Ferrablog

Great win by the Lightning today. I was going to write up the usual recap, but found this far better one from someone calling himself "Jibber McJabber" on Usenet:

Pre-Game:

ABC showed Hogan warming up the crowd. They didn't show it but the Lightning also had Koko B. Ware and Mitsuharu Misawa firing those T-Shirt shooting bazooka deals too.

Melrose predicted Flyers to win series? Oh yeah? Well I got a prediction for you pretty boy, I predict people will continue to mistake your haircut for a mullet, despite the fact that it's just uniformly long hair pulled tight into a ponytail. BOOYAH!
First Period:

I missed most of the first period because I was still laughing about Esche having a picture of Kid Rock on his mask. I mean honestly. For a second I thought we'd been transported back to 1998 and I started panicking because the Lightning really sucked back then. Luckily it turns out Esche is just a giant tool.

Did Cechmanek like Creed or something ... because his GAA was fantastic and dumping him for a guy who essentially has a Kid Rock tattoo ON HIS FACE ...well, that's pretty sad. Khabby on the other hand has, um, Dylan, Lennon, um, Thom Yorke, and, errr, Talib Kweli on his mask.

Lightning played one nice shift to start the game, as if to say "we're not rusty," then proceeded to play like shit for a period and half because of rust. Touche!

Second Period:

Lightning usually play a solid second period and this was an exception ...aside from the whole scoring more goals deal of course. Well, I suppose you have to win despite playing poorly to win a Stanley Cup and the Lightning sure gave 100% in the playing like shit department. Thankfully they started to wake up and took over the game ... in the sense of playing with a lead, only allowing shots from the boards and just killing time. Got the "non-superstar" scoring deal too ... well aside from Richards. He's a superstar. I guess Andreychuk is a superstar too considering he has so many PP goals and will go to the HOF. Dingman isn't though. So we got the one goal from Dingman every team needs to win a Cup. Little Known NHL Fact: No team has ever won a Stanley Cup without Dingman scoring a goal in their playoff run. Look it up.

I like that Timander -- Flyers should play him more.

Third Period:

Ah to hell with the period-by-period thing. The point is I like this victory. They won but played badly enough to want to come out better in the next game. Had the same kind of deal there with a "bad win" against the Habs in the Montreal series and Hab fans were all "well they just got some lucky bounces, in the next game we can beat them physically and convert on our chances and presto we ... what's that you say? ... we got swept 4-0? ... ah je suis un fromage mangeant le singe de reddition!"

Wait, did I just have the Hab fan say he is some cheese eating a monkey? Lousy Alta Vista translating site. And lousy high school French not teaching me how to write Simpsons quotes.

ABC really screwed up in their coverage. They briefly showed the last playoff meeting between the Flyers and Lightning but failed to show any footage of the FAR more relevant NFC Championship game. In fact, rather than begging the audience to watch the Flames-Sharks series (wow did they sound desperate) they could have shown Barber majestically running down the field to ice the game. Really terrible journalism -- I don't think they mentioned Joe Jurevicius once during the entire hockey game! No wonder Canadians make fun of Americans not understanding the game.

I'm looking at the box score and we actually won faceoffs 35-28. That can't be right. Did they have like ten faceoffs with just Lightning players after the Flyers had already left?

I also feel like we won the physical side, or at least it came out even. St. Louis dumping Primeau was pretty sweet -- announcers were quick to "defend" Primeau by pointing out he was actually diving like a coward in a desperate attempt for a call.

Anyway, all in all a fun time was had by all. And best wishes to my fine feathered friends in Philly.

Announcers downplayed Lightning's speed, as if they're supposed to be skating around from end-to-end with the puck like a video game set on rookie. Ask that "Flyer" who damn near broke both his ankles behind the net trying to keep up with Marty when he laid out that wicked sweet cut and the Flyer guy just
collapsed to the ground weeping. HE WAS WEEPING I SAY!

Good stuff. I may just cut and paste him each game if he keeps this up.

Matt Gunn (link via Atrios) does a good job of debunking the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth" on the merits.

However, even after giving these guys the benefit of the doubt over the sincerity of their feelings or the truth of their allegations, their denials that they're shilling for the Bush Administration ring hollow for one key reason: the timing of their recent media blitz.

If John Kerry is "unfit to be commander-in-chief", as they have stated, then why wait until now to try and stop him? If their crusade was to prevent the scourge of Kerry rather than to promote the election of Bush, the best time to stop Kerry would have been during the Democratic primary season rather than the general election, where Kerry now stands roughly a 50-50 chance of becoming President.

They had several opportunities to come forward and have a better chance of stopping Kerry:

* The summer of 2003, before the ascent of Howard Dean and when Kerry was the presumed front-runner.

* During the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, when Kerry began his comeback.

* And most notably, during the week between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, when Kerry suddenly got all the attention and became the front-runner. Kerry's support had always been a mile wide and an inch deep. His veteran status was the key selling point in Iowa, and had that aspect of his resume been questioned, he might not have won NH. Once he won the Granite State, he was unstoppable.

Now, Kerry has the entire Democratic party behind him, and is the only alternative to Bush. But, of course, this isn't about stopping Kerry - it's about propping up Bush. Well, either that, or John O'Neill wants another 15 minutes of fame, having used up his previous 15 in 1971 going on national television to debate Kerry at the behest of the Nixon Administration.

Amazingly, even some of the more thoughtful righty blogs, like Real Clear Politics, are viewing this politically motivated self-appointed fringe group as some kind of actual threat to Kerry:

As far as politically damaging attacks go, this should rank right up there among the most potent ones imaginable.

Give me a break. If anything, bringing up Kerry's claims of Americans committing war crimes in Vietnam at the same time daily disclosures of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners are making the rounds isn't exactly smart politics.

The daily Rasmussen tracking poll now has Kerry up 47-43 over Bush, marking three straight days for Kerry over Bush by at least three points. (The day-to-day swings in this poll have been notorious, but a trend for three straight days has some significance.) With the election six months out, the current poll has little intrinsic value, but it should lay to rest all of the claims that either Kerry is imploding, or that he's waited too long to run those biographical ads, or that Bush has "defined" him with the negative ad barrage than ran throughout April.

Speaking of the biographical ads, they've just started airing (saw one on TV for the first time last night during "NYPD Blue" here in battleground Florida), and presumably aren't being reflected yet in this Kerry "surge".

If he's really not trying to keep Kerry from winning, Ralph Nader should take this course of action. If it were to come to pass, and it made the difference, it would be sweet revenge for 2000.

Thanks to the Calgary Flames' elimination of the Red Wings last night, the Lightning now will have home ice advantage in the Stanley Cup Finals should they make it past either Toronto or Philly in the conference finals. All I can say tonight is "Go Toronto!", with a Maple Leaf win making it a seven-game series, with Game 7 played on Thursday and Game 1 of the conference finals now set for Saturday in Tampa.

Cracker Barrel has always been a family favorite of ours, whenever we're out on the interstates where they're normally found. However, i'm not so sure I want to go back, after coming across this:

At 36 restaurants, investigators found evidence that black customers were seated in segregated areas, said a Justice official who asked not to be identified. In 18 of those locations, the official said, managers allegedly directed the segregated seating arrangements. In one location, employees referred to the black seating area as ''the ghetto.''

There was also this telling remark by one of Cracker Barrel's PR flacks:

''These allegations don't fit the experience of most Cracker Barrel customers,'' company spokeswoman Julie Davis said.

Yeah, the white ones.