Part 1. - Urban Teen Heroes - the twisted morality of the streets - fanning the fires of discontent? - Jameis Winston - NFL Superstar or Serial Rapist - you decide

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Twice in the past few days the hypocrisy of American morality rose to the forefront when Black urban heroes made tens of millions of dollars.  Just who are these idols of a generation of young men in our urban areas?

More important, do the backgrounds of these new heroes reflect at all on the sense of lawlessness, immorality, and breakdown of the family structure that is fueling the fires of racial discontent?

A few days ago, the number one pick in the NFL draft is Jameis Winston, the Heisman Trophy winner from Florida State University.  He even led the Seminoles to the national title.

He is pictured with his NFL contract his first day as a professional, the ink barely dry on his four-year, $25.3-million rookie contract, which he signed 90 minutes earlier.  On television, he looks and he is emotionless.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are his new team.  Yet the Bucs hired private investigators to check out Winston, who’d been accused of, but not charged with, sexual assault. Twice he was exonerated by prosecutors, and once by the university after a probe by a Florida state supreme court justice found insufficient evidence to charge Winston with sexual assault.

This was a great test of the innocent-till-proven-guilty mantra in the American justice system, and the authorities could not prosecute Winston.  So Winston passed the test. “He kept checking every box,” Licht said.

Here is what The New York Times had to say about the actions of Winston.

A Star Player Accused, and a Flawed Rape Investigation

Errors in Inquiry on Rape Allegations Against F.S.U.'s Jamies Winston

By WALT BOGDANICH

April 16, 2014

Tallahassee, Fla. — Early on the morning of Dec. 7, 2012, a freshman at Florida State University reported that she had been raped by a stranger somewhere off campus after a night of drinking at a popular Tallahassee bar called Potbelly’s.

As she gave her account to the police, several bruises began to appear, indicating recent trauma. Tests would later find semen on her underwear.

For nearly a year, the events of that evening remained a well-kept secret until the woman’s allegations burst into the open, roiling the university and threatening a prized asset: Jameis Winston, one of the marquee names of college football.

Three weeks after Mr. Winston was publicly identified as the suspect, the storm had passed. The local prosecutor announced that he lacked the evidence to charge Mr. Winston with rape. The quarterback would go on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead Florida State to the national championship.

Here is the full report from The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/16/sports/errors-in-inquiry-on-rape-allegations-against-fsu-jameis-winston.html?_r=0

Woman who accused Jameis Winston of rape sues football star

By Steve Almasy and Jason Durand, CNN

Updated 12:09 PM ET, Fri April 17, 2015

(CNN)Erica Kinsman, a former Florida State University student who has accused star football player Jameis Winston of rape, has filed a lawsuit against the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, her lawyer said Thursday.

Kinsman has said Winston raped her in December 2012. A prosecutor decided against bringing criminal charges in the case.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday, Kinsman alleges sexual battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Winston has said the sex was consensual.

CNN obtained the following statement from Winston's attorney David Cornwell.

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Beyond the lawsuit, Ms. Kinsman was part of a new movie released this week called The Hunting Ground, about how female college students are the victims of predators seeking victims to rape. 

Is this the kind of role model we want for our urban youth?

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AFTA NAFTA - The Bill Clinton Legacy - Hoodwinking the Public - Protecting the Rich

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Today President Obama is putting intense pressure on Congress to pass a major new trade treaty and the news media has failed to give it even cursory attention.  It was twenty years ago, the last Democrat President jammed a trade agreement down the throats of American workers and politicians and the negative consequences are still felt today.

It has now been twenty years since Bill Clinton slammed the NAFTA trade bill through congress in 1993, then implemented it in 1994, and we are just beginning to see the House of Cards it was built on and understand the Shroud of Secrecy he constructed to protect the rich.

Do you remember when Bill Clinton and his Vice President Al Gore undertook one of the most savage attempts at character assassination ever staged from the White House during the furious debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)?

