Last Call

Things continue to be different in 2012.  An active, championship boxer, arguably the single most masculine sport out there short of engine block tossing, coming out as gay?

Hell of a thing.  Meet featherweight belt contender Orlando Cruz.

The Puerto Rican native, 31, told USA Today: "I've been fighting for more than 24 years and as I continue my ascendant career, I want to be true to myself. I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career."

He then went on to note, "I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be a proud gay man."

A former Olympian who competed for Puerto Rico at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Cruz has been fighting professionally since December 2000. His next fight is scheduled for Oct. 19 in Kissimmee, Fla., but he will reportedly sit down for an exclusive Telemundo interview before that.

A number of publications have noted that while Cruz is not the first gay man to fight professional, his revelation makes him the first to speak openly about it while being active in the sport. As USA Today noted, Emile Griffith, a welterweight and middleweight champion who fought in the '50s and '60s, told Sports Illustrated he was bisexual years after his athletic career had ended. 

Gay Latino boxer for the win.  Welcome to 2012, folks.  Looking forward to the day when news like this...isn't news.

The Rubin Con Lacks Self-Awareness

Jennifer Rubin, professional shill for Mitt Romney, gloats that the media was unable to save President Obama in Wednesday's debate.  Irony, now in the convenient crapton size.

The liberal media, and MSNBC specifically, have no one to blame but themselves, however. They have never given President Obama the sort of scrutiny he got last night. They have mouthed the president’s false talking points (“a $5 trillion tax cut for the rich”), egging the president on. When Mitt Romney debunked these easily, Obama had nowhere to go. He looked lost without the protective blanket of compliant media and over-eager left-wing bloggers.

This of course is coming from the woman who said this last week:

The presidential contest is a race to 270 electoral votes. The national vote is irrelevant. The solid blue and red states are irrelevant. If we look at RealClearPolitics (RCP), Mitt Romney comfortably has 191 electoral votes on his side. He needs 79 more electoral votes to win outright, 78 to send it to the House. The RCP toss-up states are Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Florida (29), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13). Are there polls showing Romney ahead or within the margin of error in all these? Yes. Are Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan longer shots but still within reach? Yes. This is why this race remains highly competitive.

That's going to be fun when Jennifer Rubin's magical thinking refuses to save Mittens, eh?  Will she resign, or fail upwards to WaPo Editor-in-Chief?

One Hell Of A Smokescreen

If this story is even close to being true, some heads have to roll, folks.

A college professor from St. Louis, Missouri has released research claiming that the U.S. Army conducted secret Cold War tests by spraying toxic radioactive chemicals on cities like St. Louis and Corpus Christi.

St. Louis Community College-Meramec sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor told The Associated Press that her research showed that the Army may have sprayed radioactive particles with zinc cadmium sulfide while claiming that it was testing a smoke screen that could prevent Russians from observing St. Louis from the air.

Those tests were concentrated in predominately-black areas of the city, which Army documents called “a densely populated slum district.”

In 1994, the Army confirmed to Congress that St. Louis was chosen because it resembled Russian cities that the U.S. might have to attack with biological weapons.

“The study was secretive for reason,” Martino-Taylor explained to KDSK last month. “They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles.”

You know, considering African-Americans have been the subject of Army syphilis experiments and hey, the whole slavery thing and all, I'm surely not going to say this couldn't have happened.  I'd certainly like more information on the good professor's work here, but this is something that absolutely would need checking out at the very least.

I'm appalled at this, but I would like confirmation from the Pentagon that this kind of nonsense was really going on.

The depressing part is that this is completely plausible.

Skin Cancer Spikes

 At least 170,000 cases of skin cancer each year are linked to indoor tanning, according to an analysis published online Tuesday in the British medical journal BMJ.

Those cancers include basal-cell carcinomas and squamous-cell carcinomas, two common types of non-melanoma skin cancers that aren't usually life-threatening, the study says. People who have ever used indoor tanning are 29% more likely to develop basal-cell carcinomas than those who have never used tanning salons, it adds.

Indoor tanners are 67% more likely to develop the more serious squamous-cell carcinomas compared with those who have never tanned indoors, says Eleni Linos, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of California-San Francisco and senior author of the study.

This has been predicted, and coming to pass.  A huge number of tanning salons have sprung up, and minors and adults alike have bronzed to the point of ruining their skin.  Tanning mom Patricia Krentcil is an extreme but not unheard of leatherfaced victim of tanning too much.  I see women a decade younger than me with wrinkles I don't have.  And as long as I use sunscreen and moisturizer, likely never will.

I am the color of biscuit dough.  My arms look pale until you see them across my stomach, and then they look like bronzed walnut.  I could use more sun, but I've seen enough skin cancer in my family to keep me indoors.  Native American on one side, Euro-mutt on the other.  Me British roots is showin' or something like that.

Anyway, it's time to protect minors and be realistic about the risks of tanning.  Or, if you're the executive director of the Indoor Tanning Association John Overstreet, you can just tell us how we're being wimps for noticing that cancer that keeps cropping up.

