Beantown Breakdown

Could it be worse in Boston?  Imagine if John Kerry was tossed out of his mansion by Theresa Heinz for philandering.  Imagine if MIT was purchased by California Institute of Technology, if Harvard lost a football game to Yale, if New England clam chowder was suddenly tomato based.  Unimaginable you say?  Sure.  But the surrender by the Red Sox to the Bombers after leading 9-0 in the 7th inning is about as unthinkable as any serious attempt to justify a second term for boy president Obama.  This, following an embarrassing loss, again to the heroic Yankees, on the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park the day before.  Boston is remembering the folly of last September again in the merry month of May.  Oh my!

Of course the other side of the baseball coin is the sheer joy in The Bronx when the Bombers came back from that 9-0 deficit to a risible 15-9 success nearly reaching the joy of Bucky Dent's 1978 HR to beat the Sox in a playoff.

Baseball has a very long season; this year may be painfully and particularly long for Boston.

For today at least, there is joy in the metaphoric Mudville of the Yankees' NYC.

The Unemployment Understatement

Nobody wants to see unemployment percentages rise but this Obama government is doing its very best to manipulate the numbers to its advantage. A letter to the editor by a William T. McCormick, Jr. of Florida in the WSJ dated 4/13/12 illustrates how the logic of numbers masks the seriousness of unemployment under the Obama regime and why there is a tension in the workforce considerably greater than the 8.2% reflects.

Quote: Your April 7 editorial "A Jobs Slowdown" correctly notes that the slightly lower March unemployment rate of 8.2% is due mainly to the reduction in the labor force participation rate. It is noteworthy that, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the participation rate was very stable for the five years preceding the Obama administration, averaging 66.0% and staying between 65.8% and 66.2% over the 60 months from December 2003 through December 2008. The current participation rate of 63.8% is 2.2% lower than the pre-Obama period which, based on a current civilian labor force of 242.6 million, means that 5.3 million people have dropped out of the labor force over the past 3 1/2 years. If the BLS were to count these 5.3 million people as unemployed, the real unemployment rate would be 11.6%, not the 8.2% reported.

Because of this precipitous drop in the labor participation rate, we should all be questioning the methodology that counts unemployed versus dropouts from the labor force, since it has such a dramatic effect on the headline unemployment percent report. In any event, these people aren't unemployed, which explains why the BLS statistics show that the total number employed in March 2012 is 142.0 million, lower than the 142.2 million employed in January 2009, even though the civilian labor force has grown by 7.9 million people since January 2009, the month Mr. Obama took office. End quote.

So remember these calculations as we move inexorably toward November 6 and don't permit the Democrat partisans to mask the truth of Obama's frequent failures and follies.

Baseball Begins

Finally we have the sound of balls on bats and slapping gloves. Ah, spring! So what has been observed during the approximate first week of America's game. Some modest form is already emerging. The heroic Yankees, following bad luck in Tampa, are now back to .500 with scintillating extra inning victories in Baltimore, demonstrating that Marino at 42 is still a force. It is possible the Yankees will win 17 of 19 games against the O's this year. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have continued their malaise of last September with only a solo win thus far. In the NL, the Phillies struggle for stability and the Mets...well, break them up!

Perhaps the most intriguing baseball story thus far is how Ozzie Guillen, new manager of the Florida Marlins, has discovered his love for Fidel Castro in south Florida while the Boston press is already condemning new Red Sox manager, Bobby Valentine, to the ash heap. Problems should have solutions, so here it is: these two managers should trade jobs before each is respectively fired before mid season.

While the great game of baseball is just emerging for 2012 we continue to endure the Obama regime creating class warfare among us. How truly awful. The latest effort of selling the Buffett Rule is so offensive (oh, that ARod would find some offense) and stupid (it does nothing material to close the deficit) and so hypocritical that only perennial bottom feeders such as the metaphoric Pirates, Cubs and Baltimore would pay attention.

In baseball, there are rules. They are followed. Not, however, in the latest chapter of our public life. We have the President/Baseball Commissioner telling the Supreme Court/Umpires that the ObamaCare mandate/new 12 inning game length must be upheld. How silly.

Hell, if one can shred the Constitution, one can certainly shred baseball's rule book. Chaos, why not? Why should the Pirates, Cubs and Baltimore not have a chance, even if they have not paid for players or invested otherwise in their franchises ? After all, we voted for change in 2008, didn't we?