A Chicken Is Not Pillage

Staring At The Threads Of A Season Gone

I was going to write this last week,  but time did me no favors.  Also, it's probably best to get some time under one's belt before bombasting about any emotional event.

The Broncos are Super Bowl Champions of the NFL, in a year no one will forget because of a magical number, L.  Whoops, sorry, that's Roman.  50.  I meant to write 50.  I didn't lie in my last football post, but I was dreadfully incorrect.  I was not scared of the game until about 2 hours before it.  Then I became terrified.  Out of 12 tries, twice only has the number 1 defense in the league lost a Super Bowl.  The first was SB 17, when Don Shula's Miami Dolphins took their league best defense against Joe Theismann (pronounced 'theesmen' before a Notre Dame marketing guy suggested changing it to 'thighsman' rhyming it with 'Heisman') and the Washington Taterskins.  The Dolphins had the league's worst quarterback in David Woodley, kind of like the Broncos had the league's worst starting quarterback in Peyton Manning this year.  The second time was last February when the number 1 defense of the Seahawks was defeated, not by the offense of the Patriots but rather by the defense of New England on one play.  Defense wins championships, unless it doesn't because the offense can't get it done.  Yeah, I was pretty scared at kickoff.  One of the pundits at the NFL network said that this was the best defensive effort in the history of the SB.  He wasn't comparing the 2015 Broncos to the 1985 Bears.  He was describing both defenses.  The offenses scored a total of 14 points, out of 34.  The kickers scored 14. Both offenses combined for 500 yards.  The Panthers had 5 sacks, the Broncos 7.  Von Miller's strip-sack with Malik Jackson's recovery in the endzone was truly the difference, even if Gano had not borked a field goal attempt.  This was a defensive showing for the ages, for both teams.  I love defensive hard nosed football, and I loved this game.

The Broncos are champions, and they earned it by grinding all year long.  However, just like last year, I disagree with the choice for MVP.  Had Carolina won the game, my choice would have been Taqib Alib, who willfully and stupidly handed Carolina 30 yards on their touchdown drive.  Von Miller played lights out, getting to Newton in 2.8 seconds on his second strip sack.  However, the real MVP wasn't a player at all.  The honor of 'Most Valuable'  belongs to Wade Phillips, defensive coordinator for the Broncos.  In the second quarter, Ginn had a certain reception.  He had to jump for it but he would have come down with the ball, save that Chris Harris Jr. came out of nowhere to strip the reception.  Because of T.J. Ward, Bradley Roby and Brandon Marshall, Greg Olsen was held to 41 yards receiving.  Newton was running scared not always because of Ware and Miller, but because Malik Jackson and Derek Wolfe were slashing the middle of the line to ribbons.  I've written before that if Denver makes the QB the top rusher for the opponent, then Denver will win.  They did and they did.  All of that is due to Wade Phillips.  His schemes were perfection.  Of all the Broncos who deserve enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, only Terrell Davis deserves it more than Wade Phillips.

On Monday of last week, I wore the colors and represented with pride.  I was accused, by a Raider fan no less, of being a bandwagon fan.  Guilty as charged.  I am a bandwagon Broncos fan.  I climbed on the wagon when I was about 5, and have simply forgotten to find a better team for 47 years.  My heart belongs to the Orange and Blue.  As a student of the game, I will always recognize greatness where it's due.  Can Newton is a great player, deserving of his MVP award.  I do not understand a lot of the vitriol cast his way, save maybe by those who really are bandwagon fans.  His petulance in an interview after a painful loss is not an indictment of the person.  This is a dogdamned sport, where losing hurts most on the biggest stage.  Elway lost 3 times, and he wasn't always completely polite about it.  Brady lost twice, and he was as whiny as all get out after the first one, when he was robbed, ROBBED I TELL YOU!, of going 19-0.  Fret not, band-wagoners.  Newton will return to the Super Bowl.  He might actually win one.  The excitement, the drama, is why we watch the game.

Robert Kraft, just like last year when he told us all that if we are real Americans we must love his product, has again reminded us that the Hatriots are to be seen as the bestest of succulent tubes we must mouth ever.  This year, when asked about Peytion Manning, he said this:

“I happened to see Archie [Manning] there. He has two sons who have won two Super Bowls [each]. But with all due respect, we have one son who has won four.”

