As bad as the Orioles have been over the past decade -- The Decade of The Greek -- we should remember one thing.  Philadelphia has it MUCH worse.

Aside from just being Philadelphia, the Phillies became the first franchise in professional sports -- of any professional sport -- to lose 10,000 games.

How long until football starts?  At least the Phillies fans can start working early on reasons why Donovan McNabb won't lead the team to a Super Bowl yet again.

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... but I have been crushed by a couple of particular projects at work, where a dearth of effective time management skills on the part of some senior managers and their favorite clients has turned a few "simple" projects into royal charlie foxes.

I just have one comment to make.  I'm not a big fan of "labor regulations" and the federal Department of Labor in particular.  I think too often they are just the government divisions of union locals.  The fact that Elaine Chao -- wife of Senator Mitch McConnell by the way -- still does not effectively enforce prohibition of using mandatory union dues in political activities the dues payer does not agree with really steams my ass.

But, I do think it is time to revisit the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and its classification of exempt and non-exempt employees.  For those of you who are unitiated, if you are exempt, you are generally not an hourly employee.  If you are non-exempt, you are generally an hourly employee.

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Watch this Mackes/Davis land deal for the Rockawalkin/Crooked Oak Lane land deal.  (Interesting that it should be taking place on CROOKED Oak Lane).

Up here in the vale of the Gunpowder, one of our local scumbag developers -- one Randy Shelley-- tried to buy off the local community associations by donating land for a massive sports complex on a two lane road no better than Rockawalkin or Crooked Oak.  He did this in order to a get a serious zoning change pushed through on land that used to be tightly classified.  In this, he was aided and abetted by our scumbag RINO county councilman, T. Bryan McIntire.  Why?  "It was for the children".

The local associations were able to get the facility downsized-- from about 600 parking spaces with an indoor facility to 300 parking spots, fewer fields, and no night games after 8pm.  But-- nothing is being done about the traffic load on that road.

Do yourselves a favor, and watch this carefully.  I know some folks who live out that way-- I think that Tom Field lives right around the church there -- and those roads will go to hell quickly.

I don't think anyone would disagree that keeping land as athletic fields is better than another 11 lot McMansion version of Wysteria Lane, but they can kill quality of life just as easily.

Watch your back my friends.

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In a colossally stupid move, shareholders of Laureate Education approved the $3.8 billion buyout offer from Doug Becker and his back-room friends.  How this wasn't also a collosal conflict of interest-- Becker as Chairman charged with maximizing value and at the same time as buyer trying to get the lowest price -- is beyond me.

Laureate is one-half of what used to be Sylvan Learning Systems.  SLS was given over $10 million in tax breaks and incentives back in 1999 in order to keep the from moving the HQ out of Baltimore City.  They built a new tower on Fleet Street, and purchased the Koldkiss Building for their eSylvan unit.  (Full disclosure: I used to work for eSylvan and watched as Becker and Hoehn-Sarinc and David Graves made collosal leadership and management blunders that doomed that unit to hte obscurity it enjoys today-- and blew $70 million in the process.)

Of course, those breaks came with certain conditions, like hiring 1000 well-paid employees.  Guess what?  Never happened.  NEVER HAPPENED.

So, as a former eSylvan stockholder AND a taxpayer, I have one question:  when does the state get its money back?

I'm waiting...

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Marty the Mick is on the hunt for whoever is behind the nefarious little blog omalleywatch.com.

(Hint: It's not me.  Although I might start a blog called whereintheworldissadebaderinwanow.com)

Read more.

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Umm, yes. 

Bill Clinton.

Mike Huckabee.

Don Young.

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It turns out Live Earth was a complete flop with Americans.  That giant sucking sound you hear is the whine of the turbines spitting out all that electricity to power rock concerts.

The overnights are in, and according to top5s.com, Live Earth was a bigger bust than the last reunion episode for TJ Hooker.  The Nothing But Cowflop network pulled in just 2.75 million viewers for its three-hour Gorebasm fest of "concerned" musicians and their gas-guzzling private jets.  That's a .9 rating/3 share among adults 18-49-- the Holy Grail of demographics.

Fox-- with a double re-run of COPS beat out NBC handily with over 4 million viewers.

Maybe AlGore should go back to hunting Manbearpig in Colorado.

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John Conyers (Dumbass-- MI) is set to begin an attempt at a back-handed power grab by investigating the use of presidential pardon power over the years.  Conyers claims that they will investigate pardons going all the way back to Ford's pre-emptive pardon of Nixon.  If he really wants to investigate, why not go back further-- to the first use of the pardon power against my great-great-great-great grandfater William Wallace, leader of the Whiskey Rebellion, founder of Washington County, PA, and one time landowner of that great swampland we call today, "Washington, DC"

Why?  Because it doesn't fit the political narrative that the viciously left-wing Conyers wants to pursue.  What is that?  "How dare President Bush commute the sentence of Scooter Libby!"

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NBC does it again.  Not content to rest on its laurels for faking truck explosions for Dateline NBC, Lisa Meyers -- the Senior Invetigative Journalist -- completely faked a report on body armor.  Fake expert, fake tests, fake products.  Great three fer.

See the report taken apart here at HotAir.

Oh yeah-- let's not forget, that little prick David Gregory (he likes to make up facts for Chris Matthews) works for NBC, too.

Whatever happened to Roger Mudd?

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Apparently, Cindy Sheehan has decided that if Nancy Pelosi doesn't file papers of impeachment against the Pusillanimous President by July 23rd, she will file to run against her as an independent.

Hot diggity dam!  This is awesome.

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