One of the side effects of the Boston Celtics being blown out in game four vs the Mavericks after winning the first three is to remind us just how Great Tom Brady is and why he deserves a place in the Pantheon with Bill Russell (11 rings) and Yogi Berra (13 Rings) or maybe even beyond them.
Both Yogi and Bill had an advantage that Tom did not, the ability to either:
Have a bad game
Have your opponent have a great game
This advantage is inherent to a playoff series. You can lose a single game or multiple games, you can have a bad night, your team can have a bad night, you can make a huge mistake in a game, and you can still win because it’s a best of seven series.
Not Tom Brady.
In football it’s one and done, if you have a bad day, tough luck, you’re out.
If your opponent has an incredible game (think Pats Eagles) even if you played great, tough luck you’re out.
If your opponent has a lucky break (Think Pats Giants and the Helmet catch) tough luck your out.
That’s why it’s so hard to win at that level in football and that’s why Tom Brady is and will remain the GOAT until someone matches his level.
Brady’s Pats were not allowed a game like the Celts had that why even if the green raise the trophy over their heads in the Garden Tomorrow, they will not be anywhere near Brady level great.
Bill Russell is in my opinion the greatest basketball player who ever lived and no man is more valuable in a world series that Yogi Berra, but when it comes to greatness Tom Brady is right there if not higher.
Aboard a Chesapeake Bay steamer, not long after his surrender, the general [Joe Johnston] heard a fellow passenger insisting that the South had been “conquered but not subdued.” Asked in what command he had served, the bellicose young man — one of those stalwarts later classified as “invisible in war and invincible in peace” — replied that, unfortunately, circumstances had made it impossible for him to be in the army. “Well, sir, I was,” Johnston told him. “You may not be subdued, but I am.
I usually don’t engage all that much on twitter anymore as so few people know how to have a spirited argument in a respectful way but once in a while I see something that jumps out at me. Such a thing happened today when someone was going over Putin and his faults.
Now as a person who knows his history and Putin’s KGB background you didn’t have to sell me on his faults even before the war on Ukraine began. It also seemed clear to me with the offensive near Kiev that Putin had more in mind that the Donbas region when he got started and fears of his forces driving beyond the borders were legitimate and even if you thought the threat of such a thing was not legitimate if you are a resident of Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia your fear of such a possibility is certainly legit as the three occupations of those countries by Communist Russia, then Nazi Germany then Communist Russia again are still in living memory.
As we all know the Ukrainians managed to stop the push of Kiev but the Russians had success in the Donbas region likely with the help of the large Russian population there left over from the days that they were part of the both the Soviet & Russian empires, Ukrainian counterattacks which seemed promising faded and the front lines have been fairly static for a bit with the Russians holding Donbas and neither side at the moment getting clear advantages.
The Russians have the advantages of numbers and a much larger population to draw from, the Ukrainians have the advantage of fighting on home turf and a large amount of foreign aid that even subtracting what is being used as graft makes a big difference, but a war of attrition by its very nature favors the side with the larger population plus Russia has the advantage of huge domestic energy supplies and a strong market for such energy if they wish to export to India etc.
Still this is bleeding Putin and thus you have seen some peace offers coming from Russia and the Ukrainians have to this point dismissed them. This is their right. They are the ones who are fighting this war, doing the bleeding and dying and living with all the risks of war which when it affects water and electrical supplies can quickly turn a 21st century lifestyle into a 17th or 18th century lifestyle.
Now all of the rest of us have a right to an opinion on what Ukraine should do, but it seems to me that being 10,000 miles away from the front lines and only risking tax dollars it’s not my place to tell people to go and fight and die. Nor is it the place of others to demand they fight to the last nor degrade those who might decide it’s not worth the cost anymore. The idea that Putin is a bad man and working for his own motives and that Ukraine is better off making a peace deal of some kind is not mutually exclusive.
Now of course the ideal would be Putin going back where he started from but it seems to be that even with weapons and supplies from the west the Ukrainians have neither the manpower nor the skill to force the Russians out of the areas they hold. Furthermore there is always the threat of Russia using tactical nukes if they feel the situation gets out of hand. The genie’s that would let out of bottles would not bode well for anyone.
