- Does anyone else get the impression that Philippine
President Rodrigo Duarte may be snorting in, rather than simply cracking down,
on the drug problem that he’s allegedly out to eradicate in his nation? This
wild card has been shooting off his mouth, making crazy promises, threatening
opposing nations and insulting leaders of state since he took office, but his
most recent display might be his most insane yet, a rambling speech in which he
tried to detail the challenges he confronts in his deadly crackdown on illegal
drugs, the heavy workload of the presidency and his cloistered existence.
Duterte noted that"it gets to be a very lonely life” and suggested that he
may not be able to survive his six-year term and seems overwhelmed by the
immensity of his work. His battle to eradicate drugs from his country seems to
be at the heart of his struggles, but a sometimes-incoherent, meandering speech
to the entire country makes it seem like he might be dabbling in some of the
very products he’s allegedly trying to eliminate. "Will I survive the six
years? I'd make a prediction, maybe not,” he said during the speech. He didn’t
explain what he meant but said there were people who want him removed due to
him reaching out to improve relations with China and sniping back at the United
States for expressing concerns over his anti-drug crackdown. Duterte has only
been in office since June, but it appears that he might not be long for the job
if he’s already prognosticating about when he’ll take the big dirt nap due to
the stress of the gig……..
- There really wasn’t a need to mock the cultural legacy of
the Spice Girls, but Garbage singer Shirley Manson has opened up a can on the
British pop tarts anyhow. Manson, whose band has been churning out quality,
industrially tinged rock for decades and with Manson leading the way as a solid
eample of female empowerment. As such, she’s not down with the Spice Girls’
portrayal as feminists in the ‘90s, decrying that incarnation of “girl power”
as “a sham.” Manson, an alt-rock icon, has her own ideas of what constitutes a
strong leading lead. “I always hated the
term Girl Power,” Manson said. “At the time, I found the Spice Girls abhorrent.
I was 30 when they came out I guess…[But] I felt they were written for, and
controlled by, men, who had come up with a marketing slogan and put these girls
together. It was pretending to be women taking control, but none of them took
control, they weren’t writing, they weren’t producing, they weren’t playing…I
found it a sham.” While calling that particular quasi-movement sham-tastic,
Manson does believe that she and those who were really promoting the right take
on the concept made an impact. “Girl Power was a mission. It was like, ‘We feel
like this, and we believe there is a whole generation of girls who feel like
this, too,” she added. This doesn’t feel like a catty female squabble at all,
mostly because Manson is far more legit and has accomplished far more - with
much better staying power - than those she’s verbally battering ever did……..
- Even nature is trying to prevent next week’s presidential
election from happening. Rather than allow American to choose between the two
most reprehensible presidential candidates in human history, a bold,
self-sacrificing (and possibly kamikaze) squirrel in Miami County, Ohio decided
to do something to make the world a better place. In a world filled with claims
of voter intimidation, rigged elections and balloting shenanigans, this bushy-tailed
bandit put the brakes on the Ohio county's voting on Halloween, stalling the
process by getting into a power station and causing a power failure that
stretched from 9:15 a.m. to 5 p.m. Alas, the attempt to stop voting by shutting
down electronic voting machines failed, as voters were forced to use backup
paper ballots and take an old-school approach to choosing America’s next unfit
leader. "We lost power and we were forced to vote by paper," said Eric
Morgan, deputy director of the Miami County Board of Elections. The real
miracle is that neither Democrats nor Republicans have yet accused the other
side of capturing, brainwashing and training that squirrel to carry out its
dastardly mission in an effort to short-circuit the democratic process. Morgan
did not know whether the suicidal squirrel survived the power outage, but if he
didn’t, there are millions of his brethren out there and if they can all band
together and put their petty, pawed differences aside, they just might be able
to stop this election before it can reach its disastrous ending……..
- It sounds like a plot line from a second-tier cable
television drama, but this one is unfortunately real. The Harvard men’s soccer
team has become the latest peripheral sport squad at an extremely expensive
private college to become engulfed in a major, extremely embarrassing sex
scandal, joining Duke lacrosse and Yale men’s basketball in a club no one wants
to belong to. The Harvard team will be suspended for the rest of its season
after an investigation found the team continually made vulgar and sexual
comments about members of the women's soccer team, which feels like the sort of
thing that happens in a lot more places than Harvard even though we don’t know
about it. Athletic director Robert L. Scalise announced the cancellation of the
rest of the team's season in an email to student-athletes, noting that the
soccer team rated their female counterparts on their perceived sexual appeal
and physical appearance. It’s the sort of thing guys do a lot, but most aren’t
dumb enough to write it down or catalog it in a way that can come back to haunt
them. In the email, Scalise wrote that the practice appeared "to be more
widespread across the team and has continued beyond 2012, including in
2016." The AD laid out the team’s fate in cold, detached fashion. "As
a direct result of what Harvard Athletics has learned, we have decided to
cancel the remainder of the 2016 men's soccer season," Scalise wrote.
"The team will forfeit its remaining games and will decline any
opportunity to achieve an Ivy League championship or to participate in the NCAA
Tournament this year." The school’s investigation began after a 2012
document brought the practice to light, a document the team apparently referred
to as a “scouting report.” The practice may have gone unpunished had a few
morons on that 2012 team not circulated the scouting report online……..
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