Dubai Or Not Dubai (or Bball in the time of Allah-ah)

If you recognized the title as an omage to Rocky and Bullwinkle's practice of giving multiple clever titles to the same thing, then congratulations. You probably laughed at Dennis Miller's old jokes too didn't you? Before he sucked and got a horrible show on CNBC.

I am ecstatic the last couple of days. Maybe its because UVA trounced Boston College on Tuesday night, and maybe because these days, it seems like Bush seems to alienate his own party more and more. Honestly, I vote every election, and I care about what direction this country goes in, but I can't seem to be as much affected internally about politics as I used to be, maybe assuaged by my own happiness and success. Whatever it is, I still want my opinions to be heard, and Republican or Democrat, I will probably like the next president a LOT better. College bball first.

The Boston College win was the product of crazy good 3 point shooting (12/21) - a lot of which was helped by the fact that all of the shots were close to wide open, some good fortune, and good defense. The 3's were all wide open because of good penetration. I also can't help but think that BC as a collective thought they would come in and roll over UVa. I am bolstered by the fact that our team seems to get better as the year goes on (with the exception of the Florida State performance) instead of worse. Dave Leitao really knows his job, and it really shows. I just want good basketball to make its real return to Charlottesville, since college bball is my second favorite sport. The consensus amongst UVa fans is win 3 more and we're in the tourney. I would like to know what the sports writers think.

Secondly, I looked at pictures and read accounts of the city of Dubai in the wake of recent events. By far it looks like the most modern thing I could possibly see out of the middle east. I mean, Dubai looks like Seattle. I can understand how a fair number of people would think that they are basically our allies and nothing more, our partners in modernization. That being said, I can also see how everyone who wants to hurt the US might try to get a job with Dubai ports. Seriously, I wonder if job applications to Dubai ports would skyrocket. One can imagine a political cartoon with Osama Bin Laden standing in line for a job interview.

Don't construe this as rascism. I continue to have no general problem with Muslims (except the reckless and hateful ones) and Arabs. I'm not even accusing Dubai ports of being a bad company. This has more to do with the fact that I would be against anyone handling our security but our own government. And even they seem to be doing things I don't like lately (wiretaps). This may be the only move that W has made that has absolutely confounded me as to its motives. Does his family have crucial business dealings with UAE? Is this a "UAE are our friends" move? Does he think that their culture is the only chance we have? I just don't understand. No matter what the motives are, he seems to have lost (temporarily) the support of three of his Republican governors. I have heard Ehrlich on the radio here singing W's praises for years until now. And Frist even sounded weirdly mixed when he said that "he would not support (Schumer's) bill, but he would support a bill that blocked the sale until a proper review could be conducted." The way W has talked, he doesn't even want a review. So Frist's comment is really damnation by faint praise. Or just a good way of saying what he thinks most people want to hear, without openly revolting.

Whatever comes of all of this, I just hope that the Democrats realize that no matter how many times W seems to mess up in the public's eye, that hate of the opposite party will not drive another party to victory in the end (unless you are Hamas in the middle east). I hope we can provide another Clinton-esque Democrat who might really have ideas and governing skills. In other words, I hope Mark Warner or Barack Obama wins the nomination. My bet would be on Mark running.

-K

Loving and Hating on the Press

Over the course of my life I have learned that the Republicans love to tout the media as being liberal and biased against them, and I will give them some leeway to say that the opinion sections of the Washington Post and New York Times tend to be liberal (although Charles Krauthammer and George Will also have regular pieces), but the Republicans have also gotten their Wall Street Journal and Fox News into relative popularity as well. Fox News loves to call itself "fair and balanced" and I'm not sure if that's a jab at the other side of the media or a deluded sentiment, but I'll let my readers inform me of that one. And as tempted as I am to rail on the whole "liberal=uberbad" label that the conservatives managed to stamp on our society, I will save that for later.

I can't help but notice that W has been president for most of the "politically aware" stage of my life. I spent most of my childhood and high school formulating my opinions and ideology, and after doing so I became much more willing to apply my methodologies to government and current events (namely during college years). But I was aware of Clinton's last term in office, and over the last 9 years (gasp, I'm old...) I have learned one very definitive thing about the media. They love a juicy story.

