Observation Point

"I didn't go to religion to make me happy.  I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.  If you want religion to make you feel really comfortable I certainly don't recommend Christianity."

--C.S. Lewis

A Modest Proposal

You probably read recently where J.P. Morgan/Chase lost $2B in "investments." This has set off the usual cries for re-regulation of banks, which are already highly regulated. Most of this is politicians trying to get an even greater stranglehold on the banking industry to leverage it for campaign contributions. In the meantime, reinstating a regulation that really might make a difference is not getting much play.

The Glass-Steagall Act was passed by Congress in 1933 and it prohibited banks from getting in the investment business. Investment banking is a very different animal from retail banking. Investment bankers finance mergers and acquisitions, buy and sell commodities and currencies, think Gordon Gekko. They can profit handsomely (e.g. - Goldman Sachs) and they can go broke (i.e. - Lehman Bros.). Glass-Steagall was designed to firewall retail banking and the everyday deposits of millions of Americans from activities that could take down the bank if things went wrong. Glass-Steagall was repealed, however, by a bi-partisan majority in 1999 and in retrospect, this was a mistake.

If banks want to set up subsidiaries that operate without funds from the retail banking side and compete with the sharks - knock yourself out. Depositor accounts, whether individual or corporate, need to be insulated from the risks that haunt Wall Street. Obviously, banks love to have access to hordes of customer cash at little or no interest to make deals with, but when they hit it big, do they share the rewards with all the little guys who funded the transaction. Right. And when things go wrong? Well then it's off to Congress to get some cash to cover all the depositors. Glass-Steagall, or something very like it should be passed to stabilize the American banking system. If the banks want to play with their money, fine; but no longer should they be allowed to play with ours at will.

 topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html

In Memoriam

Thank you.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

The Bush tax cuts automatically expire at the end of this year and when they do taxes take a big jump up in 2013. President Obama has shown no inclination to reinstate them if he wins in November. The effect? The Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that we have another recession. Great. Not that things are so great right now - ask the 27,000 laid off by HP yesterday - but at least there has been some nominal growth. How long, o Lord, how long?

www.cbo.gov/publication/43262

Answered Prayer

On May 8 I posted a piece about Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese dissident who is a Christian, who had sought refuge in the American embassy in Beijing to escape government persecution. After several days, he left the embassy and it was unclear if he would be seen again. Under the heading of "Answered Prayer" Chen, his wife and two children left China this morning on a United Airlines plane headed for the United States. A big thank you to God and a big welcome to the Guangcheng family!

news.yahoo.com/blind-chinese-activist-leaves-us-100619422.html

Land of the Pilgrims' Pride?

In case you missed it, inasmuch as the former mainstream media ("FMM") are sitting solidly on the story at the moment, there is new evidence out today that perhaps Kenya was the real land of our President's birth. This could be a slight problem because the Constitution requires that the President be a natural born American. The legal precedent is not crystal clear, so it will be interesting to see what develops from here. Of course that assumes that we will hear anything about it, which is doubtful if the FMM have their way. Maybe Schwarzenegger will have at shot at the White House after all. Shoot, a number of leftists would probably like to run Fidel or Hugo Chavez. It is an endless list of possibilities!

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii

Progress Report - Part Deux

Cut the Crap

You gotta love Microsoft - or not, which is why I went to Apple several years ago. If you have bought a Windows computer you know that it comes filled to the brim with "bloatware" as PC World politely calls it, or crapware as most of the rest of us label it. These are trial programs and all sorts of nuisance software added at the factory which substantially slow down the performance of a new machine. Now, MS has a solution!!! You can upgrade to their "Signature" series computers that come sans the crapware or, if you have already bought one of their pieces filled to the point of having a brownish tinge, you can pay $99 to MS to remove the stuff they put on in the first place. 

www.pcworld.com/article/255779/expect_windows_8_pcs_to_be_preloaded_with_bloatware.html#tk.hp_new

Genius. I am looking for the airlines trying to figure out how to work this angle for pricing their tickets. There is hope, though. Free software is available to do the same job and the name: Decrapifier! The URL appears below if you are a victim. Undoubtedly the Obama Administration is already working on banning this program because it puts so many crapware makers out of business.

