52 thoughts on “Derby Day”

  2. my choice described yesterday by ny times:

    Mendelssohn is a Kentucky Derby Contender, via Ireland

     
    LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Nancy and Fred Mitchell have toiled for four decades at Clarkland Farm in Lexington, Ky., with the hope of breeding a thoroughbred worthy of the Kentucky Derby. They have finally produced the horse of their dreams and perhaps those of racing fans throughout Europe.
    Mendelssohn, sold by the Mitchells for $3 million in 2016 as a yearling to Derrick Smith, Susan Magnier and Michael Tabor, is regarded by many as a colt with all the attributes necessary to become the first Europe-based starter to capture the 144th running Derby on Saturday.
    “He is really a find, a great one. He is definitely one to deal with,” said the trainer D. Wayne Lukas of Mendelssohn, who journeyed here from his home at Ballydoyle Racing Stable in Ireland.
    Bob Baffert was impressed by Mendelssohn when he viewed him in the paddock before the 1 3/16-mile U.A.E. Derby at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai on March 31. Then he watched him dominate his first test on dirt by 18 1/2 lengths in a track-record 1:55.18 for the trainer Aidan O’Brien and the jockey Ryan Moore. The winner appeared to benefit from a speed-favoring surface, and he avoided kickback by taking immediate command.
    “He’s powerful, fast. He’s got raw speed. He’s definitely one of the top five in the race,” said Baffert of Mendelssohn’s Kentucky Derby prospects.

    Lukas and Baffert are Hall of Fame trainers with four Derby victories each, tied for second. Baffert is thought to have an excellent chance to add to that when he saddles Justify, unraced as a 2-year-old but an impressive winner of all three of his starts this year to emerge as the expected favorite. As for Mendelssohn, Baffert’s opinion that he should be ranked among the “top five,” may suggest doubt. The history the 3-year-old must overcome is imposing.

    […]
    Mendelssohn is described by O’Brien as a “strong traveler.” He handled his first venture to the United States with aplomb, prevailing by one length in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf in November at Del Mar for Moore. His journey from Ireland to Dubai brought a U.A.E. Derby performance so spectacular as to be mind boggling.
     
    “If he runs anywhere near what he did in the UAE Derby, then we are dealing with a super horse,” said Steve Haskin, senior correspondent for BloodHorse.
    […continues…]

     

    IOW,  eat my dust, nags

  3. the CUK theory in a guardian op ed:
    They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. The presidency is no different: when it comes to a commander-in-chief, you can tell a lot from the aides they keep close.
     
    Barack Obama’s closest staffers were often intensely competitive, earnest, studious types who struggled to understand why the world didn’t admire their idealism and talent as much as they did. George W Bush, at least in his first term, surrounded himself with trigger-happy street fighters who confused patriotism with their own paranoia and prejudice.
     
    In the case of Donald Trump, the company he keeps is surprisingly consistent: a singular type with a shared set of character traits. They are, to a man, cocky, unqualified and kooky. You might call this the CUK theory of the Trump presidency, in honor of one of their archetypes: Steve Bannon.
     
    All the president’s men – at least, the CUKs – are a constant presence, in spite of the huge turnover among them. There was Bannon, now there’s Bolton. There was Scaramucci, now there’s Giuliani. It matters not. Trump cycles through his CUKs happily and frequently because he needs to keep one or more close through all his volatility.
    […describes here the current cuks….]

    Curious minds might wonder why this president chooses to surround himself with so many men who are cocky, unqualified and kooky. For someone so modest, so well-versed in world affairs, and so cogent, it seems so obviously out of character.

     

    [query: is the British pronunciation for “CUK” as in kooky or as in cuckold… either case, seems fitting for the lot]

  4. ‘Mr. Trump? Um, no, I don’t know any Mr. Trump’

     

    By Carl Hiaasen

    Suggested revisions for a new airtight, post-Stormy Non-Disclosure Agreement for all employees, blood relatives, in-laws, spouses, ex-spouses, free-lance manicurists, tanning-bed technicians and past sex partners of Donald J. Trump:
     
    I, [fill in your legal name, and any stage names you’ve ever used in films, pay-per-view videos, centerfolds or live performances], hereby attest that I will never confirm or discuss the details of my personal contacts with Mr. Trump.
     
    Specifically, I consent and agree to avoid any reference to:

    [[[…here certain NDA promises as only Hiaasen can humorously list….]]]

    By signing this NDA, I agree never again to mention it — or the soundproof underground room where I was taken to read it, after my blindfold was removed.
    In addition, I acknowledge that this document is effective for the duration of my lifetime, and that it will also be legally binding on my children, future grandchildren, great-grandchildren and their literary agents.
    I also agree to destroy all copies of my previous Non-Disclosure Agreement and to have no future contact with Mr. Michael Cohen, the nitwit who wrote it.
    Signed, [fill in your name. You know the drill.]

  5. Today the American Red Cross and our local fire department will be placing new, free, smoke detectors in homes in our community.  It is a national program to reduce deaths due to home fires.  Maryland has a new law requiring ten year battery smoke detectors in homes.  These smoke detectors provide home owners with alarms meeting the state law.

