Washington Redskins Ban Signs At Games, Eject And Insult Fans

It goes without saying that the Washington Redskins are a rancid football team.  But now the team, read Daniel Snyder, has reached new lows, aside from losses to Detroit and KC.

Here are some of the highlights of the new lows for the Redskins:

• Two fans wearing “Dumb” and “Dumber” shirts with photos of Snyder and VP Vinny Cerrato claimed security guards made them invert their shirts.
• Fans were prohibited from chanting “We want Gruden.”
• The team has banned media interviews of tailgating fans.
• Fans are prohibited from having signs at the game, even signs supporting our troops in Afghanistan.  Way to go Snyder.  Great to be against the troops.
• Redskin linebacker Robert Henson, berated Redskins fans on his Twitter page.  It Tweet: “All you fake half hearted Skins fan can .. I won’t go there but I dislike you very strongly, don’t come to Fed Ex to boo dim wits!!”
  • “half hearted” Henson, learn to tackle and to properly use phrasal adjectives.  You not good at either.

Notes On Refinancing A Home

Having just completed the paperwork necessary to refinance a home mortgage, it is appropriate to share a few thoughts.

First, there is a reason people hate lawyers, to wit, the preposterous number of signatures required.  For a simple refinance, same residence no second mortgage, it required a total of 32 signatures and 14 initials to consummate all of the necessary documents.

Second, why is it essential to disclose one’s race and ethnicity to borrow money?

Third, it was in sum a positive move.  The refinance resulted in a 5-1 ARM at %4.5.

yojoe out

P.S.   Premier Lending Group, Brian Baker,  was very helpful in making this loan happen.

Marines Allowed To Smoke In Afghanistan

Be it Afghanistan or Saipan, Marines want their smokes.  Now Marines, and other servicemembers, will be allowed to smoke,

The Pentagon reassured troops Wednesday that it won’t ban tobacco products in war zones. Defense officials hadn’t actually planned to eliminate smoking — at least for now. But fear of a ban arose among some troops after the Defense Department received a study recommending the military move toward becoming tobacco-free — perhaps in about 20 years.

Press secretary Geoff Morrell pointedly told a Pentagon news conference that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is not planning to prohibit the use of cigarettes, chewing tobacco or other tobacco products by troops in combat.

“He knows that the situation they are confronting is stressful enough as it is,” Morrell said, noting the wars inIraq and Afghanistan. “I don’t think he is interested in adding to the stress levels by taking away one of the few outlets they may have to relieve stress.”

yojoe out

Oregon Ducks 2009 Football Uniforms

The Oregon Ducks, with help from Nike, have done it again, they have come up with new uniforms for the 2009 football season that are even uglier than last season.  And that is saying something, considering the previous uniforms were the worst in all of sports.  Not only are the unis repugnant, they are also versatile with 80 different combinations.  Eighty combinations?  How may games do they plan on playing this season?  Put down the hippy lettuce Oregon and just play football.

yojoe Fight On!

HBO Hard Knocks: Season Three Cincinnati Bengals

The third season of the HBO show Hard Knocks will feature the Cincinnati Bengals.  For Trojan fans this will be a great year.  The show should feature a number of former USC players, including Rey Maualuga, Carson Palmer, Keith Rivers, and Fostee Rucker.

yojoe Fight On!

The Jews Are To Blame For The Current Economic Crisis

In a recent study 2,768 Americans were asked about the amount of blame attributed to the Jews for the current economic crisis.  Participants in the study were asked: “How much blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?”

The possible responses were:

• a great deal
• a lot
• a moderate amount
• a little
• not at all

The results: 24.6 percent of Americans blamed “the Jews” a moderate amount or more, and 38.4 percent attributed some blame to “the Jews.”

When the results were broken down by political party:

• Democrats – 32% blamed the Jews
• Republicans – 18.4% blamed the Jews

This is disquieting to say the least.

While universal suffrage is a cornerstone of democracy in the United States, this study suggests that it may be time to rethink the right to vote for the people responding to this survey who blamed an single ethnic group for our economic circumstance.  This is just a preliminary reaction, but one can not help but to be disturbed by the results of this study.

yojoe (in disturbed mode) out

The Economics Of Somali Piracy

Over at VC there is a great post by Prof Peter Leeson about the economics of Somali Piracy,

Despite the surge in Somali piracy and encouragement from some employees of the U.S. government, commercial ships aren’t choosing to put armed guards on their vessels. And with good reason: given present conditions, anyway, it’s a bad idea.

As I discuss in The Invisible Hook, like their Caribbean forefathers, Somali pirates are in the business of making money, not harming hostages. Of the 815 hostages Somali pirates took last year, only four died and two were injured under pirate care.

Pirates aren’t treating hostages well because they’re nice guys. They’re treating hostages well because it pays to do so. A dead hostage fetches no ransom and pirates’ business model would collapse if they injured prisoners or allowed them to die. The economics of piracy has a simple bottom line: for all the problems piracy may pose, the threat of dead and injured innocents isn’t one of them.

yojoe out

Fans Of The HBO Show The Wire Are About To Get A New Show

If you are, or were, a fan of The Wire you are in for some good news. David Simon, the creator of The Wire, has created a new show set in New Orleans: Treme.  Here is a description from The Times-Picayune,

“Treme,” named after the iconic New Orleans neighborhood where many musicians live, will marry one of television’s most prestigious networks with creator David Simon, one of television’s hottest series masterminds.

Simon created HBO’s the “The Wire,” which just completed a five-year run. While not a huge ratings success for the network, “The Wire” was one of the most critically acclaimed shows in television history.

Simon confirmed that HBO will film the first episode of “Treme,” possibly sometime later this year. If HBO gives the green light for more episodes, production would resume in 2009.

Somali Pirates Want Revenge Not Money

The Pirates of Somalia previously stated that all they wanted was money, because that is their business. Now, apparently the pirates want more than money, they want revenge,

“The aim of this attack was totally different. We were not after a ransom. We also assigned a team with special equipment to chase and destroy any ship flying the American flag in retaliation for the brutal killing of our friends.”

So much for the strategy of deterrence by payment.  For an excellent explanation of the problem of dealing with the Somali pirates, see Strategy Page,

Rey Maualuga Top Inside Linebacker In 2009 NFL Draft

According to Mike Mayock of NFL Network, former Trojan Rey Maualuga is the top inside linebacker prospect in the 2009 NFL Draft.

yojoe Fight On!

Vanity Fair Drops Green Issue

Apparently global warming does not pay,

Spring has sprung, and everything is going green. Everything, that is, except Vanity Fair, which has decided to ditch its annual “green issue”. For the past three years, the monthly glossy has made much of dedicating its May issue to the environment: from Leonardo DiCaprio posing on an iceberg to last year’s open letter from Robert Kennedy Jnr to the next president calling for action on global warming. This year, the incipient tradition has been quietly dropped.

yojoe out

USC Football: Pete Carroll Highest Paid University Employee

If you work for a private university and want to maximize your earning potential, you either need to dominate the gridiron or epidermis.  USC Trojan coach Pete Carroll tops the list of private university employees earning an estimated $4,415,714 in 2007.  A close second is a dermatologist at Columbia University, Dr. David N Silvers, who received $4,332,759.

yojoe Fight On!

Update On New Air Force One: To Be Made In America

It was previously reported that the new Air Force One may not be built in the United States. Now, according to Aviation Week, Airbus is not planning to compete for the contract.

That leaves only Boeing as the only competitor for the president’s new aircraft.

yojoe (in Made in America mode) out

More on the president’s aircraft:

New Air Force One May Be Made In Europe Not America

Upgrades To President’s Helicopter To Cost Additional One Billion Dollars

The police should leave us alone and let us sell our weed

The title of this post is a quote from Antoine Blalock, a DC resident who was convicted for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Recently, Mr. Blalock’s case was on appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  The facts of the case were less than normal,

Blalock drove to the Seventh District Police Station on Alabama Avenue S.E. in May 2007. He pulled a handgun from the trunk and started firing, shooting in the air outside the station. Five shots. He shouted, according to court records, “The police should leave us alone and let us sell our weed!”

Blalock complied with demands to drop his gun—and he did not stop there. He dropped his pants, standing naked before officers wrapped him up in a towel. Police seized 23 bags of marijuana. Blalock told police he wanted to “throw weed” and shoot the gun to get recognition from a record label.

