The Baseball Hall of Fame properly elects no one. Celebrities reading mean Tweets. And Jon Stewart, pissed off about guns

There are lots of issues in sports that I can see both sides on.
The idea of baseball players who used steroids being elected and inducted into the Hall of Fame is not one of them.

This is a very, very simple thing in my eyes, and apparently in the eyes of a majority of baseball writers who on Wednesday declined to elect Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa or any other members of the “Steroid Generation” to the Hall of Fame.

I don’t want to hear any of the ridiculous arguments friends of mine, and many baseball writers (including my beloved Joe Posnanski) make to say that Bonds, et. al should be enshrined in Cooperstown.

Don’t tell me “everyone was doing it,” don’t tell me “it wasn’t against the rules at the time,” and most insultingly, don’t try to tell me that steroids “don’t help you hit a baseball.”

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and their juiced-up brethren knew they were cheating to get an unfair advantage. They took steroids, they were either caught, implicated or presented SO much physical evidence of steroid use (Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell, I’m looking at you, and those are two photos of Barry Bonds, above, notice the huge difference in head size), and now they will suffer the consequences.

Of course the Hall of Fame has cheaters in it. So we should excuse the 1990s stars because of past misdeeds.

These guys cheated, prospered, and were never truly punished. Well you know what? They don’t belong in the Hall of Fame.

And I’ll feel that way until I’ve watched my last-ever game.

Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated says it much better than I could here.

**And now, one of my favorite features of the “Jimmy Kimmel Show,” which oh by the way has now moved to 11:30 p.m., to go head-to-head with Letterman and Leno.
In this bit, Kimmel got celebrities to read, out loud, some of the meanest Tweets they’ve received lately. Warning: Language NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

Pretty darn funny, especially the Tenacious D one.

**Finally, Jon Stewart and the brilliant “Daily Show” team have been on vacation for a few weeks, so they hadn’t had a chance to weigh in on the Newtown massacre and the gun control debate we (hopefully) are about to have; one positive step was New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (who I believe will be the Dem. nominee for President in 2016) announcing strict new proposals on Wednesday).

Stewart took a very strong but reasoned approach on his show last night, keeping the humor to a minimum but laying things out very plainly and simply. I couldn’t embed the clip but please watch it here.

Jon Stewart slays Fox for hypocrisy on guns. The NHL lockout has my blood boiling. And a drone that will babysit your kid for you

**As you may have heard, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas went on TV at halftime of a Sunday night football game two weeks ago and had the gall to actually speak out about gun violence in America.

And the right wing of this country lost their damn mind. Fox News led the way, of course, saying Costas should stick to sports, how dare he “hijack” the football game with a two-minute discussion of gun violence. Oh wait, what’s that? A day earlier an NFL player had shot and killed his girlfriend, then himself? Sorry, that’s not a good time to talk about gun violence. Nope, not at all, they moaned.

Well as usual, Jon Stewart has a slap-back for those folks (above). Enjoy.

**I haven’t talked too much about the NHL lockout on my blog, because I know most of you don’t give two pucks about the sport.
But I need to vent. I am so disgusted, especially after last week’s “close but not really close” series of meetings that left both sides accusing the others of lying.

Don Fehr, the NHL player rep and the man who ruined many a baseball season, has no interest in saving this season. He wants to get the players’ every cent they can, which is his job, I understand. But his job is also to realize that NO ONE is getting paid if there’s no season, and his righteous indignation is galling right now.
And commissioner Gary Bettman, well… there aren’t strong enough pejorative words to express how I feel about him. He’s presiding over his third lockout in 18 years, a dubious track record for any head of sport. He’s spiteful, he’s stubborn, and he gives not a whit about fans or what’s good for his game.

The serious negotiating that finally started a few weeks ago, three months after the season should’ve started, has led us nowhere. I have lost almost all faith that there will be a season (an aside: Why do these lockouts always happen my Rangers are actually good?), and I no longer care who “wins” the lockout (though owners always win these things).

It’s mid-December and I miss my NHL hockey. I wish all parties would shut up and stay in a room and not come out until a deal is reached.

