Logical Disconnect · stupidity

ESPN grasping at zebra colored straws

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 02:47:23 -0500

I am very annoyed by the way the media is turning the actual story, an amazing second half of the season and postseason performance by the Pittsburgh Steelers, into a diatribe against the refereeing in the league. I listened to the Jaws, Irvin and TJ say things like, “Every big play by Seattle was negated by a penalty.”

But when you get down to it there were four plays people are complaining about. Two of them weren’t very important, heck one was a tackle by the QB, no matter what the call he still had thrown a crippling interception. The two scoring plays in question, Big Ben’s TD wouldn’t be an issue if the official running in from the side wasn’t indecisive. But okay, he was, either way Pittsburgh was still on the 0 yard line with 1 more down, they were clearly coming away with points there.

The other D-Jax’s push off, was, well a push off. I don’t care if you take it down and play it frame by frame, the he made a cut, put his hand up on the defender and then gained separation from the defender. If the hand didn’t touch the defenders shoulder then I would agree it was a bad call. But the official does not have the benefit of super slow motion instant replay, he is watching people move very quickly, and when one of them illegally contacts another he throws a flag, it doesn’t matter if he only pushed a little, it was illegal and a good call.

And even worse than the national media saying this, is the losing head coach making comments about the officials in a public forum. Holmgren, I don’t care if you claim the ball was underinflated, or that the sun was in your eyes or that the ground was soggier on your side of the field. You guys lost, and the biggest reason was that the Seattle gameplan was a clunker. Consistently not running the ball in critical situations, and choosing to throw the ball 20+ yards on every 3rd down was the problem. Plus the biggest problem you had, Pittsburgh was better.

Ass-u-ME

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:38:05 -0400

It’s so much better to actually try and figure out what your problem is instead of assuming and then blaming it on solar flares. Turns out I corrupted some data which wasted about a half a day of my time.

confused argument

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 06:20:08 -0400

Ted Rall wrote Charities are for suckers, with the basic argument that the federal government is shirking it’s duty in disaster relief because charities exist, and people are giving to the charities. He goes on to say that when you give to a charity you are casting a vote for the government to go on being irresponsible. I think all of this is pretty stupid, and ordinarily wouldn’t comment, however it gets interesting when he torpedoes his own argument in the middle. > In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they’ve managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognizing the reality that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, has already allocated $58 billion–over 70 times the amount raised by charities–to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico. As Bush says, that’s only a “down payment.” > > Cutting a check to the Red Cross isn’t just a vote for irresponsible government. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to what you’ll end up paying for Katrina in increased taxes.

So, to clarify, he thinks the federal government should foot the bill for fixing Katrina. He also thinks giving to charities allows the government to abdicate this duty. Then somehow he also thinks that the fact that the federal government has earmarked 7000% the amount private charities have raised to help recover from Katrina is also bad because it’ll raise taxes.

He could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if he just wrote “Everything Republicans do is bad.” Okay, Ted, let me appologize to you on behalf of everyone else that you have to pay taxes, and people are going to ask you to donate to charity also. Any other inconveniences you would like me to atone for? Doesn’t it suck that sugar tastes so good, but has so many calories. It would be awesome if the federal government would fix that for free too.