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The Joe Torre Debacle

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Professional sports is an interesting field to watch. As most of you know by now, I think the majority of professional sports are fixed. You see it in the NFL with completely ridiculous calls, you see it in the NBA with struggling “markets” all of a sudden having tremendous teams to drive fans into the buildings (a la the NJ Nets), and you see it in baseball with the creation of drama between various teams.

Sometimes, though, the stuff that goes on “behind the scenes” is absolutely crazy. Take the Joe Torre debacle with the New York Yankees. Here is a man who would be revered in any other city in the country if he performed as well as he performed for the Yankees as manager. Yet, in New York, the Steinbrenner Machine won’t work for Torre. That’s ridiculous. They insult him with their contract offer and then they have the audacity to make comments about him over the weekend?

What are they crazy?

That punk bitch Hank Steinbrenner said the following in a recent article in the New York Post:

“Where was Joe’s career in ’95 when my dad hired him? My dad was crucified for hiring him.”

What a dumb bastard this guy is. Who in the world doesn’t know that Torre’s career was in the crapper before he came on as the Yankees’ manager? That’s like saying, “Where was the United States before the Revolution?” Any blockhead knows that we were in a bad spot.

Does his previous career make Torre’s performance over the last 12 years any less remarkable? Absolutely not. But this is the Steinbrenner way – classless and defamatory. It’s a real bummer that one of my favorite sports franchises is owned by such low-rent people. Punk Steinbrenner goes on:

“You can’t take credit for success when you’re going good, and then not take at least some of the blame when things change.”

Tell me one time when Joe Torre said that he was not to blame for the team’s inability to get out of the first round of the playoffs. Torre has stressed time and time again that it’s a team effort and that it’s not the fault of any one person in particular, but a group failing that costs the Yankees the big games. Hank is trying to say that by offering Torre incentives to win, he is making sure that Torre knows that some of the blame rests on him when they lose.

That’s the most arrogant, ignorant thing I’ve ever heard. The right thing to do here is for the Steinbrenners to eat their hats, apologize, and try their damnedest to get Torre back. Oh (and for good measure), get rid of Mattingly – he’s a curse!

Rank Rutgers Football!

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Rutgers football deserves to be ranked in the Top 25 in the nation. Not only have they put together a winning format over in New Brunswick, but they’ve showed dominance over the teams that they’ve defeated each week.

Today’s USA Today Coaches’ Poll doesn’t rank Rutgers at all. That’s a shame. The Associated Press Top 25 lists Rutgers as #25 and I can deal with that for now, but the BCS doesn’t mention Rutgers at all and that’s just not right.

This is a good team with great potential and they deserve a BCS ranking.

A Disaster of a GOP Debate – But Why?

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There are a few reasons why I absolutely hated the Republican Presidential Debate on Sunday night. For me the biggest problem was the fact that the FOX News question askers are in such an inherently awkward position that they can’t help but to ask stupid questions that voters don’t care about. I shall explain.

Most of the techno-public and younger generations think that FOX is a conservative news station. Forget about the fact that every single study that reviews FOX’s reporting from a nonpartisan perspective (I stress NONPARTISAN, though it doesn’t really matter for this argument) finds that it is actually less partisan than the other news channels – no one seems to care about that. People believe that because the commentators on the channel are conservative (Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity), then the entire channel is skewed to the right. That’s not only ignorant, it’s downright dumb.

Okay, so that’s the base that these question askers are sitting on. They want to change that portion of the public’s view, so what do they do? They completely attack the Republican candidates for the first 30 – 40 minutes of the debate. How can guys like Chris Wallace and Carl Cameron have any respect for the voting public when they spent the first half of the debate trying to pit one candidate against another? That’s ridiculous! Why not spend this time to ask the candidates straight out, “Hey – let’s say you are President tomorrow. What do you do about [insert issue here]?” Why did their line of questioning have to be, “Candidate A says this about you. Candidate B said you’re a bonehead. How do you respond?”

Ugh. Give it up already! If the folks at FOX think that they’re going to break their stereotype as a conservative news station by trying to make the Republican candidates fight against each other during a debate, then they’re sadly mistaken. At this rate, who can blame the Democrats for not wanting to face such a pathetic line of questioning on FOX?

Thank God for Wendel Goler and Brit Hume asking decent questions!

Aside from the fact that the first half of the debate was consumed by a manufactured type of politicking that the vast majority of Americans hate, I don’t think that the candidates had good nights. Ron Paul made a few good points as he usually does (even though those points are sometimes few and far in-between). John McCain did more of his straight talking, but should NEVER have referenced the fact that he was “straight-talking.” Giuliani had a bad night – no question about it. The post-debate interviews spun the debate in Rudy’s favor, but the way he bungled the very first question of the night left a lot to be desired. Romney had a moderately okay night as did Thompson (who looks very tired and not-up-to-the-challenge on the stage).

Huckabee did a good job to get his viewpoints across and I think that he probably had a better showing that the rest of the crew. Tancredo and Hunter are footnotes at this point.

All in all we had a debate with blase candidates and poor, poor questioning by Carl Cameron and Chris Wallace. Let’s hope for a better debate next time around.

The Syrian Community in Deal, NJ

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Anyone who has lived in Deal, New Jersey that does not practice the Jewish religion has likely been in awe at one point or another at the local and summer communities. This is a large Jewish community that is – by and large – very devoted to their faith and to the strengthening of their community as a whole. Many of us non-Jewish folks who live in town have become friendly with the locals (to some degree), but we all know that they treat us a little bit differently than they treat those who are members of their own faith – and we’re all pretty cool with that.

A few years ago, one of us non-Jewish folks found a book called Postville that shed a LOT of light on many of the business and religious traditions that we see everyday in Deal. Actually, the retired woman who found this book used to be one of my co-workers in an office that was owned by another Jewish guy who just fascinated by the locals. And, believe it or not, she directed me to a recent New York Times Magazine article about the community!

The folks over at the New York Times Magazine put together a GREAT article on the larger Syrian Jewish community that owns a good portion of town and operates between here and Brooklyn, NY. The article is a great look at some of the big players in the community and how the community views themselves in comparison to the rest of the Jewish religion.

This is really a great, educational article and I encourage everyone to take a read of it when you get a chance.

Cleaning Out the AIM Buddy List

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Earlier today I was flipping around the computer and I accidentally hit the wrong button on the keyboard. Whatever I did, my AIM buddy list popped open and went to my “offline” buddies. What a disaster this was! Have any of you ever looked at your buddy lists to see how many unnecessary names you have on it? I did – and it was ridiculous!

I started today with some 291 buddies on my list and as of this posting, I’m down to 155. Not only do I have doubles and triples of AIM names for the same person, but as I was going through the list I was deleting names that I KNEW were no longer in use!

So…if you all get a chance you should go ahead and gut that buddy list of yours. I only talk to about 5 or 6 people over IM anyway, so what’s the friggin use of having hundreds of people on the list, right? What? So I can stalk them and see what their away messages are? Weak.

All told, I expect that I’ll drop a few dozen more names and call it a day!