- It’s going to take time, people. Honestly, we’re never going to get to the point where enough justice can be done to even out all the horrific, douche-baggish things that O.J. Simpson has done. That tends to be the case when you (allegedly, almost assuredly) murder two people by attempting to detach their heads from their bodies with a knife, lie about it, write a book about how you (would have) murdered them if you had been the killer, kidnapped and robbed people at gunpoint and seemed contrite and repentant about none of it. However, Judge Jackie Glass is trying to right the ship, and as the presiding judge in the Juice’s most recent run-in with the law, she is at least making a dent here. Already, she’s sentenced O.J. to as many as 33 years in prison on kidnapping and robbery charges, but Judge Glass isn’t stopping there. On Friday ordered footballs, pictures and other memorabilia in evidence from the case shipped to the Los Angeles County sheriff. The shipment represents most of the sports memorabilia seized by authorities in the Juice’s case and is headed to California and, eventually, to Fred Goldman. The decision to ship the memorabilia complies with a turnover order signed by a California judge as part of the judgment in the Goldman family’s civil suit against O.J. for the murder of their son, a case the Goldman’s won but miraculously never received their multi-million-dollar judgment from the Juice. He was too busy looking for the real killers on golf courses, in Las Vegas hotel room, etc. to get around to paying up the $33.5 million judgment against him. Now, the Goldman family will attempt to get justice through that most time-tested and honored of venues for righting wrongs - eBay. An attorney for the family says they are considering selling the items online to recoup as much of the $33.5 million as possible. "Sheriff's sales are traditionally distress sales, to be very polite," attorney David Cook (no, not that tool from American Karaoke - I don’t think) explained. "We are going to try to obtain an order from the court to authorize this stuff with evidence stickers attached (to be sold) on eBay, America's yard sale. Hopefully, somebody will be enthralled enough to try to buy the football that put O.J. behind bars." Honestly….the Goldman’s should be pretty pumped about this development, because the notoriety O.J. has gotten from this most recent case should bump up those auction prices quite a bit. Until he robbed those memorabilia dealers in Vegas, he was just becoming a largely forgotten punch line in this country. Now, his name is back in the forefront and people may actually pony up for items he used to own. It may be a small step in the process and it doesn’t come anywhere close to atoning for all the Juice has done, admitted to or otherwise, but this is a marathon we’re running, folks, so just try to be patient…….
- Crap. Now I’m mildly disappointed that Sarah Palin won't be our nation’s next vice president. No, I didn’t suddenly begin believing that Palin would be a great second-in-command for the world’s most powerful nation; I just would have had fun watching the new administration deal with a major family drug controversy for one of its members before officially taking office. You may remember Palin’s eldest daughter, Bristol, the one who got knocked up and is set to become America’s latest teen mother. Well, it turns out that her future in-laws are, well, what you might like to call white trash. It’s a harsh label, but what else do you call a grown woman who raises a son that a) becomes a teen parent, and b) gets busted on six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance? That’s not what I call classy living, folks. Sherry Johnston is the white trash in question, and it’s her son that is having a baby with the daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Just a free piece of parenting advice for Bristol and her fiancé Levi …..you may not want to let Grandma Johnston babysit, assuming she’s not behind bars anyhow. While I can understand how living in a town like Wasilla, Alaska, where Johnston was arrested in her home this week, may drive a person to do drugs and lots of them (sorry Alaska, but too much cold, too much snow, too much winter), you need to be smarter about it than this. Apparently police had been conducting an undercover investigation that "had been going on for a while," and Johnston was caught up in it. At this point police would not describe the type or amount of drugs involved in the arrest, saying that doing so "could hamper the investigation." In other words, they’re going after bigger fish and Johnston is just a low-level user. Even so, we haven’t had a great drug-addled relative in Washington since Roger Clinton, so in that sense it’s a shame that Palin won’t be taking office next month……
- You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t quite understand why Atlanta Braves president John Schuerholz is so pissed off about not signing Rafael Furcal. For some odd reason, Furcal was the subject of a pitched battle between several Major League Baseball teams, not notably the Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers, both of whom fought to sign him to an exorbitant contract that he won't ever come close to living up to. This is the same Rafael Furcal who has fattened up significantly the past couple of years, made 34 errors in his last two seasons at shortstop and become such a liability at his original position that the Dodgers moved him to second base, right? The Rafael Furcal who batted a smoldering .270 in 2007, his last full season before playing only 38 games this season because of repeated injuries, right? This is the guy you’re battling to sign? That answer, sadly, is yes, as the Dodgers won the Furcal sweepstakes with a 3-year, $33 million contract after it had been reported that Furcal had already agreed to a contract with the Braves. The experience pissed Schuerholz off so much that he has vowed to never again do business with Rafael Furcal's agents, whom Schuerholz accused in an interview of conducting "despicable" dealings with the team. Schuerholz and Braves general manager Frank Wren claim that the Wasserman Media Group, representing Furcal, negotiated dishonestly by taking the team's signed terms of agreement sheet for Furcal to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who then reached a preliminary agreement Wednesday to re-sign the shortstop. According to Wren, he believed that when agent Paul Kinzer made the request by for a term sheet signed by the Braves, the two sides had reached an accord and were formalizing the agreement. Instead, the Braves allege that Furcal and his agent used their offer to extort a few extra dollars from the Dodgers and sign with them. Now, Schuerholz says that he will never again make an offer for any player represented by the agency, which includes Kinzer and agents Arn Tellem, Adam Katz and Joel Wolfe. "Having been in this business for 40-some years, I've never seen anybody treated like that," Schuerholz fumed. "The Atlanta Braves will no longer do business with that company -- ever. I told Arn Tellem that we can't trust them to be honest and forthright. I told him that in all my years, I've never seen any (agency) act in such a despicable manner.” For his part, Tellem, who heads up his agency’s baseball division, disputes the Braves’ version of the story. "There was never an agreement reached between Rafael Furcal and the Atlanta Braves," Tellem said in a statement Thursday. "In fact, the Braves were fully aware that Furcal was not prepared to make a decision but had requested an opportunity to sleep on it before deciding." Tough to know who to believe here, because both sides in these negotiations are known for fudging the truth to help their case. What I do know is that the Braves should be ecstatic that they didn’t wind up with Furcal, because they would have been wasting a lot of money for a wildly overrated player who can neither stay in shape nor stay healthy, not to mention he’s one of the biggest infield defensive liabilities in baseball…….
