They Make Too Much Damn Money

Tags

money, NCAA, Sports

For reasons that I don’t truly get myself, I’ve been intrigued to the point of passion with this seasons college football season. On the whole I rather like college sports over professional, and I’ve watched not only my beloved Spartans, but the entirety of the national race for #1 team of the year.

I confess that I enjoy all the games, albeit, I am intellectually against what I see as an over-emphasis on the unholy dollar bill.

I admit up front, that I don’t know a single “fact” regarding Jameis Winston’s rape allegation. I have read generally that many who have looked into the allegations believe that the University of Alabama and local authorities either deliberately ignored evidence or worse, or at minimum failed miserably to conduct anything like a reasonable investigation. Winston may well be innocent. I have no clue. There are rape charges that are untrue, and as a lawyer, I had one or two that I felt were bogus.

That’s really not the point here. The point is, that if there was not a full-fledged investigation, then justice was in no way served, and it can only be for one reason. That reason is that Mr. Winston was deemed too important to the football program at Alabama to be lost. So he was not to be benched “pending investigation” even. Rather it was, it seems all made to go away, with him never missing a snap.

Again, this case is not important, but indicative of a greater problem, one we saw even more clearly at Penn State regarding the Sandusky affair. People look the other way, push evidence under the perennial rug, and otherwise not upset the financial apple cart. What apple cart is that?

It is said that among the major players in the NCAA football world, schools bring in millions of dollars per year. In fact at Penn, one year’s profits covered the $60 million dollar fine imposed upon them.

In nearly every single state in the union, the highest paid person is a football or basketball coach.

The revenues of the athletic departments of these schools are separate from the university budget and are TAX-FREE.

I am no fan of Jim Harbaugh. In fact I dislike him rather a good deal, but I surely get why he decided to downsize from the pros to college, when Michigan offered him a 7-year contract worth $40 million bucks. Imagine, 40 MILLION BUCKS to instruct young men to play a game!

One could, at one time I guess at least argue that these young men were at least getting an education. No more of course, with the big talents opting out for early drafts, leaving school without their diplomas. And of course the atmosphere now may be anti-learning anyhow.

Cardale Jones, the third-string quarterback that will play for the national championship in a couple of weeks, tweeted on Friday the following:

Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS,”

Yes, I guess they are Cardale. Here we have a child in a man-body prepared to stake his entire life on the millions he dreams of making in the NFL. What will he do if that is cut short by some catastrophic event before he steps off the plane to sign that contract? An uneducated, nobody looking for work just like everyone else, all because education is like “pointless” dude.

Yes, they do entertain us, and they do an excellent job at that, but I’d be willing to bet that that is not what is at issue here anymore. It’s all business and no doubt it starts now at the high school level.

On New Years, MSU came back from a huge deficit, a game that was surely lost, and scored and scored again and again, until they were within a touchdown of winning. And then they did it. They scored, and Baylor road home stunned and unable to fathom what had happened.  Houston did the same thing yesterday to Pittsburg, scoring like three times in 15 minutes and winning two on-side kicks in a row.

These sorts of games make fans jump for joy. Yet in a state like Texas, the Baylor players may well want to transfer to another state to play next year. Football is life there.

Still, when all is said and done, colleges and universities are supposed to stand for something. It is supposed to be about building character in youngsters through athletics, team and individual efforts, winning and losing and doing your best and accepting being bested. When the FSU players walked off the field after being bested by Oregon, were they showing character or simply the behavior of brats who have been coddled into believing that they were God’s gift to humanity and deserved to win?

Are we teaching our youth anything that will sustain them in the future when we play to this sort of thing? When we pay their coach millions for a game? When we “wink, wink, nod, nod” them why supplying them with “extras” under the table? Surely you must know they do.

Can we expect a Cardale Jones to believe anything else when his coach makes ten times more than the university president?

I recall many years ago a young man who stood before a judge about to be sentenced for some criminal act. He wore a jacket with the name Georgetown emblazoned across the back. The Judge, an alumnus of that university, asked, “do you know what Georgetown is, sir?” The youth replied, “yes sir, it’s a basketball team, sir.”

Such is the state of athletics in America.

It should not be so.

No. It should not.

