Congratulations to the Phillies for giving it a great try as defending champs and to my Philly blogger friends like Chris Bowers, d-day, Will Bunch and C&L's own Susie Madrak who were good sports with me as we all watched the World Series.

Jeter, Posada and Pettitte were on David Letterman Thursday night to celebrate #27. Matsui, who made all of Japan proud by winning the MVP came on, holding the trophy. The only one missing from the Core Four was Mariano Rivera, the greatest reliever of all time. He'll be 40 this month and no one has ever done it better. These guys play the game the right way and do not act like fools doing it as so many pro athletes do these days.

And the Yankees do really well with a Democratic President:

Since winning the 1958 World Series when Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president, all nine of the Yankees’ titles have come under Democratic administrations — 1961, 1962, 1977, 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009. This bodes well for the Yankees for at least the next three seasons.

You may have wondered why I stopped posting about the series after my first one. Well, I'm kind of a superstitious sports fan (OK, I'm just a little bit obsessed) and when the Yanks lost Game One after I live-blogged it, I immediately gave that up.

It was a jinx, you see.

(graphic by Terry Colon)

I know the Philly bloggers are against me, but that's OK. I'm up for betting a few bags of Cheetos with my Philly faithful.

Much respect to them. Email me (crooksandliars@gmail.com) if you want to get it on...Because of the idiot, Bud Selig we have baseball that will go into November so the weather is a big issue. I'm a typical "Obsessed Fan," when it comes to sports and the playoffs and I love to call pitches like a catcher and manage the game. I will be working on the further adventures for the Obsessed Fan in the future, but for right now it's all baseball.

I'm live blogging the game on The Huffington Post right now. I hope I don't break my laptop because of a call from the umps. And I am very superstitious. OK, on to the series...

Here's the breakdown as I see it

1B) Howard vs Teixeira

Howard has a monster bat, but his glove doesn't equal Tex's. Mark needs to have a good hitting series because they will pitch around A-Rod all series long. I do believe that Mark will have an impact on the field throughout, but it's really close.

Edge: Even

2B) Utley vs Cano

Utley is a far better hitter than Cano, drives in more runs and batting in the middle of the potent Philly lineup proves the point, but Cano did hit .320 and played excellent defense.

Edge: Utley

SS) Jeter vs Rollins

This is an intriguing match-up because Rollins won the MVP last year for the NL, but if we look at comparing them in 2009, Derek had a much better year offensively. Rollins hit just .250 with an OBP of .296. Jeter hit .334 with an OBP of .406, but Rollins can still be deadly and he has more range than Jeter. However, Jeter has shown an incredible feel for the game especially in the playoffs that I have never seen before. His instincts are scary.

Edge: Jeter

Continue reading »

(h/t Mugsy)

I guess the UK is sick of hearing we namby-pamby Yanks brag on our health care system and trash theirs, disregarding the fact that the UK pays significantly less per capita for health care and achieves far better outcomes. And they've decided to push back:

Britons love to mock their National Health Service — just don't let anyone else poke fun at it.

They particularly resent the British universal health care system being used as a punching bag in the battle against President Barack Obama's proposed reforms.

Conservatives in the United States have relied on horror stories from Britain's system to warn Americans that Obama is trying to impose a socialized health care system that would give the government too much power.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old.

The superheated debate broadened this week to include renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a British icon who suffers from motor neurone disease. A U.S. newspaper wrote that under the British system Hawking would be allowed to die — an assertion that Hawking said was absurd.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking said, joining the ranks of those praising Britain's system.

Britons say the country's universal health care system, which provides free medical care, is far fairer than the current American system.

Behind the criticism is a popular British view that American society represents unbridled capitalism run amok, with catastrophic results for people left behind in the boom times like those of the last two decades.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is usually pro-American, blasted U.S. health care Friday, suggesting the delivery system is fine for the wealthy but not for the poor.

"If you can't pay, you have a very, very second-rate service or you can't get health service at all," he said.

Britain's left-leaning government has responded to criticism offering selected statistics that show England out performing the U.S. in health spending per capita, life expectancy and more.

Newspapers have jumped in, with the Daily Mirror calling the United States "the land of the fee" because of the way patients are forced to pay for medical services.

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CSPANjunkie's video highlights the outrage members of Congress felt after learning what Dick Cheney was up to with the CIA.

And there's a lot of speculation going on about what possible CIA program Dick Cheney was trying to hide from Congress. Trusting the WSJ when it comes to the Bush administration is like trusting the Yanks to win against the Angels in Anaheim. (I was due for a bad baseball analogy.)

TIME magazine has a few sources that make a case that's a bit more believable.

It is the biggest mystery in Washington at the moment. Here's what our colleague Bobby Ghosh says his sources are telling him:

Speculation abounds about the nature of the secret program Dick Cheney asked the CIA to keep from the Congressional oversight committees. The most sensational reports suggest it was plan to find and kill top Al Qaeda leaders – like the covert Israeli campaign to take out the perpetrators of the Munich killings.

But two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there's another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA's purview -– it's usually the FBI's job – and it's easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress.

Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they're only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

“People may want this to be about hit squads bumping off shady Saudis in Geneva, but that's very unlikely,” says one official. “More likely, it was a plan to spy on some suspicious American citizens or organizations, without telling the FBI.”

A third CIA official who is familiar with details of the program says it was deemed unworkable and cancelled in 2004.

With Cheney's love of spying, this makes perfect sense since catching and killing terrorists just like Jack Bauer is something that any member of Congress would have signed off on in a heart beat. Spying and keeping secrets is Darth Cheney's MO and when he sends his daughter out to defend him only sends up more red flags.

Digby writes:

This is something so far off the charts that even the wingnuttiest wingnuts distanced themselves from it:

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.

Does that sound like something about killing Al Qaeda or spying on Muslims in America? They did that anyway. This is something else.

In other words, the only way possible a program like this might have been contemplated was when Americans were utterly terrified. You can count on Cheney to be consistent when it comes to playing the fear card.