Tag Archives: George W. Bush

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Texas Rangers / Washington Senators All-Time 25-Man Roster

The Texas Rangers were formed from a failed attempt by Major League Baseball to forcibly keep a big league team in the Nation’s Capital.
The original Washington Senators had been one of the American League’s eight charter franchises. That club traced its existence back to the 1901 founding of the junior circuit.
Those first Senators relocated to Minnesota in 1961, where they became the current Twins. Wanting to keep baseball in D.C., an expansion club was created by MLB as a replacement.
The new expansion Washington Senators thus began play in that 1961 season. The team would remain there through the 1971 season.
The Senators had a losing record through each of their first eight seasons. With the nearby Baltimore Orioles as a consistent contender, attendance became a serious issue.
In 1969, baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams was brought in as the skipper with no prior managerial experience. “The Splendid Splinter” would guide the club to its only winning campaign. Williams’ 1969 Senators team finished 86-76 in the first year of MLB divisional play.

THE MOVE TO TEXAS

The Senators quickly fell back to their losing ways in 1970. This finally resulted in the ball club relocating out to Arlington, Texas where they became the current Texas Rangers ahead of the 1972 season.
In 1974, Texas rose to second place in the AL West, finishing just five games out. Their 84-76 record was just the second winning campaign in franchise history up to that point.
By 1977 the Rangers had become a major contender for the first time. They won 94 games and again finished in second place, eight games short of an extremely talented Kansas City Royals team.
For most of the next two decades the Rangers would see-saw up and down the standings. Texas would lose as many as 99 games in 1985, then win as many as 87 games the very next year.

FUTURE POTUS HELPS RANGERS BECOME WINNERS

The Rangers were sold in 1989 to a group that included future U.S. President George W. Bush. A minority owner, Bush was nonetheless elected as the team’s Managing General Partner.
The future President became a key player in setting up deals over the next few years which would result in the building of The Ballpark in Arlington. That facility would later be renamed as Globe Life Park.
Bush gave up his position with the team after being elected as the Governor of Texas in 1994, the same year that the Rangers finally moved into their new home.
Emerging from the crippling baseball strike of 1994, the Rangers quickly became a consistent contender in their new home. Texas won 90 games in 1996, capturing the first AL West crown in franchise history.
The Rangers would again capture division championships in both 1998 and 1999. After each of those three first place finishes, Texas was knocked out in the ALDS by the dynastic New York Yankees teams of the late 1990’s.

NEW CENTURY LOSERS BECOME TITLE CONTENDERS

As the 21st century dawned, the club fell back to their losing ways. For eight of the nine seasons between 2000-2008 the Rangers suffered through losing campaigns.
Texas rose in the standings once again in the 2009 season. They have once again become consistent contenders, with seven winning seasons over the last eight.
In 2010, the Rangers reached the World Series for the first time. Texas then returned the following season, capturing back-to-back American League pennants.
In both of these Fall Classic appearances the club appeared on the verge of capturing their first world championship. Both times, fate intervened to deny them the title. Texas remains one of eight clubs to never win a World Series crown.
The Rangers have now captured the AL West title in four of the last seven seasons. Division winners the last two years, they remain a strong contender entering the 2017 season.

PUTTING TOGETHER THE ALL-TIME ROSTER

Many great players have pulled on a Rangers jersey over the last four and a half decades. In fact, players from the Texas years make up the vast majority of this All-Time 25-Man Roster for the franchise. Only two men who ever wore a Senators jersey have made the cut.
In putting together this feature for other organizations, I have stuck with a formula. I normally name 11 pitchers to the roster, with a breakdown of nine starters and two relievers. The position players have usually broken down as two catchers, six infielders, and six outfielders.
In evaluating the Rangers history, there were just too many great infielders to keep that balance. Frankly, with a handful of notable exceptions, great pitching has rarely been an organizational strength. Only 10 pitchers are named here to the Rangers list: eight starters and two relievers.
There are a full eight infielders named to the roster. The two catchers are still here, and the team has five outfielders named instead of the usual six.

MISSING THE CUT

Even with making these adjustments, a number of strong position players were left off the roster.
My apologies go out to those who have been left off. Included among these are position players such as Julio Franco, Ken McMullen, Nelson Cruz, Mark Teixeira, Mike Hargrove, Bump Wills, Al Oliver, and Will Clark.
Failing to make the cut on the mound were Gaylord Perry, Cole Hamels, Jon Matlack, Jose Guzman, Dick Bosman, John Burkett, and Rick Helling.
Let’s take a look now at who did make the final cut for the Texas Rangers / Washington Senators All-Time 25-Man Roster.
American of the Year, HISTORY

2013 American of the Year: Ted Cruz

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The junior U.S. Senator from the great state of Texas, Ted Cruz, has been selected as this website’s 10th annual American of the Year, marking the first time that someone born outside of the country has been so honored.

