Fact Check

This is a great web page. When I was living in the US every politician would come up with incredibly different numbers when discussing the same topic (whether its Republican or Democrat). Its a great site if you don't necessarily have time to research who is right and who is lying. Its a neutral website (I don't know if any such thing exists) but I honestly found it quiet impartial. Check it out. Unfortunately it discusses mainly American Politicians - don't they run the world anyways!!!

FactCheck

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Sadness

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Silence is Golden, Letterman shuts Bill O'Reilly up!!

Can you believe it, Letterman actually had something deep and insightful to say (this is the same guy who gives hams to the audience for answering questions!!) So yeah, Bill throws one of those "Do you want America to be defeated??" you know the type that if you even hesitate, your patriotism and allegiance to the country is questioned (Helloooooooo Fox News!!). Check out Dave's answer. Its classic. Click and see.

Bill on Letterman

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Hip Hop is Dead?

Is Nas right? Is Hip Hop dead? According to him, no one has personality in rap anymore. Back in the 90's u use to have Methodman and Redman (funny and sick delivery), Jay-z (party tracks), DMX (deep, religious, and violent), Ja Rule (fun, duets), Nas (Black conscious), LL Cool J (Romantic I guess). Now Hip Hop has become such a success that all there is to rap about is bitches, hoes, and making money. While that existed ever since. I mean I have been listening to rap way after it originated. But rappers always talked about their money and girls, but never this much. Hip Hop today is predominately girls shaking their ass with Champagne dripping from their bikini bottoms!! Like I said, nothing new, it just wasn't that raw and it wasn't every other artist (Too Short was doing it in the 90's but now every second rapper is doing the sexual and violence thing). I think Hip Hop is not dead (Nas is my favourite rapper but he has been a disappointment with his albums, sometimes good (real, reflective storyteller), and other times crap (trying to talk about stuff he never did or preaching).

Hip Hop is more than just a hype beat and a sick video. Rap has many aspects obviously, you got the "keep it real" talk about deep stuff all the time rap (Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, etc...), you got rap that's funny (Redman, Nelly, Kayne West, etc...), you have gangsta rappers (Pretty much everybody else (50 Cent, Rick Ross, and a whole slew of others). But hip hop is about a hype beat that you can rock to, its about a sick delivery (Not everyone has to have a presence like Biggie did but a delivery that is confident), a good concept to the song, lyrics have to be clever and smooth.




This is why Jay-z even though he wasn't your classic tough guy rapper, he won over the mainstream. He was clever with lines, he had sick beats, and he did party joints with girls dancing to sell it. Hip Hop is about being fresh, confident, and got swagger.

The mainstream media possibly could kill Hip Hop because what people want is simple songs that have girls shaking, a good beat and a thug rapping on it. White America loves that. Its like getting certification from a gangsta and thus if they know a DMX line, or a Dr. Dre line then they are part of their cliques.

There is still hope. There are still some cool rappers being creative. Now all I can listen to is Ludacris, lil Wayne, Jay-z (His new album doesn't sound that good except for Kingdom Come), The Game, Nas (Please come up with something good, you are sooo good!!!), Eminem (I hope he can recover his rawness and funny side), and Talib (always even if they don't give you good beats).

If you don't like rap that's cool, but realize it is very artistic. If you start listening to it, you might appreciate that these guys are singing with the beat, rhyming and making sense. Its hard, its not as easy as you think. Check out these websites, you might find something you like.

Hiphopdx.com

Allhiphop.com

Hiphopgame.com

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African Leader Prize

This is a very interesting story (African Leader Prize). A mobile phone company mogul from Britain Mo Ibrahim (he is Egyptian by the way) is trying to tackle corruption in Africa using a different method. This billionaire is offering to pay $5 million to any Head of an African State that leaves office after their term is over (versus going to Parliament and bribing the members into changing the Constitution to allow him to run for another term....such an old trick!!!) Mr. Ibrahim said his prize, which will be more than three times as much as the most famous prize, the Nobel Prize ($1.3 million) was established for good leaders who are afraid of losing out on all the luxuries when they leave office. Such fear makes it easier for them to become corrupt. So hopefully this money will help ease that decision.
Pretty cool idea honestly, I am not sure if it will work. These heads of states in Africa usually have embezzled so much money already that they stay in power not just for the actual money but for the might and power (and definitely to protect themselves from the U.N. and the people of their government if they have caused any human right defenses). So I am not sure if this $5 million will be enough.

