My earlier posting on NAFTA crazies. As if to prove my point about the crazies and NAFTA, WND has an article about the Chinese putting censors in the highway for the one big super nation.
Billy the Kid Craziness
Conservative pandering on crime stats.
The John Birch Society
Another Minuteman Expose
Expose of conservative media sources
MY RANT FOR THE DAY
THE CORRUPTING OF TODAY’S USE
This evening I helped one of my best friends chaperone her daughter’s 16th birthday party. I don’t know if I have any hearing left…!
The evening started out slow, with a half dozen girls. Finally one boy came in, then another, etc. By 8:30 the kids started swarming. It was the only party in town. They were coming in with Sonic cups filled with something that didn’t exactly smell like the usual Sonic drink. Alicia had the waitress come around with a big trash can and tell the kids no outside beverages were allowed. That cleared the place considerably. By the end of the evening there were more guys than girls.
Frankly I don’t understand how they can teeter around on platform spike heels, mini-skirts, chew gum, talk, walk, and text at the same time!
I thought I was fairly up on things of the world until I started listening to some of the music the DJ was playing. One song was something like “I’m in love with a stripper!” I’m as open minded as the next person, but this music (which was censored already) was filthy. It has literally sucked the innocence out of these children. The are children, but yet because of the media world in which they live, they are far more knowledgeable and worldly than am I! If I were a parent I don’t know what I would do. The world these kids live in is pure filth.
How are they ever going to survive?
They have lost their innocence. It is something they will never regain. I think it’s child abuse.
Hundreds of camels are dying from some weird mystery illness.
Wizbang thinks Hillary is looking at Mark Warner for a VP choice.
MLB UMPIRES
Does MLB have a ticking time bomb with the differences in pay between ML Umpires and those in the Minors?
“…There are just 70 umpires in the major leagues, and like the referees in the N.B.A. they are well-paid, well-supervised and as well-insulated from undue influence as the sport’s security staff can make them. But minor-league umpires also work hundreds of major-league ball games every year.
During any given season, there are 15 or so of these men, selected by Major League Baseball to fill in for big-leaguers who are on vacation, injured or absent for some other reason. They are not inexperienced, having spent up to a dozen years ascending to the Triple A level of the minor leagues, one rung below the majors. But because they are not major-league employees, they are not paid big- league salaries, nor are they subject to big-league security vetting.
A handful of minor-league umps end up working games every day from April to September — more games than the regular umps, who get four weeks off during the season.
For each game, they are paid a pro-rated portion of a first-year salary for a big-league umpire, which is about $90,000. By comparison, most big league umps earn between $200,000 and $400,000. When there is no big league assignment, they find themselves back in Triple A, where the salary reverts to the minor-league standard, which tops out at $3,500 per month.
None of this is to suggest that any umpire is corrupt. The record of umpires in the big leagues is better than that of players and managers: the only time a major league umpire was accused of gambling on baseball was in 1882, and the individual, Richard Higham, was promptly fired and banned from the game.
Nor is it to suggest that the hardworking minor-league umpires who aspire to nothing more than getting to “The Show” — the same thing minor-league players aspire to — are ethically soft or vulnerable. (Donaghy’s prestige and six-figure salary didn’t inoculate him, after all.) But if you were a gambler with mischief on your mind, whom would you target?...”
During any given season, there are 15 or so of these men, selected by Major League Baseball to fill in for big-leaguers who are on vacation, injured or absent for some other reason. They are not inexperienced, having spent up to a dozen years ascending to the Triple A level of the minor leagues, one rung below the majors. But because they are not major-league employees, they are not paid big- league salaries, nor are they subject to big-league security vetting.
A handful of minor-league umps end up working games every day from April to September — more games than the regular umps, who get four weeks off during the season.
For each game, they are paid a pro-rated portion of a first-year salary for a big-league umpire, which is about $90,000. By comparison, most big league umps earn between $200,000 and $400,000. When there is no big league assignment, they find themselves back in Triple A, where the salary reverts to the minor-league standard, which tops out at $3,500 per month.
None of this is to suggest that any umpire is corrupt. The record of umpires in the big leagues is better than that of players and managers: the only time a major league umpire was accused of gambling on baseball was in 1882, and the individual, Richard Higham, was promptly fired and banned from the game.
Nor is it to suggest that the hardworking minor-league umpires who aspire to nothing more than getting to “The Show” — the same thing minor-league players aspire to — are ethically soft or vulnerable. (Donaghy’s prestige and six-figure salary didn’t inoculate him, after all.) But if you were a gambler with mischief on your mind, whom would you target?...”
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