Free Pete Rose!

Poor Pete Rose is unjustly being denied his deserved spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And why? Merely because he placed a few little bets on basebal games. And he didn't even bet against his own team. Unjust! Especially in the new world of ethics we now inhabit.

Last night a crooked journalist named Gwen Ifill moderated the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. And all the while she was supposedly being evenhanded, Ms Ifill was nervously wondering how her huge bet on the outcome of this year's election will turn out.

You see, Gwen Ifill has already written a book titled The Breakthrough, Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, and that book is scheduled to be released on January 20, 2009, which just happens to be inauguration day for the next president. If you don't believe me you can look it up on Amazon, where the book is already for sale on pre-release basis. If Obama wins, she will sell tons and tons of those books. If Obama loses, she may as well plan to insulate her house with the books.

I say that if Ms Ifill is still invited to polite parties after this conflict of interest, Pete Rose should immediately get his place in the Hall of Fame. His actions were a lot less corrupt than hers.

And lest you say that she was fair in how she moderated the debate, here's an amusing letter that was sent to Stephen Spruiell of Media Blog about one of her supposedly fair questions.

IFILL: OK, our time is up here. We've got to move to the next question. Senator Biden, we want to talk about taxes, let's talk about taxes. You proposed raising taxes on people who earn over $250,000 a year. The question for you is, why is that not class warfare and the same question for you, Governor Palin, is you have proposed a tax employer health benefits which some studies say would actually throw five million more people onto the roles of the uninsured. I want to know why that isn't taking things out on the poor, starting with you, Senator Biden.
Translation – tell why it’s okay to make the evil rich pay their fair share, o’ herald of the mighty light bringer. And you, mouth of Sauron, why are you and the dark lord trying to make things worse for the poor?

I might add that anybody who believes Barack Obama and Joe Biden can pay for the vast spending plans they have proposed by increasing taxes only on people earning over $250,000 is smoking some mighty fine weed.

Here's are two examples. Obama and Biden are right this moment sponsoring a law in the Senate which, if passed, will require the U.S. to donate something like $10 Billion per month to the United Nations to be strewn around the world as foreign aid. And both of them strongly support the idea of the government requiring industry to buy so-called carbon credits to cover the CO2 it emits. That carbon credit scheme is a pure tax, disguised to look like an environmental law, and - in fact - it is a very regressive tax which falls hardest on those who earn the least. Companies are going to pass that tax directly onto you and everybody else who buys anything.

Update 10/05/08: My apologies to Pete Rose for comparing him to Gwen Ifill. After reflecting on it I now realize that Pete Rose doesn't deserve that. What he did doesn't compare in immorality to what Gwen Ifill did. What she did is only comparable to a baseball umpire placing a big bet on a game with a bookie just before going into the stadium to umpire that game. In a rational society she would be fired from her job and barred for life from engaging in journalism just as a major league umpire would be fired and barred for life if caught betting on a game and then officiating at it.