* factual allegations regarding the football programs and their profits is drawn largely from this article at the Washington Post, “Why Jim Harbaugh is worth $40 million  to the University of Michigan’s Football Team.”

 

 

If I Ruled the Olympics

Tags

editorial, Olympics, opinion, Sports

Let’s assume.

Since the very title is a presumption, it seems right and logical that we do.

So bear with me.

Let’s assume some things:

1. The Olympics as in “ancient” games were a serious quest to determine the best of athleticism.
2. That athletes from say Thrace or Carthage stood an equal chance as those of Athens and Sparta.
3. That judging was fair.

Okay, so perhaps we are not so sure of those things, but the ideals are what we are after here, and those are certainly the ideals of Olympic competition, along with brotherhood, the international symbol for ma and apple pie, and the general touting of human excellence, there having  been no Nobel’s or Oscar’s or Pulitzer’s at that time.

So of course we realize that all has gone terribly wrong in the ensuing millennia.

Today the Games are a nationalistic entertainment extravaganza wherein somehow one country is judged better than another by virtue of how it schemes to “help” its athletes win while still not getting caught for cheating. All kinds of political points are scored, lost, won, and wasted in the pursuit. Of increasing concern is the degree to which polluters, human rights violators, and countries unable to feed their own masses somehow manage to sweep, cover-up, board-up, or wall-off, these embarrassments  while “hosting” these circuses.

Everyone waits with bated breath, (whatever that actually means) to see what Vlad Putin and his “nipples on display” ego has in store for gays and other dissidents once all the lovely people have gone and Russia returns to its cold, stark realities. We politely have looked the other way “for the sake of the athletes” and most of us will sanctimoniously report that his “opening and closing” paled in comparison with Beijing’s and even London’s.

Meanwhile a half-dozen impoverished countries will bid for the right to use dwindling resources to build venues which often go unused once the games are over, while poverty haunts the senses within blocks of these palaces of extreme waste.

So if I were handling things, this is what I’d do:

1. Select permanent sites for both winter and summer games. The choice would be weather/sea level appropriate, but would attempt to locate in smaller, poorer countries if possible. They would receive “rent” on the space and a bit of the profits in return for their lease of the land.
2. The permanent facilities would be funded by say a 25-year average of all countries athlete count to the respective games. Meaning that countries like the US, Russia, Britain, and so forth would pay the greatest share. All countries would contribute to the maintenance of a security force both during and between games and to reasonable maintenance of the venues.
3. There would be no flag carrying and no flag raising at events or at medal presentations. Athletes would not wear uniforms defining them as representing countries but rather as Olympians. Every country will undoubtedly keep their viewers firmly educated in these matters without the formal Olympic committee being involved.
4. All athletes will use the SAME equipment. We are here to determine the best athlete not which country developed the best racing suit/bike/sled/goggles/skis/javelin. Developers of equipment will submit their designs and research to the committee who will maintain experts in all these matters who will choose the best for usage in the next games.
5. All athletes will have access to venues six months before the opening to practice on the track/field/course if they wish. A small fee for housing will be paid and for food. The rest is free.
6. For sports that are not subject to objective standards for “judging”, i.e., a stopwatch and verifiable goals, i.e., proper completion of the circuit, other rules will apply:

                   a. If you want to be a “sport” no bowing  is allowed. Conclude your effort and wave to the audience and depart.

                   b. Everyone will complete the same exact “routine”.

                   c. Athletes will wear appropriate clothing and not appear to be characters in a story.

                   d. Standards will be developed for each “part” of a routine, and graded on a scale of (1)completed satisfactorily (2)

                       completed but not cleanly so (3) partially completed (4) failed to complete.

                    e. If all parts are completed “satisfactorily” 1-3 additional points may be given for “extreme merit”.

                    f. No points will be given for “style”.

                   g. All judges will be publicly known, and are required  to turn in signed voting sheets which are also public.

                   h. No judge can participate who has a family/business associate/or other close relationship with a coach or other intimately

                        connected person to the athlete.

 

No doubt there are  a hundred things wrong with what I have devised. But seriously this stuff is getting to be a joke and something must be done.

And is it time to devise a definition of eligibility? Are we going to have professionals or amateurs or some of each? Since we cannot stop the corruption of countries paying and supporting athletes to give them a hand up, we need to figure this out too. I have no salient opinion on this at this time. It’s fraught with landmines I fear.

