- In case you were wondering, Jimmy Fallon still has a late-night show. Fallon, who is on long after those who watch late-night talk shows have already seen their Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno or Jon Stewart, is hanging on and apparently struggling for legitimate guests. Otherwise, how does one explain his decision to have floundering Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann on his show Monday night? Bachmann showed up to theoretically talk about her run for the Republican nomination while it still has at least a .0000000000000001 percent chance of being successful and had a tongue-in-cheek musical surprise waiting for her courtesy of the show’s house band, socially conscious hip-hopsters The Roots. Roots' drummer and cofounder Questlove and his bandmates have never been shy about mixing politics with music and prior to Bachmann’s appearance, he tweeted, "Aight late night walkon song devotees: you love it when we snark: this next one takes the cake. ask around cause i aint tweeting title." Given the band’s avid support of President Barack Obama, it wasn’t difficult to surmise what the band was up to and when Bachmann appeared from backstage for her interview on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, she was greeted with a riff from the song "Lyin' Ass Bitch!” from legendary ska-punk outfit Fishbone. It was a pretty deep pull for all but the most rabid ska-punk fans, but a few musically savvy souls picked it up and word began circulating on Twitter. Not much of the song was discernable outside of the "la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la" refrain and Bachmann clearly had no idea what song the band was playing. Questlove later added a wink-wink hint to his Twitter feed by including a link to the Fishbone album on the iTunes music store, adding: "take a guess. buy the record anyway. its classic and should be in your vocabulary." Neither a rep for Bachmann nor NBC responded to a request for a comment on the situation, but Fallon did take notice. "@questlove is grounded," Fallon tweeted. Why? Grounded for being hilarious and awesome, apparently………….
- Make sure you pull through, Carmel, Ind. residents, because you sure as hell are not allowed to back your vehicle into parking spaces around town any more. Any time Carmel visitors and residents park their ride in one of the city-owned parking garages around town, they will henceforth be forbidden from backing in to park spaces as per a strange parking proposal passed by the city council at Monday night's meeting. Council members voted in favor of banning the practice so people won't get stuck waiting for a car to back into a space and be late for an event. Suggesting that people don’t be colossal asses who show up at the last minute and thus find a parking spot in plenty of time obviously never occurred to the council, nor did the longer amount of time it will take drivers to back OUT of spots and thus HOLD UP THE PERSON WAITING FOR THAT SPOT. Going in or coming out, it’s going to have to be backing up one of those times, Carmel council members. There are currently three garages in the city with another two planned, but anyone wanting to duck the ban may not have all that difficult of a time. The city will attempt to enforce it by posting signs throughout the garages and restriping spaces in order to make it more difficult to back into them. You’re just adding a little extra degree of difficulty to the challenge, council members, nothing more. Those who choose to fight for their right to back in will still find a way and in the end, they will prevail. You will have wasted your time on a nonsense ordinance and it will have done very little good. Here’s hoping you ass hats are extremely happy with yourselves. Government at its finest………….
