- Thom Tillis is now THAT guy. No, not the d-bag who has to
spell Tom with an unnecessary “h,” although he clearly is that guy too. No,
he’s officially the dude who invokes the hot-button issue of the moment to win
an election he has no hope of winning, even if that invocation is the most
blatant reach this side of claiming that what Britney Spears does qualifies as
music. In an attempt to unseat North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan in next month’s
election, Tillis is trying to link the incumbent to the United States’ abject
failure to stop terrorist outfit ISIS from overruning Syria’s ramshackle
government and beheading numerous Americans, Brits and Frenchmen in videos
posted online. Technically Tillis is attacking Hagan’s national security record
and he’s using a veteran whose son is a Marine in a shameless plot to exploit
the general admiration for those who have served their country. Tillis debuted
a television ad this week featuring retired Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Anderson,
who gravy trains on comments by House Speaker and abnormally tall Oompa Loompa
John Boehner criticizing Hagan's efforts monitoring the threat of Islamic State
militants. It’s Tillis’ second ad on the subject and he’s seeking to bolster
his case by letting everyone know that Anderson's son is currently serving in
Afghanistan. Anderson tells viewers Obama's "weakness has allowed the
Islamic State to grow" and that Hagan didn’t challenge the president on
the subject. In response, Hagan commandeered her own “expert” in the form of North
Carolina military spouse Donna Cheek, who said Hagan has taken "clear and
decisive action" on combating ISIS. Nothing like hijacking a major issue
that neither candidate could possibly have solved and using it to wage a
pitched battle through proxies you can exploit………
- Color me stunned. Who could have seen this coming? The
“experimental” reality show “Utopia” is dead in the water and its sphere of
influence is shrinking rapidly. The show, which picked a crew of extremely stereotyped
individuals whom Fox could easily pigeonhole and cast in a set framework such
as toothless redneck vs. sensuous yoga instructor or Bible belt preacher vs.
reformed convict, is being yanked from its primary Tuesday night at 8 p.m. time
slot because of plummeting ratings that were never very high to begin with.
“Utopia” will continue to air at the same time on Friday nights, a.k.a. the
night where struggling shows go to die. How bad were the ratings? Terrible
enough that the network is willing to fill the gap with reruns of “Family Guy,”
“The Simpsons” and “Bob’s Burgers.” If your network feels recycled adult
cartoons are a better options than new episodes of your show, then you truly
are repugnant to viewers. “Utopia” attempted to create interest and establish a
new model for reality TV by offering viewers the chance to pay an asinine sum
to visit the set and possibly even take part in a Utopia yoga class, but anyone
wanting to cash in on that offer should act soon because the show’s compound
likely won’t stay open much longer. The good news for Fox is that it can limp
through the end of October with its adult cartoon reruns and World Series games
before filling the void with the returning “Master Chef Junior” on Nov. 4. No
one has ever accused Gordon Ramsay and Fox’s culinary minds of reinventing the
reality TV paradigm, but they can’t be any less appealing than the lame-ass
fare “Utopia” brought to the table………
- Who’s ready for another round of Who’s Russia Attempting
to Menace Today? Surprisingly, the answer isn't Ukraine, where tensions between
the two nations have simmered down a touch in recent weeks. The correct
response is Bosnia, where the arrival of a group of Russian Cossacks ahead of elections
has conspiracy theorists running wild and those inclined to panic at the slightest
hint of trouble about to blow their lids. Whether there is anything to be
concerned about depends upon whom you’re asking. If you query the Bosnian Serb
Ministry of Culture, the group of 150 that arrived a few days ago are artists,
which is akin to claiming that a team of Army Rangers that just touched down in
your country are there because they’re a traveling ballet company that is
exploring and bettering the world through their mission of dance. The group's
leader Nikolai Djakonov is sticking with that story and claiming his crew is
only in town to take place in a festival. Killing festivals are rare this time
of year, so that seems unlikely. When footage of Djakonov commanding over a
paramilitary unit in Crimea that helped the region secede from Ukraine
surfaced, the bullsh*t story being sold to the masses became harder to stomach
and the prevailing theory is that the Cossacks were brought by incumbent
Milorad Dodik to stir trouble in case he loses elections on Oct. 12. Dodik's
ambition is to have the Serb region declare independence from Bosnia, so the
Cossacks showing up in Belgrade fits perfectly with that narrative. As always,
never trust a man who proudly proclaims his close ties with Vlad Putin as if
that’s supposed to make him more appealing, not less……….
- It’s that time of year again. The Oakland Athletics have
been eliminated early from Major League Baseball’s postseason despite a
successful regular season and general manager Billy Beane is defending his
Moneyball approach to building a team. This time the clean-up efforts are a bit
more complicated, as a team that owned
baseball's best record as recently as mid-August and stumbled through September
before culminating their meltdown in a 9-8, 12-inning loss to the Kansas City
Royals in Tuesday's AL wild-card game tried to bolster its season a couple
months back with two majors trades aimed at fixing its playoff woes. On July
31, Beane anted up by dealing slugging left fielder Yoenis Cespedes to the
Boston Red Sox for ace Jon Lester, less than a month after acquiring top
starter Jeff Samardzija from the Chicago Cubs. With a stacked rotation, the A’s
somehow managed to post the worst-second half record ever for a team that made
the playoffs, leaving Bean with a challenging spin job to put out in order to
spray perfume on that pile of monkey crap. His approach? Let everyone know that
it could have been even worse. "Simply
put, if we don't have Jon Lester, I don't think we make the playoffs,"
Beane said. Interesting approach and one that likely won't stem the tide of
bashing by fans who saw their team flame out once again and fail to turn
regular-season promise into any tangible postseason success. Beane will
continue to take heat from swapping Cespedes, the two-time reigning Home Run
Derby champ who was a key cog in the lineup and Oakland’s only real power
threat. "We weren't going to stay there. We knew it. Our job is to try and
correct things before they become a problem, and some of the problems that we
had we could see coming,” Beane said of his big deals that failed big-time. See
you same time next year, B………
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