On to MARCH MADNESS!

 

I Admit It. I’m Truly a Jinx

Tags

Humor, life in the foothills, New Mexico, Sports

I was a child of merely seven. I can’t tell you that I KNOW I watched the Lions beat the Bears that fateful day, December 29, 1957, but I KNOW I did.

Of course Lions “fans”, that rarefied animal that looks a bit like this,

may be something that is hard to find anymore. Most, I suspect have given up. Patience is one thing, but fifty-six years?

When I married the Contrarian, he was aware of course that I came from the land of pussy cats. Being a Packer fan, he took pity on me and mine. Whereas he saved his best invectives (and they were some doozies I gotta say) for the Bears and he Vikings, he smiled softly upon the hapless Felines and referred to them as the “little brothers”. He dutifully cheered on their lackluster performances again and again as they attempted to bloody the nose of various teams, and gave a loving pat on the head to me when they were trounced by the Gods, otherwise known as Green Bay.

We were neither of us baseball fans. You may remember that the Detroit Tigers were not quite so hapless, scoring victories in 1968 and in 1984. The last, I celebrated in the very city of Detroit after watching each of the games.

I had been at one time a Detroit Piston fan, and attended a fair number of those games through the years, especially during the Thomas, years, when they repeated to our delight and the streets were full of cheering fans. But upon leaving Detroit, and that team disbanding as all teams must, I lost interest.

I had as well been a  hockey fan, first with the Boston Bruins and that magnificent team under the leadership of Bobby Orr. I had of course seen a number of local RedWing games at the Arenas, but old and new. I had finally come around to enjoying a RedWing game, now and then, especially during the playoffs.

The Contrarian was neither a basketball fan (preferring college hoops) nor a hockey fan, likening a hockey score to the likelihood of spotting a blue footed boobie on the outskirts of Troy during hunting season. Scoring was rare and all that skating back and forth seemed only for the purpose of hurling into another human being at breakneck speed, all of which induced anger and a fist fight.

It took a long time for it to sink in however, that I had committed some terrible sin when it came to Detroit teams by leaving the state. For I did you see, back in 1996, first to Connecticut, then to Iowa and now to New Mexico.  Leave that is. While I have experienced a great deal in living in other parts of the country, places were I learned so much about history and culture from very different perspectives that what I had gown up with, I was plagued it seemed by always landing in states without professional sports teams.

So, I adopted sometimes another, or I ignored the sport more or less. I was a Houston Oiler fan long ago, before being a Texas fan of anything seemed slightly off-putting. I was a Denver fan for a bit. But nothing much settled in, and I was okay with that. I preferred Tennis and Soccer to professional baseball or basketball in any case. All that scandal and money seemed to take the fun from the sport and make it into an “entertainment” spectacle replete with too many characters acting too badly.

So, back to the jinx thing.

Well, even though one has fairly “given” up on being a true fan, doesn’t mean that one never wants to see said sport played ever again. So if there was a place to watch, it did seem it should be at the end of the season when everyone gets excited about who will win the big enchilada.

And that’s when it started happening.

You see, last year, when the Redwings, I lately learned were in the playoffs, we decided to take a look. They were up 3-1 in the series and still at home, a fitting place to win out the fourth game and the divisional championship. So we watched, and they scored and all was well until the third period when the other team scored (who? can’t remember, doesn’t really matter). And then they went into overtime, and they lost. And then they went on and never won another game. And that was that for that season.

And I realized that the MSU Spartans had a very bad habit of losing whenever I watched them. And March Madness never went too well for them either when I watched. Nor for that matter the UCONN Huskies, my second favorite college team. And the most hated team in the entire universe, The FREAKIN’ UNIVERSITY OF CRAP MICHIGAN did seem to win when I watched, which was watched by the way, ONLY to root for the other team. And if you don’t understand that, well I can only say you have never attended a major university that has an intense interstate rivalry that will stay with you in the form of abject hatred for the rest of your very long and otherwise coherent life.

But I figured, hey just a coincidence.

Oh, and I never thought anything of the fact that NMSU our very local university here in Las Cruces, has the WORST teams on the face of mother earth. I mean the AGGIES stink up the entire foothills with their pretense of playing football or basketball, and it really seems doubtful that few of the players know which one they are playing at any given time. As far as I can tell, they have always sucked, so it’s not on me for sure.

