- It’s nice to see a recording artist with a sense of
urgency about getting their next album done. Kendrick Lamar, step right up and
tell us all about your reasons for deeming your new project to be a “very
urgent” album. According to the actor, he wants to return to “addressing the
problem” the way he did on his 2015 album ‘To Pimp A Butterfly.’ That’s a very
vague statement, but let’s allow this hip-hop mystery man to explain. “I think
now, how wayward things have gone within the past few months, my focus is
ultimately going back to my community and the other communities around the
world where they’re doing the groundwork,” Lamar said. “‘To Pimp a Butterfly’
was addressing the problem. I’m in a space now where I’m not addressing the
problem anymore. We’re in a time where we exclude one major component out of
this whole thing called life: God. Nobody speaks on it because it’s almost in
conflict with what’s going on in the world when you talk about politics and
government and the system.” Ah, so this is some sort of religious, faith-based
effort….or not. Lamar’s past work hasn’t exactly been fare for the faithful, but
whatever’s on his mind now, he’s got a sense of urgency about it that your
average musician doesn’t seem to possess or even understand when he or she
promises fans a new album, only to let that promise sit unfulfilled for months,
years and (looking at you, Axl Rose) a decade before actually delivering
anything…….
- Someone’s bringing back the draft, but it’s not these here
United States. No, this news comes from Scandinavia, where Sweden's
left-leaning government has introduced a military draft for both men and women
on account of what its defense minister deemed a deteriorating security
environment in Europe and around his own nation. It might surprise you to know
that Sweden had compulsory military service for men until 2010, when it was
abolished because there were enough volunteers to meet its military needs.
However, that draft was only for men, but the new version is big on gender
equality, bringing the ladies into the mix because as the government noted,
"the all-volunteer recruitment hasn't provided the Armed Forces with
enough trained personnel. The re-activating of conscription is needed for
military readiness." Sweden isn't a member of NATO, but back in September,
it stationed permanent troops on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland in a move
Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist described as sending a signal after Russia's
2014 annexation of Crimea and its "increasing pressure" on the
neighboring Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Sweden trying to
muscle up on Russia is mildly amusing, but there have also been reports of
airspace violations by Russia's military aircraft in the Baltics and a military
buildup in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which sits across the Baltic Sea
from Sweden. The miniscule Swedish military currently employs 20,000 people, 84
percent of them men and 16 percent women, but the country’s coalition
government of Social Democrats and Greens claims the armed forces lack 1,000
active troops as well as 7,000 reservists, something it plans to rectify by not
giving people a choice……….
- No matter what shape their offense is in, the New York
Knicks continue to reside in Dante’s seventh circle of hell. Mired in the
bottom half of the Eastern Conference and with zero hopes of a championship or
even a playoff berth this season, the Knicks have been a mess of organizational
drama and on-court ineptitude this season and of late, they’re sucked while
running the triangle offense more often since the All-Star break. It’s the
offense with which team president Phil Jackson is obsessed to the point that he
believes it’s the reason he won 11 NBA championships as a coach, but Jackson
refuses to acknowledge that the league has evolved and left his beloved
triangle in the dust. One of the players trapped in New York for this season is
former All-Star point guard Derrick Rose, who was asked if the rise of the
triangle means he’s more comfortable with the system. "Sh*t, do I have a
choice? Do I have a choice?" Rose said. "I just want to win games.
Winning takes care of every category for an athlete." He’s on the record
as saying that the offense was difficult to learn and described it as
"random basketball," so he’s clearly not a fan. Head coach Jeff
Hornacek initially de-emphasized the triangle, but Jackson has clearly leaned
on him heavily and now, Hornacek says players will be evaluated at the end of
the season based, in part, on how they adapt to the triangle. The coach is in
full spin mode now, claiming Jackson was not behind the decision, but doubling
back and conceding that he and Jackson have discussed the merits of the offense
"all the time." Meanwhile, the
Knicks maintain residence in 12th place in the conference, 11 games below .500
and in a triangle of misery……..
- So maybe count Mayor Serge Dedina among those who could
have a newfound support for America’s infamous, planned border wall to separate
us from the evils of Mexico. Dedina is de-dealing with a massive sewage spill
in Tijuana, Mexico that polluted Southern California beaches last month and
according to the mayor, that spill appeared to be a deliberate move. That’s a
big accusation to make, but when more
than 140 million gallons of sewage spill into the Tijuana River, later
flowing into the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side of the border, the time for
tiptoeing around the subject is over. The spill stretched from Feb. 4 to Feb.
23 and was caused during repairs to a major sewer pipe, the International
Boundary and Water Commission said. Dedina is the mayor of Imperial Beach,
located about 10 miles outside Tijuana, and he recently pronounced the spill to
be a deliberate act. “It saves (the Mexican agencies) a lot of money in pumping
costs, and ultimately, they can get away with it and do it all the time, just
on a much smaller scale,” Dedina said. The fallout from the spill was limited
because San Diego County beaches, which typically would be closed by such a
spill, were already off-limits to swimmers and surfers in the wake of recent
storms. There have been pipe breaks and resulting beach closures in this region
in the past and recent large sewage spills on both sides of the border have
worsened conditions in the Tijuana River, helping cement its status as one of
the most polluted waterways in the country. Tijuana is a place full of shady,
illegal activity, but usually those actions involve drunken tourists looking
for a good time or criminals trying to push product across the border, but this
time the crap being sent north is quite literally crap……..
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