J.J. Hardy is no longer a Brewer!  Check out Tom Hardicourt’s blog.

To those of you who thought we should’ve got starting pitching for him I will simply say this:  Did you watch the same guy I did last year?  He couldn’t hit a curve ball to save his life!  How many GM’s out there do you think are going to give up starting pitching for a guy that was sent down to the minors and replaced by a prospect?  We’re lucky we got someone with some potential.  Whether or not Gomez lives up to it remains to be seen.

Can they make the playoffs?  Absolutely.  Are they what you’d consider a playoff caliber team?  Don’t think so.

Making the playoffs and being a playoff caliber team are two entirely different things.  Playoff caliber teams can run the ball.  The Packers can’t (they rank 16th in rushing).  Playoff caliber teams don’t lead the league in sacks allowed.  The Packers own that fine distinction.  Rodgers has been sacked 31 times and hit 50.  Does anyone wonder why he hasn’t practiced at all this week?  Playoff caliber teams rush the passer.  The Packers are 28th in the league in sacks.  Playoff caliber teams beat good teams.  The Packers haven’t.  They are 4-3 and the teams they’ve beaten have a combined record of 7-23.  Their 3 losses came against 2 teams that have a combined recored of 12-3.

However, after the Vikings and the Saints, the rest of the NFC is up for grabs.  Since the Packers can’t catch the Vikings (unless Favre, Peterson and Allen all break their legs), the Pack is left searching for the wild card berth.  Their competition will most likely come from the NFC East with the Cowboys, Eagles and Giants beating each other up.  If the Packers can beat the Cowboys head to head, combined with the fact that the Packers have upcoming games against the Buccaneers, Lions, Seahawks and Cardinals, the schedule actually plays out nicely for the Pack.  Additionally, they get Balitmore and San Francisco at Lambeau Field. 

When it’s all said and done the Packers should be 9-7 or 10-6 because they’ve proven they can beat bad teams.  All they need to do is sneak up and beat a good team once or twice.  If they don’t make the playoffs this year, they won’t be able to blame the schedule.  They can make the playoffs, but I still don’t think they’re a playoff caliber team.  We’ll see if the old men they’re starting at tackle this week can shore up some of those offensive problems.  Against an 0-7 Tampa Bay team, they should look pretty good.  Against the Cowboys, 49ers and Ravens…we’ll see.

It’s bad enough we send soldiers all over the world to put their lives on the line under questionable circumstances.  But, now they have to worry about their safety on American soil?  On a military base?  Apparently, one person can make some horrific decisions and a multitude of people nearby will pay the price.

An Army shrink who didn’t want to get deployed overseas pulled out some pistols and started shooting up Ft. Hood.  At least if these soldiers were deployed somewhere, they would have been wearing their gear and carrying weapons.  They would have had a chance of defending themselves.  Plus, I’d be willing to bet not a one of them expected they might get shot at while attending a ceremony on base.

First off, if you objected to the war, why would you shoot at other soldiers who are simply doing their jobs?  Second, how cowardly is it to shoot at a bunch of unarmed people who have not wronged you in any way?  Lastly, the shrink needed a shrink and from the sounds of it, might have seen one previously.  If the feds were concerned about the guy, wouldn’t you inform his superiors before they decide to deploy him overseas?  There a lot of questions that need some answering over the next few days with this one.

Leave it to Seth Godin to put it succinctly and make it easy to understand.  Where I live, I get Time Warner for my cable provider and the cable news networks are all in the 40’s range of channels (or 1040’s for HD).  I often skip over them completely.  Why?  Because it doesn’t matter whether its CNN, MSNBC or FoxNews.  They all consist of sensationalizing non-news and spewing incendiary crap to try to further their owners political agenda, be it left or right, blue or red, liberal or conservative – pick your label.  Meanwhile, what is actually important is completely missed.

The shows consist of blathering morons who look better than their talk radio counterparts, screaming their opinions as fact and shouting down anyone else.  Thereby making it whoever can shout louder wins the argument rather than whoever has the better, more thought out argument.  But, the arguments have already been decided by the “panel” they’ve assembled.  It consists of the show’s host, 3 yes men cohorts, and 1 lonely dissenter.  There’s no way they can out yell the other four, so they give up before the segment is over.

The problem with all of this is: We, the average American, take what these nimrods say as gospel.  Quick, how many of the cable news shows gave you any kind of inkling that the economic collapse could happen?  Even the channels that specialize in covering the markets?  I thought so.  And how many of the rest of these so-called experts have had any kind of real impact on the world other than to polarize further?  Have they really enlightened anyone?  Or is it simply a matter that they’ve convinced people to drink their falvor of Kool-Aid?

I saw this on the news last night and got the following email this morning:

“In the unlikely event that you haven’t already heard, a bill has been introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature to increase the fermented malt beverages tax by 400%, from $2/barrel to $10/barrel.  Granted, all of the (craft) breweries you probably enjoy pay a lower rate because they produce much less than 300,000 barrels per year.  Their effective tax (for the first 50,000 barrels of production), is half that, but a 400% increase is a 400% increase.

