Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I’m right now watching Sweden v. Switzerland in women’s ice hockey, which is something I’d never seen before this year.  Switzerland’s leading, 2-1, but the teams are real evenly matched and there are 7 minutes left in regular time.

It surprised me a bit.  I expected female ice hockey players to  look  very much like female weight lifters, or shot putters, but they don’t.  Of course, you can’t see much because their hockey gear looks exactly like the male hockey gear and so, much like American  football, you are not actually watching recognizable people playing but just watching a bunch of uniforms and helmets gliding  up the ice.  But, when the action slows down, or someone’s in the penalty box, you get a glimpse behind the bars of the mask.  These are hot women.  If these women weren’t playing hockey, they would not look out of place figure skating, which definitely has a beauty pageant element to it.
One minute left.

BTW, if the Dutch are so completely dominant in speed skating, (and they are) why are they absolutely invisible on the world hockey scene?  I mean, skating is half the game, and the other half is being able to hold a stick and wack at a round gob of hard rubber while you’re doing it, which I’m sure can be taught.
Switzerland won.  I’m happy enough with that.  Haven’t seen the Czech women play yet, and have no idea if they’re good or not.
Congratulations to Shaun White on his snowboarding (halfpipe) gold, even though I thought Ayuma Hirano (Japan), who got silver, was spectacular and should have won.  But, the judges know the sport better than I do, and Shaun White was pretty spectacular, too.

And, that’s about it for my Olympic observations tonight.

I have very mixed feelings about Barack Obama, which is strange.  After 8 years, our opinions should be somewhat set.

On the one hand, he was certainly not what we hoped he would be.  He continued Bush’s wars, continued Bush’s surveillance programs, continued Bush’s policy of low taxes for the rich, and failed to close Guantanamo.
On the other hand, he really did give a good speech, he passed Obamacare (which was not nothing), recognized Cuba, and had to put up with a lot of nonsense from the right.   In fact, one reason I don’t criticize Obama so much is that I don’t want to make common cause with the right wing lunatics who are destroying the U.S. from the inside out like a malignant parasitic infection.
That doesn’t excuse everything, though.  He was commander-in-chief.  He could have closed Guantanamo if he’d really wanted to.
Anyway, tonight I want to blog about the portraits.  Some people love ’em, some people hate ’em, and it’s pretty predictable which people are which.  Sean Hannity said the artist who did Barack’s included secret pictures of sperm but, you know, Sean Hannity.
I don’t really care for Barack’s either.  All that plant life around him, as if he was a huge friend of the environment.  He wasn’t, so it was a weird pose, a weird statement to make.
I liked Michelle’s.  Cool and understated.  I suppose you have to view them as a team, but Michelle’s thing was planting a White House  vegetable garden, and telling kids to exercise and eat  healthy.  As far as First Ladies go, she  was one of the coolest.

I must confess, when I saw the headline about one of the Trump boys (I don’t even try to  differentiate between Eric and Donald, they are both animal murdering assholes) wife’s opening a letter containing ‘white powder’ I opened it thinking it was an Andy Borowitz piece, and was going to be something about cocaine, and then when I realized it was serious, I still thought it might be something about cocaine, but, no, cornstarch.  No real story there, except that she was ‘rushed to the hospital.’  Seriously, she opens an envelope, it’s got some unidentified powder in it, she immediately calls 9/11 and they rush her to hospital, like being in the same room with an envelope full  of powder is dangerous.  Admittedly, it might have been some kind of toxic nerve gas, in which case she might have been dead by the time paramedics arrive, or it could have contained some kind of virus, which happens a lot in movies.
So, actually, I can’t say  that I blame her, they are, after all, among the most hated people (deservedly so) in the world.

But, I think I would have handled it differently.  “Hey, somebody sent me an  envelope full  of white powder.”  “Is it cocaine?”  “It’s a whole  damned envelope full.  Somebody would really have to love me.” “Nobody loves you that much.  It’s probably cornstarch.”  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”  And I would have put it up in the cupboard with all the other bottles, envelopes and packets filled with stuff I  don’t know what it is and probably will  never use.

And there it would stay.

The small government vs. big government is a ridiculous argument to get bogged down in.  Obviously, we need a government that is big enough to get the job done but small enough that it can’t really interfere in our lives too much.  It has to be flexible enough to react to new situations, but not so flexible that it can just do any old damn thing it wants.  Governments around the world (it’s not just the U.S.) are way out of balance and it’s hard to know just what to  do about it.

Sometimes I  think the world would  be better off if some of the larger, more powerful nations, like the U.S., Russia, and China could be broken up into 6 or 7 separate regional governments.  In the case of the United States, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt the economy a bit, but it would make it a lot more difficult for the U.S. to make war on people.
On the other hand, I’m a big fan of the European Union and believe it’s good for almost everybody involved.  Also, whenever I read about some country splitting in two, or one part of a nation trying to gain independence from the other, it saddens me.  That may be partly  because I want to see increased  unity instead of division, and partly because it almost always seems to be a surprise and it’s a shock to realize that there are so many people  in the world who hate so many other people.
But, the really annoying part is when two parties who have no particular reason not to get along seem to pick  an arbitrary fight, just for the hell of it.  The Canadian province of Alberta, for instance.  They are blocking the importation of any wines from British Columbia, which is  the province that borders them to the west.
Their complaint is that British Columbians don’t want a dangerous, stinky, obnoxious pipeline to cross their state, and the Albertans are angry because without the  pipeline, it will  be much harder to get their oil to the Pacific Ocean, and  on  from  there to everywhere in the world.

Get over it, Albertans!  Everybody hates oil.  It’s nasty, and smelly, and causes global warming.  Build some windmills, you’ve got plenty of free land.

On the other hand, lots of people  love wine.  So, you’re not going to win  this battle.  So, give it up.

It’s hard to know where to begin  with the statement by Fox News editor and executive John Moody.  He said that the U.S. might not win as many medals because there are too many gay people and black  people on the team.  He said they want to change the motto from Faster, Higher, Stronger to ‘Darker, Gayer, More Different.’

First, for all of you people over the years who’ve complained about political correctness:  this is the kind of moronic, racist, homophobic, inflammatory statement that political  correctness has been saving us from for the last couple of decades, up to Trump.  In the year 2000, anybody who said anything this crude and offensive would have been out of a job the next day, and unemployable ever after.  And suddenly they aren’t embarrassed about  saying moron stuff like this in public any more.  We should  make sure we remember their names.

Second, it’s really a dumb statement.  I hope I’m  not stereotyping too much myself but I  suspect a lot of  guys in  figure skating (which is essentially ballet on  ice) are gay, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the ladies on the women’s ice hockey team are, too.  Greg Louganis is gay, and he brought home plenty of medals.  And Caitlin (formerly Bruce) Jenner in the Decathlon.  Didn’t any of us see that coming.

And black people.  Probably  for  all  of his life, this guy’s been waiting for a white heavyweight champion in boxing.  He may have even sent hate mail to Hank Aaron when he broke Babe Ruth’s record.  I’m sure he pines for the day all negro players stayed in the negro leagues.
Thirdly, our team is way more white than the average population.  That doesn’t bother me, although it is a reflection on our society.  Winter sports.  You don’t have a lot of black skiers or hockey players, partly because these are expensive sports, not often practiced by kids in the ghetto, and partly because, as the black guy said in  the greatly under-rated John Candy film ‘Canadian Bacon,’ “It takes time to totally dominate all professional sports.”  Tennis and golf used to be thought of in those terms.
In short, this guy is not just a racist, he’s also a moron.  A racist moron.