Please Read This

Please, just read this article. It's a little long, but please do it. It'll be worth your while.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover

Madoff Mayhem

Ok, before I begin this rant, look at this picture. My man Bernie is straight pimpin'. Not only does he not have to carry his own umbrella, but the person who carries it for him remains out of his sight. Shalom L'chaim bro.

Bernie Madoff is an asshole. He knowingly defrauded hundreds of his own people out of their life savings in order to make himself a fortune. As of today, he's set up to spend his last days behind bars. That's fine, but for people like this I'm a bigger fan of the firing squad (that's quick, no sodium pentathol).

So Madoff is done (sorry, but Bernie in my book is CF #51, so I won't tarnish the name anymore). Good job justice system, you got something right for once. But, one question: Where are the prison sentences for the CEOs of AIG, Lehmann Bros., Bear Stearns, Citi, BofA and the heads of Fannie and Freddie? All these usurers got us to where we are now; in a drain spinning down.

It would be hard to any lawyer or politician to convince me that these people don't belong behind bars making friends with some poor minority inmates. Not only would it be an interesting experiment to see the winner of Darwinism v. Social Darwinism, but it would be righteous. We are a country that jails 2.2 million citizens. Over 1 million of those are for non-violent drug offenses. Most of these 2.2M come from poverty. Yet those with suits and an MBA get a slap on the wrist. Their children get to keep their trust funds and Upper West Side palace apartments. This has nothing to do with white or black, but everything to do with rich or poor.

It's the white collar criminals who really ruin people's lives. In hard times, people want their money to be safe, yet the greed of a few has ruined the frugality of the many. You never hear of bank robberies anymore; maybe it's that the bankers have already taken it for themselves.

Drugs are bad, but a drug dealer never took hundreds of his own people for their life savings. Drug dealers buy for a nickel and sell for a dime. Drug dealers are trying to be successful in a society that has set them up for failure. Drug dealers never bought up bogus mortgages. Drug dealers know better than to lend money to people who can't pay it back. What is and is not a crime is a social-construction. Selling drugs is illegal because poor people do it. Buying up bad mortgages and speculating with other's money isn't because people do it from an office with a suit on.

"Capitalism is glorified institutionalized street crime. "

No, You're the Asshole

Let me start by saying that I have never been a big fan of ARod. I never wanted the Yankees to get him, but hell, the man is an incredible baseball player no matter what I think of him personally. As anyone who hasn't been living in the Congo knows, it turns out that ARod used steroids between 2001 and 2003 (at least). Once again, I need to say it: So What? Why is this such a big deal?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard the expression, "Well, [insert players name] knows that [insert sport here] is a business" whenever a player is getting cut or traded. Owners and GMs will do almost anything to win. They'll cut or veteran players who have played their hearts out for a team. They'll give up on young players before they have a chance to prove themselves. Anything. As long as the team remains profitable. But when a player tries to get an advantage to make himself more profitable and get paid, this is a problem.

If we, as fans have to accept the fact that baseball is indeed a business, then we have to accept that everyone involved is, in his own way, a businessman. ARod did the equivalent of bankers giving out bad loans in hopes of a personal payout. People will judge ARod and people will hate on him a ton. He made a raitonal choice: the risk of taking steroids did not did not outweight $25 million per year. I'm sure whoever came up with that headline figured the risk of public insulting someone did not outweigh the notoriety he would get in his job. But I ask of anyone willing ot cast judgement: If you knew you could get $25 million per year for the next decade, but you had to take steroids, wouldn't you at least consider it?

Michael Phelps, Rockin the Ganj

Michael Phelps is pretty much the man. He has 14 Gold Medals, 7 world records and was born 31 days before yours truly. I've graduated college, that's about it. Now Phelps has experimented with the most deadly drug in the world, marijuana. The drug that automatically makes you try heroin within seconds of inhalation. The drug that has been the scourge of the inner cities since the 1980s. The drug that will make you bigger, faster, stronger and get you into professional sports. The drug that you can get from a doctor and then sell to all your friends who want to stay up late and study for finals. Oh wait, none of those things are pot. My damn memory's going....