The target of this attack was the very person who helped Clinton become president in 1992, Ross Perot.  In that election, Clinton won with just 43% of the vote.  Bush got 37.4% and Perot got 18.9%.  Perot's vote total kept Bush from being re-elected.

Only twice in the entire history of American politics did a third party candidate get more votes than Perot in 1992.  In 1856, Millard Fillmore got 21.5% of the vote, and in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt got 27.3% of the vote, neither won.  In fact, only three times in our history did a president a lower percent of votes than Clinton received and they were John Quincy Adams, Woodrow Wilson, and Abraham Lincoln.

I worked as a media advisor to Ross Perot during the NAFTA debates and witnessed firsthand the incredible attempts to discredit Perot.  The Clinton administration used a national debate between Al Gore and Perot on the Larry King show as the showcase using lighting, the chair placement, the camera angles, and every other trick in the book to diminish Perot and undermine his concerns.

Eventually, everything Perot warned could happen did happen and the Clinton-Gore victory in time would be among the most devastating of the Clinton years.  Democrats, the unions, all the minorities, and American manufacturing got sold out by the Clinton promise and to this day have continued to ignore the consequences.

In the end only Clinton and Gore were laughing, all the way to the bank, as both became the richest ex-president and ex-vice president in history, each raking in well over $200 million in personal wealth after gutting the nation's long term economy.

You need not take it from me, look at the analysis by NPR, a Progressive stalwart of the Democratic party, and even the AFL-CIO, whose blind faith in the Democrats has nearly destroyed all the good unions have accomplished.  Listen to their words when it comes to the economic security of America thanks to the Clinton trade initiative.

Once upon a time during the debate over NAFTA Clinton and Gore made many promises, and Perot warned the opposite would happen.  Vilified by the news media and the Clinton administration, Perot told the truth, Clinton and Gore did not, and the American public, are still paying for it.

   

Here are what others had to say about NAFTA.

AFL-CIO America's Unions

What have workers learned from 20 years of NAFTA?

·         It’s a flawed model that promotes the economic interests of a very few and at the expense of workers, consumers, farmers, communities, the environment and even democracy itself.

• While the overall volume of trade within North America due to NAFTA has increased and corporate profits have skyrocketed, wages have remained stagnant in all three countries.
• Productivity has increased, but workers’ share of these gains has decreased steadily, along with unionization rates.
• NAFTA pushed small Mexican farmers off their lands, increasing the flow of desperate undocumented migrants.
• It exacerbated inequality in all three countries.
• And the NAFTA labor side agreement has failed to accomplish its most basic mandate: to ensure compliance with fundamental labor rights and enforcement of national labor laws.

How It Is Destroying The Economy

By Michael Snyder

Global Research, 17 August 2014

The Economic Collapse 14 August 2014

NAFTA Is 20 Years Old – Here Are 20 Facts That Show

Back in the early 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the hottest political issues in the country.  When he was running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would result in an increase in the number of high quality jobs for Americans that it would reduce illegal immigration.  Ross Perot warned that just the opposite would happen.  He warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as thousands of businesses and millions of jobs left this country.  Most Americans chose to believe Bill Clinton.  Well, it is 20 years later and it turns out that Perot was right and Clinton was dead wrong.  But now history is repeating itself, and most Americans don’t even realize that it is happening.  As you will read about at the end of this article, Barack Obama has been negotiating a secret trade treaty that is being called “NAFTA on steroids”, and if Congress adopts it we could lose millions more good paying jobs.

It amazes me how the American people can fall for the same lies over and over again.  The lies that serial liar Barack Obama is telling about “free trade” and the globalization of the economy are the same lies that Bill Clinton was telling back in the early 1990s.  The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Paul Craig Roberts…

I remember in the 90′s when former Presidential candidate Ross Perot emphatically stated that NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) would create a giant “sucking sound” of jobs being extracted away from the U.S.  He did not win the election, and NAFTA was instituted on Jan. 1, 1994. Now, 20 years later, we see the result of all the jobs that have been “sucked away” to other countries.

