The calendar may read 2012 but take a look at this news clip from September 29, 1936 (courtesy of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). You can speed through the first minute of the 2:30 minute video if you don’t want to hear Stewart’s cheeky analysis of Republican budget promises, but do view Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s biting sarcasm as he describes Republican interest in providing Social Security, work for the unemployed and saving people’s homes during the Depression: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-9-2012/democalypse-2012---vague-against-the-machine---the-numbers-guy. Oh how similar it sounds to today’s political discourse.
Mitt Romney has been getting lots of mileage from his transformation of the anti-GOP phrase “trickle down economics” into an anti-liberal entitlement message of “trickle down government.” Are Barack Obama and Joe Biden going to be swift enough with retorts to point out all the trickle down government benefits one-percenters like Romney and Paul Ryan get from off-shoring their money while corporations get energy and farm subsidies and other tax benefits for locating businesses in specific communities? Obama blew his first opportunity during last week’s debate. There are three more head-to-head formats to challenge an ever-position-changing Romney.
It’s probably safe to say most leaders of big businesses favor Romney and his lower taxes, fewer regulations stances. But few corporate biggies, I would venture to say, are so openly blatant in their assessment of what would trickle down to their workers if Obama is re-elected. If he wins, David Siegel told his 7,000 employees, their jobs at Westgate Resorts would be at risk. "If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company," he wrote in a 1,400-word e-mail. "Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone." http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/09/news/economy/siegel-email-employees/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Riding home from Massachusetts Monday afternoon, with Gilda reading from her iTouch, I listened to some sports radio. Eventually she wondered how I could listen to such drivel. She was right. It was quite banal. But I just couldn’t tolerate hearing more presidential politics from the talk shows. At least with baseball or football talk I could laugh off the stupidity and inanity of the callers and hosts. What’s the worse that could happen? The Yankees could lose the playoff series to the Baltimore Orioles. It’s not as if the nation would reverse gear and go back to the 1950s in its treatment of minorities and women. At least I hope it wouldn’t. Wait a minute ... in the 1950s the Yankees won eight American League pennants and six World Series; the NY Football Giants played in three championship games, winning one. Maybe the 1950s wasn’t such a backward decade, after all.
Seriously, all my fretting about the Yankees not making the playoffs this year is forgotten, though the reasoning behind my worries continues. Throughout the 162-game regular season the Bronx Bombers displayed an aversion to scoring unless it was by the long ball. But home runs are hard to come by in the post-season, and the first two games showed their vulnerability. With the exception of Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki, they all seem to be swinging for the fences instead of practicing situational hitting.
Alex Rodriguez, as always, is the lightning rod for fan discontent. So many fans want him demoted, either taken out of the lineup for tonight’s game or moved lower in the batting order from his usual third spot. Manager Joe Girardi won’t grant their wishes. A-Rod is batting third, followed by Robinson Cano and then Nick Swisher.
Swisher is one of my favorites, but he has been dreadful for many years in the playoffs when batting with runners in scoring position. He has one hit in some 33 at-bats. So don’t be surprised if Girardi has the left-handed hitting Raul Ibanez pinch-hit for the switch-hitting Swisher in a critical spot late in the game against a right-handed pitcher. Even if Baltimore countered with a left-handed pitcher, Yankee fans might feel there’s more of a chance for a hit with Ibanez swinging the lumber. He did, after all, bang two big home runs to tie ball games in the ninth inning and added a game-winning single in the last week of the season. If Swisher doesn’t want to be replaced when the game’s on the line, he has to produce earlier in the contest en route to a Yankee rout of the Orioles.
