Posted 11:19 PM by Floyd

So Rush Limbaugh got into a contract spat with a Chinese owner of a radio station and posted a nasty letter that made fun of his name and threatened violence against him ... no, I'm sorry, this is getting ridiculous. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the shining knight riding to the rescue of liberals everywhere, Air America:

After just two weeks on the air, Air America Radio, the fledgling liberal talk-radio network featuring Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, and that really loud woman from Florida, appears to have encountered serious cash-flow problems.

Stop the presses!!! There’s nothing more exciting than half a story from a third hand source!!!!

Insiders tell SLUDGE, that the reason the network was pulled off the air this morning in Chicago and Los Angeles, the network's second- and third-largest markets, was because, the owner of both stations, Arthur Liu of Multicultural Broadcasting, said, the network bounced a check and owes him more than $1 million! The run-on sentence, tortured grammar and the exclamation point clearly means it’s true!!

Only it isn’t.

Normally we’d let this go because “habitual liars” like Drudge are laughable, and ridicule is our business.

Well ... okay ... but he did quote a Chicago Tribune article. Did the Tribune enter in a conspiracy with Drudge to lie?

But Arthur Liu --- not funny. He lied to us, he ripped us off and now we’re chasing him down with a pipe wrench. It’s a metaphor.

Yeah, and when Liu sues you until your eyeballs bleed, that will be a metaphor too.

Here’s what really happened:

This Liu-ser was ripping off our boss Evan Cohen big time (he can’t do that, that’s our job). Evan found out about it and he stopped payment on a check to keep Liu-cifer from ripping him off even more. You can touch Evan for the occasional meal or drinks but a million bucks is crossing the line. And if we ever get low on cash, we can always call Barbra Streisand. Or any of the
Baldwins. Except Stephen.

So we got screwed, Liu’d, and tattooed. How Liu can you get? In Liu of payment. Liu’d and lascivious behavior. These write themselves. What we’re getting at is that we hate him.

We HATES him Gollum! We will Liuse the Precioussss!!

So now everyone’s saying we’re going down the dumper in Chicago and Los Angeles, but what they don’t tell you is that we’re still on in Portland. And we OWN Portland. And let’s not forget Riverside and Plattsburgh. And New
York. And streaming on the internet. And XM. And Sirius. Actually we’re fine.

So cool your jets. Air America Radio isn’t dead, we’re in court and we’re going to slam Liu’s head in a car door. Another metaphor.

You guys are KILLING me! (Another metaphor.)

There's this concept of libel ... but Drudge knows about it so I suppose you wouldn't care to hear an explanation.

It's amazing to think that there are left-wingers who were happy to have Air America in their corner. Still happy, guys?

Posted 10:48 PM by Floyd

Here's something really disgusting: A prominent Hollywood figure is an out-and-out fascist. I don't mean a right-winger in the has-a-one-in-three-chance-of-being-elected-president sense, I mean glorifies and exults in totalitarian government. For example, he thought it was funny when Augusto Pinochet's government abducted and murdered people:

Q: Did it strike you as interesting that at one point in the scene with the prisoners, Pinochet turned to the prisoners' defense lawyers, who just happened to be there, and he says, "I urge you to do your best to release them"?

A: I love that. I thought that was hilarious. Those guys just popped up.

I fool you! I wasn't talking about a right-winger at all, but about Oliver Stone. And I changed the quote a little; Stone was giggling about Fidel Castro, not Pinochet, when interviewed by Anne-Louise Bardach:

Anne-Louise Bardach: Did it strike you as interesting that at one point in the scene with the prisoners, Castro turned to the prisoners' defense lawyers, who just happened to be there, and he says, "I urge you to do your best to reduce the sentences"?

Oliver Stone: I love that. I thought that was hilarious. Those guys just popped up.

ALB: Is there a show-trial element here?

