Question: When does being in first place with a 5-game lead heading into the last month of the season feel like second place?

Answer: When you’re the Boston Red Sox and you’ve just been swept in a 3-game series with the New York Yankees, that’s when.

I can’t figure out this team at all, and I can’t remember a season where they’ve been so successful (at least thus far), yet so frustrating to watch. Defensively, they’re OK - even a joy to watch at times, especially the glove-work of third baseman Mike Lowell (after a slow start) and second baseman Dustin Pedroia. First baseman Kevin Youkilis has also done a nice job in turning himself into a quality glove on the left side. Pitching-wise, they’re also OK as well both starting and bullpen wise, though I’m a little concerned about Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima, and feel they may be hitting the wall and feeling the effects of their first Major League Baseball season.

What’s so frustrating is their absolute inability to hit. And not only not hit, but to not try and generate runs by bunting and hit-and-running a little more. The problem is, the Sox are way too focused on taking pitches and working pitch counts up, and therefore have become (at least in my view) far too passive in their approach to hitting. As a result, they suck against good teams. Anybody can smash around crappy pitching staffs like the Chicago White Sox as they did last weekend, but to embarrass themselves offensively like they did against the Yankees this week shows an inherent weakness that will kill them, even if they make it into the post-season. The fact is, you can take pitches and work pitch counts all you want against sucky pitchers, but if you try to do that against good staffs, you’ll get mauled. As they did against the Yanks.

And don’t even get me started about the $14.4 Million Dollar Man, J.D. Drew. He swings like a girl, takes way too many pitches, and refuses to take the bat off his shoulder even when he has a two-strike count against him. Thanks a lot, Theo. Trot Nixon would look damned good in a Sox uniform at $8 mil per year right now.

Which brings me to my final point - this team has NO FIRE whatsoever. Outside of Varitek and Pedroia, all you have is bunch of “professional hitters” that go about their business, not getting too up, not getting too down. Take today, for example. Yanks’ reliever Joba Chamberlain throws two balls at Youkilis’ head, and I’m thinking, WHERE ARE THE FIREWORKS? Of course, with this team there were none. That wouldn’t have happened in the days of the so-called “idiots” and Johnny Damon and Kevin “Cowboy Up” Millar, I’ll tell you that. Those guys knew what it would take to get a team fired-up when it hit the dog days of late August-early September. Even were this team to continue to struggle as it is doing and drop out of first place, I guarantee you’d see no difference in the demeanor of manager Terry Francona or his players.

And to me, that’s almost as bad as watching them suck wind as bad as they did against the Bronx Bombers.

So I was talking to my mom yesterday to wish her a happy birthday (Happy birthday, Mom!), and she mentioned that Phoenix was going to set a record for the most days where the temperature has been 110 or higher. ‘Oh no’, I corrected her, ‘that doesn’t sound right. No place gets that hot.’

Wrong, Great White Shank. As Drudge reports, Mom wasn’t just hearing things - she’s absolutely right, as today (with an expected high of 110), Phoenix is expected to set a record for the most days where the temperature has hit 110 or higher - 29, in fact. As John Faherty of the Arizona Republic reports:

Today should be the day that allows us to tell our grandchildren that we were here in the summer of 2007.

Sometime late this afternoon, the temperature is expected to hit 110, and we will have set a record for misery: 29 days of at least 110 degrees in a year.

On Tuesday, we tied the record of 28 days, and the National Weather Service is predicting that we will get to 111 degrees today.

Well, it has been an unusually-hot summer, but then we had an unusually-cold winter last winter. I just don’t seem to feel it’s that bad - primarily because: a) I now work from home and don’t have to endure those miserably hot and draining commutes like my lovely wife does, and b) I’ve been in Massachusetts quite a bit this summer. I know it’s been damned hot because our pool temperature has stayed around the century mark for the past three weeks, and you can still go in it after dark and the waters feels cooler than the air. Unbelievable stuff, huh?

The last word goes to Tony Haffer, chief meterologist at the National Weather Service:

“This is an unusually hot spell,” Haffer said.

No sh*t, Sherlock.

I’m glad someone finally had the chutzpah to take the gloves off on Elvira Arellano, the illegal immigration activist who was finally tossed out of the country after seeking refuge in a storefront church in Chicago run by a shady so-called “clergyman” sympathizer. Trying to paint herself as a symbol of the illegal immigration movement, all she ended up doing was revealing to everyone just how screwy she was and how much she deserved to be deported. As Michael Reagan writes in his NewsMax.com article:

Who is this woman who has tugged so successfully at the heartstrings of the nation’s liberals?

She snuck into the U.S. years ago, was caught and sent southward in the late ’90s.

That was just a minor setback in her career — in a matter of a few days she was back in the U.S. where she got pregnant and got a job as a cleaning woman at an airport thanks to a phony Social Security card — rather serious offense for which would be a sure ticket to the slammer for most people. But not for Elvira. It took 9/11 to get her charged with the crime and ordered out of the U.S. — again.

She didn’t go. Instead she conned a church into giving her sanctuary where she stayed until she rashly ventured forth to promote the virtues of illegal immigration. The Feds nabbed her and promptly deported her, offering to let her take her son — you know, the one she insisted she could not be separated from.

She said no. After all, the kid is a better propaganda tool here in the U.S., allowing her to bewail her “enforced” separation from him.