I’m an addicted fan who needs my sport, and it’s disgusting how little anyone in this mess cares about their loyal customers.

**Finally, a new way to babysit your kids. Can’t say I recommend this for everyone, though.
Paul Wallich, a father from Vermont, got sick of walking his son to the school bus stop every day.
So he did what no father has ever done: He built a drone helicopter, with a camera mounted on it, to follow his son to the bus stop.

“If I am walking my kid to the bus stop in December and January, I would really rather not be doing that,” Wallich told NBC News.

Really, Mr. Wallich? You had to go to all this trouble to build a robot because it was too cold to walk your son to school? I’m sorry, but I think that’s ridiculous.

He should’ve built a helicopter that would take he AND his son to the bus stop. That’s what a good parent would do!

Drone babysitter story from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.

#DrunkNateSilver cracks me up on Twitter. Justice for the crazy woman who drove around the bus. Charles Darwin gets votes. And my last favorite re-elected Democratic President

A hodgepodge of Good News Friday items from your correspondent, who waited nearly two hours on line Thursday night trying to get gas, only to fail. It’s like 1978 all over again in these parts…

So you may have heard a lot in the last few days since the election about Nate Silver, the New York Times statistical wizard who, for the second Presidential election in a row, predicted every state correctly, and all but one Senate race.

Silver (who was pretty good on this Jon Stewart clip the other night) was mocked roundly by the right in the lead-up to the election, as they ridiculed him and his algorithms for predicting Obama would win.
But of course, Silver was right, and now he’s an Internet star, with people on Twitter Thursday creating a #DrunkNateSilver hashtag.

Some of the comments that cracked me up the most:
#DrunkNateSilver knows the actual probability of Taylor Swift ever, ever getting back together.

– #DrunkNateSilver just shouted at a jukebox blasting Biggie, “Erroneous! Mo’ money only correlates with a 42% chance of mo’ problems!”

– Last night, I walked onto a maternity ward and pointed out the 53rd President of the United States. #DrunkNateSilver

Good stuff. Hey, the guy’s a wizard at this.

**So this made me like the state of Georgia a little bit. A GOP Congressman named Paul Broun gave a speech a few years ago declaring that evolution and theories like it “were lies straight from the pit of hell.”

So in Tuesday’s election, 4,000 people in Georgia wrote in “Charles Darwin”  on their Congressional ballot.

**Next up: Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about the horrible woman who drove around a stopped school bus and onto the sidewalk to get passed it? Well, she’s an awful hideous person who deserved to get punished, and Thursday she got a terrific and just sentence handed down to her.

For two days next week, Sheena Hardin of Cleveland must stand at a busy intersection holding a sign saying, “Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.”

Perfect. Humiliation is a lot worse to people like her than any fine or community service hours could be.

**Finally, for my fellow Democrats out there, someone we all wish was real but existed only on our TV screens. A nice moment with Jed Bartlet, the last great liberal President.

There were many goosebump-inducing moments to choose from, but this has always been one of my favorites.

Jon Stewart on Passover vs. Easter: Not a fair fight. The Stanley Cup playoffs begin and I am happy. And the No. 1 reason you shouldn’t text while walking

To begin this fine Thursday, I give you the nearly-always funny Jon Stewart, who seems to have a wonderful knack for making religious differences between Christians and Jews funny (If you want proof, Google his bit about how with Lent lasting a month and Yom Kippur only 24 hours, “even in sin, you guys are paying retail!”).
The other night he had me laughing pretty darn hard when he compared Passover to Easter, and emphasized that we Jews just aren’t winning the P.R. war on this holiday battle:

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**The Stanley Cup playoffs started Wednesday night. Outside of March Madness, the NHL playoffs are my favorite sports postseason. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it 1,000 times: NHL playoff overtime is the greatest thing in sports. As pumped as I usually am about the race for Lord Stanley’s silver chalice, I’m even more pumped because my Rangers are entering as the No. 1 seed in the East.

