I thought it said 'Rage Diva' at first, which would have been a lot better

The New England Patriots are smarter than everyone else
Cyrus is NOT going to like this, but it’s really the only conclusion I can draw. Look, I hate the Patriots as much as any other decent person, but I have to call it like I see it. Allow me to explain. If you’ve been paying attention to the awesome flurry of activity after the owners decided to end the lockout, you’ve noted that every team is trying to condense what is usually 5 months of free agency and trading activity into basically a week. It’s awesome because it’s the closest the boring ass NFL will come to MLB in terms of free agency and trades.

The Patriots have alarmed the stodgy middle aged men of the NFL media and fanbase by trading for Albert Haynesworth and Chad Ochocinco/Johnson. These guys are PROVEN PRIMA DONNA PROBLEM BOYS!!!!!!! they whine! They KILL TEAM LOCKER ROOM BUTT SLAP FESTIVALS!!!!! they bleat! They make it a LOT HARDER TO TURN THE MEDIA NARRATIVE INTO THE MOVIE MAJOR LEAGUE WHICH HAS BEEN THE OBVIOUS GOAL OF SPORTS MEDIA EVER SINCE IT CAME OUT!!!!! Haynesworth and Ochocinco played for shitty franchises that treated them like shit. The NFL media expects them to “man up” and “bend over and get fucked” by their owners because they’re their bosses, like every other American citizen does every goddamn day. I understand how the rage over that can boil over, I really do, but I’m glad when people can leverage their skillset against getting fucked like all of us other victims of American capitalism, not jealous. Anyway, the owner-worshiping media gave them a raw deal, even if they were not completely blameless in their situations. Haynesworth definitely is kind of a shithead. But he’s a talented one who became undervalued because of the fact that he is a shithead.

People said similar things about them getting Randy Moss (for what, like a 4th round pick?) and that just turned into them having one of the greatest all-time offenses, if not the greatest. Of course, Randy Moss wasn’t the ONLY reason but he was a big piece of that offense. And this willingness to take on “problem” players (I cannot emphasize the quotes around “problem” enough) manifested itself in their drafting of the supremely talented Ryan Mallett, former University of Arkansas quarterback in the THIRD ROUND. This guy was often projected to be a later first, early second round pick, but he did the weed and some of the coke just like every other person in their 20s, and every NFL player except for Tim Tebow. Maybe he’ll turn into a Lawrence Taylor, who knows. Lots of kids at Arkansas said Mallett was a gigantic tool, and these were kids in the Greek System, so it’s saying something. Still, a third round pick for one of the better QBs in the draft is pretty good. Also you don’t pay a football player to be a cool dude. The Patriots’ scouts had him as their top-rated guy at QB overall, supposedly.

Anyway, the point is, I think the Patriots are utilizing a sort of “Moneyball” approach to football. The “Moneyball” philosophy is really just a business philosophy that goes like this: “Find undervalued but effective things or traits. Buy low on these, and sell high when and if they become overvalued.” The book “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis (which you should read if you haven’t. Also a movie is coming out which will probably not get the point of the book across or even try really) details, through personal stories, how until recently, traits like On Base Percentage were undervalued by baseball people. A relatively poor team(financially), the Oakland Athletics, got a bunch of cheap players everybody thought were shitty because they played poor defense and were fat and weird looking and slow. But they had great plate discipline, and they got on base a lot while hitting for power. This cheap team of shitty weirdos won 103 games in 2002 and Baseball’s Idiots are still trying to figure it out. The A’s identified something that was not valued nearly highly enough, and they bought cheap. OBP and actual statistical analysis in baseball is now VERY highly valued, and the A’s aren’t as successful, but they still do better than their payroll is capable of by getting players with undervalued traits. (As an aside, they basically put a high premium on developing young, cost controlled pitching, and their lineup consists of cheap defense and speed, which are now kind of undervalued)

