{"id":1237,"date":"2006-10-17T05:23:59","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T05:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-10-17T15:12:23","modified_gmt":"2006-10-17T15:12:23","slug":"watching_the_ra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1237","title":{"rendered":"Watching The Races"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Michael Totten has posted something on the election<\/a>, and while I’m not completely in agreement with him you ought to go check his post out. I’m a little more tied into the redistributionist, social justice stuff than he is, but I’m equally disgusted with the choices on the menu.<\/p>\n

Let me explain.<\/p>\n

I’m a huge fan of motorcycle road racing, and have done a bit myself. Right now, we’re in the midst of what will be an epochal season in MotoGP, the premier class in the sport.<\/p>\n

Valentino Rossi has been the dominant racer in the world for much of the last decade, in several classes from 125cc up to the modern 200+ hp, 100+<\/strike> 200+<\/u> mph 990cc bikes. I’ve watched him race here in the states, and watched many of his races on video, and he’s simply superhuman on a bike. I sat in a pub in Guildford and watched on TV as he took two seconds a lap out of the best racers in the world on a flooded track at Donington.This year, he’s had a tough time. The evolution of his bike hasn’t gone as well as one might expect. And it’s possible to infer that partying at his mansion on Ibiza might be more of a priority for him than the drudgery of training and testing equipment. He took a nasty spill, and was off his form for the first half of the season.<\/p>\n

As a result, young American Nicky Hayden has held the lead for most of the season. They are quite a pair, these two, a real contrast. Both second-generation racers, each of them has arrived, in their mid-twenties at the pinnacle of their sport and profession.<\/p>\n

I’ve been a fan of Rossi’s for a number of years. I’ve been a fan of Hayden’s for a shorter time. On one hand, it’s wonderful to see a master return to form when the pressure is on. On the other, it’s amazing to watch someone struggle to defeat someone who is and has been clearly the best in the world at something. Each champion has had a season marred by mischance, accident, mechanical issue, bad tire construction – all the drama that leads racers to shrug and go “that’s racing”.<\/p>\n

This weekend, Hayden was knocked off his motorcycle by his Repsol Honda teammate, Dani Pedrosa, and fell behind Rossi for the first time this season.<\/p>\n

So the whole shooting match will be decided in two weeks in Valencia. And I’m riveted, because regardless of who wins, I will be completely convinced that they deserve the championship, perhaps more than in most years.<\/p>\n

So you’re completely confused now, right? I started out talking about elections that may determine the future of Life As We Know It, and moved on to an irrelevant, elitist sport that is hastening the end of the world as we know it through global warming.<\/p>\n

Here’s the difference. Rossi and Hayden both deserve to win. The Democrats and Republicans both deserve to lose.<\/p>\n

I don’t spend much time Republican-bashing on this site; I figure I’ll leave that to people who want to build a strong Republican Party – something I’m not terrifically invested in. but in case you’re wondering, I think the modern Republicans have a lot in common with the Russian apparachniks who sold themselves the assets that belonged to the state for pennies on the dollar and suddenly announced that they were now brilliant businessmen. The modern GOP seems compelled not to limit the power of the state – the root of conservative thought, as I was raised to understand it – but to use it to pay for their places in the Hamptons and Montecito.<\/p>\n

The Republicans have one thing correct – we face a serious enemy that needs to be fought – but seem incapable of rising to the historical moment and convincing the rest of us to put the nation first – because they’re too busy looting it to put it first themselves.<\/p>\n

And the Democrats…<\/p>\n

Let’s not go there. They have sold out the working people of the country, along with a whole lot of other folks they were elected to defend, all for a mess of Hollywood and Silicon Valley pottage.<\/p>\n

There’s one race that matters a lot to me, and should matter to you as well. I’ll talk about it in the next day or so, along with some comments on California propositions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal sums up the current election season: “Rossi and Hayden both deserve to win. The Democrats and Republicans both deserve to lose.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}