The View from Right Field

Adrian Cardenas: Another Cubs Hero

I have written about Jimmy Qualls and Tarzan Joe Wallis being Cubs heroes because they broke up no-hit bids against the Cubs in the ninth inning.  Tarzan Joe’s hit was even with two outs and two strikes in the ninth.  The fact that the pitcher in each case was Tom Seaver of the Mets makes them even bigger heroes, but to tonight’s game.

A.J. Burnett of the Pittsburgh Pirates had a no-hitter going with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning of tonight's game when Adrian Cardenas, just up from Iowa, pinch hit.  On a 3-2 count Cardenas lined a single to right field.  There would be no no-hitter.  And the Cubs major league-record streak of 7441 games without being no-hit continued.

As Wayne Buckner @TheWrigleyBlog tweeted: “Nobody no hits the Cubs. Nobody!”

You can see Cardenas’s hit here.

Going to Cooperstown

I'm taking a short break.  We're going to Cooperstown, New York, for the long-overdue induction of Ron Santo into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I'll be back in about a week and a half.

David Axelrod Says Mitt Romney Doesn’t Take Responsibility. Barack Obama Says It’s George W. Bush’s Fault

On CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday, senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said this of Mitt Romney:

“If Mitt Romney became president he would have a placard on his desk saying the buck stops there."

This is from the campaign manager for the person who is always talking about how bad the economy was when he became President and that, while he is doing his best, it’s all the fault of George W. Bush and those mean Republicans in Congress who have stalled everything he wants to do – like the 2009 stimulus and Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare?

Saying Sorry to Pakistan

You may have missed it back on July 4 what with the fireworks and Joey Chestnut’s sixth straight victory in the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Championship, but after seven months of refusing to apologize to Pakistan for the death of 24 Pakistani troops in a fight near the Afghan border in November, Secretary of State Clinton said “sorry” on July 3.*  Apparently, the Obama administration finally gave in because, among other things, with Pakistan having closed the  border between Afghanistan and itself, it was costing us $100 million a month more to move supplies into Afghanistan (and start bringing other stuff out). 

Personally, I have no problem with the apology (or the “sorry” or whatever it was).  What happened in November was a terrible mistake.  Maybe Pakistan was partly at fault, too, but it wasn’t totally their fault.  And besides, 24 people died because of the mistake.  It would have been no big deal to say “sorry” – if we had done it right away.

But the Pentagon objected.  Even now, some White House advisers didn’t want the U.S. to use the word “apologize” because some Republicans would criticize President Obama.*  And, who knows, maybe some of it was just Barack Obama not liking to apologize for things he did, as opposed to apologizing for what other presidents have done.

As I said, it wouldn’t have been a big deal to say sorry, if we had done it right away.  But by refusing to apologize time after time and then finally giving in after seven months, we look weak.  It looks like Pakistan, or anybody else, can push us around, and we’ll give in, if the price of standing our ground costs too much money or is too big of a hassle.

No, it wasn’t the apology, or the “sorry” or whichever it was, that bothered me.  It was the incompetence of the way it was done.

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* Adam Entous and Tom Wright, “At Barbecue, Signs of a U.A. Apology,” The Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2012.

Barack Obama Is Not a Socialist: From Somebody Who Knows Real Socialism

Earlier this week, Milos Forman, Academy Award-winning director, wrote in The New York Times that he doesn’t “see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama” and that he doesn’t like “the word ‘socialist’ being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gringrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others.”

But before liberals get too happy with Mr. Forman’s article, they need to read it a little closer.  Mr. Forman, you see, was born in Czechoslovakia in 1932 and did not leave that country until 1968, so when he talks about “socialism,” he isn’t talking about the soft socialism of Western Europe.  He is talking about the socialism that he knew for twenty years:

“The critics cry, ‘Obamacare is socialism!’ They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism. …

I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or, thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation. Mr. Obama is accused of trying to expand the reach of government – into health care, financial regulation, the auto industry and so on. It’s fair to question whether the federal government should have expanded powers: America, to its credit, has debated this since its birth. But let’s be clear about how frightening socialism actually could be.

Marx believed that we could wipe out social inequities and Lenin tested those ideas on the Soviet Union. It was his dream to create a classless society. But reality set in, as it always does. And the results were devastating. Blood flowed through Russia’s streets. The Soviet elite usurped all privileges; sycophants were allowed some and the plebes none. The entire Eastern bloc, including Czechoslovakia, followed miserably.

I’m not sure Americans today appreciate quite how predatory socialism was. It was not – as Mr. Obama’s detractors suggest – merely a government so centralized and bloated that it hobbled private enterprise: it was a spoils system that killed off everything, all in the name of ‘social justice.’”

Mr. Forman is right.  President Obama is not a socialist, and we should not accuse him of being one.  But Mr. Forman is even more right when he reminds us of what real socialism can become and how important it is to make sure it does not ever come back.

We also need to be grateful for those of our leaders who understood the truth about the kind of socialism Mr. Forman experienced and who helped ensure our victory over it in the war that ended in Berlin on November 9, 1989.