If you’re not Joe Morgan, you realize that the “Moneyball” philosophy can be applied to anything in business. However, it’s not as much of an obvious truism in sports due to the moral drama and personal inadequacies we project onto the grand stage of athletics through our media. In most businesses, the question is: Is this going to make money? Boom. Fuck you. Do it. *snorts coke* In sports, money is part of the equation, a major part, but it’s also this: Do they play the game the right way??? The PR is a lot more important because the product is so public. So, if you’re not an NFL team that’s going to win, it’s a lot harder to take a risk on players who might have off-field issues, because the NFL fans and media are the stodgiest and most protestant of all. Therefore, players with “off the field issues,” no matter how minor, are tarred and feathered by the NFL media. As a result, these players become undervalued by General Managers, because GMs are usually football people, not businessmen.

The Patriots are definitely a team that can win so the “risk” they are taking shouldn’t be commended too highly. The fact is, however, they aren’t the only team that will win, but I guarantee they’re gonna be the only team making moves for these players. They’re not doing it as an “image” thing like the Cowboys or Raiders might, and that’s an important difference. The NFL media and fanbase expects that of them. That’s how they’re perceived. The Patriots are always perceived as a team who plays the game the right way, even though they’re one of the more cutthroat, win at any cost, teams out there. (Everybody would be like this if they could, or if they had the balls or capability) The Patriots are banking on the fact that these “problem” players will produce in their system (Receivers and Huge Defensive Nosetackles have good times in New England) and that they will win frequently enough to keep them from becoming dissatisfied. Seems easy enough, but nobody else takes these risks when they should. The Patriots bought low: They got Haynesworth for a fifth round pick and the redskins still have to eat most of his contract.(Haynesworth will make 5 million this year)They got Ochocinco for a fifth round pick in 2012 and a sixth round pick in 2013. Literally any team in the league could afford to do this. They’re all just too chickenshit. One of the many aspects of Bill Belichick being the best NFL coach since probably Bill Walsh is the fact that he honestly does not give a fuck about anything but winning, which is a big advantage when you’re staring down the barrel of the mass super media. Everybody says they don’t care about anything but winning, but they all do. Belichick doesn’t. He lets the media say whatever they want, and lets the team win or lose on its own merits. He doesn’t even care that he got caught cheating. It’s worked out pretty well for them. (As an aside: The Patriots will sell high as well. Exhibit: Richard Seymour. An old formerly great player with one year left on his contract netted them a bad team’s high first round draft pick. It was infuriating.)

Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a moral defense of shitty things the Patriots have done because fuck those guys, I hate the Patriots. But they’re unquestionably being smart and actually taking calculated risks in roster decisions and on the field. Since NFL football is basically the sport where chickenshit cowards coach, I just hope their success can change the conservative bent of pretty much everything about the NFL.

The Serious Book chosen was The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, which I also mentioned in a previous post. If you don’t remember, it’s basically an account of Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri’s arduous journeys from “brave freedom fighters” in Afghanistan to terrorist masterminds of Al Qaeda. So, without further ado, here is the original quotation from the book.

In 1986, Bin Laden brought his wives and children to Peshawar, where they joined the small but growing community of arabs responding to Sheikh Abdullah Azzam’s fatwa. it was clear by then that the Afghans were winning the war. admitting that Afghanistan was “a bleeding wound,” Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, offered a timetable for the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops. that was also the year that the American-made Stinger, the hand-fired missile that proved so deadly for Russian aircraft, was introduced, decidedly tipping the balance in favor of the Mujahideen.

Here’s what voice-to-text turned it into!

In 1986 been lot in brought his wives and children to pass to war for the joined the small but growing community of parents responding to sheikh’s up the laws on xfactor. It was clear by the end of the Afghan for winning the war admitting the Afghanistan was a tweeting world me Kyle Korver Charles the general secretary of the coming this party of the Soviet union offer the time table for the complete withdrawal Soviet rooms that was also the year that the American made stinger the and fart missile the proves so deadly for russian aircraft was and reduce the size with tipping the balance in favor of the mood job. Talk to you loads?