- The senators who were pushing for Major League Baseball to ban the use of smokeless tobacco by players for this year’s World Series and everyone else who finds Skoal and its filthy, cancer-causing tobacco brethren revolting are going to be disappointed with the provision in MLB’s new labor deal relating to the use of smokeless tobacco by players. The new deal will limit, but not ban the use of smokeless tobacco products during games, as some public health groups had sought. A summary of the agreement reveals that players have agreed not to carry tobacco cans in their back pockets or use tobacco during pregame or postgame interviews, and at team functions. However, it falls well short of forbidding the use of such products in the dugout or locker room. Several members of Congress have errantly argued that a ban on chewing tobacco and dip during games was needed to protect impressionable kids watching on TV. The argument is errant because doing a Google image search for “chewing tobacco effects” or forcing kids to sniff or take a swill from the revolting spit bottle of a chewing tobacco user would have a much more profound effect. The MLBPA explained its position on the issue through union head Michael Weiner. "Our members understand that this is a dangerous product, there are serious risks associated with using it," Weiner said. "Our players felt strongly that those were appropriate measures to take but that banning its use on the field was not appropriate under the circumstances." In addition to its slight concessions on the issue of when and where players can have their can of Kodiak or Skoal, the players union has also agreed to join forces with the Partnership at DrugFree.org to create a nationwide public service announcement campaign that will do no good. Players Curtis Granderson, Jeremy Guthrie and C.J. Wilson have agreed to be part of the campaign and the union will also create a Tobacco Cessation Center for its players and provide players with training on how to give up the habit. Those steps were not enough to placate Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of the groups that spearheaded the anti-tobacco push. Myers conceded that the restrictions represent progress, but said he would have preferred a ban at games and on camera. "The new Major League Baseball contract takes an historic first step toward getting smokeless tobacco out of the ballgame, and makes significant progress toward protecting the health of big-league players and millions of young fans who look up to them," he said in a statement. "Baseball players have been using tobacco since the earliest days of the game. This forward step marks the first time ever that the league and the players have recognized that it is time to break this unhealthy connection." Weiner insisted that players are not ducking their duty as role models and said that kids will eventually have to make choices about what they use and put into their bodies, just as players do. Still, it would have been nice to see MLB mirror the minor leagues, where players are not unionized and smokeless tobacco has been banned since 1993……………
- In a shocking development, chicken jerky treats may be bad for the digestive system. In this case, the digestive system in question is that of dogs (theoretically), but the hazard remains real. As usual, the threat of toxic products comes from the nation that dominates in this area: China. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning about chicken jerky treats imported from China, saying they may be associated with illness in dogs. According to the FDA, the number of dog illnesses reported in the past 12 months associated with the jerky products has increased significantly. Unfortunately for the Fido lovers out there with no actual friends and who treat their dogs like humans and members of their actual human family, the agency has not yet identified a specific product. Instead, it issued a statement that reads, "Chicken jerky products should not be substituted for a balanced diet and are intended to be fed occasionally in small quantities." It would probably hold true for humans who enjoy a chicken jerky snack or two from their pooch’s stash every now and then. The announcement about this particular line of products should not come as a surprise since warnings about chicken jerky were first issued back in 2007. In other words, buy American dehydrated quasi-meat products for your pets because trusting China to make them properly is taking a major risk…………
- South Africa has thus far ducked the drama that has plagued much of its continent this year with uprisings in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere. That could soon change dramatically now that South Africa’s ruling African National Congress government overwhelmingly passed a secrecy law over the objections of activists and editors and criticism from two Nobel laureates. Months of protests failed to dissuade lawmakers from passing the law, which makes it illegal to reveal state secrets. On the surface, such a law sounds great but critics say it will have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and investigative journalism. Their prime complaint is that the law does not permit a legal defense for acting in the public interest in exposing a secret, possibly by revealing criminality, corruption or incompetence on the part of officials or the government. Instead, the law institutes a penalty of up to 25 years in jail for anyone revealing a state secret. As the legislature voted on the measure, activists supporting transparency and freer access to government information wore black in protest against the vote by the ANC-dominated parliament. Lawmakers argued they needed to update apartheid-era laws on state secrecy and dismissed criticisms that its own measure was not much better than that of the white supremacists. The new law drew sharp criticism from Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who mocked the law as an insult to South Africans and said it would make the state accountable only to the state. His words were echoed by fellow Nobel Literature Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer. Other critics of the law referred to the struggle against apartheid as one to ensure that all people would have a right to vote, something the new law betrays in a sense. Former president Nelson Mandela’s foundation said the law's shortcomings were not difficult to resolve and suggested that the bill should focus on whether any harm was done through releasing a secret, not merely the fact that secret information was released. The foundation also advocated that information should not be classified secret if the public interest outweighed the possible damage to state security. Opponents of the law have suggested a plan to challenge it in the constitutional court, the country's highest court on constitutional issues, should it pass. Looks like the fight is officially on…………
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