I learned early to drink beer, wine and whiskey. And I think I was about 5 when I first chewed tobacco. 

                                                        BABE RUTH

X-Rays of Dizzy Dean's head showed nothing.

                                                        PBS BASEBALL HISTORY

Dizzy Dean was one of the greatest pitchers of all time. And if you do not believe it you could have asked him.

One day he got beamed with a baseball while running the bases by a second baseman and he was immediately picked up and taken directly to the hospital. The next day the headline read:

X-Rays of Dizzy Dean's head showed nothing.

I watched the old PBS History of Baseball again last night for the first time in 25 years. It was narrated by John Chancellor; really the finest documentary of baseball I have ever seen.

I remember taping it on my VHS recorder and even with new tapes all the recording was crud. Big Brother had somehow sent out some 'interference waves' of some kind preventing the recording. And this was the Public Broadcasting System.

Americans are weird. We always have to rate the best in anything. It does not matter if you are talking about sports or politics or wars, we always get into arguments over who was the best. Which is why we drink so much beer, I should think.

Just as an aside, Babe Ruth was the single greatest baseball player of all time because:

He hit 60 home runs in a 154 game one season while only ingesting dehancement drugs like tobacco and alcohol.

He hit 714 home runs during his career.

He won between 91 and 94 games as a pitcher depending on which source book you read.  And this was at a time when you pitched 9 innings per game.

He won 3 games pitching in the World Series.

You see...I cannot help myself. Who was the best?  I mean who cares? I watched Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Harmon Killebrew all hit home runs in an open air stadium when I was eleven years old. Roger Maris was booed and came out of the dugout and gave the entire Minnesota crowd the finger.

But that day I saw the very best players at that game exhibit their talents. What more can you ask for?

So if you pick up a book concerning the history of baseball or check out some sites like Wiki, you will see that there are hundreds of surveys listing Babe Ruth as the greatest baseball player of all time or at least in the 20th century. Who does these surveys? Who cares?

I mean what possible relevance could Babe Ruth have with a tenth grader stuck to his IPod?

Anyway, I am down lately because things look so horseshit for the Democrats this November. I mean, every single Senate seat is up for grabs as far as I can tell.

In 2006 there was 'something in the air'. Frister and Hassleduffer and w bush and rover and all the rest of the domestic terrorists were spewing out the same crap; the same speeches; the same talking points. I had not accessed the internet yet, but cable news kept predicting that the repubs were in big trouble come November, 2006.  I do not recall anyone specifically saying that the dems would take the House and the Senate. It just seemed an impossibility.

And I shall never forget election day. It was wonderful; and as I have written before at this spot, Fox News was never sooooooo much fun to watch. FOX WOULD CONCEDE NOTHING. There were still a couple senate seats up for grabs as well as several seats in the House when they signed off and Fox never took up the subject again. Both Senate seats went dem and so did all the House Seats.

The more moderate cable news networks were genuinely surprised as the results came in.  Even people like Chris Matthews had no idea that the dems would take over both Houses of Congress. Unlike Fox, MSNBC stayed on subject and followed up all the close elections.  Nobody really grasped how hated the President of the United States had become in America. Nobody.

But the 2008 election was the greatest election I ever recall following. We picked up even more seats in both Houses of Congress and we won the Presidency. I was on the internet 12 hours a day while cable news was airing in the background. Besides Huffpo and the Beast and other sites;  I found myself checking in with 538 every few hours.  If you recall 538 was spot on in his predictions.

I was fascinated by repub pollsters as early as 2000. The pudgy fuck on Fox turned polling propaganda into an art.

And he had this system whereby a small group of people would be in a room with wires on their heads while they were asked survey questions. And the computers would tell you what the reactions were in the brains of the 'contestants'. 

Of course his questions were incredible. Do you like being an American or will you vote for Democrat Candidates?

Would you like to pay more taxes or vote against Democrats?

Now you have to go back to the ancient Greek Stage to understand the process that had been discovered by the repub party ten years ago. 

The actors in the audience would laugh on cue and cry on cue. Laughter is infectious of course and the audience actors created an ambiance like the laugh track in those horrible sitcoms of the 50's & 60's. 

Well the repubs figured out that Americans like winners so you must always demonstrate that the repubs are winning in the polls. And I am aware of HST & Dewey and all that nonsense but in those days there were 4 strong parties going after 'the prize' and polling had not reached the 'scientific levels' of today.

TPM has its own polling blog site now and I hate polls. But I am forced to check the four or five polls sitting on the right of all the TPM slots every fricking day. I am sure you all do the same thing whether you are so inclined or not.

Here is what I see every frickin day.

RASMUSSEN:  55% of Americans absolutely hate President Obama. 45% of Americans do not hate President Obama so much.

GALLOP: 45% of Americans approve of President Obama. 45% of Americans disapprove of President Obama.

EVERY FRICKIN DAY.

Two guesses as to where Rasmussen gets their money.

Gallop has been around since HST and I really see no particular bias in its polling.

The reason that the findings of Rasmussen are suspect to me is because their groupings usually  add up to 100% and as I have stated before, there are at least 5% of the voting population in this country who have no idea who the President of the United States is, let alone worry about his birth certification.

And do not forget that the polling outfits will 'straighten up', sort of anyway, a few days before the actual election so they do not look like the lying bastards they really are.  I mean, McCain looked so good in August of 2008 according to the repub polling, he actually was leading Obama.  That was bunk of course. Hahahahah. Fox and Buchanan bring up these lies all the time whenever they wish to praise the dumbest bitch in America today.

At any rate, I think and I feel that there is something in the air. And I am scared to death.

If you think things are bad now, wait till the repubs take over both Houses of Congress.

Talk about domestic terrorists.

I will leave you with this gem from the old SNL:

Our top story tonight: President Ford and Governor Jimmy Carter emerged from their third and final debate virtually even in the preliminary polls. The Burns-Roper Poll showed Carter to be a winner by a substantial margin of 40% to 29%. However, an AP Poll showed Ford the winner by a margin of 35.5% to 33.1%. A panel of ten experts found Ken Norton to be the winner.

Commenting on the early polls, Jimmy Carter said he didn't care much. But Ford's comments were: "The Poles are an independent and autonomous people, and I don't believe they consider themselves to be under Soviet domination." http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76eupdate.phtml