Could Muslin Terror Mosks produce this highlight of Western Culture? No, I think not. America.

His column from yesterday is about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the shady French chair of the also shady International Monetary Fund who is accused of raping a hotel maid. It’s basically an apologia and a bunch of bleating about being skeptical of the charges(YOU KNOW THEM DAGGUM WOMEN CAN JUST SAY THEY WAS RAPED AND RUIN A MAN’S LIFE. US MEN GOT IT SO HARRRRD. WAAAHHHH) and ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ Whatever. But his second point is…well, I’ll just let it speak for itself.

2.) In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category? Maybe Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty but if so, he is one of a kind, and criminals are not usually one of a kind.

Right. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals. Therefore, white collar crime doesn’t exist? I guess kings never did anything wrong because they weren’t made to answer for things? I guess torture isn’t illegal because noone will ever answer for it? Ben Stein: pretend economist, proud defender of the rich and rapeloving.

lol

MOVE is a black liberation group from Philly(formed in 1972) that honestly had some pretty goofy ideas. They differed themselves from the other black liberation groups in their desire to ‘get back to nature.’ By which I mean return society to a hunter-gatherer state. In my view, a hunter-gatherer society probably wouldn’t be too bad, but it’s pretty unrealistic to have as a legitimate and central goal in one’s political agenda. They also opposed science and medicine in general. They lived communal lifestyles in Philly buildings while piling up heaps of garbage and human waste in their yards(this attracted vermin but they believed it morally wrong to kill vermin with pesticides) while shouting about zoos into megaphones at their neighbors. As you can imagine, this didn’t endear them to anybody, and definitely not the police. A 1978 shootout which resulted in the death of a police officer didn’t help their case. The nine MOVE members who were tried were all found guilty of murder, and are still in jail. If this were a bad crime drama, they would have gone free based on evil stuff like “due procedure of the law” and it would have made the terrifying actions of 1985 a stupidly sypathetic or understandable climax of the movie. But they were all put away, and on May 13th, 1985, we were all reminded that if we step far enough out of line, American citizenship is no guarantee that you won’t be murdered by “authorities” without trial. To wit:

In 1981, MOVE relocated to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. On May 13, 1985, allegedly responding to months of complaints by neighbors that MOVE members broadcast political messages by bullhorn at all hours and also about the health hazards posed by the piles of compost, the police department claimed that they attempted to clear the building. The police lobbed tear gas canisters at the building and the fire department battered the roof of the house with two water cannons. The police fired 10,000 rounds at the house in two hours. A police helicopter then dropped a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof of the house without any prior warning.

The resulting explosion caused the house to catch fire, igniting a massive blaze which eventually destroyed 65 houses. Eleven people, including John Africa, five other adults and five children, died in the resulting fire. The firefighters were stopped from putting out the fire based on allegations that firefighters were being shot at, a claim that was contested by the lone adult survivor Ramona Africa, who says that the firefighters had earlier battered the house with two deluge pumps when there was no fire. Ramona Africa and one child, Birdie Africa, were the only survivors.

Yeah, Philadelphia Police literally bombed a house in the city of Philadelphia. There is no reason not to use a SWAT team in that situation, I don’t care if mean under-equipped black nationalists are in there. Do your fucking job WITHOUT bombing your own citizens.* Except if you’re not a white protestant, you’ll never be a REAL American. This attitude and spirit still lives on today in the bloated might-as-well-be-a-corpse-for-how-fat-and-immobile-it-is horrible so called ‘Tea Party.’

*-Not to say that bombing random brown people is any more excusable. This act is just more shocking based on the general political narrative of America. Happy Friday the 13th!

FW: FW: FW: fw: FW: fw: fw: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO MY GRAMPA'S OLD TIMEY MUSIC BAND WHEN THEY VISITED OBAMACARE DEATH PANEL!!! DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN! REAL AMERICANS HAVE TO STAND UP!!!

