The Writing On The Wall

George Carlin said it best: "Think how stupid the average person is and then realize half of them are dumber then that."

 

Apparently a hell of a lot of the people on the dumb end of that scale are in Augusta County, Virginia.

Some Augusta County parents raised concerns on Tuesday after calling a student assignment anti-American. Some called it an Islamic indoctrination, but the school superintendent says the assignments are cultural lessons, not a religious statement. 

"When I saw the language, the Arabic language, immediately, I had a bad feeling come over me," concerned parent Kimberly Herndon told WVIR. 

The assignment involved ninth-grade students at Riverheads High School to copy the Shahada. "She told us the paper meant faith, so we didn't think anything of it," ninth-grader Laurel Truxell said. Students found out they translated a message that said, "There is no other God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger." 

The assignment also involved students dressing up, wearing the Hijab, according to WVIR.

Parent Kimberly Herndon shared her feelings about the assignment on Facebook, which was shared more than 770 times. Her post sparked a community meeting Tuesday night. "These children were deceived when they were told it was calligraphy. This is not calligraphy. This is a language."

And then they CLOSED SCHOOL.  Because of CALLIGRAPHY.  Not because of the actual assignment, but because of angry anti-Muslim assholes coming to possibly do harm to the teachers and students and school officials.

Augusta County schools closed their doors Thursday and canceled all sports and activities for the day. 

All the county’s schools are closed Friday, December 18, too. Meanwhile, all school sports and activities scheduled for the weekend are also canceled. 

It all stems from a world geography class assignment at Riverheads High School that some parents called Islamic indoctrination. 

The directions read, "This should give you an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy.” The assignment incorporated Arabic calligraphy, but also included an Islamic proclamation of faith. 

That prompted a community meeting and a lot of anger. That anger apparently coming not just from central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, but from outside areas too. 

The school system says it's received so many phone calls and e-mails following that controversial assignment that they felt they had to close the schools as a precautionary measure.

The fear and hatred from "Christians" in this country just makes me physically ill.

The Crossroads Of Power

NY Magazine's Rebecca Traister wastes little time explaining exactly what's at stake in 2016, whether the country merely observes what she calls the "death throes" of "white male power" in the country, or if instead America is immolated by the flames.

This is our country in an excruciating period of change. This is the story of the slow expansion of possibility for figures who have long existed on the margins, and it is also the story of the dangerous rage those figures provoke. Listen closely, and you'll hear the acknowledgment coming directly from the Republican candidates. Here was Marco Rubio in Tuesday's debate: "What's at stake in this election is not simply what party's going to be in charge but our very identity as a people and as a nation." This is not a dog whistle. This is a statement of fact.

There are those on the right and the left who love to downplay identity politics as a distraction: Do we even believe in race or gender as anything but social constructs? How do identity politics apply to Carly Fiorina or Ben Carson? Isn’t worrying about gender and race with regard to presidential politics just narcissism anyway?

But it’s not narcissism. This election is a referendum on the existence and civic participation of Americans who are not white men — as voters, as citizens, as workers, as members of the military, as presidents.

And while the resistance may be symptomatic of death throes, a rage at the dying of the white male light, it nonetheless presents a very real threat — there is the possibility that the old and angry may triumph over the new and different. Those who are furious are not without power to effect change that lasts generations: Imagine Ted Cruz or Donald Trump or Marco Rubio in office with a Republican Congress and Supreme Court seats to fill. Voting: restricted. Immigration: halted. Abortion: banned. Equal pay: unprotected. Same-sex marriage: overturned.

Imagine, on the other hand, a Clinton presidency — or even a Sanders one, though even a white male Jewish socialist may invite less ire than a woman. Clinton, like Obama before her, isn’t carrying just her own baggage, but will stand in as the symbolic target for those whose fury at increased female autonomy has been building. In a nation where women who were not permitted to cast votes still live and breathe, her campaign, as Ms. Clinton has herself declared in other contexts, is living history. If she wins, she — and we — will be forced to do battle with this rising, chilling, ever more open threat from those who feel enraged that their country is no longer their own. I fear that there’s a lot more terror ahead of us.

 Should Hillary win, there will be rage, inchoate rage with the potential to scorch this country and damage America for decades.

But that was always coming.  It metastasized during the Obama years, and will erupt in blood during the Clinton ones.  Should the GOP win however, the retaliation will be swift and deadly.

