- Behold the power of the riot! After four months of rioting, protesting and clashing with police, Argentine farmers have won their battle against Presidente Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and forced her to cancel a massive export tax on agricultural products. The 44-percent tax on soybeans, corn, wheat and sunflower seeds was excessive from the start and wiped out much of the profit margin for the farmers. Had the tax been a more reasonable percentage, something in the 10-15 percent range, all of this could have been avoided. As is, Chief of Cabinet Alberto Fernandez revealed in a television address that the president had signed a decree removing the tax after the country’s Senate had voted against it in a very close vote. The tax went into place on March 11 and farmers wasted no time in taking it to the streets, blocking highways and preventing goods destined for Europe and Asia from making it to port. President Fernandez had previously rejected pleas to repeal the tax, calling the actions of the farmers “extortion.” When they stood tall and didn’t give in, it was The Man finally surrendering to the will of the people. Riots work, folks, and for that reason I continue to support, salute and celebrate them.
- Hey hey, soccer has finally done something good here in the United States. For years, all the sport has given us is a gaggle of kids under the age of 12 kicking the ball around haphazardly, playing in games where no score is kept so as to not hurt the feelings of the losers, downing orange wedges and Capri Sun after games and riding home in mom’s minivan. Yes, there have also been second-rate attempts to pro soccer leagues wherein past-their-prime Euro stars have been imported in a vain attempt to establish soccer as a legit sport in the U.S., but that’s not much of a contribution. Well, we now have a tangible contribution to our nation’s welfare thanks to the current second-rate soccer league here in America, Major League Soccer. This past Thursday, an American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles was disrupted and diverted to Oklahoma City when a male passenger stripped nude, put his clothes back on and attempted to open one of the plane’s emergency exit doors. Aboard the plane were members of the New England Revolution, an MLS team of no repute. Clearly these soccer players weren’t fazed by this outlandish behavior; after all, for soccer fan, stripping and disrupting a vehicle of mass transit it just a warm-up for the big game. Several Revolution players got out of their seats and subdued the disruptive passenger, allowing the plane to land safely in Oklahoma City. The whack-a-doo who caused the chaos was escorted from the plane and given a mental health evaluation while the plane continued on to L.A. Thank you for your help keeping our nation safe, soccer players. Now if we could only get you to stop pretending like you’ve been shot by an Uzi or severely electrocuted every time someone so much as breathes on you during a game, we’d be golden….
- Lightning is wreaking havoc in Russia and the government thinks it knows who to blame. No, not the weather itself, source of the lightning, but rather the very people being injured and killed by lightning strikes. With a dozen people injured or killed by lightning strikes in the past two weeks, weather officials in Russia are fingering the use of high-tech gadgets by victims as the main cause of the trouble. Among the devices receiving blame are cell phones and MP3 players. “These things are electromagnetic field carriers. That makes them, in essence, conductors. Thunderbolts are attracted to such things,” declared Leonid Tarkov of the weather observation center FOBOS. Unfortunately for Leo and likeminded Russian officials, nearly every scientist on Earth has denounced this concept because the extremely small electromagnetic energy given off by your cell phone or iPod is not enough to trigger a lightning strike. Aside from having a metal object on your person, which does pose some threat, Tarkov’s claim is just another lie coming from a person in power in Russia. While he fingers those who have been harmed, people like Marina Sodykova, 26, are dying. She was among three sunbathers in the city of Neftekamsk who were struck and killed by lightning last Wednesday. The three victims were laying out at the beach on the banks of the Kama River, some 800 miles east of Moscow, which bolts of lightning struck the beach and raised 25 feet of sand. Sodykova was talking on a cell phone at the time she was killed, with her phone found melted in her hand. This is just an all-around scary situation, but with that being said how about we try to stop blaming the deceased, Russian officials…..
- I’ll make this blunt and to the point for the tools in programming over at ESPN: poker is not now, has never been and will never be a sport. It has no place on a sports network or any other TV network for that point. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let me say for the eight billionth time how incredibly lame televised poker is. Again, dudes sitting around playing card games is not a sport because it involves no athletic ability. If I can drink, smoke, weigh 450 pounds and have 40 percent body fat and still play your game just as well, it’s not a sport. If it involves no running, jumping, lifting, tackling, kicking, throwing, vaulting, hitting of a ball, swinging, shooting or punching, it’s not a freaking sport. If it requires no athletic ability at all, it’s not a sport. Why the rant, by the way? Because the ass clowns at ESPN are bringing back a summer staple, the World Series of Poker. The 2008 version of this pathetic event is sponsored by an appropriately crappy beer, Milwaukee’s Best. Personally I’d have gone with Natural Light or Boone’s Farm, but whatever. Regardless of the sponsor, the event will still features pathetic, out-of-shape dorks with specialized sunglasses, rocking gawd-awful Hawaiian shirts and trying to act like they’re total bad-asses because they can win a hand in a card game. These tools are under the mistaken impression that they offer something to society and that they’re actual, legitimate athletes that people look up to. Hey knobs, YOU ARE NOT ATHLETES. You’re not on par with A-Rod, Kobe, Shaq, Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods or Randy Moss. Not only could you not carry those guys’ jocks, you’re not qualified to sniff their jocks or do laundry with their jocks in it. You play a glorified game of Go Fish and get idiots to pay you for it. You’re a collection of fat, degenerate, reject slobs that I wouldn’t watch on TV if I were given the choice between suffering a session of waterboarding or watching you. Go away, get off my TV and realize how totally and utterly inconsequential you and your little card tournament are…..
- Boy has it become a major hassle to import quality cocaine into the United States. Gone are the good old days when crime bosses like Frank Lucas could pack their blow into caskets that were supposed to be flying deceased U.S. servicemen back from Vietnam. Nowadays, our government has become extremely cranky and temperamental about people trying to bring coke across U.S. borders. So what does the Department of Homeland Security do when some inventive, ingenious entrepreneurs come up with a great new way to get around the rules and laws forbidding them from importing their product? They arrest these brave pioneers and seize their stash, that’s what. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff revealed Friday that American intelligence (obviously W. wasn’t involved if there was actual, accurate intelligence) led the legendary Mexican navy to capture a small submarine packed with 5.8 tons of cocaine off the coast of the southern state of Oaxaca. Major bonus points to the drug smugglers for procuring their own submarine, that has to be tough. Maybe next time try and get your hands on a stealth bomber so you can avoid capture. Just jam your bricks of coke into an empty bomb casing and drop them somewhere in the desert. Just looking to help out, that’s all…..
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