Posts Tagged ‘tiger woods’
June 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
I play tennis like I play chess.
When I face an opponent who is worse than me, I am very good. When I face an opponent who is better than me, I am very, very bad.
Actually, I am not very good at either tennis or chess, but when I play my 5 year old, I can beat him in both pretty handily.
Tennis was in my mind over the weekend because NBC persisted in broadcasting the French Open, even though an American has not threatened to win there in about a hundred years or so.
Ok, it hasn’t been that long, but it has been a long time.
America is a big country, and it has more eligible males playing the game of tennis than just about any country in the world.
Currently, though, it has no top ten players and only a half dozen or so players in the top hundred in the world.
When I was growing up, America dominated men’s tennis. Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, those guys kicked butt and showed the world what America was all about. Read more...
Tags: America, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, French Open, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, middle class male, NBA, NBC, NFL, Pete Sampras, tennis, tiger woods
Posted in Economy, Foreign Relations, History, Theory, bad news, sports | 4 Comments »
April 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
It is easy to be fairly nonchalant about the current budget battle that has consumed the Congress.
Pundits (myself included) have pointed out that the tens of billions of dollars being discussed is chump change, especially if you consider the trillions of dollars that we owe to the Chinese.
And that may be true.
But that doesn’t mean that these cuts being considered by both the House and Senate are not significant. Because they are. And it doesn’t mean that they won’t be painful. Because for many folks, they will be.
In fact, should the House and the Senate cut $36 billion from the rest of this year’s budget, it will be the largest one year spending cut in our nation’s history. By far.
That is historically significant. Kind of like when Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a few years ago by a dozen strokes (or whatever the final number was). It is a big deal.
And if you consider that this $36 billion dollar number applies for only slightly more than a half year of the budget, that spending cut is astounding. Read more...
Tags: Budget, budget cuts, Chinese, Congress, Democrats, House of Representatives, House Speaker John Boehner, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Pundits, Republicans, spending, Tea Party, tiger woods, U.S. Open
Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending | 1 Comment »
November 23rd, 2010 by John Feehery
Every once in a while, as I peruse my Facebook friends, I run across a friend who has put “It’s complicated” in their relationship status.
It’s a phrase that neatly sums up the world we are now living in.
The economy is complicated. Some sectors are doing swell, others are in the deepest of depressions.
Sex is more complicated. You used to have male and female. These days, you have third choice, transgender. That is not the kind of complication that my grandmother spent too much time worrying about.
The war on terror is complicated. Was Iraq part of the war on terror or was it a war of choice? Why are we in Afghanistan? Are we winning or losing there?
Race is more complicated these days. It is not as easy as black and white, and now people are starting to get that. The President isn’t fully black or fully white. In fact, he is about half and half, and calling him either white or black is a disservice to his grandparents on either side of the family. Tiger Woods is even more complicated. He calls himself cablanasian (caucasion, black, asian). Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, complicated, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, election, Facebook, Government, health care, Iraq, Obama, Politics, Presidential election, Republican, Republicans, spending, taxes, tiger woods, Unemployment
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Laws, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Social Media, Theory, Unemployment, election, health care, national security, spending, war | No Comments »
June 4th, 2010 by John Feehery
Jim Joyce
Maybe Jim Joyce should run for President.
This is the only guy out there who admits he is not perfect. And that refreshing bit of honesty has inspired America.
Joyce is the umpire who blew the call in Detroit the other day, and his blown call ruined a perfect game pitched by Armando Galarraga on the last out of the game.
Joyce put it this way. “I just missed the damn call…This isn’t a call. This is a history call. And I kicked the shit out of it. I take pride in this job, and I took a perfect game away from that kid over there who worked his ass off all night.”
Every time I see this story on the tube, I tear up a bit. Not only did Joyce take complete responsibility and take his lumps like a man, but the aggrieved pitcher, Armando Galarraga, was unbelievably gracious in response. He almost felt sorry for the umpire. He didn’t cry like a baby. He didn’t bitterly complain. He acted like an adult, like a mature human being, like a grown up. How rare in this world! Read more...
