Lazy Saturday Reads: Boston Olympics 2024??? Nooooooooooo!!!
Posted: January 10, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: baseball, Boston Marathon, Boston Olympics, Boston Red Sox, Boston traffic, parallel parking, road rage, spots 25 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m feeling a bit loopy this morning. Ever since I heard that Boston is going to be competing to host the 2024 Olympics, I’ve been in a state of shock. What an insane idea. The Globe reported on Thursday,
The city was selected Thursday by the United States Olympic Committee to bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, beating out competing proposals from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
There will be best athletes all over the world who compete together and I also did some research on bodybuilding pills that they take every day. That’s insane how hard they are working.“We’re excited about our plans to submit a bid for the 2024 Games and feel we have an incredibly strong partner in Boston that will work with us to present a compelling bid,” USOC Chairman Larry Probst said in a statement.
Nooooooooooooo! This can’t happen. Hasn’t anyone on the Olympic Committee ever been to Boston? How on earth did we beat out Los Angeles? Now that would be a good place for the Olympic Games. It’s huge, and spread out. Boston is a tightly packed place–with lots of narrow, winding streets–many of which were built before cars. Lots of people around here live in houses with no driveways. Parking is always at a premium–even in many suburban areas.
Boston’s bid was submitted to the USOC in December after previously being selected to a shortlist of U.S. candidate cities in June. The group pushing the idea, Boston2024, is backed by leaders from the region’s business, sports, and education sectors, among others.
“Boston is a global hub for education, health care, research and technology,” said Boston2024 chairman and Suffolk Construction CEO John Fish in a statement. “We are passionate about sports because we believe in the power of sport to transform our city and inspire the world’s youth. A Boston Games can be one of the most innovative, sustainable and exciting in history and will inspire the next generation of leaders here and around the world.”
Ugh. What total B.S! They are going to have a fight on their hands from plenty of cynical Bostonians who are quite aware that every place that hosts the Olympics ends up going deep into debt and being stuck with obsolete, eyesore structures that no one wants. Wealthy businessmen will profit and the taxpayers will pay the bills.
The USOC decided on Dec. 16 that it would bid for the 2024 Games, but held off on making a decision on which city to go with until Thursday’s meeting at Denver International Airport. “The decision followed a spirited discussion and more than one round of voting. Ultimately, the Boston bid received the unanimous endorsement of the USOC’s board of directors,” the USOC said.
The committee will now work with Boston2024 on the bid ahead of submitting it this fall to the International Olympic Committee. The IOC will decide on a 2024 host city in 2017. Other potential host cities for 2024 include Rome, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, and Istanbul. Melbourne, Australia, and other cities have also been said to be interested.
Good. Hold the thing in one of those great cities and leave us in peace with our cold winters and our iced coffees. From the Globe, From Our Ice Cold Hands: Bostonians Still Drink Iced Coffee in Sub-Zero Temps.
Here in Boston, we pride ourselves on handling the cold. We’re ice warriors, hardened by endless winters during which we bundle up, hunker down, and thank our lucky stars that we thought to put long johns under our jeans as we charge head on into the frigid wind that sweeps across the T platform.
If we don’t bend to freezing temperatures, we certainly don’t break our habits just because it feels more like we’re the animated charcters in “Frozen” rather than humans. In other words, if your Dunkin’ order is an iced coffee, your Dunkin’ order is an iced coffee. It’s that simple.
And we salute you, soldiers of the cold. Getting an iced coffee when there’s a windchill of -10 is the coffee-order equivalent of raising your middle finger to the sky and yelling, “Come at me, winter!”
Bostonians are tough. We are cynical and sarcastic. We don’t suffer fools gladly. We take pride in our obnoxiousness. We’ll just see about this Olympics thing. Can you believe they want to turn the Boston Common into a beach volleyball field? Here’s what the abandoned Olympic beach volleyball venue looks like in Athens.
Here are some views of the Boston Common.
Need I say more? A picture is worth a thousand words, right?
Some reactions to the utterly ridiculous proposal for a Boston Olympics:
Christian Science Monitor, Boston reacts with suspicion, snark to winning 2024 Olympic bid.
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh tweeted Thursday night that it was an “exceptional honor” for the city to be chosen as the US candidate to host the Games. But many local residents aren’t exactly excited about their sun-dappled streets potentially being filled with Olympic tourists – which is how the Boston 2024 bid group depicted the city in its renderings of the Games.
Instead, many reactions around Boston have centered on the potential cost and overall chaos that the event could bring to the city, and whether all the preparations would really be worth it.
Those wary of the potential long-term cost of hosting the Olympics – including the group No Boston Olympics, which has loudly opposed the bid – have lots of data to back up their concerns.
The average cost of hosting a Summer Olympics is $15 billion, according to No Boston Olympics – roughly the cost of Boston’s infamous Big Dig highway project, which took some 16 years to complete.
No modern Olympic Games has come in under budget, and claims that the increased costs are offset by increased tourism revenue are shaky at best. Bostonians are also worried about spending millions of dollars to construct large stadiums that then go unused once the Games leave.
“If Boston hosts the 2024 Olympics, there’s no doubt that [the city] is going to be overrun with sports tourists,” said Victor Matheson, an economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., in an interview with The New York Times. “But Boston is already overrun with tourists in the summer.”
Christopher L. Gasper at The Globe, All that glitters about Boston’s Olympic bid isn’t gold.
Boston is a world-class city and sports mecca that doesn’t need a parade of nations showing up on its doorstep to validate its place on the world stage. We don’t need the five-ring circus coming to town to establish an international identity. Plus, Boston already hosts a world-renowned sporting event every year: the Boston Marathon.
The question is not whether Boston is capable of hosting the Olympics. It is. The question is whether it’s worth it. Does the benefit outweigh the potential logistical and financial pratfalls of hosting gym class for the world? Based on recent Olympic Games, the answer is probably not.
The Olympics rarely have a lasting, transformative impact on a city, unless you’re talking about the financial ramifications of the event and the planned obsolescence of venues with a 17-day lifespan. Barcelona, host of the 1992 Summer Games, was the exception, not the rule.
