MainAttraction

(wire)

A night after winning their 71st game in a row, the UConn women took on West Virginia in the Big East Championship game.

The women wasted no time and extended their streak to 72 consecutive wins. They pounced on the Mountaineers from the tip-off, and won the game with a final score of 60-32.

Kalana Greene lead the game 15 points and 12 rebounds for the Huskies, earning herself outstanding player honors for the Women’s Big East Tournament. Liz Repella led the Mountaineers with 10 points and a rebound.

The Huskies were up 27-10 with a little under seven minutes left in the first half, but the Mountaineers mounted a 18-6 run that spanned the rest of the first half and five minutes into the second half, bringing the score to 33-38.

But then the Huskies took over, scoring 27 of the last 29, and putting away the game. West Virginia scored only once during the final ten minutes of play.

The UConn women have won five out of the last six Big East titles, and 16 Big East titles in school history. They will enter the NCAA tournament unbeaten for the fifth time in school history, and are a sure-fire number one seed going into the tournament.

The women are also six wins shy of playing two whole seasons of undefeated basketball. Their next game will be either March 20 or March 21 in the

First of let me preempt this with my thoughts.
70% of the legislators in Connecticut drive foreign cars. Now what kind of an good idea does Murphy have..
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Dear Friends,

I’ve got an idea about how to protect and grow Connecticut’s manufacturing sector and the workers who built it, and it boils down to two words – Buy American.

The federal government spends billions of dollars to buy goods and services, mostly within the defense budget. To me, it is indefensible that a significant portion of that money goes overseas to buy products made by foreign companies. It’s our money! It should be spent here in America, to keep American companies open for business. That’s why I have introduced the 21st Century Buy American Act, which will shift taxpayer dollars away from foreign sources and to American companies and American workers.

You know how tough it is today for Connecticut manufacturers. All across Connecticut and the nation, shops that once bustled with workers who manufactured everything from airplanes to the tools needed to construct them have gone silent. Our defense manufacturing industry has been slowly dwindling, and when those shops went away, thousands of well-paying jobs for hardworking people went with them. In the last three years alone, the United States has shed almost 2 million manufacturing jobs.

So it’s time to strengthen our existing laws that require the federal government, using our tax dollars, to make buying American-made products a priority. The Buy American Act, which governs federal procurement, has been on the books for over 75 years. However, the government has failed to fully enforce and update this important statute, helping to hasten the demise of the heart of our manufacturing base.

The current law, riddled with loopholes, just doesn’t work anymore. Under the existing law, only 50% of a finished good has to be made in America, and when many prime contractors are done applying all the loopholes and exceptions, sometimes as little as one-quarter of a finished product was made here in the U.S. In 2007, the loopholes that we can track resulted in $5.7 billion in taxpayer dollars going to overseas companies. In the same year, Connecticut lost over 3,000 manufacturing jobs. We’ve got to reverse this trend.

So I have introduced legislation in Congress, HR 4553, the 21st Century Buy American Act, that will create jobs, close these loopholes, increase transparency of the exception process, and, most importantly, assist firms that have been hurt by unfair foreign competition.

My bill will:

• Require federal agencies, for the first time, to give a leg-up to bidders for federal contracts that commit to building a large portion of the purchased product here in the United States (in my view, we shouldn’t be outsourcing work when we know we could create jobs here in Connecticut instead!)

• Provide assistance to American companies who are the sole supplier to the federal government of a particular product to make sure they can stay in business (because if they go out of business, the work will go overseas and never come back)

• Increase the minimum percentage of a product that must be made in the U.S. from 50% to 60%. In my view, this change alone could create tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

• Mandate that agencies report, in a public database, what waivers of the domestic sourcing laws they have issued so that American manufacturers have the information necessary to compete for those contracts (the least we can do is make sure this process is transparent so we truly know where our money is going!)

Now is the time for Connecticut to make up some lost ground in manufacturing. But we can’t do it unless the federal government steps up to the plate and stops sending our taxpayer dollars overseas. We’ve got the workforce and the infrastructure to lead the way to reap the benefits of an updated Buy American effort.

I will keep you informed as this effort moves forward, and let me know what you think about Buy American, and any other ideas you may have to help Connecticut’s economy.

Every best wish,

Chris Murphy

You have to be kidding me. This former Governor of Alaska (she quit), mother of a little bastard grandson cannot even manage her own family….. WHAT MAKES ANYONE THINK THAT SHE CAN MANAGES THE COUNTRY. It is like me running for president….. DUH!

I think it odd, that Brits look at the US as a fragmented country and focus their critical repertoire on whether a person is black or white, red or yellow, brown or mixed.

What you people need to realize is that as Americans, we put aside our racial identity the best we can. Yes there is racism but as a young country we are getting over that hurtle.

Tiger Woods is human, he has human faults and sure, he screwed around on his wife. So did some of your own royals do the same yet we kept our nose out of if and respected their choice to either heal the situation or terminate the relationship.

