Scotch & Politics

If you think your pocketbook or wallet is hurting from the $4 per gallon gasoline that you have been buying recently, hang on to your butts. According to a Rice University study down in H-town, the U.S. could end up with gas costing over $6 per gallon if oil hits $200 a barrel.

Wow.

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The IHT comes through for the second time this week with another great feature. This time its about China’s Olympic athletic machine, which, much like the country’s communist government, is more soulless and unrelenting than any corporation.

Its a great read, I suggest you take a look. It paints a shocking picture of how athleticism is perceived in China, and how the communist government has turned sports into a government-subsidized, factory-like system of hardcore training – dedicated to maximizing gold medal returns and pushing its athletes as hard as a possible.

“An astonishing amount of manpower, money and goods have been poured in, so much so that it’s inappropriate to be revealed publicly,” said Lu Yuanzhen, a professor of sports sociology at the Academy of Sports Sciences at South China Normal University. If the country’s athletes do not perform up to expectations, he added, “the entire nation and its people will lose face.”

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I told him next time he does that I’m going to get my blade out and cut him. I’m a gangster. You go gangster on me, I’m going to have to get you. You do that again, I’m going to cut you right on the field.

–Jerry Manuel after his second game as Mets Manager

The Jerry Manuel era is starting off beautifully in Queens. The only way to improve this situation would be to hire Ozzie Guillen as his bench coach and really maximize the crazy.

Also, I have a few questions about the “get my blade out” portion of Coach Manuel’s statement. Maybe the diehard Mets fans can help me out on this one…

-Does Manuel carry a knife on him at all times, or just during the games?

-If Manuel had actually gone and stabbed Jose Reyes would the Mets fans really be that upset?

-Do you think the umpires are getting nervous?

Let’s discuss.

If you’re a Democrat who thinks everything that has happened since 2000 was just a nightmare, check out this analysis from Politico on the possibility of Barack Obama pulling an Al Gore–and I’m not talking about winning a Noble Prize.

What are the chances that Obama could win the popular vote but lose the election? Not very good, but for Democrats, if it were to happen again, especially after eight years of George Bush, I think the heads of roughly 50 million voters would explode the morning of November 5.

I came across this great article in the International Herald-Tribune about a free-speech case currently going on in Canada. The Canadian newsmagazine Maclean’s is under trial not for libelous or inaccurate articles, but for “hate speech.”

Under Canadian law, there is a serious argument that the article contained hate speech and that its publisher, Maclean’s magazine, the nation’s leading newsweekly, should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self respect.”

Wait a second, a magazine is “forbidden” by law from printing whatever it wants? It may have to pay restitution for injuring someone’s dignity? I’m sorry, but as an American I find this completely nuts.

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Gerard Baker of the London Times wrote a great opinion piece this week waxing philosophical on Bush’s farewell tour of Europe. Baker (and myself!) both share the opinion that, for all the apparent heartache and suffering the Europeans went through during the Bush Administration, that whole continent is going to end up missing him a lot.

They’ll miss, first, having a villain in the White House. It’s a really convenient excuse to avoid doing anything yourself on pressing global concerns.

Baker’s article is a great read, check it out!

While i’m here, I’m going to touch on another beautiful aspect of US international relations - when we switch out the old president with a new one its a great excuse for a clean slate with foreign governments. People claim America’s reputation has been horribly damaged by Bush, but truth is about 50% of the problems are going to vanish along with him. If the Dems win the triple majority and we switch political parties, I’d raise that estimate to 75%. No one’s going to protest Obama’s motorcades, and college exchange students will be at least 50% less annoying starting next year.

Not that I really care too much about what Europe thinks. I suppose if it was America’s job to keep the Europe happy we’d have to ratify the Lisbon treaty and start smelling bad. Neither of these things really appeal to me.

I’m usually not one for public service announcements, but since this is a blog and you expect me to bloviate (and this issue is near and dear to my heart), I couldn’t resist.

