Thursday, September 25, 2008

Finally a U.S. torture trial, finally Matt Millen is fired and a new candidate for most despicable crime

- Two not-so-surprising things finally happened yesterday, things we’ve all been expecting for some time but just haven’t come to fruition. One is a long, long, long overdue firing of one of the worst executives in the history of professional sports, while the other is the official outing of a dude that we all knew was absolutely, undoubtedly gay from the moment he first appeared on a TV set. I’m referring, of course, to Messrs Matt Millen and Clay Aiken. Millen has taken the Detroit Lions and turned them from one of the NFL’s most mediocre franchises into its absolute worst. He’s drafted horribly, made ill-advised free agent signings and hired coaches who have proven to be inept at best. Because of the inexplicable, other-worldly loyalty of the Ford family, which owns the Lions, Millen has managed to keep his job despite a 24-75 record. Now, he’s finally out after the Lions have fired out of the gate to an 0-3 start this season. It’s a firing that should have happened long ago, if for no other reason than Millen was alienating the team’s fan base and turning them off to the team. Seriously, what other executive in sports do you know who inspires fans to stage walkouts during games to protest their continued employment with the team? Millen had to go, and while it may take the Lions years to recover from his tenure, it is still the right move. Equally long in coming was the announcement that the waifish, effeminate karaoke-er Clay Aiken is gay. No way! You’re telling me that a guy who is about as masculine as a Hello Kitty pillow, Care Bears and lavender-scented candles mixed with pixie dust is gay? What’s next, revealing that Mark Mangino is fat or that Angelina Jolie likes adopting kids from Third World countries? Not that coming out will hurt Aiken’s career; it’s been a joke from the second he stepped on stage as an American Karaoke contestant. His music blows, it’s the most offensive kind of bubble-gum pop imaginable and that doesn’t change whether he’s gay or straight. So thanks for confirming what we all have known for a long, long time, C.

- Coaches – especially football coaches – are known for their cryptic, CIA-like secrecy and willingness to speak only in clichés and coach-speak that reveals next to nothing. Listen to any coach, college or pro, and you’re like to hear phrases like “one game at a time,” “focused on what we can control,” “play well in all three phases of the game,” and so on. That’s what makes Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach so awesome; dude is cut from a different cloth and he is a character with character. Leach is a colorful guy who has a motorized talking pirate in his office, collects art and as of this week, was heard helping out a freshman Red Raider with some impromptu dating advice on Leach’s radio show. When the student called in with a questions about what to do for a first date, Leach responded with some real pearls of wisdom. First, take your date to a restaurant that doesn't offer salad so she can’t just nibble on lettuce and try to pretend to be some demure, salad-eating person that she’s not. Second, continue the night by visiting a place with “bizarre-looking characters.” That way, if the conversation lags, you can always chat about the freaks around you. And lastly, exchange "computer schemes" at the end of the date. Better still, when asked about the topic again on a national sports radio show several days later, Leach suggested a Mexican joint located at or near a car wash in a Southern California town as a good place for a first date. When asked by the host if he had really just advocated taking a date to a car wash, Leach responded, “Well, I would.” This guy is an absolute beauty and I sincerely wish there were more coaches like him out there…..

- I’m pissed right now, and with good reason. Nothing chafes me more than pirates, the alleged badasses of the high seas, acting in decidedly un-piratey fashion. For a prime example of this, let’s turn to the situation featuring Somali pirates who seized a Ukrainian vessel loaded with tanks and weapons off the African coast and demanded a $35 million ransom. Now that’s a good freaking ransom demand, $35 million. That says something. It says, “Dammit, I’m a pirate…arrrgggh! And shiver me timbers, I’m demandin’ an insane ransom that you’ll pay or you’ll walk the plank!” However, a markedly different statement is made when those same pirates lower their ransom demand to $5 million. That message would be that these are not legit pirates, that they are sellouts who have compromised all that pirates stand for and that they are insults to their profession. And no, I don’t care that they allegedly have reasons for decreasing their ransom demands by more than 85 percent. Those reasons include that the crew is from eastern Europe and not the United States, the weapons the ship carries are secondhand, and there is no way to unload the tanks without coming onto land. Great, except for one thing: you’re pirates! If all else fails, blow all of the cargo up, make the crew walk the plank and make a daring escape. The seized vessel, Faina, was flying a Belize flag and was headed to the Kenyan port of Mombasa after departing Nikolayev, Ukraine, when it was seized by pirates. The ship was carrying 33 Soviet-made T-72 tanks, tank artillery shells, grenade launchers and small arms being sold to Kenya by the Ukraine, The ship deliberately took a route far from the coast of Somalia, where pirates are known to operate, but as everyone knows, you can't keep good pirates down. These pirates doggedly pursued the ship and took control of it, but now they are majorly wussing out. I am extremely disappointed in these guys and I’m seriously starting to wonder about the future of pirating and where all of this is headed…..

