- So I still have no idea why Dick Cheney is still talking or why anyone is listening to that tool, but at least he’s giving us plenty to mock by continuing his tour de idiocy. After years of anyone with an IQ above 47 ripping the W. administration’s decision to invade Iraq and start a war that we’re still struggling to end and W. defending that decision by saying it was due in large part to battling terror after 9/11, Cheney admits that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks. In other words, the justification the American people had crammed down our throats at the time is now being dismissed by one of the very men who was force-feeding it to us. Oh, and how noble of Cheney to also defend the W. administration's decision to invade Iraq by arguing that Hussein's previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11. Sounds pretty flimsy to be, Mr. “I Shoot Friends in the Face on Hunting Trips.” Tell us how you really feel, jackass. “I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true.” That’s all you’ve got to say about that? “It turned out not to be true?” How’s about an apology for using that rationale to interject is into a war that had no business existing? You wanting to label Hussein as "somebody who provided sanctuary and safe harbor and resources to terrorists” doesn’t fly, because if we were to invade every country whose leaders fit that description, we’d have a few dozen invasions on our hands by now. I’m not sure what’s funnier: that Cheney is doubling back on this issue now or if he expects anyone to believe him when he insists that "there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It's not something I made up. ... We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor -- a state sponsor -- of terror. It's not my judgment. That was the judgment of our [intelligence community] and State Department." Yes, but the judgment you are now doubling back on was a similar judgment and a few years later, you’re admitting you were wrong, yet you want us to believe you on one and not the other? Oh, and big ups to Cheney for throwing former CIA Director George Tenet under the bus by calling him the "prime source of information" on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Anything to keep from owning your own mistakes, eh Dick? But what the hey, let’s give this clown a chance to redeem himself by commenting on yet another issue he has no business commenting on because HE’S NO LONGER THIS COUNTRY’S VICE PRESIDENT, namely the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center. Cheney called Gitmo a "good facility.” Good how? Good in that it did a good job depriving detainees of basic rights granted them by the Geneva Convention? Good in that it did a good job holding accused men without giving them due legal process? If that’s what you mean by it being a good facility, then I wholeheartedly concur. But again, we’d all be better served if Dick Cheney would realize that he is no longer Vice President Dick Cheney, shut his pie hole and as Mike Tyson would say, fade into Bolivian……
- I feel pretty confident in saying that Denver Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall is not a great guy. I’ve never met Marshall, never spoken to him and to the best of my knowledge, never been any closer to him than the 100 miles or so between Cleveland and my hometown when his Broncos played the Browns two seasons ago. However, when a guy has been arrested five times and police have responded to calls involving him 13 (yes, a freaking baker’s dozen) in the past five years, you’re not dealing with a very good dude. These are the facts being reported by ESPN's "Outside the Lines," which detailed seven reported incidents of domestic violence between Marshall and longtime girlfriend Rasheedah Watley. Marshall went on record as claiming that he has never, ever physically abused his lady. "I've never put my hand on Rasheedah Watley," Marshall said. Problem is, that doesn’t jive with what Whatley is saying, namely that Marshall once choked her on the bed. “Like, really, really choked me," Watley said. Watley’s claims are much easier to believe once you’ve heard the tapes of the 911 calls in which Watley claimed that Marshall allegedly blocked a taxi cab carrying Watley from leaving his apartment complex and another from Watley's friend after she reportedly tried blocking Marshall from leaving a hospital parking lot. If the claims these women are making have even a small component of truth to them, then Marshall isn’t just a bad guy; he’s a raging, borderline-psycho loose cannon. The scariest incident has to be the one that prompted Watley’s friend to call 911 after the incident in the hospital parking lot, during which Marshall allegedly rammed her car with his sport utility vehicle and threatened to throw a rock at her car. However, don’t paint Watley as a completely innocent victim in all of this. According to published reports, Marshall's attorney received an e-mail from Watley's attorney asking for $100,000 in exchange for no charges being filed and a subsequent e-mail requesting $500,000. “It's evident this is clearly about money," Marshall said. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, B. Just because your former girlfriend might be a greedy scammer doesn’t mean that you aren’t also guilty of the charges against you. I’d say the truth is somewhere in the middle of what Marshall and Watley are alleging of one another and that this was an all-around dysfunctional relationship in which both parties were guilty of a whole lot……
- I guess the tough economic times in the United States aren’t quite tough enough - yet - to convince some good Samaritans to take advantage when life hands them a huge opportunity. You’d think that with entire industries capsizing and needing government bailouts and millions of ordinary Americans barely able to sustain their families, everyone would be willing to take a nice, fat, free handouts from life. But if two good Samaritans in Syracuse, New York are returning more than $275,000 that tumbled out of an improperly secured armored truck last week, that must not be the case. Yes, a few opportunistic souls did reaffirm my faith in the me-first, whatever-is-necessary nature of America by walking away with another $60,000 that fell onto the street, but the fact remains that some 82 percent of the cash that fell from a Brinks armored truck was returned. What is this, America or Pleasantville, where all is good, honorable and old-fashioned? Dammit, when more than a dozen bags of money are inadvertently strewn on the ground in front of the Syracuse Antiques Exchange, I expect their to be an all-out bum rush by everyone in sight to grab that cash and run. If the Brinks guards are careless enough to allow bags of money to slip out of an open door on the side of the truck proceed to their intended destination, a Brinks facility a few blocks away, without noticing, then they forfeit their right to expect that money to be returned. Much of the fault has to go to David Jenks, the owner of the antiques shop, and