MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Some things I know . . .

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That any baseball hall-of-fame that does not have Pete Rose in it is not worthy of the name . . .

That golf is not a sport (a game, maybe) and Tiger Woods, whatever he is, is not an athlete . . . but we talked all about that yesterday, exhausted the topic, actually.

The subject of golf does deserve at least one other mention, which is the inordinate amount space devoted to this useless pursuit.

I shared with some of you yesterday some of what George Carlin had to say about this so-called “sport.”

Here is more Carlin peroration on the topic, except, this time, he’s political:

“I’ve got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem.

I know where we can build housing for the homeless. Golf courses. Perfect!

Golf courses. Just what we need.

Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods, land that is currently being wasted on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in primarily by white well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer among themselves.

I am getting tired, really getting tired of these golfing co–suckers in their green pants and their yellow pants and their orange pants and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts.

It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless.

Golf is an arrogant, elitist game and it takes up entirely too much room in this country.

Too much room in this country.

It is an arrogant game on its design alone. Just the design of the game speaks of arrogance.

Think of how big a golf course is. The ball is that fu–ing big! What do these pinheaded pricks need with all that land?

There are over 17,000 golf courses in America. They average over 150 acres a piece.

That’s 3 million plus acres, 4,820 square miles.

You could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, and racist, that’s another thing, the only blacks you’ll find in country clubs are carrying trays, and a boring game.

A boring game.

For boring people.

Ever watch golf on TV? It’s like watching flies fu- -.

And a mindless game. Mindless.

Think of the intellect it must take to draw pleasure from this activity.

Hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then, walking after it.

And then, hitting it again.

I say pick it up asshole you’re lucky you found the fu–ing thing.

Put in your pocket and go the fu– home. You’re a winner. You’re a winner. You found it.

No, never happen. No chance of that happening.

Dorko in the plaid knickers is going to hit again and walk some more.

Let these rich co–suckers play miniature golf!

Let them fu– with a windmill for an hour and half or so. See if there’s any real skill among these people.

Now, I know there are some people who play golf who don’t consider themselves rich.

I say F— ‘em!

And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist pastime.

–George Carlin, “Jammin’ In New York,” April 24 and 25, 1992 at the Paramount Theater in New York City (later a HBO special).

George Carlin on golf

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Robin Williams, too!

Then, finally, we come to golf.

Ever watch golf on TV? It’s like watching flies f–k.

I get more excited picking out socks.

Golf could be fun if you could play alone but it’s these genetic defectives that you have to hang around with that make it such a boring pastime.

Think of the brain that it takes to play golf. Hitting a ball with a crooked stick, then walking after it. And then, hitting it again.

I say pick it up ass—e. You’re lucky you found it. Put it in your pocket and go the f–k home, will ya.

Cowardly Wilpons

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I have to say that I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when Willie Randolph signed on to be manager of the Mets. Willie had worked so hard and strove so many years for an opportunity to manage, enduring endless interviews. When the opportunity came it was in New York and with the Mets, the team that seems to permanently have the word “hapless” appended to its name.

The reason for my trepidation for him is this: Bad things happen to people who go to the Mets, especially good people.

Do you know that the moment he was fired, he was no longer a member of the team and was, therefore, responsible for paying his hotel bill and for his flight back to New York? Not that Willie Randolph could not afford it, but they fired him in the middle of the night at the other end of the world. By e-mail at 3:17 a.m.

They could have fired him before the team left on this West Coast trip. New York’s voraciously racist sports press had been screaming for his head for months and had been on a death watch for weeks. Willie’s fate was especially acute by the week’s end.

So, why didn’t they fire him after the home series against Texas? Why let the man get on a plane, then fire him in the middle of the night? He could have cleaned out his locker and gone home.

The Mets is a low-class, bush league organization and the Wilpons are cowards.

