The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox: 02.22.22

Posted on | February 23, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.22.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

“…and so it was proclaimed throughout the land of r/animemes that this day would be forever known as Zero Twosday.”
Silicon Valley delenda est.

It’s a girl! It’s a dinosaur! It’s Zero Two!

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Ted Turner Suicidal? also, Ukraine, You Are So Screwed
Twitchy: Justin Trudeau’s Slam On Putin Melts Projection Detectors Everywhere, also, Grope & Flail – The #FreedomConvoy Protests Revealed “The Ugly Side Of Freedom”
Louder With Crowder: Kyle Rittenhouse Drops A Few Names That Might Want To Lawyer Up, Cardi B Clarifies Position On Ukraine After Twitter Confusion (NOT A PARODY), and Mike Rowe Blasts PM Zoolander For Turning Truckers Into Villains
Vox Popoli: Arktoons Hits 5 Million, The Jester’s Privilege, and Russia Recognizes Donbass Republics

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: How Can We Achieve Our Freedom?
American Conservative: Don’t Eat The Bugs, also, The Fall Of The Meritocracy
American Greatness: Freedom Convoy Organizer Tamara Lich Denied Bail On Charges Of “Mischief”
American Power: Xi Jinping’s Power Grab, also, Putin Orders Troops Into Donetsk & Lugansk
American Thinker: The Democrats Are Turning America Into The New Venezuela
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Settlement News
Babalu Blog: Amidst Island-Wide Shortages, Cuba’s Dictatorship Is Selling Food To Red China, also, Fifth Sunday Of Castro Regime Arresting Ladies In White Trying To Attend Church
BattleSwarm: Am I Paranoid Enough? also, Jordan Peterson Wants You To Wake Up
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, Deformed Martian Craters, and A Thumbnail Bio Of George Washington
Cafe Hayek: Konstantin Kisin Explains Vaccine Hesitancy
CDR Salamander: Putin – First Person Spoken Word
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – This & That, Five More Canadian Tyranny Thoughts Under The Fedora, and Joe Vs. Vlad
Don Surber: Canadian Protest Turns Violent, WaPo Puts Down Freedom As White, and A Press Unworthy Of America
First Street Journal: If Someone Was Out To Destroy Transgender Acceptance, What Would They Be Doing Differently? also, Tulsi Goes To CPAC
Gates Of Vienna: Austria Turns On A Dime, The Doxxing Of Canada, and Never Waste An Opportunity For More Refugees
The Geller Report: NYC Stands With Truckers Against Canadian Tyranny, also, Majority Of Democrats Back PM Zoolander’s Tyrannical Crackdown
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, NGC 6217, and I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Hollywood In Toto: Here’s The Best Biden Impersonation, Period, DC Comics Artist Bounces Back By Defying Woke Mob, and Late Night TV Just Got Even More Liberal
The Lid: How Joe Biden Created The Ukraine Crisis, also, Armed Antifa Confront Armed Portland Homeowner – One Dead, Five Wounded
Legal Insurrection: Adult Transgender Child Molester Brags Of Light Sentence In Juvenile Jail, Israel Rated More Democratic Than U.S., Spain, Italy, & South Africa – Amnesty International Hardest Hit, and NC Schools Allow Kids To Change Name & Sex Without Parental Consent
Michelle Malkin: Thank You, Tom Tancredo
Nebraska Energy Observer: Sunday Matinee Returns, Freedom Convoys, and Pleas & Sadness
Outkick: The Winter Olympics’ TV Ratings Sucked…Real Bad, Katherine Webb Still Has Brent Musburger’s Back After All These Years, and Annie Agar Should Not Have Apologized
Power Line: Remembering The Indispensable Man, The Democrats’ Selective Authoritarianism, and History is Back
Shark Tank: GOP Lawmakers Turn On Sabatini, also, FL GOP Responds To Carlos Smith’s Failed Amendment To “Don’t Say Gay” Bill
Shot In The Dark: Someone Else’s Backyard, also, We’re In The Best Of Hands
The Political Hat: End Political Litmus Tests In Education, also, Ain’t No Cure For The Manichean View
This Ain’t Hell: Another Accounted For, Texas Hotel To Pay Damages For Refusing Service To Disabled Vet W/Service Dog, and American Democrats Strongly Favor PM Zoolander’s Crackdown On Freedom Convoy
Transterrestrial Musings: Counting Calories Burned, Thoughts On Academic Freedom, and Good News
Victory Girls: Canadian Parliament Votes For Tyranny, also, Tamara Lich Accused Of Pre-Crime, Denied Bail
Volokh Conspiracy: Justice Sotomayor’s Statement In Ortiz v. Breslin
Weasel Zippers: NASCAR Fans Can’t Stop Chanting “F*** Joe Biden”, Bob Beckel Dead At 83, and Inflation Hits 10%
The Federalist: What Made Abraham Lincoln Grow Stronger In Adversity, After Slandering Loudoun County Parents, CNN Is Trapped By San Francisco Recalls, and Once Again Joe Biden Has Failed A Foreign Policy Test
Mark Steyn: Blues In The Night, The Permanent Emergency, and Putin Makes His Move