Cruz was born in Canada, in the city of Calgary and province of Alberta in December of 1970 to a Cuban father and American mother from Delaware who were there to work the oil business.

Cruz’ parents moved to Houston, Texas in 1974, and he went to a Baptist high school, becoming Valedictorian of his 1988 graduating class. He then went to Princeton University, where he became a debate champion and noted speaker, graduating in 1992. He then attended Harvard Law School where he graduated magna cum laude, while also dealing with his parents divorce during this time.

In 1995, Cruz served in Virginia as law clerk to a true, great conservative jurist, J. Michael Luttig of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and in 1996 became the first Hispanic to clerk for the Chief Justice of the US when he worked for William Rehnquist.

After working a few years in private practice, Cruz joined the presidential campaign of George W. Bush in 1999 as a domestic policy advisor, and was influential in the court process during the contested Florida election results battle at both the state and Supreme Court levels. This led to a role in the victorious Bush administration for a few years before a return to Texas.

During the Bush campaign, Cruz met his wife, Heidi Nelson, a New York investment banker who would go on to work for Condoleezza Rice at the White House and who now works for Goldman Sachs. They now have two daughters together.

From 2003 to 2008, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas, arguing numerous cases before the US Supreme Court including landmark victories in which he stood up for 2nd Amendment rights, the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, and on behalf of a Ten Commandments monument at the Texas State Capitol.

Cruz returned to private practice from 2008 until his surprising Senatorial election battle of 2011. In what was described as a stunning grass-roots victory for fiscal conservatism, he defeated the sitting Lieutenant Governor and heir apparent. He then trounced his Democratic opponent in the November general election.

In the last few months, a poll by the respected Rasmussen organization found that Ted Cruz was the 3rd most influential world leader, following behind only President Barack Obama and Pope Francis. That position comes squarely from his emerging leadership as the most forceful, outspoken critic of what are proving to be disastrous liberal political programs, policies and ideas.

Particularly in 2013, Cruz emerged as a vocal opponent of Obamcare, the President’s attempt to socialize the American healthcare system. Cruz publicly and aggressively attacked the program at a time when many even within his own Republican Party were treading lightly.

What Ted Cruz has done is stand up and give voice to the massive base of the Republican Party that has felt left behind by the Party’s political leaders in recent years. As spending has exploded, war droned on, and deals been cut with Democrats that have allowed disastrous socialist programs to continue, that base has grown from restless to revolutionary.

While that Republican Party leadership cut those deals and smiled for the cameras, talking words like “compromise” and “collaboration”, the old “reaching across the aisle” stuff, Cruz not only recognized these continuing methods as disastrous for the Party politically, but for the nation intrinsically.

In 2013, Senator Cruz has invigorated the Republican Party base, which the Party will need if it is to have any chance at taking control of the full Senate in 2014 and then winning back the White House in 2016. Properly motivated, that base has the ability to make just those very things happen.

Republican control of both Houses of Congress, combined with control of the White House, in the next few years gives us the best, perhaps the only chance to reverse the disastrous liberal socialist spending programs instituted under Obama. That can only happen if more politicians become as publicly aggressive and fearless as Cruz was this year. Reaction to his style makes that possible now.

For his aggressive, principled, public stands on behalf of truly Conservative political values during a period when far too many Party leaders have been cow-towed into political cowardice, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is selected as the American of the Year.

NOTE:

In an original version of this article, I posited that Cruz was not eligible to become the President of the United States himself. This was based on an improper reading of materials which I believed stated that, with his having clearly been born outside of the U.S., both his parents needed to be U.S. citizens in order for him to be eligible for POTUS.

This is not so. On further research, the key information relating to Cruz comes from the ‘Citizenship Clause’ of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, as well as from the Nationality Act of 1940. Ted Cruz, with his mother clearly a U.S. citizen for more than 10 years, was considered a U.S. citizen himself at birth.

Basically, Cruz enjoyed ‘dual citizenship’ from the U.S and Canada. He has chosen to retain counsel in order to prepare the paperwork necessary in order to renounce his Canadian citizenship. This is clearly a precurssor to a projected run for the US Presidency in 2016 or sometime in the future. He does indeed enjoy such eligibility. My earlier comments were in error, and are well corrected here.

AMERICANS OF THE YEAR:
2004 – Pat Tillman
2005 – Bill O’Reilly
2006 – Rev. Billy Graham
2007 – P/O Chuck Cassidy (for the American police officer)
2008 – George W. Bush
2009 – Glenn Beck
2010 – Ron Paul
2011 – Seal Team 6
2012 – Michael Phelps

TO VIEW all articles relating to the previous ‘American of the Year‘ award honorees, simply click on that below ‘Tag’

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The Republic For Which It Stands

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Every good American knows and has said those words hundreds, if not thousands of times in their lives. Learning and reciting the “Pledge of Allegiance” to our flag is part of our shared civics lesson as citizens.