The Games are too big to succeed for most host cities. Just Google “abandoned Olympic venues” and see what comes up.
I tried it. Check these out:
12 Forgotten Olympic Venues Fallen Into Disrepair (Popular Mechanics).
30 Haunting Photos Of Abandoned Olympic Stadiums (Distractify).
Abandoned Olympic venues: in pictures (The Telegraph)
That is so sad. I don’t want a bunch of giant hulking wrecks strewn around Boston and environs, thank you very much.
For crying out loud, they don’t even have baseball in the Olympics. Boston is a baseball town.
One more reaction from Obnoxious Boston Fan at The Globe, Ten Sports Just for the Boston 2024 Olympics. A couple of examples:
Parallel Parking. You can’t survive in Boston without it.
Red Sox Clicker Toss. The anger and frustration felt across Red Sox Nation each season translated on the world stage. Medals go to the furthest and fastest TV clicker thrown during a Red Sox loss televised on NESN. [The smart players wait for the Sullivan Tire commercials for extra incentive.] By 2024,Xander Bogaerts should be about on the verge of starting to break through and approaching the cusp of realizing his potential. We hope. If by some chance Henry Owens turns out to be half as good as we’ve been led to believe, he would have left via free agency by then.
Synchronized Road Rage. Anyone can flip off the guy in the Avalon who doesn’t know how to use his f–kin’ blinker. Can you do it in tandem, while heading over the Zakim Bridge, at night, in the rain?
Baseball. No bull, just baseball. The same baseball that’s been booted out of the Olympic Games. If there isn’t baseball during a Summer Olympics in Boston, that will be the real joke.
Cry me a river. Tossing Don Zimmer was just payback for 1978.
I’ve been completely, utterly provincial today. Probably no one will even read this post, but at least I got it off my chest. So what’s happening that’s newsworthy today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: January 8, 2015 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads | Tags: cartoonists, Charlie Hebdo magazine attack, Freedom of Expression, Islam, terrorism, winter weather 14 Comments
painting by Vladimir Tokarev
Good Morning!!
I’m getting a slow start today. I guess it must be because I’m so cold. I’ve been up since 6AM, but I’ve been dawdling around reading the news, sipping hot tea, and writing nothing. It’s still only 66 degrees in my house even though I have the thermostat turned up pretty high. My furnace isn’t build to handle below zero temperatures, and at 9AM it is still -3 degrees where I live.
The local NPR weather reporter warned that frostbite can happen in minutes when the temperatures are this low and the wind chill factor is much lower. Schools around here are closed, as are many schools around the country. I need to go out sometime today, so I’m hoping the temperatures will get into the teens by this afternoon. The good news is, there isn’t any snow out there.
According to Dave Collins of the AP, via the Charlotte Observer things are going to get worse before they get better.
Another Alberta clipper barreling down from Canada is bringing more bad winter weather to the Dakotas.
The National Weather Service has posted a variety of blizzard and winter weather advisories, watches and warnings for the Dakotas through Thursday. Not a lot of snow is expected, but winds gusting to 50 mph will blow around the snow that’s on the ground.
In Minnesota, forecasters expect blizzard conditions to develop in a portion of the River Valley. Weather officials say wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph combined with fresh snow will significantly reduce visibility, especially in open, rural areas. A blizzard warning was posted in an area from Granite Falls southeast to Mankato and Albert Lea.
Thank goodness I live in temperate New England, and not the upper Midwest!
Besides the weather, the big story in the news today is the shooting rampage at Charlie Habdo magazine in Paris yesterday.
Vigil in Paris for the Charlie Hebdo victims (NPR)
Some background from BBC News:
Charlie Hebdo: Gun attack on French magazine kills 12.
Four of the magazine’s well-known cartoonists, including its editor, were among those killed, as well as two police officers….
The masked attackers opened fire with assault rifles in the office and exchanged shots with police in the street outside before escaping by car. They later abandoned the car in Rue de Meaux, northern Paris, where they hijacked a second car….
Witnesses said they heard the gunmen shouting “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad” and “God is Great” in Arabic (“Allahu Akbar”)….
Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, 47, had received death threats in the past and was living under police protection.
French media have named the three other cartoonists killed in the attack as Cabu, Tignous and Wolinski, as well as Charlie Hebdo contributor and French economist Bernard Maris….
The satirical weekly has courted controversy in the past with its irreverent take on news and current affairs. It was firebombed in November 2011 a day after it carried a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.
The latest tweet on Charlie Hebdo’s account was a cartoon of the Islamic State militant group leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Cartoonists responded to the killings by posting cartoons on twitter. You can see some of them at the links below.
From Euro News, The power of the pen: Cartoonists worldwide react to the Charlie Hebdo attack.
From Buzzfeed, 23 Heartbreaking Cartoons From Artists Responding To The Charlie Hebdo Shooting.
One of the gunmen is in custody, but two are still free, NPR reported yesterday.
French police have taken Hamyd Mourad, 18, into custody after he surrendered to authorities, according to multiple French news outlets. Mourad had been sought in relation to a murderous attack on a satirical magazine’s Paris office Wednesday, but it’s not certain whether he was involved. An ID card belonging to Mourad was reportedly found in the gunmen’s car.
The two central suspects in the attack remain at large; regional police issued a new plea for help in finding two French-born brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, both in their 30s.
They’re believed to be the gunmen who used powerful assault rifles to kill journalists and police officers at the office of the weekly Charlie Hebdo around midday Wednesday.
A police bulletin sought the public’s help in finding two suspects in the deadly attack on a satirical magazine’s Paris offices Wednesday. Pictured are brothers Cherif (left) and Said Kouachi.
La prefecture de Police
The Kouachi brothers are said to be French citizens.
This morning, news broke that a policewoman had been killed in Paris, but it was not yet clear that the perpetrators of the magazine attack were involved.
A policewoman was killed in a shootout in southern Paris, but police sources could not immediately confirm a link with Wednesday’s killings at the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper that marked the worst attack on French soil for decades.