- It’s hard to imagine a worse crime than trying to hire hitmen to kill your mother, but I think Nikita Lee Weis of Fountain, Colorado may have found just such a crime. Weis, 18, is alleged to have hired men to kill his mother for the most despicable of reasons - so he could use her money to get breast implants for his girlfriend. He has now been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, but it doesn’t appear that dude got his money’s worth from this scheme. Weis' mother, Hyun Weis, was attacked Thursday with a small wooden baseball bat at her home but escaped and was released Friday from a hospital. What kind of hitmen are you hiring whose method of killing is a small wooden baseball bat? What, you fellas can’t afford an aluminum bat? What happens if the bat snaps off at the handle like all of those wooden bats are doing lately in Major League Baseball? But back to Nikita Weis….arrested along with this piece of crap were girlfriend and intended recipient of those implants, Sophia Nicole Alsept, and two hitmen said he hired, Juan Antonio Velez Gonzalez, 18, and Brandon Michael Soroka, 19. These three were also arrested on the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Apparently the plan was for Weis to sell his mother's car and use money in her bank accounts to pay for breast implants for Alsept, 21. As for disposing of Hyun Weis’ body, the suspects discussed wrapping Hyun Weis' body in plastic and dumping it in the desert in New Mexico or Arizona. Great plan there, and with such capable, intelligent participants, hard to see how it didn’t work out…..

- Amazingly, someone tied to alleged torture is going to be on trial in these here United States. No, it’s no one from the W. administration being tried to torturing terrorism suspects and lying about it, or conducting waterboarding sessions at secret CIA prisons on foreign soil. It’s the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor Sr., who goes on trial Monday in Miami, Florida, in the first court proceeding of its kind -- testing a 1994 United States law saying those accused of committing torturous acts overseas can be tried in a U.S. federal court. Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr. was actually born in Boston, but eventually moved to Liberia when his father was named president of the country. With the senior Taylor currently standing trial in The Hague, Netherlands, on war crimes charges, his son will make it a father-son criminal trial smorgasbord come next week. Charles Taylor Jr., also known as Charles McArthur Emmanuel, is no stranger to the American judicial system. He pleaded guilty to passport violations and served 11 months in prison when he arrived in Miami from Trinidad. Then in 2006, while he was awaiting sentencing on the passport violations, he was indicted by a grand jury and charged with conspiring to commit torture, committing torture and the use of a firearm while committing a violent act in Liberia. I hafta say, it doesn’t look good for Taylor this time around, as attorneys elicited gasps when they described gruesome details of the alleged torture during jury selection. Prosecutors are expected to levy “allegations of burning people with clothes irons; allegations of shocking genitals with electrical charges; allegations of cutting genitals; allegations of forcing people to sodomize each other; allegations of cutting off people's heads and displaying the heads.” These charges stem from allegations that under his father's Liberian presidency, Taylor became the leader of the Anti-Terrorist Unit and the Liberian National Police - groups accused of abducting, torturing and killing individuals. Judge Cecelia Altonaga has said she expects the trial to last less than two months and if found guilty on all charges, Taylor -- or Emmanuel, as he is referred to in court -- could face a sentence of up to life in prison. Now if we can just get around to trying those in our government who have been heavily into the torture business….

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