How Did We Do This to Ourselves?

BALTIMORE, Maryland, March 25, 2011 - If you have read any of my posts on Twitter or comments on Power Line through the years, you know that one of the greatest mysteries for me is exactly how we, as a nation, came to elect someone like Barack Obama as president. 

Put differently, how did a nation that was the most advanced, free and prosperous on Earth choose to elect someone who was that young, that inexperienced, and that far out on the wing of the political spectrum with not a scintilla of evidence that he could or would be able to moderate those very very radical propensities to counter-balance his ultra-radical presentation. 

Obama is not a moderate.  He is not even a liberal as most of us understand that term.  A liberal, for instance, is one hundred percent in favor of a free press.  A liberal is one hundred percent in favor of seeding democratic governments anywhere on Earth where presently a dictator holds sway, and one hundred percent in favor of the right to collective bargaining while understanding that limits to that right exist where other obligations of government are directly threatened.  These are not traits of Obama.  Obama, by contrast, is an "uber" leftist; like other fringe leftists he favors silencing media sources which espouse ideas contrary to his.  An "uber" leftist sees a lot he can approve of in fascist dictators like Chavez of Venezuela, Kadafi of Libya, that lad down in Honduras who stirred up trouble by declaring himself "President for Life," and, of course, the dictator of all dictators, Fidel Castro.  And an uber Leftist like Obama sees nothing wrong with the kind of 'thugism," vandalism and 'boot on the throat' intimidation that have been taking over the union playbooks in recent decades.  He traffics in the kind of ideas that have been mocked and scorned in the past when other similarly inclined non-mainstream political hacks suggested them and took up their cause.  Ideas like cap and trade, spread the wealth and obama-care have never been part of the national conversation because they were "too far out."  The place where you would go if you were interested in such thinking was the Communist Party Newspaper, a politics class at Columbia, or a "rally," the kind of which materialize whenever the participants find out the G7 is due in town.

The current popular but extremely shallow explanation for the election of Obama is that we, as a nation, were looking for a way to wash away a big national guilt trip stemming from those many years when we allowed slavery, followed by those many years that we stood silently by while some practiced open discrimination and conducted lynchings and other grotesque practices. According to this theory, because Obama had one African parent, by electing him we were making amends for those terrible atrocities.

At first glance this explanation sounds sort of plausible and possible, but only at first glance.

Think it through:  according to some, we, with the 'we' being the citizens or the voters of the United States, elected obama as a way of paying reparations for the years that we allowed slavery and discrimination to exist in this land.  Can that really be true?  Think about the theory in reverse.  Nothing that this generation can do will ever erase the fact that slavery was permitted for the first 86 years that we existed as a nation.  Nor is there anything we can do today to erase the fact that there were lynchings and other atrocities in this land well into the 1900's.  If the people who elected obama were really trying to make amends for those years, it was a weak and pathetic gesture.  The fact that all these many years later, when the people who actually engaged in the reprehensible behavior are, for the most part,  long-since dead and buried,  their descendants elected someone who was not a descendant of the victims to a high political office is, about the most lame and pathetic gesture possible and certainly not a cloth with which to wipe the race record clean.

There are other ways of looking at the proposition.  Let's say that you own a company and this company is successful and profitable, but only because of the shared sacrifice of its employees, and the deft leadership of those making the business decisions.  As the owner, would you then be willing to turn this company over to someone who had no background in running such a company, who had no real familiarity with the business, the market it operated in or the issues it would face in the coming years, and who, in fact, had a very mysterious background and a lot of really scary ideas that he has openly discussed and which anybody with an ounce of sense would know will not work?  Would you let this person run your beloved company just because, well, just because, maybe he spoke nicely and maybe he sounded sincere (in the way a used car salesman sounds sincere)?  You would not.  Not on your life.  You would not take a chance on having such a business, in a highly competitive market, implode because you wanted to "feel good" about the person you chose to lead the company. 

