Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

Baseball and Game-Playing

Posted: November 5, 2019 by julietteochieng in media, News/opinion, Sports, Uncategorized
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Boston Red Sox 2018 World Series Championship ring that I’m sure Peter likes seeing again.

by baldilocks

Yesterday, a goodly portion of the Washington Nationals visited the White House in celebration of their victory in the 2019 World Series and at least two of the players were pummeled on Twitter for openly being fans of President Trump. I’m sure the two players will console themselves with that beautiful ring they get to wear.

In contrast, there were several players who skipped the White House visit. I didn’t notice much talk about them. But, of course it was their choice to make.

It’s a safe bet, however, that the latter received a digital pat on the back from the usual suspects. We know that it’s a safe bet because we have some comparative information. 

[R]etired Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady turned down Obama’s invitation to come to the White House and were met with strong criticism from media.

Thomas’s decision not to visit the White House in 2012 was widely criticized. U.S. News & World Report writer Susan Milligan headlined a story on the incident that said his decision was not brave, “it was just rude.” ESPN writer Joe McDonald wrote that Thomas chose to put himself above the team through his decision not to attend.

“When the president of the United States invites you and all your teammates to the White House to honor your Stanley Cup championship, you go and represent the team,” McDonald wrote.

Emphasis mine.

Hahahahahahaha!

Of course, we know that this only applies when the president is a Democrat and it double applied in the lone case in which the president was of African descent.

And then there is a whole other category of rules for Orange Man Bad.

If I were a team owner, I’d make it mandatory (in the contract) for all players and coaches to attend a White House gathering in the wake of a championship victory – unless there’s a life or death emergency — regardless of who the president is. That or get fined/traded.

But I guess that’s why I’m just a broke blogger.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Scarborough Booed, Allahpundit notes, Surber Waits, China Extracts and Jordan & the PLO Come Clean Under the Fedora

Posted: October 29, 2019 by datechguy in baseball, Israel, middle east, News/opinion, Sports, under the fedora
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I have to give Joe Scarborough a lot of credit for taking a stance that is not popular with his new found friends on the World Series Booing Business:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Remember Joe wants Trump to lose in 2020 but’s he’s intellectually consistent here, and as a Baseball fan he knows it’s bad for the game.

Allahpundit made two good points concerning this story as well

The overlap between MAGA Nation and the sort of people who can afford a ticket to a World Series game in Washington D.C. is small… …virtually all Nats fans are lobbyists, journalists, lawyers, or politicians/staffers, he should treat their contempt as a badge of honor.

Or as Mollie Hemmingway put it:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Of course the media will spin it differently but what else is new?

Don Surber has officially announced that despite my suggestion after Sunday’s booing was rewarded by a Houston blowout he is not yet willing to put the Washington Nationals on the list. As he put it:

Until they’re destroyed, no Trumpenfreude.

That’s actually very fair. This is in fact baseball and as the last three games demonstrated the game isn’t over till that final out. Washington is a good team with an excellent pitching staff and a third baseman who is the closest thing to Brooks Robinson I’ve seen in decades. Furthermore Verlander who is pitching tonight is in my opinion a first ballot Hall of Fame quality pitcher he is vulnerable to the long ball and the Nationals certainly have the bats to exploit it.

Of course Houston is no slouch in the pitching department and has an even better offense than Washington. The Yankees would have been a better matchup for the Nats but as I said it’s not over yet. Interesting fact, if the Nats pull it off it will be the 1st seven game World Series in baseball where the home team didn’t win a single game.

It takes little bravery to boo Donald Trump and apparently too much for anyone in the NBA other than Shaq to boo China but unlike Trump there are actual great reasons to boo China, Here is another one:

Having hepatitis C may very well have saved Jennifer Zeng’s life.
In February 2000, she was arrested for being a Falun Gong practitioner and interrogated intensely about her medical history at a Labor Camp in China’s Da Xing County, she said. Zeng’s blood was drawn and she told them she had hepatitis C before she took up the spiritual practice.

“Twelve days later, my (cellmate) died as a result of forced feeding,” Zeng told Fox News. “Having hepatitis C might have unqualified me as an organ donor.”
It’s the stuff of nightmares. And it has been buried from public view, hard to prove, and shrouded beneath the cloak of silence for almost two decades.
But anecdotes and evidence are slowly bubbling to the surface that the organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prisons and labor camps are unwillingly harvested. Most affected is a spiritual minority, the Falun Gong, who have been persecuted for adhering to a Buddhist-centric religious philosophy grounded in meditation and compassion.

This is what people who are actually Hitler do, but to point this out would shatter too many narratives.

Finally there was something that took place last week which was narrative shattering that I meant to write about but didn’t get a chance. It concerned the narrative of Israel as an oppressive state whose neighbors only want to live in peace with the Jews. Well not really with…

The President of the Jordanian Bar Association, Mazen Irshaidat, confirmed that there is no land registered in the Land Department with the names of Jews in the areas of Baqoura and Ghamir.

These are the areas on the border with Israel that Jordan leased out to Israel for 25 years in the peace treaty. There have apparently been rumors that Jews had bought lands in those areas.

