Check this out… https://t.co/3nc4SpR9jD
— Ice Cube (@icecube) April 26, 2018
Not to jinx the fellas, but sometimes I wish one or another of our soccer-expert front pagers had a little more time to talk about the World Cup here, because the international politics involved seem to be even more gross and twisted than those of the Olympics Committee. This year’s competition is in Russia, starting in mid-June — the U.S. didn’t qualify, probably just as well. The World Cup after that will be held in Qatar in 2022, a controversial choice which doesn’t look to be getting any less controversial…
Charles P. Pierce, for Sports Illustrated“Why Tom Brady Has No Business Promoting Qatar”:
… Back when I was scuffling around among your friends and family, I devoted an entire chapter to how discerning you were about endorsements, which were just then beginning to come your way in earnest. It was one of the things that I liked best about you, truth be told. You didn’t grab for every soft drink and pizza account that came blowing past you. You didn’t go shilling for reverse mortgages or auto insurance. You went for a few high-end products and you were very careful about the ones you picked. If I recall correctly, you made a decision early on to be careful about products to which you attached your name. You guarded your brand before most people knew what a brand was…
Times change. People change… What caught my eye was what you were doing with the time. You and your family were being wined and dined by the Emirate of Qatar.
Tom, what in the hell are you doing?
See, I got there before you did, almost 25 years before you did, as a matter of fact. In the fall of 1993, as the United States was gearing up to host the World Cup in ’94, I spent 13 days in Qatar covering the Asian Zone qualifying…
I wasn’t there long before I concluded that the main job of every successful Qatari was hiring enough foreigners to do all the real work; the bartender in my hotel was a Filipino teenager who hadn’t seen his passport in a year… I came to be revolted by the ostentatious wealth earned on the backs of people who were trapped there and paid poorly, when they were paid at all, and by the distance between all the sleek sheikhs and that teenager behind the bar. By the end of two weeks, I was ready to swim home.
So, imagine my surprise to see on your Instagram account what a swell time you and your family had being entertained by the pros from Doha. There you are, riding camels by the sea and hitting the marketplaces. And here you and your son are, visiting Khalifa Stadium, the host venue for the 2022 World Cup in Doha, and you are thanking your hosts for a wonderful time…Khalifa Stadium was built by the closest thing the 21st century has for slave labor. The kefala system, the reason why my Filipino bartender had not seen his passport, locked the foreign laborers into their jobs, and their treatment was like something out of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 2013—five damn years ago, Tom!—the Guardian blew the whistle on the situation in Doha.…
A sport with any conscience would have pulled its marquee event out of this medieval satrapy years ago. But this is international soccer and this is FIFA, its organizing body. Neither institution has a scrap of conscience. We talk about our sports occasionally being tinged by organized crime. International soccer actually is organized crime. So, I guess, it’s up to individuals of conscience to continue to raise hell about a major sporting event literally being constructed on the corpses of poor people. Which is where you come in…
In Brady’s defense, he doesn’t seem to be much of a man for reading, and soccer is really important in his supermodel wife’s native Brazil. Also, per local tabloid Boston Herald:
… The celebration, which took place at the Khalifa International Stadium, marked a new initiative to employ 20 people with disabilities as the country organizes and hosts the 2022 FIFA World Cup…
Mary G
Twenty whole people! Wow! I know it’s not popular, but I still fantasize that America will let the Middle East sort itself out militarily, because those countries just don’t seem fixable, and we are often helping kill innocent civilians whose survivors will grow up America-hating terrorists.
Amir Khalid
Hiring 20 people with disabilities, out of many thousands of people working at 12 stadiums and other venues. Impressive.
(Temporarily) Temporarily Max McGee
@Amir Khalid:
More impressive yet: Those twenty were all able-bodiedworkers when they were hired on three or four years ago.
Mnemosyne
Okay, first I had to go see if that was actually Ice Cube’s Twitter account. (It is.) He apparently is in the middle of suing the Qatari government over a complicated business deal gone wrong that I don’t quite understand, but I trust my birthday twin in these matters.
B.B.A.
The US is bidding for the 2026 World Cup, and we may now be kleptocratic enough to win this time… /s
efgoldman
As a Pats fan, of course i love Brady
But he has the tinniest of tin ears.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: Well, as I understand it, that’s 20 more than would otherwise be hired.
