October 2012 archive

Oct 31 2012

On This Day In History October 31

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 61 days remaining until the end of the year.

This day is internationally known as Halloween, also known as All Hallow’s Eve, Reformation Day, and Day of the Dead for the Philippines

On this day in 1926, Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital.

Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, the son of a rabbi. At a young age, he immigrated with his family to Appleton, Wisconsin, and soon demonstrated a natural acrobatic ability and an extraordinary skill at picking locks.

He went on his first international tour in 1900 and performed all over Europe to great acclaim. In executing his escapes, he relied on strength, dexterity, and concentration-not trickery-and was a great showman.

In 1908, Houdini began performing more dangerous and dramatic escapes. In a favorite act, he was bound and then locked in an ironbound chest that was dropped into a water tank or thrown off a boat. In another, he was heavily bound and then suspended upside down in a glass-walled water tank. Other acts featured Houdini being hung from a skyscraper in a straitjacket, or bound and buried-without a coffin-under six feet of dirt.

In his later years, Houdini campaigned against mediums, mind readers, fakirs, and others who claimed supernatural talents but depended on tricks. At the same time, he was deeply interested in spiritualism and made a pact with his wife and friends that the first to die was to try and communicate with the world of reality from the spirit world.

Eyewitnesses to an incident in Montreal gave rise to speculation that Houdini’s death was caused by a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, who delivered multiple blows to Houdini’s abdomen to test Houdini’s claim that he was able to take any blow to the body above the waist without injury.

The eyewitnesses, students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz (sometimes called Jack Price and Sam Smiley), proferred accounts of the incident that generally corroborated one another. The following is Price’s description of events:

   Houdini was reclining on his couch after his performance, having an art student sketch him. When Whitehead came in and asked if it was true that Houdini could take any blow to the stomach, Houdini replied groggily in the affirmative. In this instance, he was hit three times before Houdini could tighten up his stomach muscles to avoid serious injury. Whitehead reportedly continued hitting Houdini several more times and Houdini acted as though he were in some pain.

Houdini reportedly stated that if he had time to prepare himself properly he would have been in a better position to take the blows. He had apparently been suffering from appendicitis for several days prior and yet refused medical treatment. His appendix would likely have burst on its own without the trauma. Although in serious pain, Houdini continued to travel without seeking medical attention.

When Houdini arrived at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 F (40 C). Despite a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, Houdini took the stage. He was reported to have passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit’s Grace Hospital.

Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. in Room 401 on October 31, aged 52.

After taking statements from Price and Smilovitz, Houdini’s insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing-room incident and paid double indemnity.

Houdini’s funeral was held on November 4, 1926 in New York, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his gravesite. To this day the Society holds a broken wand ceremony at the grave site in November. Houdini’s widow, Bess, died on February 11, 1943, aged 67, in Needles, California. She had expressed a wish to be buried next to him but instead was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester, New York, as her Catholic family refused to allow her to be buried in a Jewish cemetery out of concern for her soul.

Oct 30 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: A Big Storm Requires Big Government

Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.

Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.

Bill McKibben: Why ‘Frankenstorm’ Is Just Right for Hurricane Sandy

Watching Sandy on her careening path toward the Eastern Seaboard scares me more than it would have 15 months ago. That’s because my home state took the brunt of Irene, last year’s “sprawling,” “surly,” “record-breaking” Atlantic storm. I know now exactly how much power a warm sea can contain and how far that pain can spread.

And in the process, feeling that fear, I begin to sense what the future may be like, as more and more of the world finds itself facing ever-more-frequent assaults from the amped-up forces of the not-so-natural world.

You can’t, as the climate-change deniers love to say, blame any particular hurricane on global warming. They’re born, as they always have been, when a tropical wave launches off the African coast and heads out into the open ocean. But when that ocean is hot-and at the moment sea surface temperatures off the Northeast are five degrees higher than normal-a storm like Sandy can lurch north longer and stronger, drawing huge quantities of moisture into its clouds, and then dumping them ashore.

John Nichols” Mitt Romney Is Just Not That Into Federal Disaster Relief

Who would have thought that a late-season hurricane would sweep up the East Coast of the United States on the eve of one of the closest election contests in the country’s history?

