Of Course, This Is Not True

" Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion."- Gov. Rick Perry

Texas Governor and Tea Party Presidential candidate Rick Perry gives us the opportunity to resurrect the first of what undoubtedly will be the first of many OCTINT posts during this political season.

Gov. Perry's remarks concerned the possibility of the Federal Reserve, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke,  qualitatively easing the money supply to help stimulate the economy.  Perry, and many others, may believe that this is a bad idea and they are entitled to their opinion.  But it ain't treason.  Says who?  The Constitution of the United States and the United States Criminal Code.

The Founding Fathers, oft misquoted by the Tea Partiers, defined treason in Article III, Section 3[1] as follows in pertinent part (or in pari materia as I like to say frequently in casual conversation at the grocery store):  "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them,or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." (emphasis supplied). 

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see in the paper where the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors attacked Kansas.  Or that Mr. Bernanke was caught giving lemonade to members of the Taliban.

Turning to my home edition of the United States Criminal Code, the one that I stole from the Office of the Inspector General (I have a home version of the United States Bankruptcy Code and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as well.  While these tomes are not on my nightstand, the question of why I live alone is something of a moot point given the reading material I possess.) we see the codification of the definition in the Constitution.

18 U.S.C. 2381 states, " Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

Which is pretty screwed up if think about it.  The range of penalties if you are convicted of treason is death toooooooooooo 5 years, a 10k fine and you can't run for County Judge.  No matter.  Uncle isn't really going to fool with you for this reason unless you are Tim McVeigh.  And you will note that he is usually referred to in the past tense.

But I digress. 

Do I really think that Rick Perry believes that Ben Bernanke deserves the death penalty if the Federal Reserve "prints more money?" No.  But treason is not a word that should be bandied about in political discourse.  Treason is not only, well, treason but it is a legal concept first defined with acute precision in the Constitution.  And to equate the Fed's exercise of its legal authority to regulate the banks and execute the monetary policy of the United States is palpably irresponsible and panders to the lowest common denominator in the electorate.  Which, of course, seems to be working. Which is why I'm fixing to ask my old Hendrix College buddy over in New Zealand who coaches track if he needs an assistant. 

 But is "printing money" an act of treason?  No.  Of course, this is not true. 

My Sunday Feeling

Last week was crazy.  Standard and Poor's, evidently not satisfied with helping cause the economy to crater in 2008, decided to have another go at it by lowering the credit rating of the United States which caused the stock market to go through the floor.  The 6th Circuit ruled Obamacare unconstitutional.  Texas Governor Rick Perry threw his cowboy hat into the ring of lunatics that are seeking the Republican nomination for President.  Perry, who practically speaks in unknown tongues on the stump, recently said in an interview that he thought Social Security was unconstitutional.  He will fit in well with the psychotics and bigots that have hijacked the GOP for the time being.  So do I want to write about any of this stuff?

Hell, no!  I want to write about something important.  I want to write about the latest shake-up in college sports, namely, that Texas A & M, is joining the Southeastern Conference along with Clemson and Florida State.  The earlier rumor that Missouri was going to follow the Aggies over into the land of Bear Bryant and UGA the bulldog was just that.  The Tigers are staying put.

Why would the Aggies leave the mediocrity of the Big-12 for a far more murderous and insane football conference like the SEC?  Two 5 letter words my friends.  And those words are "Texas" and "Money."  The Aggies always felt like the red headed stepchild next to the snooty Longhorns.  But what really got their noses out of joint in College Station is when Texas went out and started its own television network, the proceeds from which they ain't got to share.  So, if the Aggs are going to finish in 3rd place in football on a yearly basis, why not do it in a conference where they stand to make a little more money?

Except they might not finish third.  Odds are the Aggies will be put into the Western Division of the conference.  Which only consists of Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State and Ole Miss.  No Iowa States or Kansas Jayhawks in that lineup.  The Aggies may not be able to beat Ole Miss on a consistent basis.  This may be a tougher slog in football than they thought at the time they made the jump.

The good news is that they will be competitive in basketball in that division right out of the chute since it pretty well stinks.  That and they won't have to fool with Kansas anymore. The bad news is that nobody at A & M much gives two hoots in hell about basketball.

I will say that having Clemson-or "Climpson"as those rednecks pronounce it- in the SEC will be bring a certain element into the mix. The SEC schools pride themselves on traditions.  Well, Climpson football is traditionally one of the cheatingest  programs extant. Their booster club is known as the IPTAY club.  It was started by legendary coach Frank Howard who had the farmers who made up their fan base back then pledge at least 10 bucks to the booster club after they got the crops out each year.  Hence, IPTAY or "I Pay Ten A Year."  It has also been said that IPTAY stands for "I Pay Ten Athletes per Year" and/or "It's Probation Time Again Y'all." Further, folks in Starkville or Auburn are downright Parisian next to the average Climpson fan.  Indeed, it is not for nothing that Sports Illustrated once referred to home games in Memorial Stadium as "the world's largest open-air Klan rally."

But I do like the fact that their coach is named Dabo Swinney.  Never met anybody named Dabo before.  Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure I ever met anybody from Clemson before.

Florida State already plays Florida and Climpson.  And the basketball programs there will surely enjoy not having to play North Carolina, Wake Forest and Duke anymore.  Hell, Florida State's team last year could have won the SEC Eastern Division even with Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt in it.

And none of the new schools will enjoy their SEC debuts in track or baseball.  At least not anytime soon.

But they can live with it, at least for awhile because they will be out from under the teams they need to be out from under and, most importantly, they will each make more money.

And that's really all that matters.  Money. 

But I can't wait for the first Clemson-LSU game.  The fights in the stands will be more entertaining than the game on the field.







 

Vox Populi: The Girl At The Bakery

The cute kid rang up my order.

"Don't you usually get croissants?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

" I thought you were the guy that gets croissants."

" You have confused me with some other unattractive man."

She laughed out loud and covered her mouth and nose with her hand.  After she recovered, she opened the register to get my change.  She affected a regal bearing.

" Actually," she said as she handed me my change. "You are a very handsome man."

"Wow," I replied. "So what time do you get off?"

She laughed again.

" Wellllllllllllllll.  How should I put this?" she said as she looked to the ceiling.

She looked back at me.

" You are a handsome older gentleman."

"Gotcha," I replied.  " See you later."

"Thanks for coming in," she said.  She winked. 

Not a bad start to a rainy Saturday.  Maybe I should get some croissants next time. 

My Sunday Feeling

"I am at peace." 

These were the only words uttered by child molester and polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs as he stood in front of a Texas jury of his peers.  A jury that returned guilty verdicts against him on charges that he sexually assaulted two girls.  12 and 15.  Girls he  held out as being his "spiritual wives."  The 15 year old got pregnant.  The 12 year old he had the good taste to violate in the presence of 3 other "wives."

