I heard the lady heading the Secret Service on TV this morning. Sounded exactly like one of those awful females doing the tv play by play on unimportant college football games.

Three addition theories about why sportswriters are liberal:

1- They are a bunch of jock sniffers who have to treat 23 year old knuckleheads as if they were philosophers. Imagine doing that as a middle aged man (and not many sportswriters are former athlete types who fit comfortably into the masculine locker room environment at any age). That kind of work will naturally only retain those who don’t mind debasing themselves: thus liberalism.

2- My understanding is that sports writers are fed a lot – a lot – at games. They are also guys who spend a lot of time on the road with all the temptations of that lifestyle. A life of excess leads to effeminacy and weakness of character as any of the ancients will tell you.

3- For most of those guys, watching and writing or talking about sports is a dream job, so if they have to debase themselves before the powerful interests to keep the job so be it.

You’re overthinking. Its more likely that someone at the Times does not understand what burly means and googled it and finding that its been used to describe other black men assumes its racist. This catches the Times out because accusations of racism are always made in good faith while claims of not being racist are always lies.

So who will be El Presidente under our new system, El Guapoism?

I’m not sure that Obama’s adolescent guy chauvinism will cause him to regret unleashing the feminists. The feminism that we’re talking about isn’t about girl stuff like caring for your child, its about making the female reproductive system non-functional and allowing/coercing girls to be cool things like soldiers and basketball players (not that he is going to watch any of their games).

Here’s an article on how modern cricket pitches are becoming more standardized: http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india-2014/content/story/756913.html

“Ronaldo is evidently kind of a Kobe Bryant type who scores a lot while taking an appropriately large number of shots, while Messi is a Michael Jordan type who scores a lot and maybe should shoot even more.”

I wouldn’t put it that way. Ronaldo is a superstar player because he does what other superstar players do, just more of the time. He shoots accurately more of the time and in general is on his game more often. If the average star is performing to the extent of his ability 50% of the time Ronaldo is performing more like 70% of the time.

Messi is a guy who can do things other players like even Ronaldo can’t. His close ball control is amazing.

So while a spectacular Ronaldo goal is something that other good players can do, a spectacular Messi goal is something that only he can do.

If you want a basketball analogy, Ronaldo is the guy with the best jump shot while Messi is the only guy in the league who can dunk.

A good book on the start of WWI is Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” (his 800 page history on Prussian history is also surprisingly readable). He’s sort of a German-Austrian apologist, at least by English speaking standards.

The Russians really get off too easy. The Serbs were prepared to accept the rather outrageous Austrian demands until the ultra-Slavophile Russians made them reject the demands.

Uncle Leo agrees: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQpvK72le4Q