I don’t think my favorite team is good enough to win the Cup this year, but seeing them make a deep run for the first time in 15 years sure would be sweet. They have the best goalie in the world in Sports Illustrated cover boy Henrik Lundqvist, offensively they’re a lot better than they were last year, and the defense has been solid all year. I’m feeling like a run to the Eastern Finals is very do-able, as long as they don’t run into Pittsburgh.

For my fellow Rangers fans out there (I’m looking at you, Mark Mahoney!), here’s a nice pump-up video (above) to get you excited about tonight’s Game 1 against Ottawa.
Couple thoughts about Wednesday night’s three openers (and yeah, this blog will have at least some hockey in it for a while).
– Stunned to see the Penguins choke a 3-0 lead away at home to the Flyers, and lose 4-3 in overtime. Happy to see it, but stunned. The Flyers play great against everybody but the Rangers.
– Disgusting, awful, stupid play by Nashville defenseman Shea Weber in the closing seconds of the Predators’ win over Detroit, ramming Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg’s head, WWE-style, into the glass.

He ought to be suspended for at least 2-3 games for that. Just so stupid.
– My official Cup prediction: Blackhawks vs. Penguins. I just have a feeling about Chicago this year.

**Finally today, there are all these warnings and laws now about texting while driving, and I fully applaud that. Texting while driving is extremely dangerous and really, really stupid.
But sometimes, well, texting while walking with your head down can also be kinda scary.
Check out this video, particularly the :14 second mark and the :45 mark, when a bear that was on the loose on the street in California runs into a dude who was busy texting…

On Super Tuesday, the Mittster and Santorum solve little. Jon Stewart eviscerates Limbaugh. And Lenny Cooke, a great wasted talent

Super Tuesday came and went Tuesday, and I had a blast sort-of studying for my exam next week and checking the blogs and vote totals as things rolled along.

Some quick-hitting thoughts after a night where not a whole hell of a lot got cleared up in the race to see who gets their butt kicked by Obama in November:

1. Mitt Romney, who will be the nominee because he’s got a big lead in delegates (and we learned in ’08 that delegates is where it’s at), is really, really disliked by broad groups of Republicans. Evangelicals hate him, the South hates him (Rick Santorum easily won Tennessee and Oklahoma, while Newt got Georgia), and non-rich people hate him.
2. In the great history of campaign songs, this immediately vaults up into the Top 5.  It’s Rick Santorum’s two biggest fans singing “Game On.” I beg you to watch this, since it’s, as one YouTuber commented, “the whitest shit I’ve ever seen.”

3. In all seriousness, it’s stunning to see Santorum doing this well. This is not a fluke; while lots of GOP voters see him as “not Romney,” he has tapped into a well of support. The guy got booted out of Pa. a few years ago, and now he’s probably got a reasonable shot of being on the GOP ticket. He’s strong everywhere Romney is weak, and plus, how entertaining would a Biden-Santorum debate be? In the words of Banyan from “Seinfeld,” “gold, Jerry, gold.”

4. There may be no one in the history of mankind who loves himself as much as Newt Gingrich. The more primaries he loses, the more indignant he gets. He will not leave the national stage until he’s tranquilized and dragged off.

**I haven’t weighed in on the Rush Limbaugh kerfuffle, because really, what’s to say? Guy has always been a Grade A windbag racist and sexist, so getting outraged about him hardly seems worth the effort.
Jon Stewart felt the same way, but happily, he couldn’t resist taking a few jabs.

**Finally, a few words about wasted talent. With March Madness about to get in full swing (and for my college hoop readers, how great has this conf. tournament week been? So much fun), the New York Times decided to look back at one of the great “should’ve been, could’ve been” high school players of all time. Lenny Cooke was once the best high school player in the nation; he was considered by some better than a young LeBron James, and his rags to soon-to-be riches story (he moved in with a wealthy white family to go to school in New Jersey and escape Brooklyn) was told everywhere.

Except, as happens far too often, he listened to the wrong people. He tried to skip college, but then he was passed over by the NBA, got hurt a bunch of times, and now is wildly heavier and out of shape than ever before. His old friend A’mare Stoudemire of the Knicks didn’t even recognize Cooke last year.
It’s a great story by Harvey Araton, but also a pretty sad one.

