Alex Rodriguez suspended from baseball through 2014 in doping inquiry.”
The guy has been paid (common sense prohibits me from saying he earned it) in excess of $300 million in the course of his career. When I was a boy, my sports heroes were stand up guys, team players. They played for the love of the game and earned very little compensation. Prior to professional sports, athletes had to be good students in order to earn the privilege to play collegiate sports, it was incumbent on them to behave as role models if they wished to participate.
Today, professional sports is inundated with individuals using performance enhancing drugs, committing acts of murder, wife and girlfriend beaters, child abusers, cheaters. These are, sadly, common occurrences in sports, both collegiate and professional. Why do we turn our heads and allow it? They are like (dare I say it), our politicians. Above the law, above consequence. Do we want our sons and daughters emulating clowns like A-Rod? O.J.? Hernandez? I think not. Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Dick Butkus, Ozzie Newsome. Real men, real athletes, real role models. No one is perfect, I understand that, and boys will be boys, but between the sports figures and politicians, things have become awfully twisted in America.
The United States this week shut down 19 embassies in the Middle East and Africa as terrorist threats have been discovered in “increased chatter….” So, nearly a year after the terrorist attack in Benghazi, in which four Americans lost their lives, we basically admit we cannot or will not protect our embassies in the Middle East and Africa. Today (8/6/13) all American citizens have been urged by the US State Department to leave Yemen. Al Qaeda appears to be alive and well, although the president keeps telling us they are “on the run”, that Al Qaeda “has been decimated”….No my friends, the world has a huge problem with radical Muslims and so long as we are unwilling to face the problem, to identify a rat as a rat, it will continue to fester like a boil, finally exploding its hatred and radicalism on innocent citizens around the globe.
US raw steel output increased 0.9 percent from the previous week as mills operated at an average capability utilization rate (ACUR) of 78.8 percent. In the corresponding week last year mills operated at an ACUR of 74.6 percent. Thus far this year, mills have operated at an ACUR of 77.1 percent down from the same period last year when mills operated at an ACUR of 78 percent.
The president last week has proposed a “grand bargain” saying he is willing to reduce the nation’s corporate tax rate to 28% (25% for manufacturers)….in exchange for (surprise!) more spending and more small business incentives (including increased expensing). Dan Danner, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, opposed the plan saying,
a corporate only approach to tax reform will ensure that small business shoulders a much greater tax burden…”
Here’s another good one coming from the president
In an interview with the New York Times on July 27 and again last Tuesday, President Obama vastly underestimated the number of jobs the Keystone XL Pipeline would foster. While private forecasters have estimated the project would add nearly 120,000 new jobs and the US State Department said it would create 42,100, the president argued it would create just a few dozen. Surely you jest….we have an opportunity with this pipeline to reduce our dependence on oil from foreign countries who quite frankly hate the United States and her people. Why would you not pursue this? Just having the ability to tell the Middle East “take your oil and shove it” is worth building the pipeline through the United States, a few dozen jobs or 100,000 jobs. Let’s get ‘er done. Additionally, with current fracking technology, we can and will become a net exporter of oil and LNG eliminating our need to purchase any oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq or any other radicalized Middle Eastern country should we choose to do so. Let them drown in it.
Wishing you all a great weekend,
God Bless America