It was clear to most of us by 2007 and 2008 that America would elect a woman, a minority person, even a gay person, if that person was, in fact, the best candidate, if that person's ideas were in sync with those of the voters, and if that person had a record that indicated he or she was capable of being president.  The Republicans - the butt of all the uber left's "racist" innuendos, were already actively courting an African American female - Condoleeza Rice - to be their candidate, and only because they had failed to convince Colin Powell to run.  Racism, being the moral failure that it always is, will never be a thing of the past, but at least by the lead up to the 2008 elections, Americans were not going to let it stand in the way of getting the right person to be president.  Of course, in writing this I have not forgotten the long-time Democratic strategy of mindlessly telling Americans that every conservative leader, or most conservative leaders, are little more than closet Klansmen.  It's just that by the run-up to the 2008 General Elections very few people with a grain of sense still believed it.

Until obama came along, the USA had a long history of electing people to the presidency who at least on the surface were amply qualified.  Obama's predecessor, W - like him or hate him - was pretty highly qualified.  He had been the successful governor of one of the largest states, he was the oldest son of a previous president and had served in that adminstration in an unofficial way, he was a stable person whose moves, choices and ideas were predictable, and, even though an admitted alcoholic, he had conquered the insidious condition and lived a stable, dry life for over a decade.  He was open and candid about his failings.  Who didn't feel that they knew the man, whether you liked him or not.    Bill Clinton was also a governor, and before that, an attorney general, he had been publicly scrutinized and investigated with zeal and abandon.  The same things can be said about Bush Senior, Reagan, Carter, Ford and even Nixon.  These things are not true about obama.  He had zero credentials.  He had been a United States Senator for literally a few days.  Before that, his government experience was confined to the state legislature.  He was as green as green could be when it came to government experience and not one rival candidate was less qualified.  Swill that one around; of all the so-called serious presidential candidates in 2008, obama was the least qualified.  It wasn't even close.  His two books are full of things that would give even the most left-wing voter pause.  What's worse, the fourth estate chose not to participate in the election process in any meaningful way.  In fact, the overall behavior of the fourth estate was an abomination.  Just when the country desperately needed real journalists to fully vet an unknown candidate so that the electorate would know as much as possible before it voted, America instead was provided with a press that jettisoned its responsibilities and took on the role of public relations manager for obama.  Obama really didn't need a stephanopoulos or rove because he had the new york times, npr and nbc.  A few days before the november election, Tom Brokaw appeared on Charlie Rose's show and both sat there admitting that even they knew very very little about obama.  we still don't.  Even a little bit of digging would have showed that obama was very good at dirty politics, very good at stabbing opponents in the back and getting them off of the ballot.  Even a little bit of digging would have showed, conclusively, that instead of the moderate he was panning himself as, he was instead a very hard left idealogue who knew nothing of compromise, nothing of diplomacy, nothing of leadership, and a whole lot about every far-left talking point that was traffiked at every SNCC, SDS and Black Panther meeting in the last forty years. 

Even the liberal press wasn't blind to obama's strategy of doing everything possible to get opponents off the ballot.  When he won the democratic primary for united states senator, his expected opponent in the general election was forced to withdraw because of revelations of some long-ago sexual piccadilo, the source of which was the obama camp.  Some would say, so, this is politics.  Some would say that.  Some - many, in fact - would lament the fact that an opportunity to truly vet an unknown candidate for high political office was wasted.  When the GOP got Maryland-based political gadfly Alan Keyes to run instead against obama, it was clear that obama and his minions wouldn't even have to break a sweat.  In the Democratic Primary, the fifty percent of all Americans who didn't like Hilary Clinton gave obama a proverbial license to kill.  Even the Clintons, America's No. 1 practitioners of the dirty trick, were shocked at the level of dirty play engaged in by obama and friends.  Bill Clinton, who thought himself America's first Black President, was openly branded a racist by obama and friends.  And if they didn't hesitate to tack that title on Clinton, just think what they were prepared to do to a GOP challenger.  Meanwhile, the press, as recounted above, jumped on the obama bandwagon and closed their eyes extremely tight to all of the multitude of reasons this man shouldn't have even gotten within a country mile of the land's highest office.
Unaffiliated polling sources like Pew Research have been telling us for years that the United States, on the whole, is unabashedly conservative.  Yet the United States elected obama when he was - despite his half-hearted protestations - further left than 90% of all Americans.  Once in office, with approval ratings that caused even hardened opponents to shut up and shut down (except for Mr. Limbaugh), obama went about appointing a staff and staffing agencies with people so far left that they weren't even on the liberal radar screen.  But in the vacuum that was the mainstream press, he did all this with impunity.  Some people, laughably, thought obama was unaware that some of these people he had personally appointed were so far out in left field that most people had never heard of them.  Obama chose these people!  And he did so because they thought like he did.  Obama had given interviews where he was openly critical of the constitution, saying it limited what government could do instead of empowering the government.  He made open statements in favor of just the kind of health plan he ended up ramming through Congress despite a groundswell of national opposition virtually unheard of in modern America.  These are the kind of things that people on the political fringe think are good ideas.  What other politician, what other 'kind' of politician, would so openly flaunt public opinion?

