NOVEMBER 17 2007 UPDATE
COMMITMENTS
Molly Khalil/Catcher 08 has verbally committed to Dartmouth. She is currently playing for Desperados Gold/Ken Kertz,
Stephanie Lacek - Lady Sharks Gold - Piper - Signed to Sonoma State University
Midland Magic
Hannah Huebbe 08 Pitcher committed to Heartland College
Kaitlin Wallace 08 SS committed to Heartland College
Jessica Lovejoy 08 Pitcher committed to Lewis and Clark College
Danielle Finke 08 IF/OF committed to Lake Land College
Jessica Saucier 08 IF/OF committed to Eastern Illinois
JENNIE & THE OLYMPIANS
Jennie Finch is having a camp in
Winter Garden, FL, Dec. 1 & 2.which will include fellow Olympians from the 2004
Gold Medal team. Laura Berg, Natasha Watley and Crystal Bustos. The quartet
are on the USA national team now playing in Japan Cup; they are among the 18
players chosen for the 2008 Olympics.
A great line up!!
Players can register @
jenniefinch27@hotmail.com
ADVICE TO STEVE FORBES: DON’T RUN FOR OFFICE IN OKLAHOMA
The gazillionaire publisher makes noise but so far he has not entered the 2008 run for the White House. Should he do so, Forbes best stay away from the Sooner state.
We’re not taking sides in the legal wrangle over the legality of petitions to limit state spending and to limit eminent domain seizures of property. But, Forbes clearly believes the petitions should be allowed. In an editorial this week titled “Has North Korea annexed Oklahoma?”, Forbes derides “Oklahoma’s Soviet-minded political establishment,” calls Drew Edmondson a “hoodlumesque attorney general,” and says, “In a tantrum worthy of an Iranian ayatollah, the pro-political class Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled the petitions invalid.” (For what it’s worth from a legal standpoint, the Court ruled that only Oklahoma residents can carry petitions – and by that they meant only permanent residents – which the petitioners were not.)
THE BURGEONING RUSSIAN ECONOMY
Russian investment bankers predict Russia will become Europe’s largest consumer in 3 to 4 years, noting the expanding sales of consumer goods in the farthest reaches of the country. While the average Russian is economizing to cope with rising food prices, the domestic economy seems strong. To bolster this point, Russia, published by Rosslyskoya Gazeta, features a photo of Victor Zavodov, his wife and six children, who live in the Siberian city of Omsk, huddled around their very full freezer-refrigerator. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, only commisars, apparatchiks, military leaders and the like could even get a permit to own a refrigerator.
Smuggling a freezer past the KGB. In 1971, I was a member of a delegation to United Nations meetings in Geneva, headed by Donald Rumsfeld. At one of the numerous cocktail parties which are de rigeur for such affairs, I had a clandestine meeting on the terrace with Georges Babayan, the Russian narcotics czar. A few days later, another Russian asked if we could have a very private conversation, and we set a time and place. Meanwhile, the CIA station identified this second Soviet official as the brother of a high ranking KGB officer – which got much attention from US officials. I met this Russian one evening, in a garden, and was stunned by his request. His brother got him a permit to have a freezer in his Moscow apartment, but, no freezers were available. Ergo, this Russian, who had been told by Babayan that I was very smart, wanted to know how to take apart a freezer he was buying on the Geneva black market. He was crushed when I told him that, once you break the factory seals, you’ve lost the freezer’s essence and would have to find a way to reseal it; and, even if your could get the very large pieces over the border, the Moscow electrical system operated on different cycles from European and American utilities, ergo, the freezer wouldn’t work in Moscow. But, his disappointment was mild compared to the incredulity with which Rumsfeld et al received my report the next day. Sure, sure, Rayburn; good story; now what did he really want? Is his brother ready to defect? I’m not sure they believed me, and I had the feeling of being watched closely the next two weeks, so I went off on a Roman holiday with a nubile journalist from Paris who had no interest in freezers. She owned one. We ended up at the Cannes film festival; if anyone was watching, they surely had a good time.
POTPOURRI
Yoko Ono’s music has been used by the US military in interrogations.
Somebody should have told Bush. It matters not that the Congressional leaders are named Reid and Pelosi; the annual pork bills have bipartisan support no matter who is in the chair, and the Democrat majority is just as avid in consuming pork at the GOP. Bush argued fiscal restraint; sounds good but back home bridges, dams, roads, schools and the like are what attracts voter attention.
Take this on faith. Pyschological Science will carry in its next monthly issue a report by researchers at UCSD and Yale which proclaims that batters whose names began with a K struck out at a higher rate (18.8%) than other batters (17.3%). The study covered baseball stats from 1913 through 2006. More, studying 15 years of business school stats, the researches held that students whose names begin with a C or D earned slightly lower GPA’s that those with names beginning with A or B. And, the researchers found that people are more likely to buy brands that begin with one of their initials, “someone named Tom will buy a Toyota and Larry will buy a Lexus.”