Never, ever hire a design firm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to do an important job.
And remember from this Associated Press story, children, that the only possible PR spin for an Iowa-sized screw-up is "Boy! Are we dumb or what? We must have signed off on this before we went into rehab for our meth addiction."
Leaders at the Des Moines school say regardless of how people react, they are reacting and that's what they wanted to accomplish.The Des Moines Register reported Friday that Drake hired [a] Cedar Rapids-based company to help develop the new "Drake Advantage" recruitment campaign. The university recently unveiled it to prospective students through brochures and its website.
Drake spokesman Tom Delahunt says while the "D+" comes across as a grade at first glance, it's meant to represent all the opportunities Drake offers students.
Scientists, in conjunction with cultural historians, today announced the discovery of the likely cause of at least 85 percent of all Parkinson's disease cases in patients under age 55.
Since we're hell-bent on dragging Omaha back two decades into the bad ol' days of civic strife, dysfunction and stagnation, why doesn't the Recall Army just drop the Big One now and put us all out of the taxophobes' misery.
That's right, none of that Rodney King". . . can we all get along? Can we get along?" crap from back in the day. No, what Omaha needs now is some Lawrence King teenage mutant ninja buggery crap from back in the day.
Cut the police department's budget to zero, because you knowwhat police chiefs do with their paycheck in this Great Plains Gomorrah.
And who's Jim Suttle been sleeping with, anyway?
DAMMIT TO HELL, I'm too damned taxed out to go to the movies, and I want some entertainment value out of my municipal government -- just so long as it doesn't cost me anything. We need us some chaos right about now. Chaos -- now that's some cheap entertainment!
And all we need to do to get the ol' mayhem rolling is to start recalling everybody in sight. Hey, Alisha! Wasn't Suttle at some of those kinky hoop-de-doos? Think hard.
Ask Paul Bonacci. Maybe he can come up with something.
I mean, you got to give us something to work with here if we're gonna have us some chaotic kicks and giggles.
After all, you just don't recall a mayor over the budget and raising some taxes to balance the budget, do you?
A grass-roots group announced plans Thursday to explore a recall campaign against Mayor Jim Suttle.
A separate group took out recall affidavits Thursday against Suttle, as well as City Council members Jean Stothert and Pete Festersen.
I DUNNO, maybe you do. That's what the World-Herald is reporting. Then again, we know how the local rag likes to cover up the real reasons for stuff that goes on in this town.
Maybe Suttle has gotten to the "journalists" there. Maybe they only want us to think the recall efforts are actually over the budget.
Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's see what else the cover-uppers want the people to swallow whole. (Just like at those kinky parties, no doubt.)
The grass-roots group, the Mayor Suttle Exploratory Recall Committee, held a press conference at Anthony's Steakhouse. The event was planned quickly after the group raised $5,000 as of Aug. 17, which required it to file with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.
“The city could use new leadership,” said spokesman Jeremy Aspen, an Omaha real estate agent, who said the group is a grass-roots effort.
It includes some familiar faces: Pat McPherson, a longtime supporter of former Mayor Hal Daub, is a consultant. Also involved is Jim Cleary, a former Daub aide who spearheaded a successful recall against former Mayor Mike Boyle.
Aspen said Daub was not involved in the effort.
Aspen said the group organized out of concern about Suttle's financial decisions. The committee says Suttle didn't look hard enough at cutting costs before raising taxes. The committee also disagrees with the recently signed police union contract.
C'MON, PEOPLE! We need the truth. And some real live-and-local Jerry Springer-meets-Bob Woodward action to get us through these challenging times.
All together, now!
Where have you gone, Miss Alisha O? A city turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo woo woo). What's that you say, Mr. John DeCamp? "Alisha O has left and gone away" (Hey hey hey, hey hey hey).
I was all ready to start out this appeal for civic common sense with a high-falutin' reference to John Donne and "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee," yadda yadda yadda.
Then it occurred to me, "This is Nebraska, stupid. John Donne? Really?" I mean, John Deere, maybe. But John Donne. . . ?
But I get ahead of myself.
The deal here is that Omahans' taxes are going up. Why? The city, like most cities these days, is tapped out. Broke. In the red. It's called a budget deficit.
