Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Last Call For Rounding Up The Riff-Raff

Nothing quite like the age-old canard of "If black people would behave, racism would go away."  Juan Williams blames Black Lives Matter for angering white people and accuses them of "being their own worst enemy".

It lacks an agenda, it is antagonizing the black community’s top white political allies, including Democrats running for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, and it is not finding common ground with any of the Republican majority in Congress.

The catalyst for the movement was outrage over the deaths of young black men like Freddie Gray, Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police officers who arguably used excessive, even deadly force. But where is the list of solutions to the injustices it so often decries? 
The movement’s failure to get its collective act together carries real danger for the political clout of the African-American community in the 2016 elections and beyond.

With the movement potentially discouraging black American trust in Democrats, #BlackLivesMatter is increasing the odds of a sharp drop in black voter turnout in 2016. Already Democrats privately worry that without President Obama on the ballot, the black vote will decrease the turnout needed to keep the White House and win back the Senate.

Williams is already setting BLM up as the source of all the Democrats' problems in 2016.  You have to wonder what his reaction to the civil rights movement of 50 years ago would have been.  He goes on to say Rand Paul and Chris Christie are who black America ought to be listening to (after attacking black Democrats for not being faithful to the Democrats, mind you) and wonders why the movement isn't embracing them

If Williams can't figure that out, he's further gone than I realized.

Patriot Games And Other Cheating

If this ESPN story on former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell is even close to being correct, then Goddell needs to be immediately fired.  It turns out that "Spygate", the controversy over the Patriots getting busted for recording signal calls of opposing teams, was much, much worse than originally thought, and that Gooddell did everything in his power to cover up the mess.

His bosses were furious. Roger Goodell knew it. So on April 1, 2008, the NFL commissioner convened an emergency session of the league's spring meeting at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Attendance was limited to each team's owner and head coach. A palpable anger and frustration had rumbled inside club front offices since the opening Sunday of the 2007 season. During the first half of the New England Patriots' game against the New York Jets at Giants Stadium, a 26-year-old Patriots video assistant named Matt Estrella had been caught on the sideline, illegally videotaping Jets coaches' defensive signals, beginning the scandal known as Spygate. 
Behind closed doors, Goodell addressed what he called "the elephant in the room" and, according to sources at the meeting, turned over the floor to Robert Kraft. Then 66, the billionaire Patriots owner stood and apologized for the damage his team had done to the league and the public's confidence in pro football. Kraft talked about the deep respect he had for his 31 fellow owners and their shared interest in protecting the NFL's shield. Witnesses would later say Kraft's remarks were heartfelt, his demeanor chastened. For a moment, he seemed to well up. 
Then the Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, the cheating program's mastermind, spoke. He said he had merely misinterpreted a league rule, explaining that he thought it was legal to videotape opposing teams' signals as long as the material wasn't used in real time. Few in the room bought it. Belichick said he had made a mistake -- "my mistake." 
Now it was Goodell's turn. The league office lifer, then 49 years old, had been commissioner just 18 months, promoted, in part, because of Kraft's support. His audience wanted to know why he had managed his first crisis in a manner at once hasty and strangely secretive. Goodell had imposed a $500,000 fine of Belichick, a $250,000 fine of the team and the loss of a first-round draft pick just four days after league security officials had caught the Patriots and before he'd even sent a team of investigators to Foxborough, Massachusetts. Those investigators hadn't come up empty: Inside a room accessible only to Belichick and a few others, they found a library of scouting material containing videotapes of opponents' signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons. Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots 24-17. Yet almost as quickly as the tapes and notes were found, they were destroyed, on Goodell's orders: League executives stomped the tapes into pieces and shredded the papers inside a Gillette Stadium conference room.

And within three days, the story went away. The Patriots were fined, and that was the end of it.

Only of course, it was only the beginning.

Interviews by ESPN The Magazine and Outside the Lines with more than 90 league officials, owners, team executives and coaches, current and former Patriots coaches, staffers and players, and reviews of previously undisclosed private notes from key meetings, show that Spygate is the centerpiece of a long, secret history between Goodell's NFL, which declined comment for this story, and Kraft's Patriots. The diametrically opposed way the inquiries were managed by Goodell -- and, more importantly, perceived by his bosses -- reveals much about how and why NFL punishment is often dispensed. The widespread perception that Goodell gave the Patriots a break on Spygate, followed by the NFL's stonewalling of a potential congressional investigation into the matter, shaped owners' expectations of what needed to be done by 345 Park Ave. on Deflategate. 
It was, one owner says, time for "a makeup call."

So QB Tom Brady was rung up for Deflategate to pacify the NFL owners who knew that the Patriots had gotten away with cheating for years.  Only, that backfired too.  Brady's suspension was lifted by a judge last week.

And now, ESPN drops this story just as the season begins.

Moose-Information Campaign

I can't imagine how this particular scholar of a candidate didn't win in 2008.

Immigrants to the United States should "speak American," former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said on Sunday, adding her voice to a controversy triggered by Donald Trump's criticism of fellow Republican White House hopeful Jeb Bush's use of Spanish.

"It's a benefit of Jeb Bush to be able to be so fluent in Spanish, because we have a large and wonderful Hispanic population that is helping to build America," Palin said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"On the other hand, you know, I think we can send a message and say: 'You want to be in America? A, you better be here legally, or you're out of here. B, when you're here, let's speak American.' I mean, that's just, that's - let's speak English," added Palin, Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in 2008.

Politics is hard.  We need somebody mean, not smart.

CNN's Jake Tapper asked Palin Sunday for her thoughts on Trump's exchange last week with radio host Hugh Hewitt. Trump had since called Hewitt's questions "gotcha questions."

"I think I’d rather have a President who is tough and puts America first than can win a game of Trivial Pursuit," Palin told Tapper. "I don’t think the public gives a flying flip who, today, is a specific leader of a specific region because that leader will change of course."

Loud, stupid, and wrong beats measured, intelligent and right any day of the week, stupid liberal nerds!  Just ask President McCain!

StupidiNews!