2011 WILDLY INACCURATE Stanley Cup Finals Pick

For one night, we can forget the crap about the debt ceiling, we can walk away from Herman Cain , and lose the joyous news that cell phones increase your cancer risk, and my usual self-interested crap.

Tonight, we puck.

That’s right, it’s time for…

THE RHINO’S WILDLY INACCURATE STANLEY CUP FINALS PICK!

But before I get to the pick, let’s go over my picks for the last round.

Eastern conference final:  #3 Boston Bruins vs. #5 Tampa Bay Lightning  My Pick:  Bruins in 6.  Reality, BRUINS IN 7.  

I made this one sound like all it was going to take was the Bruins getting angry, and playing with some heart to come out ahead in this battle of wills, but that clearly is not the case.  Both teams played with an incredible amount of will, played their hearts out.  Both teams had great offensive games, and bad plays go against them.  It all turned on game 7’s goal-tending match up.  For most of the game, the Lightning’s Dwayne Roloson, and Boston’s Tim Thomas played shutout hockey, both gave goal-tending clinics on the ice.  And then Nathan Horton, helped by a rare defensive lapse by the Lightning, was able to get one behind Roloson after a sweet pass from David Krejci that put Horton in perfect position, and was able to get the only tally that the B’s would need to ice the game, and the series, and make it to the Promised Land, the Stanley cup finals.

Western conference final: #1 Vancouver Canucks  vs. #2 San Jose Sharks  My Pick:  Sharks in 7. Reality:  Canucks in 5.

The pick was not even close.  It’s not, however, like the sharks were woefully outclassed here. They weren’t.  The Canucks were simply the better team, and they fell victim to that team’s superiority in all aspects of the game.  All you needed to know about this series you could have witnessed in game 2 of the series.  On a night when Ryan Kesler, one of their best offensive players, was held scoreless, the Canucks had 6 different scorers, and 12 different players with points in the game, including 2 power play goals in a game that got increasingly chippy as it went on.

This Canucks team may well be the best team that City has ever produced, maybe even better than the team that Pavel Bure lead to the finals 17 years ago.

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Viddy of the day:  Nathan Horton scores only goal of Game 7 5/27/11

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The side stories in this series are as interesting, if not more interesting than the actual game that will be played on the ice beginning tomorrow night at 8:00pm on NBC. Stories like:

The almost miraculous comeback of Manny Malhotra from getting hit in the eye with a puck that put his career in jeopardy a mere 2 months ago.

Milan Lucic, the Bruins left wing who is from Vancouver, returning home to try to steal the Canucks thunder, and keep the Stanley cup from his hometown Canucks.

Can the Bruins win a last cup for Mark Recchi, 20 years after his first, and can the Bruins win their first for grey beard goaltender Tim Thomas?

Can the Canucks finally bring the cup back to Canada, after an 18 year hiatus, and their first ever for the city of Vancouver?

These stories will cease to be mysteries in time and we’ll all learn the answers together.

Let’s talk about the game itself.

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ON WITH THE INACCURACY!

#1 Vancouver Canucks vs. #3 Boston Bruins

Looking at some of the numbers for the goalies here, this looks like there is at the very least the possibility of more than a few shutouts during this series.  Tim Thomas has only faced the Canucks 3 times in his career, but shut them out on 2 of those 3 occasions, and gave up but a single goal in the other game.  Roberto Luongo has tossed 4 shutouts against the Bruins over 24 games, and has a career 2.40 GAA vs. the Bruins during his career.

The offensive numbers are limited, but telling.  Most, but not all of the experience that these teams have against the other is, like I said,  limited, usually 10 or 11 games against, or in some cases as few as 3 or 4 games worth of play against over an entire career, so there isn’t much to glean.

But there is something, small perhaps, but something.

