April 01, 2008

RAINOUT READING: "ASSIGN YOGI BERRA TO CAPE CANAVERAL; HE COULD HANDLE ANY MISSILE"

Opening Day at Yankee Stadium cost Horsefeathers approximately $50 (parking+ lunch) and the game was cancelled due to a light misty drizzle. Chatting with an employee who was present for her 28th Opening Day, she mentioned there'd been 2 cancellations for snow, but this was the first she'd seen for mist. Further proof that we're becoming a nation of wimps! After struggling through horrendous traffic we returned home and consoled ourselves with memories of when baseball was still a game. Here is our all time favorite baseball poem. Anyone who loves the game, even Yankee haters will enjoy this one, by Marianne Moore:

BASEBALL AND WRITING

Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement -
a fever in the victim -
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited? Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way - a duel -
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
back to plate. (His spring
de-winged a bat swing.)
They have that killer instinct;
yet Elston - whose catching
arm has hurt them all with the bat -
when questioned, says, unenviously,
"I'm very satisfied. We won."
Shorn of the batting crown, says, "We";
robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
the massive run need not be everything.
"Going, going . . . " Is
it? Roger Maris
has it, running fast. You will
never see a finer catch. Well . . .
"Mickey, leaping like the devil" - why
gild it, although deer sounds better -
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
one-handing the souvenir-to-be
meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather. "Strike! . . . Strike two!"
Fouled back. A blur.
It's gone. You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
I think I helped a little bit."
All business, each, and modesty.
Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
In that galaxy of nine, say which
won the pennant? Each. It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos -
like Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-
diagnosis
with pick-off psychosis.
Pitching is a large subject.
Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
catch your corners - even trouble
Mickey Mantle. ("Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!"
With some pedagogy,
you'll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees. Trying
indeed! The secret implying:
"I can stand here, bat held steady."
One may suit him;
none has hit him.
Imponderables smite him.
Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
require food, rest, respite from ruffians. (Drat it!
Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow's milk, "tiger's milk," soy milk, carrot juice,
brewer's yeast (high-potency -
concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez -
deadly in a pinch. And "Yes,
it's work; I want you to bear down,
but enjoy it
while you're doing it."
Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
if you have a rummage sale,
don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
O flashing Orion,
your stars are muscled like the lion.

March 30, 2008

OPENING DAY AT THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT

        Horsefeathers will be at his house of worship, Yankee Stadium, for its final opening day services. Hope may spring eternal, but not for this Yankee fan. The team will be lucky to win half its games. With aging stars locked into long term contracts, and young pitchers with fragile arms, their vaunted offense won't be enough. Without performance enhancers, Posada, Jeter, Damon, Matsui and Abreu are all on the downslope, some steeply, and A-Rod will be pitched around. Then there's the defense---pathetic. Casey Stengel said "I hate them guys who knock in 2 runs and let in 3." Well the Yankees have that kind of defense. Can Joe Girardi refrain from overusing his young stud pitchers? Not with the newest generation of Steinbrenner oafs breathing down his neck. Which pitcher will be first to blow out his arm? My guess: Joba Chamberlain.

      Our prediction: The Detroit Tigers, led by the surpisingly effective Dontrelle Willis, will win in the American League and easily prevail over the New York Mets in the World Series. We hope we're wrong and that all the Yankees young pitchers remain healthy while their older players hold off Father Time for one more year, but we don't think it will happen.

March 29, 2008

GEERT WILDERS VS THE BARBARIANS

In the heart of effete and cowardly Western civilization, a man who refuses to submit:

March 12, 2008

Spitzer Agonistes

As human nature once again trumps politics, some literary suggestions for the former Governor, from ARLA

February 19, 2008

BUSH IS TO BLAME

Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers
By PATRICIA COHEN
The suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004.

February 10, 2008

TRADERS CATCHING UP WITH HORSEFEATHERS

Sunday on the Presidential trading markets

Intrade

Contract Bid Ask Last Vol Chge
2008.PRES.CLINTON(H)
Hillary Clinton to win 2008 US Presidential Election 23.0 24.9 23.0 180878 -2.5
2008.PRES.McCAIN
John McCain to win 2008 US Presidential Election 33.3 34.0 33.3 123778 +1.1
2008.PRES.OBAMA
Barack Obama to win 2008 US Presidential Election 40.7 40.9 40.9 86877 +0.6