There's an old saying that you can't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes. Fair enough. So, anyone who wants to start throwing stones at Phelps, feel free to do so, but remember, you have to walk a mile in his shoes. You have to imagine being the most famous swimmer in the history of the sport. You have to imagine being the person who made millions tune into the Olympics even though doing so would be tacit acceptance of China (ew, gross). You have to imagine having broken Mark Spitz's record for individual gold medals in one Olympics. You have to imagine having done all this and being 23 years old. I wish I could be a criminal like Michael Phelps.

Everyone needs to back the fuck up. The dude toked a bong at a party, the reefer equivalent of taking a shot of Cuervo someone hands you even though tequila makes you sick. Yea, I know he's a role model and kids look up to him. It is parents' responsibilities to make sure their kids aren't smoking pot (or maybe to make sure they are smoking pot to aid them in winning 14 gold medals - think about it); so sucks to that argument. Yea, he broke the law. I broke the law about 20 minutes ago, I was going 55 in a 40 zone and that endangered a lot more youngins than Michael Phelps. This incident is perhaps the greatest argument for the legalization of marijuana. The United States, where pot is illegal but the President, a Supreme Court Justice, and its most famous athlete have toked. The United States, land of free, home of the hypocrites.

Spittin' Truth

I'm going to keep this simple. I've been considering keeping up with the election and blogging like every few weeks, but there hasn't been much to talk about as far as I'm concerned. Most of the real issues that I care about are never discussed.

I voted for Obama, absentee, two weeks ago. There, I said it.

Look at this http://www.economist.com/vote2008/. Countries like Cuba and Iraq support McCain, so that should tell you something. And another thing, forget all the jokes and personal attacks on Sarah Palin, the woman doesn't fucking read. Why isn't that a bigger deal? She chooses to be ignorant. She couldn't even name a news magazine or a newspaper. I'm sorry but I don't want anyone in public office to not even read. Call me an elitist, but I don't want anyone running my country who chooses to be ignorant.

What's also bullshit is that people think Obama getting elected puts us in a "post-racial" society. No way. A kid I met in a bar one night down here in Blacksburg, VA (the real Virginia, a little pocket of the real America) who introduced himself so: "My name is Wes, the W stands for white power". Like I'm down with that ignorant crap just because I'm white. You think Obama getting elected is going to change his mind about black people? Hell no. And he's only one of many in this country I'm sure.

I apologize for the rant but its been frustrating to see our country and world at the brink of disaster and yet people in this country still focus on bullshit like "Joe the Plumber". Does it bother anyone else that no one ever talks about poor people anymore? NAFTA is a non-issue somehow. We've lost over 900,000 jobs to it in a little more than a decade. Get out of that nonsense and our economy will improve. It's not free trade if only big corporations get to trade freely. Ok, rant over.

In conclusion, I just hope the next 4 years will be better than the last 4. I hope Barack Obama can make them better.

Postscript. Just a reminder: The New York Football Giants are reigning SuperBowl Champions and currently have a record of 6-1. Go Giants. Oh, and the Terps are ranked in football, so I guess things arent' that bad.

Douche v. Turd 2008

Well, it's time to concede. Q's man Ron Paul is out of the running for the Presidency in 2008 and once again, Americans are left with less than stellar options for their choice of President. I'll freely admit that I'm not staunch Republican or Democrat (it's hard to be staunch anything when both parties are both composed of ambitious millionaires). It seems as though McCain's economic policy is similar to Bush's (= less money in your and my pocket). And for all the imagery of Barack Obama which would no doubt be positive for America's international image at a time when it is so low, there are a few questions I would like all of you to consider when picking your candidate on November 4th (or earlier for those of us with an absentee ballot):


1. Mr. President, what do you intend to do with the PATRIOT Act? Will you try to revoke this legislation that limits our civil liberties and allows greater spying powers by our own police forces? Furthermore, how will you deal with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay? Will they be given fair trials like any other prisoner of war or we continue to be the country that "spreads democracy" while not giving it to our own people or our prisoners of war?


2. Mr. President, what, if any Executive powers will you give back to the Congress, to the states, to other governmental entities, and most importantly to the people? Mr. Bush in his tenure has increased the unchecked powers of the presidency exponentially. Will you exponentially give them back or are you as power-hungry as your predecessor?


