Right Wing Nut House

Regular visitors to this site will have perhaps been chagrined to discover that the last week or so, there has been a dearth of political blogging at the House. Instead, I have written extensively on the titanic struggle between two different socks - er, Sox that is - and a children’s game that most modern Americans look upon with a haughty disdain as a passion more suited for wheezing old-timers and clueless kids who are unaware that football in fact, is now king in America.

I’m speaking of my 45 year love affair with the game of baseball.

The Miers nomination, Bill Bennett’s comments about race and crime, the DeLay indictment(s), and other more worthy subjects have taken a backseat to what my good friend The Maryhunter has called while he’s guesting on TJ’s excellent NIF Blog, my “obsession” with baseball. I plead guilty as charged. While I generally have many other passions - history, space, reading, writing, cats, and coffee - it is sports and in particular baseball that takes up much of my free time and engages my interest.

I know it is silly. I realize for a grown man to memorize a baseball batter’s average with runners in scoring position (RISP) or a pitcher’s strikeouts to walks ratio borders on the irrational. And this obsession recently has not been helping either my links or my traffic for this blog.

But I don’t care. And for this obsession with my Chicago White Sox - my beloveds - I am forced to name myself, Rick Moran, as Cluebat of the Week.

To the overwhelming majority of you who despise baseball, I know this comes as very good news. Even though some prominent conservatives are huge baseball fans - George Will and George Bush come immediately to mind - I realize that the right wing in America has abandoned this one tradition that, as James Earl Jones playing the Salingeresque Terry Mann in the baseball fable Field of Dreams points out, is “the one constant” through all the years of struggle and upheaval which has kept America together:

And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.

It should go without saying that a game that has insisted on maintaining an anti-trust exemption and fights fiercely to keep control of both the number and location of franchises is anti-competitive and anti-free market, attributes that make baseball a very un-conservative pastime. And the morally reprehensible behavior by athletes that at times has been winked at or even condoned by the league does not recommend the game as a good example of American morality.

Nevertheless, my cluelessness about the importance of baseball as compared to some of the stories and individuals covered in this week’s Carnival should be seen in the context of my love for a truly remarkable American game where “the mystic chords of memory” bind us in inexplicable and mysterious ways to our fathers, our grandfathers, and their grandfathers before them. Baseball is memory. And despite all, it will remain for me a touchstone to my youth and a source of pleasure for as long as I endure on this earth.

” When you come to a fork in the road….Take it “
(Yogi Berra)

“Hey Yogi! You’ve analyzed the Democratic Party platform perfectly!”
(Me)
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Don Surber leads off this “diamond” edition of the Carnival with some rational and cogent thoughts on how conservatives should be opposing Robert Byrd in his re-election bid for the Senate. Don’t play the race card says Don. Agreed, but you gotta admit Jeff Goldstein’s “brief conversations with Senator Robert Byrd’s (D-WV) Grand Kleagle hood” is one of the funniest bits on the net.

Wonder Woman does a great job fisking an anti-American flash presentation on the history of our relationship with Saddam Hussein. How the left always ends up on the wrong side of history is a source of continuing fascination with me.

Josh Cohen skewers the MSM for celebrity obsession at the expense of reporting real news. Given the vapidity of thought and cluelessness of most celebrities when it comes to politics, I heartily agree.

Two Dogs has some…ahem, interesting thoughts on Bill Bennett’s comments regarding race and crime as well as a message for the moonbats: Meany: “I know that you have a masters degree in 15th Century poetry, Moonbeam, but that doesn’t mean that you are smart, that means that you are a dumbass.” Hee.

An arts center in Atlanta named for the late Gangsta Rapper Tupac Shakur? Mensa Barbie has the skinny and a thought on where the arts may have diverged from the dominant culture.

Pat Curley has an interesting article on why many Americans still believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 which gives the lie to Al Gore’s oft repeated claims of the Bush Administration promoting the idea.

Jay at Stop the ACLU has a question for the “rights” group about why it’s bad to print pictures of a prostitutes Johns in the newspaper but alright to print pictures of terrorists being abused by Americans.