I can see it being sought after as a publicity stunt. That is, lets say Dictator X decides that his country is out of control, he retires takes the award and the compliments with it, installs his own puppet in his place to give the impression that there is a democracy and then when things go bad come back to save his country (has happened on various occasions in Africa).

By the way, I was checking the latest Corruption Index that shows how countries performed in terms of not being corrupt (10 is perfectly not corrupt and I guess 0 is for completely corrupt). Let me tell you, I had to scroll quite a bit to get to the first African country. Botswana was the first African country to show up on the list ranked at #35 (which is actually pretty good), Tunisia ranked 43rd, South Africa 46th, and Namibia at 49th, that's 4 countries in the top 50. In any case, I think discussing corruption is so crucial and important because we need to recognize that poverty and corruption go hand in hand. Good governance (or lack of corruption) is the main way to eliminate poverty. Alot of these poor countries have great resources, its just the corruption sometimes.

Transparency International

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Humans do the splits.

This is interesting. According to the BBC there has been studies that show that in 100,000 years our Humans will be split into two different sub-species. To summarize basically people who are rich, powerful, beautiful, healthy will marry each other (damn it this is why arranged marriages were good, us ugly guys could get that hottie and keep the genetic pool nice and diverse), while the poorer, less healthy, less intelligent will be the "underclass" humans who will evolve to be "dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures", that's amazing....this (Olivery Curry) is from England. Only in England can someone be soooo Politically Incorrect...I love it.

Another interesting point is that all humans will increase in intelligence and performance and peak at year 3000 but then after that we will decline because we will be too dependent on everything being done for ourselves. You know the gift and the curse of our current society is the following: We have become incredibly specialized in terms of services and skills. The good thing is now when you want to install an auto starter in your car for winter there is a special guy who does just that, he doesn't do speakers, he doesn't do electrical wiring of cars (he probably knows about it but his speciality and what he is efficiently good at is car starters). The problem with that, is that guy who is so specialized in his work becomes dumb in other fields. That's the curse, we would rather have people do everything we don't know, and naturally we don't know how to do most things because we are so specialized and concentrated in what we do that our brain seriously stops to function properly and loses its balance. Economically we are great, socially and psychologically we are retarded (HELLLLLLOOOOO CAPITALISM!!!!!). Anyways now that I got that off my chest...what was I saying....oh yeah because we will be so dependent on gadgets and technology in general to do everything we will decrease in mental performance (look at how people use the calculator to do every addition and subtraction no matter how basic, now that's a clue of whats in store for us). Here is the beauty, "social skills such as communicating and interacting with others could be lost along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust, and care" - Wow, John I think they are on to us bro, I don't need to live to the year 3000 to feel this way, I am already there !!!!!

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Friedman's latest Column

The Berlin Wall fell almost 17 years ago. At the time, the future seemed clear: The fall of the wall would unleash an unstoppable tide of free markets and free people — and for about 15 years it did just that. Today, though, when you stand where the Berlin Wall once stood and look east, you see a countertide coming your way. It is a black tide of petro-authoritarianism emanating from Russia, and it is blunting the Berlin Wall tide of free markets and free people.

Why? Russia is a classic example of what I like to call “the First Law of Petropolitics,” which posits that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse relationship in petrolist states — states with weak institutions and a high dependence on oil for their G.D.P. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up. The day the Soviet Union collapsed the price of oil was near $16 a barrel. And as the price of oil goes up the pace of freedom goes down. Today, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, flush with surging oil and gas profits, is crushing domestic opponents, renationalizing major energy companies, throwing out Western human rights groups and generally making himself the big man on campus in Europe.

