Designated Hitters and the Economics of Baseball

and the interleague experiment will it end? not with the DH league disparity...

In the case of the DH, the big-market AL teams have no financial incentive to reduce their competitive advantage, and the NL owners have no real stake in reducing the AL owners’ cost of doing business. Unless and until all the owners are willing to make financial concessions in other areas to bring an end to the DH rule in the AL, we’re stuck with it as is. 

Did the “News of the World” Phone Hacks Violate U.S. Criminal Law?

James Murdoch

...Computer Fraud and Abuse Act extends to computers outside the United States in most circumstances. Here’s the key statutory language: the term “protected computer” means a computer . . . which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States;
Update: The Guardian reports that former NOTW editor Andy Coulson, who was forced to resign as Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman when the scandal deepened in January, has been told he will be arrested on Friday.

Faced with a rapidly snowballing phone-hacking scandal, parent company News Corp. has announced that it will shutter its News of the World newspaper, a longtime cash cow and Britain's top-selling Sunday newspaper. James Murdoch, head of the News International division that includes the company's U.K. papers, told staff that recently revealed actions by the paper — including the hacking of phones of murder victims and the families of deceased soldiers — were "inhuman."
The closing of the 168-year-old paper comes as News Corp. is seeking a politically loaded approval from government regulators over its purchase of the remainder of U.K. satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Muslim terror hits Mumbai again: At least 21 killed, over 100 wounded in 3 coordinated blasts

MUMBAI, India (AP) — Three coordinated bombings tore through the heart of India's busy financial capital during rush hour Wednesday, killing 21 people in the worst terror attack in the country since the 2008 Mumbai siege. The attacks came just months after peace talks resumed between India and Pakistan, which New Delhi has blamed for past attacks.
Blood-covered bodies lay on Mumbai streets and people hugged and wept. Others carried the wounded to taxis. Crowds gathered in the blast areas as police questioned witnesses, and bomb squads inspected the undercarriages of vehicles searching for clues and other explosives.
Motorcycles were charred, shopfronts shattered and a bus stop ripped apart. Bleeding victims crowded into the back of a cargo truck to be taken to a hospital.
The first blast struck the Jhaveri Bazaar at 6:54 p.m., tearing through the famed jewelry market. A minute later, a blast hit the busy business district of Opera House, several miles (kilometers) away in southern Mumbai. At 7:05 p.m., the third bomb exploded in the crowded neighborhood of Dadar in central Mumbai, according to police.
Because of the close timing of the blasts, "we infer that this was a coordinated attack by terrorists," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said, adding that Mumbai was put on high alert.
More...

via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com

NY Times likens violent 'fly-in' agitators to Christian pilgrims in Bethlehem

Isabel_Kershner's_NY_Times_report_on_Friday's flytilla into Ben Gurion Airport made it sound as if the participants were brutally stopped from attending something on the order of a snoozy academic conference at the Hyatt Regency in LA. Those 'peace loving' flytilla 'activists' clashed with Israeli troops on Sunday at a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Or better still, as Christian_pilgrims landing expectantly in the Holy Land. Iran's Press TV website published this photo. A similar but more brutal scene accompanied the NY Times article. Palestinians and international activists in Bethlehem on Sunday tried to force their way through a checkpoint separating the West Bank city from Jerusalem.

Among the protesters were activists who were onboard the so-called "flytilla" that arrived Friday at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Israeli soldiers prevented protesters from accessing the area and threatening to shoot anyone who approached the checkpoint, one of the main terminals connecting the occupied West Bank with Jerusalem.