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Category: Linkagery

Way to Go, ‘White Supremacists’!

Posted on | February 22, 2022 | Comments Off on Way to Go, ‘White Supremacists’!

You probably didn’t realize “white supremacists” had taken over San Francisco, but that’s just how clever and sneaky they are:

The progressive San Francisco school-board president recalled by voters earlier this week claimed her ouster was a “consequence” of fighting for racial justice, and represents a victory for “white supremacists.”
“So if you fight for racial justice, this is the consequence,” board president Gabriela López wrote in a tweet on Thursday. “Don’t be mistaken, white supremacists are enjoying this. And the support of the recall is aligned with this.”
More than 70 percent of voters elected to recall López and two other progressive board members, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga. The trio were the only board members on the seven-member board who were eligible to be recalled.
López shared a screenshot of a Washington Post article about the recall titled, “San Francisco recalls school board members seen as too focused on racial justice.”
The article’s subheading adds, “In a warning for the left, critics saw misplaced priorities, as the board focused on equity issues while schools remained closed.”
As Washington Post politics reporter David Weigel noted in a tweet responding to López, the recall vote was “racially diverse, including hundreds of non-citizen immigrants who were eligible to participate.”

Yeah, when you’ve lost Dave Weigel — and 70% of the vote in San Francisco — maybe you should rethink your agenda. But of course they won’t. Being “woke” means never having to admit that reality exists.

In point of fact, a key factor in the recall was that the school board essentially destroyed the prestigious Lowell High School by eliminating its meritocratic admissions policy, which really pissed off the city’s large Asian-American community. But if you’re into meritocracy — if you believe hard work should be encouraged and exceptional ability should be recognized — then you’re a “white supremacist” no matter what your race, according to the dogmatic beliefs of 21st-century “progressives.”




 

Category: California, Education, Racism

Ukraine as 21st-Century Sudetenland

Posted on | February 22, 2022 | Comments Off on Ukraine as 21st-Century Sudetenland

Excuse me if the headline is a bit too Godwin’s Law, but the analogy — an invasion launched on the pretext of supporting regional separatists — seems justified, and I don’t mean to do a cheap “Putin is the New Hitler” thing, because obviously the “New Hitler” will be whoever Republicans nominate for president in 2024. Anyway . . .

Putin Invades Ukraine Just One Month
After Biden Gave Him Permission to Mount
a “Minor Incursion” Into That Country

Ace’s headline fairly well summarizes the situation. I’ll resist the temptation to compare Biden to Neville Chamberlain, which would be an insult to the memory of Chamberlain, who wasn’t nearly as bad as Biden. Besides which, it must be admitted that what Chamberlain was facing in 1938 was a historical novelty — nothing like the Nazi regime had ever previously existed — whereas Biden has no such excuse; the Russian threat is familiar, and we have more than 80 years of historical example to teach us why weakness and appeasement don’t work.

The profound irony, of course, is that Biden (and Democrats and the media generally) spent so much time trying to paint Trump as a Russian stooge, and claiming that Biden would “get tough” with Putin — well, where’s the evidence that this alleged “toughness” deterred Putin?

Recall what Biden told the world on January 19:

The White House tried quickly to clarify Biden’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine would come with a lower cost than a full-scale invasion.
Biden predicted during his nearly two-hour news conference that Russia would pay a steep price if it invades Ukraine. But he also suggested the level of punishment would depend on what an invasion might look like.
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do,” he said.

