- Game 7 was awesome. Exciting, but not unnecessarily so (I know some were hoping for a double-OT thriller … me, I didn’t need the stress). And Tim Thomas … my goodness. A 37-year-old goalie from Flint, drafted no. 217 in 1994, who spent a good chunk of his career in the AHL and overseas, and who wasn’t even the Bruins’ starting goalie at the beginning of this season, ends up the hero of the series. What a fantastic story. Especially against Vancouver, what he did has got to be one of the great playoff performances in the history of Boston sports. Eight goals (a couple of which were inconsequential) over seven games, including two shutouts, one of which was game 7 on Vancouver’s home ice, against the team that led the league this year in goal-scoring? Insane.
- There’s endless news coverage of Boston’s first Stanley Cup in Boston since 1972 – take your pick. I did particularly like this bit, which seems to show how all-consuming this particular series became, whether you were in a sports bar with a million other screaming fans, or not:
Even while the din of excitement rang, some parts of the city were eerily quiet during the game and in some places seemed to stand still. At Supreme Liquors in Dorchester, Steve McNeil listened to the first goal on the radio with a few other employees. No one else was in the store. When the Bruins took a 1-0 lead, he threw his arms up in silence.
- Kudos to Boston’s fans, who generally kept things pretty peaceful last night – despite the thousands of delirious fans on the streets, there were only a couple of arrests, and nothing major happened. Vancouver, in contrast, was a nasty place last night. Here’s a depressing image (HT jimc), and here’s some video.
- Turning to other news, I don’t mean to say “I told you so,” but … well, actually, I do. 😀 NPR reported this morning that Anthony Weiner’s congressional seat may well be on the redistricting chopping block.
- Unless he resigns first, which suddenly looks like a distinct possibility.
- Both the Globe and the Herald unsurprisingly editorialize about Sal DiMasi’s conviction.
- Would it have killed the Globe editorial page to say something about the Bruins? The Herald managed to find the space.
Please share widely!
The Globe put out an entire special section devoted to the game, plus much of the Metro section was devoted to coverage of fan reaction. Besides which there are still several days of celebration ahead, so there is plenty of time to stick something on the op/ed pages.
Thursday (day after game 7): nothing
Friday: a fussy piece saying next to nothing about the win, but rather praising fans, police, and the Mayor for avoiding violence after the game. That’s great, but it doesn’t exactly capture the essence of what winning the Stanley Cup means to Boston.
Saturday (day of the rolling rally): nothing.
Weak.
does not mean it’ll happen. The numbers suggest it shouldn’t, by any measure. Even if the Democrats in NY, given the way the population numbers have moved around, wanted to be all bipartisan-y, they’d be utterly foolish to accept anything but trading a hard-core GOP district for a nominally Democratic district, perhaps one of them we have only won in recent years from the GOP.
That’s less a factor of being greedy as a party, and more a factor of the heavily Democratic populated areas in NY holding their population, while upstate (heavily GOP, by and large) is absolutely bleeding people.
If it does happen, it’s because we have a spineless, eat-your-own, defeatism deeply ingrained in our party, even amongst many in our core activist base. We have far too many people who are fully devoted to shooting our own, from the rank and file to deeply heroic, as soon as someone from the other side or in the media even speculates something could *possibly* be improper.
As far as I’m concerned, the only way to create a winning party — like the GOP has had since, well, almost forever — is to snuff out that sort of losing attitude, just like the Bruins had to do a year after imploding. In the history of America, we’ve had about 2 Republican Presidents for every Democrat elected, and people somehow think our two parties have been evenly matched in the past. Far from it, which is sad, because we’re truly the party of the people at our core and when we’re at our best — we could be the perenial favorites were it not for the losers we allow to fester within our inner ranks, which is made all the easier when we shoot our own strongest, best elected leaders as soon as something goes wrong.
I’m sorry you’re aghast that I’d stand up for one of our own over something as trivial as lewd pictures sent to consenting adults, with no laws broken or ethics commission allowed to do its job. Maybe I could be a little more worried about that kind of petty, meaningless stuff were it not for all the Republicans and other corporate shills TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.
For one final time to the purity police amongst us: Get a grip. We will not be stronger for what just went down here, no matter how much you want to pat yourself on the back for sending one of the few who actually had the tenacity to stand up to GOP bullshit back home. The GOP is laughing at us — and why shouldn’t they? We’re acting the part of fools, in a very high-stakes game.
It was all over the news. Here’s one from CNN. And, as usual, Nate Silver gave a solid analysis of how it could happen, and why it’s actually fairly likely to happen, and why it wouldn’t be a terrible thing for the Dems if it did happen. Brief excerpt from a long post:
Those articles are both pre-resignation, and obviously the fact that there will now be a special election changes the calculus substantially.
I’m not “aghast” that you’re “standing up” for Weiner (no pun intended … well, maybe it was). I’m just disappointed that you react so angrily to opinions that differ from yours.
concerning our party’s tendency to snatch defeat at the jaws of victory (amongst a few other issues), but rest assured my anger isn’t directed at you, just the notion in general. We’ve had a stronger hand than we’ve played with, as a party, for so long that I’m actually convinced our hand is now weaker than what we’re playing with only because we’re the ones playing with it. Stronger cards than the other side, but with really, really horrible poker players. Not only do we not show the other side our cards all the time, but I’m not even sure if we collectively understand how to play the game. It’s like the Republicans convinced us that there’s nothing higher than a two-pair.
Above is a video of fresh American adults celebrating our historic win. A lot of celebration videos have been posted, but a lot of them have way too wobbly and pointless camera movements. Other videos try to capture too much of a crowd, losing everybody’s faces as a result.
They Globe calls for an investigation of a CIA blogger hunt.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/06/18/investigate_bush_teams_effort_to_use_cia_against_blogger/