It took the jury 3 and half hours to come back with its verdicts.  My buddy Don wondered why it took that long, especially since Jeffs didn't actually put on a defense.  Indeed, he fired his lawyers on the eve of the trial.  My feeling was that the jury felt that if Jeffs was going to waste their time by standing mute before them for most of the 30 minutes he was allotted for closing argument that they might as well hold out for their free lunch courtesy of the State of Texas.  Might as well get 2 things accomplished.

Actually, Jeffs tried to interpose any of a number of defenses, mainly based on the theory that his prosecution was in violation of his religious freedoms.  These religious defenses were routinely shot down by the Judge who-pardon the expression-exhibited the patience of Job during Jeffs's ramblings, even when she was advised that God had appeared to him in his cell,and told him that "a whirlwind of Judgment" would be unleashed if he were not set free.

Well, why didn't God just go ahead and bust him out, God being God and all?  But I digress.

This is a teachable moment about where our 1st Amendment rights start and the criminal law ends them.

In this great land of ours, even in quasi-theocracies like Texas, Utah and apparently Hot Springs, Arkansas, you are free to believe anything you damn well please.   You are free to visit both the Catholic church and the Methodist church as I occasionally do.  Or did.  Or you can stay home and watch The Sports Reporters on ESPN as I generally do.  You can believe that there is no God.  Or that there are Gods. 

You can even believe that you are God's spokesman on Earth as does Warren Jeffs and his weak-minded acolytes.  However, your religious beliefs will not provide you with a defense if you violate the criminal laws.  Or many of the civil laws either.

True story.  A lady in Mississippi filed a Chapter 13.  She was asked by the Trustee at the First Meeting of Creditors why she hadn't filed an income tax return in years.  Simple she said.  She didn't have to pay taxes because she worked for a church.  Wrong.  Ask Richard Roberts.

God may tell me to smoke dope.  He can be my great comfort in times of woe.  But He can't be my defense if I get popped on a drug charge. 

Same with Warren Jeffs, he obviously believed his station in the universe to be sufficiently exalted that it entitled him to 78 "wives" and to engage in sex with children.  As a footnote, I think the main reason I could never be a religious sex pervert is that I would not like living in a compound with damn near a 100 people.   I like to be by myself too much. 

What is it about America that produces a Warren Jeffs, a Tony Alamo or a David Koresh?  Try as I might I can't really come up with a recent European counterpart.  Even at that, I am convinced that Alamo is mainly a criminal.  Unlike Warren Jeffs, Alamo had the relatively good judgment to cross State lines to go get his underage concubines.  So he is pulling his time in a Federal joint.  Jeffs will likely be spending the rest of his days in a Texas State prison where he will be forced to engage with a rougher crowd than what he is accustomed to.

Jeffs may well believe that he is God's spokesman on Earth.  But that didn't cut much ice with that jury down in West Texas. 

I doubt it'll cut much ice with God either.

Day of Rest

No Sunday post today sports fans!  Got lots of stuff going on nowadays and I ain't got time for this right now.

Will return soon!

Talk among yourselves. 

My Sunday Feeling

I love my Uncle Howard.  He is a friend, a mentor and a golf buddy.  I cannot imagine my life without him.   Like many of us, Uncle Howard and his buddies like to share stuff from the Internet with each other.  He used to share a lot of these exchanges, most of them right wing rants about politics, with me.  He was pretty active during the Clinton administration until I guess he got tired of me returning fire, which routinely required him to apologize to his friends on the distibution list.  Typically, it would go something like, "Well, my nephew is a good boy but he's a liberal."

Howard was pretty quiet during W's administration.  The e-mail traffic during those halcyon years of peace and prosperity were mostly about golf and family.  But now that the Oval Office is occupied by a Muslim from Kenya, it is Katie bar the door.

Yesterday, "H" as he is known in the family, disseminated to the family and some of his friends an e-mail that purported to be an eyewitness account of a talk given by the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer at the Center for the American Experiment in 2009 in which he criticized the policies of the Obama Administration.

Of course, as with many other offerings from the Internet, the supposedly accurate account was anything but as a quick trip to snopes.com proved.  You can read the story on snopes here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/krauthammer.asp

As I have said before, I view these as teachable moments.  I sent H the article, along with what I view as a rule of thumb regarding stuff like this.  Anytime you receive from the Internet a supposedly eyewitness account of an event and it doesn't include backup documentation, it is invariably false. Especially when the author purports to describe a talk that occurred over 2 years ago.  Indeed, even Krauthammer repudiated the mischaracterization of his remarks.

Didn't matter. 

"Whether K's comments are true or not they could not be more correct," was his response.

Now last time I looked this was a free country.  You can vote any way you see fit for whatever reason you  want.  And I am not naive.  As the old saying goes, "politics ain't bean-bag."  It is a dirty game with plenty of spinning and parsing from both sides of the isle.

But there is a difference between having an opinion and telling a lie.  You're entitled to your own opinion.  You're not entitled to your own facts.  The author of the e-mail about Dr. Krauthammer told a flat-out lie.  It got passed all around the country.  Undoubtedly many people accepted it on face value.  And I don't think these things are always just cooked up by nuts.  This particular offering was pretty damn clever the more thought of it.

Think about it.  The author knew that Krauthammer was invited to speak at an event that was not open to the general public.  So, there wouldn't be much documentation regarding his remarks.  That and it gives an aura of "inside information."  Secondly, the author prefaced the account by describing Krauthammer's history as a public intellectual.  He's a Harvard trained psychiatrist and award winning author.  So he's really smart.  That and the author probably suspected that some background was needed since many of the downstream recipients of this screed probably have never frigging heard of Charles Krauthammer. 

And the fact that that his remarks at the event were mischaracterized in the e-mail obviously means very little to some people.  And most recipients would accept it at face value in the first place.   

My love and admiration for Uncle Howard is not remotely impacted by his political views.  And vice-versa.  At least I hope.  Oh.  Friday's explanation to his friends on the e-mail list was a semi-exasperated " As you can see my nephew's way out there on the left."  What H does not know is that Friday I was busy with 2 different investigative agencies.  The rest of the day was spent doing debt collection. Some flaming communist I am.

Like I said, I love my Uncle Howard.  And it is for this reason that I am going to give him some George Orwell for Christmas.  Who would have been amazed at political discourse in the present age.

My Sunday Feeling

" This is not good," said my 19 year old dermatologist as he looked at a spot on my scalp. "This is coming off."

For the last 10 years I have been going to the dermatologist on a fairly regular basis due to chronic eruptions of spots on my scalp called "Solar Keratosis."  When I was first diagnosed by the doctor I had then, who has since retired, he told me that the spots got started when I was a kid playing outside.  And probably all the time I spent on the tennis court didn't help matters any. 

"Yeah," Dr. Keeran said. "We tell folks to get out and be active in the fresh air.  Well, this is what can happen.  All your years of baseball, running and tennis.  Maintaining a healthy lifestyle that any doctor would approve of. Now this.  Ironic, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said I was I recoiled from the blasts of liquid nitrogen. " Petty damn ironic."