Willie is class, a winner who was saddled with a team badly assembled by a master cover-your-own-ass general manager, Omar Minaya. They hired Willie, then Minaya cobbled together an over-the-hill gang of Latin players and a spoiled brat of a shortstop, Jose Reyes. Minaya consistently overrates and overvalues the team.

The reason they had “the collapse” last year was because they did not have the players. But they mistakenly thought that they had a good team and that they could win now. So they mortgaged the future of team to get Santana.

The problem for Willie now is that his Mets sojourn may have ruined his managerial career. He may never get another managerial post.

Tiger is . . . soft

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Let me put it this way: It’s not like he was being tackled as he hit the little white ball into the hole in the ground.

So, please, spare me the fist pumps and all the other histrionics. He may very well be a phenomenal, even a freak of a golfer. I’ll grant him that. He’s proven over these many years, since emerging as a prodigy, then dominating his field and his era so thoroughly, that he’s one of a kind. What exactly, I cannot say.

On top of that, he’s a very graceful and gentlemanly human being (at least appears to be; he probably kicks cats and dogs when no one is there to notice it).

What Mr. Woods is not is an athlete. And no amount of fist pumps and rebel yells will change that. I’m sorry to say this but a ping pong player is more of an athlete than Tiger will ever be.

Even rhythmic gymnastics and whatever abomination they conjure up at the Winter Olympics require more athletic ability than anything these layabouts do on a golf course. I also hate all the chemicals they put into the ground to get the grass to look so green. And I hate all that wasted space.

Having said all that, let me give Tiger Woods credit for one thing: the wardrobe. He has single-handedly changed the hideous style of dressing by men on the golf course. For that, and that alone, one can be thankful!

Moon in Jupiter!

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When I first read this I thought, surely, somebody’s got to be joking. I mean, it’s good of the former vice-president to make an endorsement when it would actually make a difference.

I’m tired, busy, and, did I mention tired? I don’t have time for Al Gore’s nonsense. Whoopty damn do!

I don’t want to hear anything more about Gore possibly being on the ticket.

I don’t care who wants it. Not gonna happen.

From kingnetic

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1. NBA. I’m thinking beyond the hurt and pain to ninja-like revenge for the absolute extension of corporate corruption to (no surprise) the anti-trust-exempted NBA.

I’ve been trying to think back, through my well-known cynicism, to all the unexpected extensions of conference and final playoffs.

Back then, during slow moments in the action, my twisted mind would think about the irony of the best interest of the league’s front office (in terms of the extra gorge of TV exposure and revenue) for each series to run six or seven games.

My pre-lawyer mind even imagined the TV contract clauses paying out less for shorter series, and Lawrence O’Brien and David Stern and their lackeys sweating bullets (as in Baltimore) over the lost millions in sweeps and 4-1 series, and conspiring tpo “fix” the problem.”

Apparently, they tried (and succeeded, til now).
To think I once had (completely unrealistic and misplaced) dreams of playing for this bunch.

2. NASCAR: the Good Ole Boys take a page out of the Sista v. Knicks playbook.

Did you hear that a black woman sued NASCAR for racial and gender discrimination? She says when she complained, NASCAR brass told her to “get over it.”

I hope she does get over (it), to the tune of the $225 million she’s suing them for.

It’s the yellow flag for them, and the checkered flag for her!
King

Tim Kaine of Virginia

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Va. governor could help fill gap for Obama: Centrist seen as dark horse among VP possibilities By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff, June 12, 2008

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – He is the popular governor of a critical swing state. He has working-class roots and a Harvard degree, and strong support from both business and labor. He is a devout Catholic and speaks fluent Spanish, and was the first governor outside Illinois to endorse Barack Obama for president.

Governor Tim Kaine is probably the least well known of the trio of rising Democratic stars from Virginia. The others – US Senator Jim Webb, the flame-throwing author and former Navy secretary, and former governor Mark Warner, the wealthy venture capitalist who briefly flirted with a presidential run – are regularly listed as vice presidential possibilities.