Hanson Herring, who had just gotten a haircut at a nearby barbershop, Cuttin Up. They were the first to arrive on the scene and although Herring said at first he thought the bags merely contained garbage, what he did next is the real garbage. Once he realized there was money inside, everything from coins to $100 bills, he had a choice to make. Unfortunately, Herring and Jenks made the wrong decision from a personal gain standpoint. The two men then began to round up the bags and load them into plastic postal bins. As always happens in these situations, word quickly spread in the area that hundreds of thousands of dollars lay in the street. Within minutes, people streamed out of passing cars and adjacent businesses and sadly, most of them joined in the recovery effort. Eventually, Herring, Jenks and their legion of do-gooders recovered $276,160 divided among 14 bags. Police aren’t sure if the two bags containing some $60,000 that are still missing fell from the truck at an earlier point along its route, or whether someone at the scene of the spill escaped with them. And yes, I realize that it is grand larceny, a felony, to keep a sack of money one chances upon. However, I also realize that all Hanson Herring received for his efforts was a T-shirt and a gold coin commemorating Brinks Co.’s 150th anniversary. Some reward, H. I’m just not sure I want to live in a country where people do the right thing and turn down the chance to make themselves significantly richer simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time……
- The University of Florida: irony resides here. It was in Gainesville that UF student Andrew Meyer became a household name by causing a disturbance at a town hall meeting for Sen. John Kerry and getting roughed up by campus police, leading to the infamous, “Don’t Tase me, bro!” clip that has been viewed on YouTube millions of times since. So it’s fitting that Florida Gators starting cornerback Janoris Jenkins was arrested over the weekend and hit with a Taser blast by Gainesville police. Gainesville Police spokesman Lt. Keith Kameg says police saw Jenkins punch another man in the head shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday outside of (where else?) a club. When officers arrived on the scene and told Jenkins to stop fighting, he refused and that’s when the Tasers came out. What’s amazing is that even after that Taser blast, Jenkins still tried to run away from the cops. Guess they didn’t have the electrodes jacked up to full force, otherwise Jenkins would have been violently convulsing on the ground instead of trying to get away. And why did this fight start in the first place? You just know there’s a good reason for two dudes to be brawling outside of a club at 2 a.m. on a Saturday, right? That reason would be Jenkins thinking someone was going to steal the gold chain around his neck. Oh, well if you thought that someone was going to steal your bling, then it’s all good. Did you read that person’s mind to find out, maybe see it in their eyes or did they actually say, “That’s a nice chain, I’m going to thieve it from you,”? Whatever spurred these two Mensas to lock horns, Jenkins was the one who couldn’t manage to get himself under control once the cops showed up. He’s the one who got him with a Taser blast (and no, I don’t know if he yelped, “Don’t Tase me, bro!”). Just a word of advice for my man Janoris, but once the cops show up and they pull out their Taser, feel free to view that as the opportune time to cease any illegal behavior. I don’t care if you’re a 350-pound defensive lineman who can bench press 450 pounds (which Jenkins isn’t), you’re not standing up to a Taser blast. What you will be doing is getting arrested and charged with fighting and resisting arrest. It almost doesn’t matter if Jenkins is found to have acted in self-defense, as his attorney Huntley Johnson says, and if prosecution is deferred or charges dismissed. People aren’t going to remember that the charges ultimately went away; they will remember that yet another UF football player was arrested for acting like a thug and that he got Tasered. I doubt UF head coach Urban Meyer will suspend Jenkins for this incident because that’s just not what happens at football factories like Florida, not when the player in question was named to the SEC Coaches' All-Freshman Team last year and became the second true freshman in school history to start at cornerback on opening day. Hopefully, Janoris Jenkins learns a lesson from this incident and this goes down as the first and last time he’s on the wrong end of a Taser, but for some reason I doubt it will be……..
- The sad state of the American economy may not be enough to spur some citizens to abscond with bags of money that fall from a moving Brinks truck, but it is enough to spur companies and entities associated with popular summer destinations to offer Americans a bit of a break. Both concert promoter Live Nation and the federal government are getting in on the act by offering their own variations on fee-free activities. Live Nation announced this week that it will offer fee-free tickets to select Wednesday concerts throughout the summer, meaning that the ticket handling charges you normally have to pay to see your favorite band will go bye-bye on certain Wednesdays this summer, always a good thing. The best place to check on these shows is your local music venue, assuming you live near a venue large enough to hold a Live Nation-promoted concert. You can also skip the fees if you are visiting one of America’s 147 National Park Service sites that charge entry fees on the weekends of June 20 and 21, July 18 and 19, and August 15 and 16. Fees for these sites range from $3 to $25, but for these three weekends you’ll finally get a break from fees. Couple that with the new law passed by Congress allowing you to carry a concealed weapon into a national park and I don’t see a single solid reason not to make a beeline for your nearest national park site on one of the three weekends I just mentioned. No fees, freedom to bring your Glock or 9mm AND a chance to enjoy the beauty of nature? Win-win, amigos. Clearly the government hopes that the elimination of fees will boost attendance and provide a jolt to the economies of the areas in which the parks are located, which is fine I suppose. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salaza made the announcement about the fee-free weekends on Tuesday at a news conference at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. “National parks also serve as powerful economic engines for local communities, and we hope that promoting visitation will give a small shot in the arm to businesses in the area,” Salazar said. If his theory is correct, the move could help the national parks system surpass the more than 275 million recreation visits it recorded in 2008. All sarcasm aside, I am a big fan of the national parks system and definitely encourage you to get out and experience one (or more) for yourself if you have the chance……..
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