Those old Apple IIe's

Yes, they did have computers when I was in high school. Al Gore just hadn't gotten around to inventing the Internet yet.



I have no idea what I was doing here, but I was probably scrambling to complete the high school newsletter after my journalism classmates had been slacking off the entire week playing Karateka or something...

Tetris didn't come along until our senior year. Actually, it had been in circulation for a few years, but it took awhile to reach us. By then my alma mater had started down the path of Gatesian destruction and coverted to IBM-compatible equipment.

Season's End

A valiant fight, including a comeback for the ages, came to a disappointing end last Sunday night / Monday morning as the Red Sox fell to Tampa Bay in seven games. Credit where credit is due -- The Rays fought back from two disappointing losses to triumph in the ultimate game and played with the character as well as the talent of champions.

A few breaks here or there in Game 7 (or, for that matter, in Game 2) might have made a difference, but the Sox certainly had their share of breaks in ALCS's of the recent past. Considering they were without an effective Josh Beckett, a healthy Mike Lowell, and lacking any significant offensive production from several places in the batting order, you really can't complain.

Some have added the absence of their former LF to that list of shortcomings -- I respectfully (or otherwise) disagree. The failure of Scott Boras' small-minded client to live up to his contractual obligations in 2008 may well be the underlying story of this season, and perhaps a mature (and thus productive) Manny Ramirez would have made a difference, but the Manny we saw in the first four months is a Manny we can happily do without.

Perhaps when MLB gets around to hiring a commissioner, he (or she) can look into the rather serious allegations of Boras' tampering. I won't hold my breath, however. It will probably be about the time the NFL investigates the Indianapolis Irsays for pumping crowd noise into their arena, or intentionally tanking late-season games so the head coach's best friend can get into the playoffs.

Nonetheless, the Twenty-First Century World Series scoreboard remains: Boston Red Sox 2, New York Yankees 0.

Year-two-thou-sand (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap) -- Year-two-thou-sand (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)...

Champagne on Ice . . . where it belongs

Am I the only one who thinks these September champagne celebrations in baseball are a little excessive?

I mean, hey, it's great you're in the playoffs or won your division or whatever, but unless you bring home the big trophy with all the flags on it, nobody will remember you five years from now.

"Wild Card" celebrations are particularly irksome -- you haven't won anything yet.

Somehow you never see NFL, NBA or NHL teams celebrating the fact that they made the playoffs...

From the "It's About Time" Department

Red Sox to retire Johnny Pesky's #6.

I always thought the rules the Red Sox had for retiring numbers were a little too restrictive, so I'm glad JWH & Co. had the good sense to see them as guidelines, not strict prohibitions.

The article includes a list of other potential retirees; from that list, only Jim Rice (#14) stands out, the most feared hitter of his generation. Naturally, he should be in the Hall of Fame. Come to think of it, why isn't Johnny in Cooperstown?

There's a fine line between honoring too few and honoring too many, but sometimes you have to look beyond statistics and focus on what a person means to an organization, both on and off the field. Apart from Ted, Yaz, Pudge, Dorre and Cronin, there aren't too many that stand above Johnny Pesky.

Five Years Ago

Ah, yes...

19-10. A very satisfying win on a number of levels --

(1) Over the New Jersey Jest,
(2) At their home stadium (which they're actually borrowing from that other New Jersey team),
(3) Against their treachorous, misguided and over-rated head coach,
(4) Against an ineffective and equally over-rated aging quarterback (see July 11, 2008),
(5) In front of an over-indulging audience,
(6) Proving that the Patriots have more than one talented player on their team,

and, most significantly --

(7) IN A GAME THAT THEY WERE EXPECTED TO LOSE -- HANDILY.

Of course, tomorrow, the talking heads will talk about how the Jest really aren't that good, how they didn't make the playoffs last year, and how they barely defeated the Division II Miami Tunas in week 1 -- facts that were conveniently overlooked prior to Sunday's kickoff.

Of course, those same Tunas could get their dander up (or whatever Tunas have) for next week, so you never know. But we'll always have Paris...or the Meadowlands...

Bring back #11!

You know what just popped into my head today?

Drew Bledsoe.

I mean, why not?

He's only 36, and while he and Coach B had their differences, I'm sure they can work it out. He can't be too old to learn how to throw a screen pass...

36 (or XXXVI) is kinda a lucky number anyway if you're a Patriots fan.

Just a thought...

Organization Man

Most people understand the role of a Mayor or a Governor, regardless of the constituency governed. But a "Community Organizer"? That's a little more obtuse. Fortunately, the Left-Wing establishment is there to help us out with their latest slate of talking points, explaining (to quote Donna Brazile, Susan Sarandon and Steve Cohen, that "Jesus was a Community Organizer," and, oh by the way, "Pontius Pilate was a Governor."

As an Evangelical Christian (ie Follower of Christ), I happen to have a somewhat higher evaluation of Jesus Christ than the aforementioned script-readers, and I find their continued attempts to annoint their candidate of choice as the next messiah (directly or indirectly) rather offensive.

