What It's Like For Women Under ISIS

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Flat-Out Cheap

As if Dan Snyder didn't have enough to deal with — getting ridiculed in this season's "South Park" premiere and again by the "Daily Show" a day later for his insistence on keeping a racist mascot — the Washington owner is now washing down his 14-45 New York-style butt whipping with expired World Cup beer.

That's right-- little Danny Snyder was caught trying to pinch pennies by selling fans stale beer.   Wapo reporter Dan Steinberg entered the four-month-old code from a beer into the "Track Your Bud" website and it confirmed that the World Cup-era suds were past their freshness date.

This isn't the first time cheapskate Snyder was caught trying to making a few extra bucks at the expense of fans.  Back in 2006, the diminutive owner was caught selling year-old peanuts he bought from a defunct airline. 

Threat Level: Bogus?

Foreign Policy's Rosa Brooks gleefully mocked Obama's U.N. address this week:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: My fellow Americans, the Middle East today is frighteningly full of threatiness.

What, you ask, is threatiness? As my good friend Mr. Stephen Colbert will surely understand, threatiness is to threat as truthiness is to truth. By this, I mean that sometimes we cannot articulate why something is a threat, or offer evidence, but we still think it just feels, you know, threaty. We know it in our gut. And let me be clear: when there is enough threatiness floating around, America must take action.

So when exactly is somebody going to make a halfway-decent case for why anything in Syria or Iraq is enough of a threat to justify going back to war?  I'm not sure there is a case to be made.

Tempest In A Coffee Cup

San Fran Restaurant's War On Yelp

Dead Man Walking?

Speaking at a Manhattan news conference this afternoon, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell tried unsuccessfully to quell complaints the league has not acted quickly or sufficiently enough to address the issue of domestic violence in the NFL.   At least 14 players have been arrested for violence against women in the past two years alone.

Many news outlets have described Goodell's appearance as an elaborate kicking of the can down the road.  Goodell said that, despite mistakes, he believes that he has the support of team owners. He said he has not considered stepping down “because I acknowledged my mistakes.”

The news conference came upon the heels of Procter & Gamble's announcement that it was canceling an on-field breast cancer awareness promo it had been planning with NFL.  P&G joined a long list of displeased advertisers, including Anheuser-Busch, McDonald's, Visa, FedEx, Nike, and Campbell Soup Co. The NFL responded to the drumbeat of criticism like a unrepentant teenager, saying in a statement, “We understand. We are taking action and there will be much more to come.”

Goodell vowed to have a new policy in place by the time of the Super Bowl . . . or maybe it was a vow to have the committee that would develop the policy in place by the time of the Super Bowl . . . I'm not sure, since Goodell seemed to say both in the course of his rambling, robotic and insincere performance.

I laughed out loud when Goodell admitted that he now knows that when investigating a domestic violence case, not to interview the victim while the man who beat her also is in the room.  In other clunker moment,  Goodell continued to maintain that no one at NFL HQ had seen the second Rice video before its release by TMZ-- despite evidence and law enforcement testimony otherwise.  Incredibly, Goodell even went so far to try and blame the NFL's inconsistent treatment of domestic violence on differing laws among the fifty states.  I won't even bother to try and explain that convoluted logic.

Scotland In A Historic Vote

Spokesman for Yes Scotland:  “It's clear that 'Project Panic' is willing to say anything in the last few days of the campaign to try to halt the Yes momentum - anything except what new powers, if any, they might be willing to offer.  The reality is that the only way to guarantee Scotland gets all the powers we need to create jobs and protect our NHS is with a Yes vote on Thursday - so that we can use our enormous wealth to create a better and fairer country."

David Cameron:  “Please, don't mix up the temporary and the permanent . . . If you don't like me – I won't be here forever.”

Alex Salmond:  “When you try to [pressure] people [and] companies, as the Prime Minister has undoubtedly been doing and indeed the Treasury, then that's a different circumstance.  I think people in Scotland will know the Prime Minister's fingerprints are all over the scaremongering campaign and the Treasury's fingerprints are all over the bank campaign.”

Dennis Canavan, Chairman of the “Yes” Campaign:  "A 'vow' - it looks like something written on the back of a fag packet at the fag end of a long campaign. But the people of Scotland will not be fooled.  There is only one guarantee of getting more powers for the Scottish Parliament and that is by voting Yes.”

Switching Up The Debate On Child Abuse

Why is there any debate on the Adrian Peterson issue?  So what if a parent hit you when you were a kid?  It's not love- it's violence, for christ's sake!  And if you went to grade school, that's where you were supposed to learn that violence is not the answer to any of your problems.   Not surprisingly, Louis C.K. gets it right on this:




To put it simply, Adrian Peterson and his apologists are uneducated on this and need to get up to speed--fast.  And the only way to get the attention of these NFL guys is to take them off the field.

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Throw This Guy In Jail Already!