I have heard from every Republican that W has received unfair treatment in the media. It seems that with every political issue that comes up that the Republicans certainly are impressive with providing a unified front and standardized talking points. I'm tired of partisanship, and I'm tired of feeling like our representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, are broken records with diametricly opposed sets of tracks on each other. The media is not responsible every time Republicans look bad, and "money grubbing conservatives" are not responsible every time a Democrat looks bad. (I think Ted Kennedy used that one once) The media is there to keep the government in check, and the media is ultimately necessary to preserve our way of life. They have become bloated, full of themselves, and money driven just like everything else in the world, but they can be counted on to jump on every juicy story. They gave oodles and oodles of coverage to the Lewinsky incident; the Post printed out the trial transcripts and had everyone making cigar jokes for months to come. Leno and Letterman had their field days, and so did Craig Kilborne.

As sick and nauseous as it makes me to watch the ballet between Scott Mclellan (perhaps the slimiest press secretary I've seen yet) and David Gregory (yeah I hate him too), you have to ultimately realize that it's two people just doing their jobs. Clinton perfected the art of the press secretary that didn't say anything (see Mike McCurry) so I admit he had a large part in making Scott Mcllelan who he is: a broken record that doesn't say anything. With Mclellan, the Bush administration is simply copycatting an act of political savvy. And all of the White House reporters are probably disenfranchised enough that they have to feign anger just to look like they're doing their jobs.

And, as I said, as much as the whole process makes me want to vomit, it is completely necessary to propogate democracy. Every presidency needs to be kept on their heels by the media, otherwise they can start making decisions without the effect of public opinion and backlash. So hell yes is the media tough, but its just a part of the damn territory. You want to be President? Live with the consequences then, because you will be under a lot of scrutiny. I asked my Dad how the press treated Carter, and he said they had a field day at his expense during the Iran hostage crisis. And probably rightfully so. During the next Democratic presidency, you can call me on this if I complain.

I would love to see how the media would have reacted if the administration had just released the Cheney story instantly and just called it an accident, and Cheney had taken fault immediately. Although I can't test it, I believe it would have been a big story, but for a lesser amount of time, and probably wouldn't have been as controversial. But I won't get my experiment.

Finally, if a journalist prints a story based on hearsay (in any publication other than a known tabloid) then you can complain about irresponsible journalism. I think the rule of thumb has been one first hand source, or three second hand sources. Lapses or mis-followings of this rule are hard to prove, but Dan Rather certainly had one. However, I don't think he broke it because he was aiming to get Republicans. Judging from several character reports, he was merely selfish enough to want the notoriety.

Time for bed. I should watch that movie with George Clooney about Mccarthyism, and remember what journalists were like before they were less profit driven. And when presidential administration's stances on issues and events held more substance. Maybe when I get up tomorrow the ballet will make more sense. And monkeys might fly out of my ass.

-K

Hainy Cheney

I am not (quite yet) one to talk about accidents and being careful. I have been a lot better about things in the last few years, but I have had my fair share of car accidents. A couple of them have been my fault, but at this point I've been clean long enough to nearly have progressive's lowest rate (I still have one speeding ticket on the record until later this year). I CAN talk about responsibility.

I've never been hunting and never will. That is certainly my own decision, and if people want to go "hunting" --

*SIDE NOTE * (Real hunting to me would involve slaying a bear with a knife or bagging a deer with your bare hands. Cats and dogs do some real hunting. Humans go fake hunting. I'll never be impressed that you shot a deer when I regularly see them at distances of 30 yards or less, nor will I be impressed that you killed a defenseless animal with a gun.)

--I have no problem with it as long as you eat what you kill. Hell, I've gone fishing before. It's practically the same thing. But if I had a gun in my hand, I would make damn sure I knew what I was shooting at before I shot. I don't own a gun because I believe in the potential for accidents. So does the whole of Western Europe :-)

There are 4 points I would like to make here. 3 of them hunters have come out and said, and the last just makes sense.

1.) If you shoot someone, it is NOT their fault, it is yours for shooting them. Why Scott Mclellan decided to throw Wittington under the bus by condemning him for not announcing himself I have no idea. I would have had perfect respect for the situation if they had said "Dick Cheney had an accident and accidents happen. He has apologized to Wittington and Wittington will hopefully make a full recovery. Next question." I would have shrugged and moved on.