But do we really think of the detail in those words as we say them? After all, in saying them we are theoretically taking an actual pledge to stand behind it’s principles.

One of the most important and least appreciated of those principles is the simple line “and to the republic for which it stands” which speaks to our nation’s form of government. Did someone tell you that the United States of America was a democracy? That would be incorrect. America is actually a “constitutional republic”, and there is a very big, very important difference, one you should become familiar with if you are not already.

In a true democracy, the majority rules, either by direct voting results or through the decisions of their elected representatives. These are the two basic forms of democracy: direct and representative. The American Revolution was undoubtedly fought in part to form a more democratic society and government, as opposed to the tyranny experienced previously by the former Colonies under the British monarchy.

However, once that freedom was won and our Founding Fathers set to the task of determining and establishing our actual form of government, what they came up with was not a direct democracy, nor was it the representative democracy that many mistakenly believe exists.

These brilliant men such as George Washington, James Madison, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin believed that America should be concerned with the protection of the rights of the individual. This means that people who don’t agree with the majority – and keep in mind that a “majority” will frequently change over time and across various issues – should also have their rights protected.

To truly understand the U.S. Constitution, one needs to read and understand what has become known today as “The Federalist Papers“, the series of articles and essays written by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton in order to promote that effort. James Madison has become known as the ‘Father of the U.S. Constitution’, and his ‘Federalist No. 10’ is considered one of the most important political writings in our history.

Specifically in ‘Federalist No. 10’, the 10th in the series of these important articles, Madison states that democracies tend to become weaker as they get larger, and will tend to suffer more violently from the effects of faction. However, a republic can get stronger as it gets larger, and will combat faction by it’s very structure. The difference and it’s importance should be obvious to anyone paying attention to 21st century American politics, divided into rigid factions as at no other time in our history.

As he exited from a building after helping write the original U.S. Constitution, Ben Franklin was famously approached by a woman who asked him what type of government the group had come up with for the nation. Franklin’s historic reply: “A Republic – if you can keep it.“

In a constitutional republic, the officials are indeed elected as representatives of the people. However, those representatives must govern according to existing constitutional law which limits the government’s power over the citizens.

A true constitutional republic, such as the United States of America, is a government controlled by law, not one where that government actually does the controlling. The law does the controlling. That is America. It is the Constitution that rules, not whatever elected officials happen to be in office at any given time.

So when the current President of the United States, who will in fact not be in power any longer just 3 1/2 years from now, and whose political Party may lose effective power as soon as a year from now, makes statements such as “elections have consequences” he is treading on dangerous ground. Winning an election does not give one person or Party absolute power. The power rests in the law, in the Constitution.

If they think about it for a logical minute, supporters of Obama want no parts of “elections have consequences” as a ruling principle. All they need for a perfect example is the eight years prior to the current administration, when a man they still despise, George W. Bush, was the President of the United States. Were they willing to simply sit back quietly because elections have consequences? Hardly. And in fact, their favored politicians and Party will lose elections in the future as well.

No, President Obama and Democrats, it is not we the people who must accept that elections have consequences at all. Instead, it is you who must accept that you swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. You must recognize that many people, more than 60 million who directly voted against you, do not share your values. You must gain as much as you can of your political and social agenda through negotiation, not by force, and must accept that you will never get all of what you want.

The next time that you pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, think of the words as you say them, rather than simply droning on out of some rehearsed obligation. You are pledging allegiance to our “Republic“, to our U.S. Constitution, and are doing so recognizing that we are one nation under God, who guided us down this path in the first place.

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EWTN News Nightly

On Tuesday evening, anchor Colleen Carroll Campbell signed on to the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) live at 6pm EDT to launch the latest, and perhaps most ambitious and necessary, Catholic television since the network began over three decades ago.

For one night in each of the next few weeks, and then ultimately on an as-advertised nightly basis later in the fall, the world will begin receiving coverage of the stop news stories of the day with a Catholic Christian perspective on “EWTN News Nightly.”

Colleen, a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center is a particularly astute choice to become the first “face” of this type of program on the largest religious media network in the world. She is a respected journalist, author, broadcaster, and also the lone female speech writer to President George W. Bush. She has published a pair of books: 2002’s “The New Faithful” and her new release “My Sisters the Saints” published last year.

Colleen has experience with EWTN previously, where she has become noted for her interview program “Faith & Culture” since 2006, which is still airing regularly. In it, she goes one-on-one each episode with a leading Catholic intellectual leader on a wide variety of important issues.