When Europeans tell you that they fear a new “cold war,” this time they really are talking about the temperature — and the fear that Russia, if it wanted to turn off the gas, could make Europeans very cold. About 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas imports come from Russia, and that is expected to grow to 70 percent by 2030.

With prices high, Russia has gone from the sick man of Europe to the boss man. Russia is a having a much bigger impact on Western Europe “with gas pipelines than it ever had with SS-20” long-range nuclear missiles, remarked the German foreign-policy expert Josef Joffe, author of the smart book “Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America.”

“Ten years ago we thought Russia was out of it,” Mr. Joffe said. “We knew it was going to come back. But suddenly, out of the blue, with the rise in oil prices, it is back on stage, and this time it’s much more skillful. The image we have of Russia is [the port of] Murmansk, where the Russian fleet is rotting — but power comes in many forms.” And the most popular form today is oil and gas.

Goodbye NATO, hello Citgo.

The other day, the BBC quoted a senior “E.U. insider” as saying of European Union leaders: “You know what happens when they get in the same room with Putin?” They all prostrate themselves “and say, ‘I love you, Vladimir.’ ” The BBC was reporting about a tense summit meeting last Friday in the Finnish town of Lahti. E.U. leaders reportedly beseeched Mr. Putin to honor contracts with Western oil companies, as well as to ease his crackdown on press freedoms, on human rights groups in Russia and on Georgia, and to investigate the murder of a crusading Russian journalist.

What the E.U. wants, a senior German official explained, is to be able to invest in more Russian oil and gas drilling projects and pipelines upstream, so that Russian and E.U. energy interests will be so intertwined Russia will never consider turning off the gas. Mr. Putin wants Gazprom, the giant Russian gas company, to be able to buy into more downstream consumer operations in Europe. That way Russia could dominate the industry from its oilfields all the way to the gas meters of Berlin and Brussels. Right now, the two sides are in a standoff.

“We cannot allow energy to divide Europe as communism once did,” José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, told The Financial Times. But it is.

In fairness to Mr. Putin, turnabout is fair play. After the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia was enfeebled, the U.S. and the E.U. crammed NATO expansion down his throat. He’s now using petro-power to push back. “Russia is very different from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia,” remarked Clemens Wergin, an editorial writer at the German daily Der Tagesspiegel. Russia has nukes and oil, he noted, and therefore has the potential to play a much more domineering geopolitical role in Europe.

German officials don’t really think Russia is about to turn off the gas if it doesn’t get its way on some issue. After all, it never did that during the old cold war, and Russia today is much more dependent on Western markets. But still, centuries of uneasy relations between Europe and Russia make German officials queasy about how dependent they’ve grown on the Kremlin to heat their homes and offices. Queasy or not, one thing they know for sure: Russia is back. The gas man cometh.

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Petropolitics and how it runs the World

This is a huge topic. The term was coined by Thomas L. Friedman (my favourite Journalist of all time). Friedman is a New York Times Columnist. Even though the Times is a Liberal or left leaning newspaper, he is very good at being fair unlike Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd who would bash Bush if the Middle East becomes an instant well of democracy tomorrow. I like their heart but they are too much. With Friedman you get the articulation of pragmatism mixed with our ideals not one over the other. I dunno, check him out he is really good along with David Brooke (Moderate Conservative). But anyways, back to the topic at hand. Here is what Petropolitics discuss in a nutshell....If a country has oil there are two ways things can go for them. If Oil is in demand and thus the price is high, it is directly related to the liberty and evolution of the country that has the oil. However if oil prices are lower the governments usually yield to pressure and increase liberty in their respective country. Friedman wrote an incredible paper in the magazine Foreign Policy (May/June 2006 Foreignpolicy.com) showing diagrams to prove his point. The reason for this is simply because when a country (Pick any from the Middle East) other governments want that oil for their own economies and consumers. So Western and "Civilized" governments will turn a blind eye to all the vicious acts of the corrupt regime that has the oil so that it won't rock the boat with them and risk not getting that oil. Secondly, the corrupt regime makes an incredible amount of money off the oil which helps them do one of the following (sometimes both simultaneously):