According to an article by the Economic Policy Institute on 1/3/14:

“Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring “good-paying American jobs,” a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Considering that thousands of kids are pouring over the border as we speak, well, how’d that work out for us?

Many Americans like to remember Bill Clinton as a “great president” for some reason.  Well, it turns out that he was completely and totally wrong about NAFTA.  The following are 20 facts that show how NAFTA is destroying the economy…

#1 More than 845,000 American workers have been officially certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance because they lost their jobs due to imports from Mexico or Canada or because their factories were relocated to those nations.

#2 Overall, it is estimated that NAFTA has cost us well over a million jobs.

#3 U.S. manufacturers pay Mexican workers just a little over a dollar an hour to do jobs that American workers used to do.

#4 The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States has more than doubled since the implementation of NAFTA.

#5 In the year before NAFTA, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Mexico and the trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars.  Last year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.

#6 It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#7 One professor has estimated that cutting the total U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.

#8 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.  In fact, many of them are now being built in Mexico.

#9 NAFTA hasn’t worked out very well for Mexico either.  Since 1994, the average yearly rate of economic growth in Mexico has been less than one percent.

#10 The exporting of massive amounts of government-subsidized U.S. corn down into Mexico has destroyed more than a million Mexican jobs and has helped fuel the continual rise in the number of illegal immigrants coming north.

#11 Someone making minimum wage in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than the day before NAFTA went into effect.

#12 Overall, the United States has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

#13 Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs.  Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#14 We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than we did in 1950 even though our population has more than doubled since then.

#15 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, only 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#16 As I wrote about recently, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

#17 Because we have shipped millions of jobs overseas, the competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely intense and this has put downward pressure on wages.  Right now, half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.

#18 When adults cannot get decent jobs, it is often children that suffer the most.  It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

#19 In 1994, only 27 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

#20 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

NPR Public Citizen February 10, 2014

NAFTA’s Broken Promises 1994-2013:

Outcomes of the North American Free Trade Agreement

Excerpts - see full post at http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf

In 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was sold to the American public with grand promises. NAFTA would create tens of thousands of good jobs here. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico’s standard of living up, providing new economic opportunities there that would reduce immigration to the United States.

NAFTA was an experiment, establishing a radically new “trade” agreement model. It exploded the boundaries of past trade pacts, which had focused narrowly on cutting tariffs and quotas. In contrast, NAFTA contained chapters that created new privileges and protections for foreign investors; required the three countries to waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American; limited regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extended medicine patent monopolies and limited food and product safety standards and border inspection.

After nineteen years of NAFTA, we can measure its actual outcomes. The grand promises made by proponents remain unfulfilled. Many outcomes are exactly the opposite of what was promised. Many U.S. firms used the new investor protections to relocate production to Mexico to take advantage of its low wages and weak environmental standards and to attack NAFTA countries’ environmental and health laws in foreign tribunals. Over $340 million in compensation to investors has been extracted from NAFTA governments via these “investor-state” challenges.

The small U.S. trade surplus with Mexico pre-NAFTA turned into a massive new trade deficit. The pre-NAFTA U.S. trade deficit with Canada expanded greatly. Overall, the inflation-adjusted U.S. trade deficit with Canada of $29.1 billion and the $2.5 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion by 2012.1 The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that the NAFTA deficit had eliminated about one million net American jobs by 2004.2 Meanwhile, U.S. food processors moved to Mexico to take advantage of low wages and food imports soared. U.S beef imports from Mexico and Canada, for example, have risen 130 percent since NAFTA took effect, and today U.S. consumption of “NAFTA” beef tops $1.3 billion annually.3 The export of subsidized U.S. corn did increase, displacing over one million Mexican campesino farmers. Their desperate migration pushed down wages in Mexico’s border maquiladora factory zone and contributed to a doubling of Mexican immigration to the United States.