 

pcdecrapifier.com/

Some Signs of Life

Oregon's economy is definitely a mixed bag, but there are some signs of life. New home construction is finally turning up in the Portland area at the highest rate in 5 years. Inventory of new homes had dropped to very low levels which firmed up prices. Because this is a labor-intensive industry, that is a good omen for the future, not to mention the use of wood products which Oregon produces in abundance. Now if Congress will quit talking about killing the mortgage interest deduction, maybe things will continue upwards.

  
www.kgw.com/news/business/Local-Home-Builders-Rebound-151810545.html

There is still bad news. Truitt Bros. locally is closing its green bean canning line, leaving both line workers and local farmers in the lurch and AT&T is closing a call center in PDX leaving 186 workers unemployed. This economy is primed for growth, though, if the uncertainty surrounding healthcare and tax policy is eliminated. You can help make sure of that in November!

The Eskimo Goes to D.C.

Alaska Airlines was just approved for new nonstop service from PDX to Reagan National in Washington, D.C. Alaska does a pretty good job as airlines go these days,  so if you have a trip to the our nation's capital coming up, you might try a seat on the smiling eskimo.

www.kgw.com/news/Alaska-gets-approval-for-PDX-Reagan-National-direct-flights-151374075.html

Our First Gay President

Thus saith Newsweek. Yahoo says the Donks are marching forward, proud and unafraid, under the rainbow banner, abortion, LBGT, and who knows what else. I say, let them. Let everyone see what are really the core issues for today's Democratic party because it's not jobs, or the national debt, or anything else that is going to make a material difference to those of us out in the trenches. Today's Donks are not serious people. They are as serious as George Clooney's Hollywood party and Occupy Wall Street. They think they can run a command-and-control economy and society and we have seen what that looks like over the last 3.5 years. It remains to be seen if a majority of Americans think differently. The results of the November, 2010 election would seem to say "yes." I am hoping that is the case in 6 months.

news.yahoo.com/political-insights-obama-restarts-culture-wars-offense-231013983--abc-news-politics.html

Thanks Mom!

It's Mother's Day and I have a lot to be thankful for. At the beginning for having me, training me up as a child, playing classical music and Dixieland, taking me to church, making all those meals even though Bob and I wouldn't eat the liver one time, taking Bill and me out to buy corn from the farm so we could sell it door-to-door, persevering after dad died, not grounding me too long when you caught me coming back in after a midnight run with Bill, coming to my football games even though you hated seeing me get hit, trips to Rhode Island in the summer, a California adventure on the train, going with me to Virginia to see a certain special someone, loaning us some money to help get our first car as newly weds, watching sick (and healthy) grandchildren, making Tutu tea and a lot more! Thanks for all of it Mom - Happy Mother's Day.

Progress Report

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

In an excellent piece of reporting, today's Oregonian lays out how Tri-Met, the Portland area transit entity, will spend more money on healthcare than running buses and trains, if it loses in the current round of labor negotiations. Successive agency heads, aided and abetted by Democratic governors, have said "whatever" to union demands for lifetime health care at no cost to union members. Now Tri-Met is cutting back service to pay for the lavish benefits. Finally, seeing the handwriting on the wall, the current Tri-Met manager, is trying to scale back the benefit package so the agency has the money to provide public transit. Silly boy! He really thinks that public agencies exist to serve the public?! And so it goes, with agency after agency, state after state, country after country. When will the public wake up?

blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2012/05/trimet_workers_management_appe.html

Disloyalty as a Tax Strategy

Semper fidelis is the motto of the Marine Corps - always faithful. The opposite of this is what we see amongst some of the wealthy elite in this country.

