Tour de France 2012

The 2,150 mile route of the 2012 Tour de France

Mark Cavendish, sprinter, from the Isle of Man

Lance Armstrong, retired, winner of 7 Tours

The 99th running of what is yearly called "the most physically demanding contest in all of sports", the Tour de France, gets under way today in the Prologue time trial event in Liege, Belgium. It concludes on the second to last Sunday in July in 23 days, with only two days of rest, on the Champs-Elysees of Paris. Surely, this year's Tour will live up to its annual billing of "welcome to suffering."

The 2012 Tour has it all...once again.  20 stages consisting of: 9 flat courses, 4 medium mountain courses with one summit finish, 5 tall mountain courses with two summit finishes, 2 individual time trials, today's Prologue and 3,497 kilometers of road mayhem, lung-busting, leg-spasming and brain-farting drama. 

One road weary rider will be crowned the winner in 23 days, the leader of the general classification, wearing the coveted "maillot jaune" or the yellow jersey. And he will have earned it because this is no joy ride.

There are many riders in this event to watch.  But I will give you one who will not win the "maillot jaune" because his specialty is the sprint and his weakness is climbing. To win the yellow jersey you must do both well. This rider hates the mountains, regardless, he is so fun to watch at the end of the non-mountain stages. 

This sprinter extraordinaire, Mark Cavendish, is a powerhouse rocketship from the Isle of Man, a small wisp of a rockpile landscape in the northern Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. Over the last four years, Cavendish has won 20 stages in the Tour de France, mostly, in the last minute of the race by sprinting to the tape ahead of his pursuers.  His 20 victories rank #6 all time behind the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx of Belgium, with 34 stage wins.  If Cavendish, 27, stays healthy and is lucky aka avoids crashes, he will exceed Merckx's record in 4 years time.  But that's a big IF.  This is the Tour and nothing is easy about it.

Set against this backdrop of exciting Tour theatre is the current doping allegations against 7 time Tour winner, Lance Armstrong, by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the preeminent doping authority in the country funded by the US Olympic Committee.  The USADA alleges several doping violations by Armstrong in the 2000s, of which most damning are "blood transfusions."  The USADA is armed with 10 witnesses against Armstrong.  If found guilty, Armstrong will be stripped of all Tour titles, fine him and ban him for life in all competitions including his current focus, triathlons. 

Did Armstrong cheat?  I don't know.  What I do know is he has been the most tested athlete in the world and all of his tests have been clean. However, if Armstrong, cancer survivor, multiple Tour winner, and fundraiser of hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research, is found gulity of these latest charges, it will be the greatest betrayal of public trust since MLB's McGwire-Sosa-Bonds-etc...steroid era and a close second to Albert Pujols leaving St. Louis for Anaheim.

Returning to the Tour, frankly, there is a part of me that believes that you must be one of two types to subject oneself to the road torture of the Tour: one, you must be on drugs, two; you must be crazy as a loon.   Here's hoping there are more loons than druggies.

Amidst it all and against this annual backdrop of suspicion, as the French would say, "C'est la vie", that's life.

In any event, enjoy the most incredible bike ride on earth through the glorious French countryside on NBC Sports each night with the greatest sports announcers of any sport, Paul Sherwen, Phil Liggett and Bob Roll.

Au revoir sports fans.

HELL

On Sunday past, we drove south from Denver on I-25 and noticed a smoke plume in the sky billowing up from behind the Manitou Springs and Garden of the Gods   communities of Colorado Springs.  At that point, it looked fairly benign.  Even the electronic bulletin screens on the freeway dismissed the fires as "under control." But in the last five days, non-stop high winds and high temperatues fueled this stubborn blaze to what Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown said, "is a fire of epic proportions." 

The above picture of this out of control firestorm was taken yesterday afternoon from I-25 as we headed home and returned north to Denver. The sky was so full of smoke and ash that the majestic towering Rockies were invisible.  The drop dead gorgeous city of Colorado Springs, Colorado's second largest city, was canopied under a grey cloud of low hanging noxious smoke and ash.  Smelled like death. The sun's brilliance was overwhelmed by the thickness of fire and smoke clouds.

As we sped by this image of hell with instructions not to stop, our thoughts and prayers turned to those 1200 brave men and women fighting this ornery fire on the ground and from the air.  What an incredibly huge and dangerous opponent to face and facing it they did in the worst of all conditions: dry fuel, high winds, high heat and mountainous terrain. 

