Hideki in his new hat

getty photo

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French court rejects carbon tax, left and right join against government and special interests

• The French Court recognized assaulting citizens with a carbon tax wouldn't cure alleged man-made global warming. (The last ice age came and went without a carbon tax, for example).

"France’s constitutional court rejected a proposed tax on carbon emissions, saying a

• web of exemptions violated the principal of equality

• and rendered efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions ineffective.

The government said it will make new proposals on Jan. 20....

• To make the tax more palatable,

he (President Sarkozy) partially or fully exempted power plants, public transport, airlines, farming and fishing, as well as 1,018 older cement, steel and glass factories.

• In all, 93 percent of all industrial carbon emissions in France

• would have avoided paying the full tax,

the constitutional court said in a decision published on its Web site. The tax would have fallen disproportionately on fuel for heating and cars, it said.

“The court ruled that the system of exemptions, due to their extensive nature,

• were contrary to the objective of fighting global warming and contravene the principle of equality before the tax system,” the court said.

The court rejected all the articles relating to the carbon tax in the government’s 2010 budget....

The tax had been criticized by the Socialist-led opposition and critics in Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement, who said

• the tax would hurt the poor and handicap employers."

from Bloomberg News, "French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax," by Gregory Viscusi, 12/30/09. via the Drudge Report

• From the French Constitutional Court website:

"However, Articles 7 and 10 of the Act establishing exemptions, reductions, refunds and partial specific rates. So were totally exempt contribution of carbon emissions from

• power plants generating electricity, emissions thousand eighteen sites most industrial pollutants, such as refineries, cement, coke and glass factories, emissions from industries using chemical intensive energy, emissions products for dual use, emissions from energy used in electricity consumption, emissions from aviation and those of public transport of passengers by road. In addition, were taxed at rates reduced emissions from farming or fishing, road freight and shipping."...

12/29/09, press release, google translation from French. Original French.

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Very few actually brave the arena.

""It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

• The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,

who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the

• triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly,

• so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

– Teddy Roosevelt, 1910"

• commenter to RedState.com post, 12/30/09, Prayers for Rush. Wishing him a speedy recovery.

Adweek Media: "Rush Limbaugh Radio Personality of the Decade."

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Goose Gossage was a bust in 5 high stakes outings in post season and All Star

Goose Gossage's constantly publicized and ungracious bragging about his superior durability doesn't hold water when looking at his high percentage of high stakes flops (listed below). The media does not concern itself with Gossage's actual record.

• Gossage says he's worlds apart from today's late inning relievers (item at end of article).

Gossage had it easy not having to perform year in and year out in grueling post season matches. His post season and All Star appearances had a high percentage of flops. The few times he was asked to perform in high stakes situations, the results were too often catastrophic. Nor did his failures involve grueling multiple innings. His persona falls apart easily in the following 5 examples:

• 1975 All Star game

• 1977 All Star game

• 1978 All Star game

• 1980 ALCS elimination game, Game 3

• 1984, Padres World Series elimination game

Helping teams get to big games is one thing, winning big games is another. Gossage didn't measure up in the above All Star and post season opportunities when the pressure was on. Recognition as an elite player includes mental as well as physical toughness. It's best not to constantly say how much better you are than others when you're not-someone might look it up someday. His career included 6 All Star appearances among his 9 elections. Each was only one inning.

• 1975 All Star game

Gossage enters top 9th, score tied 3-3. 2 runners on, no out. He gave up 3 runs, only one earned, score now 6-3. The AL ended up losing the game but Gossage didn't figure in the decision. I've heard him say many times how hard he had it, had to come into tie games and get out of huge messes. In this big game, he failed to get out of the mess.

• 1977 All Star game

Gossage enters in the 9th with a 4 run lead and gave up a home run and 2 earned runs. His league still won 7-5. Gossage didn't figure in the decision.

• 1978 All Star game

Gossage was the losing pitcher of record in the game. Entered bottom 8th, tie game, 3-3. One IP, 4 earned runs, final 7-3 NL. Another tie game he didn't get out of.

• 1980 All Star game

Team was losing by 2 runs when he entered bottom 8th. He pitched one inning without giving up additional runs, game ended with same score.

• 1984 All Star game

He did well in this game, entered in 9th with 2 run lead for the NL. Got out of it without giving up any runs. For those who are curious, he did get a 'save' for this game.

• 1985 All Star game

Entered in 9th with a 5 run lead, score 6-1, NL leading. Gave up no runs.

• ***********

Post Season examples: I wouldn't mention this but he keeps saying how much better he is than pitchers today.

• He usually had a lot of time in the off season to rest up, to gear all his strength toward his regular season stats. He only played in 3 levels of post season competition one year, 1981, the only year the ALDS or NLDS was played until after 1994. 'Modern' relievers have an extra level of post season play to test their durability. His 4 years in the post season totaled 31.1 IP. That is his record.

