Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
What is the opposite of "click bait?" pic.twitter.com/7BDRvY3X4d
— Andrew Exum (@abumuqawama) September 10, 2014
Go ahead and vent.
My prediction is that the Repubs will scream like scalded weasels, even if President Obama’s entire address turns out to be “Today is Wednesday, and tomorrow will be Thursday. God Bless America.”
First up, Roger Goodell is a lying sack of shit:
A law enforcement official says he sent a video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée to an NFL executive five months ago, while league executives have insisted they didn’t see the violent images until this week.
The official played The Associated Press a 12-second voicemail from an NFL office number on April 9 confirming the video arrived. A female voice expresses thanks and says: “You’re right. It’s terrible.”
The law enforcement official, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, says he had no further communication with any NFL employee and can’t confirm anyone watched the video. He said he was unauthorized to release the video but shared it unsolicited because he wanted the NFL to have it before deciding on Rice’s punishment.
Not only did they see the video, but they were given a helping hand in seeing the video ahead of when they should have by a friendly LEO sympathetic to the NFL, and they still blew it. That man has got to go. He should be fired. Last week.
And remember how we were told that Rice punched her because she hit him and started in on him. Well, that’s bullshit, too:
Ray Rice spat in the face of Janay Palmer the night he punched her in a hotel elevator, one current and one former security staffer at the Revel hotel told “Outside the Lines.”
Three current or former security staffers, who spoke with “Outside the Lines” this week on the condition of anonymity, described additional details of the ugly scene captured on video. Two of the men were on duty the night of the assault, while a third had full access to the security video, which he said he has watched dozens of times. TMZSports.com released a video this week that showed Rice punching Palmer in the face, appearing to knock her unconscious. Revel security workers watched the incident from the operations room through a security camera of the elevator.
One former staffer said Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens running back, spat in his then-fiancée’s face twice, “once outside the elevator and once inside,” prompting her to retaliate with movements that were ultimately countered with a knockout punch. According to the men, as Rice punched Palmer, the elevator the couple rode was rapidly approaching the hotel lobby just two floors above the casino floor. A security staffer, dispatched from his lobby post, saw Rice starting to drag his fiancée, who appeared to still be unconscious, out of the elevator.
We’ve learned a lot from the Ray Rice assault video, but a survivor of abuse tells Jason Whitlock that it’s time to put it away. Story
“Get him away from her! Get him away from her!” the first responder was told by another security officer over a radio, one former security staffer told “Outside the Lines.” The staffer had full access to the security footage.
I wish we could just blast these two into outer space.
*** Update ***
And this is just special:
The same prosecutor who let professional football star Ray Rice avoid a trial after beating his wife unconscious are pushing forward with the prosecution of Shaneen Allen, a single mother who carried a gun into New Jersey without realizing her Pennsylvania permit didn’t apply there.
Allen, a mother of two from Philadelphia, was driving in New Jersey last fall when she was pulled over by a police officer. She informed the officer she had a handgun in her purse and a Pennsylvania license-to-carry permit, at which point the officer arrested her and charged her with a felony for unlawful possession of a weapon, because New Jersey does not recognize out-of-state gun permits.
Allen tried to avoid a trial and jail time by applying to a pre-trial intervention program in New Jersey for first-time offenders. Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens running back who knocked his then-fiancee unconscious during an altercation in Atlantic City in February, was accepted into the program in May.
But Atlantic County prosecutor Jim McClain, the same prosecutor who allowed Rice to avoid prosecution, denied Allen’s application to the program on Wednesday.
Look- I don’t think people should be allowed to concealed carry under any circumstances, and I know the usual caveats about the law being an ass, but this is just total bullshit. There was no criminal intent, and what she has gone through is probably enough to make sure this will not happen again. And given the kid gloves treatment Rice received after beating his wife, does anyone think he would be doing hard time for making a similar mistake as Allen’s?
I’ve often said that Bono is the Irish Lenny Kravitz, only that’s not fair to Lenny Kravitz, since “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over” is pretty catchy and Lenny Kravitz isn’t a shill for neoliberal asshole idiots.
How the fuck did U2 songs end up on my iPhone? Can someone explain this? I saw jokes about it on Twitter but I don’t understand.
Not to get all mistermix on you, but should we all ditch Apple over this?
Update. I’m too depressed about the ISIS/ISIL 9/11 style mania to check in on Obama’s speech (not out of distrust out Obama, but the whole establishment media atmosphere is upsettingly stupid).