Most were barred from boarding their flights in Europe as a result of a blacklist of suspected rabble-rousers Israel sent to airlines with a request to deny them passage, while others were arrested at Ben-Gurion and now await deportation back to Europe.
A few, however, trickled through Israeli security and promptly hooked up with violent Palestinian demonstrators who clashed Saturday with Israeli security forces at two West Bank checkpoints. According to Israeli media, one of the clashes that involved the hurling of stones at IDF troops included "fly-in" participants, thus justifying earlier warnings by Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that Israel would not tolerate foreign "provocateurs" and "hoodlums" bent on entering the country to engage in public disorder.
Leftists in Israel and elsewhere, however, denounced Israel's security precautions as excessive and draconian -- a view also espoused by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner in a Saturday dispatch in the New York Times, "Israel Blocks Air Travelers to Palestinian Conference," July 9).
Determined to depict intruding agitators as peaceful visitors, Kershner stationed herself in Bethlehem (her dateline reads "Bethlehem, West Bank"), where she awaited the arrival of these supposedly harmless air travelers for a week-long program of "fellowship."
To underscore their supposedly peaceful bona fides, Kershner wrote in the second paragraph of her piece that, after all, "Israel has traditionally been welcoming of foreign tourists, including more than a million Christian pilgrims who visited this Palestinian city of the Nativity last year."
Imagine her disappointment that Israel didn't put out the welcome mat to these Gandhiesque "fly-in" pilgrims.
"There were persistent reports," Kershner informed Times readers," that the foreign visitors would try to create chaos and paralyze the airport, despite strenuous denials from the organizers of the campaign, who advocate nonviolence." Kershner thus was confident enough to give these agitators and their hosts a kosher, non-violent stamp of approval.
But no sooner did her dispatch make it into the New York Times than Israeli media reported Palestinian clashes with IDF units at West Bank protests, including one demonstration where some of these allegedly non-violent guests participated in stone-hurling attacks on IDF troops.

Leftists in Israel and elsewhere, however, denounced Israel's security precautions as excessive and draconian -- a view also espoused by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner in a Saturday dispatch in the New York Times, "Israel Blocks Air Travelers to Palestinian Conference," July 9).

via americanthinker.com h/t calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com

what did you expect?

Turkey: Erdogan's New "Ottoman Region"

Assad and his ruling clique are not Sunnis. They are Alawis -- not exactly the same as Turkey's Alevis, but similar in that they also revere Ali as a deity, much as the Christians revere Jesus. As a result of the continuing upheaval in Syria, the ruling party of Turkey might see itself as surrounded by various active religious threats from the east and from Syria, along Turkey's southern border... It is in this context that we should understand Turkey's renewed interest in the U.S. and Israel. As such, both the U.S. and Israel should be extremely wary of Erdogan and his associates. Erdogan's Turkey does not see long-term interests with either. Given economic developments in Iran, Alawite oppression in Syria, and Shiite-dominance in Iraq, Erdogan understands that he must take a temporary hiatus from his goal of reasserting what appears to be his real goal -- the Turkish Sunni domination of the entire Middle East. via hudson-ny.org

Glenn Beck: "I'm not against a Palestinian state."

Glenn Beck forum said Israel did 9/11

There also is plenty of information on replacement theology. Beck might think he is doing the right thing by Jews, but he also thinks he is capable of becoming a Polygamous God bringing the world to light skin. I actually did like his show... he educated people on TV in a way that no one else could on many economic issues. I also liked his personality... but restoring "Courage" means pointing out that Jews don't need to tolerate a "Replacement" theology that is an existential threat. It means that Jews can speak out. It means that Jews know that Christianity has been a threat to their faith. It means that we know that at a drop of a hat a theology that wants to survive after the guilt of a Holocaust can become a public relations lie.

...if he really were serious about his support for Israel ...then Beck would apologize instead of censoring past mistakes he said recorded on YouTube.

@CriticalAnalyst: #Beck 4 a Palestinian state? it is very clear by his answer that it's yes. Mormonism is replacement ideology like Catholicism.


...More than one MK spoke out against a Palestinian state in the committee meeting, but Beck told Channel 10 news later that evening that he would not oppose such a state.

"I'm not against a Palestinian state." he said. ....Beck has never come out in favor of freeing Jonathan Pollard from prison, a cause which MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) and MK Marina Solodkin (Kadima) mentioned to the commentator at the meeting. more via Jewish Internet Defense Force

North Korea's Luxury Restaurant

Phoenix Commercial Ventures Ltd offers investors business and investment opportunities in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK - aka North Korea), enabling them to take advantage of the economic reforms that are taking place there.