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Now that it’s finally over, you have to wonder, will we see Hillary as the v.p nominee sending Clinton-haters everywhere into a frenzy against Obama too, or will Obama turn away from the millions of blue collar Clinton voters and go with another possibility? This post is by no means exhaustive, and I for one have been intellectually salivating since Sam Nunn’s name starting making the rounds. I have not been at all excited about the idea of Clinton as a v.p., until this morning when I thought about it in a different way.

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Get ready to chalk one up to the environmentalists… or OPEC… I’m not sure who the credit this with, but it seems to be a win for the human race in the long run.

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Jon Lester Pitches a No-Hitter!

Jon Lester, less than a year after beating cancer, has no-hit the Kansas City Royals. It was an incredible pitching performance – 130 pitches, 9 K’s and he was topping 95 MPH on the last batter. Just incredible.

Of course I didn’t see any of it because I was hanging out with fellow S&P writer Jason playing Grand Theft Auto IV on his new flat screen TV. Unfortunately, we were far too busy shooting up police cars and running over pedestrians to check on the Sox game. That being said, its been a while since we’ve had a good baseball post on S&P so I’m going to go over a few of my impressions of the AL East (only division that matters ;-) ) at the quarter-mark.

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Are you kidding me??

So we (and by we, I mean the U.S.) have a soldier who is apparently such a fucking dumbass that he used a Qur’an for target practice in Iraq.

I don’t care if you think Islam is a cult similar to that of Jim Jones, you have to be really fucking stupid to think that shooting a copy of the Qur’an is going to get us anywhere.

What universe does this soldier live in that he missed this, and this, oh and this.

Congratulations to this soldier for emboldening the enemy more than bin Laden ever could hope to do on his own!

Most of the content of this site is geared toward red-in-the-face arguments about politics or red-in-the-face bouts of testing new types of liquor that the writers here have found (I had a great new boubon a few weeks ago that a fellow writer and I found in a Dupont Circle wine shop, and can’t remember the name - more later), but we are going to switch it up a bit today and make sure that anyone who reads our site remembers some of the things that really matter - life, love, hope, faith and second chances just to name a few.

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Now that we’ve all had a good laugh at everyone’s favorite moron, it’s time to move on because this guy is meaningless. The episode, however, may be a harbinger (one of a few so far) of a shift in American political discourse – I know, I’m being idealistic, but let me have my moment.

This episode was a hyperbole. It was an exaggeration of something that has been brewing, and I had not taken notice of it until my wife pointed it out the night of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. The gap between the rich and everyone else has not only widened, but the rich population is shrinking… the population of everyone else is growing, fast. The rich also happen to hold most of the power.

We’ve all heard the argument of how “the rich people control everything!!” In many senses, this is true. This control hinged on directives shouted to the masses. Political spin was tossed out like red meat to the hordes, who gleefully ate it up and spewed it back out.

Starting with John Edwards and his cheery populist campaign in 2004 and the fiery populist campaign he waged in 2008, something switched. The masses no longer wanted simple spin to dictate their political thought. They wanted articulate solutions to their problems, not quick fixes and a pat on the head… a la the Republican party platform and their minions of spinmeisters. It did not end with Edwards. Barack Obama, along with his soaring rhetoric, long held a theory that people are smart enough to understand policy nuance (its a central point of Audacity of Hope). In the midst of this primary, the votes started to confirm this.

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While this doesn’t quite fit our typical mold for Comedy Friday, this video is intense, yet hilarious.

Radio show host Kevin James went on Hardball yesterday and Chris Matthews (who I am not a huge fan of) baited him brilliantly to reveal his ignorance of… apparently… all history beyond the words “Nazi” and “Hitler.”

If you watch nothing else, fast forward to around 4 minutes. But, honestly, it gets better the second and third times you watch it all the way through to really pinpoint the moments Matthews turns the rhetorical knife to fillet him amid the shouting. I don’t think I need to say anymore. Have a look:

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It was an election that says volumes about what citizens want in more traditional parts of the country. Apparently tired of what they have had for years, voters turned out more of the same and voted for a new, fresh face.

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