She is also the exact type of woman that far-left liberals love to hate: an attractive, articulate, intelligent female who is an unashamed spokesperson for her faith. Her style is far more accommodating than attacking. She presents her opinions with a soft, easy clarity that can be disarming to modern television viewers and radio listeners who have become used to the ravenous and bitter tone in much of today’s media talking heads and pundits.

On the first night of broadcasting, “News Nightly” began and highlighted it’s coverage with an in-depth and multi-faceted coverage of the current crisis in Lybia. True to its Catholic mission, EWTN not only covered the news story straight, but also discussed effects of the crisis on the Christian community in the area.

It was fairly obvious that this was a dipping of the network’s collective feet in the water, production wise. My guess is there will be some tweaks to the set and the style as the show does indeed move to true nightly status. But it was all-in-all an exciting opening night for anyone looking for something different in the way our news stories are presented.

I am personally looking forward to becoming a regular viewer of this program as it grows, already having set my DVR to record the next episode. I would encourage not only all Catholics and other Christians, but anyone interested in a somewhat different but no less important take on top news stories to give “EWTN News Nightly” a try.

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Liberals Must Stand Up to Obama

The cries have been going out far and wide regarding President Barack Obama from the very beginning.

He is a Chicago-machine politician with a strong lean towards Socialism, and he will plunge the country deeper into debt while dismantling capitalism and further dividing the nation ideologically.

It turns out that all of this is true. Everything that was cried out has either come to pass, is in the process of coming to be, or has been actively and publicly discussed by the Obama administration as a goal and/or actual plan being drawn up.

The debt and the size of federal government has grown, jobs and the economy remain stagnant, the people’s political ideological gulf has widened.

There is one big problem here: the only people doing anything about it are Republicans.

The Democrats of the nation, especially the most liberal, are sitting on their hands, not only watching as all of the promises made to them go down the tubes along with their families futures, but having actively participated in the process by aggressively re-electing a man they knew was selling them out.

Within a short time of Obama’s first election in 2008, many liberals saw his actions, heard his words, and realized they had been duped. This was within weeks and months of the euphoria of that election. But they let him go awhile, waiting to see what would happen, knowing it had to be better than the eight years of George W. Bush they had just suffered under.

Bush himself became their bogeyman. Whenever any criticism was leveled at the bad economic numbers, at the difficulty in disengaging from the Middle East conflicts, at any issue that Obama seemed to be able to do little about, the liberals gave him a pass with the simple phrase: “this is all Bush’s fault!”

Problem? Nothing got better, and in fact, things kept getting worse.

As the 2012 election cycle rolled around, the Democratic Party knew that it was tremendously disappointed in the actions and the results of their “Change” President. In fact, the only changes were for the worse.

Oh, they griped and complained and moaned on talk shows and in newspaper articles. But no one called for any change of any substance. Absolutely no viable candidates either stepped forward or were put forth in the media as alternatives to a President in whom they were allegedly disappointed.

So 2012 came around, and they all got on board again. They talked about the “first African-American President” and how he was “better than Bush” (there was that bogeyman again). The media put on all the feel-good shots of him playing basketball, waving with his family, and talking tough about Republicans. There was little or no criticism of the President during the election cycle, and especially once it was time for the actual Presidential battle with Mitt Romney.

So now the Democrats are stuck with a guy whose hand they have seen, whose plans have been fully exposed, little of which they like, but all of which they fully endorsed by their election cycle actions. The question is, what do they do now? The answer is, they can do a lot.

Mid-term elections are coming up in 2014. Let’s see how many of those politicians distance themselves from the President and his policies. For those who do not, let’s see if voters overwhelmingly put them into office, or back into office, thus blessing the President once again.

Even though he was just elected last November to his 2nd term, time is fast running out on Barack Obama to fully install his Socialist ideas. Once that calendar turns to 2014 and we really get into that new year, attention will be turned to those mid-terms, by both his fellow politicians and by the public and media. And by 2015, candidates will begin emerging for the next Presidential elections, undoubtedly some of whom will be espousing ideas much different than his.

Barack Obama has about another six months to get his major Socialist initiatives really rolling. Republicans have not only been talking the talk in trying to stop him from derailing the American train, they have been walking the walk by actively fighting him every step of the way.

You can see and hear the frustration in Obama at times. But the people who can really make a difference, who can totally stop a potential national disaster? Those would be his fellow Democrats.

Let’s see if the liberals have the spine to actually stand up to him this time, and begin to take America back from the Socialist precipice to which their Democratic Party leader has led them all. If they do, we may be able to save traditional American exceptionalism yet.

If they do not, our grandchildren are in danger of growing up in a weakened, demoralized, economically stagnant, government-dependent Socialist state with little hope of recovery beyond the extreme of a revolution that we’ll be too old and they’ll be too uninspired to fight.