Mark’s Musings – August 13, 2014
Mark Fortune
Thumbs up to this year’s Canal Festival organizers – from the parade to the promenade to the junior queen and queen contest – it was a rip roaring festival that our community can be proud of.
Local high school marching bands, football squads, cheerleaders and fall sports athletes at all area schools are getting themselves in shape for the upcoming season. Good luck to all youngsters, coaches, volunteers and those that help make all of these events possible.
The situation in Iraq will get worse before it gets better. Any quick search on the internet brings up scores of articles from highly respected news journalists and news sites. The leader of Iraq is partly to blame for this mess – for not including the Sunni population in the government. According to the Huffington Post website – and many other sites as well – Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government is largely to blame for failing to share power with Iraq’s Sunni minority, which dominated before the U.S. invasion. The U.S. is now involved with airstrikes on the ISIS forces that control Mosul and much of the western portion of the country.
A key fact that oft goes unreported simply due to the amount of news about Iraq is that the country depends on its oil exports for money – Iraq produces 3.3 million barrels of oil per day and has the world’s fourth largest oil reserves. The oil fields falling into the wrong hands – in simple terms here for the sake of brevity – provides money to fund evil.
What’s going on with the Kansas City Royals? A nine game win streak doesn’t happen very often in a city known more for its great restaurants than baseball. At least lately. The Royals are a half game behind Detroit which leaves the Indians only 5 and a half back. Pittsburgh is only 2 and a half back of Milwaukee and the Reds are 5 back. I am not giving up on either the boys from the Queen City or on the Lake to make the playoffs. Yet.
If the season ended today (Monday) the Bucs would be one of the two teams playing in the wildcard game – the Indians are five games back. League leading and overall game winner Oakland makes it tough on the other teams in the American League – as the LA Angels are one of the wildcard teams with the Royals being the other. This will all start shaking out in a few weeks which will make my prognosticating much easier – and more accurate.
What is your opinion on the changes within the Big10? Adding Maryland and Rutgers certainly changes the strong Midwestern influence of the conference. Did you know that the basketball tournament is moving to D.C. in 2017? Oh, you didn’t? A story that appeared in Sports Illustrated in June makes the point that population (fan base) – or, lack of population growth (fans) in the Midwestern states is the real reason why the conference reached out to east coasters Maryland and Rutgers. It’s called fans. Interesting and we’re out of space for this week.
Category: Mark's Musings