Samuel Huntington from Harvard published an excellent book in 2004 entitled Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. One of the challenges that he identified was that wealthy corporate elite were beginning to identify more as "global citizens" than as Americans. They apparently don't stop to think that there is no such thing as a "global citizen" - just the other economic elites that they jet through life with - but the practical effect is to loosen their loyalty and patriotism for this country. This is now being taken to a new extreme with an increasing number of the super-rich renouncing their U.S. citizenship for tax reasons. In 2008 there were 235 people who did so, but last year 1,780 people made the jump. One of them is one of the co-founders of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin

Facebook is about to come out with an IPO and a number of people may become very wealthy. Saverin may make as much as $3.84 billion. The tax bite on this is enormous and instead of biting the bullet, he is renouncing his American citizenship and heading off to Singapore with its more hospitable income tax policies. I think he is wrong.

I understand his motives - taxes are too darn high! Even Jon Lovitz agrees. This is already causing wealthy people to move out of high tax states and to states with lower tax rates. Maryland thought it was going to hit the mother lode when it jacked up taxes on millionaires but revenues actually went down substantially. Why? Maryland's wealthy citizens moved to other states. This has happened in Oregon too. People who are getting ready to move a big block of stock can simply move up to Camas or elsewhere in Washington for a few years and avoid Oregon's 11% income tax rate on heavy hitters and enjoy our neighbor to the north's 0% rate. On a $10M sale that $1.1 million, which isn't chump change.

Renouncing citizenship, though, is a whole different level of this game. There is more to life than taxes; things like trust, loyalty and similar concepts. These are the concepts that motivate folks like the U.S. Marines when they come and pull American citizens out of harm's way. So Mr. Saverin, you are free to leave, this is after all is a free country. But it is not the likes of you who made it that way. And by the way - if you ever get your rear-end in a sling, I hope you can count on the Singapore Marines to get it out wherever in the world you may be.

finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2012/05/12/facebook_billionaire_gives_up_citizenship_to_escape_bad_american_tax_policy

The 1% Solution

"Obama nets $15 million at gala Clooney fundraiser." So reads the headline on the Yahoo story. Where are the Occupy protesters? If this isn't the 1% I don't know who is. Better get out the hypocrisy meter again.

news.yahoo.com/obama-jokes-clooney-stars-gala-fundraiser-050818816.html

Pegging the Meter

As Rush Limbaugh said this morning, does it bother anybody that the media is all over Romney for allegedly being a mean boy in prep school, but cannot bestir themselves to see what Obama did in college or law school? Surely not a double standard!

Moral Infrastructure

Any country depends on its infrastructure to be productive. If a country is going to be an economic success, it needs decent roads, bridges, railroads, airports, harbors, etc. Even more than that, however, it needs a strong moral infrastructure - a term I credit to Thomas Sowell - and it is this infrastructure that is the most worrisome in the United States today.


At the most basic level, "moral infrastructure" refers to the moral values of individual citizens: honesty, industriousness, thrift, self-discipline, etc. In just this morning's news I read about a bank branch manager embezzling from the bank, a male principal having sex with a 17-year old girl from school, and a female teacher having sex with a high school boy in the closet at school. Then there is the $895,000 GSA party in Las Vegas, Wall Street tycoons laughing as they knowingly rip off their customers and ...well, you get the picture. Although there are millions of Americans who go about their lives everyday in a moral and principled manner, there is no question that the amount of moral dry rot is increasing at an alarming rate in this country.


To better understand the term "moral infrastructure" as applied in a societal context and why the lack thereof is a problem, it is useful to consider Michael Novak's writing. Novak 

"Our forebears believed that a commercial society would instruct all its members in hard work, regularity, and innovation. It would also teach Americans to be bold in adventure (like the New England sea captains), modest in their expectations of gain, and thrifty in their repeated reinvestment of gains for the sake of future compounding. These activities would be an alternative to the conspicuous consumption of the old landed aristocracy. A commercial society encouraged an honest, responsible, self-denying, and future-oriented citizenry. Such a citizenry is especially needed to make free republics law-abiding and prosperous.

Because the roots of commercial society - habits of innovation and invention, the blessedness of hard work, a focus on the future - spring from imperatives in the Jewish and Christian religions, it was not too long a stretch for America's founders to recognize the crucial role of religion and morality in curbing commercial instincts, keeping them within bounds and steering them from self-destruction. "There are many things that the law does not prevent citizens from doing that the religion of Americans prevents them from doing," Tocqueville noted approvingly.

