TRI Presents: Pre-World Cup Awards!

　
Best Reason to Watch the World Cup:
Short of actual wars, the World Cup is the only event where the nations of the world truly compete head-to-head. Please don’t bring up the Olympics. The Winter Olympics are full of a bunch of competitions that only 0.05 percent of the world’s population has ever even tried (luge, bobsled, figure skating, biathalon, ski jumping, etc. etc. etc.) while the Summer Olympics are mostly events like track and field and swimming that come purely down to physical ability and preparation, with no real aspect of performance or teamwork.
Football, on the other hand, is played by just about everyone in every nation on the planet, all playing by the same rules. So if your national team isn’t good enough, you have to wonder, why not? Are your people not physically athletic enough? Not organized enough? Not good enough under pressure? Not in possession of enough resources to devote to athletics?
These can be painful questions when the reputations of entire nations are at stake—which is why the World Cup is the only sporting event in the world that is truly bigger than the games.
　
　
Best U.S. Contribution to World Football:
Music! The riff from "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes has been a near-ubiquitous chant in football stadiums around the world for years now.

Watching some of the matches leading up to this year’s Cup, TRI has heard some stadiums chanting the chorus from "Bro Hymn" by Pennywise. If the chorus of a song called "Bro Hymn" by a punk band from Hermosa Beach ends up becoming the musical refrain for the globe’s greatest gathering…well…that’s fuckin awesome, bro!
　
　
Best Team Nickname:
A five-way tie between all the tournament’s African teams: Ghana ("The Black Stars"), Nigeria ("The Super Eagles"), Cameroon ("The Indomitable Lions"), Ivory Coast ("The Elephants") and South Africa ("Bafana Bafana," which roughly translates to, "the boys, the boys").
Compare those to most European teams, whose nicknames mostly come from the color of their jerseys (for instance, Italy wears blue and is known as "The Azzuri," meaning, "the men in blue," while Spain wears red and is known as "La Furia Roja," meaning "the red fury"—at least they threw "fury" in there) and the U.S., which has no real nickname except in Britain, where we’re known as "The Yanks," and here at home, where most hardcore followers refer to the team as "USMNT," short for "U.S. Men’s National Team." Isn’t that poetic.
　
　
Best Backhanded Compliment:
English football pundit Michael Davies said the "maddening" thing about facing the U.S. is this:
"America’s team is not good enough to win the World Cup. However, American athletes never believe that they are not good enough to win."
You’re damn right motherfucker!!!! Um…on both points.
　
Best Horseshit TRI Predictions That Will Most Likely Be Wrong:
Spain romps through the group stage, scoring goals by the bucketful…but Argentina wins the tournament.
Mexico and Uruguay both make surprising quarterfinal runs in the tournament. And since they are in the same group, I guess this means we’re picking former champions France and hosts South Africa to head home after the first round.
The U.S. beats England and makes the quarters!! Fuck yeah!
Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo is linked by the tabloids with Yo-Landi of Die Antwoord…and is then murdered by Ninja of Die Antwoord with a samurai sword.

Assorted Rants on NBA Finals Coverage From Someone Who Has Been Reading WAY Too Much of It

A Letter From the Editor

Mind Games
Nothing gives the mainstream hoops press a collective hard-on quicker than Lakers coach Phil Jackson making a statement that could be considered a "mind game," whether it’s picking at the inferiority complex of an entire city (such as when he called Sacramento a "cow town" in the early 2000s), pointing out something for the referees to watch (saying before the Phoenix series that point guard Steve Nash illegally "carries" the ball when he dribbles) or denigrating someone’s style of play (saying before this series that Kevin Garnett and Boston have a "smackdown mentality").
The one thing the mainstream hoops press always misses is the reason why Phil’s "mind games" work: He is always right. Sacramento IS a fucking cow town. If it’s not, then someone needs to explain to me why there are piles of cow shit short walking distance from the basketball arena.
And Steve Nash DOES carry the basketball, and Kevin Garnett DOES have a "smackdown" mentality. Look at this video of him from last week’s Eastern Conference Finals.