Obviously what happened was that administration officials had been discussing various scenarios — including the “minor incursion” scenario — and that Biden accidentally “said the quiet part out loud.” In other words, the brain-addled fool disclosed strategic plans of the U.S. and its allies and, in doing so, signaled to Putin that he effectively had a green light, that the West would regard a takeover in eastern Ukraine as a “minor incursion.” And the only response is economic sanctions, a policy that has always failed to deter aggressors ever since the League of Nations tried it against Mussolini during the Abyssinian crisis.

Our Commander-in-Chief is a clown. No one respects him, and the fact that Americans elected this idiot means that no one respects us. Nor should they. America has become a decidedly unserious country.




 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine

The Doom That Came To Complex 34

Posted on | February 22, 2022 | Comments Off on The Doom That Came To Complex 34

— by Wombat-socho

It seems I haven’t done any book posts since last fall, when I spent three posts trashing one of the worst lists of combat SF ever posted anywhere, so I’d better get cracking, because I have a lot to talk about. 
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

One of the subgenres of SF that has fascinated me since childhood has been the Cthulhu Mythos, which Steven King had the wit to realize was the true beginning of American horror, slasher films notwithstanding. Leigh Kimmel takes the old tentacles out for a new and surprising spin in The Space Race Trilogy, which somehow successfully folds Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff into Lovecraft’s mythos, and makes it work. Only two of the stories actually involve our legendary Single-Combat Generals, but I understand Kimmel has a slew of stories set in the timeline where Gus Grissom survives the Apollo 1 fire, with major consequences for the history of America in space, and I intend to look into them. Both Kimmel’s slim anthology and Wolfe’s beefier take on the early days of our space program are available on Kindle Unlimited.

Mike Williamson’s That Was Now, This Is Then is that rare beast: a sequel that is actually better than the original, in this case A Long Time Until Now. This is not to slight the original book, which was pretty damn good, but the sequel recalls Lieutenant Sean Elliott and some of his original team to Afghanistan, where the humans from the future want them to go back in time again to retrieve other groups of humans stranded in the past. The problem is, some of those groups don’t want to go back, and the future humans have some dark secrets they’re hiding from Elliott and his people. That Was Now, This Is Then also contains some interesting meditations on the responsibilities of a small-unit leader, centered on the recovery of another American squad that went native. Like the original, very much recommended. 

I don’t know why I haven’t read more Dave Freer; considering his excellent work on the sequels to The Witches of Karres, (The Wizard Of Karres, et seq.), the excellence of Cloud-Castles should not have surprised me. This hilarious tale of Augustus Thistlewood’s arrival on Sybill III and the results of his well-intentioned attempts at philanthropy reminds me somewhat of Wodehouse’s classic Bertie & Jeeves tales, except that in Freer’s story Bertie isn’t completely witless* and Jeeves is a young street urchin on the make. Sybill III is populated by descendants of a prison transport crash, who apparently were the kind of criminals even Australia couldn’t tolerate, who eke out an existence on a sizable  alien anti-gravity plate and various drifting clumps of vegetation, all floating in the upper atmosphere of this moon orbiting a brown dwarf. A fun story with lots of humour, also available on KU.

I went to considerable trouble to get Volume 17 of Komi Can’t Communicate, what with the USPS mangling the first shipment and outright losing the second one (I had no idea the route from Phoenix to Tonopah went through the LA railyards) before finally getting a copy at a Reno Barnes & Noble. It was worth it, though; the Itan High School cultural festival is underway, and the manga takes a hard swerve into romantic comedy as Rumiko Manbagi (former gyaru) comes to the horrible realization that both she and Komi are crushing on Tadano – and precisely because they’re friends, Komi won’t allow her to just bow out gracefully. A long conversation between Komi and Rumiko ensues, and for once Komi isn’t using her notepad. Less serious is the second volume of Higehiro, in which Yoshida, the salaryman who’s taken in runaway Sayu only to have her run away again, finds Sayu in a nearby park with his junior colleague Mishima. It could almost be a harem comedy, but the chad Yoshida resolutely resists Sayu’s busty (and underage) blandishments while encouraging her to go get a job at the local convenience store – which brings another young lady into the mix. 

