This weekend must be dedicated to the animals.  Meet Rachel Alexandra the super filly, Pimlico’s hottest new attraction who will run in the 134th Preakness Stakes barring any unforeseen events. 

 

 

Much hangs on this year’s Preakness that extends beyond the 2nd leg of the triple crown stakes. All at Pimlico is not well, according to examiner.com:

 

Track owner, Magna Entertainment Corp. is in bankruptcy. A new infield BYOB ban, threatening rain, and one of the worst economic recessions in recent memory may converge to form a perfect storm of dwindling interest. The fate of Preakness teeters in the balance.

On the one hand, the sky could rip at any moment. On the other, the sun might shine. This is the City of Baltimore, nestled between the Chesapeake Bay and western Maryland. Here, the barometer can and often does shift on a dime.

We natives can’t help but see Pimlico through the eyes of history, the rest of the world’s as well as our own. Here, the underdog Seabiscuit battled mighty War Admiral and emerged victorious. Here, America’s Barbaro suffered gut-wrenching defeat.

Enter the new lady in town, Rachel Alexandra. No filly has won the Preakness since 1924. She is being billed by the horse crowd as the best horse since Man o’ War  (c. 1920) who some feel was the horse of the century. Sports stations and horse racing aficionados are all a buzz with the talk of Super Filly  Rachel Alexandra. Should she turn out to be the horse of the century, Mine That Bird is out of the running. To make matters even dicier, Cal Borel, the jockey who rode Mine That Bird to victory two weeks ago at the Kentucky Derby, is jumping ship, or should I say, ‘jumping horse,’ and riding Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness. What is that old country expression about dance with the one who brung you?

We will just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow as coverage begins at 4:30 on NBC. The odds will be posted online sometime tomorrow.  Post time is generally around 5:30-6:00.

No Triple Crown winner this year!

Watch the new kid in town kick some major horse booty! Rachel Alexandra is the winner of the 2009 Preakness Race. Mine That Bird came in a close second. One can only wonder if Cal Borel had ridden Mine that Bird, if we might be looking at a Triple Crown Winner.

Enjoy the race!

Will we have a new Lady Victory, a 2nd leg winner named Bird That Mine, or will another dark horse appear out of no where? [ED note: Rachel Alexandra won the Preakness.] Is Cal Borel, the exuberant  jockey, a turn coat for not riding Bird That Mine?  Check out the competition.  Who is your favorite?

Will the boys rule the day or will there be a female interloper breaking the glass ceiling for the first time in 85 years? 

Click to view the competition.

 

Additional video footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjePyvH7024&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBxJvzktxrw&NR=1

 

 

78 Thoughts to “A New Hottie Comes to Town”

  1. Gainesville Resident

    Thanks MH for helping clarify point I was trying to make. Indeed, I was actually just trying to say that entire frat sometimes got blamed instead of individuals. Also good point too, not all rapes on college campuses committed by frat members. And, not all rapes on campus committed by white men either. And, not all fraternity members are white, definitely NOT at my college.

    To put it mathematically, white men are not the only set that intersects with fraternities. Rapes are not a subset of fraternities – that is rapes intersect with frats but are not “within them”. Rapes are also not a subset of white men. If I could draw a set diagram I could show it better (as in a picture is worth a thousand words).

    Anyway, not particularly interested in this debate, but thanks MH for helping clarify my points. You & I are in agreement on this, that’s for sure.

  2. Gainesville Resident

    Should say “college white men” everyplace I said “white men” just to be more accurate in above post. In this case, mathematical set relationships help explain the truth of the college fraternity scene.

  3. M-H and G-R,

    All the minor exceptions you pointed out about ‘frats’ is also true about ‘gangs’.

    So why is it that just being associated with a ‘gang’ is more or less a crime that sets you up for life to be given much harsher treatment? Is it because white people are terrified of gangs (which prosecutors and AGs exploit to the Nth degree), whereas they laugh at the antics of frats?