But Kaine’s biography and political resume fill many of the perceived gaps in Obama’s profile, making him for some analysts a dark horse in veepstakes 2008.

“The case for him is Virginia is a competitive state this time around, and he is kind of a centrist,” said Dan Palazzolo, a political scientist at the University of Richmond. “He’s prolife, basically, and he’s got this probusiness background. He’s also a big supporter of Obama.”

But, as Palazzolo notes, Kaine has no military or foreign policy experience, credentials Obama also lacks and that could prove a detriment for Republican John McCain, a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war who has traveled extensively around the world during his 22 years in the US Senate. “I think they’re substantial downsides,” Palazzolo said.

Obama, though, clearly has warm feelings for Kaine, who befriended the Illinois senator when he came to Virginia to stump for Kaine in 2005. (They discovered that their mothers came from the same small town in Kansas.) Campaigning in Virginia last week, Obama appeared with all three of Virginia’s Democratic notables, but he reserved special affection for Kaine.

“When you’re in the political business, there are a lot of people who are your allies, there are a lot of people who you’ve got to do business with, but you don’t always have a lot of friends,” Obama said at a rally, according to the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog. “The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia is my friend.”

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A fine pig

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Pig in Boots: The world’s only porker who is afraid of mud By Beth Hale, June 10, 2008

You can’t get much happier than a pig in muck, or so we are told.

But when this little piggy arrived in the farmyard she showed a marked reluctance to get her trotters dirty.

While her six brothers and sisters messed around in the mire, she stayed on the edge shaking. It is thought she might have mysophobia – a fear of dirt.

Owners Debbie and Andrew Keeble were at a loss, until they remembered the four miniature wellies used as pen and pencil holders in their office. They slipped them on the piglet’s feet – and into the mud she happily ploughed.

Now she runs over to Mr Keeble so he can put them on for her in the morning.

The couple, who run the award-winning Debbie and Andrew’s sausage company in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, named the young saddleback Cinders after Cinderella and her magical glass slippers.

They are using her to front a campaign to give a better deal to pig farmers.

Fortunately for five-week-old Cinders, she will not end up in one of their sausages. Although they were pig farmers for 20 years, the Keebles keep them only as pets nowadays.

‘I don’t know what will happen as she gets bigger,’ said Mr Keeble.

‘Hopefully she will grow out of her phobia of mud before she needs a new set of boots.’

SPECIAL REPORT ON RWANDA: 1 Dies Every Minute

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null by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Tuesday, July 26, 1994

GOMA, Zaire – The skies here were darkened by aircraft yesterday bearing desperately needed food and medical supplies to Rwandan refugees dying at a rate of one per minute in the squalid camps below.

But the water purifiers needed to combat the raging cholera epidemic did not arrive until nightfall.

So with no way to cleanse the filthy water of disease, 1,400 refugees died yesterday on day six of an epidemic that has cut through the crowded camps like a scythe.

By nightfall the death tally from the epidemic had risen to 14,000, and relief workers had started burning bodies because there was nowhere to bury them.

A mass grave the size of a football field dug into the soft earth on the outskirts of Goma was full. French troops farther down the road were using explosives to blow holes in volcanic rock while hundreds of rotting corpses piled up nearby.

United Nations officials, fearing the death toll could reach 80,000, yesterday asked the United States to launch a military-type operation to distribute aid.

“It is out of control,” said Peter Hansen, a top UN relief official. “We don’t have the capacity to deal With thiS.”

Last night, on the muddy road that leads from the Goma airport to the refugee camp at Katali, the dead were wrapped in mats and stacked like logs.

Bodies are so dense by the roadside that some bear tire marks. Dogs and people could be seen scavenging among the corpses.

“We are all dying,” said one refugee who gathered up his children yesterday and started to walk home. “It is better to be killed in Rwanda.”

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