I have been critical in the past of attempts to run more conservative candidates over moderates, so this one might surprise a few people: Doug Hoffman gets my endorsement.
Why? First, because his opponent is not a moderate; she's a liberal. She supports card-check (elimination of secret ballot for union elections), for Pete's sake! Second, where I have pushed for the moderate candidate, it's in elections where the race was tight, and the GOP needed to attract independents. That's not the case in NY-23; the latest polling shows the Democrat, Owens, with only 29% of the vote. There's no reason to suppose Hoffman can't win that race, or that a strong showing by him would result in Owens winning a squeaker. Scozzafava looks like a loser in that poll, with a ridiculous 14%.
The teams were obviously hoping to get out of the heat, but it was not to be during this episode. The Blonde Beachers, off their win last week, are the first to start in the morning. They pick up a locked briefcase. The first task is a roadblock: Row a boat out to a yacht to receive a watch. The watch has a time on it, which is set at 8:35. This of course is the combination to the briefcase, and everybody quickly realizes this. Except that the Harlem Globetrotters' Big Easy thinks the watch is telling him an eight and a seven, so he keeps trying the combinations of 8-7-1, 8-7-2.
I notice that one of the gay brothers is wearing a shirt that just reads "College". Didn't somebody else do that a few years back? At any rate, the teams are next faced with a detour: Gold or Glass? In Gold, they have to weigh out $500,000 worth of gold, while in Glass they must assemble a dozen hookahs. It seems transparent to me that the Gold challenge would be much easier, although the fact that the exchange rate changes every minute does make it a little trickier. The Blonde Beachers start out on Gold, but predictably neither of them is good at math, so eventually they decide to switch tasks. The Gay Brothers and the Poker Players both pick Gold, and the Gay Bros have a calculator. They again team up with the Poker Players and both teams pretty much breeze through the challenge.
Meanwhile, the Blonde Beachers finish their hookahs. Next up is the Leap of Faith. They have to ride a water slide down six stories, through a pool filled with sharks and into another pool (which is safe). The Beachers manage it with no problems. Next up: the Pit Stop, where they receive "personal watercraft"; no mention as to what kind of watercraft, but I'm guessing something like a Sea-Doo
Next come the Poker Players, and the Gay Brothers, then the Farmer and Son; in addition to his pink hair, the son's got a lot of tatts on him.
The big drama in the race comes next. Mika, one of the Christian Country pair is deathly afraid of heights and doesn't want to take the Leap of Faith. At moments, it looks like Canaan, her boyfriend is about to force her down the water slide. Eventually, the Harlem Globetrotters, who had been in last place, show up and discourage Mika from going down the slide. It's kind of sleazy, but you gotta do what you gotta do to win, and sure enough the time is up on Mika and Canaan and they have to yield to the Globies, who can't get down the slide fast enough. Canaan tries going down first, but predictably Mika is still too petrified, and slinks down the staircase. The Globies make it to the mat, while the Christian Country pair are Phil-Liminated.
Comments: It seems a big mistake not to have a bunching maneuver in this episode, as the Blonde Beachers had about a 90-minute head start on everybody, and are easily first to reach every challenge and first to complete them. I believe they have won three legs so far in this series, and definitely look like the team to beat.
Stunning News: Women Pay More for Health Insurance
I'm completely mystified. How could this possibly be so?
Checking the "female" box when buying health insurance is likely to cost extra — perhaps up to 50 percent more than a man would pay for the same coverage.
Oh, wait:
Gender-rating — or what some term as flat-out sexual discrimination — is linked to the simple fact that women, particularly those under age 50 or so, go to the doctor more often than men.
So they're more expensive to insure? The horror. Predictably, some very stupid liberals are up in arms about this:
Isn't that great? Because women are the ones who bear the physical burden of gestation and the responsibility that entails, they are paying up to 50% more in premiums. When Jon Kyl whined about not wanting to pay for maternity benefits, he was defending that status quo.
Of course, women also pay less for life insurance (because they live longer) and less for auto insurance. Why do I suspect this "discrimination" will not be remedied by ObamaCare?