National leaders and allied states described the assault on Charlie Hebdo, known for its lampooning of Islam and other religions as well as politicians, as an assault on democracy. The bells of Notre-Dame cathedral rang out during a minute’s silence observed across France and beyond….
Montrouge Mayor Jean-Loup Metton said the policewoman and a colleague were attending a reported traffic accident when Thursday’s shooting occurred. Witnesses said the assailant fled in a Renault Clio and police sources said he wore a bullet-proof vest and had a handgun and assault rifle.
But one police officer at the scene told Reuters he did not appear to resemble the Charlie Hebdo shooters.
The Guardian is covering this story heavily, with live updates on the manhunt.
A recent story from The Guardian: Police place security cordon around Paris in hunt for Charlie Hebdo killers.
The French president, François Hollande, has led a minute’s silence for the victims of Wednesday’s attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as police placed a tight security cordon around Paris amid an atmosphere of heightened tension and confusion.
With the search for the gunmen in its second day, there were unconfirmed reports that the suspects had been seen in the Aisne region of north-east France.
In a briefing on Thursday morning, Bernard Cazeneuve, France’s interior minister, said that seven arrests were made overnight, but the two main suspects, brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, were still at large.
There was a heavy police presence at each of the “portes” – the main roads leading into the city – amid unconfirmed reports that the suspects were heading back towards the French capital “at high speed” in a grey Renault Clio.
The two men were reportedly seen in the Aisne region, but the reports were confused. Some French media suggested they had been picked up by cameras at a péage (road toll) stop. Others said they had been identified by the owner of a petrol station near Villers-Cotterêts and a number of reports went even further, suggesting the two men had robbed the petrol station and made off with fuel and food.
The reports suggested that heavy weapons including, allegedly, a Kalashnikov and a rocket launcher, could be seen in the rear of the vehicle.
However, apart from images of areas of Paris, like the north-western suburb of Levallois, completely sealed off and heavily armed police and armoured vehicles at the portes of the city, the reports were unconfirmed and there was no indication that police had located the vehicle.
Two reactions to the Paris killings:
Juan Cole, Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris.
The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.
The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.
Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.
This tactic is similar to the one used by Stalinists in the early 20th century. Decades ago I read an account by the philosopher Karl Popper of how he flirted with Marxism for about 6 months in 1919 when he was auditing classes at the University of Vienna. He left the group in disgust when he discovered that they were attempting to use false flag operations to provoke militant confrontations. In one of them police killed 8 socialist youth at Hörlgasse on 15 June 1919. For the unscrupulous among Bolsheviks–who would later be Stalinists– the fact that most students and workers don’t want to overthrow the business class is inconvenient, and so it seemed desirable to some of them to “sharpen the contradictions” between labor and capital.
More at the link.
George Packer at The New Yorker, The Blame for the Charlie Hebdo Murders.
The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West—the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be “understood” as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists.
They are only the latest blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades. It’s the same ideology that sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for a decade under a death sentence for writing a novel, then killed his Japanese translator and tried to kill his Italian translator and Norwegian publisher. The ideology that murdered three thousand people in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The one that butchered Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam, in 2004, for making a film. The one that has brought mass rape and slaughter to the cities and deserts of Syria and Iraq. That massacred a hundred and thirty-two children and thirteen adults in a school in Peshawar last month. That regularly kills so many Nigerians, especially young ones, that hardly anyone pays attention.
Because the ideology is the product of a major world religion, a lot of painstaking pretzel logic goes into trying to explain what the violence does, or doesn’t, have to do with Islam. Some well-meaning people tiptoe around the Islamic connection, claiming that the carnage has nothing to do with faith, or that Islam is a religion of peace, or that, at most, the violence represents a “distortion” of a great religion. (After suicide bombings in Baghdad, I grew used to hearing Iraqis say, “No Muslim would do this.”) Others want to lay the blame entirely on the theological content of Islam, as if other religions are more inherently peaceful—a notion belied by history as well as scripture.
A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique.
Click on the link to read the rest.
What else is happening? Let us know in the comment thread and have a great day!
Tuesday Reads: Epiphany Edition
Posted: January 6, 2015 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Black Jesus, gold frankincense and myrrh, GOP Congress 2015, John Boehner, Keystone XL pipeline, Louie Gohnert, Steve Scalise, Ted Yoho, The Epiphany, Twelfth Night 50 Comments
Ethiopian Magi, by Patrick Comerford
Good Morning!!
Looking at the news that’s breaking this morning, I’m finally getting the feeling that “the holiday season” is coming to an end. After all, today is the Epiphany–also known as Twelfth Night–the day the three Maji supposedly arrived at the stable in Bethlehem to pay tribute to the baby Jesus with gifts gold, frankincense and myrrh. From The Guardian:
It’s a significant day in many countries, particularly Catholic ones, where Twelfth Night parties and celebrations are commonplace and usually involve the selection of a king, and sometimes a queen and other characters. In France, for example, the galette des rois (“cake of kings”) has a token baked into it; patisseries sell it along with a gold paper crown for the recipient of the token, who becomes the party’s ruler.
Some Epiphany celebrations from British literature:
Samuel Pepys celebrated the feast – always on 6 January, which he says marks the end of Christmas – and in 1663 goes to see Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The drama is “acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day” – which it isn’t, apart from a general air of misrule. Pepys usually has or attends a party, with dancing and merriment, and always a “brave” or “excellent” cake. There are other tokens baked into it: one year he gets the clove, which indicates he is a knave, but he smuggles it into someone else’s slice. In 1669 he mentions a new fashion, which is to draw paper lots for king and queen of the party, rather than finding a bean, so as not to spoil the cake (and perhaps to avoid the cheating just mentioned).
In Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol, there is a reference to “immense Twelfth-cakes”, and Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present visit a “children’s Twelfth Night party”. Dickens’s letters show that in his household there was a party every year: the date is his son Charley’s birthday, but it’s clear he thinks a Twelfth Night party is quite normal.