Nowhere was obama's unpreparedness to be president more apparent than in the area of foreign affairs.  To exlain the extreme mess that passes for a foreign policy you do not choose either incompetence or far-left zealotry.  You combine the two.  It is that combination that provides insight into such mindless and, really, embarassing choices as the ones he made in Honduras, Georgia, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Libya, and so on.  This lethal combination that adds up to pre-ordained failure was never more obvious than in the obama lecture in cairo.  It was humiliating, as much so for liberals as for conservatives.  According to obama, it was the fault of the united states that led to world-wide jihad.  to make amends he told a largely musim audience that his administration would lead the way in promoting the recognition of muslim social, political and scientific accomplishments.  In short order he changed the mission of NASA from space explanation and astronomical research to being a scientific liason to the muslim world.  Yikes! Next up was his humiliating decision not to speak out at critical junctures when freedom-seekers were in the streets of Tehran and Tripoli.  He is so-enamored by some of the world's most notorious totalitarian dictators that he refused to inject this nation's considerable moral and diplomatic support into the popular revolutions started in those nations by the underclasses.  Where as the reviled George W. Bush promised the United States would stand with any group seeking democratic reforms and democratic governments, Obama seems to prefer wild-eyed dictators like Chavez and Mo Kadafi.

There are other failures in other areas, but the point is, obama is not a good president.  He is not even a mediocre president.  He is, in fact, a profoundly extreme leftist who got himself elected president.  How? Even today, I sit here and wonder how, given the choice of obama and Senator McCain, we elected obama.  You would think that responsible members of our citizenship, responsible university professors, responsible politicians, would want to know how it happened so it will never happen again.  Sadly, way too many of these people can't even bring themselves to admit what a folly the choice of obama was.  It's one thing to choose an obama at the outset before the predictable explosion of failure, it's quite another to witness the failure, to see that the choices that led to the failures are not being changed but instead of being "doubled" and re-made.  Here, of course, I'm speaking to the likes of General Powell and certain Congressmen (in Marylalnd, for instance, we have a Congressman Rupersburger, who purported to be a representative of the working man but instead voted for obamacare without so much as a word of remorse that he had done so in direct contradiction to he will of the people who elected him).
I believe that these are the factors that were in play in what, in retrospect, is an indescribably awful and irresponsible decision to elect obama president: a. there had been a relentless drumbeat from the left and from the mainstream media against President Bush.  The movement to make Bush a national pariah started the day he became president, but didn't pick up steam until he was elected for a second term.  Then, for four years, all voices in favor of staying and winning the Iraq War were met with uniform disgust and vilification from Democrats in Congress, the entire mainstream media and far left elements from every other walk of life.  Even though Bush's central policy choices - win in Iraq, keep taxes low, fight terrorism everywhere with grit and determination - never changed, his approval ratings plumeted.  Bush's refusal to fight back, even he now admits, was a huge gaffe and only added to the success of the donkey party's strategy of laying Bush to waste.  By the time of the 2008 election, the GOP was so far behind that it would have taken a miracle to pull it off. 

