Thursday, October 18, 2012

Whiners and Whining and other Amazing Stuff (#1)

From time to time I will write a blog post under this title, with the number being sequential.  

Put your glasses on, Mr. Umpire and Joey G., quit the whining: Anyone who watched the climax to the Oriole-Yankee series and then heard the Yankees whining about the umpiring in the Tiger series could not help but smile.  Smack dab in the middle of Game Five in the Divisional Series, with the Yanks clinging to a 1-0 lead, Nate McClouth of the Orioles got a hold of a CC Sabathia offering and sent it far and deep into the gathering gloom for a game-tying home run. The ball deflected off of the "foul pole," meaning it was automatically fair and automatically a home run.  So how could an umpire call it foul?  Even more incredible, how could four umpires call it foul after viewing a replay?  Because it was foul?  Wrong.  The magnified replay shows the ball changing direction, and changing its spin after hitting the pole.  More damning to the way the umpires called the hit was the way the Yankee fans sitting around the pole reacted.  Not one of them stood and motioned that McClouth's drive was a foul ball.  Instead everyone of them sat there on their proverbial hands like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. You could almost see their Cheshire Smiles and hear them whispering "are we going to get away with this?  Tee-Hee, damn if we aren't."  A TBS reporter who went to the section the next inning found plenty of fans who conceded the Yanks had again pulled one over on the Orioles (remember Jeffrey Maier?), and an usher who said he not only saw the ball hit off the pole, but heard it.  For an admitted Oriole fan like myself, hearing Girardi carrying on after a couple on bone head calls in the Tiger series seems like music to my ears, played about two, maybe three days too late...

obama whines while Mitt moves by on the rail:  Polls  have the Romney lead nationwide and in the swing states growing.  One leading pollster has actually pulled out of key battleground states like Florida, Virginia and North Carolina because Romney is so far ahead it no longer pays for them to be there.  obama's functinaries continue to say that the vapid one was so effective in Debate #2 that he will regain the momentum, but polls in the wake of another dismal performance have proved them wrong.  Now, there is but one debate to go and obama will have to really ramp up the lying to make a dent in the Romney momentum.  The latest obama functionary play is some nauseating and totally ridiculous story about a time when Romney was Governor of Massachusetts and was trying extra hard to hire qualified women to decent jobs.  Really, that's what they are trying to distort.  Hey folks, look at the latest Gallup and keep it up!

The former boss sells out again.  I used to really like Springsteen.  His music seemed to speak to me as a kindred spirit.  Families can cause pain but we stick with them because after all, they are us and they define us.  Old Girlfriends do things to your mind.  The country has flaws but it is our country.  We have fought for it and died for it.  And we've done it because we love the country, this special country, flaws and all.  Eight years ago, though, Springsteen stabbed us in the back by endorsing Kerry and then, of all things, going on the trail with him, and talking like he was some really great man and perfect candidate.  Kerry was a rich old hippie who never grew up, connived to marry rich women. never voted for even one new defense system in all his years in the senate, never introduced any legislation of his own and, generally, was a conceited, arrogant old fool.  My favorite Kerry story was the years he was leading the anti-war movement and connived to be able to deliver mail to US POWs in North Vietnam.  That was nice.  But when he met with  the famiies of the POWs before he went, he told them he would only deliver the mail to their loved ones if they made a statement against the war.  Swill that one around, Mr. Bruce.  He wrote a book back then promoting the anti-war movement, but it went out of print years ago.  When he ran for president, opponents tried to get a copy of the book or even have it re-published, but Kerry and his functionaries did everything in their power to prevent it.  Now, I suppose someone could write a book when they were young advocating something or the other, and then, as the grew up and matured, realized the thing they were enamored with as a kid was kind of stupid.  So, as an adult, they denounce the book.  But Kerry never denounced the book.  He just didn't want it complicating his presidential run.  So he and his buddies on the far left tried to bury it.  What a guy! Besides that, Kerry was okay.  And the Dems nominating someone so far out on the fringe in that post 9/11 time was the same as if the GOP had nominated Jesse Helms. But I didn't care one way or the other if the Boss decided to vote for Kerry, as long as he was realistic about who he was voting for.  But Bruce acted like Kerry was the second coming.  And the man who sings of being brave enough to look into your soul went out and worked for Kerry as if he was the real thing.   I stopped buying Springsteen stuff and stopped listening to the ones I had bought, which was a lot.  And then comes today.  If you are so strongly in favor of obama and aren't his mother or wife or daughter then you have to have been living on another planet.  Which initiative of obama's has you so enamored, Bruce?  Was it the stimulus that ended up in union coffers?  Was it obamamess, aka obamacare, that well over half the nation couldn't stand, and this is before they get gouged paying for it?  Was it maybe his courageous work in Libya that has tickled your fancy?  Will Neil Young be cutting an update of Ohio that goes "Four dead in Libya?"  Or maybe, Bruce, you like the constant, mind-numbing lying?  After all, old man, it's a special kind of man that can lie to your face even when he knows you know that what he is saying is not true?  Just last week he was on "the View" and at the UN weeks after he knew the truth about the Libya massacre and kept saying it was all caused by a film on You Tube that was viewed by 19 people before obama coughed up $70 million US dollars to advertise it in the Middle East.  Maybe, Bruce, you like his vigorous support of the First Amendment?  Or did you like him flying off to Vegas for another fundraiser just a couple hours after the Libya massacre?  And since you are suddenly so anti-war (that was what you said when you came out for Kerry), how do you like the half-ass war in Afghanistan?  We're leaving, you see, and we're firing from unmanned aircraft, and Americans are being killed by the people we are training to protect themselves, but obama wanted this "just" war.  It's the war with the important mission, so important, in fact, that we are going home long before we accomplish the act of winning.  You, Mr. Bruce, are the poster child for the monied class being removed from the real world.

No. 1 Maryland plays North Carolina in soccer tomorrow night just a few days after beating back surging Colgate.  Maryland's soccer team is still No. 1 and undefeated.  Tuesday night they started a four-game homestand with a game against a Colgate team that had rocketed out of a miserable start to go 3-1-1 in its last five games.  Maryland had a knack of not playing its best in these mid-week non-conference games, and this one had the look of a game that could really sting the Terps.  To that end, the game was still scoreless at the half. perhaps due to the fact that Maryland Coach Sasho Cirovski started five freshmen and two sophmores instead of the usual array of highly talented upperclass starters.  In the second half the usual starters returned, Schillo Tshuma and Patrick Mullins scored and the Terps, who took only five shots in the first half, outshot the defending Patriot League champs 12-1 in the second half. The 2-0 victory left the Terps at 12-0-1 going into the 6 pm Friday game against the Tar Heels.  It also gave Maryland its second-best start, all-time, behind only the 1968 National Championship squad, which finished 14-0-1.  Maryland is now 12-0-1, and 5=0 in the ACC.  The Tar Heels, the defending National Champs, are 11-1-1, ranked no. 2 nationally and in second place in the ACC, where they are 4-0-1.  A win for the Tar Heels would push them ahead of Maryland in the conference standings and, certainly, in the National Polls.  ESPNU has the 6 pm game.

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