StupidiNews!

• Pope Francis has ratified a second posthumous miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, meaning that the famed nun who cared for the poor in Calcutta could be declared a saint in 2016.
• The former neighbor of the two San Bernardino shooters was formally charged with providing material support to terrorists, as well as weapon, and immigration charges on Thursday.
• US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has made a trip to Afghanistan, meeting with some 600 troops still stationed in the eastern part of the country as well as Afghan leaders.
• Sharp declines in Chinese steel manufacturing has crashed the market for molybdenum, with the price cut in half it's the worst-performing 2015 commodity tracked by Bloomberg.
• NOAA officials have agreed to hand over e-mails as Republicans are using congressional subpoena power to try to find evidence of climate change data being manipulated.

Last Call For Shelly's World

No surprise that the mystery buyer behind the recent purchase of Nevada's biggest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is none other than GOP megadonor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

The son-in-law of billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson arranged the $140 million purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Adelson's behalf, sources confirmed Wednesday.

Patrick Dumont, who is listed on the website of Las Vegas Sands Corp. as the company's senior vice president of finance and strategy, put together the deal at the behest of his father-in-law, the chairman and CEO of the casino operator.

Dumont, a 41-year-old from New York, in 2009 married Sivan Ochshorn, a daughter of Adelson's wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, from a prior marriage. Sivan Ochshorn Dumont runs the Israel Hayom, which is owned by the casino mogul.

"He (Dumont) handles all the investments for the family," said a source close to the Adelsons who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the family.

Another source familiar with the deal said Sheldon Adelson, 15th on the Forbes 400 List of Billionaires with a net worth of $24.5 billion, funded the transaction. Dumont helped create News + Media Capital Group LLC, which acquired the Review-Journal and several smaller Nevada newspapers last week from New Media Investment Corp.

A source said Dumont also led Adelson's previous attempt to acquire the Review-Journal from former owner Stephens Media LLC before the February sale to New Media Investment. He could not be reached for comment. Sivan Ochshorn Dumont, reached at the couple's Las Vegas home, hung up before answering a reporter's questions Wednesday.

Adelson, meanwhile, broke several days of silence on the newspaper purchase late Tuesday night, telling CNN media reporter Brian Stelter only that he has "no personal interest" in the RJ's new owner.

Fortune magazine on Wednesday cited "multiple sources familiar with the situation" in reporting Adelson was the newspaper's "primary buyer."

Michael Reed, CEO of New Media Investment Corp., did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

Nothing new with the richest people in America buying newspapers, after all Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought a far larger paper in the Washington Post, but Bezos was up front about it from day one, and answered questions about how the paper would treat his financial and corporate interests as part of the very public and well-covered sales process.  It hasn't been 100% smooth, but Bezos never attempted to hide or go through intermediaries, and he certainly isn't enmeshed in politics in the way Adelson is.

We'll see how this goes as far as affecting Nevada politics.

The Worst Reporters Of 2015

The New York Times is in the middle of a real problem now, as Kevin Drum notes, the same journalists who gave us "Hillary is the target of a criminal probe!" are the same Village Idiots behind "Obama failed to stop social media jihadis in San Bernardino!"

So where did this notion come from, anyway? The answer is a New York Times story on Sunday headlined "U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife's Zealotry on Social Media." It told us that Tashfeen Malik "talked openly" on social media about jihad and that, "Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country." The story was written by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, and Julia Preston.

Do those names sound familiar? They should. The first two were also the authors of July's epic fail claiming that Hillary Clinton was the target of a criminal probe over the mishandling of classified information in her private email system. In the end, virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. The emails in question had not been classified at the time Clinton saw them.

Assuming Comey is telling the truth, that's two strikes. Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent. For the time being, Schmidt and Apuzzo should be considered on probation. That's at least one big mistake too many.

The real issue is that the Gray Lady is getting "scoops" that are 100% false, that all happen to help the GOP advance its agenda, fed through the same reporters.

It's not like that hasn't happened before or anything, guys.  Seems like there may be some exciting new career options soon for Apuzzo and Schmidt, ya know?

Marty, McFried

Looks like somebody finally knocked the smirk off Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli's face: The Feds.

A boyish drug company entrepreneur, who rocketed to infamy by jacking up the price of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was arrested by federal agents at his Manhattan home early Thursday morning on securities fraud related to a firm he founded. 