Also, we thought of all those victims and families who have been effected by the fire.  Presently, 35,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, 350 homes destroyed, 19,000 acres torched, while the fire is moving relentlessly towards the Air Force Academy to the north and it is only 10% contained. 

They need a miracle in Colorado Springs to stop this raging firestorm. 

Also, fires rage all over the state (about 200,000 acres) and in the neighboring states and it's only the first week of summer.  This summer may prove to be the worst ever fire season on record in the Rocky Mountains.

So, please pray for those in harm's way and for containment and a major weather break of what many are calling the worst fire in Colorado history. 

To date, there is no known cause for this destructive blaze.

Justice in Pennsylvania

Monsignor William Lynn of Philadelphia convicted

Jerry Sandusky with 'The Second Mile' kids convicted

Friday 22, 2012 will long be remembered in the Keystone State as the day of infamy.

Today justice was served for young defenseless victims of unspeakable horrors by men whom they trusted in the state of Pennsylvania. One verdict rendered this morning in Philadelphia.  The other rendered tonight in Bellefonte, PA. 

Monsignor Lynn, 61, of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the sixth largest in the country, oversaw hundreds of priests under his leadership. He was convicted of one count of endangering the welfare of a child, a young alter boy, making him the first senior US Roman Catholic official to be convicted for covering up child abuse perpetrated by a known, by him, serial pedophiliac priest.  His sentencing is set for August 13 and faces up to 7 years in prison.

Jerry Sandsuky, 68, was the long time football assistant coach at Penn State University and founder of 'The Second Mile', a non-profit charity serving Pennsylvania underpriviledged and at-risk youth. He was convicted on 45 of 48 counts of sexually assaulting 10 young boys over 15 years.  His sentencing is set for early October.  He faces 400 years of imprisonment.  He will die behind bars.

There are many unanswered questions but the most pressing is why?  Why did these men do what they did?

Why did Monsignor Lynn move this priest around from parish to parish fully knowing of his perverted desire for young boys, and, more egregiously, cover up the fact from the authorities?  Shamefully and tragically, Monsignor Lynn selected to protect the church from scandal and reduced parishioner financial support and neglected protecting the kid from this predatory priest.

Why did Jerry Sandusky, a married man with a family and great career, perform such horrific sexual acts against the children he was entrusted to help? In doing so, he ruined his life, his family and the many lives of his victims.  Why? I have no answer for that, other than, simply, he was possessed by demons, devils, darkness and pure evil.

As the guilty verdicts were read in two different parts of the state, mothers of the brave and broken victims in both court rooms wept the same tragic line, "Nobody wins.  We've all lost."  The victims.  The families. The perpetrators.  The Catholic Church.  Pennsylvania.

The End of the Nanny State

 Just another day in the streets of Athens.

The above picture of firemen stopping traffic in Athens, Greece says it all...the end of what these folks have known for their entire lives in OVER. And what have they known all their lives?  That their government and the European social model will take care of them from cradle to grave regardless of rank, skill or education. 

And what do they know now?  Austerity.  And they don't like it.  So, they block traffic and riot in the streets.

Well, Greeks, welcome to the real world.  You have been living in a wonderland for generations and the party is over.  No money, you see.  Your government spent it all on you for doing not a whole helluva lot. The cradle to grave "we'll take care of you" welfare model is broken.

The only lifeline Greece has after years of profligate living is Germany.  Germany, the only country in the European Union (EU) that has any money left to loan to spendthrift prodigal countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and others. And what happens if by some oft chance Germany can't be the EU's line of credit bank anymore?  Then what?  USA?  Fuhgeddaboudit!  We have our very own Greek chop tenderizing in the crock pot of Obamastew.

If you were Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and the EU's main loan officer, would you lend any more Euros to Greece, now at $270 BILLION?  Looks like a black hole to me. Frankly, by the looks of the picture above, those boys don't look too reformable to me. They like collecting those EU checks.  For they know the EU money is bankable, for now, unlike their obsolete drachma which is worthless on planet earth.

And guess who owns the majority of Greece debt now at $450 BILLION?  FRANCE.  And what did France just do against this Euro fiscal cliff backdrop? The voters hired a welfare advocate Socialist to run the country, Francois Hollande.  And what did he do as one of his first duties as President?  Lowered the legal retirement age from 62 to 60. Had to make good on one of many of his many crazy campaign promises. Next up more spending and higher taxes on the remaining producers, many have fled already, to pay for it all.  What a novel approach by the liberal junta! Sound familiar America?  C'est la vie!!! 

