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Commentary, sarcasm and snide remarks from a Florida resident of over thirty years. Being a glutton for punishment is a requirement for residency here. Who am I? I've been called a moonbat by Michelle Malkin, a Right Wing Nut by Daily Kos, and middle of the road by Florida blog State of Sunshine. Tell me what you think.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Is Annika Sorenstam pregnant?

Tiger Woods made some interesting remarks at a press conference yesterday-

Q. What was your reaction when you heard Annika, that she would retire at the end of the season? And have you spoken with her since then? And, if so, what have you spoken about?

TIGER WOODS: I knew that was going to happen. She's done it all. She's been through it all. For men and women, it is two totally different things. Who knows, she might come back or not. I doubt it. I don't see Annika ever doing anything half-ass. The time she is going to spend with her child and her family, I don't ever see her ever wanting to come back to the game of golf in that capacity. What it takes to do that, I don't foresee her doing it. We talked quite a bit after that.
Based on these comments, golf bloggers Ryan and Geoff have begun the speculation. That the reason Annika announced her retirement is due to her being pregnant. Could Annika of been pregnant at the time of the press conference? I don't remember what movie it was said in, but here's my three word reply-

Not bloody likely.

Here's why-

Annika stated at her May 13th press conference that her last event would be the Dubai Ladies Masters . That tournament ends on December 13th 2008.

If Annika knew she was pregnant at the press conference, she would have to be at the very least four weeks pregnant.(An HPT finding out that very day she is having a baby). If Annika was 4 weeks at the time of her conference, I used an online pregnancy calculator to determine-

Her due date would be January 20, 2009

Therefore she would be 34.4 weeks pregnant minimum the day the Dubai tournament ends.

All of you raise your hands if you know a professional lady golfer who competed in a pro golf tournament at that time in her pregnancy?

Not too many hands up in the air, eh?

Therefore I hypothesize that Annika was probably not pregnant at the time of her May 13th press conference.

Other circumstantial evidence in favor of my opinion-

1- A doctor would likely tell Annika to stop playing

2- Annika would likely not want to risk both her and her first child's health by competing.

3- Fellow Swede Carin Koch is an LPGA pro in addition to being mother to two and she and Annika know one another well. Annika would likely of known when Carin stopped playing.

A woman can play golf if she wants up to birth, but the Vicky Hurst story notwithstanding, it isn't the most comfortable of things to do. An amateur golfer also can use a golf cart, Annika would have no such thing in Dubai.

Could Annika be pregnant? Yes. If she is, I wish Annika well.

Would she play Dubai next December if she was 34 weeks pregnant at the time? No.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Three years

Today marks the 3rd blogging anniversary for the Florida Masochist. My first post is here.

As you can see I've slowed down considerably. I am still dealing with my cancer and it has caused my interest in blogging to wane. Most of what I write now can either be found at Wizbang or OTB Sports.(Not that I'm blogging alot there either) I get more readers at those blogs and more commenters. Sometimes I cross post here, but more often I'm just lazy to do it.

The stats for my cancer say I won't make it to my 4th blogging anniversary. Check back in to see who wins.

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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Entertaining the troops

Did a Bollywood starlet go beyond the call when visiting Afghanistan? From Times Online-

A Bollywood starlet who made her name going beyond the call of duty in Who Dares Wins, an Australian TV stunt show, has been accused of having sex with soldiers while on a tour to entertain troops in Afghanistan.

Tania Zaetta (above) was named in a confidential briefing paper to Australia’s Defence Minister as having slept with special forces soldiers last month at a military base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan province. Pictures and a video were said to have been taken.

But Australia’s military was in retreat last night, admitting that it broke its privacy regulations by naming the actress, 37, in the confidential note intended for Joel Fitzgibbon, the Defence Minister.

The Defence Department apologised to Zaetta for the leak, and Mr Fitzgibbon said he had ordered an inquiry into how the document — officially referred to as a “hot issues brief” — became public.

Zaetta, who has appeared on Baywatch and Mission Implausible, a British pay-TV show, denied the allegations and said there had been little opportunity to be alone with any soldier, even if she had wanted to be.

