To the surprise of no one, in his first act of office, Chicago Cubs President Theo Epstein has fired manager Mike Quade. After Quade guided the Cubs to a 24-13 record at the tail end of the 2010 season, the Cubs went 71-91 this season. But to the surprise of everyone, Epstein effectively ruled out Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg as Quade’s successor. Amongst the prerequisites Epstein set out was that the Cubs new manager required “managerial or coaching experience at the Major League level.” Sandberg managed in the Cubs minor league system and this past season managed the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the Triple-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies. The Hall of Fame second baseman has never served on a big league coaching staff. Yet while Sandberg has been effectively ruled out of Wrigley, the St. Louis Cardinals don’t seem deterred by Sandberg’s lack of big league managerial or coaching experience and are expected to ask the Phillies permission to speak with Sandberg . The Cardinals suddenly found themselves in need of a manager when Tony La Russa abruptly retired following the team’s World Series triumph last Friday. If the Cardinals hire Sandberg it would be a dagger through the hearts of Cubs fans. Amongst the possible candidates for the Cubs job is Milwaukee Brewers bench coach Dale Sveum, Texas Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux, Philadelphia Phillies bench coach Pete Mackanin, Tampa Bay Rays bench coach Dave Martinez and Boston Red Sox bench coach DeMarlo Hale. These candidates are also on the radar of the Red Sox GM Ben Cherington as they search for a new manager. I do feel sorry for Quade. I remember him when he managed the now defunct Ottawa Lynx back in 1993 and was glad when he finally got a chance to manage at the big league level and when the Cubs responded to him late in 2010, I thought he could take them all the way in 2011 . Well, we know how that turned out. Unfortunately, Cubs fans are impatient for a winner and the writing was on the wall once Jim Hendry was dismissed shortly after the All-Star Game. With that said, I think Theo is being shortsighted in his exclusion of Ryno. Should the Cardinals hire Sandberg, Cubs fans will let Theo have it every time they lose to the Cards at Wrigley next season and beyond.
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Cubs Fire Quade; Won’t Hire Sandberg
Go Bears. (also, congrats to the Cards fans. Well done)…. Continued here: College Football Saturday
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College Football Saturday
OK, this needs a little background: it recently came out that Indiana Democrats had forged multiple signatures on the 2008 primary nominating petitions for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The situation was sufficiently bad that former Democratic governor (and Clinton supporter) Joe Kernan had to come out and announce that no, that wasn’t his signature on the Obama petition; in other words, it’s bad enough that the Democrats are having to do damage control right now. The designated fall guy is apparently going to be St. Joseph County Democratic Chair Butch Morgan; he resigned last night . Morgan is claiming that he did nothing wrong, but he’s resigning anyway. Now, why this is kind of interesting is because Morgan was also the Democratic chair for Indiana’s second Congressional district. Which is – oddly enough! – a Red district with a Blue Congressman. One who is running for Congress. IN-02 is currently held by Joe Donnelly, who defeated (current Club For Growth President) Chris Chocola in 2006, apparently mostly from elevated Democratic turnout from… St. Joseph County (Butch Morgan had both positions for quite some time ). In 2010 Donnelly came extremely close to losing his seat to Jackie Walorski; sufficiently close, in fact, that the final results were well within the 1% or so that I would personally call the true “margin of fraud*.” Given Morgan’s resignation, perhaps this election should be re-examined? Anyway: Donnelly is now running for Senate, most likely because recent redistricting has made the seat somewhat untenable; admittedly, it’s not much more viable for a Democrat to be running for a Senate seat in 2012, but you play the cards that you’ve drawn. Since Donnelly and Morgan are long-time political allies , it’s no surprise that Morgan had been an early supporter of Donnelly’s Senate run ; which makes Joe Donnelly’s silence on this matter somewhat… suspect. After all, Butch Morgan absolutely insists that he did nothing wrong: does Representative Donnelly not believe his old friend and reliable ally? And if Donnelly doesn’t believe Morgan, doesn’t he have an obligation to say so? What’s more important to Joe: Indiana, or the Democratic party of Indiana? Moe Lane ( crosspost ) *Most people say five percent; personally, I’d move the decimal point one to the left.
