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Kerry Blows Red Sox Stats, Again, and Again
This week John Kerry twice messed up the Red Sox playoff scores, in one game proclaiming them to be ahead 10-9, in another 7-1. The Sox never had 10 runs in the first game (they went from 9 to 11 on Mark Bellhorn's two-run homer off the right field foul pole), and scored six in the second (see footballfansfortruth.us for more info). For those of you who are not Boston-area natives, you might not understand that Red Sox loyalty is far greater than political loyalty, and while this might not cause anyone to vote for Bush, it might make Kerry voters stay home. Worse, many Red Sox fans have vowed to see the Sox win a World Series before they die, so tens of thousands of Kerry voters could die before November 2. Of course, this won't affect Massachusetts, Vermont, or Rhode Island, and probably not Maine, but New Hampshire is a possibility.
This... is lame. God I can't wait 'til the election is over, and the pro-kerry and pro-bush supporters stop taking drugs....
I'm glad /. is finally showing a non-bias towards the candidates. Especially over such an important issue as this during a time of war, crappy economy, etc.
Where is the free world headed if we elect a man who can't keep track of baseball scores while trying to win an election?
No sig for you!!
If Kerry is going to get faulty intelligence, I'd rather it be on baseball scores than on, say, whether a country should be invaded.
Personally I think it's disgusting that people would change their vote based on how much a candidate knows about a sporting event. Of course it does make Kerry look rather silly if he just pretended to be interested; but on the other hand the fact that candidates feel they must be seen to like baseball is pretty sad (and reflects very badly on the electorate).
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
...after reading the title...whew!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
If the "Manny Ortiz" incident and claiming to have been at '86 Game 6 when he was actually in Boston haven't already cost him someone's vote, this isn't going to change that mind.
Perhaps next we will be discussing the brand of toilet paper the candidates use.
Or whether they use enough.
FredRated
Rate not lest you be rated
Linus Torvalds repeatedly misspelled the word 'kernel' in smp.c. Twice he wrote 'kernl' and three times he used 'kernal'. Not being a Slashdot regular, you might not know how important spelling is. This might not move any users to BSD, but it could keep a few nerds from recompiling their kernal until patches are submitted.
What? John Kerry can't keep his Red Sox scores straight? Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw! I've clearly been supporting the wrong man all along! How can we possibly expect strong leadership from a man who doesn't watch enough SportsCenter?
Please. Did it ever occur to anyone that John Kerry might be a little bit busy, considering that there's one week to go before Election Day? Naw, that couldn't be it.
Here's an idea: After the election, Malda deletes the entire Politics section from production, and burns any backup tape from a date that the Politics section was active. His editorial staff has already proven that they're juvenile half-wits. We didn't need a two-party pissing contest to reinforce it.
This sig intentionally left blank.
One candidate has messed up the score of the Bosox series a couple of times, keeping in mind that the series is also taking place during the busiest most demanding time of his life.
The other candidate traded Sammy Sosa for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique, and as a sidenote also rushed us into a terrible protracted destablizing and unnecessary war in the middle east while running up record deficits and presiding over a massive job loss.
Make your choice, America.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Worse, many Red Sox fans have vowed to see the Sox win a World Series before they die, so tens of thousands of Kerry voters could die before November 2.
That's so wrong, it's not even right.
TV ratings for Game 7 of the Sox-Yanks series topped a 50 share in Boston. Games usually don't get more than a 20 share, even for a playoff series. The point of that is that there are lots of people who are suddenly Red Sox fans.
... and maybe he should hire more well-rounded staff :-).
Shrug. I never liked Kerry anyway.
Anybody can make a mistake. Kerry never said he watched the games, did he? His people should get the facts straight
sigs, as if you care.
The claim of a "rush to war" is a total lie. The US gave Saddam many years to comply with reasonable sanctions and to stop his aggression and terrorism. The Afghanistan government was also given ample time to turn over the Al Quada terrorists.
PUDGE YOU ARE SO FUNNY.
Reminds me of that "Audible.com is biased" thing. Boy, did that have me laughing.
You are so witty and good at baiting us liberals who can never tell.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Don't blame Kerry on this. He doesn't care about the Red Sox. He would have bought the team already if he cared a bit about it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Candidate A: I certainly love my Duff.
Candidate B: I too drink that particular brand of beer!
Homer: The man never had a Duff in his life.
There are a good number of political issues that do matter to Slashdoters. Perhaps we could discuss those?
P.S.: Pudge - Just because michael posts Stupid Crap, doesn't mean you have counter by posting more of the opposite type.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
this is so stupid... i'm supposed to care what the leader of the free world said about a baseball game? Whats next? Kerry not fit to be president cause of a peanut allergy? There has been no talk of issues this election, hyper-politics and imagism have replaced dignity and discussion. They aren't parties anymore, they're brands.