On the other hand, the successes of a commercial republic also produce, over time, various enervating influences that corrode the moral strength of societies. Younger generations take for granted the prosperity won by the sacrifices of their forebears. Some want escape from the disciplines of a commercial republic, and some have contempt for the restrained manners and mores of their ancestors. Generations inured to hard work and self-discipline can give way to new generations that hear other music blowing in the wind and long for rebellion, preferring to luxuriate in idleness rather than to engage in menial work. A generation committed to saving for tomorrow is replaced by a generation heedlessly living just for today.

In such ways, the very successes of a commercial republic tend to undermine the moral stamina of the young. The sociologist Daniel Bell dubbed these cyclical turnings of the wheel "the cultural contradictions of capitalism." In other words: strong morals in, but over time, loose morals out.

We can see all around us the opportunity for accelerating moral decadence. But such moral decadence is only a possible outcome, not a necessary one. Well warned against it, we can make special efforts to overcome its attractions. In this way, the greatest task of a commercial society becomes moral and cultural deepening, a return to spiritual roots, what our forebears called a "Great Awakening."

By the reckoning of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel, the United States is now in the slow upsurge of a Fourth Great Awakening. It is characterized by a return to basics, an emphasis on family, and an invitation to the young to develop the self-nourishing habits of will and mind that are the best guarantors of strong character. Such young people are the best hope of the future vitality of our republican liberties and commercial creativity."

www.templeton.org/market/

A Great Awakening is exactly what it is going to take. The Baby Boomers have made a hash of this country. Woodstock values prevailed at way too many levels and now things are a mess. God bless our children - literally - as they try to unsnarl things. 

Lost Tribe

Here is what liberal educators think of evangelicals, according to James Taranto in Best of the Web. May I have another helping of condescension, please?

Anthropologist Discovers Exotic 'Christian' Tribe

"... here's an academic tale that will make you smile. Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford anthropologist, did some field work on an exotic tribe called "evangelical Christians." She explains their mysterious ways to the open-minded, curious readers of the New York Times.

"If you want to understand how evangelicals conceive of their political life, you need to understand how they think about God," she explains. "I saw that when people prayed, they imagined themselves in conversation with God. They do not, of course, think that God is imaginary. . . . They imagine God as wiser and kinder than any human they know."

Fascinating, isn't it? Apparently some of these people live right here in America! In her fieldwork, Luhrmann reports, "I met doctors, scientists and professors at the churches."

And they vote--but they vote differently from the way regular people--oops, make that "secular liberals"--vote: "When secular liberals vote, they think about the outcome of a political choice. . . . When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become--what humans could and should be, rather than who they are."

Uh-oh, that could spell trouble for liberal politicians. But don't worry, Luhrmann has figured it out: "If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear." And don't worry: "The good news for secular liberals is that evangelicals are smarter and more varied than many liberals realize."

And hey, we've always found that when we're trying to persuade someone of something, it's always helpful to say: "Wow, you're smarter than I realized!"

 online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577392152389120524.html

 

China and Martyrs

Like many others, I have been following the story of the blind Chinese dissident, Chen Guangchen, who holed up in the American embassy in Bejing to escape communist persecution. What I did not know until yesterday in reading Breakpoint was that Mr. Chen is a Christian and his activities aiding others in trouble with the government are motivated by his faith.

We do not yet know how his story will turn out. I am not an optimist when it comes to expecting good behavior from the Chinese Communists, but supposedly he is to be cleared to come to this country to study. We'll see, but I will certainly be praying for a brother that God will use him in this situation and that he will come through it unharmed. The time of martyrs is definitely still alive and well in China.

www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19332

Humility is the Hallmark of Heroes

One of the things that you have to give President Obama credit for is his humble and self-effacing nature. We did take out bin Laden, for example, and he gave the credit to all the brave young Americans who risked their lives on this mission. I mean the Presidential directive that he had approved the mission based on a stated set of facts and any deviation from that required consulting the President immediately, which of course is easy to do in the middle of a firefight when one of your choppers has already crashed and everything is going you know where in a handbasket, but hey - the President can't be responsible for everything and... well, you get the picture. See above left.

