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Everything posted by UpperWestside
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
UpperWestside replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Every single one of those white trash morons will dutifully go vote for their orange god king. Screw all of them. Just an absolute waste of humanity. We should not have to share a country with any of these people. Let them go live in Russia where the males in that photo would eventually be put into the meat grinder with Ukraine. -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
UpperWestside replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I voted for Harris, but I am hopefully exiting within two years no matter what happens. Doing the first leg of the journey through the Pacific by coming to Honolulu to search for a place for the next week. Should be fully moved here by the end of January. So incredibly tired of the hateful pricks we should’ve shot out of a cannon into an active volcano after 2020. -
I went in to open a bank account today in Honolulu and my new banker is a big fan of Ohtani and Yamamoto. She’s originally from Fukuoka, but also grew up near Chiba so baseball is just something she enjoys. You could tell how happy she was for those two when she was talking about them. The Dodgers are a virtual monetary printing press with the amount of Japanese fans they add with both of those guys.
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So this is going to be indirectly related to this thread, but it is courtesy of a conversation I was having with a couple from Brisbane a couple of days ago before I left to go on vacation. They know their Australian history, especially World War II and the pilgrimage many Aussies still make to do the Kokoda Track in New Guinea. They tell me they have a picture of something that would probably be of interest. Their house in Brisbane is near an area where no longer existing airstrips used by the USAAF during the war were located. They were digging in their backyard a few years back and they find this. They had tracked down the family that this dog tag belonged to, but were unable to get it to them because they did not hear back from them. They explained how their backyard had below ground shelters that US soldiers used during the war and this is why it was found when they were digging up their yard. They are still in possession of it, but would like to get it to family members of this soldier. I believe Alice West was his sister. This seems like something that people on Surly can randomly help happen. I am going to try and do my part and email my professors and see how the WWII Museum might be able to help as well.
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Say hello to your 2024-2029 World Series Champions!
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If you could just maybe not make Soto an offer he can’t refuse that’d be great. I’d like for the Yanks to be contenders for the next decade or so with him and not the tire fire they were in 2023.
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Congratulations to our Dodger fans here. Pretty darn good to be y’all right now. You did this with your best player slumping and injured and yet you won the series convincingly. Enjoy the parade and if you go post some pictures! I can also only hope that the cadre of voices from last off-season that said the Dodgers overpaid for Ohtani because his WAR wasn’t worth 70 million will never, ever use that ridiculous argument again. It was comical at the time and even more so now. That guy is worth every single penny he was paid and then some. This team is about to go on a ridiculous run of titles with how good they are.
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Can she hit a curve? If so let’s get her batting after Soto.
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I can believe it. If you have ever sat out anywhere in the sections near right field that name has many others like it nearby. I used to sit in 203 regularly and the things I heard in that section were just incredible to hear people say about the guy in right field. The Jay Bruce 2017 game 4 against Cleveland game was, well, I have still never heard both adults and kids say and do the things they did that night. It was solely because he had been with the Mets before the trade deadline.
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Voted on the first morning of early voting this past Saturday. It was, as it has been every single time, quick and easy. Having to fill in a paper ballot still seems a bit old-fashioned, but it’s cool. Harris is going to win and that orange grifter is going to get some time in a nice prison not long after that.
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Look Aaron Judge came up in a big spot when his team really needed him. He was facing the best reliever named Honeywell in major league history and he came through with a thunderous RBI that made a 6 run lead into an insurmountable deficit. This is what Cashman had in mind when he gave him that big contract and he came through like aggy in all their big football games since 1939.
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Went and cast my vote on the first day of early voting here because I am heading out to Hawaii for 10 days in the morning to find an apartment. Was quick and the folks there made it easy as always. I would not want to have to be a day of the election voter here or anywhere else. Those lines are going to be really long.
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This is the part of this battle that gets me every time. The courage to get out there in an escort vessel and take on the best of what remained of the IJN leaves me without words to accurately describe their incredible actions that morning. I would like to believe I would have done my job had I been there facing the Center Force and not been pissing down my own leg, but I wasn’t and these men were. That ship joining the fray to help save their comrades is the bravest thing anyone did that morning, and maybe ever, in US Naval warfare. We have done such a poor job keeping the memory of what transpired there alive for younger generations to learn about. I was talking with a German the other day and he loves history so he is talking to me about helping his daughter out with a school project. Part of their required history lessons are learning about the intracacies of the Marshall Plan. He said he did not know the entire scope of it and how it was not just offered to the US zones after the war. German kids are learning more about important things from this war than our own kids are. When you forget your own history you lose part of who you are as a nation in my opinion.