“How does a supposed document . . . that I don’t know about get leaked in the first place — that’s a little bit concerning about the security of the country,” she said.
“It’s complete lies . . . apart from being hurtful, it’s damaging to a woman’s career, to her reputation.”
True, Zaetta may never be able to get work in Hollywood. What a shame too.

Hat tip- Don Surber who wrote 'Gee, the most USO ever gave me was coffee and a donut.' I never even got that.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Why stop at two or even six?

Another episode of life in Florida.

Furious at what they consider the giving of more tax dollars than they get, North Lauderdale commissioners passed a resolution to divide Florida into two states: North Florida and South Florida.

They'd draw the boundary line at Jupiter, the northernmost city in Palm Beach County and head south down through Broward and Miami-Dade counties and into Monroe County.


The city commission in North Lauderdale could save taxpayer money by not wasting time on dumb topics.

Instead Florida bloggers should unite to draw a new state map. Some Cranky Guy has beat me to it.

I think the North Lauderdale City Commission is being very short sighted. We can't divide the state of Florida into two! It needs to be broken into six states!

The Panhandle we would just give to Alabama.

North Florida

Gulf Florida

Disney

Conch Florida

Atlantic Florida

Wacko Florida

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe South Florida should not just be their own state, but country. That way we could apply for foreign aid from America and get better highways, food for our massive homeless, and peace keeping troops to kick the corrupt government from office and help with the out of control crime.
Making Florida its own country would be going too far. War would be declared, and soon afterwards the smart bombs would start falling from the skies. Heaven knows, Floridians can't allow anything smart down here.

Here's Cranky's map



Just to let my readers know, I live in Wacko Florida. You probably knew that already.

The six new states sound great to me. I think more need to be added. Mostly in South Florida

Where the Left hand turn blinker is never turned off- Boca Raton

Country of crazy judges- Broward County Court House. Make sure a very high wall is put up around it so these nuts are never allowed to rule on anyone ever again.

The Water stinks- West Palm Beach

Don't move here or the politicians may seize your property- Hollywood

Knucklehead HQ- Lantana. Then again, maybe not. I haven't given out an award in a while.

I could think of more states if given enough time. Tomorrow I'm traveling four hours by car one way for my latest cancer treatment. My destination is Tampa and I'll have to pass through Atlantic Florida and Disney to get to Gulf Florida. Will I need a passport? Only if I plan to see Mickey for an extended period.

My mind isn't working so good right now, can't you tell?

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Mildred Loving dead at age 68

41 years ago next month, Mildred and her husband Richard, won a landmark Supreme Court decision. The USSC in Loving vs. Virginia overturned the anti-miscegenation that made it illegal for the Lovings to be married in Virginia. See Mildred was black, and her husband Richard white.

Laws like that the one overturned in Virginia, weren't just confined to the South. California had a law banning Japanese from marrying non-Japanese. After World War II, the US military authorities through as many obstacles in the way of soldiers who married Japanese nationals. The movie and book 'Sayonara' wasn't fiction to some couples who had done nothing wrong, except for them falling in love with each other.

Times have changed. Back in the 1970's you'd see Phil Donahue regularly do a show on interracial couples and their children. Today people from different races are marrying in increasing numbers. True love is color blind.

My marriage is interracial. I'm white, my wife Leonita is Asian/Filipino. We met 20 years ago last March. Other than in the brief time Leonita was married to me and I was still serving in the Navy, we've never run into hostility or problems.(I was stationed at Subic Bay Philippines. Sailors who had Filipina wifes were sometimes assumed to have met while she was working as a bargirl in Olangapo. Leonita and I met at the base bowling alley. Her cousin Leni was married to a CPO, and she was the one to introduce us) The legal victory the Mildred and her husband won, not just made it legal for people like me and Leonita to marry, but helped change the way society viewed couples like us. Thank you Mildred and RIP.

One last note- This May 30th marks 19 years since Leonita and I got married. Speaking for myself, I fell in love with my wife not because of her skin color, but because Leonita was the most wonderful woman I have ever met. I wouldn't say her race is unimportant, Leonita's Filipino heritage which includes her strong faith in God, attracted me to her.

The Washington Post obituary for Mildred Loving is below the fold. It is mostly about the court decision. From what I read in the past, the Lovings were a private couple who didn't seek out the press very often. Richard Loving died in a 1975 auto accident.

Mildred Jeter Loving, 68, a black woman whose refusal to accept Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down similar laws across the country, died of pneumonia Friday at her home in Milford, Va.

The Loving v. Virginia decision overturned long-standing legal and social prohibitions against miscegenation in the United States. Celebrated at the time, the landmark case sunk to obscurity until a 1996 made-for-television movie and a 2004 book revived interest in how the young, small-town black and white couple changed history.

A modest homemaker, Loving never thought she had done anything extraordinary. "It wasn't my doing," Loving told the Associated Press in a rare interview a year ago. "It was God's work."

Today, according to the Census Bureau, there are 4.3 million interracial couples in the nation.

That wasn't true in 1958, when then-17-year-old Mildred Jeter and her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, a 23-year-old white construction worker, drove 90 miles north to marry in the District. Pretty and slender, she was known by her nickname, "Bean," and she was already pregnant with the first of their three children.

Loving later said she didn't realize that it was illegal for a black woman and a white man to wed, although her husband might have. "I think he thought [if] we were married, they couldn't bother us," she said.

Nevertheless, when they returned to Central Point, Va., between Richmond and Spotsylvania, to set up their home, someone called the law.

Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks rousted them from their bed at 2 a.m. in July 1958 and told them the District's marriage certificate was no good in Virginia. He took them to jail and charged them with unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to a year's imprisonment, to be suspended if they left the state for the next 25 years.

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," Bazile ruled.

The Lovings moved to Washington in 1959 and lived with one of her cousins on Neale Street NE. They didn't like urban life and yearned to return to their rural roots.

Five years later, while visiting her mother, they were arrested again for traveling together. Loving, who had been following the 1964 civil rights legislation, wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to find out if the new law would allow the couple to travel freely. The couple was referred to the American Civil Liberties Union and assigned an attorney, Bernard S. Cohen. "It was a terrible time in America," said Cohen, who was at Loving's home when she died. "Racism was ripe and this was the last de jure vestige of racism -- there was a lot of de facto racism, but this law was . . . the last on-the-books manifestation of slavery in America."

With fellow attorney Philip J. Hirschkop, Cohen took the case to the high court. Cohen said the couple didn't understand the importance of the case to anyone other than themselves. "When I told them I thought the case was going all the way to the Supreme Court, [Richard Loving's] jaw dropped. He didn't understand why I didn't go to Judge Bazile and tell him they loved each other and they should be allowed to live where they wished," said Cohen, now a retired state delegate from Alexandria.

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared: "There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. . . . There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."

At a news conference at their attorneys' offices, the Lovings seemed stunned.

"I feel free now. . . . It was a great burden," Mildred Loving quietly said, according to news articles.

She and her husband returned to Caroline County, where they both were born. He built their house, and the couple settled there. Richard Loving was killed in 1975 when a drunk driver struck their car. Mildred Loving, who was also in the car, lost her right eye in the collision.

A 1996 Showtime movie about the case, "Mr. and Mrs. Loving," told their story. "None of it was very true," she said in 2007. "The only part of it right was I had three children."

Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont lawyer, saw the movie and wanted to read more about it. No one had written a book, so she sought out Loving for interviews but ran into the same shyness others had encountered. "She was very quiet. She really didn't like to talk about herself," Newbeck said yesterday. Newbeck's book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers," was published in 2004. "To her death, she never felt she had done anything noteworthy. She never considered herself a pioneer."

Others did. Loving's church, St. Stephens Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Va., gave her a certificate recognizing the trailblazing lawsuit.

"The preacher at my church classified me with Rosa Parks," she told The Washington Post in 1992. "I don't feel like that. Not at all. What happened, we really didn't intend for it to happen. What we wanted, we wanted to come home."

A son, Donald Loving, died in 2000.

Survivors include two children, Peggy Fortune of Central Point and Sidney Loving of Tappahannock, Va.; eight grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

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Friday, May 02, 2008

I'm a real lesbian, the rest of you are fakes

No I've not been having an identity crisis. From AP-

Three islanders from Lesbos -- home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women -- have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.


One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

Frivilous lawsuits aren't just confined to the United States. These 'lesbians' are forgetting the economic benefits the 'other lesbians' bring to Lesbos lesbians. I guess many residents of Lesbos feel just the same as South Floridians do. As much as we hate the extra traffic and other inconveniences that snowbirds cause every winter, at the same time intelligent people know the economic benefits for the area brought by these part-time residents and tourists. My wife works at our local church, after the snowbirds return north, the weekly collection falls off as much as fifty percent from the height of winter.

Dr. Steven Taylor suggests it would be rather easier to change the name of the island than win proprietary rights to the name lesbian. How about renaming the island Sappho? She is after all arguably the island's most famous resident, past or present

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Move over Michelle Wie Part III

The 2007 AJGA Player of the Year is among the leaders after the first round of the Semgroup Championship. From the Tulsa World-

BROKEN ARROW—Vicky Hurst, a 17-year-old high school senior from Melbourne, Fla., got a sponsor’s exemption into the SemGroup Championship and isn’t squandering the opportunity.

After nine first-round holes, Hurst was 3-under par and had a two-shot lead on the field. She settled for even par, but her score — posted despite sinister wind gusts — was still good enough to lead you to believe the kid was born on a golf course,
Which Vicki almost was. Back to that later.

Vicki is at present playing her rookie year on the Duramed Futures Tour. At present, Vicki is #1 on that tour's money list. If you think Vicki has played the LPGA pros a great many times before the Semgroup, think again. Vicki, who has had a very impressive amateur record, is only playing in a LPGA event for the second time on a sponsor's exemption. How many sponsor's exemptions has Michelle Wie gotten since 2002? Like 30?

Hurst is just one part of the wave of Korean-American girls who will soon be influencing US Ladies Professional golf. Vicki's Mom Koko, who caddies for her daughter but not this week, was born in South Korea. I think we'll be hearing alot of more of Vicki, Kimberly Kim, Jenny Shin, and others in the years ahead.

The rest of the Tulsa World article is below the fold.

Hurst’s mom, Koko, was very pregnant with Vicky back in June of 1990. Koko was playing a round of golf at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and made it as far as the 16th hole.

“I was ready to hit the ball,” said Koko Thursday.

Then Koko’s water broke and Vicky was on the way. Considering the way Vicky came into the world, it’s no surprise she graduated to professional golf before graduating high school.

Call it destiny.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I grew up in a golfing family and I think today I’m headed in the right direction.”

Vicky, the 2007 AJGA Player of the Year, is the sixth consecutive player of the year to skip college and turn pro. She joined the LPGA’s development league and last week set a Duramed Futures Tour 54-hole scoring record while earning her first pro victory.

The competition is major league at Cedar Ridge this week, but Vicky played like she belonged amid the world’s best golfers. She said it was “awesome” to see her name atop the leaderboard.

“I think she knows she is good enough,” said Koko, who travels with her daughter to tournaments.

“But I don’t know if she feels comfortable out here. After a few more tournaments, she will be more comfortable.”

Vicky did not make the cut while playing as an amateur in three previous tournaments against LPGA competition — two U.S. Opens and the 2007 Ginn Open. She played in the Ginn Open nearly a year after the death of her father, Joe.

“He’s up there hopefully looking downonme,”Vicky said. “I think his attitude towards my golf and golf in general was just have fun and keep your heart in the game and no matter how bad of a shot you hit, you are still out there playing and enjoying the game.”

Vicky said she was not nervous at the start of the first round. She admitted to being a little nervous toward the end of the round because she wanted to post a good score.

Vicky is juggling coursework and class work with the intent of graduating May 17. Teachers and administrators at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy have been flexible in allowing her to do correspondence work and take make-up exams.

She regrets that she didn’t get to go on a senior class outing to Disney World, but sacrifices have to be made if you are golf ’s next big thing.

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