Saturday, October 11, 2008
Bill O'Reilly meltdowns
A series of Bill O'Reilly meltdowns where Bill just loses it and it is so fucking funny.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Racist comments also Sharpton news
ETHNOCRAT AL 'The 'Do' SHARPTON
On Jews:
• "... Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not
anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. ... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."
• "White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and
astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."
LIP FLAPPING SPIKE LEE:
On Trent Lott:
• "...card-carrying member" of the Ku Klux Klan."
On Interracial couples:
• "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."
On Clarence Thomas:
• "A handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom."
NO-NAD HILLARY CLINTON
• "You f*cking Jew b@stard." - To political operative Paul Fray.
ETHNOCRAT CHARLES BARRON, N.Y.C. COUNCILMAN
During a reparations rally:
• "I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health."
MARY FRANCES BERRY, CHAIRWOMAN, US COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS
• "Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them."
ETHNOCRAT SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR WILLIE BROWN
• "The old white boys got taken fair and square."
JULIENNE MALVEAUX, USA TODAY COLUMNIST
• "There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there."
ETHNOCRAT ZACK WEBB, NAACP
• "Reparations are a really good way for white people to admit they're wrong."
Source: here
Getting back to Al Sharpton:
Uncle Sam To Sharpton: Pay Up, Deadbeat
Source: MSNBC [05/10/08]
Uncle Sam calls it balancing his books. Reverend Al Sharpton calls his header into the IRS’s bull’s-eye something else:
"Whatever retaliation they do on me, we never stop," Sharpton said. "I think that that is why they try to intimidate us." (MSNBC)
If you have any residual doubts that race card waving is an enriching endeavor, get over it. Over a number of years, Rev. Al has racked up an impressive tally of unpaid taxes:
* He owes New York City $365,558 in back taxes.
* He owes Uncle Sam $931,397 in back taxes.
* His for profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owes the state of New York $175,962.
Rev. Al has been fending off these claims, for several years, by using his nonprofit cabal,the National Action Network as a smokescreen. Bad bookkeeping, misunderstandings, and the like, are at the top of the excuses list. So far, it seems to be working, but Uncle Sam won’t be patient forever. For example, the relevant bean counters are especially annoyed over the failure of Rev. Al’s do-gooder cabal to meet their workers compensation and unemployment insurance obligations.
This isn’t the first time that Rev. Al has run afoul of the authorities. As recently as 2004, the IRS and FBI tried to pin him to the mat over irregularities associated with his Oval Office candidacy. A decade early, Rev. Al was acquitted of tax fraud and charges that he stole from one of his charities. In other words, Rev. Al isn’t as dumb as he looks, and will, in all likelihood, elude the forces of ‘injustice’ this time, too.
Source: here
On Jews:
• "... Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not
anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. ... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."
• "White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and
astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."
LIP FLAPPING SPIKE LEE:
On Trent Lott:
• "...card-carrying member" of the Ku Klux Klan."
On Interracial couples:
• "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."
On Clarence Thomas:
• "A handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom."
NO-NAD HILLARY CLINTON
• "You f*cking Jew b@stard." - To political operative Paul Fray.
ETHNOCRAT CHARLES BARRON, N.Y.C. COUNCILMAN
During a reparations rally:
• "I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health."
MARY FRANCES BERRY, CHAIRWOMAN, US COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS
• "Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them."
ETHNOCRAT SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR WILLIE BROWN
• "The old white boys got taken fair and square."
JULIENNE MALVEAUX, USA TODAY COLUMNIST
• "There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there."
ETHNOCRAT ZACK WEBB, NAACP
• "Reparations are a really good way for white people to admit they're wrong."
Source: here
Getting back to Al Sharpton:
Uncle Sam To Sharpton: Pay Up, Deadbeat
Source: MSNBC [05/10/08]
Uncle Sam calls it balancing his books. Reverend Al Sharpton calls his header into the IRS’s bull’s-eye something else:
"Whatever retaliation they do on me, we never stop," Sharpton said. "I think that that is why they try to intimidate us." (MSNBC)
If you have any residual doubts that race card waving is an enriching endeavor, get over it. Over a number of years, Rev. Al has racked up an impressive tally of unpaid taxes:
* He owes New York City $365,558 in back taxes.
