Instant Justice – Mayweather vs. Ortiz

On Saturday night HBO will replay the Mayweather vs. Ortiz fight and two things will become clear: that Mayweather put on an offensive and defensive clinic worthy of his hall of fame career, and that Ortiz didn’t want any more of it. True fight fans will see a third round dominated by Mayweather’s clean punching – see Ortiz walk into a left hook like the one that basically KO’d Ricky Hatten in the 10th, shortly followed up with a snapping right to the head, clean and perfect. After that, Ortiz was fighting going backwards.

I heard Jim Lampley and Emanuel Steward say Ortiz was walking through Mayweather’s punches, but they were wrong. Ortiz had had enough. Suddenly he was fighting going backwards. Suddenly he was looking to foul his way out of the fight.

When the fourth round came, Ortiz was dominated again. He could push Mayweather into the ropes, but he couldn’t hit him and he was getting hit with clean punches. Then came the intentional head butts: the first one Cortez saw and gave him a warning for, the second one of the round that Cortez missed.  Swing at Mayweather - three, four, five shots in a row – all slipped, all missing. Then came the third, and worst, intentional head butt of them all. Nobody could have missed that one, and it opened a cut on Mayweather’s face.

Let’s be clear, sticking the crown of your head into a fighter in the clinch and jumping with your legs is bush league dirty fighting. It’s crap you see from four round fighters just out of the amateurs, not in world championship fights. And three intentional fouls aren’t “reflex”, they are desperation.

Then the over-the-top apologies started. Ortiz hugs Mayweather against the ropes and tries to kiss him. Cortez takes him to the center of the ring and takes the point, and while he is doing it Mayweather and Ortiz touch gloves. Then Cortez says "come on" or maybe “time in” and waves the fighters together from either side of the ring. Ortiz comes forward and tries to hug Mayweather again but the fight has already been restarted and Mayweather is all business.

Mayweather knocks him out, just as he should have done. Just as I wanted him to do.

Why was Ortiz trying to hug Mayweather again after all the hugging, kissing, and glove touching he’d already done? Simple, HE WAS DONE. Done with fighting a man that was outclassing him, beating him to the punch, and sending him to the inevitable knock-out that was coming.  And that explains his accepting reaction to the knockout.

And sadly, this is another case of self-inflicted injury for the boxing industry. We should be celebrating a dominant performance by a hall of fame fighter that first outclassed a younger, bigger man, and then sent him down after he was revealed to be a dirty fighter with too little heart. Celebrating the kind of instant justice that our twisted world rarely provides. Instead, we are shown a replay that starts 3 seconds too late to see Cortez wave the fighters together, and have to hear Larry Merchant make apologies for Ortiz, asking him as his leading question if Ortiz's third intentional head butt came "out of instinct". Endure seeing Merchant give Mayweather no credit for the repeated fouls he had received or his peerless boxing; instead make him out to be guilty of taking a “cheap shot”. We are asked to forget that a fighter must be warned before having a point deducted for head butts so that Ortiz could have just made his first "mistake", and let Ortiz off the hook for his B.S.

It was a great night for boxing. Mayweather may not make friends for his personal antics, but in the ring he is an amazingly disciplined boxer that is in my opinion the best I have ever seen, offensively and defensively. And that makes him one of the greatest boxers to ever live.

 And I’ll be watching it again on Saturday on HBO to see a masterful job of boxing and a punk trying to foul his way out of a championship fight hit the canvas again.  And I’ll toast the instant justice that it represents. Hell, it was beautiful!

Egypt: How Newsweek Blew It

Letter to the Newsweek Editor:

I have been a Newsweek subscribed for over ten years and was EXTREMELY disappointed that you chose to lead the February 21st issue with what amounted little more than a flimsy editorial piece. Rather than presenting a cover story with real news value and information on the ongoing revolution, your choice offered only opinion supported by anonymous quotes, an oversimplified view of the Muslim Brotherhood, and an inflated sense of the United States' control over the forces unleashed in Egypt. This overreaching view of U.S. power is most illustrated in Ferguson's suggestion that the fortunes of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that won 20% of the seats in Egypt's Parliament in 2005 despite being outlawed and has existed in Egypt since 1928, were dependant on an American President. My point is not just that I and legitimate mid-east experts strongly disagree with the editorial, it is that by choosing sensationalism and commentary over good journalism, Newsweek is squandering its credibility and brand equity and leaving me to consider canceling my subscription.