Pink Rims are cool, presumably

Pink stickers on the back too. Wow.

I was browsing Amazon for some books and I came across the page for The Looming Tower by journalist Lawrence Wright. I’ve read the book, and I super-recommend it to anybody and everybody who wants to know anything about Al-Qaeda and 9/11 and all that fun stuff. It’s a compelling, well written and well sourced narrative following Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri(Al Qaeda’s Numero Dos) in their quest to destroy McDonalds and freedom or whatever. It also won a Pulitzer Prize and is pretty much universally praised for being an even-handed account of the events that led up to 9/11 that goes deep into the backstories of key players such as Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri. But wait, what’s this?

Well, it’s universally praised, except for by these four mavericks, who gave it one single star. What do they see THAT wrong with this book? You’d probably guess that there would be a crazy 9/11 conspiracy person, an anti-American/Israel zealot, and a super conservative person who won’t take any answer or explanation for anti-American sentiments in the Middle East besides ‘THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM, AND THEY ARE MUSLIM.’ Well, you’d be two thirds right, and you get the added bonus of some goofy wild card bullshit. Let’s take a look!

First One Star Guy: The 9/11 Truther Conspiracy Dork
This is of course the one we all knew was coming. “SmokeNMirrors” opens up with a powerful shot across the bow: “This is strictly for those who have a desperate need to believe the official story of 9/11″ Thanks, Jesse Ventura. I’ll include his text if you want to read it, I sure couldn’t finish it.

This is strictly for those who have a desperate need to believe the official story of 9/11: that 19 untrained men (at least 10 of whom were later found to be still alive after 9/11) under the direction of a known ex-CIA asset (who was dying in a cave), who had never before flown a passenger plane somehow managed to hijack four of them and fly without navigational assistance (using compasses, presumably) around the USA for a total of nearly two hours without the much-vaunted and trigger happy USAF managing to get off a single shot, without any of the 4 sets of crew managing to get off a single warning – despite the necessity to do nothing more than press a button, without any of the sets of crew, many ex-military, putting up the slightest bit of resistance to men of small stature carrying nothing more than Stanley knives. These 19 men then crashed their planes unerringly into targets they had no possible chance of finding in reality, and the buildings, weakened by the impacts and by the massive fires of jet fuel, melted to the ground, exhibiting at least 10 classic signs of explosive demolition. And of course there’s WTC7, hit by nothing except falling debris, yet it also melted to the ground in freefall speed at 5:20 in the afternoon, interestingly enough after both the BBC and CNN had already reported this building as having collapsed – in both cases while it stood clearly in the background behind the unwitting and ignorant reporter. The fact that the financial records from Enron, Worldcom and many other financial scandals were held in the SEC offices in WTC7 should be examined very closely, as should the “insider trading” which was traced to the door of the Executive Director of the CIA, Buzzy Krongard and then dropped. Also of interest is the massive amount of gold bullion stored under the WTC, only a fraction of which has so far been acknowledged as recovered.

This book, however, is a fiction which merges a small amount of fact and a large amount of media propoganda to paint a story that simply cannot be true. For an extremely advanced form of nano-thermite (Google the term) was recently discovered in the debris from the WTC which proves beyond doubt that the WTC in fact WAS explosively demolished. The fact that the Bush family had close ties to the company that ran “security” at the WTC is an indication of how this could have been done, added to the fact that most of the known research into and development of nano-thermite had been conducted by NIST up to that point. Lawrence Wright has, wittingly or unwittingly, fallen into the trap of believing an official story (sorry, but there’s not a single “official story” that can be taken at its word) with no basis in reality and woven a cunningly plausible but ultimately erroneous version of events, and should be read (and, if truth be told, classified) as fiction. Additionally his treatment of the logistics and preparation for the attacks themselves are totally unconvincing, lacking the substance and believability that should be present if the official story were true.

