More criminal fun for U. of Oregon football, I take the tools of the Coffee Party to task and Riot Watch! in Togo

- And the hits just keep on comin’ for the University of Oregon football program. By hits, I don’t mean their linebackers drilling opposing running backs or quarterbacks on attempts inside draws or their safeties belting opposing receivers who venture across the middle to snare a pass on a crossing pattern. No, I’m referring to the growing succession of UO players pleading guilty to crimes and finding themselves suspended for varying lengths of time for the upcoming season. The Ducks took their biggest hit yet when quarterback Jeremiah Masoli has been suspended for the upcoming season by coach Chip Kelly after pleading guilty to second-degree burglary in the theft of a pair of laptops and a guitar from a campus fraternity. Masoli will be banned for the entire 2010 season, but Kelly will allow him to remain on scholarship and use a redshirt for the season. In the same case, former Ducks receiver Garrett Embry also pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree burglary. They join kicker Rob Beard, who recently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge after shoving a woman to the ground and then getting his ass kicked by two of her friends at a bar in Eugene, and running back LaMichael James, who has been suspended for the season opener after he pleaded guilty Friday to a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from an altercation with his former girlfriend. So the team will be without its Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback for the entire season, without its star running back for the first game and likely without its kicker for a game or two. Oh, and the Ducks seem to have issues with violence against women, which is also not good. Misogyny is never an admirable quality in a football team and neither is pilfering lappers and video game systems from campus frat houses. Masoli pleaded guilty as part of a deal that reduced his charge from a felony to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to 12 months probation and 140 hours of community service. He must also pay $5,000 restitution. The real question now is who will be the next Duck to get arrested before the season begins and also whether Kelly will have enough players left to field a team by the time the season kicks off……….

- How’s about this? We all agree to stop having political parties/movements named after beverages you can order at your local café? If I can order something in a foam cup and with a stirring stick, it should not be the name of any sort of political group or initiative that is looking to make an impact on the nation’s governance. I say this specifically after hearing about a group of ass hats who call themselves the Coffee Party. Leaders of this ill-fated movement held 350 to 400 events at coffeehouses across the country Saturday. The Coffee Party has gathered some steam online, but the nationwide Saturday meetings were the first time these tools have met one another face to face and hopefully they were all as horrified as I would be to meet any of them. "We need to wake up and work hard to get our government to represent us," says Annabel Park, the movement's founder. Park created her joke of a political party in response to what she perceived as media overexposure of the conservative Tea Party movement. She commandeered her Facebook page to call for the creation of an anti-Tea Party movement and disenfranchised losers came a flockin’. Park set up a fan page called "Join the Coffee Party Movement" and the group has approximately 115,000 fans, most of them coming in the past 15 days. Gee, I wonder if all of this undeserved attention over nothing has gone to Park’s head and if she will blow things totally out of perspective with some sort of hack, twisted reference to a major historical event that has nothing to do with her lame excuse for a political party? "Just like in the American Revolution, we are looking for real representation right now. We don't feel represented by our government right now, and we don't really feel represented well by the media either," Park said last week." "It's kind of a simple call to action for people to wake up and take control over their future and demand representation and it requires people standing up and speaking up." Yup, she is going to do that. Bad news for you, Park. You are nothing like any group during the Revolutionary War because those people were fighting to establish independence from a foreign nation and fighting for their very lives. You and your minions are a group of lazy fools who “organize” on Facebook, meet in coffee houses and whose sole purpose is to refute the ideology of another equally mindless group of idiots who are equally irrelevant and not an actual political party. Just because you, Annabel Park, worked as a volunteer for then-Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign and Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia's 2006 campaign, does not mean you have the qualifications or competence to organize a significant political movement. People may be giving your little Facebook posse attention, but don’t think anyone is taking you seriously or that you are going to have any actual impact on the political process. Just challenge the knobs from the Tea Party to a back-alley brawl, Anchorman-style, and leave the rest of us out of it…………

- For those of you who are big Broadway fans and also fans of the music of legendary entertainer Ray Charles, a new musical coming to Broadway this fall will offer the best of both worlds. "Unchain My Heart" will open Nov. 7 with preview performances beginning Oct. 8 and will be based on Charles and his music. It will be produced by Stuart Benjamin and will feature a book by Suzan-Lori Parks and direction by Sheldon Epps. There is no official cast list at this point, although you know that Epps and Benjamin have a few ideas in mind. Parks worked with Ray Charles for 15 years and produced "Ray," the hit movie about the late singer’s life. Jamie Foxx starred in that movie but you have to doubt that he would have the time and interest for any sort of extended Broadway run to reprise the role. An earlier version of the musical called "Ray Charles Live" was produced at California's Pasadena Playhouse in 2007, so clearly there is something about Ray Charles’ life that captivates the theater world and makes those in that world want to bring his story to the stage. Not to speak for anyone else, but I think that being the entertainer and showman he was, Charles would have definitely enjoyed seeing these musicals and loved the fact that his music would be impacting people long after he wrote and recorded it. Even though I’m not a Broadway fan in any sense, I do love the idea and hope that “Unchain My Heart” has a long and successful run…………

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Today is a big day in Togo, the African nation where backers of Togo's opposition leader gathered today in the city of Lome to publicly protest and denounce the disputed reelection of President Faure Gnassingbe. While disputed elections are fast becoming a clichéd reason to protest or riot, anything that gets people to take it to the streets and stick it to The Man is cool with me. Leading today’s riot efforts was opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, who claims he was robbed of victory by Gnassinghe in March 4 presidential elections. Fabre said he expected a "massive" turn-out in his support at the rally and he was right as hundreds showed up for the rally organized by supporters of his Union of Forces for Change (UFC). What I love about the UFC is that its party headquarters are located in the capital's working-class Be district. If you’re going to have an opposition movement, you need to base it in a working-class, blue-collar area where the average man surrounds you. Fabre’s supporters were easy to see in their yellow t-shirts and making it all the easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys, backers of the president were rallying in a downtown location and wearing white tee-shirts. Police knew of both protests in advance and made a concerted effort to keep pro-government and opposition supporters apart. With large numbers of security forces out in force, there was unfortunately no chance for a repeat of Tuesday’s melee in which an opposition protest in Lome, attended by several hundred people, ended with angry protestors clashing with security forces, who in turn used tear gas to end the festivities. Prior to that great scene, last Sunday riot police did their best to quash a demonstration by more than 200 opposition supporters. The issue boils down to claims by Fabre’s party and three other smaller opposition parties that the results of the presidential poll which officials say was won by Gnassingbe with 60.92% of votes are illegitimate. Fabre went with the predictable allegation of electoral fraud and when no investigation was imminent, he and his supporters decided to force the issue. So riot on, UFC, riot on…………

- Google and Cisco have both announced plans to improve Internet speeds for users around the nation over the past few weeks and now the government is looking to join the party. The Federal Communications Commission is proposing a 10-year plan that will revise the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s primary communication network. The plan will be submitted to Congress on Tuesday and should become an immediate target for the country’s telecommunication giants, which could see their market share cut. The first battle over the plan has already commenced, with the broadcast television industry refusing to give back spectrum the government wants to use for future mobile service. But battle or no battle, there is no disputing the fact that broadband Internet is fast becoming the common medium of the United States. The telephone and broadcast television industries are being relegated to outsider status and the FCC must now shift its focus and adjust accordingly. Included in the new plan are a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service. No doubt the first thought many Americans will have is how much this plan is going to cost and if you believe the FCC, that’s not a huge issue because the plan should pay for itself through the spectrum auctions. Having said all that, this plan is going to be like any other bureaucratic endeavor in that it will be dragged out over a period of years and is nothing to worry much about at this point. It would be swell if we could resolve this quickly, what with the United States lagging far behind most other world powers in terms of high-speed Internet service. At present, one-third of Americans have no access to high-speed Internet service, cannot afford it or choose not to have it. Without broadband wiring, the best gadgets and apps are dragged right down into the mud. The aspect of the plan that I am most looking forward to is the all-out, bare-knuckles brawl that is going to break out between the FCC and companies like Comcast and AT&T once the plan begins moving forward. Companies that largely control Internet pricing and speeds are not going to give anything up without a fight. But the FCC claims it can make some important changes on its own, including reforms to the Universal Service Fund, which spends $8 billion a year from telephone surcharges to ensure that rural and poor people have phone lines at home. Ultimately, the FCC is hoping to free up roughly 500 megahertz of spectrum, much of which would come from television broadcasters, which would be compensated if Congress acts. Among the more exciting components of the plan from a user’s standpoint are the parts that call for some of the spectrum to become unlicensed so it can serve as a test bed for new technologies and an initiative called 00 Squared — equipping 100 million households with high-speed Internet gushing through their pipes at 100 megabits a second by the end of this decade. This is a major, major undertaking and it will undoubtedly make a lot of people - especially tech-fearing senior citizens who believe that computers are the devil - very uneasy, but for those who have embraced the whole 21st century thing should be just fine…………