Patrice Bergeron and Milan Lucic average a point a night against the Canucks, and the only man with extensive experience against the Nucks’ on the Bruins roster, Mark Recchi, has 26 points against them in 33 games.  For the Canucks, the Sedin twins, Alex Burrowes, and Ryan Kesler have not been so lucky.  The Sedins have scored a total of 4 goals in 22 games between them vs. the Bruins.  The biggest point guy against the Bruins for his career for the Nucks’ is Chris Higgins, with 15 points in 33 games.

Like I said, not much, but it’s something.

This series is going to turn on the power play.  Call it a hunch.  The Bruins Power play has been horrendous, and one of the Canucks strengths is their power play.  That will more than even out the strength of the Bruins even strength play. This series looks for all the world like a very tight one, one that could well turn on a single goal in the final game.  There’ll be no blowouts here.

And I can’t help but feel that the kid Lucic is going to have a special night should it come to a game 7, in the place where he watched hockey growing up in Vancouver, and I tell you this series is going 7.

Bruins in 7.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Campaign And Energize

Been reading about Sarah Palin and her extended family vacation/ bus tour.  Pretty enlightening to be truthful, at least insofar as seeing just how silly the media can be when they follow a story.    I don’t know for certain whether she is or isn’t going to run for President, but there are clues for the more inquisitive.  Let’s follow the easiest ones to find, and see how far down the rabbit hole we can get with them.

Where does she send people who want information about her bus tour?  SarahPac.  What shows up on her front page? The bus tour info.  What does it say the bus tour is about?  It says it’s a campaign for educating and energizing Americans about Americas founding principles, among other things.  Key words? Campaign and energize.

Click on the page titled “Join the commonsense conservative revolution” and you see a statement that makes it pretty plain, speaking of “ramping up our preparations for 2012.”  Add to that the news that she said she’d be visiting Iowa, after visiting New Hampshire.  Those two states, for those who don’t know, are the first two states with primaries, both happening in early January next year.

How else do you read that?  How many ways can you read those statements that make sense, given the current news?  Palin for President sounds more and more likely.  She’ll have to announce soon, so we’ll know one way or the other, within the next 5 or 6 weeks.  Not going to say definite, I’m not in her head, I don’t know.  I initially didn’t think she would at all, not even close, but the more I look the more I see a run happening.

A bus tour can be an exploratory committee if you want it to be, can it not?

Ya know, maybe I want to see it, see her run seeing the amount of coverage the “Neo-Con Mystery tour” is generating, and seeing how much of a polarizing force she would be in the upcoming Republican electoral process, how she would split the Republican party, and how much I like that thought.

I don’t know for sure though, whether I should even care about her running for President.  She would be a fringe candidate, who would realistically only appeal to about 20% of the electorate, the neo-conservative/ paleo-liberal/ tea party patriot right wingers.  She won’t and frankly can’t get the moderates, independents who are actually independent and not Republicans in sheep’s clothing, and anyone who isn’t a conspiracy theorist type.

Maybe it shows you something different.  I’m curious, so drop me a line here and tell me what you think.

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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Viddy of the day:  The future of NASA’s space shuttle program.

Sad, really, to see the end of the shuttle program.  It bothers me that we’ve been using Russian spacecraft to get our people back and forth from the ISS. The future is bright though, with the Orion program getting the go-ahead, keeping an American presence in Manned spaceflight.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

I Love Running, But Sometimes…

…It’s just a pain in the right hamstring.

Srsly.

I have been running for about 9 years now. It was around May of 2002 that I first got the running bug, from nowhere. I had stopped drinking a few months prior, and wanted something to do with all the time not being drunk had freed up.

I was still smoking, but that would soon stop as well.

So what I did was I went out one day in May. Wearing dungaree shorts, with my wallet, keys, other stuff I normally had on me, for a walk, not dressed for running, dressed for hanging out.  And for no reason that I can come up with, broke into a trot. Didn’t think walking out the door “I want to run” or anything like that. Hell, that first time I may have actually had cigarettes on me. I ran around this place called Snug Harbor in the old neighborhood, ran when no one was looking.

I didn’t want people asking why I was running or what I was running from. Srsly. I didn’t want other people asking me questions I couldn’t adequately answer myself.

