WSJ Disrespects The 1960s Boston Celtics

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Friday’s Wall Street Journal featured this story in its Friday Journal sction:

Is Spain’s ‘La Roja’ The Greatest Team Ever?

Not just the best in soccer: the best of all time in any sport. Why the Spanish national team could make history.

Tell Babe Ruth to enjoy another quiet glass of whiskey at his corner table. Red Auerbach can take his victory cigar outside. Send Vince Lombardi’s Packers an honorary cheesehead in commiseration. “La Roja,” the Spanish national soccer team, may soon surpass them.

This is going to be a hard one for a lot of sports fans in the U.S. to swallow, but if La Roja manages to win a second consecutive European championship, it’s going to have to be considered the greatest sports team of all time. Euro 2012 begins Friday in Poland and Ukraine and ends July 1.

Two consecutive European championships? Seriously? The greatest sports team of all time?

Even more ridiculous, here’s the graphic that accompanied the piece:

Really?

Where are monumental 1960s Boston Celtics teams?

Answer: Delegated to the jump page.

RED’S RUN | Red Auerbach’s Boston Celtics, led by Bill Russell, won eight titles in a row.

So La Roja’s two in a row trump Red’s eight in a row? You’ll have to read the Journal piece to sort out the logic of that.

Even so, the hardworking staff says:

Feh.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Presidential Jobapalooza! (Mitt Romney “Did So” Edition) [New Series!]

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Mitt Romney’s penurious campaign (it has spent under $5 million dollars on advertising since clinching the Republican presidential nomination vs. umpteen million dollars spent by GOP Super PACs) is actually dropping some coin on a TV spot defending his jobs record in Massachusetts.

Via MSNBC’s First Read:

In a response to this week’s hard-hitting Obama TV ad that criticizes Romney’s job-creation record in Massachusetts — that it ranked 47th in the nation — the Romney camp is up with its own ad. “As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney had the best jobs record in a decade,” the ad goes. “Romney reduced unemployment to just 4.7%. “He balanced every budget without raising taxes. He did it by bringing parties together to cut through gridlock.”

The spot:

 

Reality check:

Some quick facts: The unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 4.7% in Dec. 2006, which was Romney’s last full month as governor, but that was higher than the nation’s overall 4.4% rate. While the ad states that Romney balanced the budget without raising taxes, he raised revenues and fees as governor.

And the beat(down) goes on.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

WSJ’s Jason Gay On The “Crabby Dudes” Celtics (One Day After Edition)

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The Wall Street Journal’s always-readable sports columnist Jason Gay submitted this on Thursday:

Heat on Brink? Celtics Don’t Care

Enough with the psychobabble about the Miami Heat. Please.

Right now I don’t care if LeBron and Dwyane Wade are cosmically doomed, fourth quarter finishers, deprived of the clutch gene, or quitting to become pastry chefs.

This is not about the Heat. Can it not be about them, just this once?

Because here are the Boston Celtics. Behold a strange fact you may not have believed one week ago: The Heat are not the better team in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Celtics are. At least they have been through the first five games of this series, which pushes into Boston Thursday with Miami down 3-2 and on the verge of elimination.

Gay proceeds to call the roll of the Celtics’ old and crotchety players:

Here is Kevin Garnett. He is 29,000 (or 36) years old. He doesn’t like to be reminded of this. It makes him tetchy, growly. When people get old, they either get sweet old or nasty old. Garnett is nasty old. He is unimpressed by youth, its nonchalance, its lack of seriousness.

Garnett has no interest in youth’s frivolity. You hit a Wiffle ball into his backyard, and he feeds it to the dog.

This makes Garnett a little frightening, and very, very good.

What follows are similar profiles of Paul Pierce (“[He] breezes around the final two minutes of a close game like he’s trying to find the sesame honey almonds at Trader Joe’s. This is fun for him. He loves it”), Ray Allen (“[If] you’re Erik Spoelstra, do you want to see Allen shooting that three-pointer in the corner of a tie game? Yeah, of course not”), and Rajon Rondo (“By now you know about The Rondo. He is the everything—the delicious hot mess, the most inexplicable and unstoppable force in this series”).

And the column’s climactic conclusion:

Miami is still in this. They have two of the most dazzling players in the game, capable of massive offensive outbursts. Ask Indiana if Wade and James can claw Miami back into a series. But on their shoulders is the possibility of another nauseating off-season of second-guesses and recriminations. A failure versus the Celtics will make the 2011 fallout after Dallas feel polite.

On Thursday they face a bunch of crabby dudes from Boston who could not care less.

The better team is winning. That’s how this stuff is supposed to work.

How it actually did work is that, inconveniently, the Heat torched the crabby dudes Thursday night.

The hardwatching staff looks forward to Gay’s column on Monday.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Campaign Ad o’ the Day (Skeet-Shooting Obamacare Edition)

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

State senator Ron Gould is shooting to represent Arizona’s 4th Congressional district – literally.

Here’s his current TV spot, in which he skeet-shoots a copy of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (via BuzzFeed):

 

Gould will also personally patrol the border to keep Mexican immigrants out of the Grand Canyon State.

New Arizona state slogan:

Send lawyers, guns and money. The skeet has hit the fan.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Let Lord Stanley’s Wild Rumpus . . . Continue (Broom The Brooms Edition)

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

No sweep in the Stanley Cup Finals for the Los Angeles Kings, as the New Jersey Devils finally woke up and came to play.

