Phillies sweep the hated Mets
The Phillies completed their three-game sweep of the hated Mets this afternoon, winning 2-0 against the Mets’ ace Johan Santana, who was denied his tenth win of the season. This is a 
huge win and a huge sweep for the Phillies for several reasons.
1. After losing 11 out of 13 games, the Phillies have now won 5 of 8, and that includes getting swept by the Braves in Atlanta earlier this week.
2. The Phillies have maintained their hold on 1st place, keeping 1 game ahead of the suddenly-hot Florida Marlins, and opening up a 4-game lead on both the Braves and the hated Mets.
3. Jimmy Rollins, who is having a terrible season at the plate and just went through the worst slump of his career, is hitting the ball again, and led off today’s game with his 7th home run of the season.
4. The Phillies starting pitching has been dismal at times, but Phillies’ starters earned wins in each of the three games against the hated Mets, holding them to a total of 3 runs during the series.
5. Brad Lidge, who has had a rocky season out of the bullpen after being so dependable last year, earned saves both yesterday and today, pitching three-up-three-down 9th innings both games, today striking out the side on 14 pitches.
6. The sweep came at home, where the Phillies have not played well at all, the bulk of their victories this year coming on the road.
A happy July 4th
Right Minded is still on summer vacation today. We went to the mother-in-law’s for barbecue and swimming this morning. It has been so cool at night that the water was chilly, but the little guy and I went on in and got ourselves used to it. The ladies came out a little later. We came home in the afternoon, stopped by Starbucks for a second time in the day, and watched a little baseball and the Steve McNair episode.
We stopped buying fireworks years ago. We live in a subdivision, and have several neighbors who are serious about their fireworks. So we usually just go outside and watch theirs. (I can’t believe some of this stuff is even legal.)
It stormed earlier this evening, but cleared out long enough for our neighbors to start lighting their matches. Our backyard isn’t very large. We have it fenced in, and beyond that is a creek and some woods. On the other side of the woods, a hundred yards or so, is another subdivision with more serious fireworks fanatics.
Just before it became totally dark, the three of us and the dog went out back to watch the show. We turned off all the outside lights. It looked like the firebombing of Dresden out there. Another round of storms was approaching and it began to lightning and thunder and rain lightly. There was also a light fog out back, due in part to all the smoke. It was a perfect moment. The dog was scared, so we couldn’t put him down. But he was content with Mrs. Right Minded holding him.
The rain became a little heavier, so we backed up against the rear wall, where there is a narrow overhang. But then we decided to adjourn to the front porch, which is covered, and sat on our bench. The rain grew steadily heavier, and you could tell that those who were shooting fireworks doubled up their load to get it all done before the storm.
The gust front hit and began to blow the rain inside the porch, so we fetched a blanket and covered up. The wind was rather strong for several seconds, and it was about that time our neighbors reached their grand finale. You couldn’t tell what was lightning and what was fireworks. We continued to sit outside with the dog, our hair and our feet getting wet, wondering how in the world our neighbors were managing to keep the fireworks dry enough to ignite.
Finally, the rain was so heavy that the fireworks ended, and we, too, surrendered to the storm, retreated indoors, and put on a pot of coffee.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone.
Analyzing cap-and-tax
After being out for several days, I’m way behind on my Rush Limbaugh podcasts, and am just now listening to last Friday’s show. During the second hour, the Maha Rushie did a fantastic analysis of the job-killing effects of cap-and-tax, which, oddly, the Democrats are pitching as a job-creation bill. Yeah, the same way the economic stimulus package was supposed to create jobs.
“But on second thought, cap and trade is much more than that. It kills jobs.” The Heritage people have analyzed this. “Over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses average over 1.1 million. By 2035, a projected 2.5 million jobs are lost below the baseline (without a cap and trade bill). Particularly hard-hit are sectors of the economy that are very energy-intensive: Manufacturers, farmers, construction, machinery, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation, textiles, paper products, chemicals, plastics and rubbers and retail trade would face staggering employment losses as a result of Waxman-Markey,” this bill. “It’s worth noting the job losses come after accounting for the green jobs policymakers are so adamant about creating. But don’t worry, because the architects of the bill built in unemployment insurance,” too.
