And yes, Mariano Rivera has 3 of the worst 10 closer moments of all time. Here you can find the list. Of course number 10 is my favorite. Baseball season is 4 short days away! By the way kudos to our conservative friends at the NY Post.

Last week all of the major news sources came out with articles that reference Dick Chaney’s hotel demands. The headlines looked like this: “Dick Cheney’s hotel demands exposed by website” and “Dick Cheney’s ‘real’ hotel demands revealed” and “Site reveals Cheney’s hotel room requirements” as if Cheney has been exposed to be some pampered Jennifer Lopez that wretches at hotel employees and has a list of requirements the length of your arm. However Cheney’s list is not long and most of the demands could be easily met by your average hotel. You can read the original article on the left wing site here.

Well to be fair the site that originally posted Cheney’s requirements has also posted John and Teresa Kerry’s requirements here. Their list is actually 4 pages long and it is extremely picky. The amazing thing is that I have yet to see any stories run on this in any of the major news sources which previously reported Cheney’s demands. The few papers that do report it have headlines like “John Kerry Hates Celery!” As if to say “hey he is just an ordinary guy like us” riiiiight.

Could the lack of coverage on Kerry’s demands be because they are not as news worthy? If you compare the two lists, Kerry’s is much more remarkable, and I am sure that people would be much more entertained by it. Maybe it is that the media is two faced and takes every opportunity it can to paint a bad picture of the President and his staff. I hope you enjoy reading both sides of the story and getting a small insight into the personal lives of these men. Oh yeah, and remember to “veer away from heavy sauces” because “these things make JK very happy.”

Ok up till now all of the pictures in my blog have been from websites and all I do is copy their image location and past it here. I didn’t think there was a way to upload your own pictures to our server and use them here. Well I was poking around and found that it is actually very easy to post your own pictures here, and so I plan to do so in the future. Just when the blogging was starting to lag, I get this boost. Pretty exciting!

Here is a bench clearing brawl between the Red Sox and Devil Rays. Nothing like a good brawl to get you revved up for the season. I am not going to stand up and defend Tavarez for starting that. He is an idiot with a hot head and last season he got himself in trouble when he broke his hand punching a phone. His excuse for punching the guy is good though: “I saw him try to get up and I wasn’t going to let him throw a punch at me right away, you hear about whoever throws the first punch gets the win. That’s what happened.” Considering how Tavarez got leveled by Crawford and Norton then I wouldn’t be so sure tavarez came out of that one the winner. 6 days till Baseball season… woo hoo!

I found this case to be very interesting to read about, and the article referenced does a good job presenting both sides of the argument. I think this is evidence not only of the importance of having good surpreme court justices, but also of how wrong more then half of the supreme court justices can be. It is also interesting how the media spins it. The article here starts out by saying:

Recognizing that a man’s home is, indeed, his castle, the Supreme Court said Wednesday that police can’t search a house without a warrant if one occupant invites them in but another objects to their presence.

Then as you read you find out that the conservative judges refused to “recognize that a man’s home is, indeed, his castle.” If this is all you read then you would be disapointed with the conservatives and laud the other judges for upholding our privacy.

It is very interesting to read on however, because the rest of the article goes into detail about the position which the conservative judges took and it makes much more sense then how the liberal half ruled. The liberals took a wishy washy, “we need to redefine the constitution for modern times” stand on the issue, and their ruling could very well cause big problems down the road for innocent people who are in harms way.

The sad part about this whole case is that the actual issue at hand involved a situation which was not even a search:

Thomas also dissented, saying the circumstances in Randolph’s case weren’t a search at all, but an instance of a spouse of a suspected criminal leading police to potential evidence and as such were beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against illegal searches.

If the woman had gone into the house and carried the drug paraphernalia out to the police then this case would have been cut and dry. The Police were not searching the house, the woman was showing them evidence, and no one has ever needed a warrent to be presented with evidence. Now, just because some liberal activists judges let power go to their heads and decided they needed to redefine the constitution, a guy who deserves to be punished will go free.

My respect has grown for the conservative judges who took a stand for what is right, despite the fact that it would go to the headlines and make them look bad. They could have changed sides once they saw that they did not have the majority, but they stood fast and were willing to accept the displeasure of society for the sake of truth. Thank you Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas for your service in the face of much adversity. Fyi, Justice Alito did not rule because he wasn’t there during the testimony.