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I am going to email my professor because I want to get his brief thoughts on this battle. Dr. Citino has written 10 books about the German Army, but his father was a corpsman at Guadalcanal. The Tarawa exhibit at the National WWII Museum is the one that gets to him the most. Hopefully he has a little time to share some thoughts. If he does I will post them here. I know he was good friends with James Hornfischer so I am certain he will have thoughts on the book.
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Judge has had a fantastic career to this point. He has had a couple of seasons where injuries were a concern, but he has gotten better as his career has progressed and he’s obviously the face of the organization. He has to win a title though because if I have learned nothing else about the fans here it is they are not real forgiving if you don’t deliver a title. Having to live up to the Jeter era is not fair, but it is what it is. He has to start performing in October. I hope he does because he’s a real good guy by all accounts and he represents the city and organization very well. I hope he has a bounce back game tonight because the fans out there will give him the business if he doesn’t start hitting real soon.
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Money talks and if the price is right I am not certain he would say no. Hal is not like his old man. He cares more about the bottom line than winning. It’s his money so he can do as he pleases, but man if he gets outbid by LA for Soto, well, I would not want to be him having to deal with the fans here.
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Lampasas, as expected before the season started, lost to Stephenville 42-31. These two teams are likely going to meet again in the regional finals. If Lampasas gets to this game they will win the rematch. The Jackets are a really good 4A team, blowout loss to a far more talented Ruston, LA team in non-district notwithstanding. They are the prohibited favorite in Region 1. I had Lampasas pegged as being 8-2 or 9-1 depending upon if they beat Wimberley. I did not count on the Reed Jerome injury that got them their first loss. If they can establish the ground game and keep the defense off the field as much as possible they’ve got four more wins in them. Big if on that though as that defense is prone to giving up yards in big chunks at times. Been a fun season watching them from a distance though. One of the best things to come out of Covid is that more high school games are broadcast.
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No depth in the Yanks lineup, at all. Judge with his usual playoff no-show makes it real hard to win games. Soto and, I can’t believe I am saying this, Stanton will have to carry this team if they want to at least win a couple of games in this series. I expect Soto to show up in The Bronx because he just plays well the bigger the game is. That homer last night was basically giving the middle finger to the umpire for calling strikes that clearly were not. He sees the ball better than anyone not named Frank Thomas. He has that rare eyesight and ability to concentrate like The Big Hurt had. He was still chirping at the ump even after rounding the bases. The Dodgers lineup is just too much to deal with. Just a fun group to watch honestly. Well not so much fun for everyone here, but you know what I mean.
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I am in favor of everyone that wants to hire hitmen to be sentenced to have to live on Snake Island. He’d be done in about 2 hours.
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That seems to be more/less it for this series. Outside of Soto I think the rest of them just mailed it in after last night’s fireworks from Freeman. Not really saying anything new, but Soto has to be frustrated at how Judge just cannot perform in the biggest moments, at all. Great regular season guy that does not possess the clutch gene.
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https://a.co/d/fBWcWW5 The link will take you to the book where you can purchase it. James Hornfischer features prominently in that episode up above. He lived the last two decades of his life in Austin with his family before cancer took his life at age 56 in 2021. He was a ridiculously talented writer and this is my favorite book that I have ever read. I highly suggest buying a copy of it. I have bought copies for other people because it is such an important work of literature on the Pacific War. Again remember the sacrifices made that day 80 years ago and try to do something good for a Navy vet today if you are able to.
