buckybeaver

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@TheNYRA @andyserling It’s time for Victor to be reassigned. He is creating fairy tales in the Stewards Room.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@SoonerSwaggar @TermineRadio The fact you just compared SGA to MJ and Kobe is embarrassing. SGA may be the currently voted MVP but there isn’t a single person who would objectively say he is the best player in the league. He’s a very good player on a great team, that’s it.

[Bill Simmons @BillSimmons]

Matt LaFleur’s second half has to be on the short list of worst playoff coaching performances this century.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@RossDellenger @YahooSports Why is LSU giving that kinda money to someone who hasn’t won anything in his life? All he has are participation trophies.

[ErikDPrince @realErikDPrince]

Respectfully we will listen to promote open border immigration when you leave unlocked every door and gate of the entire Vatican in perpetuity. Nations are defined by governance quality and delineated by borders. When one party or political movement degrades either they diminish the nation state. Government was established by the God to prevent murder and chaos. Not enable it.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@HPbasketball Grifters going to grift, pass the damn ball. Refs rewarding that play is awful, Durant had position before SGA leaned in.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@JasonSobelGolf Embarrassing, if you forfeit it’s a loss. I don’t want to hear tradition, it’s a horrible rule.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@ForePlayPod @BrentleyGC It’s time people with common sense took over the game of golf. Enough of the rules “just because that’s how it’s always been”.

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

We wept bitterly putting this together...

Charlie Kirk did not fear death. Charlie told us what his legacy would be. Charlie's greatest passion was his faith in Jesus Christ.

Just hours before he was assassinated, Charlie stood on stage, openly proclaiming his love for Jesus Christ. Unafraid, unwavering, and full of conviction. He lived every moment guided by that faith, and in the end, he was taken home by his Savior.

Charlie is a true Christian martyr.

His example is not just inspiring, it is a call to all of us. To stand firm in our beliefs, to shine light into darkness, speak truth and to live boldly in our faith. Charlie showed us what it means to live, and die, with purpose.

This is the legacy he leaves...

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@NUCLRGOLF @SI_Golf @BrysonLegion @PGATour needs to figure out we care more about the golfers than some executives hurt feelings in an office building

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@brooklyncowboy1 @PaulMattiesJr How did it impact people when blackjack was raised to $25 minimums? They play less or move on, those aren’t the customers horse racing should be after anyway.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@mrmckee Jack needs to invite the LIV guys he wants next year, force the PGA Tours hand. Thats the only way moving forward.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@PitchingNinja @RetmarinemsgtM Umpire needs to be fired immediately, everyone has had enough of their petty bullshit.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@PGAPappas Too many soft egos in golf, they need some heckling. Times change, bring on the heckling bad shots.

[Pete Pappas @PGAPappas]

Removing college golfer Luke Potter from The Players for heckling Rory McIlroy was a bush league move by the PGA Tour and terrible look for the Championship. This is not how you elevate fan experience and engagement.

Commentary from galleries is part of the game and that includes heckling. It doesn’t fit the perfect ideal of golf etiquette but it’s also far from rampant where you’d need to make a feeble-minded example of Potter and remove him.

Potter’s comment about Rory’s 2011 Masters meltdown was scathing which also made it funny as this kind of sharp-tongued chirping is relatable to anyone who plays the game. You hear far worse at events like the WM Phoenix Open. And at the Ryder Cup this year heckling will be downright hostile.

However nothing Potter said was racist or homophobic or anything approaching a level of inappropriateness that everyone would agree has no place in golf or anywhere. Potter’s heckling didn’t even happen during actual tournament play. It was a practice round.

And you would think if there was ever a moment to cut a heckler some slack this would be it.

In 2019 Potter was the California Freshman Athlete of the Year (the last golfer to win this award was Tiger Woods). His resume of remarkable golf achievements include being the youngest-ever winner of the Southern California Golf Association Amateur, earning three-time All American status, and reaching the semifinals of the 2021 U.S. Junior Amateur.

I’m not advocating heckling but I am saying in this case the punishment did not fit the crime. Potter is a young man who let his adrenaline get the best of him. It’s a life learning experience. And to his credit he apologized and took full responsibility. But this could have been handled the same way privately on-site and then never become sensationalized at all.

Rory also let his emotions get the best of him. I like Rory. I’ve enjoyed the times I’ve been able to ask him questions like during the 2021 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s. His answers have always been incredibly thoughtful and genuine.

It’s water under the bridge now but I’d guess Rory wishes he also handled the heckling differently. Confronting Potter and his teammate after the heckling and taking his teammate’s phone was an emphatic overreaction.

At the same time it was a sympathetic overreaction reminding us all just how deep and haunting his Masters scars run. It’s one of the reasons we cheer for Rory, one of the reasons we admire Rory. Heart and soul it matters to him. And this transcendent, doggedly-competitive fire will bring Rory that elusive green jacket before he hangs up his spikes.