1: Increase the police force, army, and most importantly the secret police to make sure the country is held in check and all the frustrations from the populous will not spill over into a rebellion against the regime. (Done by all of them, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Russia, Pre-Invasion Iraq, to a lesser extent Venezuela)

2: Pay off the citizens. (Done by the Gulf regimes such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) This is done by just pouring money for goods that people want and giving people whatever they need as long as its not political freedom. Its sorta like offering your dog the best food, best stuffed toys, a big plasma TV, and whatever else dogs want but as long as the dog remains in the cage. Al Saoud family in Saudi Arabia for example builds incredible highways, build great hospitals, staff it with the best doctors from the Middle East, anyone who wants to get schooling can get sponsored incredibly easy, but when it comes down to actual freedom its not there. Some people argue that "well who cares, as long as the people are getting what they need, whats the problem?" I am not even gonna discuss the fact that the oil will eventually run out (sooner than people think) I will argue as if the oil will not stop flowing. The problem lies in the fact that the society does not improve. Without political and economic freedom, societies decay and so do cultures eventually. Its like a millionaire not bothering to teach his kids to read or write since they won't need to work to survive. It is technically correct however its terrible for the morale of the people and it does not provide a new step towards improvement. Anyways, its a huge topic. Here is today's article by Friedman. Click Here.

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Zack Posting - Bullet in your Head

On this song, "Bullet in Your Head" off their self-titled album, Zack is talking about complacency that we live in while the government does what it wants. He paints a very impressive picture of how entertainment has helped to put our minds to sleep.

I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You were mesmerised
Cellular phones soundin' a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realise
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds

Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high

So serene on the screen you were mesmerised - The Population is so fixated on the entertainment or what the media gives them that they become complacent with what they are given.
There is also a commentary about Capitalism here and its effects on humanity in general. People become cold to each other career and business driven, before you knoww it we are cold as stones.
This is a great line, they load the clip in onmicolour, he is bringing the idea of a gun that kills with the TV gun and says its the same except the TV does it slowly - sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz shown on the righthand side of this blog (the infamous island prison a few miles off the oceanfront of San Francisco, California known for its horrific tales of treatment of prisoners and reputation for allowing very few prisoners to escape in its long history).

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Bansky - Artist that makes you think

Have you ever heard about this artist called Bansky. This guy (I am assuming he is a guy) is out of England. He is unknown. He is famous for painting graffiti on buildings and on the streets. He does his work at night when no one can see him and then the product is ready in the morning. This guy is not limited to just England, his work has been seen on the Security Wall being built in Palestine (which will become the permanent wall eventually), Brooklyn (where he broke in this famous museum and put up his own work), and more. This is a self described Art Terrorist. His graffiti and work is very controversial and out of the box in terms of how it relays the message. He believes (rightly so) that if people are not interested in Art then the artist is too lazy to engage the audience. I couldn't agree more. There are so many times when we are told that this painting is great and this abstract work is incredible but we find nothing fascinating about it. Maybe because us common folk don't get the intricacies of Art pieces like a Monet, but if we are not told why these are great pieces (some preppie people like to keep the rest in the dark as to keep this Art thing exclusive) then we lose interest. If you as a messenger does not transmit your message in an interesting vehicle then the message will not be absorbed. You can write poems and read them to teenagers all you want but all you need is one song from Rage Against the Machine such as Guerrilla Radio or back in the day Public Enemy and you will get a much better response. Anyways, here are some work by this guy Bansky. I will leave some links. Peace.
Banksy Official Website
The Art of the State
Flicr

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Darfur is Dying

Here is a link from my buddy John. This is a game that was created to let the player learn a bit of the tough life people in Darfur is living. darfur is dying This game was developed by the Reebok Human Rights Foundation and MTV. Whether you believe the American Propaganda and think that the problem is completely related to the Janjaweed or you think America has no point whatsoever, the point is as in most hotspots in the world there is a political fight for power and the regular people that usually have nothing to do with it are used and abused to gain it whether through convincing them to fight or by using them as victims to appeal to the world community. More on the Darfur situation. Its a lot more complicated that people want to label it as.

