BASEBALL DIARY:
Not so good...Red Sox 7, Rangers 6: the Rangers steal 9 bases, have loads of men on via hits and walks...but wasted many scoring opportunities. And the bullpen failed, failing to hold a 3-run lead in the late innings. A tough start for the Rangers...
Angels 6, Tigers 5: the Tigers didn't play a horrible game, making a nice rally from a 6-0 deficit. But they couldn't get over the hump. Not helping here is that the Tigers are playing the Angels at a bad time; LA has now won 5 in a row.
NFL NEWS:
Wow--so Ben Roethlisberger is suspended for 6 games by the NFL today.
That surprises me a bit; and I almost wonder if the league is going a bit far. After all, Roethlisberger is not charged with any crime; other players suspended by the league, players whom we all agreed SHOULD be suspended, either had been charged or had admitted to criminal activity. One hopes the commissioner isn't under the impression that he had to be tough on Big Ben because Roethlisberger is white, and many players suspended previously were black. Allowing racial identity politics to influence this in any way is wrong.
On the other hand, Ben R needed a kick in the backside; details like the following make that clear:
"The NFL and the Steelers were angered and embarrassed by the tawdry details of Roethlisberger’s night out March 3. In a statement to police, the 20-year-old college student said Roethlisberger encouraged her, and her friends, to take numerous shots of alcohol. Then one of his bodyguards escorted her into a hallway at the Capital City nightclub in Milledgeville, Ga., sat her on a stool and left. She said Roethlisberger walked down the hallway and exposed himself. “I told him it wasn’t ok, no, we don’t need to do this and I proceeded to get up and try to leave,” she said. “I went to the first door I saw, which happened to be a bathroom.” According to her statement, Roethlisberger then followed her into the bathroom and shut the door."
POLITICS UPDATE DEPT:
You know, we have to admit that in 2008, Barack Obama achieved something that really was remarkable: he became the first Democrat to carry the state of Indiana in a presidential contest in ten presidential elections. Not since 1964 had a Democrat (Lyndon Johnson) carried Indiana in a presidential race. And yet, and yet...it is a sign, now, of how far Mr. Obama has slipped when we see how far his star has fallen in the Hoosier state:
"The last two polls from Rasmussen have found his ratings down dramatically among Hoosiers. Last month’s poll found that “just 39 percent of voters in the state now approve of the job he is doing as president . . . Sixty percent disapprove of his job performance, including 47 percent who strongly disapprove.” Two of Indiana’s House Democrats, Joe Donnelly and Baron Hill, are sweating their chances for reelection (and some have wondered whether veteran congressman Pete Visclosky should be sweating, too), while the GOP is expected to retain its current four seats easily."
Meanwhile, over at MSNBC Chris Matthews is becoming either unhinged, badly confused, or both. See what he said the other day concerning Charlie Crist:
"...what happens to Republicans who don't march to the right wing tune? Well they're getting purged. This is Stalin-esque, this stuff...it seems to me we're getting into something here that I do think is particularly nasty. Chuck says there's precedence, and there may well be, but here you see a party basically pruning itself. Going around and saying, "Well we really don't like Arlen Specter. You go find something else to do. Go be a Democrat." We see this with Charlie Crist perhaps being given the boot."
Ugh. How to untangle such a mess? Look, no one in the Republican Party is demanding that Charlie Crist leave the GOP. But the fact is, he's running in a primary against another Republican candidate and...wow...Republican voters like the other guy, Marco Rubio, BETTER. What--are we bound to vote for incumbents like Crist or Arlen Specter forever? Are we forbidden to decide that maybe we prefer someone else?? And in any case, it's not GOPers who are booting Crist out. It's Crist, simply because he's about, apparently, to lose an election, deciding that HE is going to boot HIMSELF from the Republican Party. Because HE is choosing to do that, therefore Republicans are "Stalin-esque"???
That's just ridiculous.
In other polling news---yes, it's confirmed yet again: no bounce for Obama or the Democrats from the passage of ObamaCare. Quinnipiac reports that Obama's approval rating right now is only at 44%.
And only 39% of Americans approve of ObamaCare; 53% oppose it.
I'm a little surprised these findings gained so much mention this morning; in this space we've been tracking exactly these trends for weeks now. I guess it's always important to continue to get confirmation...