And I could be nastier, if I didn’t have acquaintances who never knew a sibling or cousin because their parents had been told, by doctors using the standard medical protocol, “Your newborn is a helpless cripple — put it in an institution and tell the neighbors it was born dead, because otherwise your whole family will suffer.”
Not to mention that the GOP still keeps trying to destroy the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was only passed in 1990.
Mike J
Wiz Khalifa stadium?
Mary G
@Anne Laurie: Twitler has also chimed in this evening, managing to address more than one grievance in the same tweet:
He sounds more and more like a Mafia goon from a bad movie every day.
B.B.A.
@Mary G: Looks like it’ll be in Morocco (the only other bidder), then.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G:
At one level, including a strategic one, this makes a certain amount of sense. Despite years and years of engagement, we continually get the dynamics of the region wrong. Our domestic insanity over Islam, which mirrors earlier versions featuring Judaism and Catholicism and Native American religions (It was illegal, under Federal Law, for Native Americans to conduct and engage in traditional Native American religious ceremonies and rites until the mid 1980s – and I’m not talking peyote rituals!) as the dangerous and evil other, makes it even harder to gain traction. We send a horrible message about how can the US claim to care about Syrian children being killed with sarin, if it doesn’t care when they’re killed with 7.62 caliber bullets, and when it clearly doesn’t care enough to even temporarily relocate them and their families as refugees. And there’s really no consensus by the citizens of many, if not most of the countries in the Middle East that are undergoing significant socio-political change, often violent, about what should happen once the current or existing system is overthrown.
But… And it’s a doozy of a but, the real strategic problem here, what makes it a wicked problem, is that none of this is happening in a vacuum. If the US disengages, which largely means the US led coalition disintegrates, the region, and its states and societies will not be walled off to work things out for themselves. Instead the Russians and the Chinese will move in completely to pursue their interests. From within the region the religious extremist Saudis and the religious extremists Iranians will escalate their proxy war for regional hegemony. The last time we went hands off on this was in the early days of the Syrian Civil War when Prince Bandar, then running Saudi’s foreign and clandestine intelligence service, decided to turn the beginning of the Syrian Civil War into his own little playground against the Iranians. A great deal of the mess we’re dealing with now is directly the result of what Bandar was doing while we were hands off and letting folks in the region do their own thing.
And it isn’t just the more powerful regional players that would move into the vacuum. Qatar would go back to funding the Muslim Brotherhood and trying to use them to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. Honestly, I still can’t figure out what the Emir of Qatar has against King Abdullah. The Emirati Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Zayed (known as MBZ), who is the mentor of the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman (MBS) and Jared Kushner, would have a free hand to pursue his own agenda and interests, potentially suborning the Saudis. And a great deal of his interests appear to be overthrowing his peers in the other Gulf states.
Our withdrawal would also provide the Israelis with a free hand. A free hand to escalate against Iran, Hezbullah, and the Palestinians. I remember back in the 90s when the Israeli contingency plans for dealing with the Palestinians leaked. It was called Operation Crown of Thorns. As a co-religionist of the majority of Israelis, I can honestly say I am ashamed to be so given what that concept of operations called for – the complete ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced that one of the reason Ehud Barak was so willing to try to make a peace deal in the waning months of the Clinton Administration is as the former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces he knew all to well what Operation
CrownField of Thorns meant. Militarily and morally.And let’s not forget some other negative effects of our withdrawal. As the Syrian Civil War continues to rage, and sectarian disputes, including Iraqi Arab vs Iraqi Kurd, reheat and once again become violent, refugees are going to be on the move. Jordan is about at its limit for accepting refugees having accepted Iraqis from 2003 through 2010 and again during 2013 to the present because of ISIS, as well as Syrians beginning in 2011. Lebanon, which never handles population shifts well, can’t take many more refugees either. So anything that increases population outflows also increases the likelihood of new political violence in Jordan and Lebanon.
This is the real wicked, strategic problem behind US involvement in the Middle East. We are the closest thing to an honest broker, for all the compromises we make, in the region. And if we just leave and say “we’ve contributed to screwing you all up, we’re leaving for your own good so we can’t do any more damage to you”, we’re not actually making things better. We’re just creating new opportunities for extra-regional and regional actors to pursue their own interests. Interests that are clearly at odds with peace and stability in the region. The real US policy for the Middle East should be management and mitigation. We should articulate it and embrace it and formulate appropriate strategies to effectively achieve management and mitigation.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Nothing like threatening your allies and partners and peer competitors in an attempt to cohost a sports tournament with two other allies and partners you’re constantly accusing of ripping the US off.
smike
@Mary G: He’s a goon for sure, but a Fredo at best. “I am smart. I am smart. I know all the best words. The best. You’ll see how smart I am.”
