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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Belmont Notes

Tahitian Warrior lost the third on Wednesday at odds of 1-4; and Dave Litfin notes in the Form that Godolphin Stable is having a down year, with just seven U.S. winners, none in graded stakes. Of course, that's not the only problem facing the Sheikh of Dubai these days. Godolphin purchased this three-year old son of Maria's Mon after he won his debut at Gulfstream early in the year, defeating 11 horses who have combined to win a grand total of four races since then, all maiden claiming races. There's a big red-board for you.

From there, Tahitian Warrior was shipped to Dubai and ran 10th on the grass at Meydan before coming back here to win two out of three allowance races on dirt, earning triple digit Beyers in those wins. He therefore earned the tag useful form on the Godolphin website; but I imagine they were looking for more than "useful" when they bought him. He wasn't very useful to the early Pick Four players who singled him on Wednesday, as he was unable to collar Birdrun ($11.20), who proved to be unintimidatable when confronted by the heavy favorite.

Humilarity ($5.80) won the 6th for trainer Rudy Rodriguez, who continues to win at a hefty win percentage, as opposed to his record as a jockey. This was his 6th winner from 15 starters at this meeting. The verbose NY-based chart-caller must have gone to the bathroom during this race, as the entire comment section was shorter than we sometimes see for a single horse. Refreshed, he made up for it in the 7th.

RJ HOPE bumped several times lightly with JOSHUA REYNOLDS, was unhurried racing along the outside, found room to angle sharply five wide into the lane, took off in earnest after being straightened away, charged down the center of the course with powerful strides towards the frontrunners during the run through the furlong grounds, then sustaining the momentum got a nose in front right on the finish line.
No need to go to the videotape here; obviously a tough beat for those who had second place finisher Deflationary Fears. Based on his halting performances since Paladino won the primary, Andrew Cuomo might think about hiring this guy.

20 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Alan, you and all NY voting racing fans would be well advised to vote for Paladino.NY racing can do business with Paladino and, in fact, can win the many reforms so sorely needed to make racing viable once again.

Cuomo is just more of the same old crap and NY racing will be held hostage by Albany once more. Time for a change, a major shake-up, and Paladino is the only one who will bare knuckles brawl with the legislature.

Paladino's polls are amazing, and the campaign cash is flowing in. It appears that the indies are breaking big time for him, surely bad news for Cuomo. Better hop on the bandwagon now. /S/greenmtnpunter

El Angelo said...

Ignoring all that I dislike about Paladino, what makes you say that he will be good for racing? If he's putting an absolute freeze on spending in New York, what makes us think that he won't just try to take more of the slots money or determine that money losers like racing should be shut down?

Figless said...

Count me among those tough beaten with Deflationary Fears. Didnt bother me that much at the time, but ended up cost me a nice DD when the mare Karakorum Elektra beat the boys in the 8th at a very overlaid 7-1.

Seems there are still some that doubt Linda Rice sprinting on the grass, or perhaps just outdated male chauvinism at work.

Luckily, I made up for it by hitting the $66.50 Late DD when the favored Tutti Va Bene held on in a thrilling (for me) photo.

Good racing for a Wednesday, some nice races sandwiched around only three maiden claimers.

Figless said...

Well, the last Tea Party Republican to get elected in this area, Cristy, has not exactly been good for racing in that state.

Difference here is Silver and his cronies are not losing the legislature, so even if Paladino somehow wins it will result in nothing but stalemate. It will be fun watching them fight, but Silver is nothing if not intransigent, so nothing will get done.

Sadly, there is no hope for my state.

alan said...

How do we know he wouldn't want to take a baseball bat to racing?

Today's Siena poll paints a very different picture from yesterday's Quinnipiac poll. Besides being a crude name-caller who has provided no details to his radical plans to cut spending, Paladino is a crass hypocrite who has embraced and thrived on the state's pay-to-play culture that he now decries. We'll get to some of the details in the coming days and weeks.

Anonymous said...

Naturally, the media, save the NY Post, is in the tank for Cuomo, just as they are for Obama and his band of Democrat thieves in Congress. It is like campaigning as a capitalist in 1930's Russia and having to depend on Pravda and Izvestia to get your side of the story out. The joke was there is no news in Izvestia and no truth in Pravda.

It will take a lot for Paladino to break through the media lies and distortions but I was heartened, and encouraged, to learn that Roger Stone is on the scene. At least Paladino can now match dirty tricks with Democrats, and with Roger Stone, may be able to out-trick the Democrat Devils. At least it is an even match. /S/greenmtnpunters

El Angelo said...

Way to lose the message and credibility by comparing Andrew Cuomo and the NY Times to the Great Purge and killing millions of Russian civilians. I thought hyperbole like that was only used by Stephen Schwarzman.

And you still haven't answered my question as to what makes you think that Paladino will be more sympathetic to racing than Cuomo.

steve in nc said...

Green, stop whining. For right wingers like you, America is still the land of opportunity!

Go write to that pair of insanely rich guys funding the tea party movement. Soon you'll have your own think tank.

You're already seeing Russia just like Palin used to from Alaska. You have your finger on the political pulse. You know that reality is out and that calling people commies is back in.

How many mainstream news outlets actually questioned Bush's WMD lie? Not even the NY Times.
I think war opponents got less than 1% of the soundbites on national networks leading up to the Iraq war.

THAT was like Russia and I imagine you got used to it and liked it.
So I understand why you're upset now that the media isn't totally one sided. So go use that emotion!