To balancethe books, being that the city already has cut the budget to the bone the past two fiscal years, Mayor Jim Suttle proposed tax increases -- a property tax hike . . . a dining tax . . . a higher wheel tax, including one on those who work in Omaha but don't live here.
The city council made some additional budget cuts but passed the tax increases Suttle asked for, more or less.
And in this age of the tea party, it goes without saying people are furious.
The council should have cut the budget more! Government is too big! Balance the budget!
How? Who the hell knows, just do it. Cut off the freeloaders! Just not me and mine.
PEOPLE ARE so mad, there's lots of talk now about recalling Jim Suttle, as reported by KETV, Channel 7:
A group said Wednesday it will hold a news conference to announce the formation of a committee to explore the possibility of recalling Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle.
Under the title Recall Mayor Suttle, the group will announce its intentions Thursday morning at Anthony's Restaurant in Omaha.
The announcement comes one day after the Omaha City Council approved a budget plan that includes a new, 2.5 percent restaurant tax, a property tax increase of at least 2.3 cents, a wheel tax increase, and a wheel tax expansion, requiring those who live outside the city, but who work in Omaha to pay.
The Metropolitan Omaha Property Owners Association will attend the meeting. MOPOA said a poll it commissioned weeks ago showed dissatisfaction with the mayor's handling of the budget.
But political experts said such an effort likely wouldn't be driven by the masses.
"My sense is that it's more that maybe Suttle hasn't been responsive enough to some of the local business interests, and they want to make it clear that they really are calling the shots," said University of Nebraska-Omaha political science professor Dr. Loree Bykerk.
IT GETS BETTER. Says Joe Jordan over at Nebraska Watchdog, one of the people behind the latest recall effort aimed at Suttle is Jim Cleary -- the guy who spearheaded the last successful recall of an Omaha mayor, back in 1987:
Nebraska Watchdog has learned that at least part of Jim Cleary’s decision to work for the recall of Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle was made by the numbers, polling numbers.
On Monday Nebraska Watchdog reported exclusively that Cleary, who was one of the key players in the successful 1987 recall of former Omaha Mayor Mike Boyle, is now working behind the scenes with a group of Omahans who are in the early stages of formulating a strategy to recall Suttle.
Nebraska Watchdog is told that an early August poll was a key factor in persuading Cleary to get involved. According to the poll of 400 likely Omaha voters, 70% said the city was on the wrong track and 67% disapproved of the way Suttle, who was elected in May of 2009, is handling his job.
Those polled also strongly disagreed with Suttle’s 2011 budget plan which initially included a 9 percent property tax increase and a 4 percent restaurant tax. On Tuesday the City Council lowered the property tax increase to about 5 percent, trimmed the restaurant tax to 2.5 percent, and found an additional $13.5 million in budget cuts. In a statement issued following the Council’s decision the Mayor would not say if he intends to pull out his veto pen. ”I will review (the Council’s) changes to the recommended budget and will respond within an appropriate timeframe, “said Suttle.
According to several sources the recall group is expected to announce Thursday that it is forming an exploratory committee which will begin laying the groundwork for its anti-Suttle campaign.
That committee will examine the pros and cons of a recall effort, prior to launching an official petition drive. In order to recall Suttle, the Mayor’s opponents would first have to acquire the signatures of 26,642 registered voters in the City of Omaha. Those signatures must be gathered within 30 days. Sources close to the recall tell Nebraska Watchdog that a petition drive might be timed to coincide with Election Day November 2nd. That would allow those gathering the signatures to set up operations near polling places in Omaha where registered voters are casting their ballots.
Nebraska Watchdog contacted Cleary to ask him about several of these items but Cleary refused to comment.
WELL, I GUESS it was too much to ask that the national snit fit and every-man-is-an-island nervous breakdown (see, I worked in the Donne thing after all) would somehow bypass the place where I live. Insanity is afoot, and it's catching.
Nevertheless, the moment "calls for a stupid and futile gesture on somebody's part," and I guess I'm just the guy to do it. Here goes.
There is a fine line between a progressive, livable city and a dungheap that proves itself totally resistant to economic growth and successful self-governance. Indeed, civilization itself is a thin veneer over the barbarian rabble we once were . . . and could be again.
Over a couple of centuries, Americans have developed municipal services like police, fire departments, parks, libraries and social-welfare programs because we figured we needed them. Because we thought they made the places where we lived more orderly, more livable.