As it turns out, Arellano’s downfall was caused by her monstrous ego and her sincere belief that it was she who had become the face of the illegal immigration debate here in the U.S. Not those who quietly and honestly work hard jobs on a daily basis simply to try and send money home to their families, and not those who, while illegal in terms of our nation’s laws, nevertheless contribute to the economies of the cities and towns they live in. No, Ms. Arellano saw herself the poor single mother (I’ll refrain from any comment on that) and her son as the symbols of the mean, unfair, and unjust United States. And, in doing so, all she did was alienate those who should have been amongst her supporters - a fact duly noted by in a recent editorial staff in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Comparing herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks, Arellano managed to even rankle African Americans, who might have sympathized with her plea to stay with her U.S.-born son, Saul. She further estranged herself from the public when she didn’t bother to learn English during her year cooped up in Adalberto Methodist Church, the storefront church run by the Rev. Walter “Slim” Coleman, a man who is more apt to elicit ire than form consensus. Arellano also put her own interests above her 8-year-old son, exploiting him to draw sympathy. There was an element of cool self-interest in much of what she did and said. The more publicity she got, the more she turned people off.

Arellano wasn’t tugging at too many heartstrings either by shacking up in a rent-free church where she was fed and cocooned from the outside world. Boredom and a severe case of cabin fever were her biggest foes because authorities certainly weren’t going to tarnish their image by storming into a house of worship and snatching her away. Others busted for illegally crossing the borders twice, using a false Social Security number and fraudulent ID should be so lucky.

Look, there’s no doubt that there are a lot of people on the pro-illegal immigration side of the debate who not only mean well, but - no matter where you stand on the issue - make more than their share of sense when it comes to the debate, but Elvira Arellano is and never was one of them. Not only is she a fraud, a criminal, and a fundamentally misguided egomaniac, but when she put her own needs and priorities before those of her son, she showed herself to be a lousy mother as well.

Good riddance, Elvira Arellano.

—————

UPDATE: I knew I should have added as a coda to my original post something to the effect, “…But I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of you.” Sure enough, courtesy of the International Herald Tribune via Matt Drudge, this nugget: Arellano has applied for a visa to return as a - get this - “peace activist”:

“What I’m asking for is a diplomatic visa so that I can be an ambassador for peace and justice because I’m not a terrorist and the United States can’t continue treating undocumented migrants as terrorists,” Arellano told reporters after meeting with President Felipe Calderon at the presidential residence, Los Pinos.

I mean, this is absurd. The woman is obviously suffering from Cindy Sheehan Syndrome, otherwise known as CSS - you know, that syndrome where a single person uses the power of today’s mass communication channels to prop herself up as a somebody when in fact she’s really a nobody. Thirty years ago, public pests like Arellano would never be heard or seen, now in today’s media-saturated Internet/YouTube/cable network culture, anyone and everyone thinks they have their own bully pulpit. It’s enough to make you crazy.

Hey Elvira, I have a better idea - why don’t you focus on raising your son to be a good man and being a good little Mexican citizen and an agent for change in your own country. Now THAT would be a novel idea, wouldn’t it?

Tonight is a good night. Let me count the reasons why:

* Supposedly, we’ve got a lunar eclipse starting in a few hours, but I have absolutely no intention of staying up for that celestial display. I know, I know, these are the kinds of things that should be experienced, but since it was on National Public Radio this morning that I heard about it, well, we can’t let that bastion of liberal progressive thought in this country (something, BTW, taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for any longer) make me change my normal sleeping schedule, now can we?

* Even though it’s still summer here in Arizona and likely to stay that way for another month or more, the inner New England clock within me says it’s time for more hearty fare, so tonight I have a huge pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Funny how your inner clock betrays what is around you, isn’t it?

* The new Top Priority band shrine at the Kitthwawk Productions website (www.kittyhawkproductions.com) is just about to go live, with an official kick-off scheduled for Labor Day weekend. Oh baby, there you’ll find everything for the Top Priority fan in your family - autographed photos, their new “Anthology 1974-76″ CD, pre-ordering for their upcoming book (excerpted here at Goodboys Nation), and even historical tours ($18.75 per person with 2 weeks advanced notice) of landmark sites in Top Priority history. A must with Christmas just around the corner!

* Tonight I rediscovered the Beach Boys’ 15 Big Ones album. Released in 1976, history hasn’t been kind to this particular band effort, but compared to some of what came afterwards, I don’t think it’s that bad. Looking back, the whole “Brian [Wilson] Is Back” campaign did a hell of a lot more harm than good, seeing that at that time the Beach Boys’ leader and producer was in no shape to reclaim the band’s producer reigns, but listening to the album after two decades, one can’t deny that Brian was ahead of his time in the use of Moog bass, and the Boys were actually in pretty good vocal form. To me the highlights are the single “It’s OK”, the late Carl Wilson’s vocal on “Palisades Park” and “Just Once In My Life”, and the late Dennis Wilson croaking “In The Still Of The Night”. Hearing the album brought back a lot of memories, and to me, it wasn’t nearly as bad as critics pounded them for at the time.

* It’s August 28, and the New York Yankees are a full eight - count ‘em, eight - games behind the Red Sox. While I understand the Evil Empire has some pretty effective offensive weaponry, how can any team hoping to gain a foothold in the race for the American League wild card lose a game 16-0 to the Detroit Tigers. I’ll tell you this, even if the Yanks were to take 2 of 3 from the Red Sox and close to within seven games of the A.L. East lead, I don’t see how losing games like that provides any sort of hope for post-season play. I mean, will they even have a functioning bullpen by that time?

* Cosmo the rabbit seems very happy bounding around the room. Always a nice sight.

Yesterday’s post dealt with two different perspectives on the upcoming release of a book containing personal letters from Mother Teresa detailing, among other things, her years of struggle and despair in her relationship with God and Jesus Christ.

In an article for Time written by David Van Biema, the author, by way of one of his own off-the-cuff remarks and a reference to works by one of her most outspoken critics, atheist Christopher Hitchens, seems amazed that any future