Ed Kilgore, at the Washington Monthly:
… To put it another way, Cuomo spent $60.62 per vote, and Teachout $1.57. Now it’s hard to put a value on four years as governor of New York. But it’s probably safe to say that the hold on Cuomo’s presidential ambitions that many Teachout voters were probably hoping for was—priceless.
On the Bronx streets where I grew up, we said Takka mitseya, such a bargain! — which we thought was Yiddish for “paid too much for something that wasn’t worth having in the first place”. But now I can’t find that on Google, so either I’m spelling it wrong or there weren’t enough native Yiddish speakers in University Heights in the 1960s…
The America-hating AP dares to suggest that ISIS is not outside your window trying to kill you RIGHT NOW. http://t.co/Xedmcs1UIF
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) September 10, 2014
Greg Sargent, also — “Is the Media Putting Its Thumb on the Scale?“:
…[H]alf-baked suggestions that Americans want generic “action” risk being misleading. What actions do Americans actually support? It turns out the WSJ poll also finds that 40 percent say “action” should be “limited to air strikes only” and another 15 percent say we shouldn’t act at all — a total of 55 percent. Meanwhile, all of 34 percent support air strikes and sending in combat troops — perhaps higher than one might expect, but still only one in three Americans.
What’s more, the poll also finds that only 27 percent* say the U.S. should become “more active in world affairs.” That’s up from April, but still, it represents barely more than one in four Americans. Meanwhile, 40 percent say we should be less active and another 29 percent say we should maintain our current level of activeness — a total of 69 percent….
* (That number, again!)
@daveweigel lies! ISIS has ebola and is part of the teacher's union! I HEARD IT ON RUSH.
— Highly scatological (@RaisingOneBrow) September 10, 2014
@daveweigel They are fogging up my windows with their hot breath.
— Paula Green (@boycothumana) September 10, 2014
***********
Apart from waiting for the President’s address to the nation, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
From the Kaiser Family Foundation on employer sponsored health insurance:
The key findings from the survey, conducted from January through May 2014, include a modest increase in the average premiums for family coverage (3%). Single coverage premiums are 2% higher than in 2013, but the difference is not statistically significant. Covered workers generally face similar premium contributions and cost-sharing requirements in 2014 as they did in 2013. …
This is the private, off-Exchange market. The big news here is that there is minimal change. That is massive news after the disruption of 2014 coming into play with new community underwriting guidelines, and new requirements for benefits. Not much of a change is a massive change. Not much of that lack of change is directly attributable to PPACA in my mind unless you want to make an argument that there are some very nice positive spillover benefits from Medicare starting to pay for quality instead of quantity.
More importantly, most of the total premium cost growth minimization is not coming through increasing cost-sharing. Deductibles barely went up at the rate of nominal economic growth, and cost sharing is not too much more prevalent. Instead, networks are getting narrower and very high cost providers are starting to be excluded.
I know that Mayhew Insurance has been getting bombarded in the past 18 months from large self-insured employers for us to design and build custom networks for their employees. We’ve always done that (our best selling commercial plan is a custom narrow network), but the amount of interets has perked up beyond that of just hospitals who wanted to build their own home host networks. Big employers who sponsor bowl games and have hockey arenas named after them are in on narrower networks (these networks are 90% of the broad network) where the goal is to mainly dodge two and three standard deviations above regional pricing providers.
IF these types of trends keep up for a couple of years, this is very good long term news.
In certainly not breaking news, two new studies have found that it’s hard to be black and a woman in America. According to the National Women’s Law Center analysis of recent jobs data from August 2013 to August 2014. Unemployment for black men has fallen nearly 3 points from 13.4 percent to 10.8 percent. The unemployment rate for black women however? It’s remained stagnant at 10.6 percent.
In more depressing news, the Federal Reserve’s 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances finds:
While the median white family has a net worth of $134,000, figures drop precipitously for families of color. As of 2013, the median Hispanic family’s worth is $14,000. The median black family has a net worth of $11,000.
Let’s go equality and pulling bootstraps! Sigh.
Team Blackness also discussed Chuck D.’s controversial thoughts on Ray Rice’s actions, why DiGiorno shouldn’t crash discussions on domestic violence, and the irony of a mayor of a “dry” Alabama city getting arrested for drunk driving.
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