New Videos for All

First, Merle Hazard's new video on the fiscal cliff:

 

Second, Kerry Wood's new commercial for State Farm:

 

Bryan LaHair Is Why I’m Watching the All-Star Game

I wasn’t planning on watching the All-Star Game on Tuesday.  The Cubs have only had one All-Star each of the last three years, and in 2009 Ted Lilly didn’t even get to play.  (The 2009 game was played in St. Louis, and Ted Lilly was, I think, booed more than any other player.  Of course, the reason for that was the Ted had slammed into the Cardinals catcher so hard in a play at the plate the previous September that the Cardinals catcher had to leave the game.)

In any case, I figured there would be only one Cubs player at the All-Star Game this year, he would be a reserve, and who knows if he would get to play.  But then things changed; the Cubs have two players going to the All-Star Game, and now I’m going to watch.  It’s not just because the Cubs have two players, though.  It’s because who one of them is: Bryan LaHair.

Bryan started in pro ball in 2003, after having been picked in the 39th round of the 2002 draft.  Since then, and before this year, he has played his entire career in the minor leagues, except for 45 games with Seattle in 2008 and 20 games with the Cubs last September.  After a great season in the Pacific Coast League last year (he was the PCL MVP), Bryan finally got his chance this year.  And he took advantage of it.  By June 7 he had twelve home runs, a .311 batting average, and an OPS over .900.  When he came in second in the voting by his fellow players for the All-Star game, he was on the team (because Joey Votto, who was first in the player voting also won the fan voting).

So, after 970 games and 3624 at bats in the minor leagues, Bryan LaHair, at 29 years old, is going to the All-Star Game in his first full season in the major leagues.  And I’m going to watch.

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Note: Bryan was in the All-Star Game last year, too.  The Triple A All-Star Game.  He is, as far as I can tell, the only player from the Triple A All-Star Game last year who will be in the Major League All-Star Game this year. 

The Expansion of Medicaid Under Obamacare: What Now?

As I mentioned last week, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare) by a 5-4 vote, the Court also, by a 7-2 majority, struck down that section of the law that tried to force states to participate in the law’s expansion of Medicaid (which was one of the ways Obamacare was going to achieve near-universal health care coverage).  The Affordable Care Act provided that, if states refused to go along with, and pay part of the cost of, the law’s expansion of Medicaid, they would lose the money they were already receiving for their current Medicaid program.  In his opinion Chief Justice Roberts said that the federal government could withhold extra Medicaid money from states that did not agree to expand their Medicaid programs, but it couldn’t take away money they were currently getting.

Since the decision, some governors have indicated that they do not want to participate in the expansion of Medicaid because they do not think their states can afford it.  Liberals are appalled.  The New York Times worries that “substantial numbers of the very poor could be left out of [health care] coverage” if this happens.  Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic argues it would be silly for states to not participate in the expansion: 

“But state spending on Medicaid would grow less than 3 percent overall, according to the Congressional Budget Office. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, the real cost to states would be even lower than that:

‘To assess the fiscal impact on states of the Medicaid expansion, one must look at more than just Medicaid, because the health reform law’s coverage expansions will reduce some state and local costs.  As a result of health reform, Medicaid will essentially pay for many health services now provided to people who are uninsured.  Thus, the federal government will bear a substantial share of the cost of providing health care services to people whose health care costs otherwise would be borne in part by state or local governments.’” 

But if this Medicaid expansion is as important as The New York Times says, and if the cost is as little as Mr. Cohn says, why doesn’t President Obama just propose that the federal government pay for it?  According to Mr. Cohn, the federal government is going to pay for most of the cost anyway, so why not pay for all of it?  If it’s the federal government’s idea and the federal government’s law, why shouldn’t the federal government pay for it?*

It’s like President Obama’s idea to require health insurance plans to provide free contraception services to women.  It became a big deal when the President tried to get religious-affiliated institutions to provide this coverage through their health insurance plans.  Some people raised freedom of religion issues under the First Amendment.  The Administration tried to solve the problem by saying that they wouldn’t make the religious-affiliated institution pay for the contraception coverage.  They would make the insurance companies provide it for free.**

But if this coverage is so important for women’s health, why didn’t the Administration just say the federal government would pay for it.  If the Administration tries to claim that the Republicans in the House would stop them, why didn’t they do it when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker?  If it’s critical now, it was critical then.  There wouldn’t be a First Amendment issue if the federal government was providing it.  And if it is so inexpensive that insurance companies can do it for free, it shouldn’t’ cost the federal government that much to provide it.

It’s actually getting to be a trend with President Obama:  He says he’ll provide the benefits, but he wants somebody to pay for them.

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* I assume that least part of the reason the President wanted the states to pay a share of the cost of expanding Medicaid was so that he could claim that Obamacare would not cost any money and would actually save money.  If the federal government had to pay the total cost of the expansion of Medicaid, he couldn’t have made that claim.

** Sort of like how the Tooth Fairy pays for little kids’ teeth when they come out.  It’s magic.