Be that as it may, I also disagree with the premise of the analogy, and I have a feeling that most of Jesus' contemporaries -- not the least of which included the First-Century Jewish Rulers -- would agree with me (if just on this point alone). Community Organizers -- whatever they are -- shouldn't be in the business of offending and exposing the ruling class. Come to think of it, that sounds more like the other guy running for President...

Time Out

Seven years. Hard to believe. Everything changed in moments.

Take time today to remember the courage and sacrifice of so many on that darkest of days, and the families of those who lost a brother, sister, parent, child or spouse.

Hopefully history will also judge President Bush and his administration for taking the steps necessary to prevent any further attacks on his watch. In baseball parlance, it may not have been seven perfect innings, but it still qualifies as a no-hitter.

Never forget.

Pigs in Space with Lipstick

Seriously, I'm not convinced that the Lipstick comment was a cheap shot at Governor Palin. However, it does trouble me that The Annointed One doesn't know the difference between pigs and pit bulls.

Not only that, so what if "it's still a pig?" What's the matter with pigs? I love pigs -- they're delicious.

After Gov. Palin's speech in which she referenced Hockey Moms and Pit Bulls, NARAL or NOW or one of those culture-of-death groups issued a statement that made a similar pig / lipstick correlation. Nobody took notice, apparently -- until it came to the attention of some low-level (former?) speechwriter for the junior senator from Illinois. So it wasn't even an original thought.

Hopefully, the leaders of the Republican ticket won't be drawn into the pit -- so to speak...

A Real Stand-Up Guy

The Biden Gaffe Machine strikes again.

Let's be fair -- this is really an honest mistake that anyone could make. Not unlike the parting comment I made to my bald accountant many years ago, "Well, Fred, I'll get out of your hair." And Biden makes a pretty good recovery after realizing his mistake.

Nonetheless, if this had been Dan Quayle or Sarah Palin or George W. Bush or John McCain or anybody to the right of Joe Lieberman, I'm pretty certain that the coverage -- and reaction -- would be slightly different. So goes the world...

PS -- The above link seems to have a collection of slip-ups from Mr. No-Filter following the conclusion of the linked clip.

Down but Not Out

This kind of reaction really burns me. Real classy fans they have there in New York.

I've been a Red Sox fan (and Yankee hater) for over 30 years -- a rivalry that makes anything the NFL has to offer look like a Sunday School picnic -- and I have never cheered or applauded when a rival player was injured or suffer any other misfortune. Unbelievable.

I'm not ready to throw in the proverbial towel yet, and I'm certainly not conceding the division title to anyone (much less the NY Jest) one (victorious) game into the season. The team that was introduced as such in Super Bowl XXXVI has been challenged at every other position, and while this test may be harder than most, it doesn't mean the season's over.

Last season, the Patriots found their motivation in the previous year's playoff loss, and then the absurd media piling-on that surrounded the Spygate episode. They had something to prove then, and they have something to prove now. There's still plenty of talent on that team, they have the best coach in the business, and Matt Cassel isn't exactly a rusty tomato can.

It is a tragedy that one of the NFL's premier players will miss a season while in the prime of his career, but any team worth anything is bigger than just one player. Now's the chance to figure out how big they really are. The New England Patriots truly have nothing to lose -- conversely, victorious opponents (if any) know that there will be an asterisk next to each "W."

And those bozos dancing on tables in Manhattan and elsewhere have lost their right to lecture anybody on character.

In the interest of equal time...

Here's 3+ days in St. Paul summarized in a minute or so.

McCainiacs St. Paul

I'll leave the reaction to the McCain and Palin speeches to others more articulate than I (shouldn't be too hard to find). Solid performances all round, to be sure. McCain did seem somewhat off his rhythm, particularly in the early going, perhaps disrupted by the handful of crackpots who had somehow made their way into the arena.

Am I the only one who's troubled by this?

Sure, these nuts have a right to have their say (although the media, blogosphere and thinly-veiled "documentary films" should be more than sufficient), and I suspect the public viewing their craziness will primarily work against them. My concern is from the standpoint of security. Admittedly, four years ago in New York, with an incumbent president on hand during a time of war, it was even more disturbing. And a large public arena leaves plenty of gaps that can't all be secured, but it still bothers me.

Since I consider myself educated enough to at least understand english, I've never felt the need to have these conventions filtered and analyzed through me by overweight middle-aged white men in suits (I have to be careful -- that's getting close to home), so my network of choice is C-SPAN. However, even they took substantial time off the podium to show the various protestors in varying degrees of protest (and departure). I'm not sure that was necessary. I mean, television won't show drunken baseball fans running onto the field, so why this? It's not 1968 anymore.

Bill Melendez (1916-2008)

If there was a better animator, pre-CGI or otherwise, I'd like to know who it was. Yes, PEANUTS would have still been unspeakably successful had the characters never appeared on television, but the great Bill Melendez added a dimension to Charles Schulz' cartoons that brought them to an even greater audience. Faced with the near impossible task of creating "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in less than 6 months, he developed techniques that made the PEANUTS characters believable in animation -- neither too elaborate or too simple, he was thus annointed the only animator allowed to work on Sparky's creations. And the only voice -- ever -- of Snoopy and Woodstock.