Martin Shkreli, 32, ignited a firestorm over drug prices in September and became a symbol of defiant greed. The federal case against him has nothing to do with pharmaceutical costs, however. Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he’d been chief executive officer, and sued by its board. 

In the case that closely tracks that suit, federal prosecutors accused Shkreli of engaging in a complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements. A New York lawyer, Evan Greebel, was also arrested early Thursday. He's accused of conspiring with Shkreli in part of the scheme. 

Shkreli’s lawyer and a spokesman for Retrophin didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Greebel and his firm weren’t immediately available to comment either. A spokeswoman for Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers did not immediately respond to a call and e-mail seeking comment. 

Shkreli’s extraordinary history—and current hold on the public imagination—makes the case more noteworthy than most involving securities fraud. The son of immigrants from Albania and Croatia who worked as janitors and raised him deep in working-class Brooklyn, Shkreli both epitomizes the American dream and sullies it. As a youth, he showed exceptional promise and independence and, after dropping out of an elite Manhattan high school, began his conquest of Wall Street before he was 20.

I hope the SEC lawyers have a field day with this asshole and he gets the full Bernie Madoff. Couldn't have happened to a nicer aggregate colony of sentient fungus, I say.  More truth from Steve M.:

Nothing terrible happens to you in this country if you shaft ordinary people. We saw that after the financial collapse. Shaft members of the investor class, however, and you really might face the law's wrath. Ordinary schmucks aren't full citizens. Want justice? Buy financial instruments. If you can't, tough luck -- the law doesn't care what happens to you. 

Shrkeli screwed the wrong people, so I suppose he really could go to prison. However, I expect him to play the "troubled white guy" card, in court and possibly in the media. All the "bad boy" nonsense -- the incessant boasting, the taunting tweets, the $2 million purchase of that one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan CD, the claim that he seeks to bail out imprisoned rapper Bobby Shmurda and also might pursue a rap career of his own -- I predict is going to be presented in court as a textbook case of bipolar disorder, or some condition on the autistic spectrum, that impairs Shkreli's judgment and renders him less than fully liable for his own acts. 

We know that blacks arrested for violent crimes are always "thugs" and Muslims are always "terrorists," whereas even white guys who commit mass murder are "loners," "troubled" and "misunderstood." Will Shrkeli try to play the "troubled" card? It might not work, but that's what I'm betting on.

What's good, Martin?

StupidiNews!

• A mistrial has been declared for the first of six police officers tried in connection with the death of Freddie Gray as Baltimore jurors could not agree on any charges against William Porter.
• Fed Chair Janet Yellen says the first interest rate hike in seven years is "extraordinary" as the Fed raised short-term interest rates by a quarter-point Wednesday.
• FBI investigators say they have found no evidence that the couple who killed 14 in San Bernardino earlier this month were part of a larger terrorist cell.
• Aircraft giant Boeing has won a $10 billion order from China Southern Air as Asia's largest air carrier will add more than 100 Boeing 737 jets to its fleet.
• This week's $1.1 trillion budget deal did not end funding to implement FCC net neutrality rules, opponents are instead relying on an industry lawsuit to kill the measures in 2016.

Last Call For More Gunmerica

For the first time that I can remember, Americans are now against even the most basic bans on automatic weapons. Fear now rules this country.

A majority of Americans oppose banning assault weapons for the first time in more than 20 years of ABC News/Washington Post polls, with the public expressing vast doubt that the authorities can prevent “lone wolf” terrorist attacks and a substantial sense that armed citizens can help. 

Just 45 percent in this national survey favor an assault weapons ban, down 11 percentage points from an ABC/Post poll in 2013 and down from a peak of 80 percent in 1994. Fifty-three percent oppose such a ban, the most on record.




Indeed, while the division is a close one, Americans by 47-42 percent think that encouraging more people to carry guns legally is a better response to terrorism than enacting stricter gun control laws. Divisions across groups are vast, underscoring the nation’s gulf on gun issues. 

There’s lopsided agreement on another concern: Just 22 percent express confidence in the government’s ability to prevent lone-wolf terrorist attacks, with 77 percent skeptical about it. Confidence in the government’s ability to stop a large-scale organized terrorist attack is much higher, albeit still well short of a majority -– 43 percent.

Even as recently as last year, there was still a healthy majority for doing so.  No longer in the era of Trump and Cruz, as a majority of Americans now believe they are action heroes who think the purpose of a firearm is to "kill bad guys" and not to protect a home/family or to hunt.

