- I didn’t know the French had it in them to riot and actually show some testicular fortitude, so kudos to the Frenchmen who rioted following the election of the country’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s policies and alliances are already in question, as he is seen as too U.S.-friendly and frighteningly brutal on crime and immigration. Still, the Socialist Party, which was defeated in the just-completed elections by Sarkozy and his followers, appealed for calm and an end to the rioting (cars burned, storefronts smashed, the usual) that took place after the election results were announced. Why quash the enthusiasm, I have to ask? This is the most life and toughness the French have shown since……….well……pretty much ever. Granted, they were attacking cars and windows, which can't fight back, but still, everyone has to start somewhere.
- Ah, those wacky Islamic militants and their nonstop crusade for jihad. In a remote region of Pakistan, these radicals are trying to eliminate any and all music, in its varying forms and mediums, that doesn’t promote their radical hateful way of thinking. They began their crackdown in the region of North Waziristan, a mostly lawless frontier region that has been partially cooperative with the Taliban. Were I a resident of this region, I would be doubly pissed, first about having my tunes ripped, but secondly about the mandate that only music promoting the jihad agenda will be allowed. I mean, do you have any idea, Islamic militants, how hard it is to find good jihad songs on iTunes? You type in “jihad” to the search bar in iTunes and the pickings are slim, guys. For whatever reason, the music industry just isn't eager to crank out hits promoting radical, violent, large-scale religious warfare. It’s crazy, I know, but have you ever tried to rhyme with jihad? It’s almost impossible.
- Apparently Zimbabwe is African for “Los Angeles East”, because police in that nation have decided to employ the exact same tactics that the LAPD uses against protestors. Riot police in the nation’s capital used riot sticks to beat down dozens of lawyers who gathered outside Zimbabwe’s High Court on Tuesday to protest the arrest of two colleagues. Usually there’d be a line of people wanting to whack a lawyer, but this is not that kind of situation. These lawyers were fighting the mistreatment of two of their own and were deliberately disobeying an order by President Robert Mugabe to cease any sort of demonstration and the accompanying warning that police have the right to snuff out any sort of dissent. Giving props to lawyers goes against my instincts, but I’ll make an exception here and salute the Zimbabwean lawyers for taking a stand against The Man.
- There’s a reason the Rusted Steel Sandwich and the Sharp Piece O’ Iron Burger haven't become staples on the menu at Cracker Barrel restaurants nationwide. After a customer eating a hamburger at a Myrtle Beach, S.C. location of the national chain cut her mouth on a piece of metal in her sandwich, Cracker Barrel pulled hamburgers from hundreds of its restaurants nationwide. I’ve heard of people planting severed fingers in food in an attempt to extort money from restaurants and consumers trying to say that they found hypodermic needles in their cans of soda, but this is a first. I have a hard time figuring how a piece of metal could find its way into a hamburger with no one noticing. Wouldn’t you feel a hard, sharp piece of metal in the meat as you cooked it on the grill? Americans may need more iron in their diets, but I don’t think this is the kind of iron that the FDA is referring to.
- Curt Schilling always has something to say about any issue he’s asked about, and usually the Boston Red Sox pitcher sticks his foot in his mouth and ends up apologizing. This time, though, I wish he wouldn’t have apologized, because he’s said out loud what most of America is thinking about everyone’s least-favorite ‘roid-head, Bar-roid Bonds. Schilling said in an interview that Bonds had cheated the game of baseball, he had cheated on his taxes and he had cheated on his wife, all of which are pretty much true. But as is the custom in sports nowadays when anyone has the balls to speak out and tell the truth instead of spout clichés, Schilling got heat from those around him and backed off his statements the following day. Normally I’d be the first to rip someone for making such comments about a person he or she barely knows and attacking said person’s character, but this isn't just any person we’re talking about here, it’s the biggest cheater in sports….ever. Everyone, everywhere, whether they know Bonds or not, should be free to rip him 24/7 because he’s lied to, bullied and disrespected the game and those in it and is about to break the game’s most respected record on the strength of something a chemist cooked up in a laboratory instead of his own abilities.
- Testing baseball players for steroids and other performance enhancers might not be enough anymore, we might need to start testing these guys for something far more dangerous: stupidity. I say this in light of the news that New York Mets minor league pitcher Jorge Reyes has become the first player to receive MLB’s 100-game suspension that comes with a second positive test for ‘roids. It’s bad enough when you’re either enough of a cheater to deliberately take steroids once or dumb enough to take them unintentionally as a part of some kind of supplement that you don’t bother to learn the ingredients of, but a second test just means you’re either a huge, huge cheater and can't help but be dishonest or you’re really, really stupid and just don’t realize that you’re going to ruin your career if you keep doing what you’re doing. Considering that Reyes is only at the Class A level, the lowest level of the minor leagues, you have to think that the Mets aren't going to keep him around based on his proclivity for performance enhancers and his blatant cheating. Way to submarine your career before you even advanced to the majors, J., hope that was worth it to take those ‘roids.
- Speaking of cheaters in sports…..this one involves not a player, but rather a coach. Someone entrusted with shaping, molding and instructing young men in both football and life shouldn’t be trying to defraud their university out of thousands of dollars, but Eastern Carolina University assistant football coach Donnie Thompson doesn’t appear to be bound be integrity or ethics. Thompson has been arrested and charged with one count of obtaining property by false pretenses after a scam in which he submitted more than $11,000 worth of fraudulent receipts to ECU for reimbursement. Thompson claimed he’d spent the money for expenses while out recruiting, but the $11,373.70 worth of purchases he claimed were from false receipts that he had created. Way to set an example for your players, Donnie, to show them that character counts.
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