- And yet there will still be cheaters because there’s lots
of money to be earned. It’s good that Major League Baseball is increasing
penalties for using banned stimulants and is adding more random drug tests, but
until a first positive PED test results in a lifetime ban and immediate
forfeiture of any money owed under a player’s contract, guys will continue to
cheat because they can make a lot of money by doing so. Under the terms of a
change to the sport's drug agreement, the suspension for a second stimulant
violation goes up from 25 to 50 games, while a third violation would result in
a 100-game penalty, up from 80. The penalty for a first stimulant violation
remains follow-up testing and the discipline for a fourth stays at up to a
permanent suspension, with the first-offense penalty the glaring weak link in
this armor. MLB did conduct 8,281 drug tests -- 6,634 urine and 1,647 blood --
in the year ending with this season's World Series, up 123 from the previous
season and 352 from two seasons ago. With this new rule, random urine tests
will increase from 3,200 to 4,800 in season and from 350 to 1,550 during the
offseason, ensuring at least one offseason test for all 40-man roster players,
while random blood tests rise from 260 to 500 in season and from 140 to 400 in
the offseason. Dr. Jeffrey M. Anderson, the program's independent program
administrator, issued his annual report this week, with 105 theraputic use
exemptions for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and one exemption each
for hypertension and hypercalciuria (calcium in urine) issued. In other words,
best of luck to all of the cheaters out there in MLB working to scam the system
this offseason……….
- If you can’t make real news by arresting real criminals,
then why not make it up, eh Santa Maria Police Department? The SMPD is taking
all kinds of heat after Chief Ralph Martin decided to throw a plot twist in his
department’s war against local gangs by issuing a fake press release reporting
the arrest of two gang members as a ruse to mislead rivals who planned to kill
them. The fake news release infuriated some local news outlets, who worried
that reporting bogus news fed to them directly by the local police would
undermine their credibility with their respective audiences. Those outfits are
already fighting a losing battle against the proliferation of fake news on
social media and elsewhere, so taking on the long arm of the law only deepens
that struggle. That argument didn’t faze Santa Maria Police Chief Ralph Martin,
who argued that his approach saved two lives and helped extend an investigation
that took down 17 gang members for 10 slayings and plots to kill eight others,
including the two men placed in protective custody and used as theoretical
bait. Of course, the next time his department sends out a news release that
demands immediate action by news organizations in order to relay an important
message to the public and those news organizations ignore it, Martin may regret
his tactics, but for now, he can revel in the temporary high of getting over on
a local gang that now knows it can’t actually believe anything that comes out
of his mouth…….
- Wu-Tang Clan has never been the most functional rap
outfit. While extremely talented and even revolutionary within the hip-hop
world, the Wu has been on the verge of imploding for virtually every day of its
existence. Thus, it should surprise no one that Wu-Tang member U-God is
reportedly filing a lawsuit against his own bandmates, claiming that he hasn’t
been paid for his royalty payments on 12 Wu-Tang albums over the past six years
and demanding his 2-percent share of the merchandising rights, plus his share
of the $2 million the group received for selling the lone copy of its most
recent album, ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” to infamous pharmaceutical
entrepreneur /world-class d-bag Martin Shkreli. U-God is a founding member of
the pioneering New York City hip-hop collective and is seeking $2.5 million
from his fellow Clan members. He blames the supposed need for the lawsuit on group
leader RZA and as part of the suit, he’s demanding a full audit of the group’s
finances, supposedly to certify how much each member of the group will be paid
in future. The Shkreli/“Shaolin” mess is one the entire group would probably
like to forget at this point, given that Shkreli bought it under a contract that
banned him from releasing the 110-minute-long album for 88 years after the
purchase, an agreement he violated within a year by leaking parts of it after
last month’s presidential election. Oh, and Shkreli has since been revealed to
be a price-gouging piece of sh*t who raises the price of life-saving medication
by 5,000 percent in the name of sheer corporate greed, so there’s that as well.
All in all, right now is just not all that great a time for the Wu………
- It sounds like an absurd riddle, but it’s a true story and
one Norwegian police apparently aren’t all that close to cracking. Police in
the western city of Bergen are trying to determine how an iron gate stolen from
the Nazis' Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany ended up in western
Norway, but they’re not doing very well and according to police spokeswoman
Kari Bjoerkhaug Trones , the investigation has hit a snag because "no
useable evidence" has been found. The infamous gate is topped with the
cryptic slogan "Arbeit macht frei" — "Work sets you free" —
and it was found Nov. 28 under a tarp at a parking lot in a settlement north of
Bergen, Norway's second-largest city. Why someone would go to such lengths to
steal the gate, knowing its genocidal history as the imposing sight greeting
Jews sent to live, work and eventually die at a Nazi concentration camp, and
then abandon it in a parking lot on the far left coast of a frigid Scandinavian
nation is befuddling and Bjoerkhaug Trones said the gate that was now in police
care, but had apparently been in the parking lot under the tarp “for quite some
time with some junk.” Bergen police have no suspects, no leads and no idea what
to do next, other than getting that gate back to Dachau where it belongs. The
concentration camp near Munich was established by the Nazis in 1933, with the
missing gate originally set into a larger gate at the camp's entrance…….
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