into. And really, how expensive is one class? Especially with all the minority scholarships and student aid available, there is going to be a flood of illegals entering diploma factories if this takes effect. If this bill covers junior colleges we might as well just grant amnesty immediately and save the farce of going to school, most JC's are glorified High Schools, the 13th grade.

Just as a side bar, with all this focus on getting illegals into school, there must be some provision to learn English right? Nope. I guess speaking English isn't needed for attending college in the United States. Awesome.

Back to Congress. It's nice of them to show exactly why we are in financial Armageddon. The biggest reason we're broke is entitlement programs. After reaching a deal that will save people money through income tax rates but that doesn't fundamentally alter the entitlement payout to collection ratio, Congress immediately tries to pass a bill to allow millions of new people to take advantage of American entitlement programs. Brilliant. Why not just lower the retirement age to 50 and up the MediCaid threshold to families making less than $ 200,000. Clearly Congressional liberals (and 8 Republicans, including Delaware "moderate" Mike Castle) didn't get the message during the election. Hopefully the Senate was listening more clearly.

Maybe when the new Congress gets sworn in, we can pass a bill doing away with lame duck sessions altogether.