Finally, it’s not just family loyalty but enthusiasm for a very interesting book that compels me to plug my aunt Pat’s So Far From Home, a collection of letters to and from my paternal great-grandparents, Daniel Donovan and Nora McCarthy. I cannot, as a linguist, fail to recognize what an immense amount of work went into this book. In addition to transcribing the letters, Dr. O’Malley had to do more than a little translation as well, since our ancestors in County Cork often wrote in something closer to Gaelic than English; in addition, the extensive footnotes help explain the context as well as expanding on the history of rural farmers in late 19th century Ireland, something as unimaginably distant from most modern Americans as peasant life in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Despite all the scholarly labor that went into it, this is still a very readable book, made up as it is of letters from ordinary working people, whether they were farmers, midwives, or immigrants working in the shoe factories and upper-class households of late 19th century Massachusetts. Well worth your time and money, especially if you have Irish immigrants in your family tree. 

*In fact, he proves to be a Doc Savage in the making, and Briz (his Jeeves) grows up in a surprising fashion as well. 

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Category: Books, Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.21.22

Posted on | February 22, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.21.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

So…I am departing in the wee hours of Thursday on the See Confinement & Die Tour with a fellow N3F member who lives in Boulder City. We’re going to see if we can make it to Mike Williamson’s latest Emergency Holographic Convention on the east side of the Nashville suburbs, driving straight through on I-40 without benefit of Buc-ees, and then back again Sunday. For once, I’m not packing my laptop, so there won’t be any posting from Wednesday through next Monday, and possibly not until Tuesday, depending on how exhausted I am from the drive back. If this sounds crazy, maybe it is, but it’s not like you didn’t know that by now.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Canadian truckers & supporters, right about now

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Florida Woman? Well, She’s From New York, also, The Scandal F*c*book Doesn’t Want You To Know About
Director Blue: The Dreams That Fly Away
EBL: Severance, From, and What Is At The Center Of A Black Hole?
Twitchy: Kyle Rittenhouse Tells Tucker Carlson Who’s On The List To Get Sued For Defamation, also, Christopher Rufo Responds To John Oliver’s Rant About The Anti-CRT Movement
Louder With Crowder: Watch Freedom Convoy Protesters Sabotage A Live MSNBC Hit, also, Evangeline Lilly Pleads With PM Zoolander – Stop Being A Tyrant To “Our Fellow Canadians”
Vox Popoli: The Techno-Pedocracy, Another “Suicide”, and Fears For The Imperial Order
Gab News: The Parallel Economy Fund

