For the first time in my life I was called on Saturday by one of the national polling organizations and interviewed, at length, about the issues of the day. In my case the poll was sponsored by the Washington Post and ABC News. The base for the questions are the interviewee's demographics. After talking to me, I am sure the poll is a mess.
"Are you a democrat, republican, or member of some other party?" the interviewer asked.
"I am a democrat," I responded.
The lady then asked about my views on the Death Penalty. To one question, I said that I was opposed to the Death Penalty, "generally," I added.
"Generally?" she asked.
"Well," I said, "between me and you, I worry about corrections officers who have to deal with the worst of the criminal class. Without the death penalty, how do provide any kind of legal deterent where the prisoner is already serving life without parole?" I mentioned other reservations. One of those, here in Maryland, is that our lame governor wants to parlay repeal of the death penalty by the Maryland General Assembly - something he has been ramming down the throat of State Delegates and Senators during all of the years he has held office - into a jumping off point in a presidential bid. This is the guy who looks for the political angle to visiting the latrine. But I digress.
I was asked whether I was liberal, conservative or something else.
"I am liberal." I said.
Figuring she already knew my answers, she asked how I would grade the Maryland Governor. I was given five possible answers, which, to paraphrase, were, very effective, generally effective, average, ineffective or, you know, terrible.
I chose the last possibility.
Next the lady moved to obama. The same five categories were offered. I wondered aloud if there were any choice that was on the down side of terrible. She was not amused.
"Just go with terrible," I finally said.
I was also asked about gun control. If there are two public issues that i hold conservative views on, they are gun control and abortion. I told the pollster that I was against registration of gun owners and against regulation of assault weapons. The only part of the debate I slide left on is the number of bullets permitted in clips. I told her I would favor reasonable limits on such clips.
The lady advised that these poll results would be published in the Post in about two weeks.
Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to come up with the best angle on Mrs. obama's cameo on the Academy Award telecast. She opened the envelope in the Best Picture category and announced that Argo was the winner.
Limbaugh noted that Argo is a movie about those brave souls who managed to spirit a half dozen Americans out of Tehran during the Iran Hostage Crises, a gut-wrenching international incident that occupied and overshadowed the final year of the one-term Carter administration. You'll recall that young thugs stormed the American Embassy in Tehran and took all inside hostage, a stunt that violated all tenets of international law. The hostages were held for months and months and were not released until the first hours of the subsequent Reagan administration. The six Americans that the movie was concerned with had escaped the embassy as the attack was taking place and were being hidden in a safe house inside of Tehran. The thugs, who were associated with the Muslim Mullahs who were behind the revolution that overthrew the American-backed Shah, soon discovered that the six were missing and began a systematic search for their whereabouts.
What an irony, Rushbo said. The winning movie honored the courageous people who defied the crazed thugs running Iran in those days to save the lives of six American Embassy workers. The person presenting the award is married to the person who dawdled and played while four American Embassy workers were murdered and mutilated in Benghazzi, then lied about it for weeks before the truth matriculated to the surface despite the efforts of the DNC-controlled media.
It is extremely difficult to maintain a stiff upper lip in these dark days leading up to the so-called sequestration episode set to take place in Washington. obama has hiked up taxes by unprecedented amounts, increased the national debt so much that our grandchildren and even great grandchildren will have to pay for his infantile spending of the public credit, and turned the democratic government put in place by the Founding Fathers into a budding marxist dictatorship. He made a mistake in proposing sequestration, but only in the sense that he never anticipated having it take place. The spineless GOP has merely played along with his bellicose prattle. On Friday, across-the-board budget cuts of some 44% will take place. obama has been out lieing through his teeth about the consequences of sequestration. Listen to him, these days, and you get the idea that the entire government will come to a stop. The truth is that even with the scheduled sequestration the United States will spend more in this fiscal year than it did in the last. obama is merely playing the role he had when he was a was employed as a community agitator in Chicago in his post-ivy-league days. That role entails trying to scare the public to death in the hope that his spineless opponents will capitulate again and agree to even more tax hikes.
The country is mired in a recession that might be serious enough to plunge us into out-and-out depresson. obama doesn't give a hoot. A radical marxist idealogue to his core, obama thinks that is what we deserve.
In sports...