HOWEVER, this administration has such a huge fear of actually taking responsibility for ANYTHING, that the press secretary tried to pass the buck! Honestly, when there are several ways to handle a situation like this, why do you take the way that makes you look like you're hiding something? My opinion is that the administration has gotten incredibly defensive in the wake of many stories (Katrina, Iraq, Scooter Libby...) and they've reached the point that the local community college reaches when they're playing Duke in basketball (yes, I worked in a college sports reference). They just start swatting at things incoherently without any direction whatsoever.

2.) When you're hunting quail, you don't shoot at the ground. That's just common sense. It's a bird that you flush in groups (I think they fly up in groups) and you hope to get them with a spray. It just seems to me that you do the research before you do the activity, and your preparedness and enjoyment of the activity will increase. I wouldn't just take a hanglider up to the top of a mountain and jump. My perception of this might be wrong, but this is the appearance of the incident to me. He probably didn't know much about quail hunting.

3.) When you go hunting in a group, know where your friends are. In God's name, if you do one thing, do this.

4.) This is my point. When someone gets shot, the police should know about it. If you shoot someone who attacks you in your own house, how much would it look like self defense if you report it 6 days later when flies have eaten the body? Cheney waited almost a day to report the incident, when a reasonable reaction would have been to get Wittington to the hospital and then call the police instantly. Was he trying to cover it up???

So let's keep score on scandals (or appearance of scandals). Over 8 years, Bill Clinton had

1.) Whitewater/Vince Foster

2.) Monica Lewinsky/Paula what's her name

3.) The Sudan bombing.

Please tell me if I am missing anything. Over 6 years, Bush has had

1.) Possible ties to the Abramoff/Delay scandal

2.) Iraq and the WMD/selective information use.

3.) Abu Ghraib.

4.) The torture issue.

5.) Obtained wiretaps without warrants illegally. And they thought Clinton should be impeached.

6.) Scooter Libby and the classified information leak.

7.) The poor handling of Hurricane Katrina.

8.) A closed door "energy meeting" with oil executives, eventually leading to an incident in Congress where Ted Stevens refused to have the executives take an oath.

9.) An apparent mishandling of Cheney's hunting accident, maybe an illicit cover up attempt.

When does it end? At what point do we say that the 39% of people that approve of his job have reached a stratospheric level of stubbornness. And why does presidential approval go up just because nothing bad has happened in a while?

-K

Cannon Fodder

I think this is about the scariest one I can post. I think Dick Cheney is looking at that gun like Gollum at the ring, and the people in the back look like "We have the vice president in our special interest bucket, all is going according to plan!" More about Dick Cheney later today...

Oh, and him and Coach K appear to have the same tie ;-)

Why I Hate ESPN

Really, ESPN used to be the coolest thing on the planet. Constant sports coverage of stuff you wanted to hear about, and funny sportscenter anchors. Now can I put up a list of shows and efforts they've made over the past few years?

1.) Playmakers? Seriously horrible show about professional football where everyone was taking drugs and shooting each other. Ray Karuth is Ray Karuth, but this show made it seem like everyone in the NFL was Ray Karuth. When you make a TV show, make sure it has good actors, and at least somewhat realistic plot lines ( if it's not a sitcom or purposely fake like pro wrestling). The fact is, male soap operas don't survive unless they come a similar form to pro wrestling.

2.) Stump the Schwab: This would have been a good idea, except that no one EVER won. If you want a successful game show, someone has to win occasionally. This guy they put on there had ridiculous sports knowledge oozing out of his head, plus if it is your FULL TIME JOB, and not the other person's job, no one should ever beat you at it.

3.) A series of horrible, horrible movies ( ummm 3, and Codebreakers, and Four Minutes, and a couple others I am forgetting) . All of these movies had bad actors attempting to play some real life sports hero, or reenacting some dramatic sports situation. I think that 3 was the worst one, showing all the potential of late night Cinemax for plot quality and acting. Who decided that it would be smart for a sports news organization to start making movies?

4.) That "reality" show with the potential sports news anchors. This would have worked if these people had actually been given jobs or stayed with ESPN. The first winner's only moment of fame was doing an essay about basejumping. On a side note, kudos to several people who managed to spin off side careers (like the guy who ended up doing Dodgeball commentary on GSN) .