  4. Gainesville Resident

    I thought one way of joining a gang was getting “sexed in”. Maybe I’m mistaken, if so I apologize. Never heard of that in terms of joining a fraternity. Women raped by frat members – I don’t think they become (or even want to become) frat member. If I am mistaken about gangs, I apologize in advance. And, I tire of this debate. I’m not going to change your perception about college frats, Mackie, and you’re not going to change my perception about gangs (white, black, asian, or hispanic).

  5. Gainesville Resident

    By the way Mackie, in your earlier post, the way you painted it regarding Pimlico how you were afraid to go there during the “running of the urinals” – painted a picture in my mind – of a hoard of angry “drunken white young men” descending from the stands to attack you. Surely you don’t think that realistic, do you? I think not all people who go to the races are young either. Then again, I defer to MH, i personally have never attended a horse race.

  6. You Wish

    Mackie,

    Had you bothered to go to college, you would see that frats are made up of all races. I pledged a sorority in college and we weren’t “sexed in”. Neither did any of the frats require that of their members.

    Let’s see – difference between gangs and frats:
    Gangs commit murder, theft, arson, assault, terrorize entire neighborhoods.

    Frats throw keg parties, do volunteer work, have members that graduate and go on to do GOOD for society.

    You ask why people are terrified of gangs and laugh at frats. Last time I checked, I’ve never heard of a frat cutting the hands off of a rival frat member using a machette. I’ve never seen frats “tag” areas with graffiti, marking their terrority so other frats don’t cross the line. I’ve never read of frats running drugs and guns.

    Grow up.

  7. You Wish

    Moon-howler :Don’t attempt to tell me what ‘white people’ are aghast at.
    P>

    For once, I’m glad that MH isn’t slapping MY hand 🙂

  8. Moon-howler

    Snicker. i can ‘t add much to what You Wish or GR have said on that one.

    I didn’t laugh much at the antics of fraternities except when I was a drunk high school and college student. Once I got out, it all seemed rather pointless and juvenile.

    The jerks would get all liquored up and punch holes in their own walls. But then again, I have seen young males who weren’t in college or in a fraternity to pretty much the same thing. They weren’t all white either.

    I grew up a mile from campus of a major university. Not much I haven’t seen with fraternities. I went to college near several military bases. Odd how I saw similar behavior to that I had seen at the fraternities. Now let’s see…what is the common denominator here?

    I expect if Mackie took a sampling of young black men in a fraternity and asked them how they felt they differed from a street gang, some of them might just be a tad bit pissed off at Mr. Mackie. In fact, I expect they would be highly insulted and with good reason. In fact, I expect Mr. Mackie would probably be more afraid of the fraternity brothers than he would be going to the race track at this juncture.

  9. The point is that it doesn’t matter if you’re in a frat, a gang, or the military. If you commit a crime you should be judged as an individual. Who you associate with should have nothing to do with it.

  10. Moon-howler

    Unless you are committing crimes as a group…then who you associate with has everything in the world to do with it. Psychology 101 talks about mob rule and mob mentality and the energy gathered by the group dynamic.

    Quit trying to make it ok to be a gang member. It isn’t, by anyone’s standards.

  11. It’s ok to associate with anyone you’d like. We have freedom of association written into the constitution. But the feverish and frightened minds of white people, have once again found a way to suspend the constitution for minority males.

    It seems only pretty, well-manicured, white boys seem to enjoy this freedom of association no matter how many thousands upon thousands of times per year they conspire to illegally provide alcohol and other drugs to underage girls and how many thousands upon thousands of date rapes those drugs lead to.

    The bloodthirsty white boys who savagely murdered Luis Ramirez proved without any doubt what all these people are capable of when they feel they can get away with it. Because they’ve been raised in a society where white males are always portrayed as positive human beings and protectors while minority males are always portrayed as potential threats to society.

  12. Gainesville Resident

    Funny, I never thought of “white boys” as being “well-manicured”!

  13. Gainesville Resident

    Being a “white boy” myself, that is!