McCain's choice of running mates was almost that miracle, but after initially stumbling, the main stream media stepped in and did a trashing of Alaska Governor Palin that made Bill Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal proud.  That, and the financial crisis that set in during the fall, and Sen. McCain's failed strategy in dealing with it, was all she wrote.  Obama was going to be president.  It should never have happened.  My party cannot take comfort in the idea that they had gotten a man elected, which was their duty, and that is the end of it.  Nero got himself made into the Roman Emperor.  Neville Chamberlain got himself elected British PM.  Just because the Dems could get obama elected did not in any moral way mean that they should.  I believe that the failure of the Democratic leadership to clip obama's candidacy in the bud amounted to nothing less than a moral failure.  Way too many of the people who facilitated that event knew that there was a distinct possibility he would do serious longterm harm to the United States,  You do not put a person in charge of a great nation who hates virtually everything that the nation stands for, who has actively worked in the recent past to subvert that nation, and who has espoused many many ideas that are directly counter to long-held and distinctly moral national virtues. 

To be sure, the approximately half of the democratic party leadership that was not in support of Hilary Clinton and was actually tired of the two-headed Clinton "monster" with all of its heavy-handed, low-brow and sometimes illegal tactics, would have done anything to defeat her in the primaries.  When obama began to gather momentum, they were so quick to jump on the bandwagon that one wonders just how far they would've gone to defeat Hilary.  One thing receiving virtually no thought was the effect of a young stubborn uber leftist on the health and well-being of the United States.  More than a few democrats realized, however late, that obama was a terrible choice.  To know that you only have to examine the primary season.  Obama broke on top when little was known about him.  Once the uber liberal tendencies began to play themselves in public (the "slip" of the tongue with Joe the Plumber and the obscene subsequent decision to investigate the mere citizen for simply asking a question, the campaign decision to tag Bill Clinton as a racist, and obama getting himself audio-taped at a "private" gathering of super-rich California supporters wherein Obama arrogantly  describes the yahoo in Pennsylvania who, in times of stress, still cling to their bibles and their shotguns.  Playing into this late nose-dive was the continuing line of questions in the so-called new media about obama's long association with the marxist pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright).

Everybody who knew anything about obama knew he hated the constitution.  As a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, he had made that greatest of western achievements a target of unceasing derision.  He openly criticized the very idea of a constituion that - as he viewed it - was a set of what he derisively called " negative rights", or, put plainly, placed limits on what the people could force the government to do.  He was wholly opposed to the Bill of Rights and vilified Jefferson, not for his sexual behavior, but for his failure to draft a document that would have set the stage for a marxist revolution in the last quarter of the 1700's.  Conservatives scoff at Hilary Clinton's senior thesis from college, the one where she praised marxist agitator Saul Alinsky.  But Obama's radical statements and writings make Hilary's senior thesis seem almsot moderate.  He was openly friendly with the people who were arrested for trying to bomb the Pentagon in those surley days of the late 1960's and early 1970's, he attended church at the pulpit of Anti-Almerican Doge, Jeremiah Wright.  In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist atrocities of 9/11 he wrote an op-ed piece stating that America had to accept part of the blame for the attack.  Imagine, if you will, the media circus that would've surrounded any other sitting president making such statements, having such associates or trafficing in such ideas.  But, name one mainstream article from the New York Times, Washington Post, or one mainstream report on nbc that gave any credence to what is really a known fact:  obama didn't used to be a radical revolutionary, he still is.

Still is?  When the BP rig in the gulf blew, sending rivers of crude rushing into the still pristine Gulf of Mexico, Obama was slow to the switch when it came to civil defense mobilization and meaningful leadership of the effort to cap the leak.  But he and his confederate, the extremely radical Eric Holder, wasted no time reverting to full radical mode when it came to attacking the corporate leaders of BP as if they wanted the bloody thing to blow.  Obama actually muttered that full radical phrase, promising to "put his boot on BP's throat."  He led a frenzied effort to vilify the company, even though it was the employer of thousands of Americans and thousands more in America's traditional and closely held ally, Great Britain.  Things quickly got so out of hand that the British Government had to warn obama to back off of the personal attacks.  Even as BP spent many billions trying to cap the leak, obama actually sent "a team of lawyers" to BP headquarters, openly seeking evidence of some sort of criminal act.  what did that cost?  It cost millions of taxpayer dollars and not one single indictment resulted.  Really, what did they think they would find? A plot of start the leak?  In fact, obama administration officials had awarded BP just weeks before the leak started for taking a leadership role in protecting the Gulf Environment.  That was almost as ironic as the blizzard that starts in every town Al Gore goes to to shill his warm weather jive.  (I am not a disbeliever in global warming.  I am actively against all things Gore because he is nothing more than a used car salesman with a resume.)  Or, if we leave the Gulf, how about obama gussying up to the Venezualean Dictator and the Libyan Dictator, the Iranian Mullahs, Castro and the Chinese Communists.  Were he only so nice to our friends - and being friends with the USA is anything but easy these days - like England, France, India, Honduras, Israel and Georgia.