Not, presumably, Mitt Romney. [..]

Romney says he “absolutely” wants to decrease the role of FEMA in particular, and the federal government in general, when it comes to dealing with natural disasters. Specifically, he wants to shift more responsibility for responding to storms to the states-despite the fact that, as Hurricane Sandy well illustrates, storms do not respect political jurisdictions. And he appears to be enthusiastic about the idea of substantial privatization of relief initiatives.

Paul Greenberg: An Oyster in the Storm

DOWN here at the end of Manhattan, on the border between evacuation zones B and C, I’m prepared, mostly. My bathtub is full of water, as is every container I own. My flashlights are battery-ed up, the pantry is crammed with canned goods and I even roasted a pork shoulder that I plan to gnaw on in the darkness if ConEd shuts down the power.

But as I confidently tick off all the things that Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recommends for my defense as Hurricane Sandy bears down on me, I find I’m desperately missing one thing.

I wish I had some oysters.

I’m not talking about oysters to eat – although a dozen would be nice to go with that leftover bottle of Champagne that I really should drink if the fridge goes off. I’m talking about the oysters that once protected New Yorkers from storm surges, a bivalve population that numbered in the trillions and that played a critical role in stabilizing the shoreline from Washington to Boston.

Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger: 10 Filthy-Rich, Tax-Dodging Hypocrites Pushing Disastrous Austerity on America

The Fix the Debt coalition is using the so-called “fiscal cliff” to push the same old corporate agenda of more tax breaks while shifting the burden on to the rest of us.

Brace yourself for one of the most aggressive corporate lobbying campaigns of all time. And one of the most hypocritical.

“Fix the Debt” is a coalition of more than 80 CEOs who claim they know best how to deal with our nation’s fiscal challenges. The group boasts a $60 million budget just for the initial phase of a massive media and lobbying campaign.

The irony is that CEOs in the coalition’s leadership have been major contributors to the national debt they now claim to know how to fix. These are guys who’ve mastered every tax-dodging trick in the book. And now that they’ve boosted their corporate profits by draining the public treasury, how do they propose we put our fiscal house back in order? By squeezing programs for the poor and elderly, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Michael T. Klare: Romney’s Extremist Energy Plan and the Systematic Plundering of America

As he seeks the support of undecided voters in key swing states, Mitt Romney is portraying himself as a centrist at heart-not as the “severely conservative Republican” he said he was during the hard-fought GOP primaries. This kinder, gentler Romney was very much on display in his televised debates with President Obama. But a close examination of his energy plan, released on August 23, reveals no such moderation; rather, it is a blueprint for the systematic plunder of America’s farm and wilderness areas, coupled with a neocolonial invasion of Canada and Mexico. [..]

Read between the lines, however, and the predatory nature of his vision becomes evident. Essentially, the plan is intended to remove most impediments to the exploitation by US energy firms of untapped oil, gas and coal fields in the United States, Canada and Mexico, regardless of the consequences for national health, safety or the environment. In particular, the plan has five key objectives: eliminating federal oversight of oil and gas drilling on federal lands; eviscerating all environmental restraints on domestic oil, gas and coal operations; eliminating curbs on drilling in waters off Florida and the east and west coasts of the United States; removing all obstacles to the importation of Canadian tar sands; and creating an energy consortium with Canada and Mexico allowing for increased US corporate involvement in-and control over-their oil and gas production.

Oct 30 2012

On This Day In History October 30

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 62 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1938, Orson Welles scares the nation.

The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.

The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated “news bulletins”, which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ‘sustaining show’ (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program’s quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program’s news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles’ fame.

Link: The war of the worlds (radiobroadcast from 1938)

Oct 29 2012

“The Security Officer will escort you while you collect your personal belongings.”

Citi Chairman Is Said to Have Planned Chief’s Exit Over Months

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and SUSANNE CRAIG, The New York Times

Published: October 25, 2012

Mr. Pandit, the chief executive of Citigroup, was told three news releases were ready. One stated that Mr. Pandit had resigned, effective immediately. Another that he would resign, effective at the end of the year. The third release stated Mr. Pandit had been fired without cause. The choice was his.