In 1980, he only played a third

• of an inning in post season in the ALCS and was losing pitcher of record. With the season on the line v the Royals, Gossage entered Game 3 leading 2-1. Entering in the 7th with 2 outs and one ROB. Unfortunately, he gave up a single, then a 3 run home run. He left with the Yankees trailing 4-2. He did not pitch the 8th or 9th innings. Why brag about coming in in the 7th inning if you blow it, the game, and the season at the same time? Someday, somebody might look it up.

In 1984, the Padres' final game

• of the World Series, he did come in in the 7th, but gave up a solo home run. He came back out in the 8th and gave up a 3 run home run. He didn't figure in the loss as the team was losing 4-3 when he entered but the team was counting on him not to give up any more runs. The pressure does seem to get to him in big games. This was the game where his manager told him to walk Kirk Gibson but Gossage decided to pitch to him, ignoring his manager.
• "Kirk Gibson's towering home run into the upper deck was the climactic blow of Game 5.
• "Dick put up the four fingers when Gibson came to bat," Gossage recalled, "but I waved him off, insisting I could get him out. Afterward, Dick didn't throw any blame. He respected me like I respected him.""

• (Quote from NY Daily News column by Bill Madden, 3/4/07.

If a player has All Star and post season stats, they are part of his career. (Unless you're talking about the Cy Young Award). Regarding All Star games, in 2008 Brad Lidge warmed up 6 times and threw around 100 pitches in the bullpen. This is an extreme example of what happens at an All Star game, but shows All Star games can contain valuable information.

• To date, Mariano Rivera has pitched more than 3 outs in 57 of his 88 post season appearances. Many of these were 6 outs and more including extra inning games, tie games, runners on, consecutive days, etc. (Jeff Passan noted the 53 game mark after ALDS game 3 in 2009.
• Outings 54 through 57 were as follows: 2.1, 2.0, 2.0, 1.2).
• Today there are 3 levels of post season play, whereas Gossage's era only had 2 (with the exception of 1981). It's easy to say anyone could do it but actually doing it is an entirely different matter. Gossage's existing post season record shows he couldn't possibly have come close to Rivera's high stakes achievements.

Also, in his first full season of late inning relief, 1996, Mariano Rivera broke Goose Gossage's strikeout record as a Yankee relief pitcher which pretty much ends Gossage's narrative that everyone today is a wimp compared to him. "Rivera went 8-3 with a 2.09 ERA (regular season), held opponents to a .193 batting average,

• and broke Goose Gossage's Yankee relief record of
• 122 strikeouts by fanning
• 130 in 107.2 innings.

Most amazingly, of the record 4,962 homers spanked in 1996, Rivera allowed just one, to Baltimore's Rafael Palmeiro on June 28." page 208 from Joel Sherman's book, "Birth of a Dynasty," published in 2006 by Rodale.

• Still in 1996, Rivera pitched 14.1IP in the post season including 3 days in a row in the World Series.

Rivera has pitched 2 saves in one day 5x (UPDATE, as of 5/26/10, it's 6 times) in the regular season, per Elias. If durability is the subject....

• I only mention it because of repeated media coverage of Gossage's bitter narrative

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OCR seeks writer for Angels baseball topics

• posted on SportsJournalism.com, 12/22/09: "Baseball Writer, Orange County Register:"

"We’re looking for a writer to cover the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim with enthusiasm, humor and a knack for the off-the-field stories. The job would involve covering a couple of Angels games per week. This writer will also need skills in photo, video and blogging....

• We are looking for a writer who will cover Angels/celebrity golf tournaments, speeches at elementary schools and charity events. If Kate Hudson shows up to cheer on A-Rod, we want a quote from her – then a quote from A-Rod.

This position will be more about Facebook and Twitter than it will be about who won last night’s game. The writer should enjoy speculating on what the Angels will do in the off season, suggesting moves they should make and writing about what fans are saying about the Angels."...

• SportsJournalism.com has the name and email for interested persons. I looked on the OCR website, this job wasn't listed, don't know why. The paper does have an Angels blog.

P.S. Reports are that Kate Hudson and Arod have split up, but hopefully he will get another girlfriend who inspires him or brings him luck, whatever the case was. ed.

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Lush forests once grew in Antarctic--new published science says (SUV did not exist)

• New science shows earth's orbit lead to global warming.

6/3/09: "Until recently, only a single radar flight some 30 years ago had probed the (key Antarctic Gamburtsev mountains) chain....

• Martin Siegert of the University of Edinburgh, UK, says it is very likely that there are bits of frozen vegetation down there too – far out of reach. "It would have looked much like Patagonia today, with

• quite lush forests and small valley glaciers cutting into the alpine topography," he says....

The radar images suggest that Antarctica "grew" its ice cap in three stages, carving out the rock below in distinct ways

• as glaciers expanded, retracted, and flowed downstream.

The images were collected between 2004 and 2008 by researchers who drove huge trains of caterpillar tractors in tight lines over Dome A, a plateau of ice at the heart of Antarctica. The tractors carried radars that pinged down through the ice...