I see Kevin Garnett’s arm smacking Dwight Howard’s in a downward motion. Smacking. Down. Maybe I would have gone with "hacking" or "hackdown mentality." Oh, that Phil and his mind games.
Meanwhile on the other side of things, Celtics coach Doc Rivers is already complaining about a referee’s decision that HASN’T HAPPENED YET.
Discussing the possibility of his center/professional thug Kendrick Perkins getting suspended for amassing too many technical fouls, Doc said:
"What's going to happen is it'll be a double-technical [foul] that Perk doesn't deserve and we're going to have to deal with it. It's unfair, but that's the way it is."
This comes after NBA Commissioner David Stern warned that he would be coming down hard on any coach who tries to manipulate the referees through the media. But Doc is able to go all "Minority Report" on us and condemn someone for something "unfair" they haven’t even done yet, and still hasn’t faced any punishment. Mind games? Doc must be a fucking Jedi.
　
Basketball Bard
The LA Times’ Mark Heisler is the Basketball Bard, a one-of-a-kind sports journalist whose understanding of the game is matched only by his perspective on it:
"It's not real life," Heisler wrote today. "Sports fans live to hate other teams and their fans. It's fun if you don't take it seriously, which, no one really does.
OK, maybe a few (hundred million) people, here and there, do."

Which brings me to:
　
　
I Crack My Knuckles
ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons is someone who most definitely takes it seriously. He’s a diehard fan of all Boston teams (but has since transplanted to LA, of course) and is a poster boy of the willful ignorance that Boston fan-hood entails.
Simmons earned himself millions of readers with a really funny blend self-pity (when Boston’s teams all sucked) and pop culture references. Now that Boston’s teams are all good…well, all that’s left is the willful ignorance.
Take for example one of Simmons’ favorite NBA myths that he propagates in nearly every hoops column he writes: That the Lakers obtained All-Star forward Pau Gasol in a trade from Memphis in some sort of league-engineered conspiracy to return big-market LA to championship heights.
Simmons often refers to the trade as a "gift" or "theft" or says the Lakers got Gasol "for pennies on the dollar."
This is hilarious, and ignorant (willfully so—have I mentioned that?), because the NBA has a system for ensuring that trades are fair, and it involves pennies and dollars. The rule basically states that the salaries of players being traded have to roughly match up.
In this system, a shitty player who has a big contract that is about to expire is an extremely valuable bargaining chip, because the team acquiring said shitty player can let the contract expire and then have the cash in hand to go sign someone they really want.
The Lakers had such a bargaining chip: a 7-foot-tall pile of basketball excrement named Kwame Brown. They got Kwame by trading Caron Butler. They got Caron by trading a guy named Shaquille O’Neal (in a deal that was widely panned at the time).
So the Lakers getting Gasol wasn’t so much a "gift" or a "theft"--it was a case of the smartest franchise in basketball parlaying one of its most traumatic events (Shaq’s departure) into a renaissance era of dominance.
In addition to willful ignorance regarding his enemies, Simmons has lost touch with his own teams. He predicted before the playoffs that his beloved Celtics would lose in the first round (as Heisler noted today). So pretty much all you're getting from his columns now are pop-culture riffs from a married father of two from Boston.
(And how do I know all this? Because I still read his columns! I also still crack my knuckles. Bad habits are hard to break.)

Sincerely,
A man who is Sincerely losing his fucking mind waiting for this series to start,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

Some Will Kill, Some Will Be Killed: Obama Lays It Down, TRI Slurps It Up

A TRI Staff Analysis

TRI staff gathered last night to wait for updates in the Tiger Woods saga, because we find the news that a man in position of power would cheat on his wife to be one of the most earth-shattering revelations of the last 1,000 years.
Sadly, there were few new developments, the only update we received coming from TRI sports correspondent Barret Strong, who reported that his girlfriend was once brought to orgasm by playing "Tiger Woods Golf 2007" on Xbox and repeatedly hitting the ball into the water while holding the vibrating controller between her legs.
So instead, we watched President Obama accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

We were expecting just to beatbox along like we usually do when the Bammer is laying down his floetry, but when Bamdog laid down the line, "Some will kill. Some will be killed," the beatboxing stopped and a TRI staff roundtable began.
Say what you will about Obama’s performance in office so far. But…wait, actually, let’s take a second to do that.

Say what you will about:
The health care debate: Is it possible for an entire Democratic caucus to bend over so far backwards to please Republicans that they end up licking their own assholes—then have the Republicans criticize their "unrealistic" rimming technique? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Wall Street bailouts: It’s actually hard to "say what you will" about the bailouts because, like all taxpayers, we have a ball gag in our mouth and a line of downtown New York financial douchebags waiting in line behind us to pummel away while reaching into our pockets, all with President Obama looking on approvingly and Timothy Geithner jacking off in the corner.