In James Joyce’s short story The Dead, from his collection Dubliners (1914), Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta go every year to an important party held by the Misses Morkan. There is dinner, dancing and singing, but alongside the festivities we see darkness and contemplation: snow falls over Ireland, and Gabriel looks through it as he thinks about his own shortcomings and about the wife whom he thought he knew. The idea of a character having a metaphorical epiphany, a moment of revelation or realisation, comes directly from Joyce, and each story in Dubliners features one.
More examples at the link.
This is a tar sands plant Alberta, Canada. Republicans can’t wait to bring this to the US.
The new Republican-controlled Congress begins “work” today. The AP reports, via Huffington Post: New Congress Getting Sworn In With GOP In Charge.
Republicans are assuming full control of Congress for the first time in eight years in a day of pomp, circumstance and raw politics beneath the Capitol Dome.
They planned to move swiftly Tuesday toward a veto showdown with President Barack Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline, summoning unity despite a tea party-backed effort to unseat House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.
As mandated by the Constitution, Congress was to convene at noon.
In the Senate, with Vice President Joe Biden presiding, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was to automatically ascend to majority leader following his approval by rank-and-file Republicans last year.
McConnell and Boehner both were to deliver remarks on their chamber’s floors as they positioned themselves for two years of clashes with Obama.
First, Boehner had to survive his election as speaker — the main event on any opening day’s agenda. Tea party-backed Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida put themselves forward as challengers to Boehner, and at least 10 Republicans announced they would oppose Boehner.
The challenges to Boehner won’t go anywhere, but they could provide some brief entertainment. From Politico: Boehner likely to survive another squeaker for speaker.
John Boehner could lose the support of as many as 20 Republicans on his way to a near-certain reelection as House speaker, his allies concede — a political embarrassment for a GOP leader who narrowly survived a conservative rebellion two years ago.
The Ohio Republican needs votes from 217 lawmakers Tuesday to win a third term as speaker, meaning that opposition from 29 House Republicans could cost him the gavel. Boehner retained the speakership by a surprisingly narrow margin in January 2013, losing the support of 11 Republicans at a time when the GOP had a smaller majority.
This time, Boehner’s supporters say, he could lose anywhere from 12 to 20 GOP votes under a backlash from conservative members angry about their leaders’ reluctance to wage a frontal attack on President Barack Obama’s immigration policies. Losing that many votes won’t prove fatal for Boehner or even have a long-term impact on his speakership, but it could still prove embarrassing for a GOP leadership that faces a spate of difficult legislative deadlines and is under pressure to prove it can govern during the Republican-controlled 114th Congress.
The speaker’s allies believe they have the opposition under control, and as of Monday, the anti-Boehner crowd was far from having the numbers to force a second-ballot vote, let alone deny him a new term. But the dissenters and their allies in conservative media are fanning the flames.
Politico says that Boehner is looking forward to a “new reality” in which he triumphs over the wingnuts who have made his life miserable since he became Speaker in 2010.
For years, Boehner has had to stroke the egos of his House Republican Conference’s far-right fringe, the hardline conservatives who had an outsized voice in every legislative debate and often dragged the entire party with them, even when he implored them to ease up.
Sure, Boehner’s “brand” will be tarnished by the right wing challenges to his leadership, but
the GOP leadership thinks that Boehner’s almost-certain victory, plus the biggest House Republican majority in decades, gives him the legislative latitude he’s desperately sought since 2010.
No more shutdowns, no more mindless face-offs with President Barack Obama and the Democrats, they hope. Boehner and House Republicans will be able to push a conservative agenda, but they will pick their fights more carefully, choosing battles they can win on issues where they have the upper hand over the White House.
Top Republicans blare that they’re plainly sick of the chaos of the last few years, when Boehner was under pressure to deliver to hardliners in order to keep his job.
“I think a lot of members just want to get through this and get onto the business they got elected to do,” said a GOP lawmaker loyal to Boehner.
Good luck with that.
It won’t happen, but just for a moment, imagine Louie Gohmert as Speaker of the House (and third in line to assume the presidency if Obama and Biden were unable to continue for some reason!). Bob Cesca thought about the possibilities yesterday: Louie Gohmert for House Speaker Because Comedy.
I’m deadly serious about this. Contrary to popular opinion dictating that fringe political weirdos and radicals should be ignored until they somehow magically vanish (they don’t), I’ve always believed that the more they’re exposed as the weirdos and radicals they are, the faster they’ll be ejector-seated off the national bus. So, along those lines, the best thing to ever happen to the universe would be if Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) were to succeed in his mission to be elected Speaker of the House.
If you’re a Democrat and you want there to be more Democrats in Congress, you too should endorse the idea of this talking honeydew melon — this marble-mouthed gomer to ascend to the highest congressional post in the land where the entire nation will get a close-up view of his lobotomized gibberish. Of course he’ll never get there but, you know, dare to dream. While it’s fun to have a speaker who’s a weepy drunk, what we need is Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. We need a Republican who’s been repeatedly kicked in the skull by a mule. On purpose.
Why Gohmert? For the comedy, obviously. The nation deserves to laugh at crap like this:
“We need to start eliminating money for any agency, including the White House, that is not following the law. And then you get their attention. That’s what the Founders anticipated.”
Yes, a sitting member of Congress clearly doesn’t realize that any spending bill passed by Congress, including the de-funding of the White House, would have to be signed by the president before actually becoming a law. And no, the Founders didn’t anticipate the House passing legislation that automatically becomes law.
Read several more examples of Gohmert’s wit and wisdom at The Daily Banter link.
And check this out at Raw Story, Gohmert warns America: ‘It’s going to devastate this country’ if I’m not elected Speaker of the House.
In an interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum, Gohmert explained that he had announced over the weekend that he was running for the job of House Speaker because Boehner had not fought “tooth and nail” to stop a recent budget bill.
“What we do in the next two years, it’s likely going to determine whether we get a Republican or not in 2016,” the Texas congressman insisted. “For the Speaker to run in and pass the [budget bill] that totally funds Obamacare for all next year — we took the hostage of the Homeland Security — that was a huge mistake.”
