billgerat
All hail the hypnotoad!
Registered: Aug 2000
Location: In a Blue, Blue State
Posts: 13420 |
Republican crybabies
Put Me In, Coach
Posted by jesselee
Monday, April 24, 2006 at 9:49 AM
The way a man handles himself out on the field says a lot about him, they say. But what if you have contempt for the whole field itself? Last year we were treated to this sickening spectacle...
Three months into their inaugural season, the Washington Nationals are in first place. Attendance is strong, hopes are high, and the team is reportedly turning a tidy profit.
But to some Capitol Hill Republicans there is a dark cloud on the Nats' horizon: the potential that their newly adopted home team could be purchased by billionaire financier George Soros.
Earlier this month, Soros joined an ownership bid being led by entrepreneur Jonathan Ledecky. Their group is one of more than a half-dozen angling to take over the Nats, who are currently owned by Major League Baseball.
[...]
Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, "I don't think it's the Nats that get hurt. I think it's Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions" from anti-trust laws.
Indeed, Hill Republicans could potentially make life difficult for MLB in a variety of ways. In addition to being exempt from anti-trust rules, baseball is still under scrutiny over the steroid issue. The Nats, meanwhile, hope to have a publicly-funded stadium built soon, though money for that venture is expected to come through the sale of bonds rather than a federal outlay.
Still, Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that covers the District of Columbia budget, said if Soros buys the team and seeks public funding for the new stadium or anything else, the GOP attitude would be, "Let him pay for it."
And today Republicans show us that this was no flukish display of childishness brought on by some freakish hatred of George Soros -- it's just how they are...
Softball on the Mall Was Bipartisan Fun Till Politics Intruded [WSJ]
Starting this week, hundreds of young Capitol Hill aides will indulge in an annual rite of spring here by changing out of their business suits and heading over to the National Mall to play in the Congressional Softball League.
Amid all the partisan rancor of congressional politics, the softball league has for 37 years been a rare case of bipartisan civility, an opportunity for Democratic and Republican aides to sneak out of work a bit early and take the field in the name of the lawmaker, committee or federal agency they work for.
This year, the league will be missing something: a lot of the Republicans.
During the off-season, a group of Republican teams seceded from the league after accusing its Democratic commissioner, Gary Caruso, of running a socialist year-end playoff system that gives below-average teams an unfair chance to win the championship.
The league "is all about Softball Welfare -- aiding the weak by punishing the strong," the pitcher of one Republican team told Mr. Caruso in an email. "The commissioner has a long-standing policy of punishing success and rewarding failure. He's a Democrat. Waddya' expect?" read another email, from Gary Mahmoud, the coach of BoehnerLand, a team from the office of Republican Majority Leader John Boehner.
The softball coup is a "reflection of how partisan and Republican this town has really become since Republicans took control," responds Mr. Caruso, a longtime Democratic aide who worked for congressmen in the 1980s and '90s. "Republicans come here and want to bash your head in. And if they don't get their way, they pick up the ball and go home."
Yup. So who are the Republicans who have so little to do that they have the time to found a new softball league out of pure, unadulterated pettiness and spite?
The commissioner of the secessionist league is Anthony Reed, 31 years old, a legislative aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.) and the coach of Denny's Grand Slam. Mr. Reed and a small group of unhappy coaches formed this new league and persuaded 110 of the 190 teams in the old league to withdraw and join them. Not all the teams in the new league are from Republican offices, but the rebellion was predominantly led by GOP teams, including Denny's Grand Slam, BoehnerLand, the 1040 Slashers, who represent Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, and a team of staffers from the office of Republican Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.
And if anybody was wondering whether congressional softball was the same "softball" you've known all these years...
The congressional league is a relaxed affair: No umpires call balls and strikes, so batters don't have to swing until they get a pitch they like. Fields are open to the public, so most teams dispatch an intern or junior aide to reserve a field several hours before game time. And after games, teams often head to a bar to recap the game over chicken wings and pitchers of beer.
http://dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/004626.html
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"Touring America's oilrigs and nuclear plants, John McCain sometimes sounds as if he'll produce enough wind to power the nation all by himself. So strongly does his current rhetoric smell of methane -- the gas emanating from manure -- that he might even qualify for an alternative energy tax incentive." - Joe Conason, New York Observer, Aug. 8, 2008 -
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04-25-2006 05:54 AM