Be Afraid - Be Very Afraid

Steve Green over at PJTV and the Vodka Pundit did a perceptive analysis on the Democratic Presidential campaign strategy: Mitt Romney is a vampire and HE HAS COME TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD! It's sure nice to see a campaign on the issues.

France Goes Obama

France elected Socialist candidate Francois Hollande yesterday who has vociferously promised to junk Messr. Sarkozy's nasty budget cutting and instead to prime the pump with (yes, you guessed it) more government spending! The Euro immediately plunged to a 5-month low. I can't imagine why. I mean, just because France is pretty much broke and if it goes off the cliff there is no way that the Germans are going to bail them out along with pretty much the rest of Europe is no reason to be concerned. Don't worry; be happy! Hollande could yet do the unexpected a la Nixon to China and enact tough austerity measures to try and balance the mess, but I would not let your croissants get cold waiting.

And BTW, the Greeks did the same thing, voting in two different new parties to repeal the austerity measures agreed to by the former Greek government to placate the IMF bankrolling Greece for awhile longer. My take is - go for it! I think it will be a great lesson for the rest of the world when we see what happens when an entire country insists on leaping with enthusiasm off the financial cliff. An unfortunate lesson to be sure; but instructive.

www.kgw.com/news/national/150361665.html

A Monumental Failing

I am going off the beaten path today on a subject that is outside the mainstream, but very interesting nonetheless. I am taking this detour because I love the monuments in Washington, D.C. The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite. I like the Vietnam Memorial even though it makes me sad because one of my high school classmates and fellow football player's name is inscribed on it. The Washington Monument is visible as you fly into Reagan National Airport and it stands tall and proud as a symbol of our country. Something has changed, though, in how we view our national monuments and an interesting article in Imprimis by Michael J. Lewis offers some explanation. www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

On the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a photo of the new Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial. Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied commander in WWII, planned and executed D-Day, presided over the total destruction of Hitler's Third Reich, and was a two-term President of the United States during the worst of the Cold War. What does this statue look like to you? I thought it was about Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Whimsical comes to mind, but is whimsical the right way to remember Ike and all he represented in view of his resume above and the millions of Americans who fought and died under his command? I think not. Tellingly, the Eisenhower family did not agree either and testified before Congress to try and get a suitable monument built. Unfortunately, they failed and we are stuck with this small scale piece of public art that does not honor the man who Ike was or the brave souls that he commanded.

susaneisenhower.com/2012/03/20/my-testimony-to-congress-on-the-proposed-dwight-d-eisenhower-memorial/

The second new monument that Lewis critiques is the Martin Luther King Memorial. Again, a picture is the best starting point to get a feel for this issue, so here it is. The statue was sculpted by a Chinese artist and actually has "Made in China" engraved on it. Great. Cheap, contaminated consumer goods aren't enough - we have now outsourced our national American monuments. Does anyone think that the Chinese would do this for a new memorial to Chairman Mao? Right.

The second issue, speaking of Chairman Mao, is who is really depicted here? There is more than a passing resemblance to the Fearless Leader rather than the man who led the battle for equal rights for black Americans and finally closed the slowly healing wound of the Civil War. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a classic; this is not.

Lewis makes the interesting point that part of the reason that this statue does not work is that it is carved from granite rather than marble. Historically sculptors going all the way back to the Greeks knew that marble is a much softer material and can capture the soft curves and nuances of the subject's face and figure and allow shadow to interplay to bring out emotion. Granite is very hard and crystalline and only allows flat planes and harsh angles - no nuances, no emotion, just "heroic"in the Marxist/Leninist sense.   Perhaps an artist schooled in the Western tradition might have known this and avoided the problem.

All of the above is sad. These men were true heroes and perhaps the root problem is that our country does not believe in heroes any more, or even that it is a good thing to have them. And so we get whimsy, we get the great Proletarian Hero, but we do not get for posterity any sense of the character of these great men and what they represented and heroically accomplished in the crucible of history to make this land a better place.

Can You See It Now?