  14. Gainesville Resident

    And I’m not pretty either – no one in their right mind would accuse me of being that, even when I was college age!

  15. Gainesville Resident

    And there are plenty of underage girls who happily have fake ID’s and on the own (without help from any “white boys”) drink alchohol and take illegal drugs.

  16. Gainesville Resident

    I also didn’t realize I was running a fever!

  17. Moon-howler

    @Mackie

    Yo! Chump! I’m talking to you!

    I hear that white men can’t jump also.

  18. Gainesville Resident

    I sure can’t jump, MH! I’m not cut out for basketball (or most other sports). Maybe I’m not your typical white male (definitely not as far as sports go).

  19. Moon-howler

    Maybe you are just one of the honest ones, Gainesville.

  20. Gainesville Resident

    Funny, MH!

  21. If you want to focus on the imagery I used to get my point across, that’s fine, but I wish you would not avoid addressing the point itself.

    And that point is that people should be punished only as individuals.

    Punishment should only apply for the criminal actions they engage in. They should not face any extra punishment for who they associate with.

    By creating ‘gang databases’, young black and hispanic males face false imprisonment, extra jail time, and are economically crippled for life just for hanging out with the guys they grew up with.

    There is no way you can support ‘gang databases’ and ‘gang enhancements’ to punishments and still support freedom of association guaranteed in the constitution.

  22. The following is a recent example of how white people have officially created a prison that has no walls but is very real.

    Is there any difference between this and all the Jim Crow laws?

    In late March of this year, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas filed an injunction against a gang known as Orange Varrio Cypress, or OVC, a group that generally claims territory in the traditionally Mexican American area of the city Orange known as Barrio Cypress. It is the sixth such injunction filed in Orange County in the last 2 1/2 years.

    Unlike some of my fellow liberal friends, I am not against gang injunctions per se. They are a tool, and at times a very useful tool in giving a community breathing room when gangs are running roughshod. But as with a hammer, whether the tool of gang injunctions is used for constructive purposes or as a clumsy bludgeon, depends on the skill with which it is wielded.

    In the case of the OVC injunction it appears that the tool is being wielded discouragingly poorly.

    Functionally, a gang injunction works like a restraining order. But, instead of barring contact with an individual, it bans certain activities by purported members of a particular group named in the order.

    The OVC injunction demarcates a 3.8-square-mile area the DA has designated as the Safety Zone. This section of Orange, which amounts to 16 percent of the city, is located mostly in Orange’s downtown sector, west of the 55 Freeway. In the Safety Zone, alleged gang members are not allowed to be in the presence of anyone else who is allegedly a gang member, or to drink alcohol, or to be nearby to anyone else who is drinking alcohol, or to wear “gang attire, ” which is a woozy term that means certain brands and certain colors. In addition, those named in the injunction must obey a 10 p.m. curfew.

    And there are other prohibitions. Among the most bizarre is the rule that alleged OVC gang members named are forbidden to stand in front of a famous local mural painted by the highly respected artist Emigdio Vasquez. It seems that the police have deemed the mural as OVC’s gang “flag.”

    If those named in the injunction violate any of these restrictions, they face six months in jail and a hefty fine.

    With previous Orange County gang injunctions, there had sometimes been minor protests, but they had come to nothing.

    This time community members and activists seemed far more determined in their objections, saying that the police at the DA had cast an absurdly wide net that amounted to racial profiling. It was, they said, making the lives of the innocent people named to the list….. simply impossible.

    Among the problems with poorly calibrated gang injunctions is the fact that, when mistakes are made, they are extremely difficult to rectify. If one is not a gang member, but is wrongly named in the injunction, there is no way off the list short of hiring a private attorney to contest one’s inclusion. And even if one can afford an attorney, there is no guarantee that contesting will work, as one is stuck with the task of having to prove a negative.

