Medary.com

My hometown team is 38-50 at the All-Star break.  Twelve games under .500 is a relative success (considering how bad the Royals have been the past few years).  I was listening to 610 Sports here a while ago, and they gave out grades.  They were pretty generous.  Me--not so much.

• Royals Offense:  F.  The Royals are better than they've been in a while, but are still a pretty pathetic bunch at the plate, with your best everyday player batting a mediocre .286.  Still, you do occasionally get the impression that the Royals are no longer completely helpless--until they come up against a decent pitcher who has a good day, which still happens way, way, way too often.
  
• Royals Defense:  D-.  They're not truly awful like they were the past couple of years (upgrading from Berroa to Pena alone raises them from an F grade).
  
• Royals Starting Pitching:  D.  Gil Meche may or may not be worth that 5-year, $55 million contract, but the starting pitching has been upgraded from abysmal to sporadically competent.  That's a big leap.
• Royals Relief Pitching:  D.  Was an F early in the season but Joachim Soria and Zack Greinke have pulled the bullpen off of the rocks.  For now.
• Royals Management:  D.  Pick a position for Teahen and let him stay there.  Play Buck more (even though Snookums still hates him).  Figure out how to trade a couple of older, surplus outfielders (Brown and Sanders come to mind). Anything you can get from them--draft choices or low-minor prospects, would be gravy at this point.  Pluses:  Alex Gordon and Tony Pena Jr.

Overall Grade.  F.  Failing--still.  For all of the improvement in the Royals (and they have improved across the board from last year), you're still in last place, guys.  That means you still get an F.  (Although, as in grade school, the handwritten note on the grade slip says "shows improvement.")

What if they held an invasion, and nobody noticed?

A few days ago Lebanese daily newspaper Al Mustaqbal quietly reported a limited Syrian invasion of Lebanon. (Via Naharnet.)

Syrian troops on Thursday reportedly have penetrated three kilometers into Lebanese territories, taking up positions in the mountains near Yanta in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

The daily Al Mustaqbal, citing sources who confirmed the cross-border penetration, did not say when the procedure in the Fahs Hill overlooking Deir al-Ashaer in the Rashaya province took place.

The sources said Syrian troops, backed by bulldozers, were fortifying positions "in more than one area" along the Lebanese border, erecting earth mounds and digging "hundreds" of trenches and individual bunkers.

It's just Syria invading Lebanon.  It's not like we should be concerned or anything, I guess . . .

Conservative talk radio must be stopped--because it's conservative, I guess.  Advocates of this position rail about "hate speech" and "intolerance."

Pot, meet kettle.

Whatever happened to "I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it?"

The "problem" seems to be that Rush Limbaugh in the 1980's figured out how to make money on AM radio, and that Al Franken in the 2000's couldn't.  Color me skeptical that shutting down an entire wing of the nation's media (the one which, incidentally and interestingly, interacts most directly with the actual public) is the correct solution to this problem.

There's plenty of intolerance in the world, and based on the huffing and puffing of the Diane Feinsteins of the world, a goodly portion of it seems to come from the left side of the political spectrum.

The Passive Genocide Caucus seems to be gaining strength:
W. House debate over troop withdrawal deepens:  NYT

The president and his aides had thought they could wait to begin discussions about any change in strategy after September 15, when the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, must present a much-anticipated report on Iraq's security and political progress.

Those who are barking the loudest about a withdrawal from Iraq make the point that we didn't adequately consider the consequences of going there in the first place.  While I don't necessarily accept the premise, it's interesting to see that they seem to be doing the very same thing in the opposite direction.

One thing about consideration of the works of Robert Heinlein--it gets you thinking about freedom, liberty, and individual responsibility.  Heinlein was a passionate advocate of all three.

I'll have much to write about, I think, when I have a chance to put my thoughts together.

Filbert's away at the Heinlein Centennial, being held across town in the Kansas City Crown Center.  Pictures and select quotes to come . . .

Eric at Classical Values writes:

. . . I will never forget as long as I live seeing an elderly Chinese man interviewed on a local San Francisco "man in the street" television program. He was asked his opinion about a controversial left-wing proposal to do some damn thing I've long forgotten, and he flatly refused to say what he thought. This didn't satisfy the questioner, who kept pressing him, and finally asked him outright why he was so reluctant to speak.

"Because I might get in trouble with people!" the man said.

This only led to further questioning, and at that point the reporter really wanted to know why he'd be in trouble, and with what people.

