Hey everyone:
Last week we didn't publish. This usually happens for a few reasons. Either I'm not at the Post that week, or I write most of it and don't get around to finishing it, or I'm working on something else.
None of those were the reason I didn't write last week. I was at the Post, and there were a couple of topics I could have discussed, but I just didn't really feel like it. That almost never happens, usually there is at least one or two things I like to get off my chest or something that struck me as amusing or worth mentioning. But last week, I just didn't have any motivation. It was kind of weird actually.
This week I do have a few things to discuss.
First of all, if you were able to get out this weekend for a bit and enjoy the day, I hope you really did. It seemed like we hadn't seen the sun in about 3 weeks. (It was actually 10 days, which is tough enough) It was still chilly but it's still the dead of winter so that's to be expected. It felt good being out there in the February sun.
And of course, being that it is indeed February, meaning we survived January. We had that bit of snow that hung around, but really, we just had a lot of clouds and some rain. And we usually get at least one or two days in February where it is unseasonably warm. I realize we could also get clobbered with snow, but I feel like when that happens in February, it goes away quicker.
February also brings the Super Bowl (next week) a week off from school for some of our kids, and spring training starts soon.
We'll get to all that in a second, first I want to talk about the three souls we lost in the Middle East.
MIDDLE EAST WAR
Photo Credit: AP
A drone attack from an Iranian backed militia killed 3 American soldiers and wounded over 40 others in Northeast Jordan near the Syrian border last Sunday morning.
The three soldiers killed were Sgt. Willam Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton GA, Spc. Kennedy Landon Sanders, 24, of Waycross GA, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffat, 23, of Savannah GA.
President Biden vowed the US would seek retribution and as of this writing US forces have struck at targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
One thing I'm not going to do is get into the blame game, Idiots on both sides of the aisle are of course pointing fingers which solves nothing.
I just want to make sure these heroes that we lost last week are acknowledged. One of my big fears in life is having a repeat of what happened when I went to see the movie Black Hawk Down. The friend I went and saw the movie with asked me on the way out, "Do you remember when that actually happened?"
And I kind of did, but not with the clarity and emotion that I should have. The movie came out just a couple months after 9/11, and with that raw anger still burning inside of me, I wondered to both my pal and myself what could we have possibly been doing that we barely remembered the terrible attack in Mogadishu. I had to look it up to see when this all took place. It was October 3 and 4 1993, my 3rd year of college. I bought USA Today at the Student Union almost every day that year. It boggles my mind how this didn't register.
Of course 9/11 would heighten all our sensitivities, but I had also made up my mind that I would never again let myself get in a position like that. It's a big reason why, as much as I thought it ridiculous that they needed 12 congressional hearings to investigate Benghazi, I didn't allow myself or anybody who tried to trivialize it to get away with dismissing it as no big deal. I tried to find the medium between political grandstanding and indifference.
God Bless these brave souls that we lost, and may we figure out how to put these evildoers out of business with as few to none loss of innocent life as possible.
With that, we move on...
FOOTBALL-Big Time Choke Job
I was boycotting football in 2016-17 when Atlanta played New England in Super Bowl LI (51). So I wasn't watching when the Falcons blew a 28-3 lead to the scumbag Patriots. (Looking back on my blog from that week-I spent the first half watching Quantum of Solace with Timmy, and the 2nd half catching up on Blue Bloods)
I was watching last week though, when the Lions blew a 24-7 halftime lead to the 49ers and choked away a chance to win their first championship since the Eisenhower administration.
And make no mistake about it, this was a first-class choke job of epic proportions.
Folks are giving Lions HC Dan Campbell all sorts of grief for his decisions to go for it on 4th down, as the Lions could have used the 6 points kicking said FG's would have gotten them. Karl (the Ace) Ludwig would describe Campbell's philosophy as "heavy on (guts), light on brains". I'm a go for it on 4th down kind of guy, so there is a part of me that's sympathetic to Campbell.
But if you're going to go for it, you better make it. And when you don't you better not drop easy passes, or miss tackles, and the Lions spent most of the 2nd half doing just that.
As I've gotten older, I try to look at these things with some perspective. Is it possible the Niners played lousy in the first half and came alive in the 2nd? Sure, but from where I was watching, it looked like the Lions just cracked under the pressure. It really was one of the biggest collapses I've ever seen, and I've seen my fair share, what with the collection of misfits I root for.
Now one could argue that Lamar Jackson and the AFC regular season leading Baltimore Ravens also, as George Steinbrenner used to say, spit the bit. But the Chiefs pretty much dominated from the get-go and never gave Baltimore a chance to get going. It was a close game score wise, but KC was really in control from the beginning.
So even though we have two really good teams playing, I'm not really feeling the buzz here folks. We already had this matchup 4 years ago. The good news is, I know who I'm rooting for, whereas had it been Lions-Chiefs, I would have had a much tougher decision to make. The Niners tortured me back in the 80's so I can never really root for them.
Yes, I'll be rooting for Taylor Swift and Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the Chiefs. Mike Vaccaro in the Post this week talked of Chiefs Fatigue even without the Swiftie factor, just based on the fact that they have been the dominant team in the sport in this current decade's first 4 years. I have to admit, I'm getting there myself. But for this coming Sunday, I'll be pulling for them again.