Sincerely,

Michael Harrison, P.E.

FISHING FOR OIL

How could local fishing fleets be best employed to recover oil?

Fisherman are used to being paid for their catch by weight. Could they be trained to recover oil without getting sick and bring it to BP funded weighing stations? If an appropriate price could be set for the oil, fishermen could be working through the crisis while being a part of the solution. If doable, it would be better for BP than just paying damages while people sit idle and watch their livelyhood destroyed, and better for the fishermen than the helplessness of watching the oil roll in.

The Healthcare Independence Act of 2010 Will Create Freedom and Unleash Entrepreneurism

It is time to pass the Healthcare Independence Act of 2010. Healthcare reform can unleash a wave of entrepreneurism by giving Americans the freedom to act. It takes an act of faith to leave a steady job or sidestep the job market to pursue the dream of a successful startup business. But fear of losing medical coverage or not having access to it strikes a blow against the entrepreneurial spirit every day.

Healthcare reform can free Americans and unleash a wave of entrepreneurism by throwing out discrimination against patients with pre-existing medical conditions, making real health insurance available to all American citizens, and making healthcare portable.

It is time to call it what it is: "The Healthcare Independence Act of 2010". This is the economic stimulus and pro-small business policy that we need today and for our future.

Government is not a "Creator"

Government is not a "Creator"

Our government was instituted by humans to secure "unalienable rights" endowed by their Creator. Corporations, labor unions, etc. are artificial creations of man to serve a purpose and do not have unalienable rights, nor should they be afforded the same protections under our great Constitution.

The Right Wing Has Lost Any Sense of Patriotism

Patriotism means sometimes doing something you don't want to do for the good of the Country. Suposedly we all agree that it is important for the United States to become energy independant. Than why did the Right Wing ridicule the President for suggesting that we Americans check our tire pressure? If we just kept our tires inflated and drove more carefully to save gas, we could cut up to 37% of our gasoline usage without spending a dime. Edmunds proved it.(1)

But I don't see any right wing pundit calling for such things.

And when you seek to deny the properly elected President of the United States the opportunity to speak with our youth with cries of "indoctrination", you have lost any sense of what Patriotism means and have forfeited any claim on the word.

(1) http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/106842/article.html

Whose Rights are Wrong?

Americans like a good fight. If there ain't one there, sometimes we just make one up. That's the story of today's healthcare reform.
Some people want private insurance. Others want a public plan. Now everybody's screaming about their rights.
Are some rights right and others wrong? People seem to jump on the idea that if one group gets what they want, the other group MUST be getting screwed. Why is that?

Our healthcare system is a disaster and just about everybody knows it. We pay twice what the next industrialized country pays for a system that produces health outcomes worse than 71 other counties.1 That's right, 71! We have 50 MILLION citizens without access to primary care, so they just wait until it's a crisis and hit the overburdened hospitals. Every day 10,000 people lose their health insurance and costs for those of us that pay for our insurance go up WAY faster than inflation. My small business plan was raised 26% this year! Medicare and Medicaid are going to bankrupt our government and leave millions with nothing, and hell, about 50% of personal bankruptcies are caused by healthcare costs right now, right here in the U.S.A.

I don't know how a public plan can fairly compete with the private insurance market, and it sure as hell can't work like Medicare with reimbursements being set arbitrarily at less than providers' costs. But the private market screws people every day; dropping sick people, refusing people affordable coverage, and forcing people into making choices that are bad or worse.

We are all Americans. According to the Preamble to the Constitution, our people have a GENERAL WELFARE that is worth working towards and fighting for. So how about we put down the gloves and figure out how to let our neighbors have the freedom we are so fond of screaming about, fix a broken system, and make our great country a better place for all?

1 The World Health Report 2000, World Health Organization