“For Boehner to rush in when we had the control of the Senate coming into our hands this month, this week, and to make a deal with [Obama] that funds everything that Obama wanted for the year except Homeland Security is like [General] Custer saying, ‘Come on boys, let’s attack now before help gets here.’”
Read more and watch the video at the link.
According to The Hill, President Obama isn’t going to lie down and let crazy Republicans walk all over him: Bolder Obama ready to take on GOP.
White House officials feel emboldened headed into what Obama has described as the “fourth quarter” of his presidency.
Promising economic news, declining gas prices, and a flurry of executive actions that energized his liberal base have provided him with his best poll numbers in more than a year.
Aides and strategists believe this provides opportunity for him, even with Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate on Tuesday for the first time since 2006.
“Really for the first time in his time in office, the president has the economic winds at his back — and not in his face,” Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said.
If the winds continue to blow in Obama’s direction — no sure thing, as evidenced by the 300-point drop Monday in the Dow Jones industrial average — Obama’s White House will be able to stay on offense, Lehane said.
The administration is planning new executive actions and legislative proposals in the buildup to his State of the Union address at the end of the month. It is also staking out areas where the president will aggressively use his veto authority.
Finally, in the spirit of the holiday, did you know there’s a TV show called Black Jesus?
You can watch the first season at Adult Swim.
In other news . . .
Christian Science Monitor: Boston Marathon bombing trial begins with high-stakes jury selection.
New York Magazine: Bess Meyerson Dead at 90 — Remembering her three lives.
Time Magazine: White House Turns the Screw on Steve Scalise.
Olivia Nuzzi at The Daily Beast: Rand Paul’s Passive-Aggressive Trolling Campaign.
Seattle PI: Another police shooting in San Francisco. Man shot by San Francisco officers left suicide notes
Christian Science Monitor: After police turn back on mayor again, where does New York go from here?
Yahoo News: Police union pushes for cop killings to be included in federal hate crimes law.
Fox News: 2 dead, 12 injured in North Dakota school bus-train collision.
The Daily Beast: Pediatrician: Vaccinate Your Kids—Or Get Out of My Office.
ABC News: Son of Slain Hedge Fund Founder Thomas Gilbert Sr. Charged With Homicide. His dad was going to stop paying his rent and reduce his allowance.
SF Gate: Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook book club. Some of the books Zuckerberg has read are “Andre Agassi’s memoir “Open,” Walter Isaacson’s biography “Einstein” and Shel Silverstein’s children’s picture book “The Giving Tree.”” He also likes Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I think I’ll pass on having this guy tell me what books I should read.
The Telegraph: Prince Andrew’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in 60 seconds.
The Telegraph: What are the challenges facing Prince Andrew and the Queen over sex abuse claims?
What stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a terrific Tuesday.
Lazy Saturday Reads
Posted: January 3, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Audubon bird count, Bill de Blasio, broken windows policing, campus rape problem, cancer research, domestic violence, Donna Douglas, ebola, Elly Mae Clampett, Florida State U. Seminoles, flu vaccine, instant karma, Jameis Winston, Jeffrey Epstein, Kentucky plane crash, nature, NFL, NYPD work slowdown, Oregon U. Ducks, Pauline McCafferkey, Prince Andrew, Rafael Ramos, sea turtles, stop and frisk, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Eye of the Beholder, The Maya, The Twilight Zone 18 Comments
Diner, by Kevin Mizner
Good Morning!!
You’ve probably heard by now that Donna Douglas, who played Elly Mae Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, died on Thursday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She was either 81 or 82, depending on which news source you read. I wasn’t a fan of the show, but it was hard not to be aware of it; and I did see it from time to time in reruns. From the LA Times:
The show — about the down-home Clampetts who strike it rich with an Ozarks oil well and move to California — became an immediate hit when it began airing on CBS in 1962. It starred Buddy Ebsen as patriarch Jed, Irene Ryan as Granny, Max Baer Jr. as Jethro and Douglas as Elly May, a buxom tomboy character who had curly blond pigtails, wore gingham and blue jeans and loved her “critters.” ….
After winning beauty contests in her home state, Douglas headed to New York City in the mid-1950s in search of modeling jobs and wound up on television as a billboard girl on “The Steve Allen Show.” She took acting lessons and landed a few parts in other TV series before writer and producer Paul Henning asked her if she thought she’d be right for his new show, “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
“I just looked at him and grinned,” Douglas told AP Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas in 1965. “Could I handle Elly May? Why, it was just like my own life.” ….
She had to retrieve the Southern accent she had tried to lose, and she had no trouble with the dogs, skunks, mountain lion, chimpanzee and other animals Elly May adored on the series.
“I loved doing Elly May,” the actress would recall. “And, of course, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ was a story about the American dream. No matter who tried to slicker us or take advantage of us, we always came out on top. We were never the losers. We set a good example.”
I hadn’t realized until I read it in the Times obituary, that Donna Douglas also appeared in one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes ever.
Douglas appeared for just a few minutes in the final moments of the second season episode, “The Eye of the Beholder,” written by series creator Rod Serling. The episode aired in 1960, years before “The Beverly Hillbillies” in 1962. But unlike “Hillbillies,” where her good looks were used as a punch line, here they became part of a ghoulish twist. In fact, it was one of the best, and most memorable, twist endings in the show’s history.
The episode recounted the recovery of a woman named Janet Tyler after a series of medical procedures attempting to fix a face that has apparently been completely deformed. While she deals with the doctors and nurses in the hospital, we see her head wrapped completely in bandages.
In fact, it was actress Maxine Stuart who played Tyler for these scenes. But in the episode’s final moments, the bandages are removed and Tyler’s face is revealed to be Douglas’.
“No change. No change at all,” the doctor laments. And then we see the face of the medical staff — snouted and horrific. But in this world, it’s Douglas’ face that’s the monstrosity.
This ending is regularly listed among the top “Twilight Zone” endings of all time, and the image of a horrified Douglas being restrained by the bizarre-looking doctor is one that’s made its way onto many T-shirts and posters.