The abrupt encounter, described by three people briefed on the conversation, included a terse comment by the chairman, Michael E. O’Neill: “The board has lost confidence in you.”

…

As Mr. Pandit was reeling from his encounter, three board members confronted John Havens, the bank’s chief operating officer and a longtime lieutenant.

“Vikram has offered his resignation, and we would like to give you the opportunity to offer yours,” a board member said, following a script prepared by the board’s lawyers, according to several people with knowledge of the meeting.

…

This week, senior executives at the investment bank convened a group of employees to try to stem any exodus, according to several people briefed on the meeting. Among the employees’ questions: why remain at a bank that treated its top executive so harshly?

Messy Breakup Ends Citi’s Rocky Relationship With Vikram Pandit

By Matt Egan, FOXBusiness

Published October 16, 2012

“I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did,” said Charles Geisst, a professor at Manhattan College.

Shareholders clearly were not happy with Citi’s financial performance as its shares had plunged almost 90% since Pandit became CEO in December 2007. By comparison, shares of J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are down own 8% and less than 1% respectively over that span.

There’s a long list of setbacks on Pandit’s watch, including most recently a $4.7 billion charge tied to an overvaluation of Citi’s stake in the Smith Barney joint venture, which it is selling off in pieces to Morgan Stanley (MS). Citi had pegged the JV’s price tag at $22 billion, well north of an eventual settlement at $13.5 billion.

Also, Pandit and Citigroup were embarrassed in March after the Federal Reserve gave the bank’s plan to return capital to shareholders a red light, leading some to say it had failed the government’s stress tests.

“The corporate governance, whether it’s been in the last few years or the last few hours, has been awful,” said (Citigroup analyst at Credit Agricole) Mayo.

Citigroup Pays Fine and Fires Star Technology Analyst

By BEN PROTESS, The New York Times

October 26, 2012, 11:41 am

Citigroup paid a $2 million fine and fired a prominent technology analyst after authorities accused the bank of improperly leaking to the media unpublished information about YouTube and confidential research on Facebook’s initial public offering.

…

In May, the junior Citigroup analyst e-mailed two TechCrunch employees to say “I am ramping up coverage of FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates).” He attached a “Facebook one pager,” that featured an array of confidential information, including Mr. Mahaney’s private revenue estimates meant as an internal guide for the bank’s analysts.

Under securities rules and a nondisclosure agreement with Facebook, Citigroup analysts were banned from “disseminating written research” about the social networking giant until 40 days after the I.P.O. The restriction, which applied to all banks that helped take Facebook public in May, was created to prevent research analysts from improperly promoting companies in a bid to drum up business for bankers.

The rules were reinforced in a landmark 2003 settlement with several banks, including Citigroup. The case, led by a former New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, built a Chinese wall between Wall Street research analysts and investment bankers.

Don’t steal any paperclips Vikram.

Oct 29 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: Surveillance and Accountability

Nearly seven years after the disclosure of President George W. Bush’s secret program of spying on Americans without a warrant, the Supreme Court is about to hear arguments on whether judges can even consider the constitutionality of doing this kind of dragnet surveillance without adequate rules to protect people’s rights.

President Obama’s solicitor general, Donald Verrilli Jr., will be calling on the court to toss out the case based on a particularly cynical Catch-22: Because the wiretaps are secret and no one can say for certain that their calls have been or will be monitored, no one has standing to bring suit over the surveillance. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected that avoidance of accountability, and so should the Supreme Court.

The lawsuit the Justice Department is trying so hard to block concerns the 2008 statute amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The new law retroactively approved Mr. Bush’s legally dubious warrantless wiretapping and conferred immunity from prosecution on the telephone companies that cooperated in the program.

Robert Kuttner: Obama and the Economy

Thanks to his exceptional luck in drawing Romney as his opponent, Obama will probably win a narrow re-election despite the dismal recovery. But on Wednesday morning, a struggle begins within the Democratic Party to save him (and us) from himself — to keep him from agreeing to a budget deal that will only slow growth, needlessly sacrifice Social Security and Medicare, and make the next four years much like the last four years.

What a waste, what a pity. Progressive Democrats should be resisting the economic lunacy and political sway of an extremist Republican Party. Instead, they will be working to keep their own president from capitulating to fiscal folly.

Paul Krugman: Medicaid on the Ballot

There’s a lot we don’t know about what Mitt Romney would do if he won. He refuses to say which tax loopholes he would close to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts; his economic “plan” is an empty shell.

But one thing is clear: If he wins, Medicaid – which now covers more than 50 million Americans, and which President Obama would expand further as part of his health reform – will face savage cuts. Estimates suggest that a Romney victory would deny health insurance to about 45 million people who would have coverage if he lost, with two-thirds of that difference due to the assault on Medicaid.

So this election is, to an important degree, really about Medicaid. And this, in turn, means that you need to know something more about the program.

Juan Cole: Candidates Flee East Coast as Frankenstorm Takes Revenge for their Ignoring Climate Change

Mitt Romney and Joe Biden have canceled campaign events planned for this weekend at Virginia Beach as a massive storm bears down on the east coast of the US. The candidates are fleeing from the East Coast, even though they won’t talk about the key environmental issue of our time.

The candidates in this year’s presidential election completely ignored climate change in their debates and their campaigning, even thought it is the most deadly issue facing this country and all humankind. Human beings are dumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning coal, natural gas and petroleum at feverish rates. They have already increased temperatures significantly since 1750, and are on track to put up the average surface temperature of the earth by 5 degrees C. or 9 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, enough to turn everyplace on earth over time into a sweating tropics, melt all surface ice, and, over the long term, submerge a third of the current land mass. A global state of emergency would be necessary to keep the temperature increase to 2 degrees C. or less, but the window is rapidly closing for this curbing of disaster.

Tony Norman: [And Now, a Word from Mr. Mourdock’s God And Now, a Word from Mr. Mourdock’s God]

God’s metaphorical ears must be burning these days. On Tuesday night Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate from Indiana, did something that would have given pause to even the medieval scholastics who speculated about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

With less than two weeks left in a contentious and hotly contested election, Mr. Mourdock speculated about what God’s will would be if a woman became pregnant as the result of rape. [..]

Over the years, we’ve heard about a deity who countenances the invasion of Muslim countries and the forced conversion of its leaders from the likes of “believers” like Ann Coulter. We’ve heard about the god who hates abortion but loves capital punishment. We hear that he even gives absolution to the killers of abortion doctors even though they’re effectively murdering full-grown fetuses.

Michelle Chen: World Bank’s Anti-Labor Index Is a Dirty Business

It’s a 2012 campaign mantra: On Day One, the new president will reboot the economy by spurring businesses to grow and thrive. Both mainstream candidates have vowed to achieve this, in part by eliminating onerous regulations to “unleash” the long-suppressed power of American industry.

The story is surprisingly similar across the pond. The financial giants of Europe’s troika pummel Greece and other struggling Eurozone countries with a blitzkrieg of kamikaze deregulation, conditioning financial “rescue” on giving markets free rein to work their magic, unencumbered by law. The flipside of this celebration of the Invisible Hand is, inevitably, a merciless beatdown on labor, stripping protections like unemployment aid and wage standards.

The World Bank has taken the extremely dubious science of deregulation one step further by creating a guide, known as the Doing Business report, that quantifies the regulatory “burden” that investors may face in various countries. The 2013 report was released this week.

Oct 29 2012

On This Day In History October 29

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 29 is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 63 days remaining until the end of the year.

   

On this day in 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” makes its debut in Prague at the Estates Theater. It is an opera in two acts with the music by Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It is about a “young, arrogant, sexually prolific nobleman who abuses and outrages everyone else in the cast, until he encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit.” The opera is sometimes characterized as comic because it combines comedy, drama and the supernatural. It is among the top 20 operas performed in North America.

Oct 29 2012

Live Stream of Hurricane Sandy

Oct 29 2012

Eating Your Bootstraps

Advantages of a $1000 Pair of Shoes

MCanavan6, Styleforum.net.