Yarrow
Whatever happened to Randinho?
Having the World Cup in Qatar is just nuts. It’s going to be really hot there in the summer. I seem to remember they’re going to have some kind of air conditioning for the stadiums but they’re open air so I’m not quite sure how that will work.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s what so many lefties don’t understand. As self-serving as it sounds, we really are the closest thing there is to “the good guys”, despite the terrible things our institutions have done in the past around the world and stepping away to prevent the imperialist mistakes of yesteryear. They don’t seem to comprehend that other powers are more than willing to step in and they have even more dubious intentions than we do.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Got a red card.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: What did he do?
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Our foreign and national security policy is a mess. And it’s been a mess since the end of the Cold War. Because of our domestic politics, we’ve constructed very narrow boundaries for our national security and foreign policy development. And for a number of whacky reasons we decided we didn’t need to engage with our allies and partners, as well as our peer competitors to reconsider the global system after the end of the Cold War. So we have a global system that is the legacy of World War II and the Cold War and we have a 21st Century global environment. And they don’t line up at all.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: I was kidding. I have no idea what happened to him.
West of the Rockies
OT, but am I the only person here who’s never heard of Diamond and Silk? From my very brief foray into the story, I gather they’re a couple of conservative bloggers… Are they true believers, grifters, or garden variety knuckleheads?
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman:
I am having a hard time finding more information about this?
@West of the Rockies: New to me today as well. Don’t know and won’t know until it’s truly necessary.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Good summary, and it makes a compelling case to me.
But how do we change the dynamic?
The KSA and other oil-rich states in the region are propped up by us, but they also do lots of things that are against our interests (like funding al Qaeda, Daesh, and all the rest). Ditto – even moreso – for Israel. We have lots of military deals with them (co-development of anti-missile systems, etc.).
We know money talks. We know that the fall in oil prices hurt the KSA, Venezuela, Russia, and many other countries that have been acting against US interests. We know that we give Israel billions every year (part of the Camp David agreements). China depends on access to our market and our technology.
We have tools we can use to make it clear that we want players in the region to “play nice”. Will we use those tools, or will we simply declare victory and go home?
To be clear, I don’t think we can impose our views on the region. But there are ways that we can use our (remaining) power and ideals to keep the region from turning (even more) into a pool of fire.
I expect little or no progress in the region as long as Trump is in power. At least, not any progress as a result of US actions.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
HumboldtBlue
I have always enjoyed this. Music makes you smile.
This is fucking brilliant.
Arian Foster finds a groove.
Hail to the rhythm.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Whoops. I meant to say, “And stepping away completely to prevent the imperialist mistakes of yesteryear isn’t the answer.”
West of the Rockies
@Major Major Major Major:
Are you back from Japan? By any chance, did you try the squid ink ice cream?
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I thought you might be kidding. I know he moved to Brazil (where his wife is from) and said his internet connection was not dependable.
@West of the Rockies: I saw them around the inauguration and looked them up then. Apparently they have a YouTube channel. They used to be at least not conservative but I’m not sure if they were definitely Democrats or liberal. That didn’t get them a lot of viewers and when they started supporting Trump they did get viewers. My view is that they’re opportunists, but I don’t really know. They have monetized the hell out of their fame and sell all sorts of tacky Trump crap on their website.
Edit: Did something happen today with Diamond and Silk?
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
@Adam L Silverman:
Real life is what happened to Randinho. I wish David Anderson would take over the football posts, but real life might be a problem for him too: he’s already doing a lot of very serious, fact-intensive posts here on top of his day job, and he’s had to give up his football refereeing posts.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: It would help if I hadn’t misremembered the name. It was Operation Field of Thorns.
https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/220/378?v=1362363401000
Steve in the SFO
@Adam L Silverman: tl; dr: those countries just don’t seem fixable
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: If it is okay, given the late hour, I’m going to answer this some other time. Feel free to remind me if I don’t get back to it within a week or so.