You want to hear how that works? They know that the bill is going to cream you! Listen to this. Section 432, Energy Refund Program For Low Income Consumers: “(1) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the agency designated by the Administrator shall formulate and administer the ‘Energy Refund Program’. (2) At the request of the State agency, eligible low-income households within the State shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from this Act.” Now, this is just for the poor. Pay attention. This is a part where the poor get direct deposit transfers of your money. They know your “purchasing power” will be lost resulting from this act! I’m reading from the act.
Waxman-Markey-Madoff Directly Redistributes Wealth to the “Poor”
R.I.P., Steve McNair
I just heard on the radio a few minutes ago that former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was found shot dead in his Nashville home earlier today. Shocking.
Report: Former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair found dead of gunshot wound – ESPN.
Cap-and-tax: green Marxism
John Griffing writing at American Thinker, exposes cap-and-tax for what it is: a con job. I’ve always said, and will continue to assert, that global warming is nothing more than a vehicle employed by the left to grow government and raise taxes. Human beings haven’t warmed the planet, and passing legislation won’t cool it back off. Liberals exist to take away our freedoms and limit our economic choices. Global warming is simply the vehicle they have chosen to take them to that destination.
But global warming is finally coming under the scrutiny it deserves. Not only are NASA satellites showing a cooling trend, but 700 scientists-to the UN’s 50-have come out in opposition to the patently false claims of the global warming lobby.
Most damning, Harvard meteorologists have been unable to replicate the findings of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) without the use of a technique called “data-padding.” The IPCC actually admitted to engaging in this deceptive practice. Without this padding, the infamous warming trend falls by several degrees. In essence, the IPCC and its primary source manipulated data (dare we say “lied”?) to produce a desired result.
If global warming is a scientific hoax, a fact that now seems incontrovertible, then why have President Obama and Congress advanced such drastic and costly legislation to address this nonexistent crisis? One might conclude that HR 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act, exists for no other purpose than to destroy the American economy as we know it and bring it all under government control.
Buyer’s remorse
Colin Powell, a Republican-in-name-only who endorsed Barack Obama last fall, is now “concerned” over President Obama’s explosive growth of government. Gee, Mr. Powell, what did you expect when you endorsed this guy, Ronald Reagan? Might want to put a little more thought into those endorsements next time.
Colin Powell, one of President Obama’s most prominent Republican supporters, expressed concern Friday that the president’s ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of government and the federal debt too much.
“I’m concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them,” Mr. Powell said in an excerpt of an interview with CNN’s John King, released by the network Friday morning.
It’s all the taxpayers’ fault
When I saw the headline below, I thought that maybe an honest story lay on the other side, you know, blaming liberal social programs and irresponsible growth of government for the budget deficit facing the California government. But no. This is the mainstream press. Even thought taxpayers spend untold fortunes paying the heavy price of fiscal recklessness engaged by the imbeciles they elect, the fault, you see, is squarely on the shoulders of the taxpayers for the sin of wanting to keep their own money.
They begin with the 1978 property tax revolt and the victory of Proposition 13. As California experienced a dramatic escalation in home values, property tax assessments skyrocketed. Especially vulnerable were seniors on fixed incomes. When then Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature dithered, conservative activists led by Howard Jarvis put a seductively simple sounding proposition on the ballot. Under Proposition 13, the annual real estate tax on a parcel of property would be limited to 1% of its assessed value and this assessed value would only increase by a maximum of 2% per year, until a change in ownership. Voters responded and Proposition 13 scored a dramatic victory with 65% of the vote. Property tax rates dropped an average of 57%.
While homeowners celebrated, city, county and school district officials sat in stunned disbelief. There were predictions of drastic cuts to education and social services. But the ax did not fall as Sacramento, flush with a multibillion-dollar surplus, bailed out local governments and the schools. But the state rescue was accompanied by a loss of local control. As a result of Proposition 13, school districts, county governments and cities were forced to compete with state priorities for a slice of the state budget.
How California’s Fiscal Woes Began: A Crisis 30 Years in the Making – Yahoo! News.
A letter
Michelle Malkin posted a letter written 233 years ago today by John Adams to his wife Abigail on the even of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Here’s an excerpt:
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.