Florida killer George Zimmerman is in the news yet again.  Last week, Zimmerman was reported to have threatened a motorist's life during a road rage incident.  The victim, 35-year-old Matthew Apperson said he was listening to music in his car when he was verbally assailed by two men in a truck at a stop light in Lake Mary, Florida.  According to police spokeswoman Bianca Gillett, Apperson later identified the truck driver as Zimmerman.

Apperson also stated that Zimmerman, who was openly carrying a gun, asked, "Do you know who I am?" before saying, "I'll fucking kill you."  Apperson pulled into a gas station, where he placed a 911 call reporting the incident.  Zimmerman was gone by the time police responded.

Two days later, Apperson was forced yet again to called 911 when Zimmerman showed up in the parking lot of his workplace.   In a statement to the police, Zimmerman claimed he was at the location for a doctor's appointment.  No charges have yet been filed.

Palin Pack Parties, Packing Punches

The Palin clan stirred up some good old-fashioned shit last weekend, instigating a run-in at a friend's 50th birthday party.  It all started when the Palins caught sight of 20-year-old Willow's ex boyfriend Connor Cleary.  Track Palin (the eldest son) started things off by trading blows with Cleary on the from lawn.  When Cleary's father Steve tried to break the boys up, Todd Palin began to choke him. Papa Palin got the worst of it, eventually walking away with bruises and a bloody nose. 

As all hell started breaking loose, the failed vice-presidential candidate was seen nearly crawling on top of people to get involved in the altercation.  As things started to settle down, Korey Klingenmeyer (who hosted the party) politely asked the Palins to leave.

That's when Bristol Palin calmly stood up, brought her arm back and cold-cocked Klingenmeyer right in the face.  Bristol repeated the maneuver six more times before Klingenmeyer was able to push her off him.   Sarah began screaming profanities at everyone, telling bystanders "You know who we are, don’t you?"'

With the party now winding down, Track Palin stood out in front of the house with his shirt off, flipping his middle finger at people as they left the house.  The Palin clan eventually rolled themselves into their stretch Hummer, and left as well.

How Can We Not Care About Killing Innocent People?

Salon.com is among those wondering how Justice Scalia can stay on the Supreme Court after the revelation last week that two convicted murderers he once described as lucky to be given the blessing of a lethal injection have turned out to be innocent.

Scalia famously criticized Justice Blackmum for declaring the death penalty as inherently unconstitutional, saying:

Justice Blackmun did not select as the vehicle for his announcement . . . the case of the 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat. How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!”

Scalia also once mused over his role in the “the machinery of death” saying:

"My vote, when joined with at least four others, is, in most cases, the last step that permits an execution to proceed. I could not take part in that process if I believed what was being done to be immoral."

It was the overturning of the 1983 conviction of half brothers Leon Brown and Henry Lee McCollum which brought the issue of the death penalty back into the news.  The 15- and 19-year-old brothers, both mentally disabled, were railroaded onto death row over 30 years ago with coerced confessions by a corrupt police department.  Brown eventually had his sentence reduced to life in prison, but McCollum has been awaiting death by lethal injection.  A state commission with power to subpoena evidence looked into the case, and DNA from the scene (which was never tested) and other evidence (which implicated another convicted rapist but was ignored at trial) exonerated the two men.

Heather Digby Parton of Salon.com took the opportunity to call out Scalia on his utter moral failure regarding the death penalty:

Death penalty supporters inevitably use cases like this to illustrate that “the system worked” and, by implication, always works. Except that’s sophistry and everyone knows it. The only reason it worked in this case was because the state of North Carolina empowered an outside commission to investigate. And what they found was malfeasance, a coverup and a corrupt indifference to justice. The legal system obscured the truth at every level and every step along the way. There is no way of knowing how often that happens but any sentient being realizes that it is impossible that this was the only time.

Worst of all, Justice Scalia and other death penalty proponents who find nothing immoral in the state’s conscious, coldblooded taking of a life are equally unconcerned that they might be taking the life of an innocent person. The horrifying injustice in such a mistake (or criminal corruption) is irrelevant. Apparently as long as the train of the legal system runs on time there’s no cause for him to lose any sleep.

Scalia claims that he could not be a judge if he thought his participation in the death penalty was immoral and yet he does not believe it matters under the Constitution if the state executes innocent people. How on earth can such a depraved person be on the Supreme Court of the United States? On what basis can our country lay claim to a superior system of justice and a civilized moral order when such people hold power?

A Chip Off The Old [Dumb] Block

Dad asks: Is our children learning?

Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former President George W. Bush, accidentally registered as a member of the Independence Party in New York, the New York Daily News reported.   Mission Accomplished!

There have been howls from media watchers ever since the Today show gave the goofy but earnest Bush progeny a job as a special correspondent just months after her father left the White House.  How fair can this world be when so many journalism school graduates still struggle for full-time work when Bush spawn continue to remain on-air?

The blonde Bush was widely ridiculed over her initial broadcast from Yellowstone Park, where she fumbled over her words ("woof-watching") and read her less-than-a-minute-long report straight from paper.  For many folk, it is actually very touching to see a kid so resemble her doofus father.