Alex Rodriguez and the big hurry

Why did Alex Rodriguez rush to announce that he was opting out of his contract with the Yankees? Why did he and his agent Scott Boras violate the commissioner's directive by releasing major news before the World Series was over?

Was it just the usual self-centered attention-whoring, or was it something more interesting?

Yankees GM Brian Cashman told reporters that the club wanted to meet with A-Rod and offer him a huge new deal, but Rodriguez opted out by text message, without even a face-to-face meeting.

What was the rush?

Maybe it has something to do with Jose Canseco's comments last year that he had information about Alex Rodriguez which he was planning to include in his next book.

Maybe it has something to do with Major League Baseball's molasses-slow steroids investigation, carefully contained by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who is allegedly about to release a blockbuster name-naming report.

If Alex Rodriguez wants to leave New York and sign a long-term contract with another team, it certainly would be a good idea to get the deal done quickly, just in case there's anything coming out that might cause him problems.

Everybody's covered if they can just get the contract signed quickly enough.

Then they can all say "Innocent until proven guilty" until they're forced to say, "Gosh, if we'd only known, we never would have signed him, but now we can't get out of the contract. Oh, well. We'll just have to live with the fact that he will fill the seats every night for the next ten years while he chases Barry Bonds' career home-run record."

Well, maybe they won't say that last part. Not with a straight face.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Jose Canseco's interesting threat" and "Barry Bonds' big asterisk."

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Argus Hamilton would like to know...

...why this picture is not the Fox News Channel logo:



Thought you'd get a kick out of that.

Read Argus every day at www.ArgusHamilton.com.




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Ron Paul's military secret

Perhaps the most under-reported fact about GOP candidate Ron Paul's eye-popping third-quarter fundraising haul was this, buried down at paragraph thirteen of last week's ABC News report by Jake Tapper and Z. Byron Wolf:

A study by the Center for Responsive Politics found Paul received more campaign cash from members of the military than any other Republican presidential candidate.

The study of contributions of $200 and more during the first two quarters shows that Paul has raised three times as much from members of the military as what's been raised by GOP fundraising front-runner Romney, and four times what Giuliani garnered.

Three times what Romney took in. Four times what Giuliani collected.

Congressman Paul's view of the Iraq war, if you haven't been paying close attention, is that we went in illegally, it's going badly, and we should "just come home."

The people with the medals are sending him checks.

That shouldn't be kept secret.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "The Motive for War: How to End the Violence in Iraq" and "A Plan to Get Out of Iraq: Blackstone's Fundamental Rights and the Power of Property." You might also be interested in the earlier post, "Why you should vote for Ron Paul."


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John McCain saves his next job

America Wants to Know almost fired its whole rag-tag bunch of Gypsy fortune tellers and psychics yesterday when the Associated Press reported that John McCain was going to give a speech Wednesday criticizing Hillary Clinton for indecisiveness on foreign policy.

"The Democratic front-runner wants to have it both ways when it comes to foreign policy," the speech read. It went on to slam Senator Clinton for voting for the Iraq War but now opposing it, "sort of." McCain also planned to say, according to his campaign staff on Tuesday, that "this is not the '90s," we live in the "post-September 11 world," and the commander in chief doesn't have "the luxury to conduct our national security by means of triangulation."

If you're too young to remember, that's a slam against Senator Clinton's husband.

We were dismayed to read this, not because we're defenders of the Clinton record, but because we spend a lot of money keeping a team of fortune tellers and psychics on staff and they just emerged from their trances to predict that Senator Clinton would choose Senator John McCain to be the vice presidential nominee on her ticket.

Clearly, if Senator McCain was going to take pot shots at Senator Clinton and the Clinton administration's record, our team of seers was just flat wrong.

But before we could fire the lot of them and hire Nancy Reagan's astrologer, an amazing thing happened. This morning, the Associated Press reported this:

CAMDEN, S.C. (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain has decided not to assail Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton for her stance on the Iraq War in a speech Wednesday at a military prep school.

What do you know. Our psychics were right.

The AP reports that late Tuesday, Senator McCain said he had not yet seen the remarks, but planned "to look at them very carefully."

He had not yet seen the remarks?

McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan confirmed to the AP Tuesday night that Senator McCain had not seen "the language in the speech about Clinton," but still planned to give the speech as written. Then today, the day of the speech, Ms. Buchanan said the senator would not be criticizing Hillary Clinton in his remarks.

America Wants To Know keeps Lieutenant Columbo on retainer to figure these things out, and he has been following John McCain around for two days.

The lieutenant suspects that John McCain blindsided his South Carolina campaign staff. There they were, happily working to help the senator win the South Carolina primary, doing what any competent Republican campaign staff in South Carolina would do, working up an attack on Hillary Clinton. How were they to know that Senator McCain has been conducting a private back-channel conversation with the Clintons? How were they to know that Senator McCain has made himself available for a spectacular reach-across-the-aisle moment, sometime next summer, when Senator Clinton will ask Senator McCain to join her ticket?

How could anybody know about that?

I'd better take my psychics out for a nice lunch before they leave me to go to work for Daily Kos.


Copyright 2007

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