I sure hope he’s right
Senator Jim Inhofe has pronounced cap-and-tax DOA in the Senate.
U.S. Jim Inhofe, who earlier said a criminal investigation “probably should be’’ conducted into allegations the EPA suppressed a climate change report, conceded Tuesday he is not qualified to make that determination.
“I have no way of knowing,’’ the Oklahoma Republican said.
Inhofe, however, stood by his prediction that a historic climate change bill narrowly approved by the House last week faces certain defeat in the Senate.
“It’s dead in the water,’’ he said.
Michelle Malkin » Cap-and-tax: Inhofe says it’s “dead in the water”.
Unemployment numbers continue to rise
Despite the stimulus package passed by Democrats earlier this year that was supposed to create millions of new jobs, the unemployment rate is now 9.5% — higher than its has been since 1983. It’s significantly higher than at any time under President Bush, when we supposedly had the worst economy since the Great Depression. If Obama’s job-creating stimulus package has this effect, imagine the effects of cap-and-tax and ObamaCare. Shouldn’t we insist on seeing positive results from Obama and the Democrats before allowing any of their other ideas to be voted into law?
Michelle Malkin » New unemployment numbers: Quick, blame Bush!.
Democrats keep chipping away at individual liberties
Now refusing to buy medical coverage would be punishable by fines. What if someone doesn’t want to have health coverage? It doesn’t matter, because no matter what they tell you, Democrats are in no way pro-choice. They are pro-government and anti-individual liberty.
Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a health care overhaul bill unveiled Thursday by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines will raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which now imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage. Under the federal legislation, families would pay higher penalties than individuals.
Senate bill fines people refusing health coverage – Yahoo! News.
Ouch
The Phillies got creamed last night 11-1. But at least I did get some good pictures at the ballpark. Somehow, even though we’ve now lost 13 of 17 games, we’re still in 1st place, a mere one-half game ahead of the Florida Marlins.
You win some, you lose some
The little guy and I went to see the Phillies play at Turner Field in Atlanta last night. We left Mrs. Right Minded at the hotel, as we were able to find two front row seats one section over from the Phillies dugout. The little guy managed to weasel his way into a crowd of autograph seekers right before the game and got Ryan Howard’s signature on a baseball.
The Phillies lost a game they seemed destined to win, having led three different times, only to blow it each time, ultimately losing 5-4 in 10 innings. There were lots of lost opportunities, and also three errors, with Jayson Werth having myriad troubles in the right-field corner. The Phillies hit three home runs, but none of them with men on base. There were lots of stranded runners, plus a lethargic performance from shortshop Jimmy Rollins, who was back in the leadoff hole after a 4-day break. He was hitless in 5 at bats.
We’ll be back at Turner Field tonight, this time with Mrs. Right Minded in attendance, this time with Phillies ace Cole Hamels on the mound.
Today’s Lebanon Democrat column: “With Mae Beavers gone, the State Senate won’t be quite the same”
I’ve long had the sick feeling that Mae Beavers was in her last term in the Tennessee General Assembly. That fear was confirmed last week when she announced that she would not seek re-election, and that she will instead run for Wilson County Mayor. At least we wouldn’t be losing her totally. But the State Senate will lose its most principled conservative.
Senator Beavers spent 8 years in the State House of Representatives, first winning election in 1994. She made a name for herself during the infamous years of Governor Don Sundquist’s second term. Beginning in 1999, the trinity of Governor Sundquist, then-Senator Bob Rochelle, and, later, then-Speaker of the House Jimmy Naifeh began a four-year full-court press trying to stick Tennesseans with an income tax.
Mae Beavers opposed the income tax from the outset, and, unlike many of her peers, stuck to her opposition. A frequent guest on Nashville talk shows hosted by conservatives Steve Gill and Phil Valentine, then-Representative Beavers became not only a critic of the income tax, but an outspoken one, and that’s how her name spread beyond District 57.
The odd thing about those years was that the Tennessee GOP was largely devoid of any male elected conservative leadership. The state’s most prominent Republican, Don Sundquist, was firmly in the tank for an income tax just weeks after his second inauguration, this coming after he campaigned against an income tax. Elected conservative leadership thus came from then-Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Representatives Mae Beavers, Donna Rowland, and Diane Black, while the male GOP caucus members were either cowering in their opposition or acquiescing to the income tax.