The U.S. public’s view of NAFTA has intensified from broad opposition to overwhelming opposition to NAFTA-style trade deals. According to a 2012 Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, 53 percent of Americans believe the United States should “do whatever is necessary” to “renegotiate” or “leave” NAFTA, while only 15 percent believe the United States should “continue to be a member of NAFTA.” Rejection of the trade deal is the predominant stance of Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.4 NAFTA has drawn the ire of Americans across stunningly diverse demographics. A 2011 National Journal poll showed strong rejection of the status quo trade model from both lower-educated and higher-educated respondents,5 and a 2010 NBC News – Wall Street Journal survey revealed that a majority of upper-income respondents have now joined lower-income respondents in opposing NAFTA-style pacts.6 In addition, a 2008 Zogby poll found majority NAFTA opposition across nearly every surveyed demographic group, including independents, Hispanics, women, Catholics and Southerners.7

U.S. Job Loss, Not Gain

Projections on trade balance, jobs prove wrong. In 1993, Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) projected that NAFTA would lead to a rising U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which would create 170,000 net new jobs in the United States.8 This figure was trumpeted by the Clinton administration and other NAFTA proponents. Hufbauer and Schott based their projection on the observation that when export growth outpaces the growth of imports, more jobs are created by trade than are destroyed by trade.9 Instead of an improved trade balance with Canada and Mexico, however, NAFTA resulted in an explosion of imports from Mexico and Canada that led to huge U.S. trade deficits. According to Hufbauer and Schott’s own methodology, these deficits meant major job loss. Less than two years after NAFTA’s implementation, even before the depth of the NAFTA deficit became evident, Hufbauer recognized that his jobs prediction was incongruent with the facts, telling the Wall Street Journal, “The best figure for the jobs effect of NAFTA is approximately zero…the lesson for me is to stay away from job forecasting.”10

Huge new NAFTA trade deficit emerges. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada of $29.1 billion and the $2.5 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion by 2012.11 This represents an increase in the “NAFTA deficit” of 580 percent. These are inflation-adjusted numbers, meaning the difference is not due to inflation, but an increase in the deficit in real terms. The U.S. deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada has worsened considerably more than the U.S. deficit with countries with which we have not signed NAFTA-style deals. Since NAFTA, the average annual growth of the U.S. trade deficit has been 45 percent higher with Mexico and Canada than with countries that are not party to a NAFTA-style trade pact.12 Defenders of NAFTA argue that the NAFTA deficit is really only oil imports. Although oil accounts for a substantial portion of the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, the oil share of the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico actually declined from 77 percent in 1993 to 55 percent in 2012.13

Services and manufacturing export growth slows under NAFTA. A key claim of supporters of NAFTA-style trade pacts is that they create jobs by promoting faster U.S. export growth. By contrast, growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 38 percent over the last decade.14 Manufacturing and services exports in particular grew slower after NAFTA took effect. Since NAFTA’s enactment, U.S. manufacturing exports to Canada and Mexico have grown at less than half the rate seen in the years before NAFTA.15 Even growth in services exports, which were supposed to do especially well under the trade pact given a presumed U.S. comparative advantage in services, dropped precipitously after NAFTA’s implementation. During NAFTA’s first decade, the average growth rate in U.S. services exports fell by 58 percent compared to the decade before NAFTA, and has remained well below the pre-NAFTA rate through the present.16

One million American jobs lost to NAFTA. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the rising trade deficit with Mexico and Canada since NAFTA went into effect eliminated about one million net jobs in the United States by 2004.17 EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010.18 Moreover, official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect.19 Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA. The United States entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, China joined WTO in 2000 and the U.S. trade deficit with China soared thereafter. However, at the same time, given the methodology employed, it is also likely that the EPI estimates do not capture the full U.S. job loss associated with NAFTA. Service sector jobs have also been negatively impacted by NAFTA, as closed factories no longer demand services. EPI estimates that one third of the jobs lost due to the rising trade deficit under NAFTA were in non-manufacturing sectors of the economy.20 