* He owes Uncle Sam $931,397 in back taxes.
* His for profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owes the state of New York $175,962.
Rev. Al has been fending off these claims, for several years, by using his nonprofit cabal,the National Action Network as a smokescreen. Bad bookkeeping, misunderstandings, and the like, are at the top of the excuses list. So far, it seems to be working, but Uncle Sam won’t be patient forever. For example, the relevant bean counters are especially annoyed over the failure of Rev. Al’s do-gooder cabal to meet their workers compensation and unemployment insurance obligations.
This isn’t the first time that Rev. Al has run afoul of the authorities. As recently as 2004, the IRS and FBI tried to pin him to the mat over irregularities associated with his Oval Office candidacy. A decade early, Rev. Al was acquitted of tax fraud and charges that he stole from one of his charities. In other words, Rev. Al isn’t as dumb as he looks, and will, in all likelihood, elude the forces of ‘injustice’ this time, too.
Source: here
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Jesse Jackson uses the "n" word
Fox: Jackson used N-word in crude off-air remarks
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
CHICAGO - The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.
The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air
comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.
In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."
Though a Fox spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that Jackson used the slur, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments.
Jackson - who is traveling in Spain - apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics. "I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologize again to Senator Barrack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as to the American public," Jackson said in a written statement. "There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me. I also pray that we, as a nation, can move on to address the real issues that affect the American people."
A spokeswoman for Jackson's civil rights organization, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said she could not confirm that Jackson used the slur.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
Let's see if they run Jackson out of town on a rail like they did Don Imus or will the civil rights crowd cover for Jackson like they always do. If Don Imus or another white male said this they would demand his hide but since it's Jackson look for a cover-up which is typical for this group.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
CHICAGO - The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.
The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air
comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.
In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."
Though a Fox spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that Jackson used the slur, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments.
Jackson - who is traveling in Spain - apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics. "I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologize again to Senator Barrack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as to the American public," Jackson said in a written statement. "There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me. I also pray that we, as a nation, can move on to address the real issues that affect the American people."
A spokeswoman for Jackson's civil rights organization, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said she could not confirm that Jackson used the slur.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
Let's see if they run Jackson out of town on a rail like they did Don Imus or will the civil rights crowd cover for Jackson like they always do. If Don Imus or another white male said this they would demand his hide but since it's Jackson look for a cover-up which is typical for this group.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Alternative forms of energy
Fuel from foul
Using food and crop residues, a new breed of entrepreneur looks to cut waste and create energy
By Laurent Belsie and Mary Wiltenburg Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor
ST. LOUIS AND BOSTON –
Forget Iraq, OPEC, and that Alaskan wildlife refuge for the moment. Some of the clues to the world's energy future may lie on your dinner plate.
The plants that grew the rice you're eating also produce rice straw, which is mostly burned today but could be turned into fuel. Corn already produces ethanol, but stalks left in the field have energy potential. And all the country's millions of pounds of leftover chicken and turkey bones could produce millions of barrels of crude oil. The turkey experiment is already under way.
For decades, scientists have worked to turn trash into energy: wood into gasoline and municipal waste into industrial fuel. Some ventures worked; others proved too expensive or unwieldy. Now, a new generation of entrepreneurs is trying to turn the nation's muck into black gold. Armed with better technology and understanding, they're making promising starts.
These conversions, if done correctly, could not only bolster the United States' energy reserves, they could cut its leading sources of waste, starting with the nation's farms.
"We're held hostage by troubles in Venezuela, by uncertainty in Kuwait," says Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies (CWT), a New York environmental technology company. "Let's take advantage of all this waste and make a product we really need."
CWT has made perhaps the biggest splash by teaming up with food production giant ConAgra Foods Inc. Later this month CWT's $25 million turkey-to-oil processor will start turning wastes from ConAgra's Carthage, Mo., plant into light crude oil and other products.
Jeff Tester, a chemical engineering professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, has visited a CWT pilot plant in Philadelphia and is intrigued by the technology's potential. "This is a good example of a win-win situation," he says. "It's not necessarily the holy grail, but it's an innovative idea."
Using a process called thermal depolymerization, which breaks down organic compounds with water and heat, CWT can make fuel from fowl - or corn waste or municipal sludge, for that matter. The Carthage plant, which will process about 200 tons of animal waste daily, is expected to pump out some 7.6 million gallons of bio-derived oil in its first year.
That's tiny - about the size of a Texas wildcatter's well - even compared to the 2.7 billion gallons of ethanol the US expects to produce this year, largely from corn. But that industry receives government subsidies - something Mr. Appel doesn't receive. At the moment, it costs $15 per barrel to produce oil from the Missouri turkey plant, and costs could drop below $10 as more plants go up, he says. That would put his reprocessed oil on par with conventional drilling costs, roughly between $5 and $13 a barrel.
"Right now the margins are tight," Appel says. "If we really want to reduce [US] dependence on [foreign] oil, we need help to grow more quickly."
The company is also negotiating contracts to recycle municipal sludge, solid waste, and other materials.
Meanwhile, DDS Technologies, a European environmental technology company, is bringing another new waste-recycling system to the US. Already in use by several major Italian companies, the process reuses all the elements of the material it recycles, making it much more efficient than most primary food processors.
"When I look at some of the processes we use to make foods, they're archaic," says the company's COO Kerin Franklin. "The process for making soy milk, it must have been invented by a couple of hippies 20 years ago. You wind up throwing a lot away."
DDS takes all that trash and breaks it down into small enough bits to render it useful on many levels. Take pomace, the stuff left over when oranges and other fruit are squeezed for juice. Currently, fruit processors pay roughly $40 a ton to other companies to haul away the pomace, which they turn into livestock feed. DDS can take the same waste and harvest pectin (used in yogurt, gelatin, marshmallows, and fruit snacks), flavor substitutes (used in baking and animal feed), fiber (used in cosmetics production), and essential oil of orange (used as a flavoring). "Our goal is zero left over,"Ms. Franklin says. "The entire waste stream is utilized."
The US branch of DDS, based in Boca Raton, Fla., hopes to start making use of its innovative air-pressure technology later this year. By accelerating particles of matter then suddenly stopping them, DDS can separate their components much the way a speeding motorcycle, suddenly stopped, would send first the rider's helmet, then the rider, then the bike itself flying through the air.
The company is already working with a major US cityto handle its municipal sludge, and has just signed a 10-year joint venture with biomass-to-ethanol company Xethanol to convert sewage into the sugars used in ethanol production. Because DDS's process uses air and not physical contact with the material, Franklin says, it can assure a higher level of purity than other systems.
While reprocessing agricultural waste has huge potential, no one knows how huge. In a Foreign Affairs article earlier this year, Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, and two coauthors estimated that available agricultural waste could produce 10 times the ethanol that corn does today. But it's unlikely all of it will be reused for energy. Every year some of it gets plowed under, some gets burned, some gets thrown away. Much of the rest - 45 million tons, enough to cover the entire Washington, D.C., area in 17 inches of muck, according to the American Feed Industry Association - is reprocessed into animal feed.
Clearly, if environmental rules continue to stiffen, farmers will be casting about for new solutions. For example: federal regulations ban the burning of rice straw (the detritus left over after harvest) by mid-decade. So the industry is looking for ways to reuse the straw, including ways to process it into energy. Entrepreneurial firms such as CWT and DDS see potential. But some analysts believe such efforts will require federal help to blossom. "There's the potential to accelerate this much, much faster, if this country applies the same sort of aggressive approach we've taken to finding oil," says Dr. Tester of MIT. "But you have to learn by doing it."
Source:here
Using food and crop residues, a new breed of entrepreneur looks to cut waste and create energy
By Laurent Belsie and Mary Wiltenburg Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor
ST. LOUIS AND BOSTON –
Forget Iraq, OPEC, and that Alaskan wildlife refuge for the moment. Some of the clues to the world's energy future may lie on your dinner plate.
The plants that grew the rice you're eating also produce rice straw, which is mostly burned today but could be turned into fuel. Corn already produces ethanol, but stalks left in the field have energy potential. And all the country's millions of pounds of leftover chicken and turkey bones could produce millions of barrels of crude oil. The turkey experiment is already under way.
For decades, scientists have worked to turn trash into energy: wood into gasoline and municipal waste into industrial fuel. Some ventures worked; others proved too expensive or unwieldy. Now, a new generation of entrepreneurs is trying to turn the nation's muck into black gold. Armed with better technology and understanding, they're making promising starts.
These conversions, if done correctly, could not only bolster the United States' energy reserves, they could cut its leading sources of waste, starting with the nation's farms.
"We're held hostage by troubles in Venezuela, by uncertainty in Kuwait," says Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies (CWT), a New York environmental technology company. "Let's take advantage of all this waste and make a product we really need."
CWT has made perhaps the biggest splash by teaming up with food production giant ConAgra Foods Inc. Later this month CWT's $25 million turkey-to-oil processor will start turning wastes from ConAgra's Carthage, Mo., plant into light crude oil and other products.
Jeff Tester, a chemical engineering professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, has visited a CWT pilot plant in Philadelphia and is intrigued by the technology's potential. "This is a good example of a win-win situation," he says. "It's not necessarily the holy grail, but it's an innovative idea."
Using a process called thermal depolymerization, which breaks down organic compounds with water and heat, CWT can make fuel from fowl - or corn waste or municipal sludge, for that matter. The Carthage plant, which will process about 200 tons of animal waste daily, is expected to pump out some 7.6 million gallons of bio-derived oil in its first year.
That's tiny - about the size of a Texas wildcatter's well - even compared to the 2.7 billion gallons of ethanol the US expects to produce this year, largely from corn. But that industry receives government subsidies - something Mr. Appel doesn't receive. At the moment, it costs $15 per barrel to produce oil from the Missouri turkey plant, and costs could drop below $10 as more plants go up, he says. That would put his reprocessed oil on par with conventional drilling costs, roughly between $5 and $13 a barrel.
"Right now the margins are tight," Appel says. "If we really want to reduce [US] dependence on [foreign] oil, we need help to grow more quickly."
The company is also negotiating contracts to recycle municipal sludge, solid waste, and other materials.
Meanwhile, DDS Technologies, a European environmental technology company, is bringing another new waste-recycling system to the US. Already in use by several major Italian companies, the process reuses all the elements of the material it recycles, making it much more efficient than most primary food processors.
"When I look at some of the processes we use to make foods, they're archaic," says the company's COO Kerin Franklin. "The process for making soy milk, it must have been invented by a couple of hippies 20 years ago. You wind up throwing a lot away."
DDS takes all that trash and breaks it down into small enough bits to render it useful on many levels. Take pomace, the stuff left over when oranges and other fruit are squeezed for juice. Currently, fruit processors pay roughly $40 a ton to other companies to haul away the pomace, which they turn into livestock feed. DDS can take the same waste and harvest pectin (used in yogurt, gelatin, marshmallows, and fruit snacks), flavor substitutes (used in baking and animal feed), fiber (used in cosmetics production), and essential oil of orange (used as a flavoring). "Our goal is zero left over,"Ms. Franklin says. "The entire waste stream is utilized."
The US branch of DDS, based in Boca Raton, Fla., hopes to start making use of its innovative air-pressure technology later this year. By accelerating particles of matter then suddenly stopping them, DDS can separate their components much the way a speeding motorcycle, suddenly stopped, would send first the rider's helmet, then the rider, then the bike itself flying through the air.
The company is already working with a major US cityto handle its municipal sludge, and has just signed a 10-year joint venture with biomass-to-ethanol company Xethanol to convert sewage into the sugars used in ethanol production. Because DDS's process uses air and not physical contact with the material, Franklin says, it can assure a higher level of purity than other systems.
