Mark Byron

The Reign in Spain is Mainly... Disliked by the Left

Any government in budget-cutting mode is going to hear howls from the folks on the sharp end of the knife. It's going to be doubly hard for a conservative party to be the one to do the cutting, since the left is going to be against them even if they were spending like a sailor.

That's where the Spanish government is at, having to cut a deficit in the middle of a recession; given the lousy European economy and jittery markets, running a big deficit just isn't feasable without paying Lenny the Loan Shark interest rates. The conservative Popular Party took over late last year and got handed one of Europe's worst budget deficits from their Socialist predecessors.

Of course, you're going to see protests. What else would a red-blodded leftist do on a Saturday afternoon (well, go see Barcelona mop the floor against Rayo Vallecano, but if you don't have tickets...) other than go to a protest?

Speaking of Barcelona, the Catalan area of Spain is better off, so it net-to-net sends money to the poorer parts of the country; it's been itching for more autonomy from Madrid and such. So, in those areas that don't like the central government much to begin with, it's easy to take to the street.

Good luck, PM Rajoy; you'll need it.

Skull and Crosshairs

It takes a near-tragedy to get sports to move, and we nearly had one Thursday night when Doug Fister got nailed in the skull by a line drive. The 6-8 Fister couldn't get the last part of "chuck-and-duck" down, but must have been part Neanderthal or something, for he stayed in and pitched six innings of one-run ball and checked with his lawyer when he got back to Detroit on whether he should sue the offense for non-support.

Normally, such a hit to the head would create at least a concussion; careers have been ruined by such shot, such has pitcher-turned-broadcaster Herb Score, who's playing career went south after such a shot, then became the Indians' analogue to Ernie Harwell for three decades; he was at it long enough for me to remember him during my Kent State days in the early 90s.

The answer might be a Kevlar cap-

MLB medical director Dr. Gary Green has been talking to companies about protective headgear for pitchers, Halem said. A report is on the agenda at baseball's winter meetings in December.

A cap liner with Kevlar, the high-impact material used by military, law enforcement and NFL players for body armor, is among the ideas under consideration.

Kevlar is used in flak jackets in the NFL, and it's flexible enough that a Kevlar-cored cap might be feasible without being too bulky. They'd likely be pricey, but when you got million-dollar contracts on the line, a few hundred dollars for skull protection might be worth thinking about.

Corner infielders might consider that investment as well; Detroit had a scare in the pre-season when Miguel Cabrera got nailed in the eye by a bad hop bullet. A reinforced cap wouldn't have helped on that one, but it would have helped prevent a concussion had the bad hop hopped a bit higher.

 

 

Kronked Out

I'm not a big boxing fan (the more I mature, the less appeal watching folks beat up each other has), but we got some sad news out of Detroit, where veteran trainer Emanuel Steward passed on yesterday at 69. His Kronk Gym turned out a string of top boxers, most notably Thomas Hearns, who had some classic fights with Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler in the 80s. Steward was a street kid who got off the streets via boxing and he's mentored a couple of generations of boys to do likewise.

If you took the back-to-basics gym of Apollo Creed's LA from Rocky 3 and plunked it in the Great Lakes, you're poetic striking distance from Kronk, although running along the Detroit River wouldn't be as cinematic as the shot of them running on the Pacific sands.

MMA has got more press than boxing has gotten as of late; Steward client Wladimir Klitschko could get confused for a backup center for the Pistons. However, Steward was a living archetype of the father figure running the inner city gym.

Uncle Tom's Mosque-Part V-Northern Exposure

It's Friday, so something regarding a mosque is sure to be in play; today, it's a bombing of a mosque in northern Afghanistan-

A suicide bomber targeted worshippers who had gathered at a mosque in north Afghanistan for prayers to mark Eid al-Adha, killing at least 41 people.

More than 50 people were wounded in the attack, which happened as people were leaving the Eid Gah mosque in Maymana, capital of Faryab province.

Note that this is in the north, where the Taliban have less of a following. During the post-Soviet civil war, the northern part of the country stayed independent of the Taliban government; the US used a combination of air power, special forces and Northern Alliance fighters to roll back the Taliban a decade ago.

The tragic part is that it came on one of Islam's big holidays; Eid al-Adha celebrate's Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, although the Koran twists the Genesis story to have Ishmael as the would-be sacrifice rather than Isaac. It's a bigger party than the end of Ramadan.

"We had just finished Eid al-Adha prayers and we were congratulating and hugging each other," deputy provincial governor Abdul Satar Barez told the AFP news agency.

"Suddenly a big explosion took place and the area was full of dust and smoke and body parts of police and civilians were all over the place. It was a very powerful explosion."