And speaking of America's sweetheart, when our kids and grandkids look back and see the amount of time and ink being spent on figuring out how T.S. was going to make it from her concert in Tokyo to the big game in Vegas, they’re going to wonder what drugs we were all taking. There have been articles and videos analyzing Taylor's trip, as if she'll have to worry about a layover in Hong Kong, or if she'll make her connecting flight at LAX.
My favorite was a story in the Post, where someone went on X (aka Twitter) and posted a video from a 2001 episode of the West Wing. This said the poster, is how Swift can make it from Tokyo to Vegas in time for the game.
From the Post....
In the scene, the characters — including White House deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), communications director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) and press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) — are discussing the time difference between the US and Asia, debating, “So, it’s 14 hours ahead…we’re sure it’s ahead and not behind?”
“Okay, so it’s almost 11 o’clock in Tokyo,” someone says.
They continue arguing about whether that means 11 in the morning or in the evening, and how the time difference allows them to “buy a day.”
Sam triumphantly says, “He’s going to travel eastward from Tokyo, leaving at 7 p.m., so, when he crosses the international dateline —”
“He’ll have traveled back in time to what?” Toby asks.
“3 a.m,” Sam explains.
“He’s going to land in Washington an hour before he took off?” Josh asks, and Sam nods.
What they ought to do (and I'm sure someone is already working on this) is have an app like the NORAD tracker I download every Christmas Eve so I can tell my nieces and nephews where Santa is at any given time. Can you imagine?
"Hey everybody! Taylor is flying over the Marshall Islands!"
Oh Yeah? "When she's flying over Honolulu, let us know!"
Someone in my family just took a long international trip, and I spent more time than I care to admit tracking their flight on Flightaware.com. Of course, they don't do that for private jets, but like I said, someone is going to figure out how to keep tabs on her travels. For better or worse, it's arguably the game's biggest storyline.
We'll have a halftime edition of WM next week.
POLITICS: The New Hampshire Primary and the Defamation Verdict
Another thing I couldn't bring myself to write about last week was Captain Orange's win in the New Hampshire primary over Nikki Haley on Tuesday, followed by the jury deciding on Friday that he had to cough up $83.3 million for all the icky things he said about E. Jean Carroll, the writer he was found liable of assaulting back in the 90's.
First the primary. Trump won the state by 10 points, not a blowout by any means, but still a solid win. Biden is already conceding that it will be him and Orange in a 2020 rematch.
As for Haley, I do commend her for staying in the race. Especially since rather than quietly urging her to drop out, the MAGAt's are doing what they do best. Insulting and threatening her to drop out.
Obviously for my sake I think it's good that she hangs in there, and to be honest, it would be silly to drop out before she sees how she can do in her home state. (South Carolina's Republican Primary is scheduled for February 24th.) But having said that, if she doesn't win South Carolina, it's more than a fair question for her to ask herself what state she can win.
As for the ruling in New York last Friday, that had nothing to do with the sexual assault he was found liable for. He's already on the hook for that to the tune of $5 million.
No, this chunk of change he now has to pay stems from a defamation suit Carroll filed against him. In other words, had he just kept his big mouth shut and paid her the 5 mil, it would be over and done with.
But since he can't let $hit go, (for example-that he LOST the election in 2020) he made it worse for himself by calling her claims of sexual assault a hoax and that she "not his type"
All he had to do was STFU. That's it. Instead, he did what he does best, insult people. It cost him $83 million.
Hope it was worth it.
Back to the New Hampshire primary for a second... Biden won it on the Democratic side, despite the fact that his name was not on the ballot. My understanding is that the DNC wanted to make South Carolina the first Democratic Primary, while New Hampshire wanted to keep their status as the first in the nation primary. South Carolina's Democratic Primary was held on Saturday.
So Biden received the most votes, but no delegates have been awarded. And I hate to freaking say this, but I feel this is why many people don't vote and why people get fed up with politics. My pal Ed Robinson does a great job of trying to explain these primary rules, and while I'm not by any definition of the word a genius, I consider myself fairly intelligent and engaged in the process. But I can't give you a good explanation for any of this. I have argued against having one national primary day because I do feel there is something to be said for the process of having individual state primaries. But between this nonsense with New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the whole mess with delegates and super delegates and super-duper delegates, I am really starting to warm to the one big primary day idea.
BREAKING NEWS At 7:24 EST, the first poll results from the above referenced South Carolina Democratic Primary have come in. Joe Biden has so far won 97% of the vote. Weekly Mail is going to go out on a limb here and declare President Biden the winner of the South Carolina primary. Hopefully this doesn't come back to bite me in the behind. If it does, I will refund this week's subscription fee for everyone.
MORE BREAKING NEWS 7:27 EST- CNN just declared Biden the winner. I beat them by 3 minutes. My refund offer still stands.
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Was sad to hear about Carl Weathers passing on Friday. Of course I loved him as Apollo Creed in Rocky, but I Action Jackson was a great flick as well. I remember watching him and Billy Dee Williams in a TV movie in the early 90's and thinking, these two guys are way too talented and cool to be doing TV movies. He was doing those dopey commercials with Gronk for the Super Bowl and I heard he was part of the Star Wars mandalorian series. Another great one gone this week at 76.
Weekly Mail at Halftime next week.
Till then
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
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