Well things seemed to be going ok until the bottom of the 6th when Lohse sort of fell apart.  I can’t say I question the Cardinals’ decision to leave him in as long as they did because their bullpen did them no favors, but I do sort of question the decision not to start Garcia on full rest especially since he matches up better against the Phillies left handed line up.

Tonight they’re going with Carpenter against Lee which means Garcia will get a single start at best.  Or worst, these are best 3 of 5 so they can’t possibly get eliminated until they get back to St. Louis.

They came back with 3 in the 9th which is an encouraging sign if you’re rooting for the Cardinals and Lee is not invulnerable so we shall see what we shall see.

That’s why they play the games.

Coverage starts at 8:30 pm ET on TBS.

I won’t say I’m not happy with the way Game 1 turned out, though a soul destroying crushing defeat would have been better.

The Diamondbacks were not especially impressive, but the Brewers were not much better.  Today they pitch Greinke, their ace, on 3 days rest.  In Miller (named for the beer mate, you know, the one that made Mel Famey walk us) Park he’s nearly perfect with 11 wins in 15 starts.

The Diamondbacks must make do with Hudson, who doesn’t match up on paper and has lost his last 3 starts, to avoid going back to Arizona facing elimination in their home park.

I wonder if the Jumbotron will zoom in on Jan or Joe’s face?

Coverage on TBS starts at 5 pm.

Pardon me if I seem a mite grumpy.  If we didn’t have this make up game I could have slept in until 4 which is one of my very favorite things to do.

So last night we not only got to finish the whole game, but the great Mariano Rivera came in for the last out.  I really wonder about the direction of the Yankees after he retires, he makes the rest of the team look good.

The Tigers have more potential than I initially gave them credit for and threatened enough late to get that call to the bullpen.  I think they’re making a managing error by not moving Verlander away from head to head matchups against Sabathia because what does that get you?  A scoreless game until Rivera comes in and shuts you down.

But anything can happen, that’s why you play the games.

Coverage starts on TNT at 3 pm ET.

Frankly I don’t know why the networks swoon at the inferior substitute for Baseball that is designated hitter derby except for the fact it keeps aging but recognizable players around long after they should have decently retired and if you think I’m talking about the bats you are sadly mistaken because I am specifically talking about the steroid enhanced liar Roger Clemons (a Ranger).  I hope he never makes the Hall of Fame because he’s a cheater just like Barry Bonds and Pete Rose.

Yesterday’s 9 – 0 rout of the Rangers by the Devil Rays’ 8th best pitcher, 2 weeks up from the minors in his second ever Major League start, was the only bright spot in a long day of frustration.  I can only hope for similar amusement tonight and a swift exit for the Bush league ball club.

Gives them time to rest up for the Yankees.

Speaking of, when we left the most hated team in America they were tied with the Tigers at 1 – 1 coming to bat in the bottom of the second.  All the breathless speculation about whether their aces Sabathia and Verlander will return to the mound with 25 and 27 pitches respectively is stupid because they are highly unlikely to complete even 3 or 4 more innings tonight with heavy intermittent rain forcast.

I don’t know what that will do to the schedule and if Bud Selig is doing anything except hoping for the best I’d be completely surprised given his general level of incompetant idiocy.

If they play I’ll post updates in this thread.  I suspect instead it will be a washout and we will resume tomorrow at 3 on TNT.  Rangers/Rays will start at 7 pm also on TNT.

As I mentioned in my previous post the Phillies suffer under a Republican governor so my pick of the Cardinals has nothing at all to do with the fact they are division rivals of my Metropolitans.

Nothing at all.

You see, they also Taser their fans-

I had promised TheMomCat I’d go afternoon/evening on the DCS games, but apparently that’s not the way the schedule is working out and since I’m at wits end with my now totally non-functional upgrade I can hardly give you more than a few lines of distraction in any event.

I do know that I hate the thought of watching a World Series and World Series money going to the bigoted against brown people State of Arizona and its racist leaders like Jan Brewer and Joe Arpaio, so I’m hoping the Diamondbacks wash out as soon as possible.

Wisconsin under Walker is not much better so it’s tough to root for the Brewers either, but hopefully they’ll get knocked off by the Cardinals in the LCS.

‘But ek,’ you whine, ‘isn’t it incredibly shallow to make your picks based on political correctness?’

No shallower than basing it on the color of their uniforms.

The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Friday, Sep 30, 2011 06:31 ET

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”

…

What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.  Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President’s ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki — including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry’s execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists — criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

From an authoritarian perspective, that’s the genius of America’s political culture.  It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process).  It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.

So there you have it.  An American Citizen murdered for ‘thought crime’ at the whim of our unconstitutional monarch.

Obama: A disaster for civil liberties

He may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties.

By Jonathan Turley, The L.A. Times

September 29, 2011

Protecting individual rights and liberties – apart from the right to be tax-free – seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

…

President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama’s personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.

…

Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama’s position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama’s policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama’s policies have become secondary to his persona.

Ironically, had Obama been defeated in 2008, it is likely that an alliance for civil liberties might have coalesced and effectively fought the government’s burgeoning police powers. A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that “the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals’ rights and freedoms.” Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not “soft” on terror. He assumed that, yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day, they would not dare stay home.

This calculation may be wrong. Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line, especially when it comes to waterboarding. For many civil libertarians, it will be virtually impossible to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles. As Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is clearly torture and has been long defined as such by both international and U.S. courts. It is not only a crime but a war crime. By blocking the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war crimes. The administration magnified the damage by blocking efforts of other countries like Spain from investigating our alleged war crimes. In this process, his administration shredded principles on the accountability of government officials and lawyers facilitating war crimes and further destroyed the credibility of the U.S. in objecting to civil liberties abuses abroad.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now wit 39 Stories.

1 Ancient river-like volcanoes formed Mercury’s plains

By Kerry Sheridan, AFP

3 hrs ago