Yeah, so last night we watched the Detroit Tigers play the Boston Red Sox, because hey, it seemed like a good thing as the ONLY game I had seen all season, since the season was rapidly ending. So the Tigers won the first game, which is hey, really cool, since they were in Boston, and everyone knows that’s great. So we watch as I said, and low and behold we see another incredible pitching exposition, even though that can be boring as watching the proverbial paint dry. And the Tigers score, and then in the 6th score FOUR more, and they are cruising to victory and the pitcher is relieved to rest, having done his job. Well, before you can say, I DON’T FREAKIN’ BELIEVE IT, in the eighth, the coach which for some idiotic reason is called a manager, can’t manage to find a single solitary reliever who can throw a strike that the other team can’t hit, and after three tries MANAGES them five runs, and the score is tied.

And then in the 9th, there is a single, then a continuation of screwups that make it clear that the mafia fix was in, and they were throwing the game, because NOBODY could play that freakin’ bad so suddenly, and the Bostonians score again and win the game.

So of course it’s really really clear I am a jinx.

Obviously.

And I guess I’m responsible for the Detroit Lions too. Even though, mostly I blame that idiot Ford for owning them. Which is another whole story best left unsaid at this point.

So I wish the Tigers well, but I won’t watch in the hopes that they can snatch victory from those incredibly hairy men. Who told them that it would look really cool to grow scraggly beards anyhow?

 

 

The Madness Astounds a Normal Human

Tags

2nd Amendment, cartoons, Congress, Entertainment, GOP, gun control, Humor, Lance Armstrong, NRA, Sports

Yeah, it’s true, people like lice and cockroaches better than Congress.

And you know what?

The GOP actually is INTENTIONALLY responsible for your low opinion of them.

Ya see, way back in the day, when the Newtie Patootie Ging(notsorichthen)rich first came to Congress, he bemoaned the fact that the Democrats had controlled Congress for some 24 years. How to gain power?

Well, obstruct, and call Democrats everything from low down skunk fookers for starts. So they did, upon the theory that the worst Congress became in the people’s estimation, the more they might be willing to finally vote the bastards out, and Newt and his crew would have a ready slate of Restuplican turds ready to step in and run against the incumbent business-as-usual Democrats. And it pretty much worked. And that’s pretty much what they have been up to since 2008. It got them the House in 2o1o. That seems to be McConnell’s plan now, in the hopes of making some gains in 2014. Course, if your GOP candidate is a drooler, and can’t open his mouth without shoving 36 feet in it at once, then all bets are off, i.e. Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, and so forth.

Yeah, they really like it when you are disgusted with them. They just are trying to make sure you blame the Democrats. Course, common sense might dictate that we don’t.

See the thing about Lance, is not that he used the drugs to win. As we understand it, most of the cyclists do. It’s rife from top to bottom and in between with sleazy people, including the people who run the cycling organizations.

What makes people shiver in disgust when they see Lance, is that this apology is all for show. He can’t even manage to look or sound sincere in his apology, because it’s clear that inside, Lance don’t feel a good goddamn thing. It bothers him not one iota that he destroyed others lives. That’s just, well, life.

He is pissed he got caught. Pissed he can’t cover it up. Pissed he’s going to lose a ton of money, and is going through the lawyer-directed apology tour in our to stave off the worst of the financial penalties to say nothing of possible jail time for fraud.

He’s a sociopath. So listen up. HE SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO PURCHASE A GUN.

Yeah, old Wayne is being kept under wraps, but the message of the NRA remains unapologetically hard-nosed and well, sociopathic. loves

What is pathetic, sad, and all too understandable is that the brain-defective supporters of the NRA are so deep in the depths of their fantasy of armed insurrection to get rid of the Kenyan Marxist, Fascist President, that they agree with this stance of NO controls of any kind on the right to acquire any weapon of choice.

The position is indefensible from any perspective. There is no historical precedent for it, there is no logical precedent for it.

The NRA loves guns-involved tragedies because it gives them the opportunity to gin up the base that their “freedoms” are about to be taken from them. They did it all through the election cycle. They will bully their congresspeople to vote NO for anything, no matter how benign it is to the average gun owner.