Thanks for everything, Bill. Your work is complete and is the standard by which all that follow will be judged. Rest in peace.

Further Nonsense (political and otherwise)

Some random links...

Two youngish upwardly mobile political figures compared here.

Is Biden a gift?

Four days in Denver summarized in about 97 seconds.

And, finally, for Palindrome fans, here's Bob.

Keystones

One has to wonder if the Biden selection has more to do with Pennsylvania than Delaware. The Obama camp may be hoping to secure the Keystone State on the electoral map, even though PA isn't really that much competitive than Michigan and certainly less so than Virginia. Last carried by a Republican in 1988, the Bush campaign poured substantial resources into PA in both 2000 and 2004 (particularly 2004) without success; however, the strategy did force the Democratic nominee to respond in kind, devoting resources to a state that otherwise would not have been competitive.

Of course, if Obama needs Biden to win PA, he's in bigger trouble that his media surrogates are allowing to be portrayed...especially if he gives more speeches like this (sorry, I had to post this again...)

Pennsylvania's Third Senator

This is almost unspeakably bad.


I mean, you can almost see his messiah-ness cringing, most likely wondering if he still has Tim Kaine's number on speed-dial.


The video quality is rather poor, so my first thought was that it was a Saturday Night Live skit. But no -- that's really Joe Biden. If he's drunk, I'd be worried. If he's sober, I'd be panicking...

The comments are worth a look, also.

Thanks alot, United Steel Workers.

Palin-drome

In 1984, knowing that there was nothing short of global thermonuclear meltdown that could stop Ronald Reagan, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale selected a little-known Representative from New York as his Vice Presidential nominee -- Geraldine Ferraro. Forty-nine (and nearly 50) states later, we know how that turned out.

Although she had her share of baggage, one can't exactly say the Ferraro pick "backfired" because there was no way Mondale was going to win anyway. Nonetheless, she failed to deliver her home state, capture any "Reagan Democrats," or turn over a disproportionate share of the female vote. Not likely that Gary Hart would have done any better from the bottom of the ticket (although he apparently had some influential contacts in Florida).

Twenty-four years later we had a former first lady come within a few caucii of being the first female presidential nominee of a major party. This reporter could never determine which of the final two Democratic candidates was preferred, being as their views on everythin were basically identical, but my objections (and, most likely, those of many other voters and prospective voters) to Hillary had more to do with her connections to the Clintonista regime and its heavy-handed disregard for any type of accountability, not the fact that she possessed two X chromosomes.

In response to the energy produced by this year's Clinton campaign, the Democratic nominee selected as his running mate perhaps the least original member of the US Senate (Neil Kinnock, secure your filing cabinet), whose lengthy tenure qualifies him for depiction alongside Webster's definition of "Washington Insider" despite now representing a campaign built on ephemeral "change."

The Biden selection brought the typical responses from both ends of the political spectrum (the left considers it "inspired" and ideally complementary to the junior senator from Illinois; the right thinks . . . well, if you read the last paragraph, you can pretty much figure that out).

Enter Sarah Palin, a surprising choice for the Republican ticket, but perhaps the best that John McCain could have made -- she won't offend VRWC members like this reporter; she doesn't own homes in multiple states; she's never been on Meet the Press (an asset, not a liability); and she has experience as an executive, something nobody else on either ticket could offer.

What surprises me most over the past 24 hours is how the while the right is rejuvenated, energized, and producing emotional outbursts and fainting spells previously only seen at Obama campaign rallies, the opposing campaign has produced . . . well, not very much. The best they could do --

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 [way to further offend the majority of Americans, guys -- you're not elitist, are you?] with zero foreign policy experience [unlike the top of your ticket, of course] a heartbeat away from the presidency [enter next cliche --here--]. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade [also known as protecting unborn human life], the agenda of Big Oil [also known as capitalism] and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies [also known as tax cuts, and let someone else determinf if they've "failed" or not] — that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same [and the change you're proposing is...?]

The "former mayor of a town of 9,000" is particularly galling -- if his messiah-ness was referrred to as a "former community organizer affiliated with a corrupt political machine," the left and its media acolytes would be apoplectic. It was noted to me that unlike legislators, who can pick and choose their favorite issues (or, more likely, delegate their staff accordingly), executives have no such luxury of ducking unpopular matters and must pass judgement on everything.

Getting back to 1984, given that McCain has a reasonable chance of victory this year, the parallels with the Ferraro selection are rather limited, except that McCain does face an uphill battle and realized that the Palin selection gives him the best chance of victory with (hopefully, in his vetting) minimal liabilities. If the best his opponents can do is in the paragraph above, and I doubt it is, this election may be over before the Republican convention.

Back to College

FoxNews has their variation of the Electoral map, dividing the states into three categories -- solidly McCain, solidly Obama or toss-ups (ie no "leaning" here). I can't really dispute their projections -- both candidates have about 180 Electoral votes "in the bag," and need to come up with the other 90 among the 160 or so up for grabs.