Here’s that final scene. The sound is a little low, but you’ll get the idea.
Here’s the full episode:
Douglas later appeared in another Twilight Zone episode, “Cavender Is Missing,” and was a guest on many television programs, including Bachelor Father, 77 Sunset Strip, Adam 12, Night Gallery, Route 66, and Surfside 6.
Also on Thursday, instant karma struck Florida State University, its football team, and quarterback/accused rapist Jameis Winston when the team got blown out by Oregon in the Rose Bowl, thanks to Winston’s poor performance. From The Washington Post: It all implodes on Jameis Winston.
Florida State had not lost a game since November 2012, and quarterback Jameis Winston was personally undefeated since high school. That stretch included a national championship last season, plus a Heisman Trophy for Winston….
In the first-ever College Football Playoff semifinal game, the Seminoles were trailing at halftime, 18-13, but that seemed no cause for worry, as the team had staged second-half comebacks all season. Even after a pair of fumbles by FSU running back Dalvin Cook had helped Oregon take a 39-20 lead late in the third quarter, it still seemed entirely possible that Winston could lead his team back.
Down 19 points, Florida State faced a fourth-and-5 situation and decided to go for it. That’s when the previously unflappable Winston committed a mind-boggling turnover:
Whoa!! (Read twitter reactions at the WaPo link.)
On the sidelines, lip-readers picked up FSU Coach Jimbo Fisher telling Winston something that looked like, “If you don’t calm the [expletive] down, you’re going to the bench.”
Winston did not calm, um, down, at least if an interception on his second throw after that costly fumble was any indication. Eventually, Winston did go to the bench, but that was mostly because the game proceeded to get even more out of hand.
It was 59-20 when backup quarterback Sean Maguire entered the game, and that’s how it ended. Winston is widely expected to declare for the NFL draft, meaning that the Rose Bowl was almost certainly his last college game, and it certainly did not go the way he wanted.
You have to wonder if any NFL team will want to sign Winston considering the league’s current problem with domestic violence.
Jameis Winston
After the game, Oregon players taunted Winston by chanting “no means no” along with the crowd. Th
Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said in a statement to the Associated Press that the behavior was inappropriate.
“This is not what our program stands for, and the student-athletes will be disciplined internally,” Helfrich said.
Winston was never charged after a woman accused him of raping her in 2012.
Oregon has its own problems with sexual assaults by athletes.
Three former basketball players were suspended in June for a minimum of four years after a freshman student filed a report alleging they sexually assaulted her. Prosecutors decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge the players, who said the sexual contact was consensual.
Winston was recently “cleared” of wrongdoing in a joke of a hearing; Vice obtained a published the entire transcript. Read all about it at the link.
This is so sad. A 7-year-0ld girl who survived a plane crash that killed the rest of her family went in search of help.
Larry Wilkins, 71, was watching the local news at his Buckberry Trail home at around 6:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m. ET) when he said he heard a knock.
“The little girl come to my door,” Wilkins told NBC News in a telephone interview late Friday. “She was bleeding pretty bad, her legs were bleeding, her face had a bloody nose. She was barefoot, only had one sock on.”“She told me that her mom and her dad were dead, and she was in a plane crash, and the plane was upside down,” he said. “She asked if she could stay here. I said, ‘Honey, what can I do for you?’ I got a wash cloth and cleaned her up. And of course called 911.”
Marty Gutzler, 49, and Kimberly Gutzler, 45; their daughter, 9-year-old Piper Gutzler; and Sierra Walder, 14, Piper’s cousin were killed in the crash, according to Kentucky State Police. The identity of the 7-year-old survivor was not released. The victims were from Nashville, Illinois, police said.
So heartbreaking. I hope that brave little girl has other family members who will take care of her.
Hundreds of NYPD officers turn their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at funeral of fallen officer Rafael Ramos.
Many NYPD officers are continuing their long-running tantrum against NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. They’re enraged because de Blasio said that he has warned his black son to be careful in any interactions with police. Because de Blasio dared to tell the truth, the police union has instigated a work slowdown; and officers have turned their backs on the mayor in at least two public appearances, including the funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos. The New York Times editorialized about this disgraceful behavior twice. As the editors point out, de Blasio campaigned on ending the unconstitutional “stop and frisk” policy and reforming “policing excesses.” The editors stated that the public wants NYPD officers to
1. Don’t violate the Constitution.
2. Don’t kill unarmed people.
3. Do your jobs.
Meanwhile, according to Think Progress, some NYC residents are “benefiting from the NYPD’s work stoppage.”
As a result of what the New York Post is calling a “virtual work stoppage,” tickets and summonses for minor offenses have plummeted by 94 percent and overall arrests have fallen 66 percent. Theoretically, the practice will strain police budgets, which rely on fines from tickets to make-up for funding shortfalls.
Although it’s not the intended goal of the work stoppage, the decline in arrests could save New Yorkers money. The city residents who are normally hit with tickets for minor violations tend to be low income individuals who are forced to pay up a hefty portion of their paychecks.
The city began following the broken-windows style of policing in the early 1980s, a strategy championed by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton which focuses on eliminating low-level crime to prevent more violent offenses in the city’s neighborhoods. But a report earlier this year by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan found that the NYPD’s practice of arresting more people for minor offenses since 1980 has disproportionately affected young black and Latino men.
While de Blasio and Bratton have followed through on their promise to reform the city’s stop and frisk practices and the mayor announced in November that police would stop making arrests for low-level marijuana possessions, there are still racial biases in police practices throughout the city that result in a tougher financial burden on those already struggling to make ends meet.
And New Yorkers of all income levels are also saving money on one of the most consistent ways the city can slam people with tickets— parking violations are down by 92 percent, from 14,699 to just 1,241 this year.
A few more headlines:
A rescued sea turtle is recovering after washing ashore a Wellfleet beach. (Image Credit: New England Aquarium)
CBS Boston, Large Sea Turtle Rescued From Cape Cod Beach.