And of course, increasingly the people with the guns get to define who the "bad guys" are.

The increase in opposition to banning assault weapons since 2013 peaks in some groups – up 18 points among strong conservatives, 17 points among higher-income earners and 16 points in the generally more liberal Northeast. But it’s a broadly based trend. Many groups have moved from majority support for an assault weapons ban two years ago to majority opposition now: whites, 30- to 64-year-olds, suburbanites, political independents, moderates, residents of the West and Midwest, anyone without a post-graduate degree and those in $100,000-plus households.

These trends leave just seven basic demographic groups in which majorities still support banning assault weapons: women, Northeasterners, seniors, post-graduates, liberals, Democrats and blacks.

Differences among groups are extensive. Barely more than a third of men favor banning assault weapons, compared with more than half of women (35 percent vs. 53 percent). Seniors are most likely to favor banning assault weapons, while – despite their greater liberalism on many other issues – nearly six in 10 young adults oppose it. Opposition is high in rural areas (64 percent) and among those who lack a college degree.

Two observations: unprecedented fear in the 24/7 BREAKING NEWS era is exhausting, and Democrats shouldn't count on Millennials, particularly white ones, as a source of voters in the future. They've made their bed, especially white men.

Cruzin' To Get Trumped, Con't

Add Vox's Andrew Prokop to the growing list of pundits who see a GOP nomination that comes down to Trump vs. Cruz as a massive win for the Democrats in 2016.

Let's be clear on the political stakes here. It is not impossible that Trump or Cruz could win a general election. But there's ample reason to believe that a Trump or Cruz nomination makes all of the following far more likely: 

• Sweeping electoral defeat for Republicans, for the presidency and in the Senate atleast (some Democrats have even suggested to me that the House could be put in play) 
• Either a liberal takeover of the Supreme Court or a missed chance for conservatives to pad their majority (since four of the court's nine justices will be older than 80 when the next president is inaugurated) 
• A tarnishing of the GOP's image among Hispanics that will last a very long time. (This is obviously true for Trump, but Cruz is also far further to the right on immigration than any modern GOP nominee.) 

With so many other options available, nominating either Trump or Cruz would be a tremendous risk to take for a party that has any interest in winning. 

And yet somehow Trump and Cruz have ended up first and second in the polls, with one of them leading Iowa and the other ahead in New Hampshire. 

Yes, the GOP saw several extreme or seemingly unelectable candidates surge to first place during the 2011 nomination contest, but establishment favorite Mitt Romney ended up winning. Yes, past examples like Howard Dean show a poll leader really can collapse very quickly. 

Is the establishment really still willing to assume that two poll leaders will just collapse? Two poll leaders who not only have excited voters but who each has access to tens of millions in cash?

And again, there's a number of conservative pundits who are betting just that: that both Trump and Cruz will collapse and clear the way for someone like Rubio to win.  That number is shrinking, however, as more of the right are looking to choose sides between Trump and Cruz.

Still, I'm liking the Dems' chances against Cruz or Trump.  The winner here will be so ridiculously far to the right and the fight so well publicized that come next fall, the Democrats will be in a very powerful position.

Granny Starver's Revenge

The largest Republican effect on our country in 2016 isn't going to come from Trump or Jeb or any of the 2016 candidates, even the ones in the Senate currently.  It's House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has a budget plan that will starve Obamacare of tens of billions heading into an election year and it looks like nervous, cowardly congressional Democrats will throw the President's signature legislation under the bus yet again.

The Speaker told rank-and-file Republicans that they won more victories in the tax package than in the $1.1 trillion omnibus funding bill, which has been largely stripped of the policy amendments that Republicans wanted, according to a GOP lawmaker in the room.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the tax package provides $560 billion through breaks that will no longer expire — and $650 billion in total tax relief — over 10 years.

The text of that bill, which runs more than 200 pages, was posted online just before midnight.

Several lawmakers who heard the presentation said the omnibus includes a two-year delay of the Cadillac tax, something senior officials in the Obama administration opposed.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) made an all-out push for including the Cadillac tax freeze, which is a top priority of labor unions, whose members would be hit especially hard by it.

The deal also includes a five-year extension of tax breaks for wind and solar energy companies, something Democrats wanted.

It extends the 30 percent solar investment tax credit and a credit for solar-powered energy efficient properties for three years before phasing it down the final two.