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Yellowstone Supervolcano - the Slumbering Giant may Awaken Soon

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Business Tech

World’s largest “supervolcano” is even bigger than previously thought

By The Conversation May 2, 2015

Seismologists have discovered a massive magma reservoir beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming, US, that suggests its volcanic system could be more than 5.6 times larger than was previously thought.

Although it was already known that Yellowstone had one magma reservoir, located about 5-16km (3-10 miles) below the surface, the new study, published in Science, has revealed another, much larger reservoir sitting directly below the first, located around 20-50km (12-30 miles) below the surface.

This reservoir is thought to have a volume of around 46,000 cubic km – compared to a volume of around 10,000 cubic km for the shallow reservoir.

To make their discovery scientists analysed the vibrations made by earthquakes that passed beneath the volcano. The technique not only sheds light on this volcano’s potentially life-threatening eruptions but it could also help us understand other volcanoes such as Calbaco, which is currently erupting in Chile.

Sleeping Beauty

Yellowstone volcano is composed of an immense volcanic crater – known as a caldera – more more than 70km (44 miles) in length, most of which lies within Yellowstone National Park. The volcano rarely erupts lava (it last did so about 70,000 years ago, but the magma lying beneath the surface gives rise to spectacular geothermal features, such as geysers and colourful hot springs.

The last large eruption at Yellowstone was 64,000 years ago, and ejected around 1,000 cubic kilometres (240 cubic miles) of volcanic material. This cataclysm created the Yellowstone caldera. To get an idea of the scale of this, the largest eruption in recorded history, Mount Tambora in 1815, erupted about a sixth of that.

Magma reservoirs are thought to occur beneath most volcanoes, and play a crucial role in the dynamics of eruptions. However, they are too deep, and conditions within them too extreme, to be measured directly so volcanologists have to infer information about them using other means, such as measuring seismic waves.

These waves travel more slowly when they pass through molten rock, and accordingly the group were able to use the velocities of the earthquake waves to infer the presence of a large, deep zone of partially molten material.

Carbon footprint explained

The magma stored in the deeper reservoir probably doesn’t cause eruptions at Yellowstone directly. Instead, it likely acts as a “feeder” for the smaller, shallower reservoir – which is the ultimate source of the volcano’s catastrophic eruptions.

Scientists had suspected the existence of a second magma reservoir at Yellowstone for some time, but this new evidence is among the strongest support of the theory to date.

The discovery of this second magma reservoir may also help to explain a mysterious feature of the Yellowstone volcano: its carbon footprint. Carbon dioxide gas is commonplace at volcanoes (it is given off by rising magma), but Yellowstone’s output, which is around 45,000 tonnes of CO2 each day, was too high to be explained by a single magma reservoir. But according to the study’s authors, the presence of the new reservoir is enough to account for the volcano’s CO2 flux.

If the high-resolution seismic imaging technique used in the study could be repeated at other volcanoes whose deep structure is poorly understood – such as Calbuco volcano in Chile – volcanologists might eventually be able to understand how such eruptions take place. The first stirrings of volcanic eruptions happen far below the surface. If researchers can emulate the findings at Yellowstone at other volcanoes, it can only tell us more about the risks they pose.

By Robin Wylie, PhD researcher in Volcanology at UCL

Nine months ago

If This Supervolcano Erupts, Two-Thirds of America Will Be Screwed

Deep in America’s northwest, there lies a supervolcano that, if erupted, has the potential to wipe out the majority of the United States.

What is a supervolcano exactly?

I think the name says it all, but officially, scientists define it as a volcano capable of an eruption thousands of times greater than any ordinary volcanic explosion.

