02/03/2013 archive

Until about Monday this was a simple story- Art Modell and the Ravens == bad guys.  ‘9ers, storied franchise == good.

And the Ravens are.

It’s your typical tale of elite corporate greed with billionaires threatening to take away their yachts unless you build a new boat basin on the backs of the peons.

I even had a Les Mis clip to go with it.

Now the story is the homophobia of the ‘9ers–

San Francisco 49ers’ Ahmad Brooks, Isaac Sopoaga Deny Participating In ‘It Gets Better’ Gay Youth Video

Huffington Post

Posted: 01/31/2013 5:20 pm EST

“This is America and if someone wants to be gay, they can be gay,” Brooks told the publication. “But I didn’t make any video.” Later, after he was reportedly shown the video on an iPhone, the player clarified, “Oh, that. It was an anti-bullying video, not a gay [rights] video.”

In San Francisco?  I know gay people (men and women) who will kick your ass!

Happy to do it myself.

The fact is that there is no larger and deeper heap of bigotry than Throwball and yes, I am including Turn Left Racing.

Not to mention the Drain Bamage-

Transcript

Will someone hold my hair?

“Liberals have to stop gloating about Sarah Palin getting dumped by Fox News,” Maher began, “even though it happened less than a day after Bobby Jindal told his fellow Republicans to ‘stop being the stupid party.’ That’s just a coincidence. A wonderful, hilarious coincidence.”

In addition to exercising my roman numeral skillz this off beat event has become more and more popular the longer I’ve blogged it.

Call it the ek bump.

Here is a link to past Bissell Kitty Halftime shows and if that Aw factor is not enough- live kitten cam.

They now have an embeddable puppy cam too-

And, this page of Puppy Bowl whores and highlights which may (or may not) run a live feed.  Or you can try the Animal Planet main page.

And, to prove how scandalously mainstream I’ve become-

• Washington Post
• The New York Times
• USA Today

TheMomCat’s live feed link.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

February 3 is the 34th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 331 days remaining until the end of the year (332 in leap years).

On this day in 1959, “the music died” when rising American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson are killed when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza plane crashes in Iowa a few minutes after takeoff from Mason City on a flight headed for Moorehead, Minnesota. Investigators blamed the crash on bad weather and pilot error. Holly and his band, the Crickets, had just scored a No. 1 hit with “That’ll Be the Day.”

After mechanical difficulties with the tour bus, Holly had chartered a plane for his band to fly between stops on the Winter Dance Party Tour. However, Richardson, who had the flu, convinced Holly’s band member Waylon Jennings to give up his seat, and Ritchie Valens won a coin toss for another seat on the plane.

Crash

The plane took off at around 12:55 AM Central Time. Just after 1:00 AM Central Time, Mr. Hubert Dwyer, a commercial pilot and owner of the plane, observing from a platform outside the tower, “saw the tail light of the aircraft gradually descend until out of sight.”

Peterson had told Dwyer he would file a flight plan with Air Traffic Control by radio after departure. When he did not call the Air Traffic Control communicator with his flight plan, Dwyer requested that Air Traffic Control continue to attempt to establish radio contact, but all attempts were unsuccessful.

By 3:30 AM, when Hector Airport in Fargo, North Dakota, had not heard from Peterson, Dwyer contacted authorities and reported the aircraft missing.

Around 9:15 AM, Dwyer took off in another small plane to fly Peterson’s intended route. A short time later, he spotted the wreckage in a cornfield belonging to Albert Juhl, about five miles (8 km) northwest of the airport.

The Bonanza was at a slight downward angle and banked to the right when it struck the ground at around 170 miles per hour (270 km/h). The plane tumbled and skidded another 570 feet (170 m) across the frozen landscape before the crumpled ball of wreckage piled against a wire fence at the edge of Juhl’s property. The bodies of Holly and Valens lay near the plane, Richardson was thrown over the fence and into the cornfield of Juhl’s neighbor Oscar Moffett, and the body of Peterson remained entangled inside the plane’s wreckage. Surf Ballroom manager Carroll Anderson, who drove the musicians to the airport and witnessed the plane’s takeoff, made positive identifications of the musicians.

All four had died instantly from “gross trauma” to the brain, the county coroner Ralph Smiley declared. Holly’s death certificate detailed the multiple injuries which show that he surely died on impact:

The body of Charles H. Holley was clothed in an outer jacket of yellow leather-like material in which four seams in the back were split almost full length. The skull was split medially in the forehead and this extended into the vertex region. Approximately half the brain tissue was absent. There was bleeding from both ears, and the face showed multiple lacerations. The consistency of the chest was soft due to extensive crushing injury to the bony structure.[…] Both thighs and legs showed multiple fractures.

Investigators concluded that the crash was due to a combination of poor weather conditions and pilot error. Peterson, working on his Instrument Rating, was still taking flight instrumentation tests and was not yet rated for flight into weather that would have required operation of the aircraft solely by reference to his instruments rather than by means of his own vision. The final Civil Aeronautics Board report noted that Peterson had taken his instrument training on airplanes equipped with an artificial horizon attitude indicator and not the far-less-common Sperry Attitude Gyro on the Bonanza. Critically, the two instruments display the aircraft pitch attitude in the exact opposite manner; therefore, the board thought that this could have caused Peterson to think he was ascending when he was in fact descending. They also found that Peterson was not given adequate warnings about the weather conditions of his route, which, given his known limitations, might have caused him to postpone the flight.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris will be Joseph Stiglitz (@joestiglitz), author of “The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future” and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics; Julianne Malveaux (@drjlastword), president emeritus of Bennett College for Women, contributing writer at Essence magazine; Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn), author of “The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World;” Kiron Skinner (kironmemo.com), research fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for International Relations and Politics; Michael Hastings (@mmhastings), BuzzFeed Correspondent and Rolling Stone Contributing Editor; Barbara Slavin (@barbaraslavin1), a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor dot com, a new website devoted to news from and about the Middle East; Ali Gharib (@ali_gharib), a Senior Editor for The Daily Beast‘s Middle East blog, Open Zion; Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd), national correspondent for The American Conservative; Dylan Glenn, former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and now Managing Director of Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm; Joe Weisenthal (@thestalwart), deputy editor at BusinessInsider.com; and Edward Conard, author of “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy is Wrong,” and a former partner at Bain Capital.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: George Stephanopoulos interviews the gatekeeper of the president’s agenda, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and controversial education reformer Michelle Rhee.

