Archive for October, 2023

Five Quick Sports/Gaming Thoughts Under the Fedora: The Other 31’s Revenge, Keep the Goalie, Listen to Ted, Now Comes Reality, Win Out or Go Home

Posted: October 19, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Here in New England the woes of the football team are being proclaimed all over the place with great embarrassment. The wonder being how it was possible to fall so far so fast.

If you were born in 1980 or so you might be forgiven for thinking that the Patriots being at worst one of the best teams in the league and at best in the Superbowl every other year was ours by divine right, but the reality is that’s completely abnormal and due to two decades of Tom Brady.

For people of a certain age however it’s basically a return to the pre Parcells days when the Patriots were a bad team that had an occasional good year and a flash of greatness one season a decade.

As for the rest of the league and their fans, it’s payback time and I suspect they are enjoying the payback.

There again seems to be a debate as to if they Bruins should keep their two top level Goalies that led them to one of the best regular season records of all time last year.

Why this is a debate is a mystery to me. An injury to a Goalie can turn a good team into a bad one in a hurry and having two such players as starters who can spell each other would seem a really great idea.

The trick will come in the playoffs. Will the head coach be smart enough to rotate them in the same way he does in the regular season or not? If he does, they’ll win, if he doesn’t they’ll lose.

While the baseball playoffs have been entertaining the inability of any of these players to work these pitchers is beyond me.

In an age when you celebrate an “Ace” in the playoffs who only works six innings and has a limited pitch count it would seem smart to make him work deep into counts so he hits those counts in the 4th or 5th because if that happens then you can tee off on the bullpen that will be overworked.

I suspect the first manager that starts taking a page from Ted Williams treatment of Frank Howard and fining sluggers for swinging at the first pitch will upset the apple cart and suddenly start winning big.

The Celtics play their final pre-season game today and the general consensus is that they are one of the if not the top teams in the east. The Trades that have cost them their two best defensive players and last seasons’ 6th man of the year seem to have impressed everyone else.

Now we find out if that means anything or not

Finally in my Dynasty 1996 league I went into a key series with 11 games to go dead even for the lead in my division. After winning the opener my foe on the back of Mark McGuire (5 HR in series) took the next three.

My opponent is one game ahead in the loss column with two to play. If he wins them both he has the division. I have five game to play. If he loses one and I win out then I can tie him. Otherwise it’s a close second and no playoffs for me.

Hamas Breathes a Sigh of Relief all the Propaganda, None of the Danger

Posted: October 18, 2023 by datechguy in Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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Batman: (To himself as the Joker uses a girl as a human shield and puts a gun to her head) No Joker, you’re playing the wrong game, the old game. Tonight you’re taking no hostages, tonight I’m taking no prisoners.

Batman the Dark Knight Issue 3

When I first heard about the Hospital in Gaza being hit in passing at work my first thought was: Israel Has reached their Dark Knight moment. The moment when they are not playing the old game anymore. A Hamas HQ in a Hospital doesn’t mean a thing to them anymore. If Hamas is there Israel will kill them.

For Hamas such a situation would mean that there is no longer anywhere that is safe for them. No amount of hostages would save them, Yeah they would play the propaganda card but no amount of propaganda would save them, and with all the various middle east countries saying they want no part of the Palestinians of Gaza (which tells you all you need to know about them) it meant they would get their chance to be the martyrs that they claimed they always dreamed of being and I suspect the thought scared them shitless.

But when I got home I got the facts. Apparently an Islamic Jihad rocket fell short and hit the Hospital which produced a bunch of secondary explosions (why it’s as if the Hospital was a gigantic ammo dump or something) and killed a bunch of people. I suspect quite a few of them Hamas.

And Hamas now can breathe a sigh of relief, because now they have the best of both worlds:

  1. Israel still being blamed for the attack giving a propaganda card they can play with the Muslim world that will believe anything they say against the Jews anyways.
  2. Israel not actually crossing the line indicating they are willing to pay any political price to kill them.

Now I actually think that Israel is ready to cross the line and had decided to starve them a bit more before moving in and want them in the maximum state of exhaustion because you can’t stay on full alert for an invasion forever, particularly when your leadership is being decapitated at the same time. When Israel comes they’re going to come big and terrible.

But at least for now Hamas and their sponsors in Iran can breathe a sigh of relief that the end that I believe is coming is not yet a confirmed fact.

At least not yet.

Update: I guess I mixed up my Hospitals in terms of the Hamas Base From Hotair:

Besides, if Israel wanted to target a hospital, it would have been Al-Shifa in Gaza City. Why? Hamas has its command headquarters in Al-Shifa, an open secret for more than a decade. The Washington Post wrote about it in 2014 during the last major Israel-Hamas conflict. Guy Benson also wrote about it here nine years ago, linking a Tablet blast against the media for ignoring it — even though reporters routinely met with Hamas propagandists at Al-Shifa:

A moment of crisis

Posted: October 17, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Marine Sgt. Steve Russell was on guard duty. It was Sunday, a day of rest.

As he gazed out of the compound’s gates in Beirut, he saw a truck turn and head for the Marine outpost.

Then a wave of flames swept across the truck’s bumper, sending tons of explosives in a suicide attack.

Amazingly, Russell survived. But the explosion killed 241 military personnel—almost all of them Marines, who had come as part of a peacekeeping mission after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It was the largest loss of life among the Marines since Iwo Jima in World War II.

A seminal event in the chaos of the Middle East, the bombing 40 years ago still provides some insight into what led to today’s events.

As an investigative journalist for ABC’s 20/20, I spent several months back then in an attempt to piece together who was behind the attack and why.

Here are the reports:

Here’s what we found:

–Iran financed the attack on the Marines to humiliate the U.S. government and its presence in Lebanon, particularly when the Reagan administration pushed for Arab countries to make peace with Israel.

–Syria, a longtime ally of the Islamic Republic and enemy of the United States and Israel, provided the logistical support for the operation.

–Islamic Jihad, a front organization with ties to Hezbollah, provided the manpower in Lebanon. Heading the operation was Imad Mughniyeh, one of the Middle East’s prolific terrorists and bomb makers. As a chief strategist of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group, he deployed truck bombs and improvised explosive devices throughout the region, including the war in Iraq.

–The Reagan administration failed to recognize the danger the Marines faced in Beirut. For example, the guards protecting the compound were under strict orders to keep their guns without any rounds in the chamber to protect against civilian casualties. Moreover, the American military command failed to inform the Marines about the possibility of an imminent attack—information received a few days before the explosion.

–The Reagan administration largely ignored the attack’s impact on the Marines for two reasons. First, only days after the attack, the United States invaded Grenada to rescue American medical students. Second, a significant divide existed within the administration between those who wanted retaliation against the terrorists and those who argued that the government had no definitive proof of whether Iran and Syria were involved.

What can we learn about today’s issues from the past?

First, a clear connection has existed for decades among Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians. You don’t need a smoking gun to know that a link exists between the trio. Syria cannot play as prominent a role today because of its ongoing civil war.

Second, Hezbollah has become a powerful influence in the region, particularly as the leading party in the Lebanese government and an ally of Iran. Moreover, Hezbollah provides aid and assistance to Hamas, the main instigator of the attacks on Israel.

Third, Shia Muslims, the smaller of the two main branches of Islam, control a vast swath of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. That’s a significant shift from the balance of power in the past 40 years when Sunni Muslims controlled much of the territory. That’s why Saudi Arabia leaders, who are from the dominant Sunni tribe, have started to talk with their longtime enemies from Iran.

Fourth, it’s important to note that the Sunni-Shia détente also includes the Palestinian leadership, which is primarily Sunni. Moreover, it’s important to note that the Palestinian political groups, which historically made no differentiation among Sunnis, Shia, and Christians, have created ties with distinctly religious regimes.  

Lastly, the United States has a history of putting itself in harm’s way in the Middle East, wagering that a show of military strength will somehow frighten its adversaries. So, too, has shuttle diplomacy played a role in the U.S. strategy.

Let’s take a good, hard look at how many failures the United States has had in the Middle East over the past four decades. Only the first Gulf War stands as a victory.

It may be time to sit this one out.                                                                  

Hamas vs Actual Nazis, Hamas is Worse

Posted: October 16, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east
Tags: ,

While there have been murderous tyrannies that have slaughtered millions all though history in modern society the Nazi’s have been held up as the ultimate evil.

A lot of this is because the left doesn’t want to talk about the communists who when it comes to slaughtering and oppressing folks have outdone them on a huge scale both in individual countries (Russia & China) and worldwide, but they are the left allies so they aren’t allowed on the list, but in fairness the Nazi’s are a solid 2nd choice for the worst murderous tyrannies out there from their conquering of Europe and holding countries hostage to repression at home to of course the holocaust (Which based on what we’ve seen on campus this week in the US a good chunk of the campus left would consider the gassing of jews a mitigating factor in their favor, a feature rather than a bug of the Nazi regime) the Nazi have earned their spot in infamy.

So it takes some effort to look worse than the Nazis but Hamas is managing it by this by blockading their own civilians from fleeing Israel’s upcoming attack and even confiscating car keys to prevent their folks from getting out of harms way.

Contrast this with the Nazis’ in the action that resulted in the awarding of the final Knight’s Cross for bravery that was issued by them

So let’s sum up. Members of the Nazi German Navy and Air force risked their lives to evacuate civilians from East Prussia to save them from the attacking soviets and others held the line even after the official surrender to save as many as possible.

Meanwhile Hamas is doing all they can to make sure Palestinians in Gaza can die in an Israeli invasion so they can use their deaths as a propaganda tool in the west.

Congats Hamas, you have managed to be so evil that even actual Nazis can look at you, shake their head and feel morally superior

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