After the first time I went out, I wanted to run, wanted to test myself, see what I could do. It also had the most excellent side effect of helping me quit smoking, I think I’ve written of that once or 3 times here.

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9 years later, I am 30+ pounds lighter, with more muscle, more energy, I’m happier and have a better attitude than I had back before I started running.

But I also have to tell you that sometimes it can be a bit frustrating. Mostly because of when I want to run, but my body simply says “NO.” I have had weeks and even entire months when I wanted to run, but couldn’t because of a variety of injuries, from sprained ankles to what I thought was compartment syndrome. Never did go to a doctor for that, may just have been an extreme case of shin splints. I’ve pulled at one point in time just about every muscle there is to pull.

I have because of this(and my basic inquisitive nature,) learned the medical names of just about every muscle group in the lower body. Other people strain their hamstrings, I get strains near the ischial tuberosity of the long head of my right biceps femoris.

OK, maybe i’m not always like that, not always Mr. “$5 word” guy, but that particular muscle strain is curiously, what I have wrong with me now.

And it’s driving me nuts.

I did it on a training run on Monday, a 5.7 mile run, nothing long, at least not for me. About ½ a mile to go, and I feel something twinge in my right hammy. I decide it’s nothing major, and I’m close to being done, so I don’t even break stride. Doesn’t bother me at first, but by the time I’m about 50 strides from finishing, it is beginning to affect my stride, I’m running with a limp.

“Dammit, just finish.” is what I tell myself.  No worries.  I get it done. Decent enough time, not great, not bad, wasn’t going all out. I go to walk up the hill to go home, and I am limping.

Doesn’t hurt too much, but my gait is clearly affected. About a minute later it starts to hurt seriously, and I am walking like I just got shot in the ass. Or how I would imagine someone who just caught a bullet in the ass would walk, never been shot in the ass.

Lucky me. 🙂

ANYWAY…

I am antsy about this, because I have a race coming up on Memorial day. I take a few days off. I hate taking days off. Days off SUCK. Sitting on my ass is not something I do well, and I try to avoid it whenever possible. I stop my exercise regimen, hoping that a complete shutdown will help me heal quickly, and I’ve always been a fast healer.

I try to run on Thursday. 4 minutes in, the thing goes from being so-so, sore but not too bad, to feeling like I got shot again, and this time the pain is both immediate and severe. Almost puts me on my ass.  Almost.

Limp home, cursing the whole way.

I’ve had the thing wrapped up, iced, taken warm epsom salt baths for 2 days. Rest. Lots of rest. Went out today, and found I have a limited range of motion when I run, and there is a stabbing pain. Curiously, I can walk just fine, but once I attempt to run, the damn thing becomes a hairy mess. I can walk, do lunges, single leg deep knee bends on the bad leg, but I just can’t run.  I can’t even break into a trot without pain.

Dammit, I’m not going to be able to run the race on Memorial day.

I may show up. I may give it a try, but I don’t see this getting significantly better in the next 48 hours since it hasn’t gotten better in the previous 72. If it does get better I will consider it a miracle, but I am not seeing a miracle on the horizon.

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That’s it for the moment, America.  Politics later, methinks.

Looking At The Field

Rick Perry is considering a run for President.  This former 3 term democrat in the Texas house of Representatives,   raised taxes in Texas in 2006, angering conservatives.  He hates the federal government. Hates it enough to, at one point, openly consider taking the state of Texas and seceding from the United States.  That’s the guy you want running the federal government, right?

Right?

Sarah Palin is beginning a bus tour that makes it look like she wants to run for President.

She won’t. She knows that Americans are not that stupid.  Well some of us aren’t that stupid, anyway.

Chris Christie looks like he may run for President.  Or at the very least there are Republican donors looking to get him to run.  This despite the fact that his poll numbers in his home state are falling, his states credit rating is taking a hit because of his fiscal policies, and is a cheapskate, badly enough that the state’s highest court has ordered him to spend more money on Education. That’s what a Republican rock star looks like.  Srsly.  There are people that actually call him that.  Because he speaks bluntly.