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Of every battle that the United States engaged in during the Pacific War, this is the one that truly defined what courage in the face of not just overwhelming, but seemingly impossible odds to achieve even a modicum of success, looked like. I will spare most of the details as I would assume most everyone who studies World War II as a hobby, or like myself as part of a career that will span the rest of my life going forward, knows about this battle. What I do want to draw attention to is that at the outset of hostilities on December 7th, 1941, the high command of the Japanese forces almost universally believed that America did not have the stomach to take part in a war like this one. They thought the decadent Americans would not be able to engage in the all out warfare required in a fight like this. They did not believe that the national essence of the Americans was on the level of their own. THEY WERE WRONG ON EVERY COUNT. The American sailors aboard the Hoel, the Heermann, the Johnston and the Samuel B. Roberts, famously known as “The destroyer escort that fought like a battleship” got wind of a massive fleet headed their way that fateful morning. Captain Robert Copeland of the Samuel B. Roberts uttered perhaps the greatest phrase ever said by a US naval commander as they made the decision to engage the center force of the Imperial Japanese Navy. “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.” The temerity to make that statement while knowing you are taking on the Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, a ship so large that it outweighed all of the ships of Taffy 3 by itself, is just stunning. It’s a wonder the Samuel B. Roberts hadn’t sank already considering all the excess weight of Copeland’s balls of steel. Commander Ernest Evans of the Johnston took his Tin Can straight into the belly of the IJN Center Force beast and blew the freaking bow off the heavy cruiser Kumano with a well aimed torpedo. He did not even wait for orders to enter the fray. He just did it. This caused a second cruiser to exit the battle to protect the Kumano. Evans was a Native American graduate of the Naval Academy and he said shortly before his ship left the west coast that it was a fighting ship and anyone who did not want to fight could leave. No one did. Evans and the crew of the Johnston fought like the hounds of hell that morning before finally being stopped dead in the water. Surviving sailors from the Johnston recalled the sailors aboard an IJN ship saluting them as they were floating in the open sea. Ernest Evans was never seen again. He would be posthumously awarded The Medal of Honor. That we do not have a statue of this man in every single state in the US is a travesty. I have no doubt he would have retired an admiral had he survived this encounter. His actions and those of his sailors, as well as those in the rest of Taffy 3, won perhaps the most improbable naval victory in history. Just sheer courage and a willingness to not back down won that morning’s brawl and saved an untold amount of lives in the invasion force on Leyte. This doesn’t even include the bravery of the pilots that flew as many as 20 dummy torpedo runs on the IJN Center Force just to shield their comrades from taking fire on the escort carriers that they took off from. Some would land on shore and reload and head back from Leyte to rejoin the fight. Good God the fight those men showed was just on a level I will never fully comprehend. Anytime I tell this story to people I have to at times just stop because it chokes me up a bit to recount the bravery and heroism on display 80 years ago today. None of us here will ever be in the position those men were in. They stepped in to save their fellow sailors on the escort carriers as well as the soldiers of the invasion force on Leyte under MacArthur’s command. They were what an actual hero looks like. Heroes are not those who compete in sports. Heroes are these men who would sacrifice their own life to save others. So many of those heroes went to the bottom of the ocean that morning. They would never return home to marry and start a family. They would never make it to old age. Many of them gave the last full measure of their life at a very young age 80 years ago today. If you have a Navy vet in your family or amongst your friends tell them thank you today. If you know a family member of one of the veterans of The Battle off Samar tell them they have not been forgotten. And also I know that the animosity towards Admiral Halsey has never completely died down for chasing the carriers and leaving things wide open for the IJN, but I look at it from a different angle. Bull Halsey chasing the decoy fleet allowed what transpired to happen. We owe a debt of gratitude to those men that we can never repay for that morning 80 years ago. I will tell and retell this story for as long as I live and can educate folks on what happened out there. Just a bunch of young men that took on a force they had no business fighting, but they did anyhow and they won because they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to be capable of what they did. Not bad for a bunch of comfortable Americans who would never withstand the rigors of warfare. Not bad at all.
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Aww man that’s pretty sad. His peak years came before I was old enough to even know what baseball was. His importance though to the Dodgers and their Mexican fanbase is pretty awesome. I hope for some peace for his family as they mourn his passing as well as all his friends and fans who will be remembering him right now.
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Not really giving any earth shattering stuff here, but we all know the Yankees have better revenue streams than anyone in the league. Hal treats this team at times like he owns the Pirates. If he doesn’t pony up whatever amount of money Soto asks for he should be dropped off in the South Bronx at 2am on a Friday night. For the record I think he will pay whatever the cost is, but it will not be an easy negotiation if he takes part in it.
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The biggest thing in reverse is the penchant of the Yankee bullpen to implode in high leverage moments. Mariano Rivera isn’t walking through that door. I think if Soto has a big series then the Yanks win. If the Dodgers pen comes up big they win. I am not real confident in Judge becoming a pressure performer like Soto or even like Stanton in the last series. I would like to hope he flips a switch, but you can’t count on him at the moment to produce. Hopefully returning to SoCal will be good for him and Stanton. The Dodgers are a fun team. I went to a game there years ago and had a great time. If they win it I’d be happy for them, especially so because of the imbecile “WAR guys” who said Ohtani would not be worth what he is getting paid. He is just an incredible once-in-a-lifetime talent that baseball has never seen before. He makes the game fun. I hope there are more Japanese players in the pipeline that come over with more regularity in the future.
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