00010111 always try everything twice
sigh, oh well
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
...how seriously people take Slashdot. This story is silly. It's kinda funny. The whole "Football Fans For Truth" site is hilarious -- it has by far the funniest, stupidest pictures of Kerry. I'm sure all of us have equally dumb pictures of ourselves.
I'm also pretty sure that this kind of campaign is doing less damage to the Kerry campaign than the campaigning of the Socialist party.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
I've got mod points, but I don't see a choice that allows me to mod the story -1 Blithering ...
WILL SOMBODY PLEASE REALIZE THIS WAS POSTED IN THE "FUNNY" TOPIC????
/. for being biased and missing the joke.
Christ. What's that sound? Oh, that's a million liberals flaming
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
God, you liberal freaks here need to lighten up.
It's listed under "humor" for a reason. I don't bitch and moan about the "bush is a monkey" sites, so don't whine cause some group (accurately) pokes fun at the fact that Kerry does a crappy job pretending to be a sports fan.
The only part of the site that might truely sway voters is the "hunting" segment. Pretending to be a lifelong hunter w/ a gun voting record such as his is just wrong (almost as bad as exploiting Cheney's daughter).
Slashdot seems like a reasonable format to have an intelligent discussion about politics. Unfortunately, that hasn't turned out to be the case. Oh well.
It's stupid to think that any real issues are solved in a presidential election anyway. If you really care about politics, join/form a PAC. I joined iPac which I think is a good start.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Most Slashdot regulars might not know how important spelling is, either.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"And so long as you ignore the fact that the sanctions were working in terms of preventing WMD aquisition..." Yet, he was still trying. And he was in violation of many of the cease-fire agreements. As much as you would like to forget. "the real reason for the war, remember?" No. The WMDs were but one of many valid reasons. You are also forgetting that Saddam, up until the invasion, was still refusing weapons inspections. "that Iraq was effectively contained at the cost of $2 billion a year" Contained? Saddam's terrorists operated in Kuwait and Israel. " and 0 lives lost" This is the oddest claim of all. 0 lives lost? Saddam was executing 10,000-20,000 citizens a year. I've ignored no facts. You have ignored many, and have lied a few times.
That would be funny, except for the fact that Saddam's forces engaged in more than 2,000 attacks on US and UK peacekeepers in the "no fly" zones.
Ah, but what if the winner starts allowing Canadian drugs to be imported?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
He stopped that in 1991.
He never did any of that. That was Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, among others.
He was booed when he appeared at a Red Sox games before the convention. I think they see through his "insincerity" when it comes to his Red Sox Fandom.
Sure this is pedantic, but...
a baseball team can only score runs one at a time. Before scoring 11 runs, a team must score 10. In the case of the game in question, there was a runner on base when a home run was hit... but the runner on base must score before the batter does.
So, for a few seconds, there were exactly 10 runs. If, for whatever reason the batter didn't cross home plate, the score would have remained 10. That would never happen, right? Ask Robin Ventura about his NLCS Game 5 grand slam back in 1999. Once the runner on third touched home and RV touched first, he never bothered circling the bases.
In short: pudge is wrong -- the Red Sox did have 10 runs before they had 11. P.S. Bellhorn hit the home run to right field (not left) and it hit the right field foul pole, AKA the Pesky Pole. See how easy it is to mis-remember?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
...but doesn't anyone else think that it looks bad when the only anti-Kerry submission on /. in the past week or so is a humor piece?
Rob
Wow. I have spent considerable time in the past putting together well-linked relevant stories, only to have them rejected. Not that I'm grousing about it, but what exactly is this?
Is it a 'most of our political posts bash bush, so let's try and keep it balanced' kind of a story? WTF? Is this a goddamn political blog? There are hundreds of those out there, why did we have to drag it in here, and worse still, couldn't we try to stick to relevant issues, or barring that, actual fucking news?
Are we all supposed to spin off of some technological analysis of this gaffe? (Kerry must have been getting his 'updates' from Windows XP. he he.)
I mean, can someone step up and tell me what possible reason someone would think that should be posted. And for that matter, why would an editor accept it?
I had this sinking feeling that having a politics section would somehow cloud the otherwise mostly worthwhile content on slashdot, but I never could have predicted the results would be this dismal.
We are talking about a political candidate (Nerd check: FAILED) and that candidate's sports knowledge (Nerd check: FAILED).
I'm hard pressed to think of anything that matters LESS to me than if Kerry correctly remembered baseball game scores.
"...for Pudge."
This is a really bizarre blanket statement with little basis in reality.
Yay blanket assertions!
Come on -- on one hand you have baseball, on the other you have the absolutely worst president in recent memory. What's worse -- a simple gaffe about sports statistics (big surprise: not everyone gives a damn about such minutae), vs another four years of this nightmare? Somehow I think Pudge is resoundingly incorrect on this one.
But still, it's nice to see that he feels comfortable enough in his position as one of the "official" voices of Slashdot to use the site as a soapbox for his cranky politics... :-)
Or not. You never can tell!
