The Mets win. Now can they change the name of Citifield? Maybe, we can find a company that is not in distress?
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
Blogging the Mets
Kaboom! Carlos goes yard — Delgado hits the second Met homer in Citifield history, a mammoth shot into the rightfield stands. He looks pretty good for a guy who appeared washed up last year at this time.
Astroturf, Part 2
Thomas Frank knows about Republicans and populism.
Blogging the Mets
Strange inning — Mets scoring four in the seventh on three walks (one intentional), a bunt single, two wild pitches and a sac fly. Craziest play came with two outs and men at the corners. The Padres pitcher tosses the ball off the catcher and Castillo comes charging in. As he closes in on the plate, the catcher tosses the ball over the head of the covering pitcher at the plate. Reyes, watching the play unfold, then scampers home from first — from FIRST!
See what I mean? Crazy.
The Tax Day astroturf blues
There certainly has been a lot of syllables expended on what organizers were billing as “largest grass-roots demonstration in history,” but instead turned out to be, well, a lot of hot air.
Yes, there were numerous demonstrations, some with more than 1,000 people, according to The Associated Press, but these paled in comparison to the protests leading up to the Iraq War or even the antiglobalization protests in Seattle during the tail-end of the Clinton era.
From the AP:
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Thousands of protesters, some dressed like Revolutionary War soldiers and most waving signs with anti-tax slogans, gathered around the nation Wednesday for a series of rallies modeled after the original Boston Tea Party. They chose the income tax filing deadline to express their displeasure with government spending since President Barack Obama took office.
The protests were held everywhere from Kentucky, which just passed tax increases on cigarettes and alcohol, to South Carolina, where the governor has repeatedly criticized the $787 billion economic stimulus package Congress passed earlier this year.
”Frankly, I’m mad as hell,” said Des Moines, Iowa, businessman Doug Burnett, one of about 1,000 people, many in red shirts declaring ”revolution is brewing,” at a rally at the Iowa Capitol. ”This country has been on a spending spree for decades, a spending spree we can’t afford.”
The biggest reported in the AP story? 3,000 in Connecticut. Contrast this with the protests in February 2003 against the impending invasion of Iraq, from The New York Times:
On a wintry day in New York, huge crowds, prohibited by a court order from marching, rallied within sight of the United Nations amid heavy security. They raised banners of patriotism and dissent, sounded the hymns of a broad new antiwar movement and heard speakers denounce what they called President Bush’s rush to war, while offering no sympathy for Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein.
“The World Says No to War,” proclaimed a huge banner over a stage on First Avenue near 51st Street, the focal point of crowds that filled the avenue from 49th Street to 72nd Street and spilled over into side streets and to Second, Third and Lexington Avenues, where thousands more were halted at police barricades, far from the sights and sounds of the demonstration.
Crowd estimates are often little more than politically tinged guesses. The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, put the crowd at about 100,000, while the organizers said 400,000 people attended. Given the sea of faces extending more than a mile up First Avenue and the ancillary crowds that were prevented from joining them, it seemed that something in between was probable.
There were similar though smaller demonstrations in Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Sacramento, Miami, Detroit, Milwaukee and scores of other American cities, organized under the umbrella of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of 120 organizations.
I’ll leave it at that.