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Globalism Is A Death Cult
American Conservative: They’re Not Djoking, also, Don’t Repeat The Crimean War
American Greatness: The Gathering Storm In The West, also, America Isn’t Divided, It’s Being Hijacked
American Power: San Francisco’s Asian-American Political Power, also, Britney Spears Scores $15 Million Book Deal
American Thinker: “You Will Know Them By Their Fruits”, also, The Power Of The Powerless Is Real
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Critical Military Theory Friday, also, Goodbye Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: How American Airlines Became State Security Agents For Castro, also, Cuba Defends Putin’s Aggression Against Ukraine
BattleSwarm: Tucker Carlson On P.J. O’Rourke, also, LinkSwarm For February 19
Behind The Black: Sierra Club Official Busted For Vandalizing Brownsville Mural With Anti-SpaceX Graffiti, Northrop Grumman Launches Cygnus Freighter To ISS, and Why Are ANY Parents Sending Their Kids Back To Loudoun County Public Schools?
Cafe Hayek: An Exchange At EconLog Over COVID Policy, also, J.P. Sears Ends On A Note Of Optimism
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, What Does A Decaying Empire Look Like?
Da Tech Guy: Five Short Canadian Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, A Funny Vic Power Story That Shows How Far We’ve Come
Don Surber: Putin Shows Our Media & Deep State Are Frauds, NYT Finally Tells The Truckers’ Side, and Houston Paper Smears Founder Of Rice University
First Street Journal: When A Credentialed Media Article Gives Numbers, It’s Wise To Check The Math, also, The Left Cannot Tolerate Dissent
Gates Of Vienna: Hatred Coupled With Lies, “Half The Population Is Ill Or In Quarantine”, and Sweden Is Racist & Hate-Filled!
The Geller Report: U.S. Truckers Gear Up For Cross-Country Anti-Vax Protest Convoy, also, Emergencies Act Backlash
Hogewash: Bob Belvedere, RIP, The Winds In Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: How Tim Burton’s Batman Made The MCU Possible, also, Dave Chappelle & Clarence Thomas Highlight Week Of Cancel Culture Fails
The Lid: President’s Day – A Homogenized Celebration Of Nothing, also, How Harry S. Truman Helped God Perform A Miracle
Legal Insurrection: Joy Reid Insists Parents Protesting School Boards Are “Mainly White Conservatives”, When Fascism Comes To America It Will Look Like Justin Trudeau’s Canada, and Democrats Fear “Extinction” In Rural Areas
Nebraska Energy Observer: Two More Men – Cancer Sucks, Random Observations, and Leviathan
Outkick: MLB & The Players Association Currently Meeting In Florida, Michigan’s Juwan Howard Slaps Wisconsin Coach Following Loss, and Steelers Hire Brian Flores As Defensive Assistant & Linebacker Coach
Power Line: Latest From The Dreamworld Of Green Energy, Putin Moves On Ukraine (Updated), and Durham For Dummies
Shark Tank: Demings Irked By Defund The Police Narrative Against Democrats, also, Laura Loomer Secures Top GOP Op For Her Campaign Team
Shot In The Dark: Calling All “Journalists”, Welfare Check?, and Metaphor Alert
STUMP: The Geography Of Homicide
The Political Hat: Science On The Verge Of Creating Hyperintelligent Catgirl Mentats, also, Trudeau The Tyrant
This Ain’t Hell: Ensign & 4 Chiefs Charged For Leaking F-35 Crash Video, Valor Friday, and Berlin Airlift’s “Candy Bomber”, Col. Gail Halvorsen, Dies At 91
Transterrestrial Musings: The Hatred Of Democrats By Rurals, Climate Risk, and That NYT Ad About J.K. Rowling
Victory Girls: Beijing Olympics – A PR Disaster,  Canada’s Dictator Problem, and Elon Musk Schools Fauxcahontas On Tax Realities
Volokh Conspiracy: Court In Civil Case Holds Trump’s J6 Speech Could Be Constitutionally Unprotected Incitement, also, Federal Court Bars Federal Agencies From Considering Cost Of Climate Change In Agency Rulemaking
Weasel Zippers: Fat Antifa Thug Crashes Police Presser To Whine Cops Aren’t Protecting Them From White Supremacists, Now You Can Watch U.S. Wages Fall In Real Terms, and Ted Cruz Has Best Tweet About Dead Epstein Associate
The Federalist: “I Must Betray You” Illustrates The True Evils Of Communism For Teens, Michael Sussman’s Lawyers – It’s OK If He Lied To The FBI, and State Lawmakers Waking Up To Blackrock’s Dangers To Americans And Acting
Mark Steyn: The Free World In Eclipse, Rode Hard – Steve McQueen & Junior Bonner, and Into The Darkness

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Return From Reno Double-Scoop Edition

Posted on | February 21, 2022 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Return From Reno Double-Scoop Edition

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This week, another fine find from Reddit’s r/cosplaygirls subreddit. I present to you Barbie Princess Valentine’s Edition by u/miss_sarcastic 7.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

No GI Joe and Ken jokes, please.

 

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1624, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. (Week 2) Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1631, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Return To Prosperity Friday, Rule Five Critical Military Theory Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon (I) with another Saturday Gingermageddon from this week.

EBL: Kimi, Ukrainian Maidan, Echoes Of The Past, Ozarks Season 4, The Tinder Swindler, Menthol Bad But Crack Pipes Good?, Grave Digger, The Best Years Of Our Lives, Macbeth, Suspicion, The Eye Of The Tiger, Frank Sinatra – My Funny Valentine, Martina McBride, Look Ma No Masks, Valentine’s Day with Angie Dickinson, King Tut, Allison Gollust, CODA, Henri Matisse – Blue Nude, and Empty Tables & Ebb Tide

A View From The Beach: Sydney Sweeney Wants Fewer Nude Scenes, Fish Pic Friday – Taylor Lynn, Two-Faced, Women Lose Jobs Over Loose Clothes, Oysters? There’s an App for That, Kap Kops Secretly Surveil Republican Congressman, Wednesday Wetness, She Aborted the “Devil’s Child”, Rippergate, Tuesday Tanlines, Politics Delayed, Not Politics Denied, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday, Michelle Hayden, Fish Pic Friday – Alina Semjonov, Gone Fishin’, Thursday Tanlines, Hogan Demands More Braceros, Wednesday Wetness, Tattoo Tuesday, Valentines Day Morning in the Fields of Politics, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Sunday Sunrise and How Did I Miss This?

