- Lottery
scam rings…they’re the new drug cartels of the Caribbean. While Mexico might
have warring drug factions willing to kill, maim and menace all in the name of
cornering their chosen market, Jamaica has a decidedly more gambling-centric
edge to its illegal organization world. And lest you think that these criminal
corporations are a joke, just know that a series of increasingly violent rivalries among Jamaica's lottery scam rings have
helped drive the Caribbean island's homicide rate to the highest level in five
years. According to police, Jamaica had at least 1,192 slayings in 2015, nearly
a 20-percent increase from the previous year. That’s disappointing because the
1,005 killings in 2014 represented the lowest annual total since 2003 and
bouncing back that quickly to maintain your murder rap is not a good way to
show your rebounding ability. To put the 1,192 murders of 2015 in perspective, Jamaica
had about 45 slayings per 100,000 people in 2015 and for an island whose
population is roughly 2.7 million, eventually you’re going to run out of people
to murder because they’re better at trying to scam people out of their gambling
dollars than you are. National Security Minister Peter Bunting has a goal of
reducing the annual homicide numbers to 320 killings by 2017 and said officials
"will not be deterred or daunted by this setback,” but at this point the
only way Jamaica is meeting that worthwhile goal is if there are only 319
people left alive on the island when this year comes to a close……
- Even
for iconic punk and alternative rock bands, selling out is a temptation. So
when you hear that The Offspring sold much of their back catalogue to a New York-based music rights company called Round Hill,
don’t be too hard on Dexter Holland and the fellas. After all, less than two
years ago, Holland was sued over missed payments on his private plane by
manufacturer Cessna and let’s face it, keeping up with your payment plan for
that private jet is not easy. Sure, the singer and his company, Jet Racers,
Inc., agreed to make 71 monthly payments of with one final balloon payment of
as part of the deal struck following his initial failure to pay for the plane,
but those $600,000 had to come from somewhere and when you can pawn a big piece
of your musical legacy for a reported $35 million, that is difficult to pass
up. That deal includes every single album The Offspring recorded for Columbia
Records, but Epitaph Records will retain ownership of the band’s early albums,
including their best-selling release “Smash,” plus another favorite,
“Ignition.” All of that means big money for a band that had sold more than 17
million albums to date and the Harvard-educated Holland did his best to put a
smart spin on the deal. "We felt that having the right caretaker for our
catalogue, both the masters and the publishing, is incredibly important to the
future of our career,” Holland said. “Round Hill understands that we are
continuing to perform and record and that the visibility of our past is
critical to our future." In other words, we got paid………..
- Detroit:
America didn’t actually sell it to Canada for $5 and some round bacon yet.
Sure, that might seem a bit harsh to the Motor City, but as America’s first
major metropolis to go bankrupt whilst simultaneously turning into a post-apocalyptic
hell hole with packs of rabid dogs ruling the streets of abandoned
neighborhoods, but Detroit has earned a lot of the heat it has received - heat
many of its residents really couldn’t afford to pipe into their homes in recent
years. Yet in the interest of fairness, let’s give the city some props by
applauding the fact that it saw a drop in most
violent crimes in 2015, the second consecutive year in which homicide totals in
the city dipped to pre-1970 levels. Newly released data coupled with Detroit's
fiscal turnaround a year after shedding billions of dollars in debt through the
largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history has the locals feeling pretty damn
good as the city works to regrow its population, which at around 680,000 is
barely of third of what it was in the 1950s. Mayor Mike Duggan has promised to turn around
a town that earned the nickname "Murder City" after 714 homicides
were committed in 1974 and has boasted one of the highest crime rates in the
nation since then. But hell, a mere 295 homicides last year were four fewer
than in 2014 and down 37 from two years ago. Killings haven't been that
infrequent since 1967, when 281 homicides were committed, and rapes, robberies,
non-fatal shootings, burglaries and vehicle thefts were all down in 2015. Duggan
said the city still has "a lot of work to do" in fighting crime and
conceded that the city “remains much too violent,” but when poverty reigns and
the collective net worth outside of players employed by Detroit’s four major
professional sports franchises is somewhere south of the value of a breakfast
burrito, violence is going to happen. Still, credit to the D for trying to stay
alive and avoid Canadian annexation……….
- Houston
Rockets guard James Harden can be annoying as hell on the basketball court. He has a herky-jerky game that seems designed
solely to draw fouls that stop the game and send him to the free throw line, he
has irritating celebrations for damn near everything good he does and he only
occasionally can be bothered to play defense. Having said all of that, it’s
really not too much to ask that fans show up at games and not try to sear his
retina with a laser pointer during the action. The fact that it’s 2016 and
laser pointers are still a thing is sad in and of itself because they were
kinda funny for a brief moment about 15 years ago, but whoever the ass hat was
that shone a laser in Hardin’s eyes during Monday's game at Utah deserves much
more than the one-year ban from attending games that he received from the NBA.
"That's just disrespectful, not just to a basketball player,
anybody," Harden said of the incident. "Whoever that guys was he
wouldn't want to be lasered in the face, so that was disrespectful. It's not my
call [on the fan being banned], I'm just trying not to get blind." The
Beard is right and as tempting as it is to mess with Hardin while he’s in the
midst of one of his 74 nightly trips to the free throw line (numbers
approximate), carry one of those wacky, trance-inducing spinning signs and sit
behind the basket or make noise like you’re a walrus when he shoots. When the
incident happened, Harden pretended that he was going to hurl the basketball in
the stands at the fan, who was quickly ushered out of the building by arena
security…………
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