And so, I examine my skin on a pretty regular basis.  And a few days ago, I noticed one of the spots on my scalp looked darker than the other spots.  So I made an appointment even though my next scheduled appointment was in September.  I'm glad I did.

After looking at my scalp, 19 began intently studying my face and ears.

"Notice anything different on shoulders, neck or back?"

"No," I said.

"Good," he replied. "But that spot has got to come off.  And I mean, with a scalpel this time.  I need you to let me do this."

"OK," I said. "Do what you have to do."

After he had finished hacking on me he put the offending spot in a plastic jar.  He turned and started writing in the chart.

"Am I going to die of skin cancer?"

It just came out of my mouth.  What a pussy thing to say.

"Not today you're not," he said as he furiously wrote in the chart.  As an aside, I don't see how that will provide him any useful information.  You should see his handwriting.  It is illegible by doctor standards.  I had a pharmacist ask me once which doc at Little Rock Dermatology signed a prescription that 19 had given me to fill.  And pharmacists can read anything. 

Anyway, he rolled the chair around to face me.

"Look," he said. " If it is anything it is most likely squamous cell. And if it is squamous cell, I probably just took care of the problem.  If it is the next likely culprit, I probably just took care of that too."

OK.

"Here's what's gonna happen.  I'm gonna look at it under the microscope.  Then we're gonna send it off and you'll get a call in a couple of days."

Hand on shoulder.

"Try not to worry, Mr. Bowen.  No get out of here before I think of something else to do to you."

"Well," I said to myself as I rode down the elevator. "at least he didn't send me straight to the hospital like they did Andy."

My buddy Andy went to the GP with a sore hip.  Andy played baseball in college.  Figured it was arthritis or something.  3 months later he was dead from melanoma cancer.  He was 50 maybe.  19 didn't send me off to the med school the same day like Andy's doc did. 

Then again, up until the other day 19 had never referred to me as "Mr. Bowen" either.  My overactive mind wondered what that meant.  If anything. 

As a friend's doctor told her, "If you live long enough stuff just starts happening.  Mother Nature didn't really design us to live as long as we live."

So stuff starts happening.

And I am not complaining.  Like most folks my age I have a few chronic medical conditions.  Much to the shock of both myself and the cardiologist, I have a lot of plaque in my arteries.  Bad genes.  I have asthma and allergies.  Not my fault.  I have arthritic changes going on in my lower back.  Ditto.

It's frustrating because I really didn't do any of this stuff to myself.  As the cardiologist says, "What am I gonna do?  Tell you to quit smoking? Take up exercise? Lose 50 pounds?"  I'm very lucky that all of these issues are being followed and managed well by an armada of exquisitely gifted people in white coats.  My biggest issue is the asthma especially in this heat.  And if that's the worst that happens to me I will be truly blessed.  Check that.  I am truly blessed.

But, like every sane person, I didn't want to be any where in the same Area Code as the "Big C."  Luckily, I wasn't there for long.  19's office called to say that the biopsy revealed that the spot was pre-cancerous.  No golf or other prolonged exposure to sun on that incision cite for a week.  Otherwise, see you in September.

I'm not going to die from skin cancer.  At least not today I'm not.  I'm blessed.  And I know it.

And now maybe 19 will go back to calling me "Paul" again.

My Sunday Feeling

"I did not say she was innocent.  I just said there was not enough evidence.  If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be."

                                                    Jennifer Ford, a member of the jury that acquitted Casey Anthony

By whatever criterion you would care to devise, Casey Anthony was one hell of an unsympathetic defendant.  Most of us, well, all of us, cannot imagine partying, and otherwise making a spectacle of oneself, if our child had disappeared.  2 year old Caylee Anthony was missing, dead actually, and Casey's out getting tattoos and cavorting with numerous men as if she no longer had a care in the world?  Casey Anthony sure looked like she was guilty of killing little poor little Caylee.  Indeed, she looked for all the world like an intemperate head case, a less stable version of Lindsay Lohan, the kind of barfly that sensible young men would do well to avoid but inevitably do not.  And the State of Florida proved that she came from a family that was, to use the current catch-all definition, "dysfunctional."

But that's not murder.

I am no criminal lawyer.  Nor do I play one on TV.  And while I didn't follow the case like some people did, it always seemed to me that the case was overcharged.  Which means nothing in a certain sense in that prosecutors typically charge a defendant with anything and everything they can think of in hopes of getting at least a plea or conviction on a lesser included offense.  Not to go all pedantic on you but a lesser included offense is an offense that is a constituent element of the charge with the highest penalty.  To put it very simply, and making up a criminal statute to do it, if I attempted to murder you, I at least assaulted you, assault being the lesser included offense of the charge of attempted murder.  And it is unknown, at least to me, if they offered Anthony a deal to plead out to a lesser offense or not.  I'm guessing that the State had no choice but to go all in, given the glare of publicity surrounding the case.

Which leads me to the next question.  What made this murder trial a national issue?  If Nancy Grace hadn't sunk her fangs into Anthony's backside I submit to you that we might have never heard about this case.  Don't get me wrong.  The death of a child, any child, is a grievous and pitiable loss.  What reasonably sentient parent wouldn't be wild with grief or worry over a lost child?  And the thought of poor Caylee being buried by the side of the road while her Mother disported herself like unto a white trash version of Paris Hilton is hard to reconcile.  No, there is a lot to dislike about Casey Anthony.

But that's not murder.

And children are killed every day.  Often at the hands of a parent or-forgive me-caregiver and nobody hears about it.  At least it is safe to say that the abuse and murder of children does not ordinarily throw the media into a frenzy.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, we have CNN's Nancy Grace largely to thank for turning this case into a circus and inflaming the court of public opinion against the Defendant, who granted didn't exactly help herself on that score with her reprehensible conduct. But you don't convict a person of capital felony murder because of  behavior in saloons that might cause Salome to blush.  You have to have evidence.  And the State couldn't prove causation or time of death. That's pretty big.  It is hard to sell a murder charge with only circumstantial evidence in an age where folks are used to seeing the genius cops on TV wrap things up in a hour with computers and microscopes.

When O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his trial, it was said by some that it was proof that the legal system doesn't work.  Well, under the Constitution the burden of proof is on the State to prove guilt.  When it doesn't sustain that burden the Defendant gets to "go home" as my criminal lawyer friends say.

And for Nancy Grace, a lawyer who professes faith in the legal system, to say after the verdict that"[s]omewhere the devil is dancing tonight" is reprehensible and unprofessional and panders to the lowest common denominator.  Check that.  It would be unprofessional if she were using her training and experience to do straight up legal reporting.  She is not.  It is strictly show business.  She is to legal reporting as Rush Limbaugh is to politics.  So I take that back.  Sorta. 

