Does any one else find it troubling that DUI checkpoints only seem to be held at in the very poorest of locations in this county? I see nine arrests were made in Wasco, at Central and Highway 46 this past weekend. There was one on East California Avenue very recently. There was also one on South Union Avenue not long ago, and another at East Truxton Avenue if memory serves me. I do not recall seeing any on Calloway and Rosedale or Stockdale. I do not recall one at the Truxton Exchange and Coffee Road. Don't people with means ever drink? Does the check point have more to do with poverty than safety?

Any takes on the Dow dropping 360 points today with news of General Motors taking a
$39 billion dollar loss for the quarter? The GM news regarding its staggering loss is due to a one time charge of tax assets that are now not viable after three years of mounting operational losses. Of course, the company did lose $1.6 billion this quarter on operations to  add to the dismal report.  All of this comes at a time when the dollar hits new lows against foreign currency each day with mounting talk that the Chinese, in response to American outrage of  contaminated food and consumer products, will start removing big amounts of their foreign exchange dollars from the US Treasury notes it holds. The Chinese, according to Reuters, has approximately $1.2 trillion dollars invested in foreign currencies, of which two thirds are invested in the US.  Many big financial  companies and banks will be reporting earnings soon, and the news of continued loan write downs continues to be grim. Are we becoming an asset based nation without any assets left?

The World Series came to a merciful end Sunday, October 28, 2007 with the Red Sox clobbering the Rockies. Is it just me, or was there a time not too long ago that the World Series was a truly big event in American sports? The last four World Series have sapped the life out of the game for the dwindling fan base of America's former national pastime.

The losing teams over the past four years have won one game total out of the seventeen played. It is hard to get excited by blowout after blowout. I wonder how many years it will be before the World Series will be relegated to the F/X channel? There have to be more fans of The Nanny today than viewers for  the usual pairing of noncompetitive ball on the diamond.

I guess when one team outspends another by such a wide margin this is what you get, but there are other reasons why baseball has packed it in for most fans. Strikes have hurt the game.

The last major league player strike canceled the 1994 World Series. After that stoppage, home runs started popping out of ballparks faster than ribs off a grill during a barbecue  cook-off.  Fans came back, but found out  the players had more growth hormones in them than the beef at the grill-off. Barry Bonds gained a full hat size on his way to breaking all the home run records, and nobody thinks this was caused from any barbecue sauce. No quite a different rub indeed as we learned from the BALCO episode.

One other current reality that has hurt baseball is the length of time it takes to play the games. You can fly from LA to New York faster (maybe even in a crop-duster) than any world Series game is played. The games drag on for an eternity with only the players, and their little bodily function routines, oblivious to the fans discomfort over the painful pace of action  on the field.  Speed up the game with a time limit between pitches, or shorten the amount of innings played before we all die from boredom.

But maybe the most important reality that fans have come to accept, and in turn quit on the game, is the total lack of real competition any longer throughout MLB. The vast differences on what the top spending teams shell out and what the most frugal spend makes for predictable and forgettable hardball.

The game is so out of whack that the top player, a true mercenary of this era, Alex Rodriguez, can have his agent announce during the World Series he is ready to accept bids for his services because $72 million over the next three years with the Yankees is not enough. Of course the Yankees only were paying a portion of this obligation thanks to the Texas Rangers choosing to help subsidize the salary  just to get out from under the stupidest contract ever laid out to a professional player who has never appeared in a World Series. 

Sorry, this is not a game any longer and the business just gives me the creeps. No guy playing baseball, football or any game on this planet should be paid that amount of dough while so many starve and are without recourse to even fundamental  human rights and dignity. So maybe it best that the lights just stay off on this tired excuse of a game monopolists play.