Apparently, those flashy anti-drug ads aimed at keeping kids off drugs have been a huge flop. They cost $929 million. New drug czar John P. Walters acknowledges this, but that doesn’t mean he won’t give up on alarmist anti-drug messages funded by taxpayers. Instead, he’ll focus-group the ads beforehand to measure their effectiveness.
Heck, some of the ads even made kids want to smoke pot! Why are kids so resistant to government propaganda nowadays? Won’t someone please think of the children?
So says Cubs chief muckety-muck Andy MacPhail in his interview with MLB.com. Of course, he’s right that the big problem is the Cubs’ offense. And, luckily, he doesn’t resort to using the injuries as an excuse:
Everybody has injuries. You just have to overcome them. We haven’t done a very good job of that. And we haven’t hit. Injuries are a factor but they are by no means the main reason or the reason itself.
But a couple of his answers are certainly suspect. In response to Kerry Wood’s comments about the Cubs’ lack of energy, MacPhail said, “I was in Des Moines [watching the Triple-A team] and got all of that second- and third-hand. I’ve never doubted the competitive spirit in Kerry and I think that’s a good thing. No one wants to lie down.”
OK, I guess they don’t have Internet connections in Des Moines. It would have just been too much for him to keep up with the press coverage of his team. That’s a cop out. And so is his remark that nobody wants to lie down. Maybe nobody wants to, but plenty of Cubs are doing it. But he doesn’t have the guts to call out his players the way Baylor and Wood have done. That’s probably a smart move in the end, but still a cop out.
And what about Mark Prior? Will he be starting next week? “You can speculate that way. Things would have to fall in place for that to happen. It’s not out of the realm of possibilty.” Not out of the realm of possibility?!
How’s this for reality, not just possibility: one starter (Jason Bere) is 1-6 with a 6.31 ERA and another (Juan Cruz) is 0-7 with a decent 3.86 ERA but hasn’t made it past the fourth inning in his last two starts.
Come on, Andy. Wake up.
I don’t think the news that Dubya was warned before Sept. 11 about Al Qaeda plans to hijack planes is very earth shattering. As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice pointed out yesterday, Dubya had no specifics to work with. He was not told when the hijacking were supposed to happen, how they would be done, or that they planned to use the planes as missiles.
Honestly, if Dubya had shut down the aviation system based on these reports, I and many others probably would have had a fit. Sept. 11 was completely unprecedented and unpredictable, and this new information doesn’t change that. Dubya was not given any really useful information, and while we can blame the CIA and FBI for their missteps
(and we should), the truth is that telling the future is not an easy business.
That’s why showing strength is important. By responding to Sept. 11 the way he did, Dubya made it clear that terrorist attacks on the United States would not be tolerated. Before he got sidetracked by the axis of evil business, Dubya was doing the best thing that could be done to prevent future terrorist attacks — wipe out the terrorist groups themselves.
Government officials face a tough challenge when it comes to these vague threats they are made aware of. They cannot shut down their town, locality, state or country completely on the off chance an attack may happen at some point in the future. Even by letting people know, they just cause panic. Vague threats elicit vague responses. But Sept. 11 was a real tragedy, and deserves a real and effective response to make sure it never happens again.
Further, raising a ruckus about this will probably have a perverse effect. Instead of cracking down on intelligence agencies to make sure they do a better job, they will get more funding — much of it completely unrelated to Sept. 11. And Dubya will redouble his efforts to weaken our civil liberties while pouring more money into defense, war efforts irrelevant to Sept. 11 and boondoggles like federalized airport security.
Free-Market.Net‘s J.D. Tuccille argues that the libertarian movement is maturing and growing increasingly influential. It’s not just Cato. The Foundation for Economic Education and Laissez Faire Books are also celebrating significant anniversaries this year.
He concludes that the movement’s “ideas can no longer be ignored.” And yet they routinely are. How about that?
kboreilly.com 