These supervolcanoes burst when a growing pressure of molten rock, or magma, rises up from the Earth’s mantle.

When the crust can’t contain the buildup anymore — boom.

In historic times, we luckily haven’t experienced a supervolcano explosion. The most recent eruption occurred 27,000 years ago in New Zealand.

But, mankind isn’t out of the woods yet. Deep below Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming lies a supervolcano that is very much alive.

A Volcanic Winter

A massive underground chamber filled with magma sits miles below the surface in America’s oldest national park.

Though scientists are mixed as to whether the place could blow anytime soon, there is one thing they do agree on — if it did, it would push much of Earth to the verge of extinction.

It’s immediate effects would be deadly enough, with some estimates saying that 87,000 people would be killed instantly.

A 10-foot layer of ash would spread up to 1,000 miles away, leaving two-thirds of the country completely uninhabitable.

Once the plume rises high into the stratosphere, the released sulfuric gases would mix with the Earth’s water vapor, which National Geographic reports could launch the country and other parts of the globe into a “volcanic winter.”

Essentially, the United States and much of the world would be brought to its knees.

But the carnage doesn’t stop there. The spread of volcanic ash, rocks and gas would immediately cease any sort of air transportation in much of the world.

Just take into account the traffic shutdown following the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland. The relatively small explosion caused the closure of large swaths of European airspace, as well as a six-day travel ban in the impacted area.

Those who do survive would be left with a big bill too. Doug Bausch, a senior scientist at FEMA, told WND that such a scenario would cause an estimated $3 trillion in damage for North America.

Could it Happen In Your Lifetime?

The last time Yellowstone erupted — roughly 640,000 years ago — the American continent was devastated, with volcanic materials reaching as far as Louisiana over 1,500 miles away.ast decade, there has been some increased activity at the site. Since 2004, the supervolcano has been rising and just this month, roads were closed in Yellowstone after extreme heat from below was melting the asphalt on roads up above.

An explosion of “volcanic winter” magnitude, however doesn’t seem likely according the U.S. Geological Survey.  They say that the chances of a large-scale eruption at Yellowstone “are exceedingly small in the next few thousand years.”

Of course, other scientists (and the conspiracy theorist inside all of us) are a bit more skeptical. See the thing is, these explosions are highly unpredictable. I think the Huffington Post said it most accurately.

“The bulging pocket of magma swishing around beneath Old Faithful might never blow its lid again. Or, it might put on a surprise fireworks show next Independence Day. Scientists just don’t know.”

I guess it just depends who you want to believe. Personally, I’d like to go on living without worrying about choking to death on toxic ash.

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The Greatest Bluegrass Thoroughbred to Never Win the Kentucky Derby - Man o' War

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If the millions and millions of fans around the world think they have it bad trying to pick the winner of the Derby and then sweating out the fastest two minutes in sports as the horses pound around the track tomorrow, just think what the horses went through to get on the track.

They are the result of generations of breeding and bloodlines.  Of the two greatest horses in thoroughbred racing history, Lexington, Kentucky bred Man o' War set the standard for all time to come.

The other greatest thoroughbred of all time was Secretariat (March 30, 1970 - October 4, 1989), an American Thoroughbred racehorse that in 1973 became the first U.S. Triple Crown winner in 25 years.  He set records in all three events in the series - the Kentucky Derby (1:59 2/5), the Preakness Stakes (1:53), and the Belmont Stakes (2:24) - records that still stand today, 41 years later.

He is considered to be one of the greatest Thoroughbreds of all time. In 1999, ESPN ranked Secretariat the 35th best athlete of the 20th century, the highest ranking racehorse on the list. He ranked second behind Man o' Was in The Blood-Horse's List of the Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century.

But a lot less is known about Man o' War, the greatest Kentucky horse to never run in the Kentucky Derby, so here is his story.