Via the hometown LA Times:

Devils’ Adam Henrique is spot on against Kings

Rookie forward, who has a knack of getting into proper position, scores go-ahead goal for New Jersey, keeping the Devils alive in Stanley Cup Final.

Adam Henrique sat in the New Jersey Devils‘ locker room with only one thing on his mind Wednesday.

“Man, I’m hungry,” Henrique told a team official standing next to him.

That, in short, could describe the pang of every Devils player who has been flinging pucks at Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick the last week. The Stanley Cup Final had become their hunger games.

We’ll see who dines well Saturday night.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Facehook: Selling Mobile-Only Ads

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

In its never-ending quest to generate ad-itional revenues, Facebook has trashcanned its policy of selling desktop and mobile advertising as a package. Via All Things D:

Facebook Would Like to Sell You a Mobile Ad

A frequent refrain from the growing number of Facebook bears: The company doesn’t know how to make money on mobile, even though its users spend a ton of time there.

Here’s a small step in the right direction: Facebook will now let advertisers place messages on its mobile apps, without having to pay for desktop placement as well.

But here’s the Sneak ADtack part:

Recall that Facebook didn’t have any mobile ads at all until the end of February, when it rolled out a plan where marketers could claim part of users’ feeds with content that doubled as ads.

Content that doubles as ads.

Say hello to the News World Order.

Originally posted on the Newer! Improveder! Sneak ADtack!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Maureen Dowd: Pleasure Is Her Business

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Today’s New York Times features Op-It Girl Maureen Dowd’s latest installment in her Vatican jihad over sex, contraception, and etc.

Is Pleasure a Sin?

It’s hard to say what is weirder:

A Sister of Mercy writing about the Kama Sutra, sexual desire and “our yearnings for pleasure.”

Or the Vatican getting so hot and bothered about the academic treatise on sexuality that the pope censures it, causing it to shoot from obscurity to the top tier of Amazon.com’s best-seller list six years after it was published.

Just the latest chapter in the Vatican’s thuggish crusade to push American nuns — and all Catholic women — back into moldy subservience.

At issue is “‘Just Love: a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,’ by Sister Margaret Farley — a 77-year-old professor emeritus at Yale’s Divinity School, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar — [which] came out in 2006.”

The Vatican is now on that “academic treatise” like Brown on Williamson, leading Dowd to this conclusion:

This latest ignoble fight with a noble nun adds to the picture of a Catholic Church in a permanent defensive crouch, steeped in Borgia-like corruption and sexual scandals, lashing out at anyone who notes the obvious: They have lost track of right and wrong.

Your conclusion goes here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Celts Can Take The Heat

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

All together now: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

Admit it, none of you – none – predicted that the Boston Celtics would be up 3-2 after Game Five of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals. Most of you (and when I say you, I mean me too) thought they’d be gone in five.

But the Miami Heat seem to lack the toughness to match their talent. They certainly lack the toughness of this year’s Celtics squad. And so the Heat face elimination in what will undoubtedly be a foaming-at-the-mouth Boston Garden on Thursday.

Whiskey TD Foxtrot!

P.S. I cleaned my refrigerator during the game. As the hardworking staff has previously noted, when I clean the fridge (or do other household chores) during playoff games, good things happen for Boston sports teams. But it only works once a season.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

NYT: MA Voters Will Not Be Distracted By “Seemingly Trivial Issues”

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Good news for U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-Pow Wow Chow This) from Monday’s New York Times.

What is particularly interesting is the reaction of voters to Ms. Warren’s ethnic heritage, an issue that has been playing out for several weeks. Republicans have hammered her for having told employers that she has Indian ancestry.

After weeks of hedging and repeated questioning by the news media, Ms. Warren — who clinched the Democratic Senate nomination over the weekend — finally acknowledged that she had made such assertions. But the polls suggest that the voters have largely shrugged.

Massachusetts will not be competitive in the presidential election; it is a solidly Democratic performer at that level. But the larger message for the Romney and Obama campaigns may be that voters are not going to be distracted from more serious concerns by seemingly trivial issues.

We’ll see when the ad blitzes start in earnest.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

The Kings Totally Pwn – No, Wait – Totally Respect The Devils

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Game 3 of this year’s version of Lord Stanley’s Wild Rumpus featured a total beatdown of the New Jersey Devils by the Los Angeles Kings.

From Yahoo! Sports:

L.A. Kings one win away from first Stanley Cup after dominating Devils in Game 3, 4-0

The Los Angeles Kings moved to within a win of their first Stanley Cup with a 4-0 victory over the New Jersey Devils in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, as goalie Jonathan Quick cemented his status as the Conn Smythe favorite with a 22-save shutout in his best performance of the series.

According to NBC, the Kings became the first NHL team to take 3-0 leads in four straight series, the first time that’s happened since the league adopted the seven-game series format.

If history is any indication, the Devils are toast. The 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs are the only team to rally from a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Final to win the title. Those Leafs, the 1975 New York Islanders and 2010 Philadelphia Flyers, are the only teams to rally to win a series once down 3-0.

(That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen for the Devils. Take it from a Made Yankee Fan in Boston 2004 survivor.)

Still, the Kings ruled the Devils in every aspect of the game last night. They won almost every battle for the puck, took advantage of their opportunities to score, and generally pushed the Devils around for the entire game.

It’ll be a devil of a challenge for New Jersey to come back now.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments