The world of wrestling was stunned by the news yesterday that all categories of their beloved sport have been recommended for elimination from the 2020 Olympic games. The demise is not quite certain. Wrestling can be re-instated, but it has to now compete with baseball/softball, squash, karate, sport climbing, wakeboarding, wushu, and roller sports and the betting in wrestling’s favor is not good. [Read more…]
Like most people, I was surprised by the pope’s decision to leave his post to spend more time with his family. It was so unexpected that one immediately suspected that there was more to the story and the rumor mills have kicked into high gear. [Read more…]
Offbeat comedian Zach Galifianakis has an online show called Between Two Ferns where he interviews celebrities. In this two-part special, he interviews some of the people who have been nominated for Oscars this year, in which they are given roughly the same amount of time to speak as Oscar winners get at the ceremony. I think this is a wonderful idea that should be adopted by all talk show hosts. [Read more…]
Some defenders of president Obama’s policy of using drones to kill people without even charging them with any crimes, let alone trying to apprehend them, have made the extraordinary argument that this is a good idea since it does not put US forces at risk the way any attempt to capture them would. This use of drones has considerable public support. [Read more…]
End-timers, those who yearn for the end of the world when Jesus will return and destroy all the evildoers and save the virtuous (and such people are convinced that they will be among the saved), are continuously on the lookout for signs of the impending apocalypse. One of those signs is the arrival of the anti-Christ and it is said that he will have the ‘mark of the beast’ that according to chapter 13 of that wacky Book of Revelation will have the numerical value of 666. [Read more…]
Neil Barofsky was a career federal prosecutor who was appointed by George W. Bush at the end of 2008 as the Special Inspector General overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) that was a major part of the bailout program following the financial collapse, and he continued in that role under president Obama until he resigned in March 2011. [Read more…]
Last Saturday’s show was supposed to open with a sketch that parodied Chuck Hagel’s appearance before the Senate committee on his nomination to be the Secretary of Defense. But it was scrapped at the last minute, reportedly by the show’s executive producer. [Read more…]
I usually don’t follow closely stories about massive manhunts for killers and initially largely ignored the story of Christopher Dorner, the former Los Angeles Police Department policemen who killed three people all connected in some way to the LAPD and then went on the run. It seemed on the surface to be yet another case of a person snapping under the stresses of life and lashing out at those around him. [Read more…]
Once in a while a story comes along that reminds me to be careful about making sweeping generalizations about people. Take Appalachia, the rural and mountainous region that spans many states in the southeastern United States. While a place of great natural beauty, it has long been poor and rural. But ever since the hit 1972 film Deliverance came out, the people of that region have also suffered under the impression that they are uneducated, narrow-minded, inbred, hillbillies. Who can forget the famous dueling banjos scene from the film that cemented this impression?
Netflix has produced an original series of programs called House of Cards. It is a story of the seedy political wheeling and dealing and backstabbing that goes on at the highest levels of government, the The West Wing with all the feel-good, warm and fuzzy elements stripped out, and in which none of the principal characters end up looking good. In a new twist, rather than doling out episodes on a regular schedule, they released all 13 episodes of the first season simultaneously on Friday, February 1. [Read more…]