by John Walters
Starting Five
Khashoggi
One year ago today, Saudi-born Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi walked into his own planned hit. He has never been seen again.
Khashoggi left his fiancee in a waiting vehicle in Istanbul as he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate to obtain the necessary marital paperwork. Instead, from what has been ascertained, he was choked out and then butchered into pieces for easier egress. A Khashoggi doppelgänger was even sent out of the building for cameras to follow so as to provide a (flimsy) alibi.
Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman as late as last week was claiming he had no idea that the murder would take place (in the same week, the Saudis beheaded 37 prisoners because electric chairs are so not green, you know?).
The worst part, as an American, is knowing that Donald and Jared and Mike Pompeo were at the very least unwilling to hold the Saudis accountable and at the worst, particularly in Jared’s case, may have been complicit. Because oil. And money. And future resorts.
Tanking
By the way, the day before Khashoggi’s murder by the Saudis last October 2nd, the DOW was near an all-time high at about 26,900. On the day after Khashoggi’s killing, the DOW began to tank and would continue to plummet all the way to Christmas eve, when the markets closed with the DOW at 21,792.
That’s at least a 20% free fall in just over 2 months. Shares of Apple (AAPL), for example, plummeted from $232 to $142 in that time span. And while here we are one year later, nearly back to where we were, you have to wonder what might’ve been had the markets not been spooked by this cowardly assassination while the American economy was otherwise thriving.
Wild Finish
At least the Red Sox were given another game after Bill Buckler misplayed Mookie Wilson’s grounder, and the score was already tied when Mookie hit the slow roller.
With the bases loaded last night in D.C., two outs in the bottom of the eighth, and the Nats trailing the Brewers 3-1, 20 year-old Juan Soto lined a ball into right field off lefty reliever ace Josh Hader. At worst two Nat runs should have scored, maybe even only one. But somehow Milwaukee right fielder Trent Grisham allowed Soto’s hit to skip right past him in between the first and second hops.
Three runs scored. The Brewers went down relatively quietly in the ninth. One error, and the season’s over. That’s cold. But that’s why the Wild Card (read: Knockout) Game is so much fun for fans. Unless you’re a Brewers fan this morning.
Stone Cold
In anachronistic sports journal news, Sports Illustrated Editor-In-Chief Pete Campbell Christian Stone is out. The 27-year run is over at SI. (Jon Snow) Steve Cannella remains and will become one of the Co-Editors-In-Chief (with Ryan Hunt, whom we don’t know) because nothing makes more sense and creates less divisiveness than putting two people in co-equal charge of a major institution.
More layoffs are apparently imminent.
Our mom always taught us if we didn’t have anything nice to say, then to at least say it funny. We’re out of jokes at the moment (although we always found the first name ironic, more so as the years passed), so we’ll move on.
See You at Trumpstock!
Burning Man? That’s so last month. Travel one state south this weekend for Orange Man, a.k.a. Trumpstock, a three-day event in Kingman, Arizona. The high-desert town most renowned for being the place you’d stop for gas on the drive between Phoenix and Las Vegas will host this weekend event with headliners David harris, Jr. (he’s black!), Alexandra Levine (she’s a woman and possibly Jewish!) and Marco Gutierrez (“Build the wall!”). Seriously, where are the regular people?
Tickets for the event will run from $25 to $125 and it’s open to Americans of all rages.
Music 101
Falling Down The Stairs Of Your Smile
New stuff from The New Pornographers. You can always tell when I’ve been listening to student-run (Fordham) radio station WFUV.
Remote Patrol
Maradona
HBO
Our friend and colleague Richard Deitsch calls this film on the 5’5″ Argentinian soccer legend the best sports documentary of the year. Good enough for us, or you can watch Rays-A’s on the ESPN at 5 p.m. local time. Gloaming baseball!
In my unpaid job ( 🙂 ) of keeping MH readers informed of Olympic sports news & results : last night at the T&F WC, it was a 3 GOLD NIGHT for Team USA! Whoo-hoo! Noah Lyles won the 200 meters, Donavan Frazier won the 800 & Sam Kendricks won the Pole Vault! Great performances all!
You may or may not have seen/heard that fellow American Christian Coleman won the 100 meters this past weekend & he & Noah are THE current top sprinters in the world. Both only ran one individual event in Doha (in a somewhat perplexing decision to me) but both have competed in the other sprint & it is expected that both will compete in BOTH sprints in Tokyo. My oh my! These guys are not buddies. I don’t think they hate each other but they are vying to be THE FACE & NAME of world sprinting & the next Olympics & there can be “ONLY ONE!” (who knew Track was a Highlander plot? 🙂 ) , so “relations” are on the cool side, to say the least. That they will probably be competing TOGETHER in the upcoming 4×100 Relay puts one’s “sports entertainment” (emphasis on the latter) senses on high alert! Can’t wait to see if they stand next to each other after the race during interviews & on the podium (if Team USA does NOT drop the stick!) & how much (if any) credit they give each other if they win. 🙂 I’m guessing one will immediately try to show they are the “better man” by overly effusing about the other. Ooooh, it’s gonna be fun! 🙂 I like both guys although I can do without Lyles’ post-race attempts to be the ‘next Bolt’. I am THRILLED that the Olympic sprint champ’s reign is OVUH!
So, today incudes the start of the Decathlon & Heptathlon, the Women’s 200 (all of the event’s big stars pulled out for various reasons!), the Men’s 110 Hurdles, & most especially…. IT’S HAMMER TIME! You can’t touch this! 🙂
Er, perhaps I’ve been mistaken the past 7-10 years about the ‘target’ of some of your comments, but aren’t you going to be raising at least one TOAST to the news of this most recent SI “firing”?
As for “MORE” layoffs, hell, the magazine’s already been gutted the past 4 years so that it’s barely recognizable. Since I have NOT exactly embraced the “digital” mag reality, the probable eventual dissolution of yet one more of my life-long magazines is, ironically, also “gutting”. 🙁 🙁 🙁
One more thing today. I sold my 2nd-bought stock yesterday & for someone like you , who buys & sells faster than, er, Christian Coleman, it’s no big deal but for me, ‘Ms Buy & Hold to Infinity & Beyond!’, it was sad, depressing even. Even though I didn’t have much choice as the company was dissolving itself over the next 2 years in some weird drawn-out, soon-to-be unlisted rigamarolle. I had bought YHOO the same day I bought AMZN, back in Nov 2008 (within an hour of each other, I think). I bought 100 shares at $9 bucks/share. Next to AMZN (which is where it lives on my spreadsheet forevermore), it pales in comparison, but my “total sell” price (including last week’s cash distribution) was $71.17, so I did alright. Sniff, sniff. YHOO “became” AABA a few years ago, but it will always be YAHOOOOO! to me.
Is blogjacking a federal crime? Can we get a ruling on this?🙂
The judges will accept blog jacking under Statute MH-SB14796 section 12.
Thank you, Ruth. I’m glad the MH Oversight Committee is not asleep at the wheel…
The home of “Trumpstock” is no stranger to tolerance…Sacha Baron Cohen went to Kingman in disguise to discuss the possibility of building a mosque in town.
https://youtu.be/KHJlZyFxp88