Today's Shameless Fanboy Plug

All hail Keith!

There is no bigger pain in the ass (from what almost everybody says), and there is no better reporter anywhere in any field at any price.

The NFL recently agreed to pay $765M to be paid out to 4500 guys over a 17-year period.  As others have said, it sounds right decent, but... a little math (the kind that's simple enough even for me to understand) shows just how big this particular bamboozle really is.

The league made some $9.5 Billion last year - BILLION. If that number stays static over the 17-year lifetime of the deal (and we all know it's a lot more likely to go up rather than stay the same or go down), the total "cost" to the owners is less than one half of one percent of league revenue.

But of course, we can always count on some Press Poodle - who in this case owes his living to the NFL - to come up with some good PR Fluffery (in the form of sneering mockery which has become the prevailing journalistic style of Corporate Attack Dog Media).

Enter Pete Prisco at CBS Sports:

I just got off the phone with my attorney. Why?

I had a concussion playing 115-pound football and another in high school. Back then -- not leather helmet days but close -- they just called it getting your bell rung and stuck some nasty crap in front of your nose, and told you to go back into the game.

So I am suing.

Why not? I might get an extra $100,000 or so for my bank account. The precedent has been set. The NFL settled Thursday with a group of players filing concussion lawsuits to the tune of $765 million. So why not go after the high schools? Pop Warner? Colleges? And maybe even those two-hand touch games set up by our dads?

So, are you saying your coaches didn't know about the dangers of head injuries?  And that we should pretend it's still 1965 and make all of our health and safety decisions based on what we didn't fucking know 50 years ago?  Or are we finally unmasking your deep-seated fear that maybe your daddy didn't really give a fuck about you?

Here's Keith taking Mr Prisco down:



Nobody does it better.  Welcome back, Mr Olbermann - we've missed you.

BYU @ Virginia

I'm trying hard to be less of a football fan, but sometimes I just cain't hep muhsef.  It's my game and I love it.



My boy Luke plays on his HS LAX team, and since Americans have lost their ability to understand the causal relationship between paying less and less in taxes and getting less and less in terms of (eg) the quality of public schools (which includes "little extras" like Arts & Humanities, Athletics, air conditioning etc), the Booster Clubs for each of the sports teams (ie: parents) have to devise ways of raising several thousand dollars in order to provide their kids with commensurate "little extras" like transportation, lacrosse balls, helmets - just those incidentals that make the activity a bit more enjoyable, and maybe even - oh I dunno - survivable?

Anyway, our big money-maker is to volunteer as a group to scan tickets at UVa football games.  So there we were yesterday at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville for the season opener;  the Cavaliers of Virginia versus the Cougars of BYU, when a little airplane flew overhead towing one of those advertising banners - you know - it's usually something like "10% off all day tomorrow blah blah blah."  But not this one. We looked up and saw this:

Maybe you can teach an old Democrat new tricks.

Dumb Is Dangerous

From a piece in HuffPo:

It's remarkable how low America places in healthcare efficiency: among the 48 countries included in the Bloomberg study, the U.S. ranks 46th, outpacing just Serbia and Brazil. Once that sinks in, try this one on for size: the U.S. ranks worse than China, Algeria, and Iran.

But the sheer numbers are really what's humbling about this list: the U.S. ranks second in healthcare cost per capita ($8,608), only to be outspent by Switzerland ($9,121) -- which, for the record, boasts a top-10 healthcare system in terms of efficiency. Furthermore, the U.S. is tops in terms of healthcare cost relative to GDP, with 17.2 percent of the country's wealth spent on medical care for every American.

In other words, the world's richest country spends more of its money on healthcare while getting less than almost every other nation in return.

Keep Pluggin' Away

Bill Watterson retired from writing and drawing "Calvin & Hobbes" about 18 years ago, but the timelessness of his message -- to always remain thoughtful, imaginative, and playful -- will stick in our culture forever, if we're lucky. Case in point: Cartoonist Gavin Aung Than, who pens comics on his blog Zen Pencils, created this tribute to Watterson that has struck a chord with the Internet over the last few days.

Than took the text from a commencement speech Watterson delivered at Kenyon College in 1995, and illustrated it in the style of "Calvin & Hobbes." He explains that this is the first time he's intentionally attempted to mimic Watterson, although the man has been an inspiration for his art as well as his career.