I thought I had this cold thing beat. But it’s jumped down my throat with a vengeance today. My head feels ready to explode and I can’t breathe! I’m sucking down some cold medicine even as we speak, and have a big old pot of chili simmering on the stove. I’m going burn that cold out of me come dinner time!

So be careful out there and excuse me if I sneeze.

Related articles

• The NRA Just Doesn’t Know When to Quit (motherjones.com)
• What’s the NRA Really Packing? (theatlanticwire.com)

Do You Like Sport?

Tags

Entertainment, philosophy, sociology, Sports

Are we getting it yet?

Are you still enthralled with your favorite hero? Is it Clay Matthews or LeBron James? Is it Wayne Gretzky or Miguel Cabrera? You do realize they are humans and they are flawed don’t you?

Lance Armstrong is so flawed he deserves to be in his own hall of fame of worst possible human being in the entire 20th and 21st century. I mean, he stands back and admits to all the things he’s been accused of for years, without batting an eye, oblivious EMOTIONALLY to all the pain he has caused others. He’s a sociopath, and in another life would be a mass murderer. Instead he’s just a mass cheater, liar, and life wrecker.

Manti Ta’o? The kid from Notre Dame with the strange story about the girlfriend he had never met and may never have existed? Oh, I have no clue if Manti was in on the hoax or a victim of it. Having spend more hours than I wish to admit to on the old IRC back in the day, I know so many stories like this that I’m inclined to give the kid the benefit of the doubt. I knew people who feel deeply in love with personas that were not even close to truth. I knew men who fell in love with men who thought they were women. Truly it happens. Or it did.  .  .  . back in the day at least.

Never happened to me. Back before the Contrarian, I met a lot of men via the Internet, and physically met close to a half dozen. They were all who they purported to be. I was lucky I guess. I met the Contrarian via the Internet, and in a display of utter dumbness, or incredibly acute intuition, gave up my apartment and hired a moving company before I had laid eyes on the man. But we are now into thirteen years of marriage, and a happy one at that. Don’t use me as measure however of the safety of this medium of communication. I am quite sure if you x-ray my skull, you will find the alien implant that suggests I’m just on loan from Planet Glix for an earthly experiment. I think my real occupation, when not being a test subject (think 2 years government service equivalency), is as an online psychic charlatan on the run from three known law suits, and three hybrid brides who were left at the altar.

See, that stuff floats through my head, and just must be when the old implant goes into a defib mode for a few seconds.

Anyway, either Manti or Lance serve once again to remind us that we should never place our adoration at the foot of most any human, for they are just always going to disappoint you in the end by being ALL TOO HUMAN. Or maybe less human in the case of Lance.

Which begs the question, where does one lay one’s adoration? Some find elegance in the medium of mathematics, and indeed I can appreciate the elegance of that. Or the universe itself which has a majesty that is enough for 3,000 lifetimes. One can find enough to adore in the soft breathing of a newborn, a new-born of any species actually. Awe is part of adoration after all, and life awes.

I find a single dandelion growing through the crack in an old sidewalk worthy of adoration. After all, talk about tenacity. Tenacity seems worthy of adoration.

So symmetry,  the miracle of life, and tenacity are in the mix. How about longevity?

There is much to be admired in a face like this. A worn face, a face that has worked, loved, cried, laughed, and somehow continued on.

Eyes that hold a library full of stories.

Hands that have caressed a woman’s cheek and then tightened around a wrench and heaved loose a nut.

Shall we trip the light fantastic and delve into the realm of mystery? Shall we glimpse the ineffable, the transcendent? Are we not in the place of adoration?

Shall we imagine the temperatures and pressures that brought into being the pebble that you walk upon? That came from the rock, that came from the mountain, long broken and sunk back into the landscape? Adore it?

Did all this start in a giggle of a thought about Mitt Romney and his reference to liking “sport” instead of “sports?”

Can we adore the mind that can move across such distance of space and subject,  and still remain stable enough to shop for groceries and watch 30Rock?

You tell me.

Weekend Endings and Fluffy Motes of Monotony

Tags

cartoons, Election 2012, Humor, Mitt Romney, satire, Sports

You all remember the story about the Romney dog right? Seamus was crated on top of the car and given the ride of a lifetime. The poor thing in utter terror, threw up all over his crate.