OS: Yeah. I thought that was funny, I did—the prosecutor and Fidel admonishing them, to make sure they worked hard. There was that paternalism. I mean "father knows best," as opposed to totalitarianism. It's paternalism, that's what I meant. It's a Latin thing.

And what will happen to Stone as a result? Not much. Sure, this mocking interview was published in Slate, and linked to on Andrew Sullivan's blog. But Stone will still be there to pick up the dough when, say, HBO wants to film a sympathetic picture of Kim Jong Il's North Korean paradise.

Posted 3:09 PM by Floyd

So after nine games I have a fantasy baseball pitcher who's lost two games.

Hey, what can you do? Hard luck story, right? It's a long season and all that.

But I'm not talking about a starting pitcher. I'm talking about a setup man, Rafael Soriano. Please make sure no small children are around when you view these statistics: 2 IP, 7 hits, 5 ER. And two losses.

Soriano's performance didn't bother just me. It bothered the Mariners too, so much that they optioned Soriano to single-A San Bernardino. Did the Mariners ask me? Did they consider my feelings in the matter?

And who did they call up to replace Soriano? A putz. No, I'm not trying to insult anyone. That's his name:

Mariners option Soriano, call up Putz

Posted 7:21 PM by Floyd

When I was growing up I asked my grandfather what he did in World War II. He was sent to eastern India with US forces that were guarding the border with Japanese-occupied Burma. He didn't do anything glamorous -- he maintained weaponry in fighter planes -- and was never gung-ho about his adventures. In fact, he didn't like to talk about the war.

Jeff Goldstein posted about Attorney General John Ashcroft's testimony before the 9/11 commission. Oliver Willis, who I put on my blogroll when he was interesting and iconoclastic, rather than a predictable Democratic party hack, had this to say:

I'd take Ashcroft's accusations more seriously if I didn't feel he secretly admires Mullah Omar.

A few days ago I was going to post about John Ashcroft's "war on pornography," which I thought was silly and a waste of time. I had heard that John Ashcroft claimed that porn "invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," which is kind of like saying that french fries and beer invade my body through my mouth. I went to Google News to get myself some juicy quotes that I could mock.

But when I read the news article I linked above, here is what I found out about Ashcroft's "war":

The department's most closely watched case involves "extreme" porn producer Rob Zicari and his North Hollywood company Extreme Associates. The prolific Zicari is charged with selling five allegedly obscene videotapes, which he now markets as the "Federal Five," that depict simulated rapes and murder.

Now, I do think that this stuff should be legal on libertarian grounds. But the DOJ's "war on porn" isn't quite the same as a blanket indictment of all men who read Playboy in the bathroom last week, is it?

Does Ashcroft secretly admire Mullah Omar? You couldn't tell it by his actions. Ashcroft indicts people for violating civil law and brings them to trial in front of a jury. If the jury acquits, he's helpless. If the law is changed, no more trials. And if the defendants are convicted, they are fined or placed in prison.

Omar accused and convicted people for violating his interpretation of Islamic law. The Koran was the law. Period. There was no way around the Koran's proscriptions, no mercy, no appeals. And when he did find people guilty, he subjected them to barbaric punishments. The Taliban crushed homosexuals under falling walls. When the Taliban caught people listening to music or watching Western television, they would break the offenders' spines.

Tell me, has Ashcroft ever called for beating wrongdoers? Has he ever indicted someone for wearing makeup? For flying a kite?

"What did you do when radical Islam attacked America, grandpa?"

"I tried to convince my countrymen that there was no difference between elected officials who operated under the rule of law, and vicious religious fanatics who recognized no laws other than themselves."

You know, I hear a lot of insults from the anti-war side about how the militant bloggers are "chickenhawks" and the "101st keyboard brigade." "Why don't you sign up yourself," they sneer. But at least the pro-war side is willing to be serious about the situation. Lots of people who snipe at warbloggers aren't raving Indymedia moonbats. They don't object to the war on principle; they just object to being on the same side as a slightly nutty attorney general who likes to be anointed with oil and sing religious songs. They object to a debate that can't be won by being hip and ironic. They'd rather score points off their opponents then worry about whether some Islamic nutcase will detonate a nuclear warhead in Boston.