While reprocessing agricultural waste has huge potential, no one knows how huge. In a Foreign Affairs article earlier this year, Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, and two coauthors estimated that available agricultural waste could produce 10 times the ethanol that corn does today. But it's unlikely all of it will be reused for energy. Every year some of it gets plowed under, some gets burned, some gets thrown away. Much of the rest - 45 million tons, enough to cover the entire Washington, D.C., area in 17 inches of muck, according to the American Feed Industry Association - is reprocessed into animal feed.
Clearly, if environmental rules continue to stiffen, farmers will be casting about for new solutions. For example: federal regulations ban the burning of rice straw (the detritus left over after harvest) by mid-decade. So the industry is looking for ways to reuse the straw, including ways to process it into energy. Entrepreneurial firms such as CWT and DDS see potential. But some analysts believe such efforts will require federal help to blossom. "There's the potential to accelerate this much, much faster, if this country applies the same sort of aggressive approach we've taken to finding oil," says Dr. Tester of MIT. "But you have to learn by doing it."
Source:here
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Overlooked long enough...this is his time
Bryant shouldn’t have to wait anymore for MVP
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
Apr 9, 6:36 pm EDT
EL SEGUNDO, CA - MARCH 25: DJ…
Kobe Bryant hasn’t always been the best person, the best teammate, the best ambassador for the National Basketball Association. This is the reason so many voters are searching for someone else to vote Most Valuable Player. For this, Bryant can blame himself. This is the price paid for petulance.
Still, Bryant is an MVP. He’s been the best player, a three-time champion and voters must ask themselves: If I don’t vote for him this year, what will it ever take? His talent, his accomplishments, his place in history, command multiple MVPs. This has been a season when everything has come together to make his candidacy unimpeachable.
His time, his trophy.
“You can’t just continue to take what Kobe is doing for granted,” Pistons president and Hall of Famer Joe Dumars said. “The guy is one of the truly great players and he should be recognized as such.”
No one needs historical context to make the case for Bryant this year. His season stands on its own. At 29, this isn’t a lifetime achievement award. Kobe is still the best of the best. MVPs, however, are never won overnight in the NBA. Mostly, it takes constructing credibility over the years. He’s been so great, for so long that Dumars is right: People do take him for granted.
As Mark Heisler’s informal poll in the Los Angeles Times showed, the MVP race appears to be down to Bryant and New Orleans point guard Chris Paul. Someday, Paul is going to be an MVP, a champion. He has saved basketball in New Orleans, passing Steve Nash and Jason Kidd as the best point guard on the planet. There isn’t a player in the league that I love more to talk with, that I love more to watch play, than Paul.
Yet, he will have to go No. 2 on my ballot. He hasn’t been first-team All-NBA. He still hasn’t played in the postseason. His time is coming, and coming fast, but there’s time for Paul. Before Paul and LeBron James and maybe Dwyane Wade are 29 years old, they’ll probably have MVP trophies. Bryant’s wait has been long enough.
AP - Apr 9, 2:09 pm EDT
Those who believe in Bryant’s greatness are forever ripping the voting process, saying it’s a joke that he’ll never been named MVP. Normally, they don’t tell you what year that should’ve happened, who should’ve lost out. Once Tim Duncan had won his two MVP awards, Nash and Dirk Nowitzki were winning, the Lakers losing, and Bryant lost three straight times in his prime. In those years, the mediocre Laker teams crushed his candidacy.
Always, it was this: In the post-Shaq era, Bryant had to be playing for a contender. This was the voter’s mandate. As much as anything, Nowitzki was the best player on the 67-win Mavericks a year ago and it was declared his window, his time. To hear people say that they want to hold off voting to see who finishes the Western Conference with the better record – New Orleans or Los Angeles – is missing the point here.
Bryant doesn’t need the Lakers to finish with the best record in the regular season. When the Lakers are together, yes, they are the most talented team in the NBA. Only, they haven’t been together this season. The Lakers are still fighting for the No. 1 seed with Andrew Bynum out since the middle of January and Pau Gasol arriving in February and missing nine games in March.
The idea that an MVP has to do more with less is nonsense. For coach of the year, it’s a fairer argument. When Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were winning MVPs in the 1980s, who held their rosters against them?