Man o' War came close to perfection

By Larry Schwartz

Special to ESPN

When thoroughbred racing needed a boost, Man o' War unleashed his blazing speed and came to the rescue.  Though he competed for only two years, he energized a reeling sport.

   

Let's look at the world of racing that Man o' War entered in 1919: Racing in New York had been eliminated in 1911 and 1912 because of anti-gambling legislation led by Gov. Charles Hughes. Other states had taken up Hughes' crusade. Many stables had folded and some of the bigger ones had moved to Europe.

While racing was legalized again in 1913, World War I soon dominated the public's attention. Attendance and pursues were at record lows when Man o' War made his debut on June 6, 1919.

By the time he retired 16 months later, he was a national hero, joining Babe Ruth as the first shining stars of the Roaring Twenties.  The charismatic horse's popularity had brought fans back to the race track.

Man o' War went to the post 21 times and won 20 races. He won one race by an incredible 100 lengths and triumphed in another carrying 138 pounds. He whipped a Triple Crown champion by seven lengths in a match race.

He brought international recognition to Kentucky breeders and made the United States the racing center of the world. When he retired, he held five American records at different distances and had earned more money than any thoroughbred.

In a mid-century Associated Press poll, he was overwhelmingly voted the greatest thoroughbred of the first half of the 20th century.

Not only did Man o' War perform like a superstar on the track, the chestnut-colored horse (though he was nicknamed "Big Red") looked like one. At 3, he was a strapping 16.2 hands (about 5-foot-6) and weighed about 1,125 pounds with a 72-inch girth. His appetite also was huge, as he ate 12 quarts of oats every day, or about three quarts more than the average racehorse. He ran in big bounds as well, with his stride measuring an incredible 25 to 28 feet.

Bred by August Belmont II, son of the founder of Belmont Park and for whom the Belmont Stakes was named, the future champion was foaled on March 29, 1917 at Nursery Stud near Lexington, Ky. His sire was Fair Play and his dam was Mahubah, the daughter of Rock Sand, the 1903 winner of Britain's version of the Triple Crown (the 2,000 Guineas, the Epsom Derby and the St. Leger). He was 15 generations removed from the Godolphin Arabia, one of three Arab and Barb stallions considered to be the founders of the thoroughbred line.

Originally, Belmont's wife named the horse My Man o' War, after her soldiering husband, who was stationed in France during World War I, but the "My" was later dropped.

Belmont's military involvement prompted him to sell his entire 1917 yearling crop. Sportsman Samuel Riddle, owner of the Glen Riddle Farm, was the beneficiary of this decision. Accepting the judgment of trainer Louis Feustel, Riddle purchased the rangy colt, who seemed too large for a yearling, for $5,000 at the Saratoga yearlings' sales. "As soon as I saw him, he simply bowled me over," Riddle said.

At the beginning, Man o' War's aversion to the bridle and saddle caused problems. "He's nice and he's smart, but don't ever try to force him or you'll come out second best every time," a stable boy said. "Ask him and he'll do what you want. Push him and it's all off."

Under Feustel's training, patience paid off, and the energy of Man o' War was harnessed. His debut, in a five-furlough maiden race against six other 2-year-olds at Belmont, was no contest. The fans reportedly screamed and pounded the rail as jockey Johnny Loftus tightened the reins at the stretch, slowing Man o' War to a virtual canter. But the horse still won by six lengths.

"He made half-a-dozen high-class youngsters look like $200 horses," wrote the turf editor of the New York Morning Telegraph.

Following his smashing debut, Man o' War won three stakes races, at three different New York tracks, in the next 17 days.

His winning streak was at six when Man o' War raced in the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 13. It is Man O' War's most remembered race -- because it is the only one he would lose.

Starting gates were not yet used, and horses were led up a tape barrier. A fill-in starter had difficulty getting the horses ready and they milled around. While Man o' War apparently was backing up, the tape was sprung. Man o' War "was almost left at the post," the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.