We could go on and on, but again, the point is, how did this person get elected president.  We are like a nation playing the role of the young man who tied on a serious drunk one night and woke up married to a woman he normally wouldn't get anywhere close to.  He's a frenzied radical with no experience at governing or leading and we elected him.  Is the electorate disineterested to the poijnt that they really don't care?  Does the electorate get its political information via Hollywood or their children's elementary school teachers?  It's worse than that.  If you look back, there was no limit to the number of nationally recognized persons who actually endorsed him for president over Senator McCain.  General Powell, Senator kennedy,  One of William F. Buckley's sons, and on and on.  (Some of them have fallen on their proverbial swords and admitted they made a terrible mistake.  Some, like Gen. Powell, against all logic, have not.  For him, I suggest reading Barbara Tuchman's landmark work, "The March of Folly."  If you know what that is about, nothing more need be said.

In summary, obama was elected for a combination of reasons:  the United States has always felt better when the Presidency switches parties regularly, and the electorate, with the help of the far-left mainstream media, was tired of a President who would not defend his policies against relentless democratic carping.  Add to that the usual cry of the voter for change to somebody who isn't "part of the club."  Through effective use of the media sources like the internet and a comliant news media, obama was able to largely disguise his uber left portfolio and thought process and convince many out-of-touch voters that he was a moderate of a different ilk who intended to get along with everybody.  Add to these, the fact that many who had ill-gotten reputations as independent and rational thinkers who came out in support of obama when he needed such support to contravene his leftist background.  And, to wrap it all up obama was somehow able to don the cloak of redemption for the country's past sins against Africans forced here under the yoke of slavery and forced to live even longer with open government-sanctioned discrimination. What we got is obama, a leader worse than any previous american president no matter how they are judged.






  

It starts here. It starts now.

I have really really struggled with the idea of starting a blog.  Weighing against the decision is a reticence to commit the time necessary to make it viable.  I do not mind writing for a small audience.  I will not be so conceited as to suppose anyone wants to read my musings on a regular basis, or on any basis, for that matter.  But I will not post something that other's might view unless I am proud of the product.  Some postings, probably most, will require research. 

Another fear is that the entries will end up being a collection of "I", as in "I did"  or "i have been" and "I think," and, worst of all, "I want" and "I wish for."  I hope, really really hope, that these essays have very few inclusions of the word "I".  But look at the first word of the first paragraph and there it is, "I". 

What will be added to the national psyche by these entries?  There is a theory that folks with views that tend toward liberal but not toward leftist are not being heard today.  The kind of liberal of which we speak, here, is the John Kennedy type.  The noble idealistic, profoundly American President espoused viewpoints very similar to those many (I believe most) people espouse today, but you would never know it if you follow the mainstream press, be it printed or broadcast. 

Kennedy hated racial prejudice and was dedicated to ending it.  To him, ending racism began with purging it from the way the government worked.  He worked hard and, was, indeed, dedicated to rooting out all vestiges of government-backed racism.  It was Kennedy's belief that in the public domain color had not a thing to do with a person's right to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Kennedy fought to end all vestiges of Jim Crow legislation and all vestiges of government institutions favoring one race at the expense of another.  State Universities would be open to all.  Public accommodations would be open to all.  Employment opportunity would be color-blind.  Housing opportunity would be color-blind.

Kennedy was also profoundly anti-communist.  Today's leftist is either openly communist or so close to it that he or she trips over themselves trying to keep the line from blurring.  Kennedy did not support McCarthy-style vigilante practices but he did oppose national communist states like those behind the iron curtain, the one in Cuba and the one in China.  Kennedy realized, like most Americans still do today, that communism and capitalism were anathemas to each other.  The existence of capitalism almost guarantees that communist states will fail, sooner or later.  The European Communist states - the ones behind the iron curtain - have already failed.  The Cuban "Communist" state is really a dictatorial totalitarian state where the press is crushed, political discussion is choked, free-thinking, liberty and other freedoms taken for granted here are non-existent there. Most believe that states which start out calling themselves "communist" end up being fascist dictatorships like Cuba.