• Earlier this year, the British Antarctic Survey revealed images of the mountains' profile.

Now, a Chinese, Japanese and UK team have published results detailing the 900-square-kilometre area beneath Dome A....

Some 34 million years ago, small mountain-top glaciers developed. They froze and thawed

• with variations in Earth's orbit,"...

"Journal reference: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature08024)"

• from New Scientist, 6/3/09, "How Antarctica grew its ice--and lost its hanging gardens," by Catherine Brahic

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Houston Chronicle Sports Editor named to MLB.com post

"Carlton Thompson, one of a handful of African American top sports editors at a U.S. daily, has been named executive editor of mlb.com, the Web site of Major League Baseball, his colleagues at the Houston Chronicle were told on Tuesday.

• Thompson, 39, will serve "as my right hand," Editor in Chief Dinn Mann told Journal-isms. "I expect him to play a leadership role that's profoundly impactful, bringing his personable nature, his competitiveness and energy."

The two met at the old Houston Post, where Mann was sports editor and Thompson was a beat writer covering the Houston Oilers NFL team. That paper folded in 1995.

• Mann said the New York-based mlb.com, entering its 10th year, produces original content with more than 100 people. It has 30 reporters, one for each team, and in total, close to 40 full-time reporters, he said. One of Thompson's roles will be "traffic control," as well as exercising his appreciation for "the power of the printed word" at the multimedia site."...

report by Richard Prince, "Houston's Carlton Thompson Leaving for MLB.com," The Maynard Institute, 12/23/09, via SportsJournalism.com

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Snow returns to UK, Earth completely ice free in past, PBS explains 4 fluxes of CO2-none related to man or SUV's

In 2000, an East Anglia scientist said snow was becoming extinct in the UK due to global warming, and our notion of Christmas might forever change.

• Snow in UK on 12/25/09, more cold on the way. photo UK Telegraph, Cheskin

PBS Nova explains, it's not man-made 'climate change': "During the past billion years, the Earth's climate has fluctuated between warm periods -

• sometimes even completely ice-free -

and cold periods, when glaciers scoured the continents....Ever since the Pre-Cambrian (600 million years ago), ice ages have occurred at widely spaced intervals of geologic time - approximately 200 million years - lasting for millions, or even tens of millions of years. For the Cenozoic period, which began about 70 million years ago and continues today, evidence derived from

• marine sediments provide a detailed, and fairly continuous record for climate change."...

• (No need for grant money to East Anglia or anyone else) ed.

(continuing, NOVA): "Our climate today is actually a warm interval between these many periods of glaciation.

• The most recent period of glaciation, which many people think of as the "Ice Age", was at its height approximately 20,000 years ago.

Although the exact causes for ice ages, and the glacial cycles within them, have not been proven,

• they are most likely the result of a complicated dynamic interaction between such things as

• solar output, distance of the Earth from the sun, position and height of the continents, ocean circulation, and the composition of the atmosphere....

Through a million year period, the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is affected by four fluxes: flux of carbon due to

• (1) metamorphic degassing,
• (2) weathering of organic carbon,
• (3) weathering of silicates,
• (4) burial of organic carbon.

Degassing reactions associated with volcanic activity and the combining of organic carbon with oxygen release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

• Conversely, the burial of organic matter removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Plate collisions disrupt these carbon fluxes in a variety of ways, some tending to elevate and some tending to lower the atmospheric carbon dioxide level.

• It has been suggested that the Eocene, the early warm trend 55 million years ago, was caused by elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide and that a subsequent decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide led to the cooling trend over the past 52 million years.

One mechanism proposed as a cause of this decrease in carbon dioxide is that mountain uplift lead to enhanced weathering of silicate rocks, and thus removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."...

• "NOVA Online/Cracking the Ice Age/The Big Chill," by Kirk A. Maasch is a professor at the University of Maine, in the Department of Geological Sciences.

Freely available (taxpayer supported) information like this proves what we already know, that crooks are getting rich from a giant lie. Even if climate change were true, it is a worse crime to suggest man can stop it. Please stop this lie. *******************

• from March 20, 2000, catastrophic global warming declared by another East Anglia climate scientist (instead of looking at science he appears to be going by weather):

"Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change:

• snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which

• scientists are attributing to global climate change -

• produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

• Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality

• by the international community. "
• (You mean those equatorial dictators and that psychopath who cried in Copenhagen about his sinking island? Although he doesnt' live on any island, lives well inland in Australia and is a higher-up in the 'climate' hierarchy?) ed.

(continuing, Independent): "Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers.

• According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,

• within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event."

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said....

• Fen skating, once a popular sport on the fields of East Anglia, now takes place on indoor artificial rinks. Malcolm Robinson, of the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club in Peterborough, says they have not skated outside since 1997. "As a boy, I can remember being on ice most winters. Now it's few and far between," he said.