To get a truer picture of the events leading up to 9/11 a far more believable (and far more thoroughly researched) book is The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11–and America’s Response by Paul Thompson. Or anything by David Ray Griffin.

Google the term “Nanothermite’? Yeah right dude. Google Ron Paul. *dons leather trenchcoat, hits “play” on Winamp playlist containing the entire Dream Theater discography*

Second One Star Guy: THE ZIONIST OVERLORD WORLD GOVERNMENT BUG PEOPLE

While I’m slightly more sympathetic to where this guy’s coming from, he makes the same mistake lots of young leftists or rightists make: going off the ideological deep end. He’s read a bit, but not quite enough to realize that he’s just a callow kid yet. Or he is just legitimately a weird person, who knows. Here we go!

Wright’s book entitled The Looming Tower serves as scripture for the War on Terror. The book fulfills the following Zionist goals.

(1) It ties a lot of disconnected information together to fabricate a compelling script defining a vast Islamic fundamentalist terrorist conspiracy, which UBL is supposed to head but really does not exist and which can only be fought by stripping Americans of their Constitutional rights.

(2) It transformed the Zionist genocidal war against Palestinians into the American War on Terror with the goal of forever hitching the USA to Zionist ideology and policy.
The Israeli Coin and Mint’s Twin Towers Medal
A Perfect Example of Zionist Opportunism

(3) It justified an Afghanistan and then an Iraq invasion as well as attacks on Somalia, Lebanon, Gaza, and Pakistan that made no sense whatsoever for the USA however much Zionists might welcome the incineration of Arabs and Muslims.

(4) It creates a framework to demonize the most mainstream currents of Islam in order to facilitate the marginalization of American Muslims and to make sure that they cannot participate in a meaningful way in the debate over American foreign policy.

(5) It provides a rationalization for a pointless continuation of the War against Terror in Afghanistan in order

* to forestall attempts to bring Bush administration criminals to justice,
* to discourage scrutiny of Zionists in the Obama administration,
* to keep Israel and Zionist plutocrats on the expanded military gravy train,
* to continue intimidation of American Muslims, and
* to prevent the American public from realizing that the US and Israel have no interests in common whatsoever.

Remnick made this achievement possible by providing Wright with full use of the fabled New Yorker resources for research and fact checking although in this case they were corrupted to provide distortion and fabrication conforming to the desires of wealthy Zionist advertisers, who brought the magazine back from the brink of bankruptcy.

With such talented support Wright’s lies are sophisticated. They depend on subtle mistranslation or elipsis and calculated distortion of the timeline. They start from the beginning of the book with the discussion of Sayid Qutb and continue right through to the end.

The crowning example is Wright’s explanation of the meaning of the book’s title on pp. 394-395.

“The duties of this religion are magnificent and difficult,” bin Laden said in a videotaped speech that was later discovered on the computer of a member of the Hamburg cell. “Some of them are abominable.”

Bin Laden spoke about the Prophet, who warned the Arabs that they would become weak because of their love of lif and their fear of fighting. “This sense of loss, this misery that has befallen us: all these are proof that we have abandoned God and his jihad,” bin Laden said. “God has imposed inferiority on you and will not remove it from you until you return to your religion.”

Recalling the Prophet’s injunction on his deathbed that Islam should be the only religion in Arabia, bin Laden asked, “What answer do we have for God on the day of reckoning? … The ummah in this time have become lost and have gone astray. Now, ten years have passed sine the Americans entered the land of the two holy places. … It becomes clear to us that shying away from the fight, combined with the love of earthly existence that fills the hearts of many of us, is the source of this misery, this humiliation, and this contempt.”

These words reached into the hearts of nineteen young men, many of whom had skills, talent, and education, and were living comfortably in the West; and yet they still resonated with the sense of shame that bin Laden sang to them.

What do we want? What do we want?
Don’t we want to please God?
Don’t we want Paradise?