When the income tax ultimately failed to pass during the 2002 legislative session, conservatives claimed victory. Don Sundquist was on his way out, and, after Mae Beavers announced that she would challenge Bob Rochelle for the Senate in District 17, Rochelle bailed out, leaving Beavers to face off against an unknown Democrat challenger, Sherry Fisher, from Carthage. Mae Beavers won election to the Senate with 52% of the vote. What made her victory especially remarkable was that District 17 had heretofore been the Democrats’ turf. District 17 is Al Gore country, after all.
Mae Beavers won by simply being conservative: low taxes, limited government, pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment. That she had consistently voted conservative made her a credible conservative candidate. Not only did she articulate conservatism on the campaign trail, she voted that way in the General Assembly. (It’s what I call “principled conservatism.”)
Senator Beavers continued doing the things that had made her a conservative icon while in the House. She voted against budgets that exceeded the Copeland Cap, noting that it doesn’t make sense to vote against overriding the Copeland Cap, and then vote for a budget that overrides the Copeland Cap. She attempted to phase out the state’s sales tax on food, but couldn’t get her bill past the Democrats. She consistently made efforts to advance gun ownership rights. She defended the unborn.
Mae Beavers had illustrated that conservatives can win in yellow dog Democrat districts by winning them over as conservatives, and not by trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. This is how Ronald Reagan won landslides in 1980 and 1984. It really does work.
While serving her first term as a State Senator, Mae Beavers overcame a bout with cancer, and managed to still serve the voters of District 17 while taking chemotherapy. When 2006 rolled around, she was recovered and ready to run for re-election. That’s when Bob Rochelle announced that he would challenge Senator Beavers for his old Senate seat. By now, Senator Beavers was well-regarded for her principled conservatism. Voters knew that what Senator Beavers promised on the campaign trail, she would deliver in the Senate. And so she easily won re-election, this time getting 58% of the vote.
One of the frustrating things for conservatives is watching good conservatives go to Nashville, or go to Washington, D.C., get sucked into the political machine, and lose their conservatism. Don Sundquist is a prime example of an elected conservative gone bad.
Senator Beavers never went bad, never got corrupted by “the system.” She’s every bit as conservative now as the first day she set foot in the State Capitol in 1995. I wish she had run for governor, but I understand why she wants to spend her time here in Wilson County. Politics is often a cutthroat business that can easily corrupt elected leaders if they aren’t careful. By the time she leaves the Senate, Mae Beavers will have served the people of Wilson County (as well as the other counties in her district) for 16 years.
I’ll miss having her as my state senator, but should she become our next county mayor, the voters and taxpayers of Wilson County will be very well served by one of the most principle conservatives we’ll ever see in elected politics.
The cap-and-tax 8
Michelle Malkin has a list of the 8 turncoat Republicans who voted for President Obama’s cap-and-tax legislation. Without their vote, cap-and-tax would have failed. Thanks, guys. Sheesh.
Michelle Malkin » The 8 cap-and-tax Republicans…and the 44 Democrats who voted no.
Same-sex marriage advocates just can’t catch a break
Pageant officials finally figured out a way to give former Miss California Carrie Prejean the boot and install a new Miss California. Trouble is, the new Miss California shares the same view of same-sex marriage as her predecessor. Maybe pageant officials can figure out a way to give this one the heave-ho and find a Miss California who does believe in same-sex marriage.
Tami Farrell, the newly crowned beauty queen who is replacing the ousted Carrie Prejean as Miss California, apparently holds the same view as her predecessor, Carrie Prejean, and President Obama that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto asked Farrell, who is Christian, on his show today:
“[Prejean] went out and said that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Do you share that view?”
Farrell responded in the affirmative with a simple, “Uh huh.”
“You do, OK,” said Cavuto.
Farrell quickly added: “I don’t think that I have the right or anybody has a right to tell somebody who they can or can’t love. And I think that this is a civil rights issue. And I think that the right thing to do is let the voters decide.”
Prediction: California pageant officials will figure out a way to make same-sex marriage advocacy a litmus test for future pageant winners. This will probably happen in other states, too.