I submit to you all, let the man choose his process to heal, let the US press have their day but keep your freaking nose out of it. It is none of your business. You folks have enough to talk about in the UK, stop talking about ours.

Ray Sabb
Editor
Mainattraction.net

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Tiger needs to change his name to Cheetah Woods..

On the heels of the Magician, Chris Lee the Philadelphia won the first game of the 2009 World Series in New York.

They came close to shutting out the Yanks.

The 2 big players of the game, Utley with 2 solo home runs early off of Sabathia set the stage for the 6-1 win. And Chris Lee pitching a complete game, 10 strike outs and a bit of magic with a behind the back line drive snag put the Yankees in a catch up position.

Not that the Yankees haven’t been there before but they nearly got shut out for the first time in 40 World Series appearances and the second time in their own park this year.

Chris Lee’s stellar performance was the pivitol key to the Phillies defense while the Yankee Bullpen was emptied with 5 or was it 6 pitchers starting in the 7th.

Sabathia was running out of steam.

Final analysis, tough offense, tough defense for the Phillies, galant effort for the high paid Yankees.

Lets see tonight what happens when Pedro hits the mound against his old team mates. Prediction…. 3-2 Phillies.

(Wire)

As the start of the 2009 World Series approaches on Wednesday, Big League Stew takes a look at five early story lines involving the Yankees and Phillies.

1. Sweet repeat for Philadelphia?: The Phillies have a shot at becoming the first National League team to repeat as champs since the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, but there’s more to this story than a simple mimicry of the Big Red Machine. The NL hasn’t had any two teams go back-to-back since a four-year Senior Circuit run from 1979 to 1982 and a victory over the pinstriped class of the American League would only add to the achievement. With a strong core that screams extended success, the Fightins’ are already among the most-beloved Philly teams of all time. If they win the Series, they’ll join the 1948-49 Eagles and ‘74-75 Flyers as the only repeat champs in the City of Brotherly Love.

2. Yankees aim for No. 27: How large does the Yankees’ title total loom in New York? Shortly after being hired in Nov. 2007, Joe Girardi showed up at Yankee Stadium and clearly stated his goal through the simple choice of his jersey — No. 27. The Yankees have been stuck on 26 championships since beating the Mets in the 2000 Subway Series and with the end of this decade fast approaching, there’s nothing they’d like more than to match the Red Sox for most titles in the ’00s. And since George Steinbrenner continues to fight serious health problems, his sons Hank and Hal would surely like to reward their father’s expected trip to New York with at least one more winning turn in October.

3. Cliff Lee(notes) vs. CC Sabathia(notes): It’s the Game 1 matchup that only a Clevelander could hate. The two lefties both won Cy Youngs while pitching for the Indians — CC in ‘07, Lee in ‘08 — but they’ll now be facing off in the Fall Classic after being traded by GM Mark Shapiro over successive summers. It’s hard to imagine a meeting between two better pitchers right now. Lee is 2-0 this postseason with a miniscule 0.74 ERA and he’s coming off a NLCS Game 3 start that ranks as one of the best in recent memory. Sabathia, meanwhile, just won the ALCS MVP and has a 3-0 record with a 1.19 ERA this postseason. He’ll have to answer questions about wilting against the Phillies in last season’s NLDS with the Brewers, but that’ll be small road bump before what should be a great game on Wednesday night. Can you imagine Lee and Sabathia facing off in Games 1, 4 and 7?

4. A-Rod vs. Ryan Howard(notes): This is the batter’s box equivalent of Lee-Sabathia, because both superstars have treated the postseason as his personal batting cage. Both A-Rod and Howard tied Lou Gehrig’s record of eight straight playoff games with an RBI (though only Howard’s eight came in the same postseason) and both have opened up opportunities for the hitters around them. If you were picking a postseason team from the pool of remaining players, you’d pick A-Rod because of his positional value, but it’d be a tough decision at designated hitter with the way that both are swinging the bat. Luckily we’ll get to see them play at Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank Park, which are both conducive to homers.

5. Philadelphia vs. New York: The two cities are separated by about 100 miles of New Jersey and have a long history of no love lost (check out this 1852 New York Times article if you don’t believe me). All previous days in the rivalry, however, are going to pale in comparison to Sunday. That’s when the Yankees and Phillies will stage Game 4 in south Philly, just hours after the Eagles and Giants play at the football stadium just across the way. If the National Guard hasn’t already been summoned for what could be a long day between fans of New York and fans of the city New Yorkers call their sixth borough (when they’re feeling nice), it’s probably best to go ahead and do so now.

Travelers Championship Awards Initial Sponsor Exemptions to Rising Golf Stars
06-03-2009
Exemptions awarded to Danny Lee, 2008 U.S. Amateur champion who recently turned professional, Kyle Stanley, winner of the 2009 Ben Hogan Award, and Rickie Fowler, the No. 2 ranked amateur in the world.