First of all my congratulations go out to the entire wolfpack team who had a really great year with 22-10 record and a fifth straight trip to the NCAA tourny. It was not till injuries down the stretch that NCSU slipped. It was very exciting when we were 21-5 and second only to Duke in the ACC.

The real question though is Herb Sendek. Year after year State has done reasonably well, but it seems that every time we get a good winning streak going, and our national ranking moves up, we falter. We might be doing really well against every other team, and then we will lose to a Carolina team that is young and inexperienced.

I have to admit that over the past 5 or 6 years I have gone back and forth loving Sendek and then hating him. Of late I have grown to really admire the team he put together that fit his offense so well, and I enjoyed the success that the team had for most of the season.

On one side here is Dick Vitale who I have heard on many occasions sing his praise. Mike Krzyzewski also had good things to say about him very recently. On the other hand there are the many wolfpack fans who want him gone. I think that this article has a very interesting insight into the real problem with Herb Sendek:

Anyone who ever takes a job coaching basketball on Tobacco Road has to understand first and foremost the lay of the land, then work within that framework as best he can to produce positive results.

Coaching at State is about Xs and Os and recruiting and emphasizing academics and dozens of other issues. It is also about giving the fan base a sense of hope, in good times and bad. It is also about putting your best foot forward at all times so that when there is adversity, the support, the hope, is intact.

It is not about being all things to all people, but it is about cultivating assets, especially when the biggest potential asset is a passionate support system of followers desperately wanting to feel good about the program.

Sendek has failed miserably on that front. It’s the biggest flaw on his resume. If he could project and instill a sense of hope, then a four-game losing streak wouldn’t drag the program down the way this one did. If he could instill a sense of hope, there wouldn’t be this uneasy truce that exists with an element of the fan base even when he’s winning.

He has been very good, for the most part, at getting his players to buy in to what he’s doing. Most of them are passionately loyal, as are Sendek’s close friends and those who see a side of him that he rarely shows the public. If he can inspire those people, he clearly has the ability to inspire the fan base.

Instead, he has gone the opposite route, especially whenever adversity hits. This is not about one-liners to the media. It’s about putting his best foot forward, showing his human side, explaining why he does the things he does instead of clinging stubbornly to his way and leaving it at that. It’s about giving people something to latch onto as they search for anything to pin their hopes on.

Is it counterproductive? You bet. The atmosphere surrounding the team this past week was surreal, so surreal that it’s a wonder State beat California. There was an us-against-the-world mentality, to the point that Ilian Evtimov, one of the most-endearing players ever to wear a State uniform, lashed out at Sendek’s critics as “idiots.”

An us-against-the-world mentality might produce a win over the Cal Bears every other time you play them, but it’s ultimately fatal. There’s nothing positive to come out of antagonizing the fan base, or the media, or anyone else. It’s a drain on everyone.

Again, Sendek has brought it all on himself with his refusal to cultivate the fan base, and to show his best side to the media, which is in truth his direct connection to the fan base, and to allow his players the opportunity to show their best sides, too.

And since he has brought it all on himself, it’s up to him to either change something or to continue to live in this theater of the absurd. Change doesn’t have to mean leaving, but it probably does mean making the commitment to addressing the issues that are dragging the program down. It probably does mean coming up with a new game plan for cultivating the assets, for instilling more of a sense of hope in the program.

Will Sendek change? Or will he bolt? Or will he remain stubborn and try to ride it out, knowing full well that it will be difficult to match this 22-win season next year?

I think John Delong might have hit the nail on the head with this one. Sendek knows that his offense and his strategy is good, and he knows his team is capable of executing it very well. The problem is, is it really the best strategy against the ACC? I am positive that if he took those players and that strategy to another league he would do fabulously. I dont think it is working out in the ACC though, and I think there needs to be a change.

If Herb Sendek is willing to change his strategy, then I will be very willing to see him come back and coach more seasons at NC State. If he can execute any other stategy as well as he executed the princeton offense with a healthy team this year, then he will be awesome. However if Sendek is not willing to change then it very well might be time for a new coach who will bring an offense to Raleigh which can be more successful in the ACC. There you have it, that is my official position on Herb Sendek.

For what its worth, here is my shot at predicting the NCAA tourney. Go Wolfpack!

Ok this is so weird… I dont really have words to describe it. You will just have to check it out yourself and maybe you can fill me in on what its all about. www.theneverything.com