Now, I was reminded that some aggressive journalist was not the source of this story. Nay. It was Romney himself, written about in his book to show that he is a common man, not above cleaning up after the dog. No recognition that the dog was scared witless of course, that would be beneath his compassion level.

Well it’s the same for us. No compassion, just stern “tough love” is all he’s got in store for us. Well, we aren’t buying it.

It’s kind of axiomatic that when you are really losing badly, you attack the people who are telling you are losing.

Such is the state of the Rut-Ro twins campaign. All the polls save Rasmussen which can sometimes be as much as 30 points off the truth, put Obama clearly ahead. Almost all have it outside the margin of error as well.

Even Foxy has reported Obama in the lead, obviously before it was informed that it was not to report such stuff, because the official right-wiggy meme now is that the pollsters are collaboratively skewing the polls in favor of Obama for reasons known only to Zeus and Poseidon, and leaked by mistake to Hera while she was cleaning the bathroom.

So, the GOP plans on holding a victory party after the election before they set up their shadow government in the Cayman’s.

If you are polling challenged, then perhaps a simple game of tic-tac-toe will help to clarify the state of the election.

Now if this is still too complicated, let me say this.

Romoney (not a spelling error) has the following chance of winning:

• When you 1 tsp of water over hot coals for three miles while skipping.
• When dinosaurs show up to butler your next dinner party.
• When the Minnesota Vikings don’t choke in a big game.
• When women want to marry polygamously a half-dozen men at a time because men are such good listeners.
• When fat is the new “in”.
• When clocks run backwards and the new sport is race-crawling.

Enough?  ‘Nuff said.

To be fair, it’s not all his fault.

To be fair, it’s the fault of OhMittensYouSilly.

That is Willard’s alter ego.

He’s the nice one.

You’ve never met him.

But he secretly knows that Willard won’t be happy as President.

There is no crown for the job, and Willard definitely wants a crown. He wants to clink crowns with the Queen of England. Before they sip tea with their pinkies sticking forth. He dreams of it every night. Ann says he often cries out at night, “Oh Elizabeth, you naughty girl you!”

It’s sad.

But then again, Romoney has had some help.

The GOP decided that it was best for the country if they tried their very best to keep the country down in the dirt. Not because they didn’t care about America, but because they really did.

See, it’s like this. Sometimes your medicine tastes really bad, but it does really good stuff for ya. Saying NO is the bad taste, but it will prove so beneficial once the GOP is back in the saddle. Trust them. They know not what they are doing, but they do it with élan.

Elan is a 1%’er word and means “doing with strong eagerness.” Sort of like how a puppy kisses ya. Just steel yourself against the bad breath and that  it still goes potty when it has to regardless of where it is.

I gots this feeling that the 47% thingie will end of being more memorable than the 99% thingie.

They are really a lot alike of course.

I wonder if Romney has ever seen the inside of an E.R. Maybe when taking Ann to birth them babies. But then again, perhaps the driver escorted her in while Willard went up to the suite.

Birthing is messy.

I don’t think Willard likes messy.

Willard strikes me as the kind of man who washes his hands and washes his pee pee after sex. Don’t you think?

But of course, all that election business pales when it comes to what’s really important.

The real refs are back!

Not that I care much about football any more.

I always get that way when I learn that a “sport” ends of being a real danger to the people who play it.

All these guys risking their brains.

For a brainless game of brawn.

How come rugby players don’t get all the injuries? Am I missing something?

Well, It’s Not as if They Want Those Votes!

Tags

Election 2012, Gingrich, Jr., Martin L. King, Obama, racism, right-wing insane, Romney, Santorum, Sports

They have lots of time on their hands in Myrtle Beach I guess. Just so you know, from L-R, it’s Romney, Newt, Huntsman, Perry, Santorum and Paul.

While we were busy doing other things (getting totally immersed in the new show Alcatraz), the clown show was doing its level best to wow ’em in South Carolina. True to form, when we miss a rare debate, we miss the best of them.

Juan Williams had the unmitigated (it’s always unmitigated by the by) gall to question Newtster as to whether his “little black boys becoming janitors” might be a bit, ya know, talking down to darker folks. For this he was roundly booed by the good citizens of drawl.