The Afghanistan strategy: "Er, um, hold on, give me a minute here…dither, dither, dither…Did Sarah Palin just accuse me of dithering?! That bitch!…dither, dither…Hold on, just a minute, er, um, well, jeez.…Okay! We’ll send more troops, but not as many as the general asked for! And THEN we’ll get the fuck out of there!" *wipes sweat from brow*

Cash for Clunkers: Might as well have been Gold for Bowlcuts: go to your local salon for a bowlcut and get a gold bar straight from Fort Knox! After all, barbers are hurting, too. We guess it’s understandable that Obama would shovel money onto the auto industry…We would expect him to do the same for any other American industry that is essential to the fabric of our nation and in danger of going under…*cough* Newspapers! *cough*

Bowing to the Japanese emperor: The only way it’s cool for an American president to bow to non-elected royalty in Japan would be if he followed it by saying in an exaggerated Chinaman voice, "OOooooh, pwease ta meechuu Mista Empowaaaaa…." then threw little karate chops at him.

Calling out a white police officer for acting "stupidly" when he arrested Obama’s Harvard professor buddy, who is black: Uh, Barack? You weren’t there. And your professor buddy seems like an asshole. Saying what you said…well, it was just "stupidly."

Anyway, say what you will about ALL of that. But the president’s speech in Norway reminded us of at least one thing: This is a man who cares, and who understands the gravity of his decisions. Of our troops, he said, "Some will kill. Some will be killed."
Remember how Bush talked about war? "Bring ‘em on." "We’ll smoke ‘em out of their holes." Meanwhile, he wouldn’t even let us see PICTURES of all the American caskets coming back from overseas.
Obama walked into one of the toughest situations in presidential history--and he’s made it look pretty fucking tough. But with that one line–"Some will kill. Some will be killed."–he reminded us that he really is a unique motherfucker in the history of the presidency. He cares and he’s not afraid to show it.
So TRI is here to say that while 2009 may have been a year of strikes and gutters, ups and downs, we stand behind our president going into the new decade.
Obama, the Bammer, the Bamdog, the Head President in Charge: We’re with you, dog. Let’s go get ‘em again. This time it’s for the money.