January 13, 2008

AN ARMY OF MURDERERS ROAMS AMERICA

Quick! Hide the children. The New York Times has learned that murderous Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are on a rampage around the country. Of course the Times's reliably left anti-war reporters, Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez, are full of crocodile tears for these supposed sufferers from PTSD. The fact that the homicide rate among war vets is LOWER than for the general population is not mentioned because it conflicts with their childish narrative. In Timesworld we have no enemies, only friends we've abused unfairly. Furthermore, we don't see the Times devoting its reportorial zeal to seeking out the stories of growth and maturation in response to trauma because that would conflict with their anti-war narrative. To the reporterettes for whom the worst trauma they've ever experienced was getting a B+ in Queer Studies we'd say they could use a little psychotherapeutic help themselves. We suspect they got a lot of pleasure finding "victims" through whom to narrate their lurid fantasies.

For a thorough analysis of the Times's anti-veteran agenda see Bruce Kesler here.

January 11, 2008

More On The Mitfords

From Rita Kramer: Not My Mitfords

January 04, 2008

IT'S ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING

        The idiotic Iowa caucuses have revealed enough so that Horsefeathers is now ready to call the 2008 election: Obama will easily beat Mc'Cain for the Presidency.
        Instead of worrying about the election, save time and energy; skip the next 9 mos of the media manufactured horse race. Instead get ready for a torrent of politically correct cant, and the replacement of neo-conservative utopianism by liberal utopianism. The neo-conservative faith in Democracy for all, with its accompanying fantastical belief that everyone craves freedom, will be replaced by the Liberal utopianism that believes all conflicts can be resolved using words and therapeutic empathy. When Islamic barbarism strikes again, we'll deploy cadres of psychotherapists and lawyers to help the aggrieved Jihadis, driven to despair by the unfair distribution of wealth and power. Remember this, however, it might have been worse; it might have been President Hillary.

January 01, 2008

WHEN BASEBALL WAS AMERICA'S GAME...

...and America was still America.

BABE RUTH AND THE HOLOCAUST.
Don't miss the letter to the editor from the Babe's granddaughter.

December 11, 2007

ANNALS OF PERVERSION

Father killed daughter for not wearing hijab, her friends say
(See American Thinker)

Hattip to Yale Kramer

December 09, 2007

LUST TO KILL

Jihadism, Liberalism and Perversion.

December 02, 2007

OH THOSE MITFORD GIRLS!

Guest blogger, Rita Kramer, discusses the Mitford sisters.

        Please—enough with the Mitfords already! A whole industry has existed for years publishing breathless, admiring books about the delightful, charming, witty Mitford sisters, growing up in between-the-wars England and the Continent, writing books for us and letters to each other, the latest collection of which are reviewed in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Yes, they were clever, those girls, one of whom (Jessica) became a Communist (but lived out her life in the capitalist California sunshine), another (Unity) a fanatic Nazi with such a fevered love for Adolf Hitler that she shot herself in the head when England declared war on Germany. (She lived, but even more brain-damaged than before.) And there’s Diana, the one who left her husband to join British Fascist leader Oswald Mosely in his attempts to rouse the British public in support of Hitler and of good old English-style anti-Semitism. She followed him to jail and defended his positions to her dying day. Yet there is a segment of the reading public that just can’t get enough of the Mitford sisters. Celebrities in their day, they remain so down to the present, due to what the Times’ Caryn James calls “their irresistible appeal.”

        Sorry, but these were horrible people, the Mitfords and their set. Morally blind, to the point of obscenity. The Times reviewer thinks the Mitford archness amusing —OK, no harm in that, just a matter of taste. But these people were friends—friends!—of Hitler. Like other reviewers before her, the Times’ reviewer treats their pro-Nazi positions with a touch of disapproval, almost as though they had voted Republican. They never went back on those views or disclaimed them, even after we all knew about Auschwitz. (Of course Der Fuhrer didn’t really know the details, as Goering said at Nuremburg, and that was the Mosleys’ position.) The most important thing the much-praised author Nancy Mitford ever wrote was a letter denouncing her Fascist sister Diana for what she was--a kind of upper-class British Eva Braun. What a repulsive bunch, what a depressing cache of letters.