Michael Jeacock, a Cambridgeshire local historian, added that a generation was growing up

• "without experiencing one of the greatest joys and privileges of living in this part of the world - open-air skating"....

But very little research has been done on the

• cultural implications of climate change - into the possibility, for example, that

• our notion of Christmas might have to shift....

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately,

• British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet,

• they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does

• we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out.

• Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.

The chances are certainly now stacked against the sort of heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters, such as Sisley, and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in "London Snow" of it, "stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying".

• Not any more, it seems."

from Independent UK, March 20, 2000, ""Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past," by Charles Onians, via Tom Nelson, via EU Referendum

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NBC-Comcast could compete with Fox for MLB

"A combined NBC-Comcast could compete for more NFL coverage, regain Major League Baseball and the NBA, and fight to maintain its exclusive deal for U.S. rights to the Olympics.

• "I think this is a watershed deal in the history of the broadcast industry," said former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson, now a television consultant. "It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in my 40 years in broadcasting. No question."

When Comcast Corp. gains majority control in NBC Universal, it will meld NBC into a company that already owns 11 regional sports networks, The Golf Channel and Versus, and

• also has minority interests in the MLB Network and iNDemand."...

The deal could take a year to finalize. If baseball is someplace other than Fox on Saturdays, and Leo Hindery is not involved in any way, I might watch. ed.

• From Boston Herald article by AP, 12/25/09, "NBC-Comcast will be big power in sports," via RadioDailyNews

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Furman Bisher Unleashed with detail of Tiger Woods Thanksgiving

Bisher received an account of the day from a reliable source. For example, Woods was unavailable for police interviews because he was in Phoenix. 12/26, via Baseball Musings

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Bud Selig's actions brought today's LA Dodgers scene

"The Dodgers owners split, and now they're headed to court to see if Jamie does actually own a piece of the Dodgers, how much of a settlement she'll get even if she doesn't, and what this means for the franchise.

• Will Jamie make good on her threat to line up a group to buy the team? Will Frank ever come out of hiding now that he's moved out of Dodger Stadium?...

• Laughs aside, Dodgers fans do have reason to fear the future.

The McCourts successfully sucked all of the revenue out of the franchise, which doesn't exactly make the ballclub, even with its tradition and recent on-field success, a good buy for a prospective new owner.

• The McCourts added as many seats as physically possible, increased ticket prices substantially for the good seats, worked overtime to draw as many fans as possible with cut-rate prices for ho-hum seats, littered the stadium with more signage than Ebbets Field in the mid-'50s, and installed more eateries than the Food Court at the Mall of America....

Here's what scares me the most.

• Since the mid-'90s, the same set of sweaty fingerprints can be found in the DNA of every single tortuous twist of the franchise -

• those of one Allan Huber "Bud" Selig.

Selig can be affable and friendly and he always seems sincere, but then so could Mr. Potter in Bedford Falls.

• When Peter O'Malley announced plans to sell the Dodgers on Jan. 6, 1997 - seems like yesterday - he cited estate taxes as a principal reason.

It was a reason, but hardly the first.

• O'Malley simply had been marginalized by Selig since he became interim commissioner.

Selig has seized control of baseball by assembling all of the small-market owners together as a force to defend baseball against the players association. O'Malley sought compromise. Selig wanted to defeat the union, and was willing

• to cancel a World Series and organize collusion against free agency, which cost the owners $280 million when the courts were done." (Criminally convicted owners recouped this by selling new franchises). ed.

(continuing, Bob Keisser): "O'Malley was exhausted. He thought the owner of a team (Brewers) acting as commissioner was a conflict of interest, plus

• Selig had violated baseball's own rules by

• accepting a loan from another owner,

• and the Brewers' debt load had increased from $3million to $63 million between 1990 and 1996....

When O'Malley went to market, the first group to bid was Rupert Murdoch's Fox, which was in its second year as a national TV rights holder and

• didn't want the team as much as its local broadcast rights.

With Selig's blessings, the sale of the franchise moved at lightning speed. An agreement in principal was in hand within five months, and Fox took over in 1998. And promptly traded Mike Piazza and turned the franchise on its head.

When Fox tired of running a baseball team, Selig found Murdoch a buyer in McCourt, who agreed to follow Selig's mandate on salary control. The sale was pushed through

• even though McCourt didn't meet MLB's standard financial guidelines for ownership and ran counter to Selig's policy of "local, private ownership."

The McCourts were from Boston. The new owner bought the team on credit,

• using a large parcel of land in Boston as collateral.

• Fox now owns that property.

Since Day 1, the McCourt Dodgers have been a cash-poor operation even with all of the enhancements (i.e., higher prices) to the park, and now the McCourt bounty is to be split

• with no cash on hand to be competitive in the marketplace.

Do you think Selig cares? Probably not. This is the commissioner who once embraced the idea of contraction, who robbed Montreal of the Expos

• and has hand-picked all new owners."...

From Long Beach Press-Telegram article by columnist Bob Keisser, "Selig a Major Factor in Dodgers' Circumstance," 12/26/09, via BTF

• 12/25/09: "Reds, Brewers stadium deals strain cities"

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Investment banks huge profit centers for non-existent global warming

""Carbon-related products are probably the most profitable part of trading for any of the investment banks right now,

• because the margins are so good," Mr. Birley admits....

As the man in charge of the world's biggest exchange for companies, banks and hedge funds to trade permits to emit carbon dioxide, Birley is

• fed up with the environmentalists' charge that dirty capitalists should not profit from the global effort to tackle climate change. "...

Patrick Birley is chief executive of the Europeon Climate Exchange.

• from UK Telegraph by Rowena Mason, "Europeon Climate Exchange Chief Patrick Birley defends the Carbon Trading System," 11/29/09

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CO2 believer added to list of NY Times layoffs

From Andrew Revkin twitter, 'Many at NY Times shocked' at Kate Galbraith's layoff. The Times needed to reach 100.

• via Tom Nelson

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Reds, Brewers stadium deals strain cities

• NY Times, "As Revenue Plunges, Stadium Boom Adds to Municipal Woes," 12/24/09:

"Nowhere is the problem more acute than in Cincinnati. In 1996, voters in Hamilton County approved an increase of half of one percent in the sales tax that promised to build and maintain stadiums for the Bengals and the Reds, pay Cincinnati’s public schools and give homeowners an annual property tax rebate. The stadiums were supposed to spur development of the city’s dilapidated riverfront.

• But sales tax receipts have fallen so fast in the last year that the county is now scrambling to bridge a $14 million deficit in its sales tax fund. The public schools, which deferred taking their share for years, want their money.

The teams have not volunteered to rewrite their leases. So in the coming weeks,

• the county plans to cut basic services,

lower its legal bills and drain a bond reserve fund with

• no plan for paying it back....

Cincinnati is hardly alone. ...In Milwaukee, a drop in sales tax receipts may delay by several years the date for

• paying off the bonds issued to build Miller Park,
• the home of the Brewers."...

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McClatchy Watch blogger calls it quits

After 27 months writing about the newspaper chain. Rats.

• via Romenesko twitter

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Felipe Alou and Bob Welch key in Miguel Batista career

Santo Domingo: "In a school called Baseball Felipe Alou, pitcher Miguel Batista learned to respect the game, doing more to statistics provided by Scouts advanced equipment and

• also to understand the bureaucracy of baseball.

He said the leader of the Montreal Expos, under whom he was in the seasons 1998, 1999 and 2000, "has an incredible knowledge of the opponent's offensive system.

• He studies the numbers like an accountant.

Always rallies emphasized the need to play at the top end of victory and to please an audience that had made the effort to leave their homes and pay one or more ticket to watch the show. "Philip always told us: that people draw their money out of pocket to see you, so I do not accept quackery," says Batista, who was called "The Pancake Haina" while successfully attempting to speak the unique style of it.

• He also said that Alou is probably the best known leader of the
• opponent's offensive and

• urged his players to read well because it is a fundamental tool for their careers.

For example, said that once during a meeting with pitchers and catchers before a game against the San Diego Padres, he showed the batting Tony Gwynn displaying the time he attacked the first pitch.

"Gentlemen, this is not wrong,

• Tony Gwynn, a man who will be Hall of Fame, is
• hitting .190 lifetime when
• he does swing at first pitch.

"You have to to like this man up immediately.

After then I will not recommend anything because hitting between .300 and .500 and can frustrate those boys,

• "says" The Poet "(Batista) on the recommendations made Alou.

However revealed that no one has had more faith in their conditions as pitcher

• Bob Welch, who was his pitching coach for several years with Arizona Diamondback.

He said Welch, a winner of 211 games in a 18-year career in the majors that was divided between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics,

• intervened on his behalf on many occasions to give him the chance
• to be in the rotation."

From Listin Diario article by Freddy Tapia, 12/24/09, "Felipe and Welch, keys in career of Miguel Batista" google translation

• Original Spanish
• photo from Listin Diario

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Merry Christmas

Rockefeller Center, New York, above "Western lifestyle is not sustainable," claims multimillionaire jet setter, locomotive expert, Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (a panel on something that doesn't exist). getty photo.

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From the grooveyard of forgotten favorites, Arod & Jeter, 1998

• via Yahoo Sports, FoxSports, via NYYfans.com

Title of this post as overheard somewhere

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Phillies wanted Cliff Lee 'far away from fan base consciousness'--Sherman

Joel Sherman says Yankees tried hard to get Cliff Lee:

• "But by the end, the Yanks also came to believe the Phillies would rather put Lee as far from their fan base’s consciousness as possible, and
• Seattle fit that criteria."...

And, one can only hope:

• Joel Sherman: "Plus, more and more Yankee officials have come to believe Joba’s long-term role is in the pen and as heir apparent to Rivera. So the early betting line should be that Hughes is the No. 5 starter, though the Yanks will certainly not hand the job to anyone and could have a group including Sergio Mitre, Chad Gaudin, Alfredo Aceves and
• Ivan Nova in contention, too. My darkhorse is Nova, a growing favorite within the Yankee hierarchy.

And I am probably the last reporter in New York who actually thinks it is possible Chien-Ming Wang could return. That is, as long as Wang accepts a minor league contract with incentives. I do not think it is a strong chance. But I do not think it is impossible."...

• from "Joel Sherman's Hardball" blog, "Ten thoughts on the Vazquez trade," 12/22/09

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Melky now and forever

Melky, Arod, Cano, Yankee Stadium 10/15/09, getty photo June 5, 2006, Melky from the bench, 2rbi, 3r. Varitek on keister. Teams hoped Yankee regulars would be back soon.

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Carbon trading tanks on weak Copenhagen outcome

• 12/14/09: Europeons lose billions in carbon trading fraud with Denmark's lax system causing most if it. GuardianUK

12/21, Reuters, LONDON - "The credibility of the European Union’s flagship carbon trading scheme was dealt another blow on Monday after

• carbon prices fell to six-month lows as UN talks in Copenhagen failed to deliver a strong climate deal.

Traders and analysts say low prices could continue well into 2010, slowing investment in low-carbon technologies which have already been dented by tight financing due to a slow economy....

• “This does give ammunition to the anti cap-and-trade brigade,” an emissions trader said, referring to groups who say emissions trading does not work."...

Reuters report by Nina Chestney from Calgary Herald, 12/21/09, "EU Carbon Scheme Reels after Weak Climate Deal,"

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Seth, sources say leading experts agree

"Rajendra Pachauri, Executive Profile and Biography, Business Week, 12/22/09

• Pegasus Capital Advisors, LP

"BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEMBERSHIPS

• 2009-Present

• Chairman of the Advisory Group

• Asian Development Bank"...

REUTERS: 12/13/09: "The head of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, warned governments that

• failure to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen could lead to a
• collapse

• of the carbon market"...(estimated at $150 billion in 2009, reuters)

Times of India quotes Rajendra Pachauri, 12/21/09:

• "I haven’t pocketed a single penny from my association with companies and institutes."...

That may be true, but the 'carbon market' hangs on your every word. You are an advisor to the Asian Development Bank. The head of that bank just said a reported $100 billion dollar market stands to crash if, in essence, you can't forge a particular agreement in Copenhagen.

• Not saying you would exert any undue influence of course, but the head man at the bank sounds worried.

Al Gore's statement before US Congress, 4/24/09

• "But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a nonprofit, "...

• 3/6/08, Bloomberg News report states Al Gore net worth well in excess of $100 million. From the article, his net worth in 2000 was at most $3 million.

Which is fine, it's just that what is being manipulated

• in the long absence of American national leadership

is the American worker, his family, his sacrifice, and his sovereign rights. Communist China says it has sovereign rights. Isn't it fair that Americans do as well? Isn't it fair that we get a chance to speak? (ed.)

• More on Mr. Pachauri from the Pegasus page: "Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri is a Strategic Advisor at Pegasus Capital Advisors, L.P. He has been a Director-General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) since April 2001. Dr. Pachauri has been Head of Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi (now known as The Energy and Resources Institute) since April 2001.He has been the President of the Asian Energy Institute since 1992. Dr. Pachauri has been the President of the International Association for Energy Economics ..."

• Reference Reuters article, 12/13/09, "Climate Progress Eludes Ministers, protesters held"

• Times of India article, "Pachauri slams charges about conflict of interest"

P.S. There is obviously not a penny behind this blog. The only reason anyone is talking about the 2 individuals above is,

• nature abhors a vacuum. (Scientists agree).

• The United States has had no national leader for about 20 years, exactly the amount of time it took

• for the global warming scam to become the biggest industry in the world. ed.

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From National Public Radio: Yanks must pay $25.7M luxury tax!

"New York is the only team to pay a tax for this season and has crossed the threshold in all seven years since the tax started. According to the collective bargaining agreement, the Yankees must send a check to the commissioner's office by Jan. 31."...

• NPR says this is per information obtained by the AP!
• Nowhere in the article does it say what exactly happens to all that evil money after it's turned over to Bud Selig.

Now that would be news, so the AP will never report it. The AP reads like the PR office of Bud Selig.

• from "AP NewsBreak: Yanks Hit with $25.7 million luxury tax"

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Chicago Sun-Times sells its photo archives

"A photograph is a single moment, framed and frozen, yet individuals looking at it sometimes each see something different.

• More than simply conveying a time, a place, a mood, an event, an association, those actually in a shot can peer into the picture and beyond its margins. The photographer spots features and flaws unnoticed by others, the image accompanied by the circumstances of capturing it.

• Others bring their own context, memories and aesthetic values.

Sun-Times Media management looked at the photos in its extensive archives, including shots from the Chicago Sun-Times and the late great Chicago Daily News, and what it saw was an untapped asset.

• No media company these days can afford to overlook an asset, and sure enough this one has been sold.

The company confirmed as much Friday, although it declined to share any details beyond the fact that the transaction did not include the papers' intellectual property. That means the company still owns all the copyrights, although that's

• only useful if all the aging pics no longer in its physical possession were
• painstakingly digitally scanned and properly cataloged for later use.

Open questions include when and with whom the deal was done, the value of the deal, how many photos are involved and whether Sun-Times Media gets a share in subsequent revenue from peddling the photo.

• Pics already are showing up on eBay from a pair of sellers from Arkansas with the user names "narfrontrunners" and "lexibell."

Photos on the block include vintage pictures of sports icons Michael Jordan and Ernie Banks, apparently straight from the file cabinets."...

• Chicago Tribune column by Phil Rosenthal, "Sun-Times media's photo sale puts focus on maximizing assets," 12/20/09, via romenesko twitter

There have to be thousands of baseball-related photos.......ed.

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Was thoroughly restricted to ESPN brand--Gammons

"SI.com: How would you describe your editorial independence at ESPN?

Gammons: There is certainly independence but whether it is radio or whatever you do,

• you are thoroughly restricted to the ESPN brand.

And I understand that. Everything you do,

• it has to be within the ESPN brand,

• and if ran the company that's what I'd do. It's a great idea, a great business but

• I don't mind the independence now."...

From SI.com column by Richard Deitsch, "Peter Gammons Unplugged," 12/21/09

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UN climate change guru Pachauri has endless conflicts-US media kept to themselves

• Has business deals or associations with countless banks, oil companies, investment and construction firms. His firm lobbys the US government from offices in DC.
• With his active business interests, he advised the United States EPA to declare CO2 a dangerous substance and not wait for congress to pass cap and trade. Which the EPA did right before the Copenhagen meetings.
• He's on the board of the US Chicago Climate Exchange.
• He has no training in climate science at all.

UK Telegraph, 12/20: "No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics

• he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in

• organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds

• heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the

• fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

• It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how
• the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand
• to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations.

The issue of Dr Pachauri’s potential conflict of interest was first publicly raised last Tuesday when, after giving a lecture at Copenhagen University, he was handed a letter by two eminent ‘climate sceptics’. One was the Stephen Fielding, the Australian Senator who sparked the revolt which recently led to the defeat of his government’s ‘cap and trade scheme’. The other, from Britain, was Lord Monckton, a longtime critic of the IPCC’s science, who has recently played a key part in stiffening opposition to a cap and trade bill in the US Senate.

• Their open letter first challenged the scientific honesty of a graph prominently used in the IPCC’s 2007 report, and shown again by Pachauri in his lecture, demanding that he should withdraw it. But they went on to question why the report had not declared
• Pachauri’s personal interest in so many organisations which seemingly stood to profit from its findings.

The letter, which included information first disclosed in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, was circulated to all the 192 national conference delegations, calling on them to dismiss Dr Pachauri as IPCC chairman because of recent revelations of his conflicting interests.

• The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director-general in 2001.
• Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India’s largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group, with interests ranging from steel, cars and energy to chemicals, telecommunications and insurance
• (and now best-known in the UK as the owner of Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus, Britain’s largest steel company).

Although TERI has extended its sponsorship since the name change, the two concerns are still closely linked.

• In India, Tata exercises enormous political power, shown not least in the way

• it has managed to displace hundreds of thousands of poor tribal villagers in the eastern states of Orissa and Jarkhand to

• make way for large-scale iron mining and steelmaking projects.

Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries, which may now seem odd for a man who has since become best known for his opposition to fossil fuels.

• He was, for instance, a director until 2003 of India Oil, the country’s largest commercial enterprise, and until this year remained as a director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, its largest electricity producer.

In 2005, he set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.

However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved,

• such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms.

Dr Pachauri’s TERI empire has also extended worldwide, with branches in the US, the EU and several countries in Asia. TERI Europe, based in London, of which he is a trustee

• (along with Sir John Houghton, one of the key players in the early days of the IPCC and formerly head of the UK Met Office)

is currently running a project on bio-energy, financed by the EU.

Another project, co-financed by our own Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the German insurance firm Munich Re, is studying

• how India’s insurance industry, including Tata, can benefit from exploiting the supposed risks of exposure to climate change.

Quite why Defra and UK taxpayers should fund a project to increase the profits of Indian insurance firms is not explained.

Even odder is the role of TERI’s Washington-based North American offshoot, a non-profit organisation, of which Dr Pachauri is president.

• Conveniently sited on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol,

• this body unashamedly sets out its stall as a lobbying organisation,

to “sensitise decision-makers in North America to developing countries’

• concerns about energy and the environment”.