For those who don't remember his wacky noontime show, it's impossible to explain. It was obviously the inspiration for the Pee Wee Herman show. About all I can remember is the couple inside the cast-iron stove; one of the signature lines was "Cool it, Reba," aimed at the wife. And of course, the Mouse:
Later that year he invented a dance called "The Mouse," a loony version of the Twist in which Sales bared his upper teeth, raised his hands to his ears and wiggled his fingers while chewing in time to the music. He performed it several times on "The Ed Sullivan Show," where he met dancer Trudy Carson. They were married in 1980.
They miss the real trick of the Mouse, which was that Soupy would skip left and right as he sang the song, and sometimes he would skip twice in one direction, which us kids tried hard to do and mostly failed.
I missed the beginning of last week's episode and while I found it interesting I couldn't get a handle on a post. I was certainly sorry to seem Team Asperger's get Philiminated for the loss of a passport; about the only gag I can come up with is that they say you're never alone with a schizophrenic, and you're never together with an Asperger's.
Teams are told to head to the Persian Gulf, to find the world's tallest building. Of course, that immediately said Dubai to me, but one team (hilariously) tries to find the country called the Persian Gulf. There's some bits about how some teams stop at the local internet cafe and others go straight to the airport, but for once there's no difference; all teams end up on the same flight.
That's the one there. Of course, everybody (including me), is thinking some dramatic hang-glide or rappel down the face of the building, but instead the teams just go back down the elevators. Cool scenery, but WTF? One team decides to go for the fast forward, on the idea that if all of them go for it, they'll fall behind the guys waiting below for the next elevator. And when they get to the bottom, they try to pretend that the challenge above is really intense. Obvious problem; all the teams went up and came down less than 15 minutes later.
The Blonde Beachers go to the Fast Forward, where the task is to drive a Formula One car on a 50 seconds or less lap. Beach Boy does it the first time, removing much of the drama from the episode especially when it is revealed they will be driven to the pit stop in a Maserati.
The other teams all race back to the garage, where cars are waiting. Except the Obnoxious Lawyer and his girlfriend can't find the right place, so they spend a lot of time running around the garage. They go out into the desert, where the roadblock requires one of them to search in the desert for vases filled with water, and fill up their water pouches.
The Interracial Couple decide that the guy should do it, because, as they point out, chocolate melts in the sun. Of course in my case I would say that I should do it as wandering around in ridiculously hot sun is nothing new to me. They all have some trouble finding vases that actually contain water. On the way to this challenge, the Obnoxious Lawyer ignores his girlfriend three times when she tells him not to get off at an exit; this means they're the last to arrive at this challenge.
There's a whole lot of talking about karma in this part of the episode and later. When the White Chocolate finds a vase filled with water, he fills his water pouch, then quietly clues in two of the other teams while heading back.
Next up: Ski Dubai, a four-story skiing center in the middle of the desert. Teams must choose between building a snowman or digging through a pile of snow to find a small (looks to be about 4 inches high) snowman. Initially all the teams choose to dig (and I probably would have too), but aside from the Interracial Couple and the Harlem Globetrotters nobody finds one. So they go for build and despite having to create their snowman in the heat of the sun, nobody has much trouble. So when the Obnoxious Lawyer and his wife get lost again (!) but eventually show up and choose to build, they're pretty much hosed; you can only pick up time in something more random. Sure enough they are the last team to the mat and Phil-liminated.
Team To Beat: Blonde Beachers look pretty good so far Watch Out For: Harlem Globetrotters Designated Villains: See next week's episode
I have been critical of Rush Limbaugh in the past, and I probably will be again. But this claim that Rush has often uttered racist quotes on the air is ridiculous. First, there are sites like Media Muttheads, which transcribe every word Rush utters. Second, Rush would be called out on it by conservative listeners.
Update: One bogus quote that is floating around is this one:
“Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
It's a phony quote, but the funny thing is that if you take that last bit out, lots of liberals have said the same thing. Travis Darby, a blogger at Salon:
If we can afford to spend nearly a trillion dollars bailing out the predominantly white bankers whose greed got us into this recession, what's another trillion to pay back the people who helped build this country through the blood and sweat of their forced labor?