After a slow start, Man o' War was third as the field headed for home in the six-furlough race. Blocked by close quarters, he had to go to the outside in the final eighth. Though he gamely made up ground, he missed by a half-length of overtaking the winner, who at 115 pounds carried 15 fewer pounds than the 11-20 favorite. The winner was named, rather appropriately, Upset.

Big Red, who beat Upset in their six other meetings, finished the year with easy victories in the Hopeful and Futurity, giving him nine victories in 10 races.

In 1920, Man o' War won all 11 of his races, with Clarence Kummer aboard nine times. Big Red didn't race in the Kentucky Derby because Riddle believed that a soft-boned 3-year-old should not have to run 1¼ miles in early May. Instead, he set his sights on the Preakness (Man o' War held off an Upset charge to win) and Belmont (a 20-length victory in a two-horse field).

After winning the Travers against two horses at Saratoga, only one colt challenged Man o' War in his next race. Well, it wasn't exactly a challenge as Big Red, the 1-100 favorite, defeated Hoodwink by 100 lengths in the 1 5/8th-mile Lawrence Realization at BelmontPark.

He was 1-100 again in winning the Jockey Cup at Belmont Park, and then he was saddled with the excessively high weight of 138 pounds for the Potomac Handicap. After being a bit fractious at the post, he assumed command and won easily.

Man o' War's last race was against Sir Barton, who in 1919 had become the first to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. Like most match races, it was hardly competitive. At Kenilworth Park, in Windsor, Ontario, Man o' War won the $75,000 purse and $5,000 Gold Cup by defeating the older Canadian-owned horse by seven lengths.

When Riddle was informed that Man o' War would have to carry even more than 138 pounds as a 4-year-old, he retired his horse to stud. Man o' War held American records for the fastest mile, 1 1/8 miles, 1 3/8 miles, 1½ miles and 1 5/8 miles. His total earnings were $249,465, a record at the time.

Don't feel sorry for Man o' War because he stopped racing so young. He proved to be quite a stud. In 1926, his issue won $408,137, breaking a 60-year-old record.

Following his undefeated season of 11 straight wins, Man o' War traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, to enter at stud at Elizabeth Daingerfield's Haylands and later moved to Riddle's Faraway Farm. Man o' War was a top sire who produced more than 64 stakes winners and various champions. Though many believe that Riddle did not breed the stallion to enough good mares after the first five seasons, he still sired many leading horses.

Man o' War sired American Flag and Crusader, who won successive Belmont Stakes in 1925 and 1926. Although there were no official champions in America at the time, both colts were generally considered the best three-year-old colts of their year, and Crusader was also largely accepted as the best racehorse of 1926.

Among Man o' War's other famous offspring were 1929 Kentucky Derby winner Clyde Van Dusen, Battleship (who won the 1938 English Grand National steeplechase), and War Admiral, the 1937 Triple Crown winner and the second official Horse of the Year. Another of his offspring, Hard Tack, sired Seabiscuit, who was Horse of the Year in 1938. Man o' War's most successful sons at stud were War Admiral and War Relic, and War Relic's branch of the male line survives today.

Tiznow, Honor and Glory, and Bertrando are also all sire-line descendants of Man o' War. According to Kent Hollingsworth, 37 per cent of all stakes winners in 1966 were descendants of Man o' War. Despite not covering more than 25 mares in any season, Man o' War sired 379 named foals during 22 seasons at stud. His daughters kept Man o' War listed in the 10 leading broodmare sires list for 22 years.

In 1921, a Texas oil millionaire, William Waggoner, offered $500,000 for Man o' War. Riddle turned him down, as he did when Waggoner increased his offer again, first to $1 million and then a blank check. "The colt is not for sale," he said.

Although Man o' War spent most of his life in Kentucky, he never raced there. He died there, though, at the age of 30 of a heart attack on Nov. 1, 1947 in Lexington.

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