November 26, 2007

IT'S THE ROOT CAUSES: PRES. BUSH MEET NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

PRIME MINISTER CHAMBERLAIN, HOUSE OF COMMONS, OCTOBER 5, 1938

As regards future policy, it seems to me that there are really only two possible alternatives. One of them is to base yourself upon the view that any sort of friendly relation, or possible relations, shall I say, with totalitarian States are impossible, that the assurances which have been given to me personally are worthless, that they have sinister designs and that they are bent upon the domination of Europe and the gradual destruction of democracies. Of course, on that hypothesis, war has got to come, and that is the view--a perfectly intelligible view--of a certain number of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen in this House….

If that is hon. Members' conviction, there is no future hope for civilisation or for any of the things that make life worth living. Does the experience of the Great War and of the years that followed it give us reasonable hope that if some new war started that would end war any more than the last one did? No. I do not believe that war is inevitable. Someone put into my hand a remark made by the great Pitt about 1787, when he said:
"To suppose that any nation can be unalterably the enemy of another is weak and childish and has its foundations neither in the experience of nations not in the history of man."

It seems to me that the strongest argument against the inevitability of war is to be found in something that everyone has recognized in every part of the House. That is the universal aversion from war of the people, their hatred of the notion of starting to kill one another again….

What is the alternative to this bleak and barren policy of the inevitability of war? In my view it is that we should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a programme would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with dictators, and of talks man to man on the basis that each, while maintaining his own ideas of the internal government of his country, is willing to allow that other systems may suit better other peoples. The party opposite surely have the same idea in mind even if they put it in a different way. They want a world conference. Well, I have had some experiences of conferences, and one thing I do feel certain of is that it better to have no conference at all than a conference which is a failure. The corollary to that is that before you enter a conference you must have laid out very clearly the lines on which you are going to proceed, if you are at least to have in front of you’re a reasonable prospect that you may obtain success. I am not saying that a conference would not have its place in due course. But I say it is no use to call a conference of the world, including these totalitarian Powers, until you are sure they are going to attend, and not only that they are going to attend, but that they are going to attend with the intention of aiding you in the policy on which you have set your heart.

I am told that the policy which I have tried to describe is inconsistent with the continuance, and much more inconsistent with the acceleration of our present programme of arms. I am asked how I can reconcile an appeal to the country to support the continuance of this programme with the words which I used when I came back from Munich the other day and spoke of my belief that we might have peace in our time. I hope hon. Members will not be disposed to read into words used in a moment of some emotion, after a long and exhausting day, after I had driven through miles of excited, enthusiastic, cheering people--I hope they will not read into those words more than they were intended to convey.

I do indeed believe that we may yet secure peace for our time, but I never meant to suggest that we should do that by disarmament, until we can induce others to disarm too. Our past experience has shown us only too clearly that weakness in armed strength means weakness in diplomacy, and if we want to secure a lasting peace, I realise that diplomacy cannot be effective unless the Consciousness exists, not here alone, but elsewhere, that behind the diplomacy is the strength to give effect ........

I cannot help feeling that if, after all, war had come upon us, the people of this Country would have lost their spiritual faith altogether. As it turned out the other way, I think we have all seen something like a new spiritual revival, and I know that everywhere there is a strong desire among the people to record their readiness to serve their Country, where-ever or however their services could be most useful. I would like to take advantage of that strong feeling if it is possible, and although I must frankly say that at this moment I do not myself clearly see my way to any particular scheme, yet I want also to say that I am ready to consider any suggestion that may be made to me, in a very sympathetic spirit.

Finally, I would like to repeat what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday in his great speech. Our policy of appeasement does not mean that we are going to seek new friends at the expense of old ones, or, in-deed, at the expense of any other nations at all. I do not think that at any time there has been a more complete identity of views between the French Government and ourselves than there is at the present time. Their objective is the same as ours--to obtain the collaboration of all nations, not excluding the totalitarian States, in building up a lasting peace for Europe. That seems to me to be a policy which would answer my hon. Friends' appeal, a policy which should command the support of all who believe in the power of human will to control human destiny. If we cannot here this afternoon emulate the patriotic unanimity of the French Chamber, this House can by a decisive majority show its approval of the Government's determination to pursue it.

[The vote which followed supported the government 369 to 150.]

November 21, 2007

ANNAPOLIS: SELLING OUT ISRAEL FOR A BARREL OF OIL

With oil approaching $100/barrel, and none of it pumped in Israel, the West has invited the hungry Arab hyenas to dine on the Jewish state in return for an addict's fix. The Czechs at least objected when Chamberlain served them up to Hitler. Olmert not only doesn't object, he wants to be known as chef de cuisine.

Churchill's words to Chamberlain apply equally to Condi Rice and Ehud Olmert: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."