The deal also extends the wind protection tax credit for two years before phasing it down over three years until the 2022 expiration date.

In exchange, Republicans have secured language in the omnibus that would lift the ban on exporting crude oil from the United States that has been in place since the 1970s.

Ryan emphasized that many popular business tax provisions, including the research and development tax credit and the Section 179 small-business expensing deduction, would be locked into law by the agreement.

Democrats in turn won provisions that would keep the 2009 expansions of the child tax credit, earned income tax credit and American opportunity tax credit for college tuition, all core pieces of President Obama’s stimulus law, on the books indefinitely.

It's good to have tax breaks for green energy and for low-income families, as well as for college tuition, but the notion that exporting crude oil will lower prices here in America is ridiculous, and it just means the production of even more fossil fuels that need to remain in the ground in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

And the Cadillac plan tax was put in to lower insurance costs and raise money for Obamacare subsidies.  Republicans already broke co-ops and high-risk poll funding with the last omnibus spending bill, this one will only make it worse.

This is a terrible bill, and the GOP will win because the alternative is shutting down the government at Christmastime, an untenable position.

The real problem is that Paul Ryan is Speaker.  Perhaps we should put more Democrats in Congress in 2016, yes?

StupidiNews!

• Republican will pass another short-term funding deal today in order to hold a final vote on a 2016 budget measure later this week that will fund the government through next year.
• The city of Flint, Michigan has declared a state of emergency after finding lead pollution in the water of the Flint River to be unsafe.
• Los Angeles schools are expected to reopen after officials determined a terror threat that shut down the entire school system Tuesday was a hoax.
• The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006 today amidst collapsing commodity prices and junk bond markets.
• More than 100 teams will be competing to design pods for SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" high-speed passenger tube service in January.

Embracing Your Inner Fascist

While I'm busy not watching the GOP debate tonight, here's a look at the kind of Iowa voter backing The Donald, and yep, he's everything you think he is.

Bruce Goacher, a repo man in a camouflage cap and oil-smudged jacket, praised Donald Trump as he drove his flatbed through Davenport on his way to seize a delinquent borrower’s car. 

Trump’s call for barring Muslims from entering the United States may have sparked an international uproar, but it only reinforced Goacher’s support for the Republican Party’s top contender for president. 

“He says let’s not bring nobody here until we get to the bottom of it,” Goacher said Tuesday over the rumble of the tow truck’s engine. “I agree 100 percent.”

Men like Goacher are the main reason Trump has sustained his lead in the Republican presidential race for six months. Poll after poll has found that white men with no college degree are among the New York tycoon’s most avid supporters.

Angry middle-aged white guys are pissed, America.

And they vote.

To Goacher, Trump’s swagger and blunt talk of a more forceful America offer hope in dangerous and unstable times. He admires Trump’s “no-bull attitude.” 

“I think he’s writing all his own stuff, ’cause it’s too off the wall for anybody to write something like that,” he said the day after seeing Trump at Davenport Speedway, where Goacher used to race stock cars. 

As for Trump’s agenda, Goacher likes it all, starting with immigration. “He’s not going to deport everybody — just illegals,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with that.” Echoing Trump, he said some were “robbing and killing to survive.” 

Goacher mentioned a local company that charges “8, 10 grand” to replace a roof. “OK, there’s a boatload of Mexicans come by, and you can get it done for 2 or 3 grand. They’re not from here. That’s hurting the businessperson that’s here.” 

As a successful owner of a tow truck company, Goacher sees some of himself in the former star of The Apprentice. When repossessing a car, it’s best to dodge contact with the owner, Goacher explained. But when it’s unavoidable, the ability to size people up quickly is essential. 

“It’s either that or get screwed,” he said. “I can look at somebody, in 30 seconds of talking to them, I can tell you whether they’re a con … or they’re a pretty decent person.” 

Trump, he said, uses a similar talent on a grander scale. “He thinks a lot like me.”

Angry Middle-Aged White Guy now finds himself in a country with a black president and same-sex marriage, where being a 56-year old repo man with a tow truck doesn't exactly make you super rich.

But he knows who to blame, Mexicans and Black Lives Matter and feminism and gays and he'll be damned if he doesn't use what's left of his power to smash those groups flatter than a pancake so he's still king of the hill.