Ryan Broekhoff poured in 21 points and Kevin Van Wijk added 15 and Valparaiso overcame a deficit that reached as many as 13 points with a stirring second half comeback as the Crusaders beat back Youngstown State, 73-64, on Tuesday night. The win clinched the second-straight regular season Horizon League championship for Valparaiso, which improved to 23-7 overall and 12-3 in the conference. By virtue of taking the regular season title the Crusaders secured home court advantage for the Horizon League Tournament, which begins Friday March 9. Valparaiso also earns a bye in the opening round of the tournament, and will play its first game in the semi-finals on Saturday, March 10, beginning at 7:30 pm. The semi-final will be on ESPNU. The championship will take place on Tuesday, March 12, at 8 pm. One of the ESPN stations will televise that game. Only the tournament champion is guaranteed an NCAA tournament bid. If Valparaiso does not win the Horizon Tournament, it would be guaranteed a bid to the NIT by virtue of its regular season title.
The officiating at the end of Monday night's Big 12 showdown between Kansas and Iowa State was about as bad as it can be. It was so bad, in fact, that the Conference leaders said on Tuesday that disciplinary action against the officials is in the offing. Two calls, in particular, were absolutely inexcusable. The game was at Iowa State, one of the loudest and rowdiest in the NCAA. And that gym is never more out-of-control than it is when conference heavyweight Kansas comes to town. Fortunately, the game on the floor was just plain wonderful, with nearly 20 lead changes, and tons of truly spectacular plays. In the final seconds the Cyclones led, 90-88, but Kansas had the ball. Jayhawk guard Elijah Johnson, who exploded for 39 points, took a pass and went flying down the lane. As he prepared to release a shot he crashed into Cyclone Freshman George Niang. Niang had perfect position and held it despite the contact he took from the hard-charging Johnson. Both players crashed hard to the floor. The shot did not go in. A second later, the ball landed next to the two prone players. Johnson crawled right over Niang and got the loose ball. He continued rolling with the ball and managed to pass it to another Jayhawk. Johnson then sprang to his feet and raced out and took a pass back to him. In one motion he spun around and launched a high-arching shot that hit nothing but net, tying the score with just over four seconds left. But it should never have happened. The contact between Johnson and Niang was about as violent as basketball contact gets. The replay showed clearly that Niang had done a truly outstanding job in getting and holding position and taking the charge. But even if you somehow believed he was a split-second too late, the point is that the whistle of the referee just a few feet away had to be blown. Somebody - be it Johnson or Niang, had committed a foul. But this referee just stood there and made no call. That is a travesty. The league has indicated that his assignments for the rest of the season will be curtailed. That is small consolation to the Cyclones.
But another call a minute earlier was just about as bad, if that is possible. The most feared player on Kansas is seven-foot-plus senior center Tim Withey. Iowa State paid so much attention to him during the game that their center fouled out with nearly five minutes left. But Withey was in foul trouble also, picking up his fourth foul not long after Iowa State's center fouled out. With about a minute and a half left Withey reached out and fouled an Iowa State player who was trying to break a Kansas press. And the referees did call the foul. But, incredibly, they assessed it against another Kansas player who was several feet away from the play. Come on, lads! There are three of you out there. When one of you blow a call that badly, why can't the other two pull him aside and make the call right? Same thing with the play at the end of the game. Make the call and then make sure you get it right. There are three of you out there and, ostensibly, you are being paid to get the calls correct. You cannot tell anybody who watched the game that some foul did not occur when Johnson crashed into Niang on the critical play. A player shooting a lay up crashes directly into a defender and both tumble to the floor. Somebody had to have been fouled, any fool knows that. In fact, the only really outrageous outcome was the one that ended up ruling the day: no call. But there has always been an arrogance among big-time basketball refs who just will not correct a call no matter how pathetic it was. Last night, apparently, the three culprits finally crossed the line. But don't expect to find out what the conference powers-that-be decide to do about the folly that occurred. The same statement that announced disciplinary action also noted that this was the very last statement that would be released about the incident.
Maryland's baseball game at James Madison, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Harrisonburg, Virginia, was postponed due to rain. it has been rescheduled for Wednesday afternoon at 4 pm. No television of any kind is available, but an audio play-by-play is said to be available from the James Madison Athletic Department. You'll have to pay for it, however.
Maryland's men's basketball team is also in action on Wednesday. The Terps travel to Atlanta to take on Georgia Tech in an 8 pm game. With four regular season games remaining - each one an ACC conference game - the 19-8 Terrapins probably need at least three wins to have a reasonable chance of obtaining an NCAA tournament bid. It is also imperative, analysts believe, for the Terps to finish at or above .500 in the ACC. They are currently 7-7 in the ACC.
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