Les Paul: A Great White Swims On

A Letter From the Editor





TRI would like to take time today to remember a true Great White shark: Les Paul. He invented the solid-body electric guitar, or as we call it now, "the guitar." He invented multi-track recording, or as we call it now, "recording."
I will now recount, in the self-indulgent fashion of our times, my personal journey with this man, from the day I first got one of his guitars to the night I spent in his sharky presence in a jazz club in New York.
I first went crazy for the Les Paul guitar in high school. I didn’t play then, but I was a devout member of the Church of Social Distortion, and our pastor, Mike Ness, always played a beautiful gold-top Les Paul. I would have ran through fire for Mike Ness in those days, but I’ll never forget the one thing I was willing to criticize him over – the RF sticker he had plastered on that guitar. I remember thinking, How could he slap that thing on that beautiful golden guitar? I vowed that if I ever got one of my own, it would be completely unadorned.
When I started playing myself, I would go over to my dad’s place and fuck around with the many guitars in his quiver. He had Les Pauls, but long ago devoted himself to the Fender Stratocaster (hey, if it’s good enough for Jimi Hendrix, I guess).
But I always preferred the Paul. Not so much because of the sound, since I didn’t know shit from shinola sound-wise in those days, but the look. It just looked beefier, stronger and more substantial. I looked at it and imagined clubbing someone over the head with it, killing them instantly.
Anyway! When I picked my first guitar out of the Musician’s Friend catalog, I went with the Epiphone Les Paul Special II. It was the very cheapest entry-level Paul in existence and when it stopped working, as $150 guitars tend to do, I took it to my dad to fix.
He called me over to his house one day and said, "Your guitar is fixed." He handed me my case, and I immediately felt it was heavier than when I left it. I opened it up and my Epiphone Paul was nowhere to be seen – in its place was my dad’s authentic Gibson "The Paul" 1979 solid walnut Les Paul. He was giving it to me. He said something like, "You’re ready for a real guitar," and it was one of the best days of my life.
When I started looking into the man himself, the first thing that struck me was the story about how he broke his left arm at some point, and the doctor said he was going to have to set it in a fixed position. Paul chose to have it fixed at a 90-degree angle, so he could still play guitar. I tried finding a picture of it, but I swear, there’s pictures where he’s standing there with his left arm sticking out. It looks hilarious – unless he’s playing, in which case it looks totally natural.
Anyway, several years ago I was surprised to find the man was still alive…he was approaching 90. Then I was AMAZED to find that he was still playing shows, every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
I became fixated on the idea of going there to see him. Well…partly I was fixated on that, and partly fixated on a woman I loved who had bailed on me and moved to New York, and partly fixated on going to New York and watching the b-ballers at Rucker Park, but anyway! This came to represent what was so fucking cool about New York to me. LES PAUL PLAYS THERE EVERY FUCKING MONDAY NIGHT!
So years later, I got that woman back, and we went to New York together and went to the show. Again, one of the best nights of my life. It was so damned fun….I really don’t have the words for it. Some editor, huh?
First of all, his band SHREDDED. Bluesy-jazzy-rock, just straight up, good-time, have-five-or-six-martinis, good ol American music.
And Les Paul the man, just shy of 94 years old, was one of the most engaging, charismatic frontmen I had ever seen. Just full of jokes and good vibes…I remember at one point he was talking about some encounter he had just had with a beautiful woman, and he said, "I felt like a condemned building with a new flagpole." HAHA! This was a 93-year-old man making boner jokes! The crowd loved it.
His Iridium Jazz Club residency was famous for HUGE guest appearances: Jimmy Page, Springsteen and other huge names had popped in for unannounced appearances before.
On our night, Les announced that he was going to welcome to the stage, "One of the first men around the world."
I was sitting there thinking, who the fuck’s he bringing up, Magellan? But it turns out what Les meant to say was, "One of the first men to orbit the planet Earth." It was astronaut Scott Carpenter.
I was a little disappointed at first, but Carpenter turned out to be an awesome guest. He took the mic and talked a little bit about space, boasted like a real old bastard about beating the Russians in the space race, then left us with a really foreboding warning, as only a true old bastard could: "China…LURKS…" he said, then left the stage.
The crowd didn’t know whether to applaud or cry. Me, I almost spit up my martini before busting up laughing.
On the way out of the club that night I walked right by Carpenter. As I mentioned, I had had a few martinis. I said to him, "Before this week, I had never even been to New York. And you’ve been to space!"
Carpenter smiled and shook my hand and said, "Well, they’re both great places!"
I laughed my fucking ass off. It was a magical night, and I’d like to thank Les Paul for it. Oh, and for inventing the greatest musical instrument in human history.
Sincerely,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