No one ever made Nash reach a conference final – never mind win a title – to give him his first MVP. He came on late in his career to transform himself, but that was never necessary with Bryant. At 29, he’s been great for most of a decade. He’s paid his price for petulance. Joe Dumars is right: No more taking Bryant for granted.
His time, his trophy.
Source:here
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
Apr 9, 6:36 pm EDT
EL SEGUNDO, CA - MARCH 25: DJ…
Kobe Bryant hasn’t always been the best person, the best teammate, the best ambassador for the National Basketball Association. This is the reason so many voters are searching for someone else to vote Most Valuable Player. For this, Bryant can blame himself. This is the price paid for petulance.
Still, Bryant is an MVP. He’s been the best player, a three-time champion and voters must ask themselves: If I don’t vote for him this year, what will it ever take? His talent, his accomplishments, his place in history, command multiple MVPs. This has been a season when everything has come together to make his candidacy unimpeachable.
His time, his trophy.
“You can’t just continue to take what Kobe is doing for granted,” Pistons president and Hall of Famer Joe Dumars said. “The guy is one of the truly great players and he should be recognized as such.”
No one needs historical context to make the case for Bryant this year. His season stands on its own. At 29, this isn’t a lifetime achievement award. Kobe is still the best of the best. MVPs, however, are never won overnight in the NBA. Mostly, it takes constructing credibility over the years. He’s been so great, for so long that Dumars is right: People do take him for granted.
As Mark Heisler’s informal poll in the Los Angeles Times showed, the MVP race appears to be down to Bryant and New Orleans point guard Chris Paul. Someday, Paul is going to be an MVP, a champion. He has saved basketball in New Orleans, passing Steve Nash and Jason Kidd as the best point guard on the planet. There isn’t a player in the league that I love more to talk with, that I love more to watch play, than Paul.
Yet, he will have to go No. 2 on my ballot. He hasn’t been first-team All-NBA. He still hasn’t played in the postseason. His time is coming, and coming fast, but there’s time for Paul. Before Paul and LeBron James and maybe Dwyane Wade are 29 years old, they’ll probably have MVP trophies. Bryant’s wait has been long enough.
AP - Apr 9, 2:09 pm EDT
Those who believe in Bryant’s greatness are forever ripping the voting process, saying it’s a joke that he’ll never been named MVP. Normally, they don’t tell you what year that should’ve happened, who should’ve lost out. Once Tim Duncan had won his two MVP awards, Nash and Dirk Nowitzki were winning, the Lakers losing, and Bryant lost three straight times in his prime. In those years, the mediocre Laker teams crushed his candidacy.
Always, it was this: In the post-Shaq era, Bryant had to be playing for a contender. This was the voter’s mandate. As much as anything, Nowitzki was the best player on the 67-win Mavericks a year ago and it was declared his window, his time. To hear people say that they want to hold off voting to see who finishes the Western Conference with the better record – New Orleans or Los Angeles – is missing the point here.
Bryant doesn’t need the Lakers to finish with the best record in the regular season. When the Lakers are together, yes, they are the most talented team in the NBA. Only, they haven’t been together this season. The Lakers are still fighting for the No. 1 seed with Andrew Bynum out since the middle of January and Pau Gasol arriving in February and missing nine games in March.
The idea that an MVP has to do more with less is nonsense. For coach of the year, it’s a fairer argument. When Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were winning MVPs in the 1980s, who held their rosters against them?
No one ever made Nash reach a conference final – never mind win a title – to give him his first MVP. He came on late in his career to transform himself, but that was never necessary with Bryant. At 29, he’s been great for most of a decade. He’s paid his price for petulance. Joe Dumars is right: No more taking Bryant for granted.
His time, his trophy.
Source:here
Monday, March 31, 2008
Elections
Write in Ron Paul's name on the ballot for president if it is not there. Ron Paul is the only one to resist the feminist pork so he is definitely more preferable to Obuma or Hitlery. He is still running,perhaps as an independent or better yet Libertarian. The second choice is would be John "Open Borders" McCain. The third choice would be leaving the country.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
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