"UV exposure, whether from the sun or a sunbed, has many benefits," Overstreet says. "As with most human activities, there are also risks. It seems the risks continue to grab the headlines in the media, while the benefits remain unnoticed and unpromoted."

News Anchor Sets Record Straight

In a special four-minute comment that aired during this morning's news broadcast on La Crosse, Wisconsin's CBS affiliate WKBT, news anchor/reporter Jennifer Livingston responded to a viewer who wrote in to the station to chide Livingston for not providing "a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular," by appearing on television despite being overweight.

"The truth is, I am overweight," Livingston acknowledged. "You can call me fat - and yes, even obese on a doctor's chart. But to the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don't know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don't see?" Proving that she was most certainly "a suitable example for this community's young people," and "girls in particular," Livingston concluded her necessary rant with an appeal to bullied children everywhere.

"To all of the children out there who feel lost, who are struggling with your weight, with the color of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, even the acne on your face, listen to me right now. Do not let your self-worth be defined by bullies. Learn from my experience - that the cruel words of one are nothing compared to the shouts of many."

This woman has class. Seriously, what poise and elegance she showed. I have never bought into the whole idea that because you are on camera you owe the world perfection as a role model. This woman's response to insensitivity is far more valuable to young women than her waistline. Girls in particular?  I'd love to hear them expand on what they meant by that.

I don't think the person who wrote the letter realized how shallow they would sound. I hope her answer gave them new insight into how thoughtless and silly we can be.

Click the link and you can watch her deliver the lines, and say a whole lot more.  Well done, madam.

All Hail The Job Creators

GOP mega-donor and billionaire casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson certainly has the money to be a job creator.  His next conquest in fact is a massive $35 billion casino project, practically a second Las Vegas by itself, that will create a whopping 250,000 jobs.  So which lucky state will get these badly needed American jobs from our job creating overlord?

Why, Spain, of course.

American billionaire, casino mogul and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson has a new project: a $35 billion gambling megacity in Europe. He has chosen debt-ridden Spain as the location for "EuroVegas," which is expected to bring up to 250,000 much-needed jobs.

But many Spaniards are divided over whether they want casinos in their backyard.

Adelson recently touched down in his private helicopter in the Madrid suburb of Alcorcon, where wind whips across empty lots and half-built apartment blocks. The area has been down on its luck since the housing collapse, and one-third of its residents are unemployed.

On this land, Adelson envisions a glittering gambling city, to rival Las Vegas — complete with 36,000 hotel rooms, 18,000 slot machines and three golf courses.

Unemployed residents like 28-year-old Ruben Alvarez say it's like a mirage in the desert — almost too good to be true.

"If it's true and they really bring 250,000 jobs here? Imagine that. Things would definitely improve here if people had work. It would let people breathe a sigh of relief," he says. "But we'll have to see if it's true."

Turning Madrid into Vegas?  Gosh, we should elect Republicans like Mitt Romney so we can make sure Adelson gets a nice fat tax cut as a reward so he can continue to create hundreds of thousands of jobs not in the United States.

And remember, with Mitt Romney warning us Wednesday that we'll end up like Spain if it's such an awful, bankrupt Socialist hellhole with no future and crushing taxes and a moribund economy (and America is super awesome and stuff) is anyone in the political press going to ask why Romney's biggest single donor about to invest in a $35 billion casino city smack in the middle of the capital of Madrid rather than in America?

Wouldn't hold your breath waiting on that particular answer.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Just in case you thought the Romney campaign had really rebooted and stopped being racist jackasses:

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu lit into President Obama's Wednesday debate performance, calling him "lazy" and "disengaged."

"What people saw last night, I think, was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them," Sununu — a top Romney surrogate — said on MSNBC Thursday.

"I think even the liberal press reacted with shock at this revelation, and I find it fascinating now this morning, after they've slept, to watch them all scrambling around to clean up the mess the president left on the floor last night," Sununu said.

Pressed by host Andrea Mitchell about whether Sununu really intended to call Obama "lazy," Sununu stood by his comments.

"Yes," Sununu said. "He didn't want to prepare for this debate. He's lazy and disengaged."

Lazy, not too bright, incompetent, Sununu went on the dog bullhorn rampage and has immediately turned the Romney debate win into the latest Romney campaign toxic explosion.

Pretty classy with the code-switching, guys.  In case you were wondering what changed post-debate?  Nothing, really.  Still undisciplined, still awful, still borderline ni-CLANG.  When they burn through whatever bump they get from the debate this week, the game ends.

StupidiNews!

• NYC officials are trying to subpoena footage of Ken Burns's documentary on the Central Park Five in order to defend the city from a bevy of wrongful imprisonment lawsuits.
• US officials are calling Turkish shelling of Syrian border positions "appropriate" but cautions against further escalation of violence.
• Campaign disclosures show that despite praising parts of the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance industry gave overwhelmingly to Republicans in 2012.
• Consensus predictions on today's jobs report is that 115,000 new jobs won't be enough to keep the unemployment rate from edging up another tenth of a percent to 8.2%.
• Game maker Zynga has taken a $90 million writeoff for the acquisition of Draw Something creator OMGPOP as the company's fall accelerates.