Steve in the SFO
@West of the Rockies:
No. And from what little I have no seen, I hope to forget them very quickly.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: I know, that’s why I said I was fantasizing. But it seems like (here comes some real fantasy) if we shifted to less of a military presence and more of a policing/humanitarian effort. You know how heartsick I am about the poor Yemenis, who are in danger of losing 8 million people to starvation and disease. If we could get the Saudis to knock off the blockade of food and fuel, and the Iranians to knock off giving the Houthis missiles, and get them both to concentrate on taking out Al Queda, that would help. Syria, the Kurds, the Russians, the Israelis, is a big mess. There might be no solution.
Gaza is a nightmare. I tweeted some mild criticism of the Israeli snipers shooting unarmed protesters and for days afterward I was thanked by Arabs and demonized as a fool by Israelis. I am afraid they are at least part of the way to becoming what they were founded to make sure was gone from the world.
The best we can do is try to get back to leading by example. If we can take both houses of Congress in November and hold Twitler to one term we might change the play, but for now all we can do is protest, which is not nothing. When they first came out with the Muslim ban, I apologized to one of my doctors (he comes from what was once part of Yugoslavia, not sure which), who told me that the common people of his country were so impressed with all the protesters who came to the airports to provide signs and money and lawyers. They would like to have that there.
ETA: You’ve probably already racked out, but don’t worry about answering. I am just rambling to myself.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Oh that link looks like a very informative read, thanks.
@West of the Rockies: I am back, alas. No, I didn’t. It doesn’t sound like it would be that good–I’m not a huge fan of ink.
Yarrow
@Amir Khalid: I think he has also given up his actual refereeing due to injuries.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Hey, I’m just throwing it out there. I’m not expecting an answer (especially not immediately). I’m sure volumes have been written about this stuff – condensing it to 2-3 paragraphs can’t capture it all.
If/when you’ve got the time, I do look forward to your thoughts though.
Thanks.
‘night all.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the SFO: Just like Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.
Viva BrisVegas
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
So was the British Empire in its own way.
The US is an imperialist power that has acted to put its commercial interests above all others. This is as it has been since the Monroe Doctrine.
A caravan of misery has just reached the US-Mexico border. The conditions that these people fleeing are the direct result of decades of corrupt right wing rule instituted by the US government to ensure the maximum return for corporations like United Fruit and their successors. To get to this stage dozens of social justice movements in places like Guatemala and Honduras had to be exterminated with US assistance.
Most people outside the US are aware that the US acts in its own interests in foreign countries, and through countless coups those interests have invariably coincided with the interests of whatever tiny right wing clique rules that country.
The bad guys are bad, but at least they don’t lecture you about freedom while taking it away.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I’m getting ready to rack out. MBS’s Yemen adventure is as tragically destructive as it is foolhardy.
As for the rest, I’m getting ready to rack out as well. So feel free to ask again in daylight.
Mary G
@West of the Rockies: They don’t rise to the level of bloggers. They have a You Tube channel that they praise Twitler on, and a Facebook page, and they go on Fox a lot and some of the more out there conservative outlets. I used to think they were grifters, but now I think they are grifters with mental issues.
Librarian
@Yarrow: They testified today to a congressional committee, apparently whining about how conservatives were being censored online or something. I think Steve King had something to do with it.
Viva BrisVegas
@West of the Rockies:
What’s the Spanish for “Why not all three?”.
Ruckus
@smike:
You think we might be able to get him to hold his breath till we all agree how great he is? Think he might look better blue? Of course the problem is that the SS might not let him hold his breath that long. Damn it.
Amir Khalid
@Viva BrisVegas:
¿Por que no los tres?
Anne Laurie
@Yarrow:
Last I heard, he was just very busy & happy in his real, day-to-day, not-blogging life. And I very much hope that’s still true!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Viva BrisVegas:
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You still miss the point. As bad as we have been and can be (and are) Russia and China are far worse by every metric imaginable.
Perhaps it’s the idealist (and maybe arrogance) in me, but I believe the US and its allies represent the best chance humanity has to survive the coming age and create a lasting utopia that uplifts everyone. The potential is there and always has been, since our founding; the promise that all people are created equal and have inalienable rights.
It’s true we haven’t lived up to these words and often still don’t. But progress has been made. I firmly believe that we can lead by example and truly be the heroes we’ve been waiting for.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, ‘Crown of Thorns’… just didn’t sound like an Israeli title choice, ifyouknowwhatImean…
(Temporarily) Temporarily Max McGee
@B.B.A.:
Nope. FIFA hasn’t changed enough since the scandal caused by the Russia and Qatar picks. FIFA still wants too much from host cities, still including the demand that host nations surrender some of their sovereignty to enforce their laws at the federal, state and municipal level and allow FIFA to empower their own courts in host cities. And they’re still asking for too damned much money.