U.S. Soccer Team Shits the Bed in Mexico

By Travis Lee Hunter
TRI Editor and Publisher
And
Colombo Crue
TRI Sports Correspondent
　
Reporting from La Cita in downtown Los Angeles: A giant Mexican flag greeted us at the entrance so it was no surprise to find a big pro-Mexico crowd inside. Most of these men were intensely focused on the game and their $2 Budweisers and had very little to say, other than the occasional "la madre" or "a la chingada" when things looked risky for their beloved Tricolor. Once in a while someone would crank some disco through the system for five or ten seconds to pump up the crowd and everyone would cheer.
Of the four USA supporters in the bar besides your faithful TRI correspondents, two were loud-mouthed suit-wearing assholes who were hoping the game would go to a shootout (which was impossible since World Cup qualifiers can end in ties, and in fact a tie might have been what the U.S. was aiming for, strategically speaking). Another guy was so pessimistic about the U.S. team’s chances he was actually rooting against them harder than any of the dozens of Mex fans in the house. Another guy didn’t say anything the whole game other than a sarcastic "there you go Ching!" everytime U.S. forward Brian Ching blew it. And we thought we were the only ones who hated Ching! We actually had a gay little bonding thing with the guy, like, You hate Ching too?! Wow, cool man, us too! Smile. Wink.
The service at the bar was excellent. The bartendress spoke little English but certainly understood "Budweiser." When we asked her if they served food, she said no. Then a couple minutes later she asked, "You want shrimp tostada?" We had no idea where the fuck she was getting a shrimp tostada from all of a sudden but we were sure it was going to take some sort of unusual effort, given that they didn’t have a menu or even so much as chips and salsa. We didn’t want to impose.
The room was very dark, with three flatties over the bar and a big sheet with the game projected nice and clear over the dancefloor.
On to the game.
The U.S. team had trouble a) getting the ball, and, on the rare occasion when they did achieve a), b) keeping the ball.
These are both important facets of the game of soccer.
The Mexicans just like to kick the biscuit around, passing for the sake of passing. The entire crowd shouts "Ole!" for every pass and they have fun with it, just biscuiting it around. The U.S. team…well, we don’t know biscuiting from bed-shitting, apparently.
What we had here was a pretty comprehensive bed-shitting, excepting Goalkeeper Tim Howard, who stopped all the shots that were stoppable. But once you move up from there, to the defenders, is where the grass starts getting poopy.
DeMerit, as usual, filled the role of tattoo-haver for the team, and played pretty well. Onyewu was his big bad self, but neither he nor DeMerit seem to be aware that they have options once they have the ball at their feet other than "blast it the fuck upfield." Granted, they were probably feeling a little ragged because of the constant pressure they were under the entire game thanks to the midfield, which might as well have brought toilets onto the field and sat on them and watched from there. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
At least Onyewu and DeMerit actually stopped people, which is more than you can say for Cherundolo and Bocanegra, whose defensive mindset appeared for a while to go something like, "Do not get too close to the offensive player. Keep your distance and funnel him into the penalty area." They had me waiting all day for the classic Meh-Hee-Can flop in the area for the penalty kick. The long-range "golazo" (magnificent goal) that tied the game for Mexico wouldn’t have happened if Bocanegra had rushed the shooter instead of covering his balls and flinching away from the shot like…well, like we would have done if we were out there.
As for the midfielders….ay ay ay. We wouldn’t go near Ricardo Clark or Michael Bradley’s positions for about 35 or 45 minutes. Let them air out. Clint Dempsey, supposedly one of our cornerstone ballers, must have gone and dug a hole to shit in, because we didn’t even see him.
Landon Donovan’s pass on Davies’ goal was one of the best and biggest plays he has ever made in his soccer career. It was perfect: the power, the placement, the vision. Unfortunately, he should have spent the other 80 minutes of the game in the bathroom. Have we mentioned that?
On to the forwards, and Davies. He got a look at the goal with just the ‘keeper to beat and he punched it, bent it and buried it. He made it look easy. He made it look easier than it was. It reminded us of when the U.S. had…um…wait, we’ve never had anyone who just made it look easy like that. Wynalda was as spazz who battled and scrapped for every goal he got. McBride was a spazz who battled and spazzed for every goal he got. Donovan is…fuck it, you get the picture.
Then there’s Ching, as we mentioned, sucks so bad we got a new boyfriend out of it. We wanted to see the Connor "Shiny Marshmallow" Casey or that young bad brotha Jozy Altidore on the field, but U.S. Coach Bob Bradley chose to go with slightly more experienced players.
Unfortunately, their main experience is in the field of bed-shitting.
So the U.S. was denied, unable to get either its first win or second tie in more than 25 qualifiers in Mexico. We deserved zero points and we got them. Our World Cup qualification hopes are still on solid ground (next game Sept. 5 vs. El Salvador in Utah) but we still have the look of a team that would be lucky to get out of the first round if we did make it to South Africa. Fortunately we are a young team with the potential to improve greatly between now and the tournament.
So wipe your butts, boys, and think about what you’ve done.

Hanging Fake Testicles from the Back of Your Vehicle

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Republicans Make Pledge, Take It in the Butt; Abel Maldonado Wins Badass of the Week Award

