UFC 143 Diaz vs Condit

In a battle of street fighters versus game planner, Carlos Condit bested Nick Diaz to claim the interim welterweight championship Saturday night at UFC 143.  Using a master strategy created by Greg Jackson,  Carlos Condit ducked, dodged, and leg kicked Diaz to a unanimous 48-47, 48-47, 49-46 victory. 

“He was talking, I was landing punches,” Condit said after and while Nick Diaz is never in a fight where he isn’t talking, Carlos was able to not allow himself to be suckered into the Diaz school yard bully technique.  The plan for Carlos was to keep distance and stay out of exchanges on the cage which, short of a few brief moments, Condit was able to use his defense boxing skills to do just that.

“I pushed this guy backwards the whole time.  He ran from me this whole fight,” Nick Diaz told Joe Rogan after his first loss in twelve outings.  “I landed the harder shots.  He kicked my leg with little baby kicks the whole fight.”  Of course, in MMA, just as in boxing, when a fight goes to the judges, it really does depend on the points a fight scores during the fight so connecting with more than half a hundred leg kicks is going to account for a lot of points.  Point wins like this are a Greg Jackson specialty that is good enough t o even propel a fighter like Keith Jardine to beat the likes of Hall of Famer Chuck Lidddell.

In the co-headline fight of the night, Febricio Werdum used and abused Big Country Roy Nelson in route to an easy decision.  Working a solid inside game and a face to knee plum clinch that threatened to send Nelson’s nose into the first few rows, Werdum went a long way to erasing his lay and invite technique that he utilized against Allistair Overeem in his last outing.  Febricio’s striking will never be on the level of Junior Dos Santos, who’s striking is really, but he did show that his basics are improving and maybe when he gets another shot at one of the big dogs of the division, he can make it on the feet long enough to have a chance to take the fight into his wheelhouse and show the skills that he used to bring down the Last Emperor.  In defeat, Roy Nelson reminded everyone how hard a noggin he has but showed little else to convince anyone that Big Country is anything other than a middle tier fighter.  The Mullet Wonder will continue to have entertaining fights almost every time he steps into the cage but if his dream is still UFC gold, he might want to talk to Chael Sonnen about where he got his belt from.

picture courtesy of  sherdog.com

    

Friday means...

...that someone somewhere is getting drunk and reminiscing about ABC's TGFI tv lineup.  With that in mind you nostalgic mofo's, let's relieve the week of the one that just past.


In an all things from the great beyond story, astronomers have found a fourth potentially habitable planet outside of our solar system.  The planet, only 22 light years from earth, is located near enough t a M-class dwarf star that it appears to have a temperature reasonable enough to sustain water and in turn, support life as we know it (Touch Me).   
The inmates from St. Albans Vermont have a very sly sense of humor (Touch Me).  Just a little chuckle for the years of hard time spent in the tough confines of Vermont.  
Monsanto is fucking bees.  What a surprise (Touch Me)!
A Harvard professor has created a model that shows how the slight shifts in the Earth's axis could be enough to create an ice age (Touch Me).  Damn you and your real data Harvard.  Where is the faith.  Faith!
The do not fly list (eyes rolled) has doubled in the last year (Touch Me).   If terrorist are doubling their numbers every year in a continual effort to do the exact same thing that they did (or were used a the face of) a few years ago, well first, they should really start using condoms (ha, Catholic joke inside a terrorist discussion.  shaky ground here).  And second, I believe that means that in another ten years, everyone will be terrorists and then what?  Is there really that many virgins up there (I know that is an outdated terrorist reference.  It has been shown that the idea is a good one for news stories but not an actual goal of most extremists) (because the extremists know that they have time in America before the plane goes kablooie to check mark off the list a few of their personal to do's before saying goodbye) (Touch Me).  
And with multiple stories, it is hard to really pick a favorite story for a picture so this week, I bring you an artist I love.  

(Touch Me)

David Jien

http://davidjien.com/

Well at least someone is standing up

Mon 810 maize, a genetically modified frankenseed created by our old friends at Monsanto, has been knocked down by the French government.  Since a government ban on Mon 810 maize in 2008, the large Blackwater owning company has tried to push through French court a removal of the ban.  Finally, this year, Monsanto has announced that they will not be selling MON810 in France this year.  A year is not forever, but when the powers of genetic modifications starts to put their grip on you, it is hard to break their grip (Touch Me).

(Touch Me)

courtesy of The Scottish Farmer

Republicans say the darndest things

These Republican debates have been amazing.  It is like they operate in the world circa 1968.  Someone should package these debates up and sell them for 19.95.  The comedy could compete with even the best of Johnny Carson.  The lies.  The false disgust.  The pure disregard for things that happen in the actual real world.  I watch the Daily Show often but rarely reference it because either you are a fan or not and there is really no reason to push to the converted or push against those that hate pompous New Yorkers but this time, rather than pretending I can sum things up better than them, I acquiesce to the best on your tv screen.  

(Touch Me)

courtesy of huffingtonpost.com

Over there Over there

So, I live slightly to moderately fearful of the ever impending march to challenge Iran to see who has the bigger cock/finish taking out the entire power structure of the middle east so that we can...well, I do not want to conjecture so let us just say that we like war and Iran is slightly crazy so here we have arrived.  Now, I am aware and appreciative that many of the smartest minds on the topic have been saying war was inevitable starting in September and we are now in January so someone is a little off on predictions.  Hopefully we can all agree that being wrong on something like this is the best kind of wrong to be but I am afraid that they are only temporarily wrong and that eventually, a head will come and off to blow things up again we will be.  Maybe this time we will at least think of a new reason to go rather than this whole weapons of mass destruction thing we try last go around.  If we do try this again, how about we all just make sure to go back and watch what Leon Panetta had to say on this week’s Face the Nation.  Just to be clear, he says not.  Not developing.  Does this mean we can slow our roll just a little and try and figure out how to all just get along together in this whole wide patch of humanity.  Friends or at least rivals in agreement that we are tired of bombing, tired of pulling dead people from destroyed buildings.  Just maybe.

(Touch Me)

source: www.rawstory.com

Book Club Time

A little exert from one of my most favorite books, The Secret Team by Fletcher Prouty.  Even though Oliver Stone did a good job of tainting the book, if even a fourth of the stories inside are accurate, well...that's the CIA for ya.  I highly recommending reading the book.  It's even available free online (Touch Me).  Enjoy the horror.


Some of these actions worked in strange ways. And some of these

actions were subject to the same irregularities that plagued the rest of the operations that were kept from the eyes of the public and from the controls normal to an open government. The irresponsible step in from time to time and get away with things that would be discovered in normal activities. 

At one overseas base heavily involved in air activities in support of the Agency and of the foreign nationals the Agency was assisting, there were a number of aircraft of doubtful ownership commingled with other aircraft that were on "loan" from the Air Force. These aircraft were flown and maintained for the most part by a civilian facility that had the appearance of being a civilian contract carrier; but there were also a number of Air Force and Navy personnel with the unit in various capacities. The primary base unit was under Navy cover and had been for years, as a result of an earlier mission. With such a mix of personnel and

equipment it was all but impossible, and certainly impractical, to attempt rigid controls in the manner customary on a real military base. 

One of the planes assigned to this unit was a small transport aircraft common to all three services and built by the Beech Aircraft Corporation.  This plane was flown by the officers of the staff and was used for shorter administrative flights. One of the pilots who flew it regularly came in to land in a bad crosswind one day and momentarily lost control of the plane

after it had touched the ground during landing, in what is called a "ground loop". He recovered in time to keep from doing very much damage and no one was hurt. The plane needed minor repairs to be as good as new.  However, this pilot, who also had maintenance authority at this conglomerate base, ordered that the plane be hauled out behind the main hangar and covered with a large protective tarpaulin. It was left there for months, and unknown to others on  the base, a report was filed to Washington that it would cost more to fix the plane than it was worth; so

the plane was scheduled for what the military calls "salvage". This means it is put up for sale to the highest bidder for scrap, or whatever. 

No one on this base, which was  primarily managed by the CIA, gave this a thought, and after a while the plane was not even missed.  During this time the pilot, a major who was actually a career CIA employee serving in his Air Force reserve grade, was transferred back to an assignment in Washington at CIA headquarters. He had not been there long when he located the paperwork on that plane and made a bid in his own name and that of a friend to purchase the plane for scrap prices. Since

no one else even knew where the plane was (and even if they had they would not have wanted to go to that remote place to get it) and of course, since any other bidder would have believed that the plane was a total loss, there were no other bidders. The major bought the plane in a perfectly legal maneuver. 

He then applied for a brief vacation. Dashing back to the overseas station, where he was well known, he arranged with the local maintenance crews to have the plane fixed at very little expense to himself, and in no time he and his friend shipped it back to the United States. Their profit on the deal was many times more than the actual money they had invested, and no one ever knew about it because all of the records had been kept in

highly classified channels. Secrecy can be used for many purposes, and this was just one of the uses to which it can be put by those of the team who know how to get away with it.  

My new friend

I am sorry lady that I ran into at Grandy's today.  Not ran into so much, like a car into car parking lot incident, though, that would have been much more enjoyable.  No, I am talking about us running into each other, head to head, in a battle of stubborn wills.  At this time, I am still a little too into the situation to share the story but let me just say that if you have a loved one or family member that performs any kind of civic duty, do me a favor and never put them in the position where you ask them to come to your rescue when there is nothing to be rescued from.  That makes them not want to talk to you or answer their calls or spend time with you at the holidays.  I highly doubt they ever call you at your job and ask if they can get a large fry bump up for the price of a medium. Respect peoples work place.  Be a drain to them on their off hours.