Irshaidat told the Jordan 24 site that it is unacceptable to have lands owned by the Zionists or Jews in that area, and he confirmed that he could not find any Jewish names in the list of landowners in those areas.

Remember Jordan is a state that is not only considered moderate but has made peace with Israel. yet they felt the need to assure their citizens that no Jew owns land there. Why it’s almost as if the narratives like the Palestinian desire for a two state solution…

Two states, he says, was merely a concession to the international community, but it is not a Palestinian desire. The entire land is solely theirs, and Jews have no rights there.

This is not usually said in English. Usually in English the Palestinians claim they want to live in peace with Israel. But now they are officially admitting that they never even wanted that; their real desire (as polls have shown) is to have a single Arab state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, and the two state idea was merely a stage towards that end.

…is just a myth.

Does anyone note the irony that this statement made in English at a public forum by the PLO’s UN rep was made in the city of Berlin?

Five Movie/TV Thoughts: Blazing Saddles, Bond, Big Bang & Brian (Plus Tom Brady) Under the Fedora

Posted: October 25, 2019 by datechguy in entertainment, nfl, Sports

When you work a repetitive job that doesn’t require a lot of mind, you have time to pray your rosary and occasionally have ideas for post pop into your head, you also get weird and silly things running through your head like this:

This scene from Blazing Saddles was in my mind lately:

It’s not a well known but a “do da day” is 21.779 hours long that’s why it’s much easier to do things “all the do da day”. I think it would be a lot of fun to put a bunch of college snowflakes in an auditorium and watch them go doing their best to hold back laughing while pretending to be “triggered”. Of course a few true believers would in fact be outraged.

Such people should be laughed at.

In the Big Bang Theory, Howard is supposedly a lapsed jew and Bernadette is supposedly a good Catholic Girl, does that mean their children were baptized? Was their wedding blessed or “Jewish” & “Catholic” just a word to be thrown out for a joke?

For some reason this scene from the Classic Bond Movie “The Man With the Golden Gun” came into my mind this week

That’s Clifton Webb as Louisianan Sheriff JW Pepper who Bond (Roger Moore) met in the previous movie “Live and Let Die” He might be there for comic relief but if you think about it this guy is actually pretty brave.

He suddenly finds himself, while on vacation, in a high speed car chase with a man he knows is a secret agent (what he’s doing shopping for cars half a world away is another question) and how does he react?

Does he insist on being let out, does he call for help. Nope, he goes all in. It’s true that he doesn’t know that the man he is now helping to chase can kill him with one shot and I suspect he wouldn’t have cared if he did. As far as he’s concerned the cold war is on, Bond is on our side and he’s ready to lay it all out there.

For some reason Siskel & Ebert has been coming up in my Youtube suggestions and I dug up an old review of theirs of Monty Python and the Life of Brian:

I watched them for a lot of years and preferred the old “Sneak Previews” vs the syndicated “At the Movies” and this is the only time I remember both of them laughing out loud at a scene in a movie.

Finally I know this doesn’t go here but if you, unlike me, subscribe to the idea that Tom Brady is leaving NE look for a team that has two things

  1. a great receiving corps
  2. An impenetrable offensive line

Brady has all the money he will ever need and if anyone thinks he is leaving New England for any time that doesn’t provide a group of people who can catch the ball along with a group of people who are going to keep him from getting killed, you’re out of your mind.

Me I think he stays in NE after winning the Superbowl this year to try to get a ring for every single finger. I suspect eight will be enough.

A Primer on Freedom of Speech & Association for both sides in the NBA / LeBron Business

Posted: October 19, 2019 by datechguy in business, nba, Sports
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Let me explain how freedom of speech works for all those angry on either side of the NBA/Lebron/China busines

Freedom of association means The NBA has the freedom to associate and/or do business with whoever they wish, including China

Freedom of speech means that players and or executives on their own time have the right to associate with whom they wish, but freedom of speech and associations means the NBA has the right when players and executives are on the clock or using league resources to limit their speech in ways that they wish (unless a contract specifies otherwise)

Freedom of speech might be also means that potential fans and customers of the NBA can publicly approve or disapprove of said decisions either by public expression or with their pocketbooks.

So here is what that means:

the Rockets GM had every right to tweet out what he did.

The NBA had every right if they decided it was in their interest to object to him doing so and then change their position when the heat was on.

The players have every right to say something, say nothing or equivocate on the China issue.

HOWEVER free speech also means that the fans, the media and everyone else has the right to publicly object, act protest and ridicule the NBA for those choices and act accordingly.

The bottom line is freedom of speech means freedom to speak or not to speak, to associate with someone or some group or not, to do business with a person, a group or even a country or not and to object to these choices or not.

This freedom exists even if we don’t like what they’ve done.

I like that the GM of the Rockets spoke up for Hongkong, I don’t like the NBA’s initial reaction nor the players reactions on this. I don’t like or respect LeBron’s reaction (although I’m sure most of the rest of the league is happy for him to take the heat so they don’t). However it’s their right to act how they wish according to law and it’s my right to react accordingly.

That’s freedom of speech!

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