These things evolved all across America because we decided, for the overall good, that everyone should have a right to certain services, certain "safety nets" -- that by investing in our communities, we were investing in our, and our children's, future.
This is not the case everywhere in the world.
In some locales, those who have, keep it. All of it. And those who have not . . . have nothing. They're just flat out of luck.
Some such places we call the Third World. Other such places we call "banana republics."
They all got there when enough people -- at least enough people with means -- decided that "me" was a lot more important than "we." That is the thin line between "the American way of life" and the abyss.
I'M NOT getting through to you at all, am I? I completely lost you at John Donne, didn't I?
Well, this is Nebraska, so let me put it to you this way:
What do you think would happen if there was an "I" in "team"? Yes, I'm talking football.
What do you think would happen if Zac Lee and Niles Paul decided that giving Bo Pelini 100-percent effort was just excessive, and that instead, they'd give just 73 percent, but only when it would directly benefit their individual stats?
How do you think that would reflect on the Huskers' win-loss record?
Do you think Nebraska would be fielding a product worth the price of admission? You think anyone would care to take up residence, so to speak, at Memorial Stadium if the whole program went to hell in an every-man-for-himself hand basket?
What if bunches of first- and second-team players adopted the same attitude? Decided they were in football just for themselves? Rejected Pelini's expectations that they'd all do their bit in the name of the common good?
And what if Pelini came under suspicion for demanding players all do their part for the team?
WHAT IF Jim Cleary were Nebraska's athletic director and decided that Pelini was just a "tax-and-spend" football coach and recalled him? Well, you'd probably end up with a replay of the Bill Callahan era, that's what.
Which, of course, would be a lot like what happened to Omaha after Cleary engineered the recall of Mike Boyle -- several years of civic stagnation, instability and a revolving-door cast of mayors. And there's more!
With your electoral snit-fit, we'll include years of political mayhem and strife for free . . .all because we know you wouldn't pay for it anyway!
So, go ahead. Take care of No. 1. Recall that big-tax mayor who's so incompetent he can't do the fiscally impossible, and so arrogant he opted for the socially responsible instead.
Go ahead. Pitch a fit; sign a petition. I can't think of a better prescription for what ails us.
We are sooooo, soooooooooo sorry about the late unpleasantness of that whole Mexican-American War thing. We are also soooo, soooooooo sorry that, previously, American settlers moved into Tejas and caused so much trouble for you with that most unfortunate war of independence.
We'll forget the Alamo if you will.
I'll tell you what. Take Tejas back, with our deepest apologies. Really, it's yours. No, go ahead. We were wrong to have annexed it in the first place.
If you want to learn about modern life -- especially postmodern life -- look at your smart phone.
Because if your life . . . er, your smart phone, is anything like the deal one Omaha man got, congratulations! You're a officially a member of a club born when Eve bought the serpent's line about that apple.
For two days in late July, Monty Poland searched Omaha for something that didn't exist.
Poland, 39, had just purchased a new smart phone from Sprint, the HTC Evo. The handset, purchased at a discount with a new contract, cost Poland $275, excluding a $100 mail-in rebate.
It was loaded with features, including bundles of applications, the latest version of Google's Android operating system, a touch screen, dual cameras and wireless Internet that could be channeled to make the phone a wireless hot-spot.
Poland discovered those just fine. What he couldn't find was a place to use a feature Evo has that few other smart phones possess: the ability to connect to Sprint's 4G wireless network.
He tried to access the network from many places. At his home near 72nd and Giles Streets? Nope. In downtown Omaha? No way. At the La Vista Sprint store where he purchased the device? Not even there.
That's because even though Sprint proclaims Evo's 4G capabilities on in-store signage, the company's website and in commercials, 4G service isn't available anywhere in Nebraska or Iowa.
The term 4G stands for “fourth generation,” meaning the latest and fastest version of digital mobile functionality. It is superior to 2G, which was introduced in the early 1990s, and to 3G, which dates to around 2002.
Having the latest and most reliable technology is key to companies' profitability, because smart phone customers are hungry for faster mobile Internet connections to stream video, download applications, or “apps,” and browse the web. Mobile phone companies engage in heated battles to reach pacts with network providers while investing billions in the updated networks.
But in the end, all the whiz-bang features need to work.
“It's like buying a laptop computer with supersonic speed, but the local Internet provider doesn't offer supersonic Internet connections,” Poland said. “Why spend the extra dough to buy something you can't use?”