 Such a tax increase may not make a lot of difference in cost to you in the short run as a consumer (but also don’t believe the misleading couple pennies a bottle assertion made by tax advocates, because costs are multiplied as they go through the three-tier distribution system.  Also don’t forget that beer–unlike just about any other food product–is already taxed three times, at the federal level, with the tax at issue here, and then the state and county sales tax on top of all that!  (Imagine the uproar if we taxed milk that way.)  But a tax increase could mean a huge difference for the survival of some of our state’s great small craft brewers who are already operating on the financial margins as they put pride in quality beer above financial profit.  They can’t absorb a tax increase as easily as the macrobrewers, and as they pass along the resulting cost increases to the consumer–and with those increases multiplied through the distribution chain–even a relatively small price increase of $2/case, particularly in this economy, might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and some consumers may be encouraged to “trade down” to craft beer look-alikes from the out-of-state macrobrewers.  That’s bad for Wisconsin craft brewers and their employees.  And craft brewers going out of business ultimately means less selection for you and less great craft beer for which Wisconsin has been a national leader. “

Here is the actual bill, if you’re interested.  Makes me glad Im a homebrewer, since they’re taxing the barrel of finished product rather than the ingredients that go into the product.

BTW – Sorry the blog’s been empty for so long.  I’ve been playing around with Facebook and LinkedIn and toying with the idea of Twitter.  But, what Facebook has shown me is that I don’t have enough different things happening in my life to update a Facebook status regularly, let alone a Twitter feed.

Well, we’re finally back from our annual trek to the North woods.  This year we were at a new place for us, Fawn Lake’s Timber Lodge Resort.  I gotta tell ya’, the place is outstanding.  The cottages have all been remodeled, we watched the sun set over the lake from our deck and the kids had a blast using the boats and the playground equipment.

We took one of their fishing boats around all 10 lakes of the Manitowish Waters chain.  We had lunch on the boat while my daughter was learning how to fish.  She wanted us to fish with her, but since I had neglected to buy a fishing license I was reluctant to put a line in the water.  My wife and I would help her cast out occasionally, and my wife caught a 8″ black crappie on one such cast.  After getting it off the hook, we promptly put it back in the water to be caught another day by someone else.  I suppose we could’ve claimed it was my daughter’s and kept it, but we’re trying to teach our almost 6 year old the importance of telling the truth and I hate hypocrisy.  So, back went the fish.  Just wish I took a picture first ‘cuz it was a nice crappie.

When we weren’t fishing, we were pulling the boat up on the shores of Little Star Lake’s public beachfront.  For my money, there is no cleaner lake with sandy beaches than Little Star Lake.  That lake is awesome.  Always was.  For years we stayed at the Northwoods Resort on that lake until the owners decided to turn it into condos.  Watching the kids spend an entire day playing in the sand was quite a treat.  Plus, they never once fought about anything while they were on the beach.  It was fitting that on Friday afternoon — our last swimming excursion of the week was made via automobile — that a storm rolled in as we exited the lake.  The bolt of lightning that came down in the middle of the lake looked very cool.  Had it hit 10 minutes earlier when we were packing up, it wouldn’t have been so cool.  But, from the confines of the car it was a sight to see.

The kids loved all of the eagles and the otter that swam up to our boat on Wednesday.  They thought the snapping turtle was cool but couldn’t figure out why daddy told them to stay away from it.  While we have your traditional gray squirrels around here, the black squirrels up north did through the kids for a bit of a loop as well.  But, most of all, I think the kids loved, Greta — the resort owners’ 11 1/2 year old Doberman Pinscher.  She was big enough to look our 2 year old right in the eye, but she was a very sweet and docile dog.  They got excited every time they saw her out and about the resort grounds.  And I think she got excited because she knew they’d scratch her right behind the ears.

We finished off the vacation with sitting on the hot asphalt of Michigan Avenue for 3 hours waiting for the Great Circus parade to come by.  Why people camped out for the whole weekend is beyond me.  Yes it was crowded, but we managed to find front row seats the morning of the parade.  My daughter loved it, but my little guy didn’t quite make it through the whole parade as he fell asleep just past the halfway point.  He woke up again just in time to catch the elephants at the end.

In all, I don’t think I could have planned or scripted a better vacation.  If you haven’t taken one in a while, I highly recommend them.  You won’t regret it.

As a starting MLB pitcher, you’ve got to figure that if you go 7 innings, strike out 12, walk 2, and give up just 1 run, you’ve put your team in position to win the game.  Especially when the guys who came in to pitch in the 8th and 9th innings from your bullpen didn’t allow any hits or walk anybody.  That’s got to go in your win column right?

Most of the time, yes.  But, not today.  The Brewers dropped the final game of their 3 game series with the Mets by a score of 1-0.  The offense failed the young pitcher today.  The Crew got 7 hits and the Mets were nice enough to commit an error on top of that.  But, the team went 0-7 in batting with runners in scoring position.  Kind of hard to win games when you do that.

My brother sent this link to me about one of the latest obesity studies.