There’s a special place in hell for agents and AAU coaches who fill a young, naive kid’s head with dreams of glory, then run away as soon as the pot of gold vanishes.

“Sesame Street” becomes a pawn for U.S., Palestinians. A lovely story about Mountain Dew and rats. And CNN sinks to new lows

The fight over land between Israel and the Palestinians has so many tentacles, and goes so deep, that it’s no wonder that it’s been going for thousands of years.
And despite fits and starts of progress in the peace process, it seems like the battles and killings may go on for the next thousand years, too.

It’s the little things that show just how silly and petty this dispute can be sometimes. Take this story, which doesn’t technically involve Israel, but the U.S. on Israel’s behalf. For the past 15 years, there has been a Palestinian version of “Sesame Street” that has educated youngsters in much the same way American kids learn through Sesame Street:  fairness, counting, cooperation, all that good stuff.
The show, called “Shara’s Simsim” has been wildly popular and was slated to continue this year.
Except it can’t. That’s because the U.S., as punishment to Palestinians for attempting to petition the United Nations for statehood, has stripped $200 million of aid, including funding for educational programming.

So now because the U.S. is pissed at Palestinians applying for statehood, millions of children won’t learn from a TV show about kindness, generosity and cooperation. Really America, it’s not

Little thing like that just depresses me. Because it’s with the children that seeds of hatred and intolerance are first sown.

**Here’s a fun story for you soda drinkers. An Illinois man sued the makers of Mountain Dew saying he found a dead mouse inside a can he was drinking.

In the lawsuit, though, PepsiCo came up with an ingenious defense of their product: They said that a rodent would have disintegrated and been transformed into a “jelly-like” substance between the time the soda was bottled and when the Illinois man would’ve drank it.

So the defense is basically: Our soda is SO toxic, there’s no way a mouse could’ve survived as a mouse in there! He had to have dissolved by now!

Enjoy that next sip of Dew, boys and girls.

**I’ve defended CNN to people for a long time in the face of criticism. Sure, the all-news network ain’t what it used to be, which was the most valuable news source in America. Sure, they’ve made some terrible decisions about on-air talent, and Wolf Blitzer hasn’t said anything of substance since 1999. But I still have a soft spot in my news-loving heart for the pioneer of the all-news format on cable.

But then I see something like this, and I just get really sad. Jon Stewart nails it again:

A (mostly) good-news Friday: Jon Stewart speaks the absolute truth. The happiest fast-food worker ever. And a classic “West Wing” scene

Sadly, it sometimes takes Jon Stewart to point out terrifyingly obvious flaws in our Congress.
So even though the news discussed here (the absolutely insane amendment that passed in Congress this week allowing for the indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of terrorism) is hardly good, it warms my heart to know that as much of the American media continues to ignore and soft-pedal this issue, we have Jon Stewart to point out how absurd our America has become.

**Let me put a smile on your face by introducing you to JC Stroble, who works at a fast-food restaurant in Spartanburg, S.C. He’s 70, he’s blind, and he’s worked at this joint for more than 50 years. He’s an American institution, and I love him after watching this…

**Finally, just because I hadn’t seen this in a while and it cracks me up every time…

Billy Crystal’s back at the Oscars, whoo-hoo! On 11/11, it was about Spinal Tap. And Jon Stewart slays ‘em again.

Billy Crystal is back hosting the Oscars.
This is wildly exciting for me. For my money, Billy C has been the best host of any awards show, ever. From his skits at the beginning of each Oscar telecast he’s hosted, to the hilarious jokes during the show (the Jack Palance telecast was a highlight), Billy just gets it. He knows how to tweak celebrities and keep the show moving.

During last year’s telecast, I briefly became Nostradamus. As Anne Hathaway and James Franco were tanking, I put out a missive on Facebook saying this show desperately needed Billy. Not 10 minutes later, he came out to do a hilarious five minutes.
Can’t wait for this year’s show.

The People of Facebook (I love that that sounds like a country, as in: “The People of Facebook decided to elect a new leader today…”) decided that there was no one better to honor on 11/11/11 than Nigel Tufnel, the character Christopher Guest played in the classic movie “This is Spinal Tap.”