Still in the end it’s their decision. If they feel it’s worth the hardships of war for months or even years to retake the parts of the country the Russians hold, I respect that. It’s their call not mine. There is a nobility in such a call whatever the result and no matter how it works out nobody should think less of them for doing so. Hey, they might think that Putin will reach the point of exhaustion and withdraw on terms favorable to Ukraine, if they can pull that off they deserve congratulations and admiration.
On the other hand if they eventually decide otherwise, that their people just can’t bear the costs of war anymore I’m certainly not going to critique them as Putin apologists or being on the other side or traitors for reaching the point of war exhaustion that I think a lot of the people online pushing them to keep fighting would have hit long ago. It’s very each to make that call from the safety of a keyboard far away in a comfortable home where your food and electricity supply is not in doubt. If they make a deal, they make a deal and it’s their deal to make.
Watching the world push the idea that saving the Israel hostages was a massacre makes an interesting contradiction.
Israel has taken every possible step to both save the lives of the hostages taken by Hamas and held by Hamas sympathizers or members because Israel values the lives of their citizens and for reasons that I frankly can’t understand also values the lives of non-combatants who want them dead.
Personally I question the “non-combatant” status here but I digress…
Hamas and the Arab world sees it quite differently.
We know Hamas loves 200 dead in rescuing hostages because they’re pawns in their war against Israel & every one of their people killed who are non-combatants hurts Israel diplomatically and the Arab world which also hates Israel to the max agrees.
There is however another dirty secret here concerning the rest of the Arab world. They love seeing those 200 dead Palestinians no matter what their combatant status not just because it hurts the Jews but I submit the love it as well because they hate the Palestinians only slightly less than they hate Jews.
Frankly I think it’s unfair to the Palestinians the way the other Arabs hate them. It’s as if they blame them for losing to Israel (face culture you know) & that it reflects on them. I suspect that is why the Arabs who were previously “Jordanians” and “Egyptians” became “Palestinians”. It allowed them to separate themselves from their defeat by the Jews before and after the formation of Israel.
Oh and there is one more dirty little secret, if Israel & every single Jewish person in it disappeared tomorrow the various Arabs groups in the area would celebrate for about 15 minutes before getting going with slaughtering each other. The Jews are a convenient distraction from that.
Now I refer to these things as “dirty little secrets” although in fairness:
It’s not really a secret to anyone who has even a basic knowledge of the area and its history.
Given what we’ve seen in Syria, Lebanon and even the West Bank and Gaza while hating Jews might distract Arabs from killing each other, it’s not a highly successful distraction.
Tom Hagen:Well, I say yes. There is more money potential in narcotics than anything else we’re looking at now. If we don’t get into it, somebody else will, maybe one of the Five Families, maybe all of them. And with the money they earn they’ll be able to buy more police and political power. Then they come after us. Right now we have the unions and we have the gambling and those are the best things to have. But narcotics is a thing of the future. If we don’t get a piece of that action we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.
The Godfather 1972 Emphasis Mine
Boston Common 2018 leftist “anti-racists” mob a guy wearing an Israeli flag
There is an interesting piece at Hotair concerning Pittsburgh and change in (almost all) Democrats concerning the aftermath of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting titled: Is Pittsburgh still stronger than Hate? by Salena Zito. She talked about the unity against the slaughter of Jews and the Pittsburgh stronger than hate campaign which isn’t what it once was:
…seemingly everywhere you went, the Pittsburgh Stronger Than Hate logo, which cleverly had the Steelers’ distinctive mineral elements as part of the design, was on T-shirts, kippahs, lawn signs, hoodies and more.
Recently, however, Pittsburgh became the site not of strength and unity but of hatred and division. A group of over 300 far-left activists established a Gaza solidarity encampment on the private property of the University of Pittsburgh, and the community has not been the same since.
You see the Ghastly Tom Hagen Math has caught up with Pittsburgh and math being math it’s unrelenting:
Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future. In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.
And if that means more LGBT Americans have to live in fear during those two decades, well it’s small price to pay for power.
Given the rise of “Queers for Palestine” It seems the LGBT community has seen the tiger charging and decided their immediate goal is to run faster than the Jews in order to be eaten last.
Meanwhile Democrats with power can also do the math and with new math comes new priorities:
Both the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County leadership were noticeably mute in the first 30 hours, with both Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Chief Executive Sara Innamorato, the latter having her early political success as a member of the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists, saying absolutely nothing for over a day.
When Gainey finally did offer a statement, it was through the Pittsburgh Public Safety spokesperson who wrote that the “encampment/sit-in at the University of Pittsburgh is strictly taking place on private campus property.”
As one elected Democrat who asked not to be identified said to me in a fit of frustration, “If the KKK had been doing this at Pitt, private property or not private property, I can guarantee you Gainey would be there in a heartbeat.”
Jewish progressive Democrats don’t seem to get it:
“The swiftness of it when you think of it is head-turning,” DePasquale said. He said no matter what happens on social media, he will always stand up for what is right when it comes to any religious group.
“I am all for standing up for the First Amendment,” he said, adding that calling for the end of Jewish groups or intifada is beyond a bridge too far.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Abigail Salisbury, a Democrat, Jew and proud progressive, who Gainey, Innamorato and Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) recently unsuccessfully tried to oust in a Democratic primary, (emphasis mine) said on Facebook, “It seems that many people expect Jews to sit quietly with our hands folded and allow others to tell us what is antisemitic. We won’t.”
They don’t see the math behind all of this both those Democrats who denounced hate all those years ago who now wanted the pesky Jew defeated see Muslims who want Jews dead as the future of their party:
For every Frankel, Heisler, Salisbury and DePasquale, there were the posts or retweets by Lee, county Councilwoman Bethany Hallam and city Councilwoman Barb Warwick that cut to the heart of Salisbury’s post.
Warwick, who tried but failed to introduce a Pittsburgh City Council ceasefire resolution and represents Squirrel Hill, issued a statement that said in part that the words “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” hold different meanings to different groups.
Could you imagine Democrats supporting someone who defended the Confederate battle flag saying it meant different things to different people?
The truth is that this is all about timing. It’s likely true that Mayor Gainey would have acted if the KKK was behind the camps today, but I suspect if the KKK ran such a camp in say 1920-1950 when the KKK was a political powerhouse within the Democrat party then I suspect Mayor Gainey would have acted much as he did now. And it goes without saying if Gainey was mayor of a city in the deep south during that period he might have joined the encampment itself.
You see the Democrat party needs to explain to Jewish Democrats like Frankel and Salisbury the real mathematical and demographic principle that’s in play here and nationally among Democrats. This principle can best be expressed by rephrasing Lincoln famous speech concerning his priority being not abolition but union. It would go something like this:
Our Paramount goal is to elect democrats and is not to prevent or enable the slaughter and/or oppression Jews in Israel or America
If we can elect democrats by protecting Israel and Jews in America from slaughter or oppression we will do it
If we can elect democrats by enabling the slaughter or oppression of Jews in Israel and America we will do it.
and if we can elect democrats by enabling the slaughter and/or oppression of Jews in some places while protecting Jews from slaughter and/or oppression in others we will do that too.
Now there was a time when such a manifesto might have been unacceptable to Democrats and to some like Senator John Fetterman who was Lt. Gov of Pennsylvania at the time of the Tree of Life Synagogue slaughter such a position still is but to those more “pragmatic” democrats in a party that his largely secularized such position doesn’t pay any percentages. Islam is a thing of the future and the Democrats want those young voters from large families who are now calling for the slaughter of Jews in their camp.
I’m sure that someone can be sent privately to Frankel, Heisler, Salisbury and DePasquale that none of it is personal, it’s strictly political business.
Closing thought #1: The real irony here is that many of these progressive Jewish democrats fought hard to secularize the nation and the laws to push Christian faith out of the public square and out of their party. In retrospect that might have been a bad idea.
Closing thought #2 One of the most interesting things about this development is how it crystalizes the Democrat’s war on the past. They were against anti-Semitic hate when it didn’t cost anything politically but now demur when it does. It’s very telling.
If you want to figure out which democrats would have stood against the KKK when it was electorally dangerous to do so (1920-1950) look at the ones who have stood against the anti-Semitic encampments all over blue states & universities and if you want to figure out which Democrats will be making excuses for those who who will be lynching Jews and throwing gays off the roofs of tall buildings in blue America in twenty years look at those who are not.
Closing thought 3: I personally saw all of this coming in Boston 6 years ago when organizers of an “anti-nazi” protest had to hold their people back from beating a person wearing an Israeli flag.
Now they don’t feel they need to so do anymore.
UPDATE: Here is an article title that nobody born in 1963 ever expected to read:
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