The Riotus Thoughts of the Week

A $305 Million bargain for A-Rod? I think we have gotten a little carried away with the economics of baseball. Damn America for being so obsessed with value. The fact that we have baseball financial analysts writing stories about how the biggest contract in professional sports history is mathematically a bargain enhances for my simmering hatred for the sickening mix of professional sports and money. This mix has infiltrated sports to a point where any discussion of fielding this year's squad, in any sport, money becomes a central theme. It's not about player loyalty, or being a team player, it becomes cap room, and values, items even the lofty Blogriotus has succombed to write about in the past. I shouldn't complain too much about money being some part of the game, it has been a business from day one. If pro athletes weren't paid enough, we wouldn't be able to see the best perform. But our devotion to these relatively unimportant "games" has lofted gifted ballplayer to worshipped hero. These people get paid to play a game. Someone is going to tell me just because a guy can crush 90 mph fastballs 450 feet with a frequent enough regularity and stab rocketed ground balls with reaction measured in little more than nanoseconds, that their abilities are worth the spectacle to earn more than $27,000,000 a year? It's hard to believe that more people aren't able to look behind Oz's curtain and realize, yes, these guys are super-talented and games are entertaining, but let's get beyond the hype that drives this greedy market and focus on things that make my life more valuable. Instead they pony up $4,500 or better to get their 81 games worth of these ballplayers, sucked in to the hype once again, because they can't find any other meaning to their existence. I am not trying to be hard on anyone, especially my super-sports devoted friends, because I am a sports fan too and do spend an unreasonable amount of time watching entire games for entertainment. But I must question it because the salaries that are being offered out there to this and that star are simply staggering. It has reached a point where it does not make me feel comfortable supporting this industry where these physically talented men are making a killing when others are suffering greatly trying to make ends meet. It just doesn't make sense.

I HEARD three important questions a lady asked to a talk radio host while driving home tonight.
1) How is the next president going to mend the political fence between conservatives and liberals?
2) What do we export? What do we produce that the world needs to buy. Why have we exported all of our manufacturing jobs to offshore factories? (so corporations can give your job to a indian or chinaman and save a buck)
3) What are we doing in Iraq?

I have no great answers for anyone for these questions because none of these have a real concrete precedent. Civil Wars or Fiscal success usually quiets the dissenting parties, neither of which is probably on the horizon. We export ideas now, not good enough for a still very tangible world economy. Ideas may be supporting us for now, but there will come a day soon that we wished we did not take a quick buck to offshore our once immense national production. For the last question, I really have no understanding of why we even went there in the first place. The intelligence estimation was incorrect, Saddam's regime was hardly a threat and now we have the very real potential of a steep political vacuum where any number of whack-jobs could take power...by popular vote. Our invasion has bred political, economic and social instability in Iraq and there is no quick fix in sight. Losing diplomatic leverance has been our biggest loss, and now we face even greater and greater potential threats and we have no recourse to take because our hands are tied down in Iraq and to lesser extent Afghanistan. Everyone says, we must still support troops and even worse, support their fallen comrades by staying the course, but as far as I can tell, staying the course will only see more troops dead. Is that what we really want?

Not that I wasn't aware of this before, but out of the candidates for the 2008 presidential election that still actually have a chance to win, all (well most) of them are from 'blue' states, those that have voted democrat in recent elections. Illinois, New York and Massachusetts feature the four front-running candidates. Conservatives sense a shift in the nation's sentiment by running two candidates that were successful in the hearth of the yankee north. Regardless who ends up being the nominees, I hope this election does not focus on personal war records or gay marriage, two issues that deserve less attention than Spears' exposed pot belly or Lohan's latest DUI. Can we focus on things that really matter? Like Manufacturing getting a new start here or revamping our world image? Please?