- When I hear news like this, it just makes me cringe. For a business that does so much good in this world, the drug business sure does find itself on the receiving end of a lot of persecution. After all, do you know how many tens of millions of people make their living off of drugs or receive enjoyment from using them? Sure, lots of people die in the process, both on the business end and on the user end. Yes, many other go to jail and throw away their lives in their quest for their next fix, but to focus solely on that would be to lose sight of the big picture, which top officials from both the United States and Mexican government seem to be doing right about now. Representatives from both nations met this past week at the State Department to discuss the Merida initiative, a U.S. program to help Mexico fight drug trafficking and organized crime. Not surprisingly, given the abortion the past eight years have been with a certain Moron-in-Chief in the Oval Office, this program comes as part of a $1.4 billion plan, proposed by W. in 2007, funds training, equipment and other assistance for Mexican law enforcement. Astonishingly, it doesn’t (to the best of my knowledge) includes plans to invade Mexico or anyone else, which is unusual for any W. plan, internationally-slanted or otherwise. But Congress recently approved an initial $197 million, which the W. administration then made available to Mexico this month. “The United States and Mexico have reaffirmed a commitment to enhanced partnership, cooperation, training, assistance [and] information-sharing, built on the premise that we have a shared responsibility to confront these criminals and protect our citizens, and that success requires increased cooperation,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after the meeting. Also in attendance were Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Office of National Drug Control Policy chief John Walters. Great, bring out the big guns, slam them in a conference room with some doughnuts, fruit plates, coffee and have them sit through an endless string of Power Point presentations, solid idea. But I ask again, why overreact? While there has been an increase in drug-related violence in Mexico over the past year, with much of it attributed to turf battles between rival drug gangs, let’s not react too hastily. Any business has its dirty side, and I like to think that these killings and rampant violence are just a sign of how much these drug cartels care about the role they play in the world’s economy. That fact has eluded Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting the drug cartels a priority for his administration. Dude has really gone psycho on this one, unleashing federal police and soldiers in several states across the country and clamping down on money laundering and corruption among local and municipal police forces. Jeez Felipe, who doesn’t like clean money? I’m sure you don’t like dirty money, nor do I, so why so harsh on those who would take dirty money and turn it into clean money? I really, really don’t get this whole crusade against drugs, money laundering and corruption. Then you have Rice, claiming that the U.S. is focusing on decreasing demand for those drugs coming across the Mexican border. Good luck with that one, C. You’ll rid this country of addicts right around the time you rid it of stupid idiots with a low enough IQ to be rabid fans of American Karaoke, i.e. never……..
- Not so smug now, are we Canada? You can mock the U.S. economy, the sagging value of our dollar and the massive bailouts for the auto and banking industries in this country, but it appears Americans aren’t the only ones who are bailing out the companies that build its cars. No, Canada will also be providing $3.3 billion in aid to its automotive sector, living up to a promise to provide 20 percent of what the U.S. government offered automakers. Just like Detroit rlies on the auto industry to sustain its local economy, the same is true for places like Ontario, Canada, where nearly 400,000 residents "rely on the auto industry so they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads," said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who made the announcement along with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "What the prime minister and I are saying today is that those people and their jobs are worth fighting for," McGuinty added. That’s fine, I’m glad you’re stepping up to help those in need and to keep your economy afloat, I just hope you all will remember this the next time you feel like taking a pot shot at the U.S. economy. You’re not that much better off, even if you insist that the aid you’re providing is "not a blank check," and that “conditions will be attached” to the short-term loans. Of course, your economy has had the benefit of not being overseen by a complete brain-dead tool the past eight years, so you do have a leg up on America there. But a new day is dawning here come January, so perhaps we’ll have a chief executive who is at least mildly competent and intelligent. Speaking of the brain-dead tool…..on Friday, W. announced a rescue plan for General Motors and Chrysler LLC that will make $13.4 billion in federal loans available almost immediately. By giving out this money, the U.S. Treasury Department has committed virtually all of the $350 billion of the total $700 billion it can hand out without additional congressional authorization. One humorous note to the proceedings on the Canadian side was Harper saying that Canada is taking a "holistic approach along the supply chain.” Wait, I didn’t know you all were going to align your economic shakras, smoke some ganja, get baked and wear beanies woven by stoners while sitting in a dingy, earthen office and giving each other dreadlocks, count me in. Maybe this economic bailout isn’t such a bad thing after all…..
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