  8. Just a reminder of the horses and riders.  Anyone who doesn’t have a horse only has a couple of hours to get aboard for the 144th run for the roses.

    Interesting commentary from the talkers about the quality of the horses this year.

    This field is so good and so deep that whichever one comes in 5th could have won the derby in any other year.

    Post Position
    Horse
    Odds
    Jockey
    Trailmix

    1
    Firenze Fire
    50 to 1
    Manny Franco

    2
    Free Drop Billy
    30 to 1
    Robby Albarado

    3
    Promises Fulfilled
    30 to 1
    Corey Lanerie

    4
    Flameaway
    30 to 1
    Mark Casse

    5
    Audible
    8 to 1
    Javier Castellano
    XR

    6
    Good Magic
    12 to 1
    Jose Ortiz
    Renee

    7
    Justify
    3 to1
    Mike Smith
    Craig

    8
    Lone Sailor
    50 to 1
    James Graham

    9
    Hofburg
    20 to 1
    Irad Ortiz, Jr.

    10
    My Boy Jack
    30 to 1
    Kent Desormeaux

    11
    Bolt d’Oro
    8 to 1
    Victor Espinoza

    12
    Enticed
    30 to 1
    Junior Alvarado
    Jamie

    13
    Bravazo
    50 to 1
    Luis Contrares

    14
    Mendelssohn
    5 to 1
    R. Moore
    Patd

    15
    Instilled Regard
    50 to 1
    Joel Resario

    16
    Magnum Moon
    6 to 1
    Luis Saez
    Flatus

    17
    Solomini
    30 to 1
    Flavien Prat

    18
    Vino Rosso
    12 to 1
    John Velazquez
    Sturgeone, KGC, BB, BW

    19
    Noble Indy
    30 to 1
    Florent Giroux
    Pogo

    20
    Combatant
    50 to 1
    Ricardo Santana
    Lani

  9. Up seeing LP. Beautiful NYC day. Haven’t seen any horses in midtown but I haven’t ventured up to Central Park. Just chilling with a latte watching folks wander by a pleasant little plaza near Hell’s Kitchen while LP gets a haircut and Mrs P get her nails done. All in all a nice way to kill an hour in the city.

  10. Jamie, up for a trifecta with Mendelssohn to win, Bolt D’Oro to place and Noble Indy to show??

    It’s a sure thing I tell ya.

  11. Pogo……what’s now on the corner of 13th and 5th ave?……the southeast corner

    Should you happen to go by there, I mean…..

  13. patD – Great catch on OT!  Just downloaded “Shine.”   They should sing that outside of the NRA Convention to protest, and, at voter registration drives (which will now require help for some folks getting IDs).

  14. I think the hansome cabs were retired (or are being retired) as it was cruel to the horses.   I saw a horse trotting in heavy traffic from his/her stable to the park & looking absolutely terrified, so I’m glad kinder minds prevailed.

    You may see a human-powered/pedicab.

  15. BiD. thank heavens the kids are still making noise… as well as music.

    here’s Cameron Kasky  on cnn telling it like it is. hope they keep it up.

  18. the guardian:  UK regulator orders Cambridge Analytica to release data on US voter

     
    Cambridge Analytica has been ordered to hand over all the data and personal information it has on an American voter, including details of where it got the data and what it did with it, or face a criminal prosecution.
     
    The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) served the enforcement notice to the company on Friday in a landmark legal decision that opens the way for up to 240 million other American voters to request their data back from the firm under British data protection laws.
     
    The test case was taken to the ICO by David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design in New York. As a US citizen, he had no means of obtaining this information under US law, but in January 2016 he discovered Cambridge Analytica had processed US voter data in the UK and that this gave him rights under British laws. Cambridge Analytica had refused to accept this and told the ICO that Carroll was no more entitled to make a so-called “subject access request” under the UK Data Protection Act “than a member of the Taliban sitting in a cave in the remotest corner of Afghanistan”.
     
    The ICO did not accept this as a valid legal argument and has now told SCL Elections, which acted as the data controller for Cambridge Analytica, that it has 30 days to comply or appeal. Cambridge Analytica and its affiliates announced this week that they had gone into liquidation, but the ICO has made it clear that it cannot avoid its responsibilities under UK law and states that “failure to comply with this enforcement notice is a criminal offence”.
    […continues…]

  19. more from above link re Cambridge analytica:
    He said the ICO’s letter was “pretty extraordinary” and “proved what we’ve been saying for a long time: this is not a normal company. To have the audacity to say that American voters are no different than jihadis hiding in a cave is pretty shocking”. He said that it was the fact that it was a British company that had processed US voters’ data in the UK in an act of “digital colonialism” that had originally inspired him to ask the company for his data back.
     
    He went public in an interview with the Observer last year after Cambridge Analytica sent him a “profile” they had created about him but no information about how they created it: “They had given me ‘scores’ for different issues but I had no idea what they’d based this on.”
     