Start civil disobedience at all the media outlets until they're all as fair and balanced as poor little underfunded, invisible Fox and Rush (the gov't is always jamming his frequency just like in Russia).

And that poor Post... anyone who so much as looks at a discarded copy on the subway gets reported to the secret police and sent to Buffalo for the winter.

Dirty tricks? I guess the Dems invented Swift Boating? And I guess a Democrat paid that Republican activist to recruit homeless people to run as Green Party candidates?

Your side has no bankroll or exposure problems. There are only 2things your side is missing: scruples, and a clue.

Figless said...

"How many mainstream news outlets actually questioned Bush's WMD lie? Not even the NY Times.
I think war opponents got less than 1% of the soundbites on national networks leading up to the Iraq war."

No one, not the media, not the UN Security Council, not the democrats, questioned the existence of Saddams WMD program.

Some questioned the logic of going to war over the WMD issue, arguing instead for continued sanctions (and some of those countries were late proven to be in violation of those same sanctions, flouting them for economic gain), but no one questioned their existence.

EVERYONE was wrong.

Yet somehow "Bush Lied".

El Angelo said...

Do you really want to get into the arguments about how Bush said that Iraq was in cahoots with al Qaeda? Or had tons of chemical/biological weapons it didn't have? Or the b.s. about aluminum tubes?

And what does any of this have to do with Paladino and whether or not he would be good for racing?

Anonymous said...

Let's re-locate Washington DC to Omaha and then see how many honest pols want to serve their country? Politics in Washington have become a lifetime sinecure for a corrupt Ruling Class of Democrats and Republicans. Read the Angelo Codevilla essay.

If more Americans visited Washington,i.e., anywhere inside the Beltway, there would soon be a mass uprising to overthrow this entrenched, rotten to the core oligarchy. They live like Ottoman Empire Pashas down there while the rest of the country scrambles for table scraps. Nothing new, it is the life cycle of civilizations down through the ages.

Tea Party has it right: The status quo- the unholy alliance between Democrats and Republicans to share power and the spoils- must be turned upside down so we can start over. Even the naiive, generous American people can be fooled for only so long. /S/greenmtnpunter

Anonymous said...

If you're going to read articles, try the new yorker's article on the koch brothers and the tea party. You teabaggers are all being played for the fools that you are.

alan said...

Here's the link to the abovementioned article on the Koch brothers:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

steve in nc said...

Figless - Remember Hans Blix? The UN inspector who kept telling the world that he couldn't find any evidence of WMDs? His name became a punch line here in the media. His reports were taken seriously all over the world, but dismissed here.

If the rest of the world believed Saddam had WMDs, do you think Bush would have had to twist so many arms so hard to get votes at the UN and nations to supply a dozen or so soldiers each soldiers to the "coalition"?

The transcripts of the British cabinet meetings that were leaked also showed that Bush had told them he was invading no matter what Saddam did.

Bush's deception was widely reported here in the alternative and left press. As a reader of The Nation, I read of the many sources saying the intelligence was cooked.

This is why I responded so strongly to Green claiming the media is against the Republicans.

Figless said...

I watched and taped the security council round table on WMD's, right before the vote, the one where Colin Powell mentioned the incorrect assertion that Iraq was trying to obtain Uranium.

Not a single member nation denied that Sadaam had a WMD program, some argured that sanctions should be given more time but no one said it was not a possibility.

After all, Mr. Blix would not have been there in the first place if the UN did not believe he had a program.

I distinctly remember Mr. Blix requesting more time, and the French, Russians and Chinese wanting to give it to him, and the USA, who had 100k troops on high alert for close to two months, not wanting to wait any longer.

Blix never said WMD's existed, he never said they did not, he said he needed more time and cooperation from Iraq. He got neither.

Figless said...

As for two rich guys being behind the Tea Party, is there not big money behind Obama and the progressives?

George Soros, anyone?

C'mon, all political movements need money to get to the next level. But they get nowhere without having a message that connects with people.

Figless said...

Another point to consider was the context, this was right after N Korea had announced they had a nuke, after years of stalling the UN inspectors, so the credibility of the inspection team was in question.

The only folks opposing the invasion were anti-war zealots, who in this case were proven correct. But they did not oppose the invasion based on the evidence at hand, they opposed it on principal, which I respect.

The list of politicians opposed to the invasion is a short one.

steve in nc said...

Fig, here's a digest of how the intelligency community itself questioned the WMD evidence. LOTS of people thought the case was shaky:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100474.html

And remember that Blix was on a UN mission and had to be diplomatic. He went privately to Tony Blair and warned him that invaders were likely going to look foolish when they found no WMDs.

Once freed of that UN mantle, he wrote books accusing the US of hyping the evidence to justify the war, and of spying on him.

My point to Green was that while many people were making arguments against invasion on various grounds, they got almost no coverage, except Blix - the only one acting professionally and not politically - who was belittled.

I'm not claiming that the left is not without its backers or its media, although I think you'll concede that corporate money has a much greater impact on Congress than Soros and other progressives.

What got me is that while the tea party has no shortage of funding or coverage, Green thinks he's in Russia and being victimized by dirty tricks to boot.

Anonymous said...

We have a state-run media as Rush has pointed out for some time. The NY Times being the best example, followed closely by MSNBC and the networks. Their ratings show it and now the heads are rolling. Phony Liberalism is finally cracking up after being propped up for so long by it's useful idiots.
/S/greenmtnpunter

Anonymous said...

does greenmtnpunter have any independent thoughts of his own, or does he just regurgitate what the talking heads tell him to while getting all the spelling and grammar wrong?