Tags: Al Gore, Armando Galarraga, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Detroit, Hillary Clinton, Jim Joyce, Mark Souder, Newt Gingrich, tiger woods, Tipper Gore
Posted in Government, Politics, Theory, sports | No Comments »
April 28th, 2010 by John Feehery
Martin Michael Lomasney, a Boston politician from the 19th Century, once said: “”Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”
Being from Chicago, I was taught that lesson by more a few political types. The Washington corollary to that admonition is: “Never write down anything that you wouldn’t be happy to see on the front page of the Washington Post.”
I bet you that the fabulous Fab, the Goldman Sachs wunderkind, Fabrice Tourre, wish he would have remembered those golden nuggets of advice.
It was the fabulous Fab who wrote in an email: “The whole building is about to collapse any time now. Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab . . . standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”
That Fab is a cad goes without doubt.
But he isn’t the only one who failed to heed the advice of fabulous Martin Michael Lomasney.
Think of Tiger Woods. If he wasn’t text crazy, there would be no reason for his wife Elin to beat him with a seven iron, because Elin would have been none the wiser. No text, no bruise, no crash, no rehab, no problem. Read more...
Tags: CDO, Economy, Fabrice Tourre, Fabulous Fab, Goldman-Sachs, Jack Abramoff, Justice Department, Martin Michael Lomasney, tiger woods
Posted in Financial Crisis, Politics, Theory, corruption | No Comments »
April 12th, 2010 by John Feehery
I thought it was interesting that Tiger Woods wore sunglasses during the Masters Golf Tournament. Nobody else seemed to notice, but Tiger never did that before.
But, of course, Tiger never took five months off from the Tour before, became the center of scandalous speculation, became a regular target to late night comics the world over, and became a symbol of all that is wrong with the male species everywhere.
It would have been amazing if Tiger finished first in the tournament earlier today. Of course, he didn’t, but he still did pretty well considering.
After he finished, you could tell that he was angry, and not just about coming in fourth. He was angry about the whole thing, the whole scandal, the whole truth of his sex life that has slowly become a part of the American experience.
And maybe he has a right to be pissed off.
After all, it is not exactly news that professional golfers (or any professional athletes for that matter) routinely cheat on their wives.
And last year, with the many different examples of men behaving badly (Elliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, etc), it was only fitting that the year end with a bang, which it did with Tiger getting banged over the head by his wife. Read more...
Tags: golf, Golf Tournament, infidelity, sex scandal, tiger woods
Posted in Scandals, Theory, sports | No Comments »
June 22nd, 2008 by John Feehery
I am still trying to get my head around E.D. Hill of Fox News, whose comments about Barack and Michelle Obama landed her in the unemployment line.
For those who don’t remember, Hill called the Obamas’ knuckle-to-knuckle greeting a “terrorist fist jab” (TFJ for short).
Like many duffers out there, I came into contact with the TFJ through Tiger Woods and his caddie Steve Williams. This dynamic duo did the TFJ as Tiger terrorized golf courses and his fellow golfers, winning every important golf tournament known to man.
Soon, pasty-assed white guys all over the world were doing their own version of the TFJ, in hopes that by doing the same kind of handshake as Tiger, perhaps they too could play the game of golf. It is this kind of wave that Buick was hoping to catch when it made Tiger its spokesman. (If you buy a Buick, you too can hit a 350-yard drive).
I was a late convert to the TFJ. I was all about the high-five and the TFJ seemed too cutting edge for me. The high-five, another handshake that started in urban America before becoming a tired cliché in suburban America, was a long-time favorite in my family. Read more...
Tags: E.D. Hill, handshake, Obama, Presidential election, tiger woods
Posted in Government, Media, Politics, Theory, sports | No Comments »
June 15th, 2008 by John Feehery
And so it goes.
Fathers beget sons who beget their own sons. Fathers die, and sons are left to either carry on their legacy or to reject it out of hand.
This Father’s Day is especially poignant for many in Washington, because of the passing of Tim Russert.
But every Father’s Day is poignant for fathers and their sons. Every son wrestles with their father’s example, hoping to improve it somehow, hoping to make their dads proud.
And every father wants the best for their sons, but they are also sons, trying to live up to their own father’s expectations.
Russert’s book put an extra spotlight on the tangled relationship between fathers and son. Russert clearly loved his father, Big Russ, but he had no interest in following in his father’s footsteps. What he learned from his father was not a profession, but a way of living with respect and dignity.
Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, fatherhood, George Bush, John McCain, tiger woods, Tim Russert
Posted in Government, Theory | 1 Comment »
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