Did Casey Anthony get away with murder?  Only she knows that for sure.  The juror quoted described their task correctly.  Because innocence is not a legal concept.  It is a moral concept.  The question before the jury was whether there was enough evidence to prove that Casey Anthony was guilty of the crimes for which she was charged.  Period.  And the jury ruled that there was not. 

Like it or not, like Casey Anthony or not, that's the way the system works. 

May God have mercy on her soul. 

My 4th of July Feeling

I got up bright and early Saturday morning.  I had some coffee and glanced at the paper.  I got a bottle of water, I powered up the camera and headed out the door en route to Van Buren Street next door.  I very quickly noticed that something seemed amiss. 

There were no cops.  There were no barricades at the top of the hill.  There were no......runners.  Seeing as how nothing much gets past me, I quickly suspected that the annual Firecracker Fast 5 K race was actually going to be run on the 4th of July this year and not on Saturday.  A quick visit to the Internet confirmed my suspicion.  Thus began, in such an inauspicious fashion, my Fourth of July weekend.

Granted as far as screwups go, I have committed far worse.  But I have to think that I must have looked pretty stupid standing out on Van Buren with Nikon Senior as the only other folks out at that hour seemed to be the usual yard sale type ladies going up and down the street looking at the classifieds as they drove.  Which seems more dangerous than texting and driving if you think about it.

This weekend is going to be a scorcher.  My friend Marge over in Jackson, distraught as she is after losing a jury trial last week, has rethought her earlier plan to go lie in the street.  Too damn hot.  So some good did come from this.  I would hate to lose her.  Especially in such a ridiculous fashion.

My plans are pretty simple.  NV and the boys are coming over Saturday night.  She has graciously included me in  celebrating the happy fact that her oldest boy Paul got into the Honors College at the University of Arkansas.  The young man wants me to cook hamburgers on the grill.  OK, son.  You got it. 

Other than that, going to play a little golf, watch the Gentleman's Final tomorrow morning at Wimbledon and join friends for dinner.  Maybe try to catch up on my reading. 

And take pictures of the runners on Monday morning.

We do take all of this for granted, you and I.  I have written about this before but it bears repeating on the 4th of July.  I do not understand the campaign rhetoric that suggests that our freedoms are somehow being "eroded."  I can pretty much do whatever I damn well please as long as I can afford it, it doesn't hurt anybody else and is otherwise legal.  So can you.

I can have whoever I want over to my house.  I can pretty much keep anybody out.  Assuming they are not carrying both a badge and a warrant that is.  I can watch what I want to on TV.  I can go to church to hear a patriotic sermon on Sunday or I can refuse to go because I find patriotic sermons stupid and/or borderline dangerous.  I can read whatever I can put my hands on.  An old friend called me late last night.  We talked for sometime.  Unlike my latest  pro se lunatic, I reasonably believe that my phone is not tapped.  I can stand out on the street with a camera without being questioned by the authorities.  Indeed, there were none to found when I stepped out early Saturday morning.

We take our freedoms for granted.  But that's different from being paranoid about them.  We take them for granted because we can. 

That's because all of the men and women out in the Veteran's Cemeteries across the world wore the uniform in defense of rights and freedoms we enjoy today. 

I have a couple of buddies who served in Iraq.  I'm going to send them a message Monday thanking them for their service. 

I can't think of a better way to celebrate the 4th of July. 

Due Diligence

The question of how a relatively small time operator like Frank McCourt managed to buy one of the most storied franchises in all of professional sports is a fair one.  Certainly McCourt was a wealthy man having made most of his money in real estate development-parking lots mostly-in the Boston area.  But he wasn't Steinbrenner level rich. 

Indeed, McCourt tried to buy the Boston Red Sox and was turned down.  He also tried to buy the Los Angeles Angels back when they were happy to be from Anaheim and was likewise turned down.  The reason?  He didn't have enough money.  Or at least he wasn't considered sufficiently liquid to become a player in that world.

And yet, in 2004 McCourt managed to "buy" the Dodgers with only 9 million of his own money.  The rest of the financing for the 430 million dollar deal came from Bank of America, Fox and-get this-Major League Baseball.  That's right. MLB loaned McCourt 75 million to help him join the club.  As an aside this would make MLB a creditor as well as the trade association that is most likely going to try to seize ownership of the Dodgers from McCourt and his numerous corporate alter egos.  Some might find this to be a conflict of interest.  Some, myself included, might find this hilarious.  Talk amongst yourselves.

So how in the name of Calvin Griffith did this deal get done?  I have a couple of theories.

First of all, compared to the NBA and the NFL, the baseball owners are considered to be for the most part, well, idiots.  Twas ever thus. As the perpetually cranky Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin once said, " If it were raining soup, baseball's owners would be standing outside with forks."

The rumor at the time the Dodgers were put on the market by Rupert Murdoch was that Mark Cuban was interested in getting into baseball.  Cuban, the owner of the recently crowned NBA World Champion Dallas Mavericks, was in those days frequently fined by NBA Commissioner David Stern for his sideline antics and post-game tirades about officiating.  The story is that the thought of Mark Cuban elbowing his way into "the club"sent MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and some of the other MLB owners straight for the Mylanta.  These guys thought McCourt would be a better fit than the brash young owner of the Mavericks. 

The second theory is that the whole economy at that time was running on the foolish assumption that real estate was forever going to appreciate.  My guess is that McCourt, like many other people during that halcyon time who put up real estate as collateral for loans that they couldn't afford -in his case parking lots in the Boston area-looked good on paper.  Well we know what happened don't we?  Real property values went through the floor taking the economy along with it.

Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan said something on ESPN's Sports Reporters to the effect that the folks in Boston were on to McCourt all along and that Bud Selig is getting exactly what he deserves.  Some people in the Commissioner's office have said that maybe, just maybe, they should done a better job of due diligence when Frank McCourt first hiked his skirt at MLB.  Ya think?

I bet Mark Cuban, who has recently been quoted as saying that he wants nothing to do with the Dodgers mess, is looking pretty good in retrospect.  He may have a big mouth but he's got a ring.  And he can pay his bills. 

I bet he looks pretty good.  Especially on paper.

The Commissioner Digs In

Well.  That didn't take long.  Yesterday, Major League Baseball, acting by and through Commissioner Bud Selig filed its Objection to the Dodgers' Application for Interim Financing.  We'll get to the Objection in a minute.  First, the boring procedural stuff.

Monday, I told you that the Dodgers had filed bankruptcy and that they had filed an application for Interim Financing.  Such an application is just what it sounds like.  When a Debtor-in-Possession or DIP, files for bankruptcy protection, it often (in the case of a large corporation) has a "white knight" that it approached pre-filing to arrange to fund the business.  Indeed, some very sophisticated lenders will require a business to file an 11 as a condition of making the loan.  Why?  Because bankruptcy stops all collection efforts by the creditors. 