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Rage Against The Machine

The greatest band in the history of punk rock. These guys brought it. The first time I heard them I was hooked. The passion, the energy, the youthful rage, it was amazing. I watched Bulls on Parade on TV and I couldn't believe that people cared about current events and politics in music. At the time music was for the depressed and for shiny suites (refer back to Nirvana and Puffy and Bad Boy). The group is composed of four members. On drums there is Brad Wilk who plays the drums so hard he would go through a bunch of sticks and some bloodied fingers before the end of the set. Then on Bass you got Tim Commerford who is also buddies with the lead singer (or yeller) Zack De La Rocha. On Guitar its the musical genius of Tom Morello. Zack and Tom are the leaders of this group. They produced four great albums together over 10 years. They are by far the least efficient rock group of their time. Their music and message was genius but they had so many intergroup problems that finally led to their breakup. The day they broke up I was incredibly sad, and I put the beginning of "Know your enemy" on my answering machine. (The Vice Dean of Pharmacy called me on it and left me a message saying "she is not sure if she reached my number or whose") So yeah, if you are interested here is a link to a summary of the group. Yahoo-Rage Against the Machine




I don't really have a knack for understanding music nor appreciating it. So when everyone in the music world agreed that Tom Morello (a Harvard graduate by the way) was a guitar god, I didn't care much for it. Anyways, after listening to other rock groups, it was obvious that he was way ahead of everyone in terms of beats and riffs (you should see him freestyle on his crazy ass guitars!!). But truly the one aspect of Rage Against The Machine that hooked me was none other than Zack de la Rocha. This guy is insane. He brings so much energy and assertiveness. He is a musical genius, got a gifted pen, and knows how produce songs. I strongly recommend watching the video of this guy performing. He was great!!!!

Every week, I will take a couple of phrases of his lyrics from his many songs and elaborate on it. You will be impressed. This guy was something else.

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China - Puppet Master??

Since being mentioned as part of the axis of evil (genius move by George W. Bush) North Korea, the lunatic running that country as his playground - Kim Jong the second was to start building up his atomic or nuclear arsenal. You put an idiot on the defensive you think he will care about his people and try to save them or would he try to hold on to power at no expense being too high. Take a look at what Saddam has done in the past. The bottom line is always sustaining power with no care what is being destroyed to maintain it. I am not saying that Kim Jong was an angel and the Bush administration has turned him into the devil (some leftists would have you believe that) that's stupid. No, he was a crazy self absorbed, self loving man who wanted might and power and respect and then found himself being isolated from the world. The U.S. for the longest time tried to bully him into stopping, but Kim had a deal with Jimmy Carter (Democrat) that he broke. He was cheating for a couple of years working on his nuclear arsenal before he was caught.

Again Bush is a bully and a lot of what he does might have been based on good points but he fails everytime in style points. He thinks the world will tremble infront of him because of the U.S., what a stupid attitude. It actually alienates people who might like the U.S. Moderates who want change might feel like if they go along with the way Bush wants to do things then they are giving up their dignity. But forget all that, here is the crux of the matter. North Korea couldn't give two craps about what the United States think, what Europe thinks, what the U.N. thinks...HAHA...The U.N. they are so funny. They don't care. They only have one friend. CHINA. Here is the matter. China provides North Korea with so much. Its like its little bitch. Yes North Korea costs China energy, food, and technology but it uses them as leverage. Its like China is Dr. Frankenstein and North Korea is its monster. Sure the monster is annoying, but the reason you put up with him is because he can cause havoc on others. So China for so long had this cool master slave relationship with North Korea by telling the world that it got Kim under control. It gave her lots of leverage in negotiations for its own deals with Europe and the U.S.