Wow.  The best state out there has a ratio of 1 in every 5 adults being overweight.  Think about that.  1 in every 5 is the best we can do.  And if you look at kids, the numbers are even uglier.

So, my question for you is this: What does this mean to our trillion dollar health care reform initiatives?  It means that as everyone gets older — especially all those baby boomers that are starting to retire — it’s going to cost a lot more than that.  And if it costs more than that, it’s going to fail.  Of course, I’m making a big assumption that it would succeed in the first place.  Comparing the costs to the taxpayer, obesity makes smoking look like pocket change.  Can’t wait until the government decides to levy 25% tax rates on bacon and butter only to find out soy is worse for you.  Then they’ll offer tax breaks to folks who buy new fitness related items only to realize that Americans already spend more money on fitness than anyone else but I digress.

It means that until this country gets up off our asses and stops shoveling crap into our pie holes insurance premiums will be so high that no one will have any health care coverage.  And before you get all up in arms, I put myself in there as well.  I lost 20 pounds 10 years ago and since then have put it all back on plus an extra 5.

Which brings me to my training update.  Since starting 5 weeks ago now, I’m down a measly 4 pounds.  On top of that, I failed to listen to my body and pushed harder to try to lose more weight.  The results?  Running too far, too fast has led me to cramping calf muscles and signs of developing shin splints.  So, now I’m using the exercise bike instead.

Why no real success yet?  I failed to accomplish my number 1 goal.  Do you remember what it was?  The one thing I said would prevent any of the other life changes from being successful.  I was going to get more sleep.  On top of that, I really haven’t watched my eating because when I’m tired and wore down I lack the wherewithall to say no to bad food that tastes really good.  So, I pushed the training harder and harder and now have to dial it way back.  So, my personal health care reform plan seems to have hit some snags as well.

Yet, I’m still hopeful.  Why is that you ask?  You were asking that weren’t you?  Anyway, I’m on vacation next week.  So, I should get caught up on some much needed rest.  I also tend to eat worse the more stressed I get.  Less stress should mean less eating.  And I’ll have plenty of time for exercise.  With some planning and maybe a little luck, I’m hoping to replace some bad habits with a few good ones and they will hopefully carry on after my time under the stars in the northwoods.

That was quite a rambling post.  I must really need that vacation so my brain starts working again.  Thanks for reading to the end.

You know, when it comes to the Milwaukee Bucks its hard to get too excited about anything.  However, the Bucks managed to stay under the luxury tax by dealing Richard Jefferson for 3 other players.  They can now re-sign Ramon Sessions and Charlie Villenueva.  Plus, with the draft tomorrow, we should finally be able to answer the question of which point guard the Bucks are going to draft.

Unfortunately, Richard Jefferson was the only guy who showed up all year long last year.  Redd went down hurt.  Bogut went down hurt.  Ridnour went down hurt.  Sessions would be there one game and gone the next.  CV didn’t show up until the end of the season.  I think both Sessions and CV are starting to get more consistent as they get more mature, but neither has shown up for an entire season yet.  Makes me feel a little less excited.  Throw on top of that all the rumors that the Bucks don’t think they’ll be able to give Sessions what he wants and he’ll go elsewhere and I’m even less excited.  Which means we’ll live with rookie mistakes at the point and Redd taking as many shots as he feels like.  That will leave Bogut and CV to fight for offensive boards if they want to do any scoring.  Makes me feel even less excited.

I wish I could get behind this team.  I want to get behind this team.  Scott Skiles is a good coach.  John Hammonds seems to be a decent GM.  But, this team has had too many problems for too long, and Hammonds is still cleaning up the mess Harris left.  I’m just going to have to wait for another 1-2 years before I can finally stop talking about lottery picks this time of year.

Why is it, whenever you see someone in politics these days standing at a podium offering and apology to their family for certain “indescretions”, they always seem to be members of the party that promotes family values and is backed by the “moral majority”?  I know that’s not true.  Their are plenty of Democrats running around behind their spouses backs (i.e. John Edwards) and the Libertarians advocate legalizing drugs and treating marriage like a business partnership.  Those are hardly things people who buy into the family values mantra would think of as a proper.  But it sure seems like the majority of these guys are Republicans (Ensign, Swaggert, Gingrich, Limbaugh, etc.).  Plus, the Democrats and Libertarians have not put a stake in the ground claiming “family values” and “morality” are the sole property of their party.  If you’re going to cast scorn on everyone else and be so high and mighty, then you might want to try to act the part.

Or perhaps it’s just your definition of family values and morality.  Since morals and values are a rather personal thing, perhaps their values and morals permit that sort of behavior.  That’s not what I get from them before they’re caught screwing up, but maybe I misunderstood.  All I know is that next time I screw up — being human, I’m pretty sure there will be a next time — I better not have to turn on the TV and listen to some reactionary right wing nut job, blathering on about how superior they are over everyone else.  Just remember — unless you’ve recently mastered walking on water, your day is coming.

Just for the record – I don’t want to turn on the TV and listen to some revolutionary left wing nut job, balthering on about how their going to make the world a more fair and homogenized version of itself that everyone will want to play nice-nice in while the government does everything for them either.