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Joe Donnelly (D, IN-02; D-CAND, IN-SEN) curiously quiet on Indiana voter fraud.
National Review ‘s Andrew McCarthy, who thinks that President Obama’s drone killing of radical Yemeni-American al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki was “obviously the right call,” notes a gross inconsistency in the administration’s attitude toward due process for Islamist terrorists:
WASHINGTON — We are engaged in a long war — actually two long wars. The first and most commonly accepted of our wars is the long war against Islamofascists. It is not a war against vast armies. Comparatively speaking it is just a war against a handful of thugs, but they want to strike at our heart, wherever we are ill-prepared, and if they can they will cause incalculable destruction. This we discovered on September 11, 2001. We are on the hem of wiping al-Qaeda out, but there are other thugs waiting. We must be vigilant against them. It will be a long war. The second long war is at home on budgetary matters. That both the left and the right are in a fury about an early battle in that war, the debt-ceiling battle, suggests just how long that war will be. We have little consensus on this war. Yet a war it is, and a very long war I fear it will be. It is a war to balance the budget, putting the economy on a sustainable course, and ensuring growth and jobs. It is a war to get the country back to a federal budget that accounts for 20 percent of GDP rather than the 25 percent of GDP that President Barack has snatched from us while we were not looking. Today the left is grumbling that the Congress agreed to budget cuts of nearly $900 billion over the next ten years but with no new taxes or as they delicately put it, no new “revenue enhancements.” As Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York, exclaimed, “It’s a surrender to Republican extortion.” He elaborated, “It’s one thing to say ‘we want this. We don’t want that as part of negotiations.’ It’s another to say ‘we will destroy the country and the economy if you don’t do what we want.’” My response is just get government spending back to where it was before the Obama revels. Tax increases kill job growth, are unfair to those whom the left targets to pay them, and give us a false sense that we can continue on this perilous path to ever-larger government. The federal budget has accounted for roughly 20 percent of GDP in recent years. When President Obama came to power he increased that to just shy of 25 percent of GDP, a peacetime record. In other words, he increased government’s size in our economy to 25 percent of GDP and he wants to keep it there at that historic level forever, or until he can grow it larger. It will mean slower economic growth, but he rather likes that too. The answer to Obama and the grumbling left is “give us the 5 percent of the economy that you took form us.” I think that is reasonable. That is what we want. Unfortunately, the Tea Party is unhappy. It is the most successful political development in decades. It removed “revenue enhancements” from the recent Washington agenda, at least temporarily. As recently as July 28 President Obama was insisting that tax increases had to be part of the debt-ceiling deal. He lost. The Tea Partiers focused the agreement on spending cuts but many do not think they got enough cuts. To be sure, they did not get enough cuts in the debt-ceiling battle, but they are in a strong position to get them in the battles ahead. They must not be distracted. They must not pack it in and go home. A Tea Partier by the name of Ellen Gilmore told the Wall Street Journal , “People are saying, ‘These tea partiers, aren’t they wonderful, they are changing the conversation.’ Well, we got absolutely squat — except for the conversation.” Actually, the Tea Party is leading us toward a tipping point, as Sean Hannity and Jeffrey Lord pointed out on Tuesday. And the tipping is to the right and it can stay there for years to come if the Tea Party and conservatives play their cards right. We now are heading for the small battles to ensure that the debt-ceiling agreement is carried out properly. Then there is the great battle of the 2012 elections and the retirement of Barack Obama. Finally there will be other battles after 2012. The Tea Party is essential to winning these battles. It must not give up. It must stay the course. We are in a long war, but with the Tea Party’s assistance it is winnable. The fight has just begun.
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The Long War and the Budget