Some leftists in Hollywood, in the White House and on the campus scene have this bizarre idea that Cuba is Utopian.  According to these "removed from reality" types, Cuba really has totally free birth-to-death health care for all.  The truth is that there is more and better free health care here than there.  Any American, rich or poor, can show up at an emergency room and be treated even if they have no way of paying.  The hospital may attempt to be compensated later but they will provide the care now, even if they know from the git go that they will never be paid.

Liberalism, as I have always understood the word, is the idealistic pursuit of all things noble.  Liberals believe in providing a voice to those who aren't heard by the powerful, providing care for the helpless and safety for the endangered.  Liberals believe in trying to be the best person you can be, of being selfless in a world that is rife with materialism.  The kind of liberal that this blog will espouse believes in the best things about this nation; it's freedoms and liberties.  This Blog endorses American Exceptionalism and believes that the ideas of liberty and freedom for all  are things worth dieing for.  The fight to keep America free and unfettered is the most noble of the secular causes.  The kind of liberal supported here also believes that freedom of religion is just that, the freedom to believe in God and to practice your religion in the way God has commanded us to.  The freedom of religion spoken of in the Constitution reflects, to a T, the idea that state-supported religion is the opposite of freedom of religion, but freedom of religion is not in any way, shape or form, the use of government to curtail or impose upon religion.  A government that nurtures liberty and freedom for all is, to religion, what a fertilized field is to the seeds sown by a farmer. 

The far-left today is anti-Christian.    They are, at least, open and obvious about it.  But the far-Lefts idea that government is a kind of anti-religion is not what the founding fathers favored.  To state that the founding fathers believed that government should curtail religious practice is a total perversion of the ideas of the founding fathers.  Such a perversion will not be favored here.  Christianity will be favored, fought for, defended and, maybe even spread, in this blog, and thank you Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams for the freedom to do just that.

This blog will also address every other topic of interest that you can imagine.  There will be short bursts and long essays, and there will be lots and lots of ideas suggested, floated and analyzed.  Sports will be spoken of fondly here, for a gym rat is writing this blog.  Art and Music are also in for discussion.  There will also be a lot of words devoted to books, writing and plain old reading.  Reading is one of man's most civilized and advanced functions. It is one of the things that is a true marker for civilized advancement, for a society that recognizes that reading is the foundation of learning is a society that inevitably will seek the same kinds of things the founding fathers sought: liberty, freedom, and the opportunity to be happy. 

There will also be discussion of science and scientific advancement.  This is one devout Christian who hates the idea that those who believe in and follow Christ must take stands against science.  Evolution is a scientific fact and is not in the least intellectually challenging.  Whether and to what extent modern man escaped the primeval world through evolution is a wonderful and challenging field whose purveyors are among the most advanced thinkers on earth. 

This is a world filled with wonder and excitement.  It is a world still waiting to be discovered.  Each new idea, each discovery, and each new conclusion is another page in the story of humanity.  We get but a second, in the big scheme of things, to live in and discover it for ourselves.  The most cutting edge of today's scientists and thinkers are those folks engaged in the quickly developing theories concerning dimensional realities.  These are the people who postulate and try to prove that the universe is not merely three dimensional, and that there is every possibility that there are parallel universes much closer in some ways than many of us can imagine.  These scientists use advanced mathematics and other advanced ways of thinking, measuring and calculating as they forge ahead in their effort to understand reality. 

To really understand where science is and where it is going, one owes it to himself or herself to make an effort to track this field of science because it is possible if not likely that the most fantastic new advances in the way humans live, think and communicate will occur because of advancements here.

As mentioned above, the writer is a sports nut; a long-time and devoted follower of the Baltimore Orioles, the University of Maryland Terrapins, and the Baltimore Ravens.  The writer, in fact, is pretty goofy when it comes to the Terrapin Basketball Team.  It's difficult and sometimes impossible for him to sit through a whole game and its downright traumatic for him to revisit the second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Michigan State last spring.  In that game, the Terps were down nine - as in 9 points - with less than two minutes to play.  They were down throughout the game.  Michigan State was a lot bigger than Maryland and every time it would look or feel like Maryland would make its move, State would fight them off, usually under the boards, but sometimes with a three-pointer.