After two frustrating days, Poland revisited the Sprint store and asked a manager why the 4G connection wasn't working.
Poland learned that 4G wasn't available in the Midlands. In fact, it is available in only 48 U.S. markets, of which the closest is Kansas City, near Sprint's national headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.
OVERPROMISING -- and, alternatively, getting suckered -- is what we do as children of the first consumers, who believed Satan when he advertised that "your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad."
I'll bet the scaly SOB stiffed 'em on the 4G service, too.
The thing is, we never learn.
Never.
Ever.
In fact, our entire Western economy is built upon the fact of our permanent placement in planetary special ed. Let's just say it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Men World.
AND THE hell of it -- literally -- is illustrated by what Monty Poland did when Sprint offered him a full refund: He turned it down.
Which explains why America's churches are so empty come Sunday.
Let me see if I have this straight. Or gay. I forget.
The country is in an uproar over gay marriage, because that's all weird and stuff, because the gays found out that everybody else was married to somebody else on Facebook and all they had was a crappy little ceremony in the San Francisco courthouse, when everybody else gets a destination wedding in Italy -- and then one at Disney World, complete with fireworks but no divorce, which is so easy today that half of all married couples get one (So what's the deal with forgetting that common little detail?) -- and that's, like, bigamy, only the lawyers say they're just being drama queens, because nobody sexted them pictures of their junk like Brett Favre, who supposedly texted pictures of himself playing with his while wearing Crocs -- Crocs? -- because Jenn Sterger is hot and kinda looks like his wife, only 16 years younger and not a grandma.
We know Sterger because she's got a show on Versus because she used to go to Florida State football games damn near nekkid, which got her enhanced physique into Maxim and Playboy -- before she took her implants out, because she wanted to, like,totally go countercultural here -- which led to a Sports Illustrated column and a gig as a New York Jets sideline reporter, which is what apparently intrigued Mr. Retirement's penis, and now Whoopi Goldberg is all pissed off and cussing a blue streak at gate crashers, if not penis posers, which makes Michaele Salahi cry, because somebody's gonna be irate when pictures of your wanger end up on Facebook for your other wife to find, and why should gays have to miss out on that kind of wedded bliss?
AND WHY DID Michelle Obama ditch the prez on his birthday anyway to spend hundreds of grand on a Spanish vacay with the kid?
I ask this because we are a sensible, sober and moral people who think marriage is sacred and not to be trifled with by just any Tom, Dick or Harry. Or any consenting combination of the above.
IT IS the very sanctity of marriage and the spiritual and cultural gravity of sexuality (and how we use it) that is what's behind the monster effin' rush you get by boinking pert little interns less than half your age. Or sleeping your way up the corporate food chain.
"I'm the best thing in this town," she arrogantly declared after cops busted her for being a drunk nuisance Friday, according to an insider.
"She was bad-mouthing everyone who walked by her [in the police stationhouse]. She was saying 'I'm a star, you can't do this to me.'"
Snooki unleashed a boozed-up, expletive-filled rant after being arrested for disorderly conduct, and attempted to use her new-found fame as a "get-out-of-jail-free" card.
"You can't tell me what to do - I'm Snooki," she yelled at officers, according to witnesses. "Do you know who I am? I'm f------ Snooki. You can't do this to me. I'm f------ Snooki. You guys are going to be sorry for this. Release me!"
Not surprisingly, her harsh language didn't do the trick.
The pint-sized reality TV star was hauled away from the Jersey shore boardwalk in cuffs Friday as her oversized shades slid down her nose. A photo of her looking dishevelled with mascara running down her face while in custody also surfaced yesterday, as locals took stock of her unruly behavior and lashed out at the reality show cast.
"My world's been turned upside down," says Chris Wilson, a charter boat captain in Venice, La. "Our life as fishing guides and marina owners — and everybody down here. We used to fish every day. Now we ride around and look for oil, or ride people around, you know. They say we're working, they say they're paying us, but nobody's got paid yet ... I guess it's coming."
This quotation comes from photographer David Zimmerman's latest series, "Gulf Coast." A fine-art photographer based in New York and Taos, N.M., Zimmerman relocated to Louisiana just after BP's April oil spill and, for the past few months, has been using a large-format view camera to put faces to the oil spill. "For all the devastation I saw offshore," Zimmerman writes in his artist statement, "the worst of what I saw was onshore; in the faces and voices of the people who call this place home."