Trump's his man.  Laugh all you want to, poke all the fun in the world at him, but guys like Bruce here and his buddies are goddamn sure they're gonna vote in November.

Oh For Pete's Sake, Baseball!

It's official: the talk here in Cincy is all about how baseball's new commissioner Rob Manfred will continue Charlie Hustle's lifetime ban on baseball.

The decision by Manfred, who succeeded Bud Selig as commissioner last January, comes less than three months after he met with Rose, 74, at Major League Baseball’s headquarters on Park Avenue in Manhattan to discuss his latest bid for reinstatement.

It was the third time that Rose had appealed the ban, which was first instituted in 1989 after an investigation by baseball, known as the Dowd Report, concluded that Rose had bet on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds and that some of the bets had been placed on his own team.

In a report that accompanied Manfred’s decision to uphold the ban, he said Rose informed him at their September meeting that he had continued to bet on baseball, which he can legally do in Las Vegas, where he lives.

That disclosure clearly concerned Manfred. So did what Manfred described as Rose’s inability, at the meeting, to admit that he not only bet on games as a manager but also as a player. Manfred said that recently obtained evidence in that regard — a notebook containing records of bets Rose placed on games in 1986 — contradicted statements Rose made about betting during their meeting.

He also said that Rose, at the meeting, could not seem to remember other facts concerning his betting habits as a player.

“In short,” Manfred concluded in the report, “Mr. Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing, so clearly established by the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989.”

But...and this is a BIG but...there is hope for Cooperstown, still.

However, in his report, Manfred did distinguish between the continued ban on Rose and his eligibility for the Hall of Fame, noting that as commissioner he did not have the authority to determine whether Rose belonged in Cooperstown or not.

“In fact, in my view, the considerations that should drive a decision on whether an individual should be allowed to work in baseball are not the same as those that should drive a decision on Hall of Fame eligibility,” Manfred wrote.

Any debate over Mr. Rose’s eligibility for the Hall of Fame is one that must take place in a different forum,” Manfred added. 

In other words, the Baseball Writers Association of America are the ones who determine who gets into the Hall, and Manfred is clearly tossing that baseball-shaped grenade into their camp to deal with it.   They voted to ban him from eligibility nearly 25 years ago, so Rose needs to take that up with them.

Whether or not the BBWAA will take another vote in order for Rose to get a shot at the Hall, who knows, but at this point it looks like at least MLB isn't going to budge.  I can't imagine the writers doing it either.

I wouldn't hold your breath for Rose to get in anytime soon.

 

The Worst Accountants On Earth

It's nice to be a federal legislator, especially a US Senator, because whenever you get caught taking too much in bribes lobbyist contributions you can always call a mulligan.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker had not properly disclosed millions of dollars in income from real estate, hedge funds and other investments until last Friday, according to a Sunday evening report from The Wall Street Journal. The Republican senator said these were oversights he has since corrected.

“I am extremely disappointed in the filing errors that were made in earlier financial disclosure reports,” the Tennessee Republican told the Journal in a statement, after the newspaper had queried his office about his past financial reports that it said contained irregularities.

Corker, who is the third-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, did not properly disclose at least $2 million in income from investments in three separate hedge funds in Tennessee, as well as millions of dollars in income from commercial real estate investments because of an accounting error, and millions of dollars in various other assets and income from transactions.

According to the report, Corker filed amendments to his previous personal financial reports on Friday.

“After completing a full, third-party review, we have corrected this oversight,” Corker said in his statement to the newspaper, adding that he had hired an accounting firm after the Journal began making inquiries.

Now, if you and I failed to disclose millions of dollars in income over seven years, the IRS would have put you away for tax fraud.  But he's a Senator, and a powerful one, so the rules don't exactly apply, do they?

"Filing errors" for the goddamn win.

StupidiNews!

• Saudi Arabia is forming a coalition of Sunni Muslim nations to band together to fight terrorism across Asia and Africa.
• Seattle's City Council unanimously passed legislation to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize, something the ride-sharing companies say is illegal under federal law.
• President Obama is expected to approve the sale of Perry-class guided missile frigates to Taiwan before the end of the year, a move China calls "interference" in its internal affairs.
• Star Wars Episode VII is expected to open in more than 4,100 theaters in December, a record for the holiday season, and to have the largest box office opening weekend in history this week.
• Concerned that their internal batteries may overheat and catch fire, airlines are now banning "hoverboard" devices from all flights.