So, goodbye Nanny State (except for France and maybe USA)...good riddance and hello to Clockwork Orange in the 21st Century...good Lord and buy lots of plywood for the windows!

Lemonade Stand

With no disrespect to hardworking, diligent and honest third grade boys and girls who ply their trade of selling lemonade on neighborhood street corners in the summer, President Obama has been characterized by many as having "never run a lemonade stand", yet he is in charge of governing the largest economy in the history of the world. Gulp!

In a recent post in the Wall Street Journal which many of you may have read, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal spoke candidly about Obama's business experience in the private sector:

"I suspect that many in the Obama Administration don't really believe in private enterprise. At best, they see business as something to be endured so that it can provide tax money for government programs. 

Indeed, the President had to quickly retract his recent comment that the private sector was doing fine, despite lagging economic growth, stagnant wages and continued record high unemployment rates.  The problem is that the private sector is so foreign to our President that he would need a passport to go there and a translator to understand what is happening.

...While the liberalism of the Obama Administration is widely understood, the incompetence of it remans a bit of an untold story.  A few weeks backs, I made the comment that prior to being President, Obama has never run anything, that in fact he had never run even a lemonade stand.  That's a fun line, and folks were entertained by it.  But there's the problem:  it's not a joke, it's the truth."

Jindal continues, "We put a guy in the White House who has no experience running anything (ahem, other than his mouth). In that sense, the joke's on us.  But again, it's no joke. America simply cannot afford another four years of on-the-job training...President Obama needs to go because his liberal policies are wrong and bad for America.  But it's worse than that: it's basic incompetence.  He is also the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter." (see note below about incompetence vis-a-vis competence)

Jindal concludes, " We simply have to win this election."

NOTE: President Obama may be incompetent in running our country but he and his Chicago thugs are very competent in running for the highest office in the world where no rules apply, they demean and diminish the opposition relentlessly and where truth and reality have no place at the table of Obama.

The Obama Economy

The "Obama economy" now that's an oxymoron.

An oxymoron is a self-cancelling phrase. Putting those two words together: Obama and economy is the perfect self-canceller. One negates the other. In this case, President Obama knows about as much of how to govern over the world's largest economy as he does about how to play golf. Simply, he has no clue what he's doing....either in or out of the Oval Office. However, he was an expert at smoking pot in college so says his revolting consigliere, Bill Maher...so, "he's got that going for him which is nice."

Let's be honest with ourselves, President Obama's performance for the last 3 and half years governing the world's economic superpower is a total failure. If he ran a Fortune 500 company, what do you think the Board and the shareholders would do provided he didn't stack the Board with his crony smarmy hoods from Chicago? How bad is it? Let's look at the facts from when he took office to now, in other words HIS RECORD ON THE JOB and forget the smiles and the swagger for a moment.

A. Unemployed Americans. Up over 1.5 million more unemployed.
B. Unemployment rate. Up over .5% to 8.2%.
C. Gas Prices. Up over $2 gallon on average.
D. Debt per person. Up over $15,000 to over $49,000 per every citizen in the USA. (Added $5 TRILLION in three years of Obamanomics to the debt.)
E. Misery index. Up 4 percentage points to 11.9%.
F. College tuition. Up $2000 per student per year at a state college.
G. Worker health care costs. Up $1000 per employee.
I. Food stamp recepients. Up 14 million people to 46 million overall.
J. Americans in poverty. Up 6 million to 46 million.
K. Home values. Down on average $20,000 to $147,000 average home in USA.
L. US Global Competitiveness. Down to #5. Down four positions from #1.
M. SP Credit rating. First time in 70 year history that the USA was downgraded from AAA to AA+.
N. Wall Street. Remains in tatters and in temporary pause mode.

(Numbers above courtesy of CBO on-line.)

If the economy is still a relevant issue in our country today, Republican-presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, has many arrows in his quiver as evidenced in the numbers above. He must continually attack President Obama's sorry record of governance and his aim has to be spot on. Use the data convincingly and with great shocking effect.

And what is President Obama's main re-election strategy? Increase taxes. Is it the first time in US history where a standing President's main message for a second term is to increase taxes on the rich? Is that all there is to this empty suit? No, there is something else and only the President and his curs know. He has something grand planned 30 days out from November Tuesday to tip the election in his favor in spite of his record. God help us all!

What was that groan I just heard? Wall Street blues again...the economic malaise and paralysis continues.

Look at the bright side, only 156 days left of this gross ineptitude...gulp.

Postscript:

In USA Today 6/12/12 headline: Families wealth dives 39% in three years