Omigod…Beth has a live one. A commenter actually believed that her post for White Trash Wednesday featuring the sometimes catty, usually trashy, and always clueless Beulah Mae was written by a real person! And you won’t believe the IP address either.

Ferdy the Cat says we should be cautious when reading stories on the internet. First, see if the story comes from an accredited journalist. Ferdy: “If it doesn’t, then it may be distorted or fabricated. If it does, then it may be distorted or fabricated.” One smart cat, that Ferdy…

Carnival Superhero, the lovely Pamela of Atlas Shrugs gives us the horrifying news that the UN’s Nuclear “watchdog” Mohamed ElBaradei (some watchdog!) is up for the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe while they’re at it they could give a humanitarian award to Saddam Hussein.

Rachel at the excellent blog Tinkerty Tonk has some thoughts on the panting moonbats who see ABC’s Drama Commander in Chief as paving the way for Hillary in ‘08. Are we “smart enough” to elect a woman President? Rachel: “Geez, if it weren’t for Geena Davis, I’d never have considered such a new-fangled notion. What’ll they think of next?” Yup.

Here’s your weekly dose of excellent satire from two of our Carnival regulars. First, The Nose on your Face has the mystery of the arresting officer’s missing hand at the Cindy Sheehan media circus during the anti-war demonstration. This one as well as Mr. Satire’s take on some Garrison Keillor hypocrisy are both laugh out loud funny as well as being unsafe for work.

AJ at The Strata-Sphere has some truly shocking revelations about a probable source for global warming that shoots holes in the luddite arguments about climate change.

Van Helsing is tracking moonbat Donald Sutherland and his recent breakdown in public over how America is doomed! Doomed I tell you. Says the slayer: “The same to you Donald, and to the rest of the infantile group-thinking zillionaire traitors who make up the Hollywood Left.” Uh-huh.

More on Sutherland from Duncan Avatar who reminds us all of what actors actually do as opposed to who they really are: “Remember folks, Donald only plays intelligent human beings on television, doesn’t mean he himself is intelligent.” As I former actor, I can attest to the truthfullness of that statement.

Matt Barr has some fascinating thoughts on an ad campaign in Florida regarding new laws about guns and victims rights that are designed to keep clueless criminals from making a mockery of the law.

Cao (pronounced “key”) has everything you want to know about the University of Oklahoma cluebat who could very well have been America’s very first suicide bomber. We can only hope that any imitators are equally clueless about high explosives. Great post, Blogmama.

Not to be outdone, The Maryhunter reminds us all why Cindy Sheehan is a c**t. While Maryhunter doesn’t use that perjorative, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a most apt description of this clueless slimeball. Great job, TMH.

Mike Huckabee for President has more on Al Gore’s rant of a speech given in moonbat heaven, San Francisco, about how America is in D-A-N-G-E-R. After quoting how Dan Rather was “forced out by the White House (????)” clueless Al quotes Dandy Dan by saying that “V news has been “dumbed down and tarted up.” As Blue State Republican says “DAN RATHER? He quotes Dan Rather?”

Orac is mad at Bill O’Reilly and for good reason. O’Reilly evidently needs some remedial work in history not to mention some common sense and a decent sense of when to keep his mouth shut. Other than that, I can’t think of a thing wrong with him.

Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade brings us the story of an air traffic controller in Las Vegas that made a huge, potentially catastrophic mistake.

The Prowling Pachyderms from Elephants in Academia have fleshed out a story about a Kansas State “Cultural Conference” where one of the topics will be “The Secret Lives of Conservatives.” One of the subtopics is “sexual dysfunction in conservatives.” Hey moonbats! Speak for yourselves!

Jimmie K has some truly clueless news about the CIA’s Porter Goss not convening a special committee to look into the abject failures of our intelligence service with regard to 9/11, WMD, etc. etc. etc… Goss evidently gave into pressure from the agency about how it would “lower morale.” Better to get rid of incompetents rather than hurt the spooks feelings, I should think.

Finally, I criticize the stupidity of the Boston Red Sox in Game 1 of the Division Series against my beloved White Sox.