For more on marijuana, see the devastating rope shortage facing California.

yojoe out

H/T: The BLT

United States And Canada To Go War Over Global Warming

Yes, this is a prediction actually raised by a global warming alarmist in the WaPo

,

Admittedly, it’d take a lot of tension for this to turn into a military conflict, but anyone convinced that the United States and Canada could never come to blows has forgotten the War of 1812. And not all this sort of resource conflict will occur between friendly countries.

And you thought those Canadians were mad when we took their hockey teams. yojoe out

Microsoft Windows 7 Available For A Limited Time

According to the great Wired blog Epicenter, Microsoft will offer a beta version of Windows 7 to the first 2.5 million people to visit the Windows 7 page.

Windows 7 will offer:

• Improved taskbar
• Jump Lists
• Internet Explorer 8
• Windows Live

Start looking for download times on Friday.  Good luck being among the first 2.5 million.

yojoe (in Windows mode) out

Charles Barkley Arrested, Not For Gambling But DUI

Charles Barkley plans to run for governor of Alabama. His latest trouble with the law may not help him.  He was arrested on 31DEC08 on suspicion of DUI in Arizona.  This after his previous $400,000 gambling debt, does not seem to improve the odds of his gubernatorial run.

yojoe out

Yahoo! Search Engine Offers More Privacy Than Google Or Microsoft

If you are looking for privacy and anonymity in your Internet searches you should use Yahoo! search. Yahoo! recently announced that it,

will anonymize user log data within 90 days with limited exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations. Yahoo! will also expand the policy to apply not only to search log data but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks.

By comparison, Google will anonymize data after 9 months.  Here is Google’s privacy policy.

Microsoft keeps data for 18 months before making it anonymous.  Here is Microsoft’s privacy policy.

So, before searching for things you may not want others to know about, at least after 90 days, you may want to consider Yahoo!.

yojoe out

New Book By Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell has released his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.  Gladwell’s previous two books were Blink and The Tipping Point.

Gladwell’s writing concentrates on the social sciences and are written for the layman.  Here is some Q&A about his new book:

1. What is an outlier?

“Outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In the summer, in Paris, we expect most days to be somewhere between warm and very hot. But imagine if you had a day in the middle of August where the temperature fell below freezing. That day would be outlier. And while we have a very good understanding of why summer days in Paris are warm or hot, we know a good deal less about why a summer day in Paris might be freezing cold. In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.

2. Why did you write Outliers?

Washington DC Has Plan To Fix All Its Problems: Rename A Street "Taxation Without Representation Street"

The residence of DC have a great new plan to solve all their woes: rename the portion of South Capitol Street between N Street and Potomac Avenue “Taxation Without Representation Street.”

That should do it.  No more problems in the District.

This should help your rate of HIV/AIDS infection, which is the highest in the nation.  (128.4 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 14 cases 100,000 people for the rest of the United States)

Murders that “are the second-leading cause of premature deaths among the District population as a whole . . .” are no longer a problem.

A 6th-place ranking in a ranking of the most dangerous cities in the United States, is no longer an issue.

And, some of the worst public schools in the nation.  Fixed.

Jonathan Lee Riches© Sues Blizzard Entertainment

The JLR (as Jonathan Lee Riches©  is known at Dreadnaught) has filed a lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment.  Here is his latest lawsuit:

Comes now the interveners, moves Jonathan Lee Riches d/b/a Gordon Gekko, Vincent Dragonetti, Steven Iaria, Mario Cassarino, moves this honorable court to intervene in this case as Plaintiffs under fed r. civ P rule 24(A)2 – as a matter of right, or under rule 24(B) – permissive intervention, as interverors have a intrest in this case against Blizzard Entertainment Inc and their World of Warcraft video games which caused Intervenors to commit federal crimes.  World of Warcraft caused Riches mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscapes committing Identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hackergangs.  Riches was addicted to video games and lost touch with Reality because of defendants.  This caused Riches to commit fraud to buy defendants video games.  Riches chose World of Warcraft over working a legit job.  I move for Amicus Cuaie, I can provide this court with my medical charts, credit and receipts of buying their video games with fraud.  I have newly discovered evidence.  I pray this court will grant Intervenors motion for relief.

For all of the JLR’s lawsuits.

yojoe out