Ironically there’s a shared bond and core mentality between Rory and Potter that matters infinitely more than their unprosperous clash. And it’s arguably the most crucial aspect of success in golf and in life. They are both in their own right uncommonly focused.

I remember asking Potter during the 2022 East Lake Cup if coming close in Stroke Play (he finished 2nd) was any extra motivation for the next day’s Championship Round of Match Play.

Potter said to me, “No, not really. Every new day is its own new day.” Keep that in mind young man as you continue your extraordinary journey.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

There is no overstating how insane this is, and in a normally-functioning media environment it would be a scandal of enormous proportions: after cancelling -based on a now-debunked lie - the presidential elections that Georgescu was winning, Romania has now barred him from even running at all.

Agree or disagree with his political ideas, I'm afraid Georgescu is right here 👇: this shows that Romania, and by extension the EU which fully supports what Romania is doing here, is now much closer to tyranny than democracy.

A small reminder of what happened.

First, Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round of Romania's presidential election in November through what appeared to be a highly effective social media campaign.

Then, Romania's Constitutional Court annulled his victory and cancelled the elections altogether, primarily citing alleged Russian influence, along with claims of "undeclared campaign financing and fraudulent use of digital technologies."

Yet it's now crystal clear that this cancellation was based on a complete fabrication. As I previously detailed (https://t.co/JSGd1K750K), the declassified Romanian intelligence documents that served as justification for cancelling the election contained no actual evidence of foreign interference or manipulation. They merely documented a social media campaign involving 25,000 TikTok accounts coordinated through Telegram channels - completely standard practice in political campaigning. In effect, an entire presidential election was cancelled on the grounds of the existence of a coordinated social media campaign on TikTok that the intelligence services claimed - without concrete evidence - resembled Russian tactics.

Even more insane, subsequent investigative reporting by Romanian journalists (which I also wrote about: https://t.co/9FA8OveABy) revealed that the TikTok campaign cited as "evidence" of Russian interference was actually funded by the ruling National Liberal Party (PNL) itself! The same party that supported cancelling the election paid over 1 million RON a marketing firm called Kensington Communication to run the very campaign later characterized as "foreign interference."

So this whole thing appears to have been a deliberate ploy to provide intelligence services with grounds for nullifying an election that the ruling party was losing.

And now, even as Georgescu leads in the polls ahead of the rerun, they've taken the extraordinary step of barring him from participating in the elections entirely.

What's even more disturbing is how this fabricated narrative of "Russian interference" continues to be propagated at the highest levels of European leadership. Just four days ago, on March 5th, in a televised address to the French people, Macron stated as fact: "President Putin's Russia violates our borders to assassinate opponents, manipulates elections in Romania and Moldova. It organizes digital attacks against our hospitals to block their operations." This casual repetition of a thoroughly debunked claim shows how deeply embedded this fiction has become in the European political establishment's narrative - a convenient bogeyman to justify overriding democratic processes when they produce "undesirable" results.

For all his faults, JD Vance was spot on on this topic in his Munich speech (and even though I was critical of the speech overall, I gave him credit for it in my commentary: https://t.co/C50JdXzwsY). He specifically pointed to Romania as a prime example of Europe's retreat from its values, noting:

"I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. [...] For years, we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy, but when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard."

Again, I'm under no illusions that Vance himself is hypocritical here. He conveniently failed to mention that the US State Department - his own country - was actually first to raise concerns about "Russian involvement" in Romania's elections on December 4th, essentially providing cover for what followed. Furthermore his support for Georgescu likely stems not from principled defense of democracy but from ideological alignment with that side of the Romanian political spectrum, and in this sense he's probably no better than the EU officials he criticizes. Yet on the face of it, his commentary on this specific situation was correct.

All in all, the Romanian situation exposes a terrifying truth at work in European politics today: democracy is celebrated only when it produces the "correct" results. When voters choose candidates deemed unacceptable by the political establishment, suddenly the democratic process itself becomes suspect, allegedly compromised by "foreign interference" or other conveniently vague threats.

As such what we're witnessing in Romania isn't merely a local political dispute - it's the canary in the coal mine for European democracy as a whole. If an EU member state can cancel a legitimate election and then bar the winning candidate from running again without meaningful consequences, what's to prevent this playbook from being deployed elsewhere?

The mask has slipped, and what lies beneath is very ugly.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@BartHanson Fire the floor person. How are they not verifying the elimination with only three players remaining.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@TennisChannel why are you and T2 showing the same match? We have a WTA1000 quarterfinal that is more important than these 250s.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@GoodmanHoops He fouls on every defensive possession.

[buckybeaver @jmahls]

@Stuckey2 Contact yes but Smith has to catch that. Can’t have weak calls like that in any games