    Carroll is also pursuing his right to his data through the British courts, with his case due to be heard in the high court in the next few months.
    [….]

    Carroll, who has studied the modern “adtech” industry for his professional work, said that he didn’t expect to find his data had been harvested from Facebook “since I’ve always been pretty paranoid about my privacy settings”, but that he expected to find a whole host of other companies implicated. “I think we’re going to find that this goes way beyond Facebook and that all sorts of things are being inferred about us and then used for political purposes.”

  20. cnet:  

    NASA sends Mars InSight rocketing toward the Red Planet

    NASA’s Mars InSight is on its way to the Red Planet to explore the unseen interior of our neighbor and listen for “Marsquakes.” The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Martian lander successfully lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California at 4:05 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday.

    Mars InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is NASA’s first interplanetary mission to leave from the west coast of the US. 

    The lander will spend at least two years “listening” to the interior of Mars as it measures the planet’s subsurface heat and detects Marsquakes. The goal is to develop a map of sorts of the planet’s interior and hopefully gain insights into the formation of other rocky planets, including Earth.

    The Atlas 5 carrying InSight also carries a pair of experimental cubesats called MarCo and nicknamed “Wall-E” and “Eva” that will tag along to Mars. All three spacecraft took off on a southward path that carried the rocket over the Pacific Ocean, around the south pole and toward the other side of the planet before the rocket made a left turn toward Mars.

    […continues….]

  22. Jamie,


    Shine, written by Stoneman Douglas students Sawyer Garrity and Andrea Peña in response to the tragic shooting at their school on February 14, 2018 to inspire unity, hope, and change. MSD alum Brittani Kagan collaborated with students and faculty to create this music video to honor the victims and the school.
     
    All proceeds from downloads & views go to Shine MSD, a non-profit created by MSD families to support programs that provide healing through the arts.   To donate, go to http://www.ShineMSD.org
     

  23. Sturge,  There is a Brandy Melville women’s clothing store there. Truth be told I didn’t go there – I used Google Street view and there it is.

    And no blue they don’t do Hanson cabs anymore. The NYC horses do Central Park carriage rides now.

  24. Another fire alarm install campaign completed, a huge success today.  But, the teams ran out of time to do more than one third of our little community.  So, another campaign will be held later this year.  Most likely in September or early October, just before fireplace fire season starts.  If you have older or non-working smoke detectors check with the American Red Cross or your local fire station they might be in the program to install free detectors.

  25. About three years ago 23,000 thoroughbreds were born.  In about three hours, 20 of those foals will find out which one of them as a three year old will win the Kentucky Derby.  No matter how the race turns out, they are all pretty darn special.

  28. oh by the way, it’s cinco de mayo day…. forget the mint julep, lift high the tequila sunrise!

     
    ny times:  What Is Cinco de Mayo?
    Saturday is Cinco de Mayo, a day often mistaken in the United States for Mexico’s Independence Day. In fact, the holiday had its origin more than 50 years after the date associated with the country’s independence. So here’s what you need to know about Cinco de Mayo, including its evolution into a major economic driver for business owners and beverage companies across the United States.

    What is the significance of Cinco de Mayo?
    Cinco de Mayo, which isn’t widely celebrated in Mexico, commemorates an underdog victory over France in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The victory was galvanizing for the Mexican forces — and for those supporting them from afar — but it was short-lived, as France later occupied Mexico for a few years. Still, Cinco de Mayo continued to be celebrated in Puebla and, perhaps more significantly, by Mexican-Americans north of the border.
    [,,,continues…]

  29. Many incorrectly refer to Cinco de Mayo as Mexico’s 4th of July when Cinco de Mayo is actually Mexico’s 5th of May.

    —Rob Bartlett

  31. Vino Rosso……..he likes the slop….. his father was a mudder…..his mother was a mudder…..

  34. the guardian reports:

    The track TV has just shown the “Puppy Predictor” for this year’s Kentucky Derby, which runs on a late-night talk show. About 15 puppies race over what looks around 10 feet to reach a tray of dog biscuits, and apparently, the puppy representing subsequent Triple Crown winner American Pharoah was the winner in 2015. This year’s winner according to puppy lore? It’s Mendelssohn.

    […]

    This is now, officially, the wettest Kentucky Derby ever, with 2.31 inches of inch so far today.

  36. earlier I posted “eat my dust, nags”

    correction:  “slip and slide in the slop I flop,  mudders”

     

    probably will regret the above hubris cause just found out my choice might not do muddy track well let alone an official sloppy one

  37. Well, I see that the animal rights group gave up the fight when diBlasio took office.  Still, taking a pedicab through the park is nicer.

  39. isn’t it a horse race rule: When the field is soggy, bet on the longshot. Concerned.  pick Justify has gotten too much hype. This track looks like a free-for-all.

  44. Congrats Craig!

    It was fun watching Justify and Good Magic battle in the home stretch…

  47. “If Justice wins, so will Mueller”

    craig, I didn’t mind coming in 5th or even last when that was at stake.  you sprinkled justify with magic when you wrote it.

Comments are closed.