Weather.com, Hundreds of Sea Turtles Are Washing Up on New England Shores, and Experts Don’t Know Why.
Gizmodo, Why the Flu Vaccine Doesn’t Always Work.
CNN, Scientists: Random gene mutations primary cause of cancer.
CNN World, What killed the Maya? ‘Blue Hole’ offers clues.
Nature World News, Audubon Bird Watchers Get an ‘Unusual’ Show, this New Year.
AP via USA Today, Accused plotter of U.S. embassy bombings dies in N.Y.
BBC News, UK Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey ‘in critical condition’.
The Guardian, Prince Andrew named in US lawsuit over underage sex claims.
More about this at Politico, Woman who sued convicted billionaire over sex abuse levels claims at his friends.
Thursday Reads: Happy New Year!!
Posted: January 1, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2015 New Year's celebrations, David Duke, GOP and racism, KKK, League of Women Voters, NYPD slowdown, Protests, Shanghai stampede, Steve Scalise, Tom Brady 17 Comments
Sydney 2015
Good Morning!!
New Year’s Celebrations Around the World
Berlin 2015
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London 2015
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The Latest News
Sadly, the New Year’s celebration in Shanghai was marred by a terrible tragedy.
SHANGHAI, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) — The death toll of a fatal stampede during New Year celebrations late Wednesday in Shanghai rose to 36 as of Thursday afternoon, local authorities said.
Seven injured have checked out of hospital. Among the 40 injured being treated in local hosptals, 13 are suffering from serious injuries, the municipal government said.
The tragedy happened at a crowded square in Shanghai’s gleaming Bund area at around 11:35 p.m. There were 25 women among the deceased whose ages ranged from 16 to 36, said the authorities of Shanghai, a metropolis that is home to a population of over 23 million….
Survivors described the stampede as “horrific and hellish.”
Some said they were standing on the steps adjoining the major road and the sightseeing platform when the deadly incident happened.
“The steps leading to the platform were full of people. Some wanted to get down and some wanted to go up,” said a witness who gave her surname as Yin. “We were caught in the middle and saw some girls falling while screaming. Then people started to fall down, row by row.”
The woman said she covered two kids in front of her with her arms in the chaos. Her son followed her.
“When we brought him out of the crowd, his forehead was bruised, he had two deep creased scars on his neck, and his mouth and nose were bleeding,” said the mother.
Dirty shoe prints covered her son’s clothes when the 12-year-old boy came to safety.
“The crowd was in a panic. We stood in the crowd, feeling squeezed and almost out of breath,” another witness, surnamed Yu, said. “Some yelled for help, but the noise was too loud.”
Other survivors said police rushed to the scene and tried to pull out people who were stuck, but without much success.
“The chaos lasted several minutes, then some of the injured were seen being carried out of the crowd,” Yu said.
Security personnel and police officers at a Shanghai hospital where victims were treated on New Year’s Day (Reuters)
From the Independent, China New Year’s Eve crush: At least 36 killed and 47 injured in Shanghai stampede.
State media and witnesses have said the incident at Chen Yi Square was at least partly caused when people scrambled for coupons that looked like dollar bills that were being thrown out of the window of a bar on the third floor of a building overlooking the Bund.
A man who brought one of the injured to a local hospital said the fake money had been thrown down from the bar as part of New Year’ Eve celebrations, which he claims triggered the stampede. But Shanghai police could not confirm the cause of the tragedy and have asked people to be patient, according to state television.
Many of the dead and injured were students, and 28 of the dead were women, state media reported.
The trouble is believed to have broken out about half an hour before midnight. Pictures published by Xinhua and on social media outlets showed several people lying on the floor with rescuers attempting to revive the injured as police tried to restore order.
In Boston, protesters staged a “die-in” at the beginning of First Night festivities.
BOSTON (WHDH) –As Boston’s First Night activities began Wednesday afternoon, so did demonstrations by people protesting racism and police brutality.
The protesters started gathering at 2:30 p.m. on the steps of Boston Public Library.
Protesters said they heard calls from Mayor Marty Walsh and Police Commissioner William Evans asking them not to disrupt the family event.
But, they said, the protests aren’t a disruption. They are just an extension of the other family events around the city.
“When kids see people dying in in the middle of the square maybe they’ll ask their parents ‘why is America like this?’” Martin Henson said.
“When the police officers respect black lives and respect us, and we don’t get killed because things are happening because we have children and we have brothers and sisters, that’s when this will stop,” Courtney Hambrick said.
A die-in happened in Copley Square right in front of the library at 5 p.m. Nearly 100 protesters participated while a large crowd gathered to watch.
See tweets and more photos from the protest at Boston.com.
In St. Louis, Protesters present[ed an] “Eviction Notice” to St. Louis Police.
ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) – A group of approximately 75 marched throughout downtown St. Louis Wednesday before gathering outside of Police Headquarters.
The protesters posted an “Eviction Notice” on the door of the headquarters which listed reasons that “Chief Sam Dotson and all other occupiers of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department” would be “removed from power.”
News 4’s Russell Kinsaul was at the headquarters and said there was a line of police officers outside the front door preventing people from entering the building. He said the officers used pepper spray when the protesters attempted to enter the building.
Protesters said they would be at the headquarters for about four hours to represent the hours that Michael Brown’s body lay in the street.
According to The Daily Beast, NYPD officers are staging their own protest against public criticism of police officers shooting and killing black men: Ground Zero of the NYPD Slowdown.
The end of 2014 in New York City has felt like the end of days. The last week of the year was marked by strained relations between Mayor Bill DeBlasio and the rank and file of the NYPD following the shooting of two officers: Rafael Ramos and Wejian Liu, shootings blamed by President of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, on the Mayor’s response to the Eric Garner protests.
In the wake of this turmoil, the New York Post reported that the police had stopped policing. In the week starting Dec. 22, arrests were down 66 percentcompared to the same week in 2013. According to the Post, citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587. Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination fell 94 percent—from 4,831 to 300. And drug arrests dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.