3. Mr. President, how willing are you to pander to the religious zealots in this country? Will you concede that issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion have no business in the federal government? If I recall there is nothing in any section of the Constitution about such matters, therefore they should be given to the states, no?


4. Mr. President, how do you feel about the legislation of morality? Why are penalties for recreational drugs under the guise of the federal government (FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.)? Those issues should also be handled by the states as they are not explicitly mentioned in the constitution either. Will you still allow federal agents to trump state power (unconstitutional) and raid state sanctioned marijuana distributors in places like California? Shouldn't cancer patients be able to get some relief from their pain? Is not the purpose of drugs to work? If you want a boner, don't you take a Viagra? People use it because it works.


5. Finally Mr. President, why aren't we out of Iraq yet? You've wasted all this time talking to me and yet our troops are still being shot at by angry Iraqis. When will you realize that country has been fought over for centuries with no clear winner? Ask the British, they tried the same thing and they failed. What excuse could you possibly have to have our young men and women killed and maimed in a desert? We cut and ran in Lebanon and Vietnam, why is this war any different? Staying in Iraq justifies what George W. Bush did and I thought you were different from him. Maybe nogt.

WWPOTMD?

Unlike the title of this post may have you believe, this has nothing to do with the internet, pot or doctors. The title is an anagram: "What would Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez Do?" I'll tell you what they wouldn't do. They would not let the Red Sox come into Yankee Stadium, in their last series in the Bronx, and take 2 of 3 in some of the most atrociously played baseball games this Yankee fan has ever witnessed. The "new Yankees" of superstars and overpaid primadonas simply does not have the passion and fire that the men to the left of your screen brought to all 162+ (they actually made the playoffs and won series in the playoffs every year) games; day in and day out. There is simply no grit, passion and fire on these Yankees. Teams who don't play with that don't win championships.

I was just discussing this with a good friend of mine, an incredibly intelligent baseball fan who appreciates all of baseball, not just Yankee baseball. I told him, "It's actually a good thing that the Yankees aren't gonna make the playoffs this year." As any Yankee fan would do he said, "How in the hell is that?" I responded by saying that this will weed out what I call the CEO Yankee fans; the fans who sit in the first level of every game in their blue Polo button down shirts and khakis on their Blackberrys the entire game who don't give a shit about winning but only saying, "Hey I went to a Yankee game last night with my sweet corporate seats". Any true baseball fan knows that real fans sit in the cheap seats because baseball is the working man's game in this country although its current form would demonstrate otherwise.

My friend and I went on to discuss that the reason why the fans of our favorite football team, the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants are such great fans are that they have endured a decade of bullshit in between championships. We, as Giants fans, have dealt with Dave Brown, Jesse Palmer, losing to Trent Dilfer and the Ravens 35-7 in the 2000 Super Bowl, all capped off with going 4-12 in 2003. Yet we still loved the Giants because they were OUR team, they're called the New York Giants but they play in the filth of the Meadowlands. They are gritty, they are tough and they play with passion. We endured a lot of terribleness before glory this year; making it all the sweeter.

Yankees fans are spoiled, plain and simple. We got to witness our team making the playoffs every year from 1995-2007 and 4 World Series, including 3 in a row. No other fans have experienced such a run, but all such runs must come to an end. The fans, like the team, have become richer. As tickets become more and more unaffordable for the average family, the teams payroll skyrocketed with players who have done what amounts to a pile of shit, either in the regular or post seasons in their careers as Yankees (ARod, Giambi, Damon, Abreu, Pavano, etc.). Perhaps next year us real Yankee fans (those who remember the whe Don Mattingly was the only shining light on the team) will see the true colors of those Polo blue CEO fans.

Yankees fans are the AJ Sopranos of Major League Baseball. They were given everything and pissed it away by being arrogant whiny little bitches. I love the Yankees and always will, but that organization and its fans need to wake up and appreciate all we've been given over the past decade. As I closed the conversation with my friend, "fuck giambi, fuck arod, fuck pudge, fuck damon, molina is cool, fuck abreu, i'm out."