Wednesday's notes & links

Jeff Jacoby writes today about the politics that led to the collossal mess known as the Big Dig.

The Big Dig is indeed a monument to O'Neill. It captures perfectly the costly big-government sloppiness for which he was the poster child. Only in the public sector, where market discipline is nonexistent and financial losses are the taxpayer's problem, would such mismanagement be tolerated for so long. Only in the public sector, where political considerations far outweigh the bottom line, and where consumer satisfaction carries little weight, is such shoddiness and lack of oversight routine. In the private sector, incompetent performance generally means lost business, reduced earnings, or even bankruptcy. Only in the public sector -- under Democrats and Republicans both -- are negligence and failure commonly rewarded with ever-increasing budgets.

Newt Gingrich sums up the hypocricy of some Americans saying we should restrain Israel from defending itself in a column titled: Now isn't the time for restraint.

Imagine that this morning 50 missiles were launched from Cuba and exploded in Miami. In addition to buildings and homes being destroyed, scores of Americans were being killed. Now imagine our allies responded by saying publicly that we must not be too aggressive in protecting our citizens and that America must use the utmost restraint.

If you need a laugh today read this article.

A Red Sox fan, Chris from A Large Regular has been ranking the top five baseball players born in some of the New England states today he posted Massachusetts. Here are links to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Other than Massachusetts (where Jeff Bagwell couldn't even make the grade) these lists weren't very impressive. I'll have to come up with a list for Ohio. How would your state stack up?

The Indians continued their losing ways last night. Now sitting 21 games behind Detroit in the AL Central, the Indians should be let other teams know which players are available. There are very few players in their system who should be tabbed as completely unavailable (Sizemore, and ????).