Jim Bunning was a brilliant pitcher. He pitched one no-hitter for the Tigers and a perfect game for the Phillies.
When I was young, I remember waiting outside the old Stadium (the original old Stadium) to get his autograph after a Yankees-Tigers game.
Yesterday Senator Bunning (R Kentucky), perhaps the least brilliant U.S. Senator of all time, was disinvited from an opportunity to pick up a few dollars signing at an autograph show. The show was in Detroit, a ghastly town about to become an absolute ghost village thanks to the non-leadership of Bunning’s Kentucky colleague Mitch (the Son of a ____) McConnell (R Kentucky) who leads the brain-dead Republicans in the Senate. Bunning voted against the auto bailout that might have saved a city he pitched for over a span of eight years from certain doom.
Baseball in the winter is dead. Spring brings rejuvenation for baseball and for life. It is then that batters begin the journey through the pasture that brings them home, scoring runs and successes. More than once Bunning had poetry and life in his right arm worthy of the poetry that baseball is. He was a leader on the field. Now his hand seems to have but one finger left, which he offers to Detroit, to the nation and to the world as we teeter on the edge of Great depression II.
Good for you Detroit. May that articulate middle finger of Bunning’s fall off before he inks another autograph.
i know this is not an economic forum but now that the door has been opened...
ReplyDeleteits tough to say whether a "bailout" would save the three automakers. it would provide necessary short-term funds, but long term the loans would have to be paid off and bankruptcies would still be a possibility.
now, the auto industry is not the only retail sector reeling. so why should they be federally bailed out but not others?
the financial mess was partially facilitated by federal activity and pressure for banks to make loans so i can understand why there would be
an obligation to bail it out.
in truth, many of the issues holding up the auto bailout in congress had nothing to do with the performance of the companies in the future or the necessity of aid, rather issues to do with the uaw.
bottom line is was he selling out his hometown? in the short term, yes. in the long term - imo, not really.
in paragraph 4 of my last comment i am reffering to the financial sector bailout and tarp.
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ReplyDeleteWe can discuss the auto bailout later. I personally am against it, but the issue is a very complex one. By the way, you can no longer say that I did not read your blog, as I have commented on it.
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