- Wednesday
was a good day to be Bobby Bonilla, just as every July 1 has been since 2000
and will be until 2035. Bonilla, who hit really well in his first turn with the
Mets from 1992 to 1995 and retired from baseball in 1996, is avoiding the sort
of post-career pitfalls many professional athletes stumble into by doing
nothing other than cashing a check. See, back in 2000, Bonilla and the Mets’
new ownership group sat down and negotiated a buyout of Bonilla’s $5.9 million
contract before the new season began. They eventually arrived at a deal under
which Bonilla would receive $1.2 million a year every year on July 1 as part of
a deferred payment schedule all the way through 2035, when he will be 72 years
old and nearly half a century removed from the start of his MLB career. The
numbers actually look worse on the surface than they do if you really dig into
them with someone who knows their fiduciary facts and yet, a guy who hasn’t set
foot on a major league field this century is still making more money in a year
for doing absolutely nothing than many people will make in the first 30 years
of their adult life. When they agreed to the new terms with Bonilla in 2000,
the Mets’ owners thought they were solidly in the black fiscally thanks to
their pal Bernie Madoff, so the deal they struck with their former slugger
seemed just fine. That held up until Madoff’s Ponzi scheme became public and
the Mets fell into financial ruin and now, the team is a punch line for those
who like to point out that as recently as 2013, Bonilla earned more from the
Mets than any of the outfielders actually on the roster. All of this is great
news for Bonilla because he essentially won the lottery without buying a ticket
and now, he knows he has seven figures’ worth of cash coming his way every
summer. The agent who negotiated the deal, Dennis Gilbert, needs a plaque in
the Agents Hall of Fame for his work here too………
- No
way. Russia is getting pissy about people questioning its integrity and honor?
That never happens. The showdown in this case involves the Russian Prosecutor
General's office, which says a request by lawmakers to check the legality of
Soviet recognition of the independence of three ex-Soviet Baltic republics
makes no sense. That’s essentially saying that those responsible for the
request will be locked up in a long-forgotten gulag by the time the
prosecutor’s office gets around to officially dealing with their request, but spokeswoman
Marina Gridneva said the office is obliged to pick up any request by lawmakers even
though this particular one "has no legal prospects." That remark is
directed at the two lower house members who have asked prosecutors to look into
Soviet authorities' decision in September 1991 to recognize the independence of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Seemingly hungry for their own demise, these lawmakers
argued that the State Council created by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wasn't
authorized to make such a decision. These trouble-lawmakers and their
ill-advised motion has sparked a minor uproar in the Baltic nations, which are
now members of the European Union and NATO. Some have even dared to suggest
that this smacks of Moscow's aggressive intentions toward them. Russia?
Aggressive toward small, former Soviet republics? Again, that NEVER happens.
Tolerance, open-mindedness and fairness are what despot Vladimir Putin and his
regime are all about. This whole charade doesn’t have a chance in hell of
gaining any real traction, but it could still be entertaining………
- It’s
almost as if Iggy Azalea is trolling the very people she claims to be disgusted
by. The Australian-born rapper, who is stirring up drama because she claims to
be angry with critics she accuses of exaggerating a series of tweets between
herself and recent collaborator Britney
Spears, could just denounce her haters as being jealous of her success and keep
moving, but she’s aiming higher - or lower and dirtier, depending on your
perspective. A series of tweets on Azalea’s official Twitter feed seemed
to blame a lack of promotion from Spears' camp for the perceived failure of
their collaborative single 'Pretty Girls,' which both failed to become anything
remotely resembling the song of the summer and didn’t make much of an impact on
the charts. When it became clear that her initial blast of rage was being
construed as critical of Spears, Azalea looked to double back, er, clarify.
"No one is throwing 'shade' or 'shots' on either side of the table. The
girl is my friend and I support her 100 percent,” she tweeted. That was merely
a warm-up, as the rapper saved her true straight fire for some dirty
allegations. "I feel like the media wants women in music to get out and
mud wrestle each other. As a woman I take great offense,” she added. "Women in the media should be able to
have a grown up and subjective opinion without it being anything more than
that. It’s disappointing." Mud
wrestling? If you’re suggesting it, then feel free to make it happen, Iggy. And
while you’re at it, stop bringing shame to the Iggy stage name with your
mediocre-ass rap and leave it to icons like Iggy Pop. Claiming that women are
basically musical eye candy is as trite and lame as it gets………..
- How
far does the issue of bigotry, stupidity and intolerance go when it comes to
the embattled symbol of idiocy that is the Confederate flag? That depends upon
who you ask. Ask the socially stunted retards who are defiantly standing behind
the flag despite all it stands for and it’s not that big a deal at all. Ask Charles
Steele Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and you’ll hear that
the flag - as well as all other Confederate symbols - represents
"treason" and should be removed from public objects. Steele is the
national president of a civil-rights group that wants to not only yank down the
Mississippi state flag, but wants to rip Confederate names from streets and structures.
It clearly isn't lost on Steele that Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, at which the recent murders of nine
people thrust the offending flag into the national spotlight once more due to
the soulless ghoul behind the shooting’s devotion to the banner, is located on
a street named after a Confederate icon. Steele is also well aware that
the same Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, upon which police attacked
civil-rights marchers in 1965, is named for a Confederate general who became a
Ku Klux Klan leader. Thus, Steele used his 15 minutes of fame at the
Mississippi Capitol to fan the flames of outrage by suggesting that the state
should remove the Confederate battle emblem from its flag. His words echoed the
sentiments of other Mississippi leaders who have called for a state banner that
would unify people, to which Gov. Phil Bryant replied that voters should decide
the flag's fate. Yes, because so many
of them have displayed such an aptitude for making sound societal decisions……..
No comments:
Post a Comment