This is a re-post of a piece that I originally posted on January 14, 2010. We have now had an extra 2 years of President Obama, aided and abetted by Senate Democrats. All I see everywhere is kudzu. 

"I think the Democrats are like Kudzu, the noxious vine infesting large parts of the South. Once it gets established, it's nearly impossible to get rid of the stuff. The picture above shows a healthy Southern hardwood forest. Below it is a photograph of a Kudzu-covered forest. It is stunted, gloomy and almost impenetrable, which is exactly what the Democrats are doing to the United States. Americans are beginning to catch on and are getting out the political pruning shears. It an't happen soon enough! If we don't act quickly and decisively, the American landscape will never be the same."

This country is sinking and I am now convinced that President Obama and most Democrats believe that the terrible economy and all the associated social dislocation is unavoidable and even desirable collateral damage on the road to socialism - you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.  They really believe that what is pictured above is what this country should look like and they have been doing their best to buy or create votes to finish the job. For those who think they can just continue "as is" and things will get better, well, enjoy the landscape above because this is what things will look like for the rest of your life. For those who remember what a healthy America looks like, this election is critical - get involved - it can change for the better but it will be a fight.

Time to Eject?

For those of you invested in stocks, here is a sobering article from today's Wall Street Journal. Generally speaking, the economy stinks. This is a technical term, but you ain't seen nothin' yet. As Donald Luskin writes, literally trillions in tax hikes kick in on January 1 and included in these are new taxes on stock dividends. The top dividend tax rate will increase from 15% to 43.3%. This means that where previously a stock yielding a dividend of $10 per share would net the investor $8.50 after taxes, it will now only net him or her only $5.66 after taxes. This means stock prices will have to decrease in value approximately 30% in value to again yield 8.5% after taxes. Along with the sterling housing market, I think a 30% hit on the Dow is a great way to bring the economy back. Are these guys idiots or what?

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577381851218376744.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

GE - "We bring good things to...China?"

Jeff Immelt is the CEO of GE and President Obama's pick to lead the commission to increase jobs in America. So what does he do? Why move GE's x-ray division from Waukesha, WI, where it has been situated for 115 years, to Beijing! And oh BTW, did you know that more than half of GE's employees are overseas? I just can't understand why the economy continues to sputter and fizz.

www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20117479-10391709.html

(Tip o' the hat to Gary Edelbrock!)

Forward! (Comrades)

This is Obama's campaign slogan for the 2012 Presidential race. Apparently this slogan has an interesting history.

Bob Beauprez reports that it was commonly used by Marxists and Socialists in the 19th and 20th centuries on newspapers and other printed materials to symbolize that socialism, communism, Marxism (choose one of the above) was the wave of the future. I'm shocked, shocked that Obama would pick such a slogan. We can't say that we weren't warned what President Obama means when he says he wants "transformational change" for this country.

finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2012/05/02/das_forward_where_do_you_think_they_got_that_idea

Promotions to Glory

I respected Chuck Colson enormously. His life, his writing, his work and his person all spoke eloquently and truly of his faith in Christ. I have read many obituaries and eulogies but the one below by Peter Wehner comes closest to who Colson really was. Although unknown to Mr. Wehner, his piece also speaks about the character of men I have personally known who, although out of the public spotlight, have been inspirations to me - men like Al Wipf, Jim Steinfeld, and John Skelton. Character counts and they counted. I miss them all.

www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/charles-colson-1931-2012_640560.html

New Way to Seattle

Luxury buses have been in service on the East Coast for several years. They combine nonstop service with amenities like wide leather seats, wifi, power ports and more. Now they are coming to the West Coast and PDX-SEA is their first route. I'm a train guy myself, but if the trains aren't running, maybe the bus won't be so bad after all.

blog.oregonlive.com/terryrichard/2012/04/boltbus_begins_portland-seattl.html

Why I Love Baseball

Down 5 runs in the last inning; 2 outs; rally caps on and... the Saxons come through with 7 runs to win the game! How fun is that? These kids will remember this game for the rest of their lives. Take me out to the ball game!
www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20120501/PREPSSPORTS/305010016/Stunning-rally?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Sports