From the State News Desk

State lawmakers got all the headlines this week as they struggled to figure out California’s budget, which was, as TRI has previously reported, “fucked.” After a long week that included late-night power struggles and senatorial sleep-overs that surely brought secret thrills to many of the chamber-members who oppose gay marriage, our fearful leaders came thiiiiiiis close to leaving the budget “fucked, murdered, and buried in the woods.”
Facing a $40-billion-plus deficit, state Democrats came forward a plan that was basically, “We’re gonna have to make some tough cuts and we’re gonna have to raise some taxes,” and the Republicans came back with, “No tax increases! And NO, we do NOT have a better idea! So don’t bother asking!”
Now, anyone who thinks they’re going to close a $40 billion budget hole without increasing revenue (through taxes) has a “math problem,” as our eloquent Austrian immigrant (and Republican) governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it. But math wasn’t the Republicans’ problem — it was a “pledge” that almost all of them had signed, promising to never raise taxes.
The Republicans’ unwavering commitment to this pledge reminded us of their ideas on sex education, and their “abstinence pledges,” which was probably on our minds because of the recent interview given by Sarah Palin’s lovely daughter Bristol. Then we remembered that a lot of kids who sign those things circumvent by having anal sex. Then we almost got completely off track.
Anyway, we have no idea why our leaders can’t simply pledge to do the right thing for the state in each situation….guess that’s not as catchy as “I’ll never raise taxes.”
The budget was fucked and the Republicans couldn’t budge without risking having their constituencies crucify them for sacrificing their rigid ideology in favor of pragmatic crisis resolution. Instead, they chose to stall, and if they had stalled for just a few more days, the government would have run out of money and basically shut down. Which sounds kind of cool, except if you care about small things like roads, schools, cops, fire departments and healthcare. Small things.
But one guy finally did something about it, and we at the Raw Intelligence are proud to present this guy with our “badass of the week” award: State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria)!



Now this guy was already somewhat of an outsider within his own party. Last year, when our budget deficit was a paltry $2 billion (and they considered that big at the time), he petitioned hard against closing it through any cuts to education, which seriously rankled his Republican counterparts, who love nothing more than stealing money from schools. (Their kids go to private school.) He’s also pissed them off on issues like gun control, and by being Latino (he’s the only Rebublican Latino in the Capitol).
So Maldonado sat there in the State Senate knowing that his one vote could end the budget crisis, and he decided to play that chip HARD.
In exchange for his vote, he forced onto the ballot a measure that would institute an open primary system in California. This would allow Californians to vote for any candidate they want for state government, regardless of party affiliation. The thinking right now (which could of course prove to be pretty simple thinking) is that this opens the door for more moderate candidates and will make for interesting races in places where the electorate skews so heavily to one party that the primaries have basically been the real elections.
To illustrate why this is a good thing for California, let’s go back to what got us in this fucked budget situation in the first place:
“Governors and legislatures, in good (economic) times, overspent and over-cut taxes and didn't have the courage to make their pandering generosity just temporary.” – George Skelton, LA Times Capitol Journal.
That’s putting it simply enough.
When you put rigid Democratic spenders and stiff Republican cutters together in the same room, here’s what does NOT happen: They negotiate through difficult decisions, deciding where spending is most essential and how much of the cost burden can rightfully be placed on the taxpayer. No. What happens is, these stiffs just cut AND spend, and push the huge fucking problems inherent in that logic into the future — which finally came.
So anyway, we at The Raw Intelligence think having some more moderates like Maldonado in the room will be a great thing, and the open primary system should help make it happen. Both parties HATE the idea; they’d rather just sit on safe seats, keep their party talking points on the straight and narrow, and roll out some standard factory model D’s and R’s for battles in a handful of contested areas.
But somehow this Maldonado guy managed to sneak in and seize his one moment of opportunity to unleash this whole other crazy animal that nobody else from either party wanted to fuck with at all.
Despite the small brown stains on the trousers of some lawmakers, the taxpayers, of course, are the immediate “biggest losers” (in the traditional, negative sense of that phrase). They are going to be paying more taxes for fewer services, all thanks to past dumbfuckery in the state capitol. (Though you can’t say we don’t deserve it a little bit. After all, we lapped up those “pandering” tax cuts and new expenditures that Skelton was talking about.)
But at least we got to see all the politicians, dumb-fuck Democrats and remedial Republicans alike, get it good from Abel Maldonado. They signed their little pledge, and now they’ve got Abel’s dick in their butt.
Hahahahahahahahaha.

Death of News

Gary Kamiya of Salon has displayed extreme sharkiness on many occasions...but he's probably at his most eloquent in this piece about the death of newspapers. He argues that newspapers, and the true brand of objective reporting they provide, are a social necessity — one that is quickly being strangled by the invisible hand of a free market that gives people what they want, but not always what they need.
He suggests they should be subsidized, either through endowments or government financing. That sounds creepy as fuck to any trained journalist...but as a former newspaperman who hopes to be one again, I say fuck it! Give us that guv'mint money!!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/02/17/newspapers/index.html