8/20/12 at 3:41pm

After getting bitten by the bug I have decided to began upgrading my wardrobe and one of my biggest problems is dress shoes. After deciding I would rather pay a bit more to upgrade from AE to Aldens, Churchs, Crockett & Jones, etc (~$500-$600) I have been wondering if it would be worth it to go all the way and purchase EG, JL, or Vass for my first couple pairs. Right now I am looking for a pair of black captoes and probably brown captoes with quarter broguing. What are the additional benefits of paying over $1000 a pair for EG, JL, or Vass (hopefully I can get some sort of deal) over a $500-$600 pair like Aldens, Churchs, or C&J? Obviously the leather is better quality and stitching/construction is better but in the end will I notice that large of a difference or should I save that $1000 ($500/pair) and spend it on something else? Any advice is appreciated.

post #3 of 415

by Gdot – 8/20/12 at 4:14pm

You will not know for yourself until you can handle the shoes in person. There is a difference. Although once you get past the Northampton benchgrade shoes C&J, Churches, etc. etc. you will find the differences become increasingly subtle and increasling more about design, leather quality and refinement than about the durability/substance of construction.

If you do decide to start at the top and work your way down look for one pair of super classic plain captoes in one of the upper end brands EG,G&G, JL. Then you will have a pair of something super swell for important events.

Then buy a second pair in something more upper/mid price range such as Vass, or AS exclusive. (Nobody beats Vass at this price point in terms of quality from what I understand.)

Then buy a third pair from C&J or Carmina.

This will take you through all the major categories/prices from about $500 up to $1200 or so.

Of course you could also start at the bottom and work up.

Oct 29 2012

Storm Surge

It’s really impossibly vain of me to suppose anyone cares, but there is a chance that underwater squirrels will attack my inter-tubz and disrupt the series of trucks that dump these ephemeral photons on your word TV thing.

If you happen to notice any gaps or interruptions in the next few days or even failures of insight and inspiration I blame Global Warming.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Oct 29 2012

2012 World Series- Giants at Tigers, Game 4

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan.

I know things.

For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring… which makes it like sex.

There’s never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn’t have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I’d never sleep with a player hitting under .250… not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there’s a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds.

Sometimes when I’ve got a ballplayer alone, I’ll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. ‘Course, a guy’ll listen to anything if he thinks it’s foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. ‘Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games.

Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball – now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God’s sake? It’s a long season and you gotta trust it. I’ve tried ’em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

Well, about the only good news for Tigers fans is that tonight Scherzer (6 – 7, 3.74 ERA) is starting against Cain (16 – 5, 2.79 ERA) and if there has been a pitcher most consistently under rated this post season, it’s Scherzer and one consistently most over rated it’s Cain.

That said this looks like the last game of the year.

As always my feelings are mixed, I suppose if I were really a huge fan I’d have watched every single pitch of every single game.

At least the ones the Mets played.  At least the repeats of games I already knew were victories.  At least the ‘Fast Forward’ versions that skip the boring parts.  At least I could have slept through them.

Instead I’m a poor fanatic, easily distracted and influenced by outside events, hardly able to focus even at this late hour on the passing of moments that never come back and mourning them at the same time they’re squandered.

Of course I think that way all the time about everything, for instance the rice and bean burrito I just ate for dinner (I could have had anything), and at its best, when it captures my attention, it can make me forget about futility and the second law of thermodynamics for a time.

The wonderful thing about rice and bean burritos is they taste good and take exactly 45 seconds to make if you happen to have the rice and beans prepared and if not you’re only 25 unsupervised minutes away in any case.

You can use that time to head out to the store and buy your burritos and be hyper efficient.

For the Giants it’s a chance to close out and put a cap on a 2nd magical season in 3 years.  For the Senior League it extends their dominance and illustrates the inferiority of Junior almost but not quite Baseball.

For the Tigers it’s Scherzer and Cain and pray for rain since if they extend tonight it’s highly likely that we face 2 days of postponement for underwater Squirrels and that for sure will bring Verlander back into the picture and I refuse to believe that he’s as bad as his Game 1 start.

But above all I hope for bright and shiny objects.

This game played on Faux.

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