Archive for September, 2021

Five Reasons Why Tom Brady is Superior to Michael Jordan as the Sports Goat

Posted: September 9, 2021 by datechguy in nba, nfl, Sports
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There was a bit of a fuss on TV over Michael Irvin & Stephen A Smith over who is the overall Goat Jordan vs Brady.

In my opinion there is no debate at all. The nod is to Brady for these reasons

  1. Brady won championships and made finals all through his career Jordan did not

Michael Jordan career spans from 1984 at age 21 to 2003 at age 39 with one year off for baseball and three years off for retirement before returning with the wizards. Jordan won six championships during that period at ages 27-29 & 32-34.

Tom Brady’s career spans from 2001 at age 24 (in 2000 he appeared in one game and threw 3 passes completing one for six yards) and continues in 2021 at age 44. During this period he has won seven championships at ages 24,26,27, 37, 39, 41 and 43. He also made the finals three other times at ages 30, 33 and 40. Which is far superior to Jordan

  1. Brady won championships in a sport where it is harder to win a championship

In basketball playoffs it is very easy for the cream to rise to the top. Series are best of five or best of seven. So a single off game or hot game from your opponent or freak play might cost you a game but is unlikely to cost you a series.

In football it’s one and done. One bad throw, one off game, one supreme effort by an opponent or one freak catch off the top of Helmut can be the difference between a title and an also ran. Jordan had a margin of error, Brady does not.

Furthermore Football weighs a schedule based on your finish thus when he was regularly winning AFC East titles he was doing so when constantly playing a 1st place schedule. He succeeded against a system designed to make him fail.

  1. Brady has won championships with different lineups on different teams with different systems

Jordan won six titles in Chicago under Phil Jackson with a fairly consistent lineup around him. Tom Brady has not only won titles with two different teams with two different systems but even when he was with the Patriots over twenty years he managed to win titles and get to titles with a completely different cast of characters around him. None of the teammates from his first three titles played with him in his last two.

  1. Brady has taken a sub .500 team to a title not once but twice.

Michael Jordan’s did take a Chicago team with a losing record to the playoffs then later to the conference semis, then the conference finals and then at age 27 to the finals where he established the Bulls Dynasty. But while he was able to make a horrible Wizards team 20 games better then they were he was unable to get them even to the 1st round of the playoffs

When Tom Brady at age 25 started for the injured Drew Bledsoe in game 3 of the 2001-2002 season the Patriots’ were coming off a 5-11 last place season and were 0-2. He would lead them to their first superbowl victory. When he came in as the new QB for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at age 43, he took over a 3rd place team with a 7-9 record and took them to their first superbowl in almost twenty years.

  1. At age 44 Brady is favored to make it to the Superbowl AGAIN!

All of these previous points would, in my opinion be enough to close the case here, but if that wasn’t enough the icing on the cake is that at age 44 nobody is picking Brady and the Bucks to do any worse than the NFC title game and many are picking him to win yet another Superbowl. It’s true that both Aaron Rogers and Patrick Mahomes will likely be standing in his way with a big chips on their shoulders and nobody would be shocked if either Rogers kept Brady from another superbowl appearance or Mahomes kept him from his eighth ring.

But the fact that we are even having this conversation makes my point for me.

In conclusion with all due respect to Stephen A Smith there is no debate to have here. Brady is over Jordan. WAY over.

Full Disclosure: I don’t rate Michael Jordan as the GOAT of the NBA or LeBron, I give that to Bill Russell who in 13 years in the NBA made the finals every year but one and won the title every year but two and won two of those titles as a player coach.

He is the person Brady should be compared to and points 2-5 count in Brady’s favor, however Russell gets points for

  1. 2 titles as player coach (and as the 1st black coach in the NBA)
  2. Coming up in an era of segregation and STILL ruling the roost.
  3. playing in a smaller NBA where the talent was more concentrated

To me it’s a tough call, but if Brady goes to another Superbowl then I’d have to give it to Tom.

The Real Excommunication Question, Do you love that soul enough to take heat?

Posted: September 8, 2021 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
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Sir Humphrey: The church [of England] is looking for a candidate [for bishop] to maintain the balance.

The Bursar: What balance?

Sir Humphrey: Between those who believe in God and those who don’t.

The Bursar: Is there anyone in the church that doesn’t believe in God?

Sir Humphrey: Yes, most of the Bishops.

Yes Prime Minister The Bishop’s Gambit 1986

Lord Germain: Whatever may be the outcome of this, I shall not forget your [Friar Tuck’s] interference (rides away)

Sir William of Marksbury: I advise you father to be a little more restrained. It’s not a very sound idea to make an enemy of that particular lord.

Friar Tuck: Nor of my particular LORD Sir William.

The Adventures of Robin Hood Friar Tuck 1955

One of the spiritual works of mercy in the Catholic Church is to admonish the sinner, that is warn a person who is sinning that their actions put their soul at risk. However in the modern “touchy feely” church this is often forgotten or ignored by clergy who either:

  1. Do not believe

or

  1. Are cowards

This situation is exacerbated when the sin is public and even celebrated. To confront such a person brings a risk in terms of reputation and responses.