To continue the real theme of my blog, ESPN was a great sports news network, and that's all it was ever supposed to be. I want to drill a point into people's heads. THERE IS ONLY ONE, MAYBE TWO CHANNELS WORTH of sports news and events to cover at any point in time. ESPN is now spinning off side networks like the Simpsons spun off side characters. Is there some reason that bass fishing, bowling, and every other sport that 3 people care about need to get hours of daytime coverage? If you eliminated ESPN classic and just showed game reruns of the core sports (football, basketball, baseball) during the day I guarantee you viewership of ESPN/ESPN2 would increase! And the idea of ESPN U could make it if you just expanded pay per view coverage!

AND my cable bill would go down. ESPN's self righteous battle with Cox Cable (although I hate Cox as well) wouldn't have been necessary. Their costs are ballooning because of all these poorly thought out projects and failures!

And every time I see the "in" logo on ESPNs home page I want to scream. Seriously, why would I pay that money to see why Jay Bilas thinks that basketball teams foul too much in the last 2 minutes of the game? And they want money from me to see my local sports articles, when in reality they're just linked to the Post, which I can get for free anyway.

ESPN has ballooned out of control, and often times it seems to actually suck the life out of sports. The poor ideas of coming out with show after show of talking heads, too many networks, barring people from reading articles (seriously, if the Post doesn't charge for content, what makes you think that its a good idea? I can read Michael Wilbon for free, but not Jay Bilas? Are you making money off of this?), and treading in places they weren't meant to (movies) have all contributed to over-commercialisation in the network. None of the ideals that ESPN started with are there anymore. I don't watch Sportscenter anymore, and really I only tune into ESPN for game broadcasts and PTI. The only real good that ESPN.com does for me anymore is providing Page2 (since it continues to be more of an open forum for sportswriters) and factual information. Their website is way too cluttered to be considered useful at this point.

What I really want would be a channel that I would be perfectly willing to pay $10/month for that would broadcast solid sports, and the announcers would never even have say "That touchdown was brought to you by Mazda, who never drops the ball in the clutch!" But we can talk about that later.

-K

Yet Another Look Alike

As long as I can keep coming up with these I will keep posting them. And, as I post this, Robbay on the Don & Mike show mention symetrical book stacking. Perfect!

-K

Point/Counterpoint Discussion & Statistics

So I got my first real comment post (from a Duke fan - no less) and I have to say that there are some interesting topics to discuss in relation to the question of whether Dukes gets all the calls or not. I definitely appreciate that the comment was not on the level of "Whatever man, DOOK RULEZ!!" and that it talked about some legitimate phenomena. And Greg, I don't care how long your comments are. It's all good.

Let me first state that

1.) I am against any team or player getting more benefit of the doubt than any other team. I think that any ref should look at the players like robots, basically calling any illegitimate contact without biases. I don't think anyone disagrees with that, but as refs are human, so is the game.
2.) I recognize that some teams are definitely better than others. When UConn plays someone like West Connecticut Community College, UConn will go the line a lot because the opposing players will foul when UConn blows by them or outrebounds them.
3.) If your basketball program has national prominance(sp?) then it will receive more criticism than others for supposed inequities- much like the President having more criticism hurled at him than say, your average Senator.

That being said, I think that the attitude of players on a team like Duke and in the NBA wil start to resemble those of tenured professors (and I dealt with too many of those!) . A fair number of them think that they have paid their dues and can (and often will) start getting away with more than they should. The commenter (Greg) made a reference to Jordan's last championship game versus the Utah Jazz, and his last second shot that is replayed over and over on ESPN classic and NBA clip shows. Jordan clearly should have been called with the pushoff and the Jazz should have been given the ball.

I remember seeing one game where Jordan was heffing along with the Wizards and during one possession he tried to drive the ball to the basket. He took three looonng steps and was RIGHTFULLY called with traveling. The look on Jordan's face was priceless, clearly saying "how DARE you call me with traveling!" My point is here is that referee bias towards teams and players that are widely viewed as "better" is a self perpetuating culture and problem. Because these teams/players get some benefit of the doubt, it goes to their heads that they can get away with this or that. So they keep testing and testing and their habits get worse as they become more established in the league. My favorite possible example of this is that Shane Battier (called Raisin-Head or Floppier by haters) fouled out of his first NBA summer league game about as quickly as you can foul out, and he just about never fouled out in college. I'll give 4 possible reasons for this:

1.) He played the same way he played in college, except that he was actually fouling in college.
2.) He was new in the NBA, and therefore called against unfairly towards more established players.
3.) NBA summer league is called much more toughly so that the players can better learn from their mistakes and correct bad tendencies.
4.) He just fouled because he wasn't used to playing people as good as this (although NBA summer league has a lot of questionable players)

What do you believe? As an opposing fan, it had always seemed to me that Battier was moving on a lot of calls where he garnered the desired charging call. It was a pet peeve of mine.