He urged them to become martyrs, to give up their promising lives for the greater glory that awaited them. “Look, we have found ourselves in the mouth of the lion for over twenty years now,” he said, “thanks to the mercy and favor of God: the Russian Scud missiles hunted us for over ten years, and the American Cruise missiles have hunted us for another ten years. The believer knows that the hour of death can be neigher hastened nor postponed.” Then he quoted a passage from the fourth sura of the Quran, which he repeated three times in the speech — obvious signal to the hijackers who were on their way:

Wherever you are, death will find you,
even in the looming tower.

No English translation of the Quranic verse 4:78 renders ÈÑæÌ ãÔìÏÉ as in the looming tower.

Muhammad Asad interprets the verse as:

Wherever you may be, death will overtake you — even though you be in towers raised high.

The mistranslation of mushayyadat meaning lofty may be a confusion of the Hebrew word shed meaning demon with the colloquial Arabic pronunciation musheyyda.

The faulty rendering is only a small piece of the Wright’s big lie. He states in his “Notes” (p.485) that he took “Speech of Sheikh Osama Bin Laden on the occasion of the Fitr celebration of the first schawal 1420″/”Rede des Scheich usamma Bin LADEN anlasslich des Fitr-Festes erster schawal 1420″ from the “Motassadeq Document which Chester Rosson translated.

Ramadan 1420 took place in Dec-Jan 1999-2000. Eidu-l-fitri was Jan. 7, 2000.

The Quranic passage 4:78 is a hardly inappropriate reminder to people in the midst of a celebration that they should still think about the time when they will be called to final accounting after death.

Probably many Eidu-l-fitri sermons with which UBL grew up contained such recommendations.

The speech had absolutely no connection to the 9/11 attack as is almost certainly true for UBL himself.

Because the entire mythology of the War on Terror is filled with the sort of misrepresentations littering the Pulitzer Prize winning Looming Tower, Zionists like Frum (and Judea Pearl) are absolutely unwilling to countenance any critical reevaluations of the case for the war from which they and the State of Israel have benefitted so much.

Point 1 is kind of crazy but I guess I agree with parts of it. Point 2 is kind of uhhhh not really man you’re kind of deciding ahead of time what this book does, Point 3 is no not really at all, Point 4 is lol come on man al Qaeda doesn’t represent mainstream Islam, you’re killing me here and I basically stopped after that. Sorry to be so flippant but tell me this goofy Leftier-than-thou butthole guy provides anything substantial after that little tirade in which he admitted in too many words that the purpose of the book flew right over his weird haircut encrusted head. Maybe I give him too much credit, he might actually sympathize with Al Qaeda. Ha ha ha.

To be fair, he makes a lot of good, true points, but all hilarious hyperbole aside, he attributes FAR too much sinister motive to this book, and it’s silly.

Third One Star Guy: The Freshman Girl Taking a Poli Sci Class for Basic Studies and is Assigned This Book By Her Well-Meaning But Naive Professor

I need no words of explanation.

I’m in the middle after 3 weeks because its soo boring. Hopefully I’ll find excitement near the end.

An amazon admin saw this and, taking pity, deleted the parts where she said ‘omg’ and ‘lol!’

Fourth One Star Guy: The Boring Loser Who Only Reads Academic Journals And Scoffs at Everything Else

YEAH RIGHT I COULD HAVE PUT THE ESSENTIAL FACTS TOGETHER IN ONE ESSAY AND REGULAR PEOPLE WOULD BE WILLING TO READ IT

This book is overwritten. The actual content could be in an essay. There are pointless diversions, etc., etc.,and when it gets to actual facts it jumps around. It really needs an editor who knows the subject.

*throws pie at this guy*

In closing, I’d just like to say I don’t think you’re dumb if you don’t like this book, I just think you’re dumb if you’re one of these four people. If you’re not one of these four, then you should get ahold of the Looming Tower and give it a read!