    One of those named on the OVC list was Erika Aranda, a 21-year-old single mother who lives with her family and her young daughter in the so-called Safety Zone, but says she has never claimed gang membership, or participated in gang activity. She has never been convicted of a crime. She has, however, grown up around those who are admitted gang members and has sometimes, according to police, been seen talking on the street with these childhood friends who still live in the neighborhood. Plus her uncle—a drug addict— is a old time OVC gang member who lives with the family intermittently, “whenever he’s not locked up,” she says.

    That was enough for the DA, who named Aranda as a gang participant, thus subject to all the restrictions. For instance, this meant that the young mother, who had recently been laid off from her job at the Dairy Queen, would be unable to continue with the job training classes she had been attending at the The Bridge, a non-profit also located in the Safety Zone. It seemed that, among its services, The Bridge counseled and provided classes to at-risk youth, some of whom were listed in the injunction. So just by being in the building, Aranda would be in violation of the order.

    Nor could Aranda ask a neighborhood friend to drive her to a job interview (she doesn’t have a car), if that friend happened to be on the list or had a family member on the list.

    And, if the police wanted to push things, it meant she could not use public transportation if someone on the injunction list was also taking the same bus.

    “Because I live and shop in the Safety Zone, I will become a prisoner in my own home even though I am not on parole or probation,” Aranda wrote in a statement protesting her inclusion in the injunction. “I fear that I will be targeted by the police and will be accused of violating the terms of the preliminary injunction by engaging in routine, day-to-day activities.”

    Given the flimsy “proof” of gang membership the DA had compiled to justify her listing and that of some of the others who claim they were named wrongly, Aranda’s fear doesn’t seem outlandish.

    As if to validate her anxiety, on Easter Sunday, police arrested a teenager named in the injunction for nothing more than standing with a friend (not named in the injunction) outside the apartment building where he lived with his mother, which happened to be located right next to the forbidden Emigdio Vasquez mural.

    At their wits end, the community group went to the ACLU, which finally agreed to represent five of the people named in the injunction, Aranda among them.

    “The ease with which the District Attorney’s Office embraced this sweeping approach is troubling, and should make the public very nervous,” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, one of the two ACLU staff attorneys who would be working the case. “This haphazard, catch-all approach to cracking down on gangs ensnares innocent victims and threatens to take away their most basic freedoms — associating with family and friends.”

  23. Gainesville Resident

    Makie – you wrote “If you want to focus on the imagery I used to get my point across, that’s fine, but I wish you would not avoid addressing the point itself.”

    Come on now Mackie. I wrote earlier about the individuals getting referred to the police, how women weren’t sexed in to fraternities, how those women would never want to be part of the frats they were raped in, etc. etc. etc. I made light of your “imagery” because I just never heard white males described as pretty and well-manicured, and was just making some light jokes.

    But for you to tell me that I did not address the issue, that’s just preposterous! Apparently you aren’t interested in a proper debate on this topic, THAT is what is apparent to me!

  24. Gainesville Resident

    I also said that entire frat house got disbanded, and most likely other frat members who were innocent were caught up in it.

    Again, your statement that I did not address the issue you were debating, preposterous.

  25. How could a frat house being disbanded ever compare to having your name entered in a ‘gang’ database for the rest of your life simply for not being white? Your examples don’t really have any substance.

  26. Gainesville Resident

    Whatever Mackie, I tire of this entire argument in this thread. Believe what you will, and I’ll believe what I believe. Neither of us is going to change each other’s mind!

  27. GR,

    Tell me why you never see these unbelievably unconstitutional ‘gang’ injunctions, like the kind I posted above, in white neighborhoods?

  28. Gainesville Resident

    Humor me, Mackie. Explain how they are unconsitutional. I don’t particular feel like explaining why they aren’t in “white neighborhoods” as you put it, as around here, I don’t know of any “white neighborhoods”. My neighborhood in Gainesville is ethnically diverse, and definitely cannot be called a “white neighborhood”. I don’t know the percentages, but if I’d have to hazard a guess – possibly 50 – 60% white. Anyway, I don’t need to justify anything to you – I already said let’s drop it, but you continued.

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