Finally, the old man allowed a slight twinkle in his eyes, and said,

"You know.... The social people!"

I do know. It's the social people. They are everywhere, and you really don't want to get in trouble with them. Not if you want to avoid being hassled at your job, go about unmolested, not get targeted or audited by bureaucrats, or scolded at the local church groups, PTA meetings, or (for the wealthier and snobbier) even humiliation at smug cocktail parties and country clubs.

The social people take note of deviations, and even silence at the wrong time. You can get on their shit list by saying that there are still glaciers in Alaska after returning from a trip there and seeing them.

The social people want endless government reaching everywhere. Anything that is good for government (meaning anything that generates the need for more government bureaucracy) is considered good -- regardless of whether it solves the underlying problems. In fact, if it aggravates the problem, so much the better, as aggravating the problems leads to cycles of government-grown, government-aggravated growth!

(IMO, a major push behind the immigration bill comes from bureaucrats and social workers who find the illegal status of the 12 million extremely inconvenient, but would consider their legalization through a complex process to be extremely convenient! Laws are often passed simply because bureaucrats hate to be inconvenienced or because they want more jobs. But both? What a win-win!)

 . . .

That's because the social people package their views as a form of morality, and fewer and fewer people are willing to run the risk of being publicly labeled as immoral. It is now immoral to disagree with the overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming alarmism. A woman publicly scolded me for it not long ago, and while I brushed her off, many in my position would not have, as she is a rich local philanthropist, much accustomed to giving orders and making sure that the wrong people don't get invitations to social events, and just because I don't care about being snubbed socially does not mean that others don't.

The idea that disagreement on such issues is seen as immoral fascinates me on another level, because I think it might shed light on a polarizing aspect of the Culture War. Once it becomes immoral to disagree with the social people, then the only people who will dare to disagree are people who don't mind being considered immoral. I know I'm generalizing here, but I think these divide themselves into two primary groups:

libertarians (and atheists) who are resistant to political arguments dressed up as morality; and

religious people who have their own view of morality as coming from God.

Unfortunately, many ordinary people are willing to have their morality manufactured and directed for them. There is not enough cynicism, and this allows the "vast group of intellectuals whose standards are declining" to wield the vast social power they do not deserve. While I still don't know precisely what to call this vast group, my biggest concern is that people who are given undeserved and unearned power are more likely to abuse it than people who at least had the decency to run for office. In a country built on the premise that no one has the right to rule, those who believe they have the right to rule are the last who should be given power.

The Social People.  Coming to a bedroom, garage, living room, kitchen, school, park, business, television, radio, bar, restaurant, sports venue, highway, sidewalk, Wal-Mart, factory, park, front yard, or back yard near you.  And they're right, and you're wrong.  Deal with it.

Because our enemy are monsters.

Read this.  Look at the pictures.  Look closely.  (There are a lot of pictures, it may take a while to load.  Be patient.)

I told the Iraqi commander, Captain Baker, that it was important that Americans see this; he took me around the graves and showed more than I wanted to see. He said the people had been murdered by al Qaeda. I made video of him speaking, and of the horrible scene. The heat and stench were crushingly oppressive and broken only by the sounds of shovels as Iraqi soldiers kept digging.

Our enemy thinks nothing of slaughtering entire villages--man and woman, child and beast.  They crave the opportunity to do this to Elk Point, South Dakota or Mound City, Missouri.  We fight them now, when they are weak, or we fight them later, when they may be much, much stronger.

So now, the story of the Eggers of Corson, South Dakota:

When neighbors complained that they didn't want to listen to barking dogs from a proposed kennel, Randall and Vicki Eggert decided to give them something else to listen to - donkeys.

"I have a sister in Mobile, Ala., who told me they pretty much make a lot of noise. We did it to irritate the neighbors," Vicki Eggert said. "I figure if the neighbors want to complain, then they'll have to listen to the donkeys."

Eeeyore.

Let me see if I have this story straight.  (go ahead, click the link.  I'll wait.)

OK.

So, if the Earth wasn't, um, the Earth, then much of the United States would be under water.  Or swimming in magma.  Or something like that.  Ooooo-kay.  Let me guess--this research was funded by a Federal grant.

Next, people will be suggesting that the Sun (did you know, it rises in the east and sets in the west?) is the predominant factor in warming the Earth, and not, for instance, carbon emissions from evil Americans.