But the DIP can't just get the loan money and fund the business.  It has to get permission of the Court to obtain the financing.  Here, the Dodgers requested approval of the loan it had negotiated and an initial draw of 50 million against it in order to make tomorrow's payroll.  They requested interim financing until the hoped for Final Order Confirming a Plan of Reorganization.

MLB objected.  They reasons for the Objection are basically three-fold.  1) They allege that Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Dodgers siphoned off millions of dollars and misappropriated them to his personal use; 2) Oh, and by the way, we took McCourt out of baseball and installed a monitor to run the club.  He can't requisition paper clips without the monitor's approval much less put the Dodgers in bankruptcy.  I confess that I wondered about that one too and; 3) MLB is ready to make a loan for Interim Financing on much more favorable terms, will not charge a fee or place a lien on the assets.

The response of the Dodgers is that the decision about who to approach for financing is vested in the "sound business judgment" of the DIP, and yeah, the rates and terms of such financing is typically at murderous rates and terms because DIPs are typically in acute financial distress.  Secondly, they say, the Dodgers are not required to do business with someone who is trying to take over the business.  And thirdly (thirdly?) we don't believe the Commissioner has the authority under baseball's Constitution to take over a member baseball club. 

The Judge granted the Application for Interim Financing.  The report is that MLB agreed to it and I believe that.  They had no choice.  There was no time for a trial on the Objection.  The payroll has to be made.  All of this will be tried down the road.

So what's next?  ESPN reported today that MLB will try to terminate the Dodgers franchise and then take it over in order to sell it to somebody else.  Eventually there will have to be a ruling on the issue of a) whether the Commissioner of Baseball has the authority to take over a team.  Every Commissioner since the time of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis has viewed the Commissioner's power to act "in the best interests of baseball" to be damn near plenary in nature. 

So I guess the threshold question before moving too far forward is who is entitled to run the Dodgers?  Is it Frank McCourt?  Or the monitor appointed by Bud Selig?  Oh, let's not forget Jamie McCourt.  She contends the Dodgers are marital property to be divvied up by the Divorce Court Judge in Los Angeles.  Look for her to intervene in the bankruptcy before too long.

This is all fascinating stuff.  I will continue to monitor-pardon the expression-the activity in the case.  And in the next installment we'll talk about McCourt's acquisition of the Dodgers and how MLB is partially to blame for the current mess.

Stay tuned.

Frank McCourt Goes High And Tight

The Los Angeles Dodgers filed a Petition under Title 11 of the United States Code today.  To put it in layman's terms, otherwise widely known as English, the Dodgers filed a Chapter 11 in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

First some background. Chapter 11 is a business reorganization.  You may recall that Chrysler and GM both reorganized under this provision of the Code.  You may ask why Delaware?  And the answer would be that many, if not most, major corporations incorporate under the laws of Delaware because of Delaware's corporate-friendly organization and tax laws.  Chapter Elevens are time consuming and expensive.  And in my experience with smaller corporate debtors, rarely successful in reorganizing the business.

Some more background.  In 2004, the Dodgers were acquired by Frank H. McCourt, who made all of his money in the parking business in Boston.  His wife Jamie will figure into these chronicles soon enough.  Long story short:  In 2010, the Dodgers started experiencing what the Emergency Motion for Interim Financing dryly refers to as "cash flow difficulties."  According to the Motion this was due to a decline in attendance and  failure to make the playoffs.  Oh.  That and a whopping 22 million in deferred compensation to current and former players.

In April Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig ousts McCourt and appoints a monitor to run the Dodgers.  The Motion refers to Selig's authority to do this as "questionable."

McCourt cuts a deal with Fox Sports that will get him well financially. Here's where Jamie comes in.  As if the Dodgers don't have enough drama in sufficient supply, the McCourts are embroiled in an exceedingly nasty divorce.  One of the issues in the divorce is whether the Dodgers are marital property along with the numerous other entities created by McCourt.  Indeed, a hearing on the issue is set for August.  Or was until the bankruptcy filing.  Anyway, part of the deal with Fox was that if Jamie McCourt prevailed in divorce court on her theory that the Dodgers were marital property, she would get 100 million (Yes.  You read that right.) which would be partially funded by the loan.  The other part would come from a loan from Fox to Frank.

Selig doesn't approve the deal because of the proposed payment to Jamie.  That, and the McCourts have run the business like their own personal candy store.  The Dodgers are officially broke by June 30 if they don't close with Fox Sports.  So off to Bankruptcy Court we go.

Which if nothing else, will serve to piss off everybody in Major League Baseball.  Let me count the ways.

1) The Debtor in case 11-12010 isn't Wally's Pizza.  It's the Los Angeles frigging Dodgers.  One of the crown jewels of professional sports.  Broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson.  Won 6 World Series.  Created everlasting enmity in Brooklyn when the franchise moved to LA in 1962.  This is a black eye on the sport.  Which leads to......

2) The other owners will be pissed especially the Chicago White Sox to whom the Dodgers owe 3.5 million.  This filing is a black eye for baseball. 

3)  The Commissioner will be pissed.  His powers to act "in the best interests of baseball" are damn near plenary.  Until they run into the Automatic Stay provisions of 11 U.S.C. 362.  If MLB wanted to sell the Dodgers, no can do without a fight in Bankruptcy Court. 

4)  The Major League Baseball Players Union will be pissed.  Most of the Dodgers' unsecured creditors are current and former players.  They owe Manny Ramirez @ 22 million.  They even owe Marquis Grissom @ 3 million.  He played for then what?  A year?  These insane contracts were made possible by a collective bargaining agreement.  Expect the player's union to bring hell if the Dodgers try to impair (again, in English the word would be screw) these claims. 

5)  Speaking of collective bargaining agreements, ask the United Auto Workers how their contracts held up in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies. 

I'm just getting started good. 

I may have no life.  But it is for these moments that I indeed live. 







    

AWOL Again

This is becoming a habit.  I know.

Will be back next week sometime.

Talk amongst yourselves.

My Father's Day Feeling

As I have said in the past, I like Father's Day.  Later on today, I will hit the sales and buy stuff for me on sale.  It's not like I'm cheating.  I can't stand Christmas or Valentine's Day.  For me, participation in either of the latter civic rituals is complete hypocrisy.  But I need a new golf bag.  I know where I can get one on sale today.  Somebody is going to buy it.  It might as well be me whether or not I have any "heirs of the body" as the old property law cases used to say.

Besides, most Dads I know would love to treat Father's Day as no big deal.  Here's a true story. Back in April I submitted a essay on Father's Day to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  My editor at that time was a devout Roman Catholic father of a little girl whom he adores.  Here is the following e-mail exchange.

Editor: " This is great.  I want to use it."

Me: "Cool."

Editor: "When is Father's Day anyway?"

Me: "You're asking me?"

Editor: " Yeah well.  It's no big deal to those of us who are actually fathers.  I would just as soon be left alone."

Me: "But that won't happen will it?"

Editor: "Oh no."

Anyway, no, there are no heirs of my body of which I am even remotely aware.  And that's OK.  I assumed that I would be a father at one point in time but it just never worked out.  But on the other hand, I am in a position to do some things with my life and what little money I have scraped together that I would not be able to do if I had to worry about the college fund.  Which certainly is in line with my essentially narcissistic personality.

My memories of my own father are kind of diffuse at this point.  After all, by now he's been dead longer than I knew him.  I know it's different with girls and their daddies, but I suspect Hugh's daughters will experience at least some of the same disconnect when they consult the memory banks when they are in their fifties as well.  Human nature is what it is.  And 34 years, to use my example, is a long time to bear witness.

But what of my father?  Here's what I remember.  He was quiet.  He was shy to the point of social ineptitude.  Looking back at some of the weirder aspects of his personality through the modern prism of diagnosis I wonder whether he had ADD or Asperger's.  He was the kind of guy that could teach thermodynamics and yet fully believe that no one could see him from the outside as he passed by a window in his skivvies.  Which, as one of my shrink friends who evaluates children would say, sounds kind of "aspergery" to me.  Then again, maybe I come by it honest.  My father always struck me as a lonesome person who had something of an impaired ability to relate to others.  As for me, I am not lonesome to the slightest degree and I play well with others.  And yet, for the most part I am the most content when I am by myself.

Maybe I'm a little more aspergery than I care to know.

One of my aunts maintained that he was a drunk.  I don't know about that.  I only saw Dad real bad drunk once that I know of.  It was not pretty and is a story for another day.  Sometimes it takes awhile for dust to settle.  That time has come.  But this is Father's Day.  Today is not the day.  In any event, I do know he was addicted to nicotine and this is why his heart blew up at 53. 

Bottom line.  He was a good person.  He worked hard.  He wore the uniform.  He faithfully did his duty in harm's way.  He was a good provider. He loved his sons.  Like most marriages his had its up and downs.  And from what I could tell from my perspective of limited discernment as a young person, the downs were practically Wagnerian in their scope and intensity.  But over time I have come to see just as bad if not worse.  And he made sure that there were investments in place that were so sufficiently sound that only recently have they been liquidated pursuant to his spouse's Will. 

My father and I clashed a lot toward the end.  In my junior year at Hendrix I began the process of applying for law schools.  I applied to schools all over the country.  While he grudgingly paid the application fees for Vanderbilt, Tulane, SMU and Arkansas, he made no secret of the fact that he wasn't going to pay for me to go to school out of the state.  Which struck me as an odd position for somebody who up until then had routinely disparaged higher education in Arkansas.  Eventually I figured it out.  He didn't want me to leave. 

Unfortunately, he left before I did.

If I am doing the math right in my head, which I am probably not having still no aptitude for math or science which he found unfathomable, Buck Bowen would have been 87 as of this writing.  Most likely, he would not have lived that long given his chain smoking ways along with the genetic predisposition to coronary artery disease that recent testing revealed he bequeathed to guess who?

But I wish he had been around after I returned to Arkansas after getting my law degree from The Tulane University of Louisiana.  I wish we could have played golf.  Maybe we could have worked some of this shit out on the driving range.  Maybe not. 

I wish he could have seen that I turned out OK.  I wish I could have said "Thank you."

Not A Morality Play. Still, Karma Is A Bitch.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to say "I told you so" after the Miami Heat and the much-ballyhooed Big Three of Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James were dispatched in the NBA Finals in 6 games by the Dallas Mavericks, the final win taking place on the Heat's home floor.  So by all means let's do it: http://themovingfingerwrites.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-sunday-feeling.html

Particularly, I direct your attention to the quote from legendary tough guy Paul Silas who at the time LeBron told a rapt America that he would "taking [his] talents to the South Beach" was telling ESPN Radio that James didn't have much of a killer instinct.  Silas was LeBron's first NBA coach.  So he should know whereof he spoke.  And LeBron's disappearing act late in games in the Finals, although he played pretty well last night, seems to bear that out.

Text from a friend Saturday: "Why can't LeBron make change for a dollar bill?"

"No 4th quarter."

While it is a safe bet that nobody outside of the Sunshine State was rooting for the Heat in this series, let's not make a morality play out of it.  Sure, LeBron's (and ESPN's) stupid decision to announce that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers in prime time during a contrived "special" entitled "The Decision" in retrospect made LeBron, a guy who up until that point was not particularly known for hubris or arrogance, seem steeped in it.  And when James, Bosh and Wade were introduced to the Miami fans strutting around in their white home unis as if the NBA Title was a foregone conclusion it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.  Myself included.

But let's not forget that, again, these guys didn't have bad reputations for being knuckleheads prior to that night.  And they still don't. Sure, Wade and James looked like a couple of punks for mocking Dirk Nowitski's sinus infection after a shootaround after Game 5 which Dirk played while running a 101.  Hey, assholes!  You lost!  Shut up.  But still, there are far worse citizens in the NBA than these 3.

Also, James and Bosh's decision to go to Miami was a business decision they were entirely free to make.  Indeed, depending on what kind of labor agreement the NBA Player's Association and the League can hammer out after the lockout-you do know there's gonna be a lockout right?-free agents will continue to essentially collude with each other to join teams that they believe gives them the best chance to win a title.  Somewhere Curt Flood is looking down and smiling.

And let's give the Mavericks some credit.  Dirk Nowitski had a series for the ages.  Jason Terry and Jason Kidd shot the Heat out in games 5 and 6.  Shawn Marion (who has to be carrying an AARP card by now)and Tyson Chandler held their own with Bosh.  They were quite literally the better team last night, scoring 27 points off of highly unsure Heat ball handling.  Note to Erik Spolestra:  who thought it was a good idea to have LeBron bring the ball up the middle on the fast break.?  I'm sure that it wasn't you.  And if so, I'm sure Pat Riley was not impressed.  Also, your team's free throw shooting was generally atrocious especially in light of the the Maverick's excellence at the line.  So that's two notes.

So while we don't need to make a morality play out of the victory of the Dallas Mavericks, there is some real satisfaction in seeing the Heat get taken down a peg.  And that tells you everything about what a PR disaster "The Decision" and the events afterwards really were.

Because basically OK guys instantly became the very embodiment of arrogance and hubris.  And the whole country-or at least the part that follows the NBA- pretty much rooted against them in the Finals.  Which is remarkable when you think about it. 

Oh.  And I told you so.

AWOL

There will be no MSF tomorrow.  My excellent friend Jim Nelson is coming up from Baton Rouge to play golf with me and my little friends in the Hendrix Warrior Booster Club tournament.  He is a big LSU Tiger booster.  I think it does him some good to see real student athletes that aren't getting paid either over or under the table. 

In any event, I am all jammed up this weekend.  Will return next week. 

Talk amongst yourselves.  Happy Father's Day to all the Dads!