Finally I will address the questions of statistics. What I think would be useful would be a study on emotional effects. For instance, with Top 25 teams, what is the differential of FTs per game at home and away? Can we cross reference that with the "quality" of teams that they play? Will Duke get more fouls than UNC when they play UNC at home? Do refs get frazzled by the home crowd boos on close calls? I think these would be useful statistics to track.

And for all the conspiracy theorists, did Duke have a good number more fouls than UNC to silence the media? Or were the refs scared of backlash after the FSU/Duke refs were suspended? Or did Duke just foul more? Question of the week. Weigh in if you read this.

-K

Another Look-Alike

I read this one today - I LOVE the symbolism here. And as the writer says, "J.J. Redick seems to get paler every year..."

Admissions

Ok, so UVa lost by11 last night to Maryland, but really it was tied until about the 18 minute mark in the second half. Before I knew what Dave Leitao could do for this group and what passion he could instill in his players, I would have said that we would lose by 18, and definitely would not have said that we would lead for 95% of the game. I think that since we kept the lead until there was so little time left, that I didn't pay attention to the officiating, but apparently message boards are blowing up with how bad it was. There were a few calls that were horrible. JR Reynolds got absolutely mugged while taking a 3 in the corner and it was simply called an out of bounds to Virginia. Jason Cain got run over while holding his ground a couple times (although he got a couple charge calls to go his way) and it wasn't called.

I know that the Sabre is FULL of very bipolar posters that tend to get overwhelmed in the momentum of what is going on. I know that we lost because we ran out of gas and didn't make any shots down the stretch. We need TJ to come back and compliment Singletary because Campbell simply can't do it, and Singletary will wear out if he has to play the whole game.

So why can't I help feeling like we got a bad deal last night with the officiating? Am I programmed to think that the world is against me, or am I simply lumping Gary Williams and Maryland in with Coach K and Duke? How was it last night with Duke/UNC? Given the name of this blog I should watch the Duke games for some commentary. Duke won a close one, and I wonder again how the officiating was.

At any rate, watch out when UVa gets more talent and some inside players. They've already way surpassed my expectations.

-K

My First Humor Post

The only thing that really makes me think about this post, is that I don't know who I am insulting here ;-)

Welcome To 'Why I Hate Duke'

Hi to all - my name is Kevin and I thought I'd actually try having my own blog. I'm probably not going to write any personal entries in here, since I prefer my personal life to remain under the radar; instead I believe this blog will be more oriented towards sports and politics, my two favorite topics of conversation. Being that this part of the year is really owned by college basketball, I figure I'd go with a current emotion of "Why I Hate Duke."

Duke symbolizes that kind of institution that has been "in power" for so long that they have forgotten what it is like to not have things swing their general direction, and they have developed a following of people who follow power instead of their heart, and would rather just root for whoever is winning than have an actual path. Because of the sheer number of "fans" that now follow Duke blindly, there is also now an interest in keeping them winning and at the top, simply to keep college basketball ratings up, rather than keeping the games better.

The most egregious examples of this interest being the controversial refereeing that takes place in Duke's "games." The Shelden Williams non-foul at Boston College, and the technical called against Florida State in OT all serve to bolster me and my fellow conspiracy theorists. Coach K once railed upon a similar regime that was Dean Smith, and now he simply takes his place. Power corrupts!

So really, "Why I Hate Duke" is a symbolic title towards anything that was built from nothing, became a quality organization/culture, and then was ruined by wanna-bes, corporate marketing, and everyone who attaches on simply because they want to be part of the crowd. (RIP Rock n' Roll, America, the NBA, and many others) Almost everything starts as or becomes something very ideal (see the Grant Hill years), and is ruined in the same fashion. Some of these things could be saved with a few rule changes.

Oh, I also hate Duke, coming from the fine University of Virginia. To those of you who suggest that I am jealous of the success of Duke, know that I would rather fail legitimately than have success falsely handed to me. There are no illusions in UVa basketball, and I believe in Dave Leitao and his ability to bring us back.

-K