The numbers reinforce another article in the Post, in which cops confessed to “turning a blind eye” to minor crimes. An NYPD supervisor told the Post, “My guys are writing almost no summonses, and probably only making arrests when they have to—like when a store catches a shoplifter.” In the later article, the Postquotes the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which warned its members to put their safety first and not make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.”
On Wednesday afternoon in the predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, many had noticed the police slowdown. A car mechanic who goes by the name “Big Perm” said he noticed a change in the neighborhood. “They just walk around, they ride in their patrol cars, and they just pass by,” he said. He does not approve of the police slow down, like most people I spoke to. Big Perm worries that the lack of policing the “small fry” will lead to more crimes by “big fry.” In the meantime, he is keeping his children at home.
A young man who wouldn’t give his name also noticed the police slowdown over the past week in a neighborhood he says is usually teeming with police activity. “I see the streets are different, they have a different look to them. I’m not seeing the police like I usually see them,” he said. But he said the streets are calmer, too. “More police makes it crazy. If they see me and my friend having a conversation, and my cousin comes down the street, it’s a problem. I just try to keep out their way most of the time.”
David Duke campaigning in 1991
The Steve Scalise story is still in the news, but it doesn’t appear that The Louisiana Congressman will be resigning his Majority Whip post anytime soon. Perhaps that is because, as the New York Times reports, David Duke’s ideas now represent mainstream attitudes in the Republican Party.
From NPR: 6 Reasons Steve Scalise Will Survive His Speech Scandal.
Unless further evidence emerges of liaisons with the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO, Scalise will take his oath next week for the 114th Congress as the No. 3 leader of the chamber’s GOP — the party’s largest majority since 1928.
That was the message tucked into the bouquet of supporting statements Scalise received Tuesday from Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other prominent Republicans….
Scolded and scalded, Scalise was still standing.
Suffice it to say that the whip’s protestations of innocence about EURO and its views have strained credulity, both in Washington and in Louisiana. EURO was co-founded in the 1990s by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader and American Nazi. Duke at that time had run for governor and for the U.S. Senate as an insurgent Republican, doing well enough in both cases to distress the national GOP and attract news attention from around the world.
That’s pretty shocking, but I guess it shouldn’t be. Republicans have become the party of ignorance, racism, sexism, and nativism.
North Jersey.com notes that the Republican record on race has become so awful that Scalise actually suggested that speaking to David Duke’s was no different than talking to the League of Women Voters.
A WHITE supremacist organization is not akin to the League of Women Voters. That should be obvious to anyone, let alone the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. But it was not to Steve Scalise of Louisiana back in 2002 or even this week.
The House majority whip is dealing with the backlash over the revelation that in 2002 he addressed the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO, an organization founded by David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Scalise claims he had no idea about the group’s ideology; he was a state politician at the time, understaffed, and he would talk to anyone about tax policy.
While that is hard to accept, given the very high profile of Duke in Louisiana, even if taken at face value, the congressman’s comments to the Times-Picayune earlier this week, when he tried to defend himself, show a lack of understanding about racial divisions in the United States.
“I spoke to the League of Women Voters, a pretty liberal group. … I still went and spoke to them. I spoke to any group that called, and there were a lot of groups calling,” he offered in his defense. The League of Women Voters wants citizens to get out and vote; in what definition of “democracy” does encouraging voter participation become “pretty liberal”?
The League of Women Voters is completely nonpartisan and welcomes both Republican and Democrats to its membership.
How valuable is Tom Brady to the New England Patriots? The Sporting News reports: Tom Brady takes one for the team, helps Patriots remain perennial contenders.
On Sunday, Tom Brady earned $24 million in future contract guarantees with the Patriots. On Monday he volunteered to eliminate those guarantees in return for an extra $1 million in salary each year to help his team pay for players in free agency.
The reason for the contract restructure is to allow the Patriots to avoid having to place his $24 million in salary, which would be earned from 2015 through 2017, in escrow early in the the 2015 League Year. Salary that is guaranteed at the start of the year for skill must be funded in entirety by the team, meaning the Patriots would have had to set aside $24 million for future payments. Once those skill guarantees are eliminated so is the need to set aside the money in advance. This is a common reason teams use vesting guarantees when signing a contract.
Brady has been a dream come true for the Patriots and their ability to remain competitive, not just on the field but off it. Brady’s $8 million salary and $14 million cap charge in 2015 rank just 17th in the NFL. Meanwhile his closest contemporaries of Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and Tony Romo will carry cap charges of $21.5, $26.4, and $27.7 million and actual salaries of $19, $19 and $17 million. He is a unique talent and team player the likes of which we many never see again.
Brady has been giving his team hometown discounts ever since his first Super Bowl win in 2002, in stark contrast to so many greedy professional athletes.
More News Headlines
The Hill, Pope Francis drives a wedge between Catholic Church, GOP
Jameis Wilson will suffer no consequences for raping a fellow college student in 2012.
The Daily Beast: Jameis Winston Cleared of Rape Like Every Other College Sports Star, even though the hearing that cleared him was a pathetic joke.
From Vice.com: JAMEIS WINSTON CONDUCT HEARING TRANSCRIPT REVEALS MASS CONFUSION AND BIZARRE DECISION-MAKING.
Here’s an excellent piece on the reality of “false accusations” of rape from Autostraddle.
Rebel Girls: Our “False Rape” Hysteria is Bullsh*t
Wired, Over 80 Percent of Dark-Web Visits Relate to Pedophilia, Study Finds.
Bostino, Harvard Law Found in Violation of Title IX; Agrees to Remedy its Sexual Assault Policy.
Oregon Live, Why the backlash against Donna Tartt’s ‘The Goldfinch’ was so extreme.
PBS News Hour, Why are snowy owls moving so far from their Arctic home? And where can I spot one?
Marketwatch, You can put the next stock-market crash on your 2016 calendar now.
Christian Science Monitor, Judge rules that Boston Marathon bombing trial will begin Monday.
Forbes, Are Monarch Butterflies Endangered? Population Down Ninety Percent.
What else is happening? Have a great New Year’s Day, Sky Dancers!!
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