Narcissus Shrugged

I have done some foolish things in my life.  Odds are you have too.  And we have all done things that we would just as soon never finds the light of day.  Maybe they are not very bad things in the great scope of fucking up.  But they are things that might otherwise not reflect entirely well on a reputation for sound judgment and probity that one might hope to attain at a certain station in life.

Like sending a picture of your crotch on Twitter to some girl in Texas.  While you are married.  And a Congressman.

I never did anything that stupid.  Point for me.

I was sitting in a bar in St. Louis back during what I recalll was Bill Clinton's first term.  Like everyone else in there I was transfixed by the breaking news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that was breaking in on the TV.  The man sitting next to me must have picked up on my Arkansas accent whenever I ordered a refill of my iced tea.  He asked me if I thought that the story might be true.

"No," I said. "Bill Clinton may be many things but he isn't stupid."  Of course, subsequent events proved me completely wrong.  He was that stupid.

At least Clinton had the basic good sense to lie about it. Congressman Weiner led off with the  plausible explanation that his Twitter account had been hacked.  But I have a pretty good bullshit detector after all these years.  And it started going off when Weiner said that he wasn't going to turn it over to the investigators to spare that the taxpayers the expense. After alleging that he, a Member of Congress, had been hacked?  I'm willing to bet that the FBI advised his office that an investigation was not an option which I'm sure started the bullet sized sweat droplets.  Because you do not want the FBI poking around if your story is even remotely hinky.  I refer you again to Bill "I did not have sex with that woman" Clinton.

But what really sent the ole bullshit detector into the red zone was when Weiner stated that he could not say for sure that the image that got transmitted to the girl in Texas was indeed not of him in his skivvies.

I am not a Congressman.  Having said that, there are no pictures of me in the Jos. A. Bank jockey shorts that I favor.  Nor will there ever be.  If anyone ever shows you an image that purports to be me in such scant attire, it is not me.  It might be Congressman Weiner.  But it is not me.

Which leads one to the inescapable question: What kind of an idiot what do something like this?  Isn't being a powerful elected official who happens to be married to a beautiful woman validation enough?  Evidently not.

My take?  Leave it to the Democrats, his wife and his constituents to deal with him.  I know. Nancy Pelosi has called for an ethics investigation.  Undoubtedly the Republicans will demand he be turned over for the criminal equivalent.  Please.  From what I can tell Weiner's behavior, though disgusting, unseemly and juvenile, was not a violation of any criminal laws.  Let this be between his constituents and his wife.  If they can live with it, I can live with it.

Here's another good question for the folks in his District.  Presumably they sent him to Washington to represent them on the major issues of the day.  Health care, the national debt, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And Congressman Weiner has time to send texts and pictures to some young woman in Texas whose only mistake was contacting an elected official she admired? 

Earth to Anthony:  She admired you for your positions as a public man.  She did not like you as a person.  And now she probably thinks, with some justification, that you are a creep.  Well played.

But back to Bubba.  Weiner would have been better off to haul off and lie like a damn rug.  Just like Clinton did.  Coming clean is just marginally useful as a matter of tactics as he is probably now realizing to his infinite chagrin.

What he should have done was enlist his wife in the defense.  Really. He should have put her up in front of a mic.  And she should have said:

" That doesn't look like my husband's crotch.  Actually, Anthony is much smaller than that."

Bet she would have done it.  Most of the women I know would have done it.

Up On The Rooftop

The sounds of Lance Armstrong level strong woodpeckers overhead are building my new roof.  Read into that what you will.   The roofing crew got here as I left for my white collar job.  They are still here as I type this while drinking wine in the comfort of the air conditioning.

How bourgeois.

And it occurs to me that this little house here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest, sitting here,as I am being my bourgeois self,  drinking wine while Mexicans work 14 hour days in the service of me and the insurance company, is a symbol of the national debate on immigration.

Young men going up and down on the ladders carrying-what?-bags of shingles that weigh a hundred pounds per bag.  In 100 degree heat. 

These guys on the roofing crew are here because nobody else will do this kind of labor.  The "Build the Wall" types are not opposed to the maids, agricultural workers or the guys on my roof.  As far as I can tell, they are opposed to providing government assistance to the children of these people who are "taking jobs away from Americans."

But what should I do?  Ask these guys to produce green cards?

I will do it whenever you ask your Caucasian or African American roofing crew to do the same.

My Sunday Feeling

It wasn't the worst scandal in the history of college football.  I will give The Ohio State University that.  That dubious distinction will forevermore reside with SMU whose players were getting paid in a scheme that reached all the way to the Governor of Texas.  And the NCAA gave their football program "the death penalty" for the first, and I predict the only time.  But it was pretty bad.  Especially after Sports Illustrated went with a story this week that was so damning in its exposure of the utter corruption of Buckeye football and in revealing head coach Jim Tressel to be a pious fraud that Tressel resigned before the article hit the stands.  Resigned without extracting a severance deal from The Ohio State University even.  Which is not only unheard of but is indicative of just high pissed the Buckeye brass was at Tressel.

As most of these things go, it started small.  Before 2-a-days started last season, Tressel got an e-mail from a booster who also happened to be an attorney that had gotten wind of the fact that the FBI was investigating a Columbus tattoo parlor where players liked to hang out.  The investigation also revealed that some, if not most, of these guys had been selling sports memorabilia such as game worn equipment and autographed programs and the like for money or in exchange for getting ink.  Now this was a clear violation of the extra benefit rule, which would conceivably render the players ineligible for the upcoming season.  But this is nickle and dime stuff which likely would have resulted in some lesser penalty if Tressel had acted on this information or told his Athletic Director about it.

Tressel did neither.  But what he did do is he executed the NCAA compliance letter and certified that he knew of no NCAA violations and that his players were eligible to participate in the upcoming season.  Which was, of course, a flat out lie.  And lying to the NCAA is THE cardinal sin in the coaching business. 

Flash forward to December.  The Buckeyes are headed to the Sugar Bowl where they are scheduled to play-guess who?-the Arkansas Razorbacks.  About that time the Department of Justice passes info along to The Ohio State University about a raid it conducted on the tattoo joint in question which confirmed that 6 players had been selling or trading memorabilia.  Tressel, and his supporters, including the President of the school, state that he knew nothing of any of this.  Which was Tressel's second whopper.  Or third since he obviously lied about it to his AD and his President.

The NCAA declares the players involved, including star quarterback Terrelle Pryor to be have violated the extra benefit rule.  But it didn't rule them ineligible for the Sugar Bowl.  Rather, they were ruled ineligible for the first 5 games of the NEXT season in the first ruling of its kind in the history of the NCAA.  Armed with the full compliment of players, Ohio States defeats the usually sure handed Razorbacks who evidently caught a fatal case of the butterfingers the day of the game.

In March of this year Tressel 'fesses up.  In what was both an obvious sop to the NCAA and a bid to keep his job, Tressel offers to join the players in the suspension.  By this time Sports Illustrated and local media are sniffing around.  Turns out that this kind of thing had been going on on a widespread basis since 2002.  Suuuure Tressel didn't know.  And so he was histoire by Memorial  Day.  Which was about when the local media revealed that about 50 current and former Buckeyes received sweetheart deals on vehicles from local car dealers. 

Now this situation stinks to high heaven for any of a number of reasons.  An athletic scholarship is a hell of a deal.  Free room and board and tuition.  But since the NCAA won't let the student-athlete work at a job-with some exceptions- during the school year what's a poor kid gonna use for gas money?  Or to take a girlfriend to the movies?  Hell, Rick Majerus got a reprimand from the NCAA when Utah self-reported that he had taken a player out to get a pizza.  This was despite the fact that the kid had just found out that his father had died.  As one of the players interviewed for the SI story said, "Technically we knew if was wrong, but a lot of those guys are from the inner city and we didn't have much, and we had to go on the best we could.  I couldn't call home to ask my mom to help me out."

Schools like Ohio State and Arkansas, and the coaches they employ, make millions off these kids.  And eventually Division I sports is going to have to figure out a way to provide some kind of financial assistance for the kids in the revenue producing sports.  Whether they can figure out a formula that is fair and equitable is not known.  A lot of D-I schools are barely scraping by in trying to support their football programs.  Tulane certainly couldn't afford to provide as lucrative a stipend to the men who wear the Olive and Blue as could LSU.  And could they do it at all without violating Title Nine which mandates equal athletic opportunities for women?  Who knows? 

And lest the NCAA get too high on its horse, remember that it allowed clearly ineligible players to participate in the Sugar Bowl game.  Why?  They won't admit it but a Sugar Bowl without Terrelle Pryor would have hurt ratings.  Its all about the money.

And here's another wrinkle.  The NCAA just laid the wood to Southern Cal, primarily over the Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo episodes.  You can bet that the Trojans-and the PAC 12 (or 27 or whatever it is now)- will give the NCAA unshirted hell if they don't lower the boom on the Buckeyes at least to the extent that they themselves got tossed in the hoosegow.  These are indeed happy days up the road in Ann Arbor. 

All we know now is that Jim Tressel will be raking the leaves this fall instead of roaming the sidelines in his trademark tie and vest. The situation at The Ohio State University will get far worse before it gets better.  And it all started over Jim Tressel covering up for poor kids selling otherwise worthless crap that has value only for the sports obsessed booster types that feed the beast that is Buckeye football.

Read the article on the jump.  Make up your own mind: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/magazine/05/30/jim.tressel/index.html?sct=cf_t11_a2#&sct=cf_t2_a3

Oh.  The "pious fraud" remark with which I led off this post?  There is an incident in the story that put my Hypocrite Meter into the red zone that is usually reserved for politicians and televangelists.  Let me know if you find it and if you concur.
















  

My Sunday Feeling

It has been a terrible Spring in the South and Midwest.  Hundreds of people killed  and millions of dollars of damage from tornadoes.  And that's just last week.  In one 24 period last week, 84 tornadoes touched down in Arkansas, Texas and the Midwest.  84.  Godalmighty.  And of course, since about the first week of May the Mississippi River has been doing its damndest to cut over to the Atchafalaya.  It has been held at bay by both the Army Corps of Engineers and sheer luck.  But they had to open the dam at Morganza to flood the spillway.  Unfortunately people and wildlife live in the spillway.  We shall see what is left when the water recedes sometime in June.

But things are looking up.  We haven't had any rain since Wednesday or so.  Otherwise sensible people are speaking wistfully of Summer.  It may be hot but it will be dry.  We are technically in a drought which hardly seems possible.  But nobody cares about that.  People are ready to be cooking on the grill and playing golf.  We are sick of being cooped up indoors or checking our rooftops for hail damage.  The good news is that I saw that the kids who operate the snow cone shack have hauled it back to the parking lot down the hill from Mount St. Mary.  If that ain't a sure sign of the advent of Summer here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest, I don't know what is.

The Memorial Day weekend also is the unofficial start of the Presidential election season.  That seems hard to believe but I read it somewhere on the Internet.  So it must be true. 

One of the common themes that I have been hearing from the Loyal Opposition in recent years is that the next election will be about restoring freedoms that we have lost.  What to do about health care and the national debt I get.  Restoration of lost freedoms I do not.

In the last 2.5 years, nobody has told me what church to attend or that I have to attend church at all.  As far as I know, nobody in the government is monitoring my communications.  If my usual telephone and Internet traffic created an exception to the Court Order requirement allowed by the Patriot Act I am honored.  Which means that the National Security Agency knows that I bought a golf GPS today and that my buddy in North Carolina is taking Vicodin for back pain.  Big whoop.

My last post on this blog was about how I view Harold Camping's predictions of apocalypse as complete nonsense.  It did not result in the seizure of my laptop.  Earlier this morning I took a walk.  There were scores of runners, walkers and bikers out this morning.  Everybody was pretty much going whatever direction they damn well pleased. 

I went to Little Rock National Cemetery to take pictures.  Nobody seized my camera.  A police officer drove through as I was walking unescorted among the graves of our veterans.  He waved.  I waved back.  I was glad to see him.  Here and there folks were laying flowers on the graves of loved ones.  They were completely unsupervised.  By now you should be getting my none too subtle point.

There has always been a paranoid element in American politics.  But it seems now that the notion of sacrifice of self to the greater national good is seen by some as naivete.  Or that laws enacted by the legislature, such as the recent health care reforms, or seat belt laws even, are an impermissible infringement on personal liberty.  Be that as it may, I have not heard much from the Tea Party in either Baton Rouge or Joplin lately.

Here is a true story.  A woman with whom I am passingly acquainted started dating somebody.  He is a small business person and enamored of the Tea Party.  Anyway, she told me that he is insisting that she read "Atlas Shrugged" as what I gather is a condition of their continued relationship.  When a crackpot like Ayn Rand makes something of an inroad into the zeitgeist I wish to suggest that these are indeed remarkable times in which we live.

But that's OK.  Everybody is entitled to their opinions.  And they are pretty much free to express those opinions as they see fit so long it doesn't involve a bullhorn at 3 AM in front of my house or the use of explosives.  That's because men and women came together for the greater good in times of national peril.  They put themselves in harm's way so that we might be secure.  So that I might be free to go see the Catholics whenever I see fit or that you can read Ayn Rand.  Or anything else you damn well want.

Or to go get a snow cone if you want.  The snow cone kids are back.  Which means it is officially Summer in the People's Republic of Hillcrest.

Just take a moment this Memorial Day weekend to remember those folks at rest just East of Downtown Little Rock.  Remember those men and women from all walks of life united in death at the National Cemetery because either they wore, or they were related to someone who wore, the uniform of the military of the United States of America. 

And give thanks for their service.