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Category: Rule 5

Russia-Ukraine Crisis Continues

Posted on | February 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Russia-Ukraine Crisis Continues

Lots of headlines via Memeorandum:

New intel adds to US fears that Russia is readying for military action
— CNN

Ukraine Live Updates: Biden Warning
on Russian Attack Was Prompted
by New Intelligence
— New York Times

Ukraine tensions: US sounds fresh alarm
over Russia invasion fears
— BBC

U.S. has intel that Russian commanders have orders to proceed with Ukraine invasion
— CBS News

Ukraine’s president criticizes Western “appeasement” of Putin’s aggression
— Axios

It would appear that the current level of mobilization is such that Russia is unlikely to halt — The Guns of August all over again. That”s the thing you have to understand about modern armies: You don’t fully mobilize for no reason. That’s what I was trying to explain to certain of my friends before the Iraq War. There was no way, once we’d deployed all those troops halfway around the world, that we were not going to invade. Congressional “debate” over authorizing the invasion was a kabuki show, because the decision had already been made. And if we can believe what’s being reported, this thing is past the point of no return:

Putin has amassed approximately 190,000 troops near the Ukraine border, effectively surrounding the country. A U.S. official told reporters on Friday that 40-50% of the up to 190,000 Russian soldiers near Ukraine’s borders are now “in an attack position.”

What will happen? And what will Joe Biden do? Our Commander-in-Chief botched the Afghanistan withdrawal, and his next foreign-policy success will also be his first foreign-policy success, so the real question is, “How will Joe manage to screw everything up this time?”

Eighty-one million votes!




 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

Nick Saban Dropped THE BOMB!

Posted on | February 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Nick Saban Dropped THE BOMB!

While everybody else is expecting war in Ukraine, Alabama football fans are reeling from the nuclear holocaust unleashed in a speech last week by Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban:

“We lost the national championship game, basically because we had 3 corners out, both starters and the best backup. So we’re playing with some guys that didn’t have a lot of experience. It eventually got us in the fourth quarter. We had the kind of team where we had a really good quarterback and we wanted to have skill guys that they couldn’t guard. So we had 2 who were really, really good — (John Metchie III and Jameson Williams). They both got hurt.
”Now, we were playing with guys that typically didn’t have to play at those positions. The lesson to be learned is there were 3 guys, and I’m not calling out any names, that basically didn’t do the things they needed to do throughout the season because they were frustrated with their circumstance. … They’re frustrated with their circumstance because they’re not playing as much as they want to. They’re outcome oriented, they want to worry about how many balls they catch or how much playing time they get or whatever it is. So they don’t focus every day on being a complete player at their position, and they don’t work in practice and prepare for the games because they say to themselves, ‘Why should I do this? I’m not gonna play anyway.’
”So, we had 3 guys, they all had a significant role in the national championship game, and not one of them, not one, could take advantage of the opportunity that they had, because they never ground through it. They never made themselves the best player they could be. When they got the opportunity, they couldn’t do it. That’s a lesson for everybody. What comes first? Playing time? Or making sure that you’re ready to play and create value for yourself when you get the opportunity?”

Whoa! That’s a bombardment of heavy truth, and a message to the rest of the team. A lot of these five-star recruits expect to be starters their freshman year, and think it’s the job of coaches to give them what they consider as their “fair share” of playing time. So if they don’t start right away, they get their feelings hurt and start sulking, but then when something happens to give them a shot — and having Metchie and Williams both get hurt was clearly not something anyone anticipated — they’re not ready for it. You can contrast that to Mac Jones, who rode the bench for three years before he got his chance to be Alabama’s starting quarterback, but by God, he was ready when he got that chance.




 

Category: Alabama, Football
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