"I haven't and I don't think I would even go to the point of talking to Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, Dwight Freeney, talking to those men and seeing what their positions are. I'm very sensitive to know there are scars out there. I think as a nation we need to stop it. Our words do damage and it's something that we don't need. We need to get to a higher level of humanity and we have."
Well, if Irsay did go to the point of talking to Tony Dungy, he might be surprised by his response. You see, Dungy appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show in January of this year:
RUSH: I have been looking forward to the next few minutes ever since this interview with Coach Tony Dungy was put together. Recently retired from the Indianapolis Colts, coming off the million copies of his first book Quiet Strength. This book is Uncommon, is the title, Finding Your Path to Significance, the subtitle. Coach Dungy, welcome here. I can't tell you how thrilled and honored I am to be able to speak to you, sir.
COACH DUNGY: Well, thank you, Rush. I feel the same. It's great being on with you and thank you for having me.
AL Cy Young: Zack Greinke Royals. Even though he couldn't get the job done against the Twins, his pitching in late August and September was amazing, almost as amazing as the job he did in April and May. In June and July and early August he was merely terrific.
AL MVP: Joe Mauer, Twins. A catcher hitting .364 with power? No questions left to answer; Mauer is the best player in baseball today.
NL Cy Young: It's clearly either Carpenter or Wainwright; I'll take Carpenter's +13 W-L record over Wainwright's +11, and the league-leading ERA. Plus Carpenter's a terrific story after missing most of the last two years.
NL MVP: Well, I've tried to avoid it all season, but I'm going with Albert Pujols. Chase Utley, who's still my favorite player in baseball right now, did not perform in September, and Pujols was the usual Albert. The only question remaining about Pujols is whether he's the greatest hitter of all time.
I suppose I understand why they would feature Vietnam so prominently on the Amazing Race (in this series and at least one other); there are a lot of people in the US who are probably interested to go back over there, living their prime vacationing years.
In the opening, the riverboat everybody got on during the last episode travels upriver, but apparently not everybody was paying attention, as the fourth couple, the Obnoxious Lawyer and his fiancee, think they are still in Ho Chi Minh city and decide to start looking around for the playhouse that is mentioned in the first clue.
Actually, HCM city is over an hour away, which adds to the comic delight. As the teams arrive there, they are confronted with some puppet serpents swimming around in a pond; the racers must snag the clues from the snakes' mouths. There's a container with a stamp inside that shows the main post office. Every team gets this immediately except the Obnoxious Lawyer and his fiancee. BTW, since they showed the outside of the PO on the show, here's a reminder of what the inside looks like: At the main PO, the clue is a detour. Teams must either do child's play or word play. Child's play involves dragging a clay animal around the park and collecting balloons, while in word play they must spot the letters in cars circling a roundabout and then combine them into a common word, very important in Vietnam ("independence"). Okay, a little bit of PC nonsense there, but more importantly, only one team picks word play, and it's the oldster couple from San Francisco. It's always a bad sign when you're the only team that picks one challenge.
The Globetrotters, who have won every section of this particular episode, breeze through the child's play challenge, and we see that they are thinking ahead when they pick a stable animal to lead through the park. Later on, Team Asperger's picks a giraffe with dire consequences, and the Poker Players are not careful in selecting a cart, resulting in them losing precious time going back to the beginning. One interesting bit; Tiffany Michelle tells the Gay Brothers to continue on when her cart disintegrates. Perhaps she is starting to feel the usual "who deserves to win this" vibe already?
Next we get a bit about what great recyclers the Vietnamese are; one senses this is because they pull screws out of old VCRs, which appears to be the next task. It's kind of droll, but they spoil the green aspect by giving everybody power tools. The best bit here is the Obnoxious Laywer just pulling things apart with his bare hands and apparently gaining a bit. Aside from that everybody appears to pretty much finish as they started this task, which does not bode well for the older SF couple, who arrive after everybody else has left.
And despite some effort to make it look close, they do indeed finish last, and are Phil-liminated. The Globetrotters win the episode, followed closely by the Blonde Beachers.
Comments: No bunching maneuvers in this episode, but then again there are no long trips that would make that necessary. Lance, the Obnoxious Lawyer keeps talking about how he's a lion; I wonder if he ain't "lying" about being a lawyer. He seems more like a bouncer at a bar.