Then came the charge.  It was one of the most incredible and inspiring rallies this long-time basketball nut has ever witness.  Sitting here now, thinking about it, it seems like it took place over ten or even fifteen minutes.  The truth is, it was 110 seconds of the most scintillating basketball ever played.  Say what you want about Greivis Vasquez, he took over college basketball in the second half of last season.  Nobody and no team could stop him for a whole game.  He was tenacious.  He was cool under fire.  He never stopped going directly after each opponent.  He was extremely tough and he never, ever gave up.  A sub-.500 shooter from three point range for his career, he caught fire as his senior season wore on.  In the Michigan State game, the last two minutes were his.  He made threes, he made driving one-handers from impossible angles.  He wanted the ball with everything on the line and he came through when he got it.  He combined with Sean Mosley, Cliff Tucker and Eric Hayes to steal the ball from State's guards time after time during that last 110 seconds.  Finally, with about 20 seconds left, Vasquez hit another runner and Maryland led by one. 

State came down the floor, and, being a great team with a great coach, they retook the lead.  Now there was less than ten seconds left.  Again, Vasquez got the ball and put up a runner from right of the lane.  It went in.  Maryland led again and now only six seconds remained.  You know the rest.  State got a long three at the buzzer, a shot Landon Milbourne contested but couldn't block, a shot that almost never happened because another state player ran between the shooter and the player who passed the ball to him.  But at the last instant this Spartan ducked under the pass;  It is possible that in doing so he charged into a Maryland player, but even the most ardent Maryland fan would have made that call.  When that bloody shot went in it was like somebody punched every Maryland fan in the gut.  How could a team come back from nine down with less than two minutes left and take the lead not once, but twice, and still lose?  Many years ago when Albert King, Ernie Graham, Greg Manning and Buck Williams were playing for Maryland they lost a regular season game at Notre Dame just like the State game.  They were in the middle of the conference schedule during that season, and then had to go to South Bend to play the highly ranked Irish.  For most of the game they looked dead in the water and then they caught fire.  Albert King was unstoppable.  There has never been a college player who seemed so easily able to play above the rim.  Whatever his vertical leap was from a standing position, it looked like he could make those heights with no effort at all.  He seemed to be in his proper natural state when he was way up in the air.  In that long-ago Notre Dame game, the Terps got the lead, finally, with about six or seven seconds left, only to lose when an Irish player drove the length of the floor for a lay-up.  My memory of that game doesn't provide me with the certain identity of the Irish player who made the winning shot, but I do believe it was Adrian Dantley.  Everybody in the gym thought Digger would call a time-out as the Irish raced up the floor.  But Digger knew Lefty - who had used up his timeouts during Maryland's frantic rally - would use such a timeout to set his defense just so and he decided he was better in a transition situation.  The old Digger did get that decision correct.  State and its coach, Tom Izzo, had no such decision to make because they also had exhausted their time-outs in that last desperate Maryland rally.  When you watch the replay you see that a non-guard actually brought the ball up the floor for State and this briefly befuddled the Terps.  The player assigned to apply ball pressure to the point guard moved towards the ball but saw it was not his man and backed off.  Whoever was supposed to pick the ball up was slow to react in the wake of the Vasquez shot.  This allowed State to dribble the ball up the floor in just a few seconds, and then they also had the good fortune of the non-guard seeing the open shooter spotted up and calling for the ball.  The shot left his hand a split-second before the buzzer.  To their credit, the officials did check that at the scorers table.  Vasquez had led Maryland from nine back with less than two minutes left by making a series of spectacular shots.  Had the Terps won, it would've been them and not State that made it to the final four.  The nation would've had the privilege of seeing Vasquez play in several more really big games, and there is no doubt here that he would've wowed them.  With six seconds left, it all seemed to be falling in place.  A tough old coach with a chiseled group of over-achievers, led by the flamboyant and spectacular Vasquez, playing for all the marbles.  It would've been Basketball Nirvāna.