He is honored, of course, because he uttered the famous line “These go to 11″ when talking about his fancy new amplifier. (And that scene above, stick with it through the Stonehenge prop comes down, just kills me every time).
And so the fine people at the Washington Post put together a “Top 11″ Nigel Tufnel quotes. Enjoy.

**Jon Stewart, taking on this week’s GOP debate with his typical hilarity. I laughed many, many times, especially at the Friendly’s reference. Truly astounding at how bad the Republican field is this time around.

The drunk 18-year-old skier who pees on people’s legs. And Jon Stewart finds Megyn Kelly endlessly fascinating (and hypocritical)

There are all kinds of problems I have with this story I heard about on Friday.
This 18-year-old member of the U.S. Ski team named Robert Vietze was on a JetBlue flight to New York City last week.
He had a few drinks before the flight (“eight” he later said) and of course, at some point during the trip stumbled toward the bathroom. Except he didn’t quite make it, and unbelievably, began peeing on the leg of an 11-year-old girl.
Apparently he mistook her leg for the urinal.
Now I’m sorry, how drunk do you have to be on a flight to not realize you’ve reached the little bathroom? And I don’t care what the kid’s leg looked like, I’m pretty sure it didn’t have a toilet seat or a urinal cake on it.
I love the understandable reaction from the father (who apparently started screaming at Vietze), and I’m wondering if this poor girl will be traumatized for most of her teenage years.
Predictably, Vietze has been kicked off the U.S. Ski team and we’ll likely never hear from him again.

**Another four minutes of genius from Jon Stewart, as he tears apart his favorite Fox News blondie, Megyn Kelly. The hypocrisy is so large it almost cannot be contained in the world…

A hilarious teacher’s contract from 1922: Women weren’t trusted too much. And Jon Stewart takes on GOP “victimhood.”

So far after three weeks of grad school, I’ve learned that my grades may be about what they were 15 years ago (hey, I’m still a B student, I haven’t lost my touch for slightly above-average work!) and that some teachers back in the day had it rough.
Take this hilarious (in hindsight) document my professor gave us the other night. It’s a 1922 Teacher’s Contract for women. For the salary of $75 per month, this is what women had to agree to (My comments in italics)

1. Not to get married. This contract becomes null and void if the teacher marries.
2. Not to have company with men.
3. To be at home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless in attendance at a school function (what if they had to go to the store to buy milk?)
4. Not to loiter downtown in ice cream stores (by far my favorite stipulation. What the hell was going on at ice cream stores in the 1920s? Were they bootlegging liquor or selling cocaine or something? Man, that Baskin-Robbins has always been known as a drug haven)

5. Not to leave town any time without the permission of the Chairman of the Trustees.
6. Not to smoke cigarettes.
7. Not to drink beer, wine or whiskey (but vodka was OK, apparently)
8. Not to ride in a carriage or automobile with any man except her brother or father (so not only no husbands, but no boyfriends either?)
9. Not to dress in bright colors.
10. Not to dye their hair.
11. To wear at least two petticoats (TWO? What if it’s 85 degrees in May, they’ve still got to be all bundled up? Cruel and unusual punishment. UPDATE: I’m an idiot for not knowing what a petticoat is. An alert female reader friend of mine, A.T.,  tells me it’s an undergarment for a skirt. Apologies for the mistake. Still, I think it’s crazy that they had to wear two.)
12. Not to wear dresses more than 2 inches above the ankle.
13. To keep the schoolroom clean, including scrubbing the floor weekly with soap and hot water.
And finally…
14. Not to wear face powder, mascara or to paint lips.

So there you go. Obey all 14 of those items, and you, too could’ve been a 1922 teacher.

**Jon Stewart was on his game again Wednesday night, calling out the blatant hypocrisy (and really, it’s more than hypocrisy. There needs to be a stronger word than hypocrisy here) of the Republicans crying victimhood. During the last Sean Hannity quote of this sketch, I really thought Jon Stewart’s head might explode: