- If it walks like a dictator, talks like a dictator and I’ve been calling it a dictator for years, odds are that it’s……wait for it…..a dictator! Venezuela, I know this is not news to you, but Hugo Chavez is a freaking despot and has been ever since he took office. The man has been in office for 11 years and acted like an oppressive dictator for every single one of them, so it’s certainly no surprise that Chavez moved on Tuesday to bypass parliament and rule by decree for a year in South America's biggest oil producer. Even holdouts who have been loathe to climb on board the dicator wagon and recognize Chavez for what he is has begun to come around and they are now joining the angry mob hurling accusations of behaving like a dictator at Chavez. It is the fourth time Chavez has officially used the power to bypass parliament and run the country by his own decree and this time, he insists that he needs them again to deal with a national emergency caused by floods that have killed about 40 people and left almost 140,000 homeless. It’s a very opportunistic move, seizing upon a natural disaster to invoke a power that he intends to use for something else entirely and initially, use his new power to do a small bit of good before turning it into a weapon to push his dictatorial agenda. Sadly, the head of parliament admitted that the "Enabling Law" that would let Chavez govern by decree would be approved by Friday. The law allows him to issue all sorts of unilateral decrees across a wide range of areas including housing, land, finances and security. Those possibilities have private banks and property owners alike bracing themselves for another wave of nationalizations and governmental overbearance (my word, created just now). "He is winning time with the tragedy to put limits on the new National Assembly," opposition politician Pastora Medina warned. "He is consolidating himself as a dictator." In the parliament, a newly united opposition coalition won about half the popular vote at a parliamentary election in September to take 40 percent of seats in a new Assembly that will convene on January 5. They had hoped to immediately reign in Chavez's power, but Chavez beat them to the punch by asking the outgoing parliament on Tuesday to grant him fast-track decree powers for 12 months. Because the legislature is currently dominated by members of his ruling Socialist Party, the request is expected to be quickly approved. Chavez, anticipating that result, immediately declared that the powers could extend for up to 18 months. Wall Street took the development in stride. All of this raises some scary questions about how Chavez will handle it in two years if he loses the next election. My guess is that he will entrench himself in the presidential residence, stock up on weapons and have the idiot with the gall to defeat him executed………
- Mood determines so much about life, from our approach to solving problems to how we deal with people around us and nearly everything in between. According to not one, but two separate new studies, being jazzed up about life could actually assist in performing better at certain tasks and being more creative. The first study, published in the latest issue of everyone’s fave psychological journal, Psychological Science, exposed participants to music clips and YouTube videos that were supposed to put people in specific mood states. For some odd reason, researchers figured that a video of a laughing baby would put people in a positive mood, watching "Antiques Roadshow" TV show would produce neutral feelings and a news report of a Chinese earthquake was negative. Participants watched these videos along with music characteristic of one of these three moods, then had to do a task that involved learning a rule to categorize a particular pattern. What researchers at the University of Western Ontario found was that the "happy" participants performed better than "sad" or "neutral" volunteers at this task. In other words, watching a happy YouTube clip may turn you into a more creative, productive person. Gee, who would have guessed that bored, indifferent or pissed-off people wouldn’t do as well on tasks requiring focus? A similar study by researchers at Northwestern University found that humor was key to people's ability to solve puzzles. One of the study’s lead authors, neuroscientist and noted ladies man Mark Beeman, said after concluding the study that he thinks "that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections” to solve puzzles. Previously, Beeman and colleagues conducted brain-imaging studies of people who are about to do a puzzle prior to actually seeing the task. What they found was that people’s brains have a particular mark of activity associated with positive moods when faced with such a task. Those are the same people who are more likely to use their insight to solve puzzles. Putting two and two together, using humor can supposedly get your brain into a state conducive to successfully completing puzzles and similar tasks. So keep laughing, watch funny and positive YouTube clips and you too can be a puzzle-solving, problem-solving dynamo………
- Awwwwwwwwkward. There is simply no better description for the new head-coaching arrangement for the football program at West Virginia, where current coach Bill Stewart is being slowly forced out because athletic director Oliver Luck believes the Mountaineers cannot win a national championship under Stewart. "I didn't believe we had an opportunity to win a national championship with the direction of the program," Luck said. "At the end of the day, results matter. And we weren't getting the results. I want our Mountaineer program and expect us to compete at the highest levels." So if your goal is winning a national championship and you don’t believe your current coach can get you there, then you have only one logical choice, right? You have to fire him. Umm, not exactly. See, you can instead come out and give your current head coach a vote of no confidence, hire his eventual replacement and then expect that current coach to spend the next year leading the team with the new guy peering over his shoulder as offensive coordinator. Thus, enter Oklahoma State's Dana Holgorsen as West Virginia's head coach in-waiting, scheduled to replace Stewart prior to the 2012 season. Luck held a news conference Thursday to address the hiring. The gathering took place just five months after he took over as athletic director. Luck said he met with Stewart on Nov. 14, the day after a 37-10 win over Cincinnati, and expressed his concerns. He first met with Holgorsen on Nov. 23 and feared that Holgorsen, whose name had cropped up for several coaching vacancies, could end up somewhere else as a head coach. "I wouldn't want to prepare against his offense," Luck said. "I wanted him to be at this university to lead us in the long term. He is, I think, one of the outstanding l coaches in college football today and I wanted him at WVU because I do think he can lead us to a national championship." So to go over the situation for West Virginia football for next season, Holgorsen will be paid be paid $800,000 in 2011 -- which will increase to $1.4 million, plus incentives, in 2012 - and Stewart will serve an entire season as a lame-duck coach. Normally, programs and teams look to fire a coach before he becomes a lame duck and thus unable to exert any real influence or authority on his players. Luck is not only putting up with such an arrangement, he’s actually creating one intentionally. As for Stewart, Luck said that there were two options for a coach who is 28-11 and earned a Big East co-championship this year, but has no BCS bowl berth in his three seasons. Stewart could either resign after the current season, or he could stay on for one more year. But Luck magnanimously elected to let Stewart keep his job next season after the Mountaineers finished with four straight wins. Stewart will take an undetermined administrative post in 2012. "I think coach Stewart did a marvelous job toward the second half of the year," Luck said. "We went on a great win streak, and I thought he deserved the head coaching position for the 2011 season." The AD then had the balls to say that he doesn't foresee a conflict between Holgorsen and Stewart next season. "Bill Stewart's the head coach," Luck said. "There's no question about that. Dana Holgorsen's the offensive coordinator, just like Jeff Mullen was this past season." Right, except that Jeff Mullen wasn’t about to force Stewart out of his job and into some paper-pushing administrative position within the next 12 months. Other than that, the two situations are EXACTLY the same……..
- The New Hampshire attorney general's office and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Whereas they may have a beef with a Massachusetts lab (allegedly) recruiting über-hot female models to wear black high heels, black skirts and white lab coats to get people to submit to expensive bone marrow tests, I have so such concerns. "Their activity was described as very flirtatious. They would attempt to bring in especially younger men. There was some indication they were handing out their phone numbers," New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Jim Boffetti said. And the problem is? Look, if a guy is governed by his hormones to the extent that he’s willing to submit to and pay for expensive and invasive testing just because some hit chick flirts with him and gives him her number, then he deserves what he gets. There is no need to ban the Caitlin Raymond Bone Marrow Registry from operating in New Hampshire while the attorney general's office investigates its practices. New Hampshire Attorney General Michael Delaney made that gem of an announcement. This entire saga came to light when Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas brought to light what looked like excessive bills for mouth swabs done by the registry. The attorney general’s office investigated and uncovered what they believe to be deceptive tactics used by models hired by UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, Mass., to work in malls to get mouth swabs from potential donors. "Consumers who are approaching the Caitlyn Raymond kiosks are being told that the process will cost you nothing, yet we have uncovered that it is impacting those consumers that have health reimbursement accounts," Delaney said. The most impressive and jaw-dropping part of this story (other than the hotness of the models posing as medical assistant) is how much UMass Memorial Health Care allegedly spent to hire them. Delaney estimated Wednesday that the company may have spent as much as $4 million on the models during the past 18 months to recruit donations for the bone marrow registry. Never mind that it’s for a good cause, Delaney and his crew want answers and them want them now. Boffetti seemed particularly agitated by the fact that the models "were given specific instructions as to what they could wear." He was adamant about that point and said the hired models told some people they would pay nothing for the swab test while their insurance was billed from $100 to more than $4,000. Now that I have a big problem with. It’s one thing to play to people’s superficiality and hook them into tests they don’t want or need, but lying right to their face about how much they will pay is bogus. "Where the money went, what consumers, if any, had to pay monies based on misrepresentations and what tactics were going forward," Delaney said. I don’t know if this is possible, but the best idea would seem to be splitting the investigation and letting go of the push to punish UMass Memorial Health Care for using hot chicks to sell its services while pursuing the case against them for lying about how much those services would cost……….
- Is it a case of “times are tough for everyone” or of hip-hop stars looking to boost their street cred with some new additions to their rap sheet? I can't decide, so let’s examine the facts of the case. First, Waka Flocka Flame's Georgia home was raided this morning amidst reports that police are investigating possible prostitution as well as evidence of gangs and drugs. Additionally, rapper Gucci Mane was cuffed in relation to the same prostitution ring, although it’s not clear if these two fine, upstanding gentlemen of hip-hop are involved in the actual operation of the prostitution/drug ring or if they were, um, customers. What we do know is that Waka Flocka's mother/manager, Debra Antney, said that her son wasn't at home when the cops came knocking with their warrant, but that if he doesn't show up soon, cops will issue an arrest warrant. Law enforcement in Hery County refused to confirm any of the details being reported about the raid and arrests, although that is simply S.O.P (standard operating procedure) when it comes to ongoing investigations. More details will begin leaking out soon enough and we’ll know whether Waka Flocka Flame and Gucci Mane are truly proving that pimpin’ ain’t easy or simply caught up in soliciting members of the world’s oldest profession while also dabbling in some high quality Colombian nose candy and/or hippie lettuce. Personally, I’m hoping for the former………
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