January 6, 2013 archive

Wildcard Throwball: Seahawks @ Native Americans

Pretty uniforms is how I feel about the Seahawks.

By which I mean painfully ugly but they are an otherwise unobjectionable team no more evil than any other unless they are playing one of my particular favorites and win.

They face the Native Americans who I hate on 3 different levels.

First of all they’re divisional rivals of the Jints that I’d despise just as much as the Evils except they employ fewer dog killers and are generally more hapless and ineffectual.

Second is their racist name I’ve decided not to dignify by repetition.

Third (and I can not emphasize this enough), they are the Village darlings and the fawning bootlicking of the courtier class is bi-partisan and universal.

‘nuf said.

I am going to the movies where I am going to watch actors attempt to sing show tunes and get weepy eyed when I hear anthems like this-

My friend Bobby will be watching while I’m distracted by flickering images.

Wildcard Throwball: Colts at Ravens

As I told TMC yesterday (offline, don’t bother looking) throwball is more about who you hate the most.

Today we start with 2 teams either of which is an approprate target for your scorn and derision.

On the one hand we have the Bolts

(M)any of the prominent old-time Colts, many of whom had settled in the Baltimore area, were bitter and chose to cut all ties to the relocated Colts team. Most notable and vocal among them was Johnny Unitas, who recognized himself solely as a player for the Baltimore Colts until the day he died, with his estate defending that stand to this day.

And on the other we have the Carrion Crows who’s only redeeming feature is that they failed in their attempt to carpetbag away from the land of Cleves before the community was able to reclaim their name.

(T)he agreement stipulated that the Browns’ name, colors, uniform design and franchise records would remain in Cleveland. The franchise history includes Browns club records and connections with Pro Football Hall of Fame players. Modell’s Baltimore team, while retaining all current player contracts, would, for purposes of team history, appear as an expansion team, a “new franchise.”

So Bolts or Crows– slime pit Hell wrestling until they both get their asses kicked.

Cartnoon

I wish.

On This Day In History January 6

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 6 is the sixth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 359 days remaining until the end of the year (360 in leap years).

On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse’s telegraph system is demonstrated for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize long-distance communication, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 1930s.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He attended Yale University, where he was interested in art, as well as electricity, still in its infancy at the time. After college, Morse became a painter. In 1832, while sailing home from Europe, he heard about the newly discovered electromagnet and came up with an idea for an electric telegraph. He had no idea that other inventors were already at work on the concept.

Morse spent the next several years developing a prototype and took on two partners, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, to help him. In 1838, he demonstrated his invention using Morse code, in which dots and dashes represented letters and numbers. In 1843, Morse finally convinced a skeptical Congress to fund the construction of the first telegraph line in the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. In May 1844, Morse sent the first official telegram over the line, with the message: “What hath God wrought!”

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

India and Pakistan in Kashmir border skirmish

 6 January 2013 Last updated at 06:54 GMT

Indian and Pakistani troops have exchanged fire across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region.

Pakistan said Indian troops had raided a military post in the Haji Pir sector of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, killing a soldier and injuring another.

An Indian army spokesman said Pakistan had “initiated unprovoked firing” at Indian military posts.

Kashmir is claimed by both nations in its entirety and has been a flashpoint between them for more than 60 years.

Exchanges are not uncommon but rarely result in fatalities.

‘Small arms’

The Pakistani military’s public relations office said the two sides were still exchanging fire in the area.




Sunday’s Headlines:

Fears of lives lost as search for bodies begins in Tasmania fires

Kosovo bars entry to Serbian President Nikolic

Banda assures IMF of Malawi’s economic reform

Kajaki dam: The great white elephant of Afghanistan

Robots find Barrier Reef coral at extreme depths, amazing ocean scientists

Late Night Karaoke

What We Now Know

Up host Chris Hayes discusses what we have learned since last week with guests Oliver Stone, award-winning director, producer and screenwriter; Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author; and Suzy Khimm, reporter for the Washington Post.

2012: A Safe Year To Fly

By Daniel Politi, Slate

Fear of flying may soon be a thing of the past as 2012 was a great year to get on a plane. Air travel is now the safest it has been “since the dawn of jet planes,” reports the Wall Street Journal, noting that the industry is set to mark the lowest rate of fatalities in 2012 since the early 1960s. Before Saturday’s crash near Moscow that killed four people, there were a total of 22 fatal crashes across the world in 2012, a decline from the 28 seen in 2011 and far lower from the 34 fatal accidents per year that is the average over the last decade. Of the 22 crashes, only 10 were of passenger aircraft, and just three were larger jetliners built in the West. The other seven were turboprops built in the West or Russia.

Secrecy of Memo on Drone Killing Is Upheld

by Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON – A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Wednesday to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The ruling, by Judge Colleen McMahon, was marked by skepticism about the antiterrorist program that targeted him, and frustration with her own role in keeping the legal rationale for it secret.

“I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote.

“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,” Judge McMahon wrote, adding that she was operating in a legal environment that amounted to “a veritable Catch-22.”

A lawsuit for the memorandum and related materials was filed under the Freedom of Information Act by The New York Times and two of its reporters, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane. Wednesday’s decision also rejected a broader request under the act from the American Civil Liberties Union.

David E. McCraw, a lawyer for The Times, said the paper would appeal.

How I’d write “The Town” If I Were to have Written It:

At this point, I no longer visualize The Town as a movie, but as a story.  

Doug MacRay and his men are lifelong Charlestown Townies, who, under Charlestown’s crime boss, Fergie, who runs a flower shop as a front for  his criminal enterprise, are working for him, robbing banks and armored cars.  Except for Desmond Elden, the youngest of the four, who has a fulltime, regular job with the telephone company, Doug and his men have extensive criminal records of grand theft, assault and murder.  One warm, sunny late-spring morning, after lying in wait for the bank employees to cone and open the Cambridge Savings Bank, at around 8:00 a. m., after lurking in the vestibule overnight and putting on their disguises, they decide to go to work.  After deliberately bumping into the cash-car driver to startle him,  Doug and his men storm the bank, dressed as grim reapers, with long black capes and scary-looking ghoul masks with their automatic weapons drawn, forcing bank employees and customers alike to the floor.  Everybody is threateningly warned by Jem, the nastiest and craziest of the four bandits, not to look up for even a second.  Doug and his men seek out the attractive bank manager, a woman in her late 20’s, and force her to open the vault at gunpoint, which she nervously does after Doug calms her down.   Doug and his men then take all the money from the vault and the cash  drawers, being careful to avoid any dye-packs, which could unexpectedly explode and  give them away.

Doug, Jem, Gloansy and Dez are about to escape with their loot when Claire, the bank manager, kicks the vault alarm with her foot, setting it off immediately.   Then things go from bad to worse.   Amanda, an equally attractive female customer in her mid 30’s,  who is an artist, paramedic and martial artist, and her boyfriend, Dave, a construction worker, also in  his mid-30’s, have been waiting in line to deposit some money through a teller, when they, too are somewhat roughly forced to the floor by Doug MacRay and his men.  Despite having been warned by Jem to stay down on the floor and not look up, Amanda’s boyfriend, Dave, makes the mistake of looking up for a split second when the alarm goes off.  That’s enough to send Jem (who’s Doug’s best friend and righthand man and the craziest, most hot-tempered of the four.) into an uncontrollable rage.  Thinking that Amanda’s boyfriend, Dave, had set off the vault alarm, Jem attacks Dave in a fury, hitting him directly in the back of the head with the butt of his automatic weapon a half dozen times, as hard as he can,  before Doug can stop him.  Much blood flows from Dave’s head, and Dave is ultimately killed by the blows, as we shall see.  Upon a paramedic’s instincts, Amanda attempts to find a pulse in Dave, but is unable to.  She immediately realizes the worst.

Wild Card Throwball: Vikings @ Packers

Sigh.  The not troll in me is strong despite my birth below the bridge and it’s extremely hard to hide my green and gold heritage at times like this so I seldom bother.

I don’t care who they play much, when the pack is on the field I remember things like this

The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States.

Try as I might I can’t find a topper to that single statement.  Today they face the all purples, but I’m a class warrior over ethnic, bachelor farmers not withstanding however soothing and melifluous their tones.

The Vikings are disadvantaged by the injury of Christian Ponder who may not start and by Lambeau Field, the 12th player.  On the other hand they beat the Pack just last week 37 – 34.