It's useful to remember that we don't know what we don't know. And that some of the things we think we know -- or that we try to do, because we want to find out what we don't know -- just might look pretty darned silly in 70 years or so.
In 1924, for example, when Mars was at one of its closest approaches to Earth, some radio engineers thought they heard something . . . unearthly, let's say. According to a 1939 article in Radex magazine, some thought the signals originated on Mars.
(Note that the 1938War of the Worldsscare didn't come out of nowhere.)
So, in 1939, astronomers and engineers thought they might try to communicate with the red planet -- or at least see whether they could bounce a radio signal off of it. As the writer for Radex, a radio enthusiast periodical, put it:
It appears that most scientists believe now that life is hardly possible on Mars, but some, particularly the late Dr. Lowell, have believed that life exists there. If true, the Martians are living on a dying world, where most of the oxygen has entered the rocks, oxidizing the iron present and rusting it, giving Mars its typical reddish color. Martians would be seeking a new world on which to live, and July 27 would be the obvious time for them to make an attempt at communications.
OF COURSE, the little green men coming to Earth would be most impractical. Orson Welles' interplanetary invaders of the previous year were ultimately done in by something as simple as . . . Earth germs.
They'd all have to be little green versions of the Boy in the Plastic Bubble. If germ-free plastic bubbles had been invented yet.
Nobody knows whether or not there is animal life on the planet Mars; nobody knows whether or not it is possible to reach Mars with a radio signal. In 1924 a group of radio engineers trying to tune in Mars heard signals which they claimed they could not identify with an Earthly source. Last week, with Mars closer to the Earth than at any time since 1924, another group of radio engineers tried a more daring experiment: sending a signal Marsward in the hope that it would be reflected back, picked up again on Earth. They thought they might succeed if: 1) the signal could penetrate the ionosphere, the ionized layer in the Earth's atmosphere whose influence on radio waves is not thoroughly understood; 2) it was not dissipated or destroyed on the way; 3) it hit Mars; 4) it was reflected toward Earth, and strong enough to be detected.
At the headquarters of Press Wireless, surrounded by the barren salt marshes off Baldwin, Long Island, gathered engineers of Newark's publicity-wise Station WOR, good-natured Curator Clyde Fisher of Manhattan's Hayden Planetarium, newshawks, photographers, announcers standing by to tell all. Before sending their signal, the engineers spent forty-five minutes twirling the knobs of 40 short-wave receivers, trying to catch a signal from Mars, where the highest form of life is generally believed to be some low form of vegetation, possibly resembling moss. Result: a potpourri of short-wave noises, most of them promptly identified.
BUMMER. That crafty Marvin probably was maintaining radio silence as he plotted his sneak attack on Earth.
Oh, wait. That was the Japanese. Target in two years: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Then again, we didn't know what we didn't know. And more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.
I don't know what to say about this, except that I think we have achieved some sort of perfection in suck.
Not only that, but the BPocalypse has done so -- out there on the soiled marshes of Louisiana -- in a massively appropriate, full-circle kind of way.
What am I talking about? Pick up your New York Times, man! Behold the dawn of a new standard of outrageous dumbth.
THEY'RE HOUSING oil-spill cleanup workers in FEMA trailers. You know, the ones that reek of formaldehyde:
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, they became a symbol of the government’s inept response to that disaster: the 120,000 or so trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to people who had lost their homes.
The trailers were discovered to have such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again.
Some of the trailers, though, are getting a second life amid the latest disaster here — as living quarters for workers involved with the cleanup of the oil spill.
They have been showing up in mobile-home parks, open fields and local boatyards as thousands of cleanup workers have scrambled to find housing.
Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, Alpha 1, said that in the past two weeks he had sold more than 20 of the trailers to cleanup workers and the companies that employ them in Venice and Grand Isle, La.
Even though federal regulators have said the trailers are not to be used for housing because of formaldehyde’s health risks, Mr. Mason said some of these workers had bought them so they could be together with their wives and children after work.
“These are perfectly good trailers,” Mr. Mason said, adding that he has leased land in and around Venice for 40 more trailers that are being delivered from Texas in the coming weeks. “Look, you know that new car smell? Well, that’s formaldehyde, too. The stuff is in everything. It’s not a big deal.”