Posted 12:35 PM by Floyd

Nobody else is saying it, so, once again, it is left to me to explain what really happened in Iraq yesterday.
Iran declared war on the U.S.

Michele Catalano's latest post is a must-read.

Posted 11:49 AM by Floyd

Here's an interesting trivia question that I found while researching the previous post: How many home runs did Babe Ruth hit? The official answer is 714, but Ruth actually hit another one; he just didn't get any credit for it. Before 1920, if you hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth or later inning, and the runners you batted in were sufficient to win the game, you would get credit for whatever number of bases would advance the winning run across. Strangely, Ruth was given credit for this 715th homer for awhile until it was rescinded:

When is a home run not a home run? Before 1920, not if it came with men on base in the ultimate inning and created a margin of victory greater than one run. A ruling of Special Baseball Records Committee in 1969 reversed its earlier decision that had made home runs of 37 disputed final-inning, game-winning base hits. In accordance with the practice of the day, such a hit, even if it sailed out of the park, would be credited with only as many bases as necessary to plate the winning run. Thus Babe Ruth's "715th home run," hit on July 8, 1918, to win a game against Cleveland, remained a triple.

Posted 11:12 AM by Floyd

Before I got involved with fantasy baseball, I thought that pitchers' wins and losses were the stupidest statistic in the sport. I now believe that wins and losses are the stupidest statistic associated with any human endeavor.

One obvious problem with wins and losses is that pitchers are given credit, or blame, for the performance of the entire team. Give up eight runs while your team scores ten, and you're a winner! Thus poor Jeremy Bonderman, a decent young pitcher for the horrible Detroit Tigers, had 2003 numbers (6-19) that no New York Yankee starter could approach even in his worst nightmares. (Jeff Weaver, New York's worst starter and clearly an inferior player, was 7-9 last year).

While sportswriters and announcers realize that wins and losses don't necessarily reflect pitcher performance, they do so in a weird way. The pitcher is treated as if he is some sort of feudal lord, and the position players are serfs who are supposed to produce a reasonable number of hits for him. Last year Tim Hudson was "plagued by no-decisions." Players buy into this, or pretend to, so Athletics would talk about how they needed to "get Tim the win." Yet if one position player had a stellar game and the team lost, you would never hear anyone say that the other batters had let him down.

Another reason that wins and losses are stupid is that the assignment of the statistics is somewhat arbitrary. "A pitcher is credited with a win when, in a game won by his team, he is the team's pitcher at the time that his team takes a lead that it does not relinquish for the remainder of the game." If he is the starter, he must pitch five innings. Conversely, a loss is assigned to a pitcher who last gives up the lead to the other team.

Suppose a starter gives up eight runs in five innings while his team scores nine. He is pulled from the game, and the relief staff holds the opponents scoreless. Does the starter really deserve the win? Or, to use a not-so-contrived example, suppose Oakland starter Mark Redman pitches six innings and yields two runs. He leaves the game with Oakland leading 4-2. The next two relievers surrender four runs. Finally reliever Chris Hammond enters the game and gets Oakland out of the inning. Oakland responds with a three-run seventh inning, and the A's win. Chris Hammond, who pitched one and a third innings, is given the win. Did Hammond really contribute more to the Athletics' win than Redman?

The flip side of this is that in close games, it is some random reliever who takes the loss, just because he was the most recent pitcher to suffer a lead change. In a recent game between the Mets and the Expos, Expos starter Zach Day gave up two runs in five innings. Reliever Luis Ayala gave up one run in the eleventh inning, and was charged with the loss.

(Redman and Ayala are both on my fantasy team. Yes, I have an axe to grind, and it is large and blunt.)