Manchester and Valiant Efforts: Lady Lions, Fighting Irish

-Lady Lions win in five in the morning, lose in three in the afternoon.
-Notre Dame Fighting Irish trying to extend its 43 game winning streak against the Navy Midshipman. Late in the 4th, Irish have scored and tied the score at 28 apiece. And now overtime...
-watched a little of the ball game earlier with Marty; we both agreed that maybe ND has found its proper level of play where they can be competitive; that would be the military academies, Ivy League, the Delawares of the universe. I say go for it, Irish.
-Manchester (Goodbye, Darkness) and the US Marines (and US Army) are on Saipan having taken the measure of the Japanese at Guadalcanal and Tarawa (pronounced TAR-uh-wuh). Manchester has already made it clear that the Japanese will fight to the death, not only the soldiers that they run into but also the civilians who have been convinced that the Americans will not only kill them but eat them. (Yuk.)
-in case you missed it, another beautiful fall day.

Last Night: Pacers Win and a Movie: Shooter

-Number One Son drove down last night: dinner and a movie along with all sorts of conversation including camera talk (my new Olympus E-410 which has made it out of the house the past two days - its first excursions).

-Pacers win again. Still perfect. My oh my...

-Netflix movie: The good guys win in this shoot em up thriller about, get this, nefarious guys in government, in our very own US government. What a thought. Diane loved it. Shooter with Mark Wahlberg. Diane and I both had trouble understanding this non foreign language, multiple dialect American movie. Didn't use subtitles though...

-Saturday morning scramble starts at 9...

Golf Basics Revisited

Had the chance to practice a little golf today. After several drives and several approaches and several chips and several putts, I decided to concentrate on finding out why I was repeatedly pulling the ball to the left on my approach shot, that 60 to a 120 yard finesse shot that is not all that hard and one that was made easier with my adoption of the David Pelz method several years ago. Since I was consistently pulling the shot to the left, I thought maybe my alignment was off. So I dropped a club on the other side of the ball and carefully pointed it at the pin some 115 yards away. Backing up and taking my stance, I was careful to ensure that my feet were parallel to that alignment aid, and then swung away. Same result - pull to the left of the pin. Darn. Tried it several more times, ensuring that my grip and my club face were in the right position and again and again pulled the shot to the left. Darn again and again. What now... From somewhere back in my memory of alignment, the image of two clubs on the ground popped up. One club near the ball, and another closer to the feet. Put a second club down and made sure that it was parallel to the first one. Stepped into position with my toes up against that second club and gave it a go. Wallah! Three shots, threes right at the stick, two close enough for birdies. So, my eye ball alignment was throwing me off; and my putting one club down, thus minimizing that eyeball, was also off. Moral of the story: keep going back to the basics. In this case, the basic was being parallel to your target line, something I thought I was but really wasn't. And that is pretty basic.

Friday Wrap: Saturday Scramble

Reminder: tomorrow's scramble will start at 9am.

Got a golfing story but it will have to wait. Got a Netflix movie to watch: Shooter. Later...

Friday Follies: Torture, Lions

-from Dana Milbank and WAPO: Reports on a Human Rights briefing on torture which includes comments by people who have actually gone through waterboarding in past wars. Bush described as having successfully bridged the 21st century with the 15th century with regards to weapons used to fight wars. The 15th century, of course, is when the Spanish Inquisition refined the different ways people could be treated to ensure some kind of confession, including waterboarding.

(BTW, from the SI link, "...The methods of torture most used by the Inquisition were garrucha, toca and the potro. The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the criminal from the ceiling by a pulley with weights tied to the ankles, with a series of lifts and drops, during which arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.^[28]. The toca, also called tortura del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had impression of drowning.^[29] The potro, the rack, was the instrument of torture used most frequently...." and "...Some of the torture methods attributed to the Spanish Inquisition were never used. For example, the "Iron Maiden" never existed in Spain, and was a post-Reformation invention of Germany. Thumbscrews on display in an English museum as Spanish were recently argued to be of English origin...." Good to know.)

Let me see now, projecting us into the future some 500 years, what shall we call this episode in American history? The Bush Inquisition? The Lost Decade? The Stupid-I-Forgot-Who-We-Were Years?

Enough of that. It's lovely out there once again. Sun is shining, temperatures in the mild range. Another beautiful day. Breakfast at the Cabin this morning with Jim and Wilma and a lot of Catholics in after their morning Mass. Jim and Wilma and a host of other Loogooteeites heading to Muncie and Anderson later today. Girls volleyball team going for the gold. Go Lions! (Lionesses? Lionettes?)

Thursday Wrap: Mukasey, Torre, Manchester

Notes to close another beautiful fall day:

-Mukasey nomination on the ropes? tpmmuckraker has lots more including a lot of discussion that delves into the legalities, illegalities and moralities of it all. One of the commentators writes:

The real travesty here, folks is not that the administration has tortured, not that they have decided to attack a country without cause, not that they have decided to exempt themselves and their hirees from prosecution in Iraq, not that they have decided "We the People" need to be spied upon with or without Constitutional permission.

The actions to fear is more basic and more dangerous is that Congress and the Senate is fully aware of the deeds and transgressions and has decided to allow it to continue. We have about 6 hundred folks up their in Washington voted in by "WE the People" who have decided not to submit or support actions to stop these events from happening now or in the future. Instead, they are condoning it (yes, I know they are speaking out against these clowns... but at the same time they are also voting to continue the actions).

That certainly would be a real travesty and certainly one of those not to be mentioned fears that I harbor. Please do not let it be so.

-Joe Torre to manage Dodgers. That would be the team that came from my birth city. Cool.

-Manchester (Goodbye, Darkness) done with Guadalcanal. Survives. On to Tarawa. Question for those of you who watched Ken Burns' The War: Did he spend any time at all on Guadalcanal? I don't remember it being mentioned. Manchester believes it was a decisive battle, one that showed that the Japanese could be stopped even when the Allies failed to support the Marines at Guadalcanal.

Bird Team Trumps Lents Team in Senior Game

In the Senior Game this morning, the Mike Bird, Leroy Streepy, Dave Strange and Vic Wallace team defeated the Jack Lents, Joe Gray, Ray Shaw and Diane Bird team by a score of two to one in singles match play. The particulars with the Mike Bird team players being listed first:

1. Mike Bird and Jack Lents - all square.
2. Leroy Streepy defeats Joe Gray.
3. Vic Wallace defeats Diane Bird.
4. Dave Strange beaten by Ray Shaw.