Not everyone agreed. “It stunk to high heaven,” said Thomas J. Sparks, a logistics coordinator for the Marine Spill Response Corporation, as he stood in front of the FEMA trailer that was provided to him by a company working with his firm. Mr. Sparks said the fumes in the trailer from formaldehyde, a widely used chemical in building materials like particle board, were so strong that he had asked his employer to provide him with a non-FEMA trailer.
HAPPY FOURTH to us, citizens of the stupidest flippin' nation on earth.
Either a sparrow has gotten into the house, or the smoke detector needs a new battery.
I'm betting on the latter.
Get chair to stand on. Remove smoke detector from ceiling. Open battery compartment. Take out old battery.
Curse lawyers for messing with natural selection and, thus, messing with God's intelligent design of evolution some 6,000 years ago. Sorry . . . I had to alter the content of the blog to get it published in Texas.
I'm not sure, but I think this sort of thing in Judah led directly to the Babylonian captivity.
It's really kinda appropriate that "schmuck" and "dreck" are Yiddish vulgarisms. As in, "It takes a real schmuck to foist dreck like this on an unsuspecting public."
It's no surprise this thing has gotten all furcockt, has netted Israel less than bupkis in PR value and, frankly, has a bunch of people about ready to plotz. If I were Joe Biden, I'd be soliciting contributions from Hamas to run this ad on American network TV.
That'd teach those Israeli nudniks a thing or two. Oy veh.
So, Scoop, what do you think the chances are that we come out of this iceberg field alive?
Can't say, guv'na.
Why not, Scoop? I mean, we're underway at 25 knots and, from what I can see through my opera glasses here, there's an iceberg dead ahead.
Guv'na, this 'ere crew on the S.S. Titanic are not allowed to speculate about icebergs and our chances of 'ittin' one and drownin' 'ere in the bloody North Atlantic. It would impugn the very notion of our objectivity as crew.
Uh, Scoop . . . I wouldn't be worrying my little head about notions and appearances right now with that iceberg dead ahead. Shouldn't you be worrying about the real and present danger?
Listen, mate! Them bleedin' icebergs will take care o' theyselves! 'Aven't you 'eard? The Titanic is bloody unsinkable! If I was allowed to prognosticate -- which I ain't, mind you -- you would be owing me a snifterful in New York.
But, Scoop! LOOK OU. . . .
FLASH FORWARD 97 YEARS . . . to the bridge of the unsinkable S.S. Denver Post, cruising full steam ahead on a journey into the mainstream-media future as the flagship of the White Elephant Line.
The dictate went public Friday afternoon, when Broncos writer Mike Klis appeared on Mile High Sports Radio, at 1510 AM, with hosts Nate Kreckman and Joel Klatt, who hooted at the very idea of a prognostication ban.
When Klatt and Kreckman asked Klis if he thought the Broncos could defeat the Ravens in Baltimore on Sunday (which, unfortunately, they couldn't -- or at least didn't), the Post staffer explained that his supervisors had concluded that offering picks about a team beat writers are supposed to cover in an even-handed way potentially undermined their objectivity in the eyes of readers. Klis added that the change had been instituted after the San Diego game, when pretty much everyone who weighed in foresaw a Chargers victory (instead, the Broncos won).
What was the real motivations for eliminating predictions? And did readers upset that none of the writers had confidence in the Broncos have any impact? Not according to [Post Editor Greg] Moore, corresponding by e-mail, who says, "It is an ethical move. Sports writers are no different than other news-beat reporters. We would not have political reporters picking sides in a political contest.
"We did not get a single complaint from outside," Moore continues, "but I did look at the predictions before the San Diego game. Obviously, I had seen these for years. And it occurred to me that it must be making it hard for news reporters, especially when they pick against the team they cover. In an equal vein, these beat reporters don't want to seem like homers, always picking the Broncos. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed an unreasonable position to put these reporters in."
I'LL BET THE instruments of the ship's band of the S.S. Titanic were spotless -- and the musician's ability to play "Nearer My God to Thee" untainted by personal bias -- as the unsinkable ocean liner slipped beneath the waves and into the depths of the deep, blue sea.
If you want to see weird s***, one of your Facebook friends -- in my case, a classmate from Baton Rouge High -- sooner or later will come across some prime Weirdus Maximus and throw it up on his "wall."