Since a lot of officials and police were at the mosque, it was a target for the Taliban as a way of getting at the powers-that-be. That's the underlying theme of a lot of Muslim-on-Muslim violence as of late (note the part V), where the jihadis go after the establishment Muslims.

 

Honey Badger Boo Boo

At least one NFL career seems to have gone to pot; Tyrone "Honey Badger" Mathieu had another run in with the Wildwood Weed.

Mathieu and former LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson were charged with simple possession of marijuana, the Baton Rouge police department said in a release.

He was making moves in the right direction, getting into rehab with sports drug-rehab master John Lucas, but old habits die hard, especially when you run with a crowd that tends to get into trouble.

Edifier du Jour-Philippians 2:1-4(NIV)

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

That's worth remembering in an election season. Libertarians talk about "enlightened self-interest", but that light doesn't come from Christ as often as it should.

What's in God's best interest? Or, brought down to earth a tad, what's in the best interest of the country as a whole and the world as a whole?

Note that looking out after others isn't always going to give the bleeding-heart liberal response. For instance, as someone of modest income without health insurance, "Obamacare" would be a net plus for me, but it sems to be a net minus for the country as a whole, likely dragging the economy down and hurting the poor by decreasing chances for an entry-level job due to employer mandates driving up the cost of low-end labor.

That being said, a bit more compassion towards others is helpful, from making our rhetoric more loving and kind [insert latest Ann Coulter misstep] to looking out after the pocketbooks of "the least of thes" as well as our own.

 

HI Ho,Silver, Go Back-Door!

The NBA will be getting a new boss next year; David Stern is stepping down and Adam Silver, the current deputy commissioner, will take over. One interesting aspect is that you have one New York Jewish lawyer handing the reins over to another New York Jewish lawyer. Not that any of that is disqualifying, but it plays all too well into stereotyping. Since the league HQ is in New York, a NYC lawyer would be the kind of guy to deal with the business end of the league, and New York is about as Jewish as any big town outside of Israel, so that's not a huge coincidence. Heck, a third of the Supreme Court are Jewish lawyers.

When I Googled for Silver's ethnicity, I saw a number of groups the Southern Poverty Law Center likely has long files on. Yuck. That will add to any dislike they'll have for all the blacks and fer'ners that make up the league these days.

As a fan, I'd like to see a former player or former coach in that role, but the commissioner is the guy the owners turn to for running the business, so lawyers get most of the spots. Silver seems to know his stuff, so things are in reasonable hands.

Savile Row

Interesting but sad story out of England, where their analogue to Dick Clark, Jimmy Savile, turned out to be a bisexual Jerry Sandusky, using his TV shows and children's charities to find targets; he seemed to have a taste for teeny-bopper girls. He died about a year ago, and victims have been coming out of the woodwork, closing in on 300.

The trend of suspecting the pedophile but not saying anything seems to strongly overlap with the Sandusky case, as well as using the charities to surround himself with jail-bait. Now, his enablers are under the microscope.

Jesus isn't on the Ballot

Good post from Kevin DeYoung on voting; while he's on the Gospel Coalition web site, this is one where Reformed-Arminian food fights don't factor in. Here's the money statement-

...we should realize that if we vote at all we are voting for less than our ideal candidate. As long as Jesus isn’t on the ballot every Christian is voting for someone less than our perfect candidate.

We've got two candidates with flawed theologies (don't we all, when it comes down to it), one being a former pastor of an heterdox Christian offshoot and the other steeped in a Liberation Theology-style black mainline milieu. Neither would be the first choice of most of the Peanut Gallery to pastor their church, but we're hiring them to run the country, not pastor our church.

Sports Musings

UConn's woman's coach Geno Auriemma is plugging for lower baskets for the women's game. I'm not sure that is a good idea, given that girls often cut their teeth playing against guys and are used to the standard 10-foot rim height. Some backboard sets can be changed in height by winching things down a tad and pulling the standard back to compensate, but most playground and many gym sets are fixed; it would be awkward to refit gyms with a mens set and a women's set, and singular courts would be lawsuit-bait.

_________

Brooklyn is on Long Island, isn't it? The Islanders are moving to the Nets' new stadium rather than try and get a new facility built; the current Nassau digs are 41 years old and need an upgrade, assuming the NHL gets back playing someday. They have a lease for their current digs through 2015.

_________

Ozzie Guilien is available if you have a baseball team that needs a manager; Miami ate three years of his deal in order to fire him. It seemed to be a good fit, bringing in a Hispanic manager to run the club as it moved to a Little Havana stadium, but saying something nice about the boss in Big Havana isn't the way to make friends in Miami.

He might be a better fit in the broadcast booth; I could see ESPN or the MLB Network snag him as baseball's version of Charles Barkley, sometimes wrong but never in doubt. He could do well talking smack for a living rather than doing that as part of running a ball-club.