And that brings us to  Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who will not rule out excommunication in the case of Catholic pols who publicly advocate abortion. As he puts it:

You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings.

And he also notes that during the civil rights era Excommunication was put to good use to cause public Catholic to repent from serious sin

On April 16, 1962, he [Archbishop Joseph Rummel] followed through, excommunicating a former judge, a well-known writer and a segregationist community organizer. Two of the three later repented and died Catholics in good standing.

You see that’s the point. If you are actually interested in saving souls and the normal methods do not work Excommunication is a powerful tool. It may not work in every case as noted above but that was two souls saved out of three.

Now of course there was a time when the threat of excommunication carried a lot of weight, when people of power actually believed and feared for their souls to wit:

These days however you are more likely to get a Catholic Pol and a Catholic Bishop more in line with my Sir Humphrey Quote than the Friar Tuck quote.

The real question is this: Do they actually believe? For a pol who doesn’t actually believe excommunication will not move them but the other question is do you have clergy who actually believe?

Clergy who believe will take this passage from the prophet Ezekiel to heart:

Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me.

If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.

If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.

If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him.

When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Ezekiel 3:17-21

A member of clergy who either does not actually believe or fears man more than God will not act or wish to rock the boat.

But a member of clergy who not only takes this passage to heart, but has actual love for the sinner, a love strong enough to bear the opprobrium of a post Christian society will act both for his own sake and that of the sinner. And when the slings and arrows come his way he will comfort himself with Christ’s words:

 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matt: 5:12

Hostile environment + politized classes = Bye Bye College

Posted: September 7, 2021 by datechguy in culture, education
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Apparently men have figured out that it’s not worth going into a lot of debt to be told that you’re what’s wrong with the world:

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.

At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.

Now that the STEM stuff like math, physics, engineering and medicine are going woke with realty has taken a bad seat to ideology the cost benefit analysis will make even more men think twice.

But have no fear. Trade schools are still there and haven’t reached the point of wokeness and men who go into heating, plumbing, welding carpentry and electrical work, none of which need a degree will discover that they will be able to name their own price when highly educated woke folk with degrees on their wall need anything

9/11/1981

Posted: September 7, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

My 9/11 story started 20 years before the attack on the World Trade Center.

On Sept. 11, 1981, President Anwar Sadat expelled me from Egypt because I reported about his troubles with Islamic fundamentalists.

After he signed a peace treaty with Israel, Sadat faced various threats from his fellow Arabs, but the most serious one came from the mosques in Egypt.

Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as the “blind sheik,” issued a fatwa against Sadat, who imprisoned about 1,500 of the sheik’s followers from a group known as Al-Jama’s al-Islamiyya, or “The Islamic Group.”

As a reporter for ABC News in Cairo, I interviewed some of Abdel-Rahman’s followers, who began widespread demonstrations after the arrests in September 1981. At a news conference shortly after that, Sadat told me, “If this were not a democracy, I would have you shot!”

The next day, I was ushered to the airport, where I boarded an Egyptian Air flight to Rome. I was the only passenger.

Less than a month later, Sadat died in an assassination carried out by Islamic fundamentalists.

The Egyptians arrested a lot of bad guys but eventually left them go free. Among the Islamists jailed after the Sadat assassination was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a confidante and colleague of the blind sheik. Together, he and Abdel-Rahman, who spent three years in Egyptian jails, spread the beliefs to the prisoners of what would become al-Qaeda.

Although many of al-Qaeda’s followers came from the war with the Soviets in Afghanistan, many more came from the prisoners held for the assassination plot against Sadat.

Al-Zawahiri received a three-year sentence for dealing in weapons and left prison in 1984. As a top leader in a key Islamist terrorist organization in Egypt, al-Zawahiri eventually joined forces with bin Laden and served as the second-in-command of al-Qaeda. He rose to head the organization when bin Laden was killed in 2011.

After Abdel-Rahman was found not guilty in the trials that accompanied the investigations into the attack on Sadat, the sheik made his way to Afghanistan, where he became a spiritual adviser to Osama bin Laden. In 1990, Abdel-Rahman set up shop at a mosque in New Jersey. There, he helped plan the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center for which he was convicted and spent the rest of his life in a U.S. prison.

I saw the 1993 attack as a significant escalation of radical Islam, and I tried to convince my bosses at ABC News to create an investigative team to look at the bombing. “Only four people died,” the executive producer of 20/20 told me. That disconnect between my analysis and that of ABC started me thinking that it was time to leave journalism, which I did a few months later.

As it turned out, the organizer of the 1993 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was so frustrated by the mission’s failure that he became obsessed with trying again. That’s one of the reasons he chose the World Trade Center on 9/11.

I often wondered if it would have done any good if ABC had backed my desire to investigate the 1993 bombing.

So, as Paul Harvey used to say, “Now you know the rest of the story.” At least my little piece of the story.  

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