???
This article seems to be some new application of the phrase "news for nerds, stuff that matters" that flouts just about every term in the phrase. Impressive.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
If Iraqi planes were flying in our (I'm an American, and I'm assuming you are, too) airspace, do you think we wouldn't try to shoot them down?
Look, both Bush and Kerry misspeak ALL THE TIME; it's simply the nature of American politics. As a citizen, it's your civic duty to seek out the misstatements of both candidates and determine which has been speaking the more dangerous/egregious misstatements (and, yes, in some cases, outright lies). This means more than just reading the National Review's bashing points of one candidate.
As for Kerry's goose-hunting, it's a shallow photo-op. He has time for it because he think it'll get him votes, whereas he's probably calculated that following the world series won't give him as much benefit. Don't tell me Bush has never engaged in a shallow photo-op when he should've been running the country.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
1) Exposes the Christ-like and irrational following Kerry commands as his disciples are unable to see the obvious humor in this. How dare anyone make fun of the Great Leader!?!?!!?
2) Demonstrates once again that John Kerry is not like Americans. He doesn't care about sports, but he pretends to. He doesn't share anything with the "average American" when it comes to lifestyle or interest. But he has no problem lying to make it look like he does. All of this goes to the invite him home to dinner test. Kerry fails this consistently.
GG pudge
Are you saying that it looks bad as in the /. editors are biased or that it looks bad as in we have all these terrible allegations regarding the incumbent's mismanagement of the war and yet this is the worst stuff we can find on the challenger? Seriously, your comment could be interpreted either way, depending on the viewpoint/bias of the reader.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
I was going to post something like this, I was even going to use the word fuck, but I probably would have missed the reference to Bush's ownership of a sports team. Well done.
I was thinking along both lines, actually. Though I'm sure other websites have dug up more damning evidence against Kerry than this.
Rob
A great plan--you get modded up by both side's partisan hacks :)
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
Everyone who's getting so worked up about this, for any reason:
See the foot? It stands for "It's funny. Laugh."
Do it.
Love the Third Amendment?
"True, but this was the ONLY reason presented by our government for unilateral action"
False on two counts. There were many reasons presented, and the action was anything but unilateral. (Look up unilateral in the dictionary).
"against the will of the UN and most of our allies."
One slightly true, one false. It was to enforce UN sanctions, so it was that much with their will. It was also done with most of our allies.
"but pissing of the rest of the world (except Britain and Poland"
You really know nothing, do you? You forget to name Australia, Japan, and many many others. However, this shows your contradiction. Any action by the US/Britain/Poland is at least "trilateral", not unilateral
"...but abandoned it for unilateral action"
Just because you repeat a lie does not make it true. Do you lack knowledge of arithmetic?
"The "cowboy up" mentality cost the US lots of respect"
Cowboys herd cattle. What does this have to do with anything? Or is it something we have to know the obscure Keifer Sutherland movie "Cowboy Up" to know? Good going, Roger Ebert. No, the US did not lose respect. France hates us anyway (the place is turning into Nazi Germany with is grassroots groundswell of antisemitism anyway).
"that John Kerry believes the....unilateral preemptive strike with invalid justification"
This shows that John Kerry (if he said this) is like you: someone who can't count. He would also be ignorant of the valid justifications, and the fact that this was a retaliation (not preemptive).
"poor planning of post invasion Iraq (unguarded nuclear materials and explosives have disappeared)."
You bought into this one. This "new headline" is from April 2003! The materials vanished before alliance forces reached the site. The only way to prevent this would have been to invade earlier.
"While the president insists that he did everything perfectly, and would do the same again knowing what he knows now"
The President has admitted mistakes many times. You are lying on that one. However, it is true that he would do the same again. Of course he would: he chose a wise course.
"some are questionable (Saddam's terrorist operating in Isreal, Kuwait - are spies terrorists?)"
No, actual terrorists are terrorists. Not spies.
"but are you missing the big picture?"
I see the big picture. However, you are bending over backwards to support Saddam and don't see it. Maybe the Bush-bashers would start to be convincing if they used truthful arguments for once.
There were dozens of allies even without the participation of one organization (the UN).
"A majority of the permanent UN security council (France, Russia, China) condemned the action"
France was in bed with Saddam. Russia has yet to be an ally. China tends to oppose good causes and support imperialism and aggression (see their support for Serbia).
"Yes, two nations were involved"
That is still a whopping lie (as dozens were involved, including the independent part of Iraq in the north). But I can't see how you can argue 'unilateral' and be consistent. You might try 'bilateral' from now on. It is still totally false, but slightly less erroneous.
"Yes, two nations were involved, but both were acting in defiance of international opinions and support"
There was much international support. You seem really sore that Nazi France and the mainland China regime did not support this.
Not really. Everything that Bush says is humorous.
"Fool me once, shame... shame on... shame on you."