Similarly, we understand that Mr. Mittens made some remark about his Mexican heritage  and for that he was also booed. That story is another of those, “you cannot make this stuff up” moments. When Mormons were being persecuted in the US, Mittens grandpa took the family down to Mexico, and they stayed there for some time, and Mittens papa was born down there. When the Mexican revolution broke out he moved the family back to the US–get this–as illegal aliens. Sooo, I’m thinkin, Mittens needs to go back to Mexico and get at the back of the line. Fair is fair after all.

While Mittens may be inevitable at this point, the right-wingers are intent on making it clearly known that they don’t want no Black and Hispanics muddying up their white GOP waters. I rather think their desire will be accommodated come next November. But, as the Rightie-Tightie’s are quick to point out, there ain’t no bleepin’ racism in Merika no more!

It used to be that the GOP could always make an issue out of crime. Crime being down everywhere, they have pretty much lost that issue, but both Frothy Mix and Mittens assured everyone that no dirty ex-felon would ever pull a lever in a voting booth if they had their druthers. So there.

¶

Andrew Sullivan, who writes for the Daily Beast, has by all accounts a great article on the Obama Administration accomplishments to date in Newsweek. Given what he has had to work with, it’s actually pretty amazing. And remember that it was Obama that pushed the stimulus, which contrary to all GOP rhetoric has been successful. It has been Europe who refused his suggestions and opted for austerity, that finds itself in deeper and deeper trouble. While our economy is certainly not robust, it has been making a steady climb upward for more than ten straight months.

¶

Now this is no gossip column, I want that to be perfectly clear. But good grief, how can one pass up juicy stuff like this:

It seems that Santorum’s wife, Karen, who is now a rabid anti-abortion crusader, used not to be well, so inclined.

It seems Karen, before she met the Rickster, was the “live-in” love for many years of one Tom Allen, a Pittsburg obstetrician, abortionist, and t0-this-day outspoken advocate of a woman’s reproductive freedom. He knows Karen quite well, having delivered her himself. Karen was into older men at the time. Karen was 22 when she remet Allen, then 63. Their affair lasted six years.

You cannot make this stuff up.

So, if you wonder how Frothy Mix gets all those perverted notions in his little noggin, well, . . .just sayin’.

This ranks high on the scale of Newtzpah!

¶

 I re-heard part of Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail last night. I have to go read the entire thing. It is powerful stuff. MLK was an extraordinary and eloquent writer. You can go read it here.

¶

Call me crazy, but I find articles like this intriguing. Do Sports Build Character or Damage It? The Chronicle of Higher Education weighs in, and makes for an entertaining and thoughtful piece. The comments are good too.  This all from a professorial perspective. How else would Plato, Hector and Lawrence Taylor end up in the same place?

¶

Betty White turns 90 today, and is busy, healthy, and funnier than hell. She gives me hope.

¶

You guys probably don’t read the Blaze much. I don’t “read” it either, but I do check out the headlines and read the comments of one’s that I am sure will be “hot”. One of the most dangerous and compelling tools in the Blaze readership arsenal, is their willingness to “boycott” all those bad folks they find. Mostly they are Hollywood types and of course whole broadcasting networks, most of them in fact. They have boycotted so many people I can’t keep track. People like Morgan Freeman, and Spielberg, and Ron Howard, and George Clooney, and so forth.

The boycotts are because they are black and are “playing the racist” cards (code for reminding us of our damn bigotry), or they are supporting that racist/socialist/communist/fascist/Muslim jihadist/half-black/Merika-hatin’ Obummer dude.

I always feel sorta bad for ’em. They got nothing to watch, nothin’ to read, nothin’ to do except fume. They are down to Rush and Glenn and WorldNewsDaily. Gotta be rough.

And I can tell that all those Hollywood types are sweating out these boycotts. I mean the must be losing pennies a month. Rough.

¶

What’s on the Stove? Something called Smashed Tacos. And today’s posting will be an awesome Autumn Squash soup.

Extraordinary Words: Musings on the state and ethical behavior (suitably vague huh?)

Related articles

• Before Karen Met Rick (politicalwire.com)
• Political Predictions (hidinginurcloset.wordpress.com)
• Romney Shrugs Off Attacks (thedailybeast.com)
• Video: Gingrich vs. Juan Williams on the “food-stamp president” (hotair.com)