The Democratic Lord Doesn't Taketh Away

I can't quite tell what Richard Mourdock's church background is from a quick Google run; his campaign site has him "active in Christian Missions in Bolivia" and has been comfortable campaigning at conservative churches. He's the GOP nominee to replace Richard Lugar for Indiana's senate seat.

If a conservative says something bad's in God's will, liberals will make a knee-jerk trip to open theism, saying that the bad happening isn't in God's will-"My God wouldn't have let that happen." We saw that earlier this year when George Zimmerman chalked up his shooting of Travon Martin as God's will, much to the consternation of Papa Martin-"There is no way that my God wanted George Zimmerman to murder my teenage son."

We had a replay of that when Mourdock was grilled on abortion in the case of rape-that's an area where some pro-lifers will make an exception but other's won't; the latter thought is that 9 months of grief isn't worth killing someone for. Here's Mourdock's reply from last night

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, and I realized that life is a gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen," Mourdock said, explaining that he would allow for exceptions to an abortion ban when a mother's life is in danger.

That's not to say that rape is a good thing, but if you have the concept of a God who is omnipotent and omniscient and all those other omnis, God at least is OK with everything that is going down. However, that doesn't sit well with a lot a folks at first blush-here's his foe for the Indiana senate seat, Joe Donnelly

Donnelly also responded, writing, "I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance. The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen–ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."

That's not shocking, unless the concept of a seriously powerful God is shocking; Donnelly would likely be less shocked if he weren't trailing in the polls and needed something to wedge moderate Republicans away from Mourdock.

Job is oft-quoted in tragedies-"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" is the slight misquote of the King James that I remember. I guess the liberal version only gives.

Authority Figures

We had a baby dedication at church on Sunday. I've been thinking about the Bible and how best to consider it; the construct they used in the standard Free Meethodist dedication text seems a good place to start-

Do you accept the authority of the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God?

It doesn't specify how one is to read every verse and leaves open that some passages might well be metaphorical. However, you turn your back on the Bible at your own peril, since it seems to be our best look at how God interacted with His people over the years, and especially how Jesus interacted and preached and lived.

If it isn't authoratative, we're at square one.

Fluke Kiev Isn't Selling

At a Reno supermarket, only ten people were interested in their Fluke promotion. Here's a good recipe-

FLUKE "KIEV"
(Fluke Rolls with Herbed Butter Filling)

I don't know if you need any extra medicine to safely roll a Fluke with herbed butter, but some people seem to think so. At the supermarket, they made sure to use safe sacks at all times.

How Distant You Are

The sermon theme this morning was on seeing God as a parent rather than as a slave-master; seeing oneself as a child rather than a slave. The core passage was from Hosea 2:16

“In that day,” declares the Lord,
    “you will call me ‘my husband’;
    you will no longer call me ‘my master.

That takes on extra meaning when the word for master was baal, the name of the local false deity. Pastor Kessler opted to not mention the wayward wife Gomer by name, although I half-whispered "Golll-eee!" to Eileen as he mentioned that Hosea was the reading for the day.

However, one of the praisemeisters on as background music before the service went the other direction inadvertently, modernizing How Great Thou Art as How Great You Are. The problem with that is that the King James-sounding thou is second-person familiar in older English; back in the days, friends and loved ones would get thou while strangers and authority figures would get you.

You're not going to get a Spanish love song addressing the beloved with the formal usted; no, eres tu. Likewise, the hymn-writers of old would address God as Abba Daddy with a thou rather than a more distant you.

To the linguistically-illiterate, shifting thou to you makes it sound more modern; it also makes it more distant, more of the absentee slave-owner that folks often treat God as rather than Abba Daddy.

 

It's Not Messy; It's Just Disorganized

We saw two versions of this sign coming to and from the mall in Saginaw today, with the punch line-"Poor Obama;if he's reelected, look at the mess he'll inherit." We also saw a Nobama sign as well just before making the turn onto the M-20 spur into Midland.

Three anti-Obama signs. No pro-Romney signs. That's not encouraging, but it is also descriptive of the motives of a lot of center-right voters; getting rid of an economically-clueless Democrat is more the issue than the virtues of his GOP replacement.

The sign does present an interesting analogy of an economic mess.

One problem with a second Obama term is that he won't view the mess as a mess. The Affordable Care Act is a feature, not a bug that screws up the aggregate supply curve by discouraging employment and business expansion. The tax increases that are forthcoming to finance it aren't all that bad, especially if they skew upscale.

So, if I can make a slightly lame analogy, the economic is Barry's bedroom as a teenager, and he knows where everything is and likes it that way. Grandma may think its a mess, but he's set it up that way, somewhat by accident and somewhat by design; Barry doesn't want the mess cleaned up.