If you want to buy a print of Than's cartoon, you may be out of luck. He explains that since Watterson famously refuses to license his work, preferring to let his art speak for itself, selling this "would be against the whole spirit of Calvin and Hobbes." However, you can (and should) click over to his site and browse his other, non-Watterson related artwork.

hat tip = HuffPo via Democratic Underground

New Findings

Like we didn't know this already?  I guess it doesn't hurt to look for a little confirmation and reaffirmation now and then.

In an earlier study, published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Piff and four researchers from the University of Toronto conducted a series of experiments which found that “upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals.” This included being more likely to “display unethical decision-making,” steal, lie during a negotiation and cheat in order to win a contest.

In one telling experiment, the researchers observed a busy intersection, and found that drivers of luxury cars were more likely to cut off other drivers and less likely to stop for pedestrians crossing the street than those behind the wheels of more modest vehicles. “In our crosswalk study, none of the cars in the beater-car category drove through the crosswalk,” Piff told The New York Times. “But you see this huge boost in a driver’s likelihood to commit infractions in more expensive cars.” He added: “BMW drivers are the worst.”

 --and--

These findings may appear to represent a bit of psychological trivia, but a study to be published in Political Science Quarterly by Thomas Hayes, a scholar at Trinity University, finds that U.S. senators respond almost exclusively to the interests of their wealthiest constituents – those more likely to be unethical and less sensitive to the suffering of others, according to Piff.

Hayes took data from the Annenberg Election Survey — a massive database of public opinion representing the views of 90,000 voters — and compared them with their senators’ voting records from 2001 through 2010. From 2007 through 2010, U.S. senators were somewhat responsive to the interests of the middle class, but hadn’t been for the first 6 years Hayes studied. The views of the poor didn’t factor into legislators’ voting tendencies at all.

It gets harder and harder for me to understand why we insist on doing nothing to address the massive problems being created and perpetuated by the ability of hugely wealthy Government Patrons to control the very process of government in a system that's supposed to be all about keeping that kind of power in check.

Today's Religious Blather

The headline says it all - most of it anyway:

‘Miracle’ Fresno Tree ‘Weeping Tears of God’ Is Really Just Dripping Bug Poop

Read the story at Moral Low Ground.


Behold - the power of self-delusion and the miracle of deliberate ignorance:

Here We Go Again

From The Guardian:

In a sign that Obama believes he has the legal authority, independently of Congress, to launch a strike, Carney said that allowing the chemical weapons attack to go unanswered would be a "threat to the United States".

It's not at all clear what we're fixin' to do, but when the White House intones a certain combination of magic words (eg: "threat to the US"), then it's pretty clear we're fixin' to do somethin'.  And never mind that some asshole Syrian colonel used poison gas to settle an old score (what? it's as likely as anything else we've heard).  The point is that it poses practically no serious "threat to the US".

(boiler plate): It's never about what they tell us it's about, so we have to assume we don't know what Obama knows.

Let's hope Obama knows a shitload more than I do; and that what he knows includes the very real probability that Assad might have something Russian or Chinese up his sleeve.  A piss-ant like Assad usually won't do what we tell him not to do unless he's got some real backup from some heavy friends.

Obama said he'd do something if illegal weapons were used, and now he has to follow through.  But if he goes in there with a big swingin' dick, he's likely to get a very rude surprise.  Since that's not Obama's style, maybe we can expect to hear about whatever we're planning to do after the fact - and it'll be like Osama bin Laden all over again.

Today's Pix

Today's Wonderment

So, tell me again - why is everybody always so down on The Media?

Outrage and shock and dismay, oh my! It was all over Facebook the last coupla days too.

C'mon - really?  With all the really weird and horrible shit going on in the world, Miley Cyrus is what we need to worry about?

And when I stop to think about it for a moment, maybe the people who're throwing their little hissy fits might wanna thank her for letting them retreat back into the fantasy of believing an exhibitionist teenager is at the root of all our troubles.

Today's Quote

God love Charlie Pierce, especially for having sense enough to love Little Jemmy Madison:

Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.  -- James Madison, Political Observations, April 20, 1795.