Really, you sad fuck?  You aren't Brady's daddy.  And someone, me perhaps, needs to remind you that all of the Manning rings come at the direct expense of your little Angry Tommy.  Peyton Manning beat your little puppet to make the Super Bowl 3 times, two of which he won.  Eli has beaten your angry "son" twice on the biggest stage.  In 2 of his angry outings in the Sooper Dooper Bowl, Angry Tommy's ass was saved by his defense (SB 49)  and his kicker (SB36).  You insult a great NFL quarterback and his family because you think a man you pay is so much better than those you don't with no reason?  So come on, Kraft, you pathetic rich fuck, tell us all about how Peyton's win means nothing because you are such a special snowflake ...  It is no damned wonder why people hate the New England Cheatriots.  Aren't you, Robert Kraft, the dumbass who handed an over-sized check on national television to a murderer?  Why yes, yes you are.  Indeed, you have a guy you claim as son, who you only pay, who has 4 SB rings.  You have another guy you claimed as son who will spend the rest of his life in prison for shooting a man in the back of the head.  And you actually have the audacity to demean Archie Manning's pride in his boys?  Folks, I have dislike for the ownership of the Chargers and the Colts and the Buccaneers.  I have intense disrespect for the owner of the Taterskins.  I have nothing but revulsion ans disdain for Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Hatriots, the worst of what the NFL offers and displays.

While we are on the topic of 'badness', allegations have been leveled at Peyton Manning concerning sexual assault.   Not rape, mind you, but still very bad.  It is possible that while at the University of Tennessee, he dropped his genitals on the face of a professional woman attempting to examine him.  I don't have much to write about this as the story is still growing.  Don't bother to tell me what I need to believe, I won't. 

Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead

My three opinionated thoughts on the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia:

 

1) A man is dead. So what? I've read many progressives saying that no one should be mean about it, because of 'his family' or 'his work efforts' or his 'commitment'. That's muddled and confused. Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease. A man is dead. However, this was a man who had inordinate power to positively or negatively affect the lives of every person in this country. He no longer has that. By "celebrating" his death, people aren't rejoicing in his passage; they are rejoicing because he no longer has the power to hurt them, many of those he has hurt before. I say, let them celebrate. A request to show respect for one many see as their abuser is to ask for people to lie about the hurt done them, showing hollow respect for a legacy of abuse. The man is dead, and that isn't where people are finding their joy. It's that the inevitable has removed him from the Supreme Court. He was not the worst SC Justice ever, and likely won't be comparable to the worst we see in the future. But he no longer has power over any of us. The man is dead. More to the point, his legacy, his power to affect us, is over.

 

2) At work yesterday, I spoke of his death to 9 of the 11 student employees I shared the store with on that Saturday. Not one of them knew who Antonin Scalia was. Not one. Scalia, with others, made rulings that will powerfully impact the futures of these young people, and apparently he did it completely in the shadows as far as they are concerned. I can't describe my disappointment. I will, however suggest this: If the Supreme Court is to have such power, perhaps we as citizens shouldn't be allowing them to hold it in such obscurity.

 

3)  In contrast to the disappointment I feel in the young folk who don't recognize the tools used to control their lives, I am laughing at the 'true progressives' and 'real liberals' who 4 years ago told us all how evil the re-election of Barack Obama would be.  One of the strongest arguments for his re-election was his Constitutional obligation to appoint Supreme Court Justices.  Despite the caterwaul coming from Republicans and FAUX News already, this is a Constitutional obligation of the sitting President, not the President they wish they had.  Scalia has not been dead for 72 hours and the anti-Constitutional wail from the right has already begun.  That will play out over the next year.  What satisfies me, most personally, is how short-sighted and wrong the "True" progressives have proven.  Given the almost unbelievable power the SCOTUS has been granted (including the power to define their own role)  any suggestion that a vote for President because of his nomination duty is meaningless proves the vacuous ignorance of those who suggest such a thing.  These are the same idiots who think we are stupid for paying attention to what they foolishly assume is only 'partisan politics'.  The Supreme Court handed Dumbya Bush the Presidency, by vote of 5-4.  That's a decision that Sandra Day O'Conner has admitted to regretting.  Dumbya nominated Roberts and 'Sc'Alito, neither of which acknowledge that the founders MEANT for the Constitution to change to suit the nation.  The SCOTUS handed Corporations the financial keys to our 'Democracy' by a vote of 5-4, based on a biased clerk's statement over a hundred years ago.  The next SCOTUS could reverse the century old opinion that corporations are 'persons', if only the right people sit on the court.  It's time to thumb the nose at those who think Presidential elections don't matter when it comes to the power of the Supreme Court.  Hey, progo-kids, we were right and you were wrong.  Whine all you want, but we have Kagen and Sotomeyer and will soon have another reasonable progressive on the SCOTUS.  Withholding your vote from the evil Obama, what have you accomplished?