Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Blaming Walter White, Israeli soccer riots and campaign mail where it belongs


- Bad postal worker or hero to us all? That question is up for debate after a postal worker in Neenah, Wisc. was placed under investigation for allegedly not delivering political mailers. This would-be hero is suspected to be responsible for the U.S. Postal Service finding 879 pieces of campaign mail in a dumpster last week and that didn’t sit well with candidate Mike Rohrkaste, who said a voter showed him hundreds of his campaign flyers stuffed into a dumpster at the Foxwood Crossing Apartments in Neenah. The fliers were connected to three separate Republican campaigns and given the deluge of campaign mail and ads that voters are overrun by in the weeks leading up to elections, the mailman responsible for the massive mailer dump should be hailed, not harangued, right? “It’s obviously very disturbing, I paid to have these delivered. I wanted to get my message out to the voters of the 55th District,” Rohrkaste said. The candidate said he paid $5,000 to get that message out and seeing his fliers where they were going to end up anyway but simply put there by a different person enraged him. He snapped a few pictures and called the local post office. “They had a supervisor out within a half hour. This supervisor, she took a lot of pictures, actually got into the dumpster. She collected all the documents. It was filled up with boxes, and then she took them with her,” Rohrkaste added. The fact that a government employee moved that quickly AND got into a dumpster is a minor miracle, so that was another great result of this mess. The USPS said it is investigating the matter, including why no Democratic flyers were found………


- Being smart and solving problems are valuable skills to have for a hockey goalie. So is understanding the rules and realizing that blatant cheating in front of dozens and dozens of fans and the opposing team won't work even if it seems like a good idea in the moment. Meet Bridgeport Sound Tigers goalie David Leggio, who may not make it to the NHL any time soon – or ever – but did provide a memorable moment in an American Hockey League game against the Springfield Falcons when a challenging situation came his way and he reacted the way a desperate man might be expected to react. With his team locked in a close game, Leggio found himself facing a two-on-none break. Laden with all of his goalie padding and realizing that he had little chance of outwitting and outplaying two streaking forwards aiming to put the puck in his net, Leggio had two options. He could man up, face the challenge and do his best, or he could intentinally knock his net out of place to force a stoppage in play. Being the courageous soul he is, Leggio chose the second option and play was indeed stopped. However, the referees awarded Springfield a penalty shot as a result of the Bridgeport goalie's actions and this time, the net stayed in place. Leggio did not and stopped the penalty shot, which would have been a linchpin moment for a big win had the Falcons not won the game anyhow, downing the Tigers 4-3……….


- Fights and injuries from fights are an everyday occurrence in the Middle East. However, these brawls are  typically religious and deeply cultural in nature, featuring Jews and Arabs going at each other over centuries of hate, killing and bitterness. None of those were in play Tuesday when rival Israeli football fans brawled outside a Tel Aviv courthouse that was extending the arrests of other fans who had stormed the field and halted a league match. Video from the scene showed what looked much like an actual soccer game – minus the 90 minutes of boring action as dudes run around on a big grass lawn not kicking the ball into the goal – with fans flailing wildly on the street and hitting each other with belts and sticks for several minutes. It was a continuation of rising soccer violence that resulted in the abandonment of Monday night's game between local rivals Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that six people were arrested following Tuesday's street fight and said police would investigate the video further to determine if additional arrests were needed. The drama began when Maccabi and Hapoel were tied at 1-1 in the first half and a shirtless fan ran onto the field and began hitting and kicking Maccabi midfielder Eran Zehavi. This standard soccer hooligan had been arrested 11 times for acts of violence, so it should surprise no one that he crossed the goal line and kicked Zehavi after he had tied the score with a penalty kick. Not satisfied, this hooligan then taunted the Hapoel bleacher section by simulating gunshots toward them. Zehavi responded with a shove to the throat of Alroee Yadai, who threw an errant punch before Zehavi landed the final blow, a flying kick that ended the fight as security and other players intervened. Amazingly, the referee then showed Zehavi a red card and the game continued before more fans stormed the field, chaos ensued and the game was halted. The violence, though, not so easy to stop……….


- Walter White’s influence knows no bounds. He’s gone from our lives in terms of new episodes of “Breaking Bad,” but he’s still making waves in society. There’s the drama over action figures from the hit AMC drama being sold at Toys ‘R Us and now, some European professor is accusing the show of being responsible for the rise in crystal meth use in Britain and Europe. Acccording to statistics from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, attempts to smuggle the drug into the United Kingdom have risen 400 percent in the past year while seizures of the drug have quadrupled. Why anyone needs to import crystal meth rather than find a filthy basement and the cheap collection of chemicals and equipment needed to make the white trash drug of choice is unclear, but professor Ellis Cashmore, an author on celebrity and media culture at Staffordshire University knows who’s to blame for all of this. "Although the show does not go out to glamorize the drug, its very inclusion promotes interest in that substance,” Cashmore said of “Breaking Bad” and its influence. "The fact it is a central premise to almost the entire series would serve to boost this interest for people who perhaps had not encountered it before. We live in a hedonistic generation where people are seeking pleasure from various sources, and increasingly these are be found in the most illicit forms. Even if a TV show, like Breaking Bad, portrays drugs in a negative aspect and showing its most destructive side, it will still appeal to somebody.” Sorry E., but this who notion of pawning blame for societal ills off on TV shows, movies, music and video games is lame, tired and out of date. The 17,000 Brits believed to have used crystal meth in 2013 aren't doing so because Walter White made it cool. They’re doing so because they are people struggling in life and making poor choices because of it………

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