Make it stop: Buffoonery from my party, and some good boxing by Edner Cherry

Workout notes: 5 miles in new shoes prior to my group, 3 with my group. Probably another 5 after yoga today.

Update: 5+ miles (gooseloop, dam) after yoga; 1:04:26, last in 12:13. First mile was 13:30 or so. I didn’t get divebomed but I did get “escorted”. I did come across a family of geese; the dad was a hybrid snow goose (orange feet and bill, but some grey in the head) and the mom was a Canadian; they had about a dozen fledglings.

Politics: the campaign for the Democratic nomination continues (sort of) and we are getting exposed to all sorts of buffoonery.

1. The Black Journalists are sexist. Yes, you read that right; that is the latest claim from Geraldine “Imperial Wizard” Ferraro.

Geraldine Ferraro continued her campaign to get someone, anyone, to do something about all the sexism in the campaign today in an appearance on Fox News, where she once again had difficulty citing an example of sexist behavior from the Obama campaign. She eventually got around to the Annie Oakley remark, the treatment of Clinton at the Philadelphia debate, and her confusion over Jay-Z songs, but she had picked a new target of chauvinist infamy: black journalists. Ferraro held out the New York Times’ Bob Herbert as a particularly egregious example of one such sexist misogynist terrorist of media, saying that in his past six months of writing, “There wasn’t one column that had anything decent to say about Hillary.” (By contrast, she applauded Fox’s Sean Hannity for his honesty, saying that he hates Clinton too completely and too perfectly for it to be sexist.)

Host Shephard Smith rightly pointed out that this was more of a media critique than a charge that could be plausibly laid at the feet of the Obama campaign, but Ferraro, who seems not to understand what a campaign conference call is, insisted on labeling these “black journalists” as “surrogates”: “Well, well…yeah…if you have conference calls with these people every week and you give them your message and they put your message in the paper, that to me is campaign.”

Please, make it stop! I am so ashamed that I ever voted for this moron.

2. Hillary Clinton: Compares the Florida stripping of the delegates to the civil rights struggle, suffragists, Zimbabwe, etc.

Gee, I missed all of the dogs, fire hoses, lynching, etc.

(note: the above was censored by the assholes at photobucket.)

3. We are seeing media doing stuff like this:

No, this has nothing to do with any candidate. And, I’ve heard that the article itself is good; it talks about white power groups targeting Obama. Nevertheless, bad cover photo.

4. As usual, we are hearing more of the “we HRC supporters will NOT vote for Obama” garbage. That isn’t true for all of them. But to the morons who are saying this, I present:

Hey, look: I’ll survive a third Bush term; I walk to work, have decent job security and I’ll never get knocked up. So go right ahead and vote for John “more of the same” McCain.

Boxing: I managed to watch some boxing matches last night; in each case an ex-world champion fought younger opponents. Not surprisingly, the ex-champions went 1-2, with two of them getting knocked out. Fight News has the report:

Three former world champions were in action with mixed results Wednesday night at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base in Jacksonville, North Carolina. In the main event, lightweight contender Edner “Cherry Bomb” Cherry (24-5-2, 11 KOs) scored a vicious tenth round knockout against former two-time WBC lightweight champion Stevie “Lil’ But Bad” Johnston (42-6-1, 18 KOs). Cherry, rated WBC #9, WBA #13, dropped the 35-year-old Johnson in rounds three and nine before brutally leveling Johnston with his famous “Cherry Bomb” right hand in the tenth. Johnston was down for several minutes but happily appeared to be OK. Time was 2:34.

I have to admit that having Terry Atlas doing the commentary helped me understand what was going on. In the later rounds, Cherry danced and circled; I though that he was just cruising to get by on points as he had a huge lead. But Atlas explained that Johnson had lost his legs and had no choice but to inch in toward Cherry, very slowly and Cherry was setting him up for the big shot.

That is what happened; when Johnson got in too close, Cherry lead with a jab to “blind him” and then unloaded a huge straight right hand which dropped him.

Lightweight Johnny Edwards (14-2-1, 8 KOs) scored an impressive seventh round knockout over former world champion Freddie Norwood (42-3-1, 23 KOs). Edwards took command in round three. After the 38-year-old Norwood was cut over the left eye by an unintentional headbutt, Edwards knocked him down with a left hand. Norwood was cut over the right eye in round five. In round seven, Edwards clocked Norwood with a left hook that laid him out for the count. Time was 2:51. The bout was rematch of a September 2007 clash in which Edwards won after Norwood was DQ’d for low blows.

The blow that floored Norwood didn’t look that severe on the replay, but it hit him on the side of the head. The knockout was a delayed type of thing; a split second after Edwards landed the blow to the temple, Norwood stumbled forward and then fell face first.

43-year-old former cruiserweight champion Arthur Williams (44-15-1, 30 KOs) was the only ex-champ to come out with a win, albeit against lesser opposition. “King” Arthur took a one-sided unanimous decision over journeyman Clarence Moore (5-4-1, 5 KOs). Williams scored two knockdowns in round two, but was unable to finish early, going the six round route to win by scores of 60-52 on all cards.

I had it 59-53 on my card as I actually gave Moore round 3; I really thought that Moore was going down on round two but he came back fighting. But yes, Williams had him overmatched.
Atlas cautioned that Williams might get a false sense of security from this fight; where Moore does have knockout power, his straight ahead, “no jab” style played right into the long armed Williams style.

One note: they showed a clip of Bob Foster and Terry Atlas said that Foster was one of the top 5 puncher of all time. I have a hard time believing that; watch this clip of him trying to box Joe Frazier (Foster moved up from what was then “light heavyweight” to take on Frazier)

Don’t blink; the entire fight didn’t make it two complete rounds.