What a bunch of assholes.

Don’t mind the name calling, just “rockin’ out.”

🙂

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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

H.L. Mencken, 1930

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Viddy of the day:  Dan Savage on the origin of “Santorum.”

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Rick Santorum is running for President, and is the dirtiest , most obscenely biological neologism on the internet. ‘Nuff said.

Donald Trump is running for President of…. whatever planet he is actually from.

Newt Gingrich is running for President.  Does anyone remember how this guy made a name for himself?  By whining about having to get out of the back of the air force one after Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral, and whining like a bitch about it, and shutting down the government because of it.  For leaving his wife while she was in the hospital, with cancer.  The failure of his “Contract On America” to do much for America, besides cost us money, with its biggest measure, the fiscal responsibility act, being found to be unconstitutional.

Mitt Romney? The Former pro-choice governor of Massachusetts?  Romneycare?  Hmmm… I don’t think so.

Are you impressed? I’m not.

There are no really impressive Republican names out there running for President.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Minor edit 5/28/11 10:03 am

President Obama, P.M. Netanyahu, And The Two State Solution

I was trolling the web, looking for news of some import to write about. found plenty of it.

Saw the headlines about Benjamin Netanyahu saying in a speech before congress that going back to the indefensible pre-1967 borders was  unacceptable.  My initial thought about this was something along these lines:

“I wonder what Moshe Dayan thought about how indefensible those borders were, when he pounded the Jordanians, the Syrians, the Egyptians, and armies that were nearly 3 times the size of his, manpower wise, and whipped their asses, took the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.”

But then again, that land was hard fought for, and it would be damnably hard to give it up now, especially if you are as security conscious as the Israelis are.  Especially seeing as how the Syrians and the Israelis are technically still at war with each other, never having signed a peace treaty formally ending hostilities between the two nations.  And if you have ever read up on the Six days war, or even know just the basic history of the region, you’d know why the Israelis are so protective of those borders.

So I don’t blame P.M. Netanyahu for countering assertions that the borders in any potential “two-state solution” should go back to pre-six day war borders.

But let’s get one thing clear.  The President’s words on this subject were NOT that the new Israeli border be those of Israel prior to the six days war, no matter what the Republicans or P.M. Netanyahu think.

Let us, rather than allow hyperbole to rule the day, using opinion of what was supposedly said, use the President’s words directly:

And it was my reference to the 1967 lines — with mutually agreed swaps — that received the lion’s share of the attention, including just now.  And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means.

By definition, it means that the parties themselves -– Israelis and Palestinians -– will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.  (Applause.)  That’s what mutually agreed-upon swaps means.  It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation.  It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years.  (Applause.)  It allows the parties themselves to take account of those changes, including the new demographic realities on the ground, and the needs of both sides.  The ultimate goal is two states for two people:  Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people — (applause) — and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people — each state in joined self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.  (Applause.)

To read the speech in question, click here. To read the original speech, referenced in the above text, click here.

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To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army].

General Matityahu Peled

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Viddy of the day:  President Obama at 2011 AIPAC Policy Conference

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What that means, if you need any clarification, is that the basis of any 2 state agreement would exist using negotiation.  That’s all.  Very basic stuff.  No specific mention of pre six days war borders, not even a vague allusion to it.

And let’s think for a minute about where a potential Palestinian state would actually exist.

Somewhere within the land that the Israelis took in 1967.  There would, by necessity, HAVE to be some land concession, some portion of that land given up by the Israelis to the Palestinians that they initially took in 1967.  That simply cannot be avoided. The President, and most people, including P.M. Netanyahu, want a Two State solution.

No one expects, and no one has asked, that the Israelis give to the Palestinians ALL the land from the Six days war, and anyone who did would be a laughingstock.  Luckily, no one has done that.

No one.

You’d never know that if you listened to the news, though.

Another case of the news being slanted against not the left, not any political faction, or any individual, but against reality, choosing to create a story rather than report the truth.

Sad but true.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.