This has happened to me once again, and I had to, as they say, share.
NORMALLY, I'd advise that this is the kind of thing best viewed with a buzz on. Uh . . . not this one. You couldn't handle this one after having a couple or three. Trust me. You may not be able to handle Yogi Oki-Doki and his "farmyard yoga for kiddies" sober as a judge. To tell you the truth, it made me want to go out and commit a crime.
Then again -- and I'm not 100-percent sure about this -- Yogi Oki-Doki just might have during the taping of whatever it is this is. Who knew that FFA stood for Future Freakazoids of America?
BUT IT IS POSSIBLE(also through the magic of YouTube) to turn this cringeworthy display of dexterity into some snarky techno hilarity:
Reason No. 234,876,129 why I'm Catholic (a grumpy Catholic, but Catholic nevertheless). We pretty much got this kind of nonsense out of our system once Savonarola got his just deserts.
EVEN SO, you have to admit that a bonfire of the Bibles (and everything else) trumps a mere Bonfire of the Vanities every day of the week -- and twice on Sunday.
I'd better stop now, because I feel some Junior Samples jokes coming on. . . .
I don't know how America's "freedom fighters" can defend capitalism when it's this stuck on stupid, but I'm sure some radio talk-show host will be happy to tell us why everyday absurdities such as "obese" babies being denied medical insurance is preferable to "socialistic Obamacare."
Afghanistan did it to us. That and our failure to learn from history -- once again indulging the fatal American impulse to "nation-build" nations that don't want to be built. Especially by outsiders.
If not for Iraq, perhaps we could have taken care of our al-Qaida business and gotten the hell out -- or at least botched the whole thing much less badly -- before we turned into Russians (as the Russians 20 years ago turned into British, who turned into etcetera and so on).
BUT NO. President Obama has his hands full of George W. Bush's Afghan mess now, and there ain't no good way out. Read this story in The Times of London and note that American soldiers are saying about Afghanistan what GIs said about Vietnam . . . and what Russians said about their "Vietnam."
American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.
Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.
“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.
“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.
The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains’ assessment. The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can. Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped.
“We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”
Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”
The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”.
(snip)
The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.
Captain Rico told of the disgust of a medic who was asked to treat an insurgent shortly after pulling a colleague’s charred corpse from a bombed vehicle.
The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs. “They’re a joke,” said one. “You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It’s not enough to know which house the shooting’s coming from.”
The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but “I Suck At Fighting” or “I Support Afghan Farmers”.
To compound matters, soldiers are mainly being killed not in combat but on routine journeys, by roadside bombs planted by an invisible enemy. “That’s very demoralising,” said Captain Masengale.
The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the soldiers’ private lives. “They’re killing families,” he said. “Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect families for the rest of their lives.”
The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.
IN FACT, the American commander in Afghanistan already is borrowing heavily from the Russian playbook. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's new strategy of pulling back to "protect" Afghan population centers is pure, uncut Red Army 1980-something.
LET US PRAY Barack Obama is worthy of his Nobel Peace Prize. He's going to need all the mad Nobel skillz he can muster just to keep all our heads above water.
Hey, Mac! You have GOT to come see what PC is up to now!
Really, Mac. Look at this instructional video for playing host to a Windows 7 launch party later this month. The only thing they left out are the Windows 7 pocket protectors.
I MEAN, this isn't a really kewl launch party for a really neato-keen operating system that locks up on you 15 percent less than Windows XP if the wind is blowing right and you don't actually run any Microsoft applications. No, this is your church youth group with the possibility of adult beverages.
My God, it even has the same kinds of "activities."
And when all the party hosts get the bright idea to play Windows 7 "sardines," it'll be easy enough to find where everybody's hiding.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, this isn't too far from what passes for the kind of "news" that gets people afraid that their president is going to turn their kids into commies with one schooltime speech to students.
In journalism school, the professors told us there was no such thing as as a bad question.
They were wrong.
The whole world is agape at the jaw-droppingly brain-dead question from CNBC's Maria Bartiromo to a 44-year-old congressman. Medicare . . . just for old people? Who'd a thunk it?.
Walter Cronkite, I am sure, is so happy he didn't live to see his profession brought to this new low.
FLASH FORWARD 97 YEARS . . .