Aha, now that the stage is set, what would happen if the slave runs out, what if the monster runs away from Dr. Frankenstein. North Korea defied China (actually they were smart, they knew China wanted them as a pet for their own good, so they used the protection provided to them by China to proceed with their nuclear ambitions and then when they got to the point of no return, i.e. an actual warhead they sped full speed ahead not looking back). So now China feels like it better reel North Korea back to complacency for a couple of important reasons. First and foremost, China's credibility and power leverage. If it loses N. Korea (by not turning it back to peaceful non nuclear ways) then its political importance in the region will decrease significantly which China would not like especially with India ascending economically and politically right beside them. And second and more immediate, if the U.N. authorizes force led by the U.S. or Europe, a wave of refugees will flood China's border with North Korea, a situation that China doesn't want.

Its funny because I think everyone got what they deserve. The U.S. being stupid with their arrogance (Bush's attitude) helped convince a lunatic that his only way for respect is through mass destruction weaponry. China playing with fire and wanting regional dominance will end up losing both North Korea as their bitch and legitimacy as a superpower because no one will need them to negotiate with N. Korea anymore. And Kim will probably be assassinated or taken out for just being himself (He deserves the worse for what he has done for his people).

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Microbanking Movement

Did you hear about this. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank won the Nobel peace Prize. news/1/hi/world/Europe/6047020.stm The cool thing about it is that as the article states its becoming a new phenomenon for anti-poverty and environment work to be considered peace work. This is a sign of the ages. Before a peace prize would go to someone who intervened to end a war, stopping genocide, lead a peaceful anti-colonial movement in their own country, but those days are long gone and the new problems facing the world involves less colonialism and more poverty (could be caused by neo-coloniolism). These guys (by guys I mean men and women) have figured out a way to give a Spark to a stagnant situation. Creativity is great, they were pioneers in the microbanking movement that has had great effect in the world. So lets say a guy is just chillin' on the street in Bangladesh. He is able bodied (can work), can't find work, can't start his own business (because he is poor and has no assets for a bank to give him a loan against), so he will not produce, not provide for his family and not contribute to the growth of the economy of his country. So what this guy Yunus and the Grameen Bank (I think from Australia) did was provide people who can't get a loan for anyone immediate approval. A genius idea that requires a bit of idealism mixed with some courage (cause if this plan doesn't pan out, the founders would look like idiots) and you got a spark that enables potential in people to be realized (I think the greatest achievement any country can do is to allow its people a chance to achieve their full potential). So the plan worked, obviously there were many people who defaulted which is to be expected but for the most part the successes were more than the failures. GREAT JOB!!!

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Tigers can't win the World Series!!!

Don't you hate it when a team comes out of no where and win it all. Sure its fun in the beginning when they make it to the playoffs, and the Cinderella story continues with them winning one series at most, but doesn't it start to suck as a viewer when you know there are better teams out there that lost because of it being a five game series (luck plays a much bigger role than if it was a seven game series). Like yeah cool, young pitching staff makes it to the playoffs, but don't beat out the Yankees (even though I hate the dreaded Yankees). Let Oakland take care of them in the second round. And you know what's worse, the fact that next year Detroit will be no where to be seen, please refer to exhibit A - the Florida Marlins in 1997, exhibit B - Arizona in 2001 (the one year the Yankees should have won it to break the sadness of 9/11), exhibit C - Florida Again in 2003, and finally last year champs the White Sox. What do they have in common, these guys won and that was it, they didn't make it again the playoffs. There are teams that deserve these championships, the Red Sox, Yankees, Cardinals, Minnesota, Oakland, teams that consistently make it there. Its fun when a team kinda creeps out of nowhere but it sucks when you know they don't deserve to go all the way. Its cooler when a team makes the playoffs, struggles for a bit then makes it eventually, its sweet, its deserving, its rewarding. I don't know that's what I think. All I gotta say is GO METS GO!!! Love that orange and blue Uniforms.

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Coolboy in the house

Yo this is coolboy.

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