TERI-NA is funded by a galaxy of official and corporate sponsors, including four branches of the UN bureaucracy; four US government agencies;

• oil giants such as Amoco; two of the leading US defence contractors; Monsanto, the world’s largest GM producer;

• the WWF (the environmentalist campaigning group which derives much of its own funding from the EU)

• and two world leaders in the international ‘carbon market’, between them managing more than $1 trillion (£620 billion) worth of assets.

All of this is doubtless useful to the interests of Tata back in India, which is heavily involved not just in bio-energy, renewables and insurance but also in ‘carbon trading’, the worldwide market in buying and selling the right to emit CO2. Much of this is

• administered at a profit by the UN under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol,

• which the Copenhagen treaty was designed to replace with an
• even more lucrative successor.

Under the CDM, firms and consumers in the developed world pay for the right to exceed their ‘carbon limits’ by buying certificates from those firms in countries such as India and China which rack up ‘carbon credits’ for every renewable energy source they develop – or by showing that they have in some way reduced their own ‘carbon emissions’.

It is one of these deals, reported in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, which is enabling Tata to transfer three million tonnes of steel production from its Corus plant in Redcar to a new plant in Orissa, thus gaining a potential £1.2 billion in ‘carbon credits’

• (and putting 1,700 people on Teesside out of work).

More than three-quarters of the world ‘carbon’ market benefits India and China in this way.

India alone has 1,455 CDM projects in operation, worth $33 billion (£20 billion), many of them facilitated by Tata –

• and it is perhaps unsurprising that the largest and most lucrative carbon-trading exchange in the world,

which was also assisted by TERI in setting up India’s own carbon exchange.

But this is peanuts compared to the numerous other posts to which Dr Pachauri has been appointed in the years since the UN chose him to become the world’s top ‘climate-change official’.

• In 2007, for instance, he was appointed to the advisory board of Siderian, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specialising in ‘sustainable technologies’, where he was expected to provide the Fund with ‘access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level’,

In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise £100 billion.

• In the same year he became a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by EDF and E.On, two of Europe’s largest electricity firms, to promote ‘bio-energy’.
• This year Dr Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a ‘strategic adviser’, and was made chairman of the advisory board to the Asian Development Bank, strongly supportive of CDM trading,
• whose CEO warned that failure to agree a treaty at Copenhagen would lead to a collapse of the carbon market.

The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on.

• He has become head of Yale University’s Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding.

He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank. He is Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and was until recently an adviser to Toyota Motors. Recalling his origins as a railway engineer, he is even a policy adviser to SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company.

• Meanwhile, back home in India, he serves on an array of influential government bodies, including the Economic Advisory Committee to the prime minister, holds various academic posts and has somehow found time in his busy life to publish 22 books.

Dr Pachauri never shrinks from giving the world frank advice on all matters relating to the menace of global warming. The latest edition of TERI News quotes him as telling the US Environmental Protection Agency that it must go ahead with regulating US carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to pass its cap and trade bill.

• It reports how, in the days before Copenhagen, he called on the developing nations which had been historically responsible for the global warming crisis to make ‘concrete commitments’ to aiding developing countries such as India with funding and technology – while insisting that India could not agree to binding emissions targets. India, he said, must bargain for large-scale subsidies from the West for developing solar power, and Western funds must be made available for geo-engineering projects to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

As a vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri repeated his call for the world to eat less meat to cut down on methane emissions (as usual he made no mention of what was to be done about India’s 400 million sacred cows). He further called for a ban on serving ice in restaurants and for meters to be fitted to all hotel rooms, so that guests could be charged a carbon tax on their use of heating and air-conditioning.

• One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies for which he works publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.

As for TERI itself, Dr Pachauri’s main job for nearly 30 years, it is so coy about money that it does not even publish its accounts – the financial statement amounts to two income and expenditure pie charts which contain no detailed figures.

• Dr Pachauri is equally coy about TERI’s links with Tata, the company which set it up in the 1970s and whose name it continued to bear until 2002, when it was changed to just The Energy Research Institute. A spokesman at the time said ‘we have not severed our past relationship with the Tatas, the change is only for convenience’.

But the real question mark over TERI’s director-general remains over the relationship between his highly lucrative commercial jobs and his role as chairman of the IPCC.

• TERI have, for example, become a preferred bidder for Kuwaiti contracts to clean up the mess left by Saddam Hussein in their oilfields in 1991. The $3 billion (£1.9 billion) cost of the contracts has been provided by the UN. If successful, this would be tenth time TERI have benefited from a contract financed by the UN.

Certainly no one values the services of TERI more than the EU, which has included Dr Pachauri’s institute as a partner in no fewer than 12 projects designed to assist in devising the EU’s policies

• on mitigating the effects of the global warming predicted by the IPCC.

But whether those 1,700 Corus workers on Teesside will next month be so happy to lose their jobs to India, thanks to the workings of

• that international ‘carbon market’ about which Dr Pachauri is so enthusiastic,

• is quite another matter."

"Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr. Rajendra Pachauri," by Christopher Booker and Richard North, UK Telegraph, 12/20/09

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