This weeks panel guests are ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; Univision anchor Jorge Ramos; Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman; former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina; and Republican Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests this week are National Football League faces with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. ;CBS Sports’ Jim Nantz, Phil Simms and Shannon Sharpe.

The Chris Matthews Show: this week’s guests are Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor;

Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent; Howard Fineman The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor; and Annie Lowrey, The New York Times

Economic Policy Reporter.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests on the weeks MTP are Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey outline the challenges that lay ahead for the country’s armed forces and for the next Defense secretary. Bob Costas talks NFL ahead of the big game.

The roundtable weighs in on the political battle over the president’s pick to head the Pentagon with former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs; Chairman of the Faith and Freedom coalition Ralph Reed; former National Hispanic Co-Chair for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, Ana Navarro; and the New York Times’ David Brooks.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey; Obama policy adviser Melody Barnes, former Labor secretary Elaine Chao, Time magazine’s Michael Duffy and The Hill‘s A.B. Stoddard; Super Bowl XL MVP Hines Ward; and former football player and Fmr. Sen. George Allen.

Why extreme Islamists are intent on destroying cultural artifacts

 By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News

LONDON — They have destroyed the iconic Buddhas of Bamiyan, smashed down the fabled “end of the world” gate in the ancient city of Timbuktu and even called for the destruction of Egypt’s ancient pyramids and the Sphinx.

Extreme Islamist movements across the world have developed a reputation for the destruction of historic artifacts, monuments and buildings.

This week, officials confirmed that up to 2,000 manuscripts at Mali’s Ahmed Baba Institute had been destroyed or looted during a 10-month occupation of Timbuktu by Islamist fighters. Some experts have compared the texts to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In his “what we now know” segment of Up with Chris, host Chris Hayes talks about Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) who will be investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee for allegations that he took free flights with a political donor and prostitution in the Dominican Republic. Discussing with Chris what they have learned this week are panel guests Hilda Solis, former Secretary of Labor in the Obama administration; Aaron Pena (@AaronPena), founder of The Hispanic Republican Conference of Texas; Jim Antle (@jimantle), senior editor of The American Spectator; and Lorella Praeli (@lorellaluciana), director of advocacy and policy for United We Dream.

Sen. Robert Menendez under growing scrutiny over ethics questions

by Joseph Tanfani, The Los Angeles Times

Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey is under scrutiny over his ties to a Florida doctor under FBI investigation.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Robert Menendez, the powerful New Jersey Democrat who this week was named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is facing a Senate ethics probe into whether he accepted inappropriate gifts from a wealthy Florida eye surgeon who is under FBI investigation.

The Senate Ethics Committee is conducting a preliminary investigation of two trips Menendez took to a luxury beach resort in the Dominican Republic in August and September 2010 as a guest of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a longtime friend and political donor.

The review comes on the heels of an FBI raid on Melgen’s medical offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night and Wednesday as part of an investigation into what sources called possible Medicaid fraud.

Israel admits Ethiopian Jewish immigrants were given birth control shots

by Katie McDonough, Salon

An Israeli journalist also found that most of the women given the shots say they were coerced

Israel has admitted that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth control injections, according to a report in Haaretz. An Israeli investigative journalist also found that a majority of the women given these shots say they were administered without their knowledge or consent.

Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu acknowledged the practice – without directly conceding coercion was involved – in a letter to Israeli health maintenance organizations, instructing gynecologists in the HMOs “not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.”

Depo-Provera is a hormonal form of birth control that is injected every three months.

Treasury approved big pay raises at bailed-out AIG, Ally and GM, report says

by Danielle Douglas, The Washington Post

The Treasury Department ignored its own guidelines on executive pay at firms that received taxpayer bailouts and last year approved compensation packages of more than $3 million for the senior ranks at General Motors, Ally Financial and American International Group, according to a watchdog report released Monday.

The report from the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program said the government’s pay czar signed off on $6.2 million in raises for 18 employees at the three companies. The chief executive of a division of AIG received a $1 million raise, while an executive at GM’s troubled European unit was given a $100,000 raise. In one instance, an employee of Ally’s Residential Capital was awarded a $200,000 pay increase weeks before the subsidiary filed for bankruptcy.

“30 Rock” finale: Comedy series comes to an end

You wanted resolution on the “30 Rock” finale?

You got it. Sort of. At least, the sort befitting “30 Rock,” with its loopy storytelling mixed with joy in spoofing the culture of TV.

Closure, if that’s what it is, came in a two-minute postscript on this hour episode Thursday on NBC. Which, among other things, included this sly touch: a reference to the snowglobe revelation with which the medical drama “St. Elsewhere” famously concluded a quarter-century ago.

But there was more. Just before the final fade-out, NBC President Kenneth the former Page (Jack McBrayer) was pitched a new comedy series taking place right there at network headquarters, 30 Rock.

Hmmm. This was no ending. It was a Mobius strip.