At least two big cities have withdrawn their bids to host games if the North American bid (Mexico, Canada and the US are making their bid together) wins it, Chicago and Vancouver.
Aleta
-US News and Report
SRW1
@Yarrow:
The World Cup in Qatar will be played in November/December. Gonna mess up the regular seasons in the Northern hemisphere because with the prep times it’s gonna mean a two month break.
And what’s even better, FIFA is pushing to increase the number of participating countries to 48 already for that tournament, which would mean Qatar woudn’t have enough stadia and would need to partner with another country. The Qataris are not amused.
Ruckus
@Steve in the SFO:
@Adam L Silverman:
I think that Steve is right this is not fixable, especially from the outside. These countries have some serious issues based around a system that is centuries old in a world that has gone global. Of course the same could be said for us, it’s just taken us a lot less time to think a bit too much of ourselves.
I think a lot of the problem is that money is even less evenly distributed in most/all of the middle east than it is here. So you have the way, way overly wealthy and everyone else. Here there is/was a path to have a satisfactory life for many, even if not most. In the middle east that ratio is far worse. And with the communications that are available far more people world wide can see that they are being fucked for the benefit of the few who already have far, far more than they can ever use for any purpose other than getting more.
I know I sound like a b bro but this really is a problem. If you don’t think so, review your life/career and see if you don’t feel like it was just a holding pattern. And that isn’t really the issue except that life in the US is now a harder/longer, a work till you drop proposition unless you figure out a scam. A profession used to be a way up, is it now? Is it obtainable? Some of this is being exposed by the drumpf ascension and how it got here but in other countries it is far worse. So people turn to whatever scam sounds good and because it’s a scam it doesn’t work. Iran is a prime example if you take it’s history back say the last 50-75yrs. We aren’t all that bad of example either, if you go back that same 50-75 yrs and take an honest look at what was and where we are today. We have the option to change course ourselves, most of the middle east will not. But outside meddling doesn’t and won’t work either. Especially from us with this extremely low level of “leadership” that we currently are experiencing.
BTW I’m not in any way saying that 75 yrs ago was better for most, only that we had sight of a way forward. We even managed to get some progress, tough as that was. But the last 25 yrs was only slightly better than stagnation and the current situation has to get to a hard reverse and fast if any of that progress is to remain. And all so a few can have more money than they can ever use. There’s just too damn many of us for the old ways to continue, we have to find ways to work together a lot better than we currently do, not just in our daily lives but in country to country as well.
Viva BrisVegas
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I know where you are coming from, but remember the coming age is one of Global Warming. Of China, Russia and the US which one is acting to sabotage any remedial action?
What you seem to be referring to looks just like a liberal version of American exceptionalism. The US as the indispensable democracy.
What the rest of us see is that we will have to come to terms with Chinese aspirations just as we did with US aspirations. The extent of US support against Chinese expansionism will be entirely dependent on American interests being served, not that of international liberal democracy.
hervevillechaizelounge
@West of the Rockies:
They’re grifters but I admire their hustle; why should old white dudes have a monopoly on wingnut welfare?
I expect them to get their own show on Fox; since Stacy Dash hit her sell-by date and Michael Steele got clued-in there is a dearth of POC willing to defame their race for cash.
So Diamond and Silk aren’t going anywhere but it looks like Joy Reid may be toast; if her blog really was hacked and backdated no one is safe—the Russian-empowered left will pick us all off one by one.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Viva BrisVegas:
Admittedly we are, but the Russians are as well, considering they helped put Trump in power. Putin apparently doesn’t give one fuck about the future of humanity. Just one aspect of his evil.
I don’t think we’re exceptional but I do think we can be a force for global good
Amir Khalid
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
It is naive to trust any superpower’s good intentions. (Or any superpower’s definition of “good”, for that matter. It is all too often conflated with “what’s good for me.”) And America’s intentions in its decades as a supower have not been as good as you seem to believe.
AxelFoley
@Mike J:
Fix’d
SectionH
Um, sounds like the Saudis are still trying to fuck Qatar. Y’know, after they gave up trying to ban Qatari flights etc. They got enabled by Dolt45, spawn.
I don’t pretend to know much about M/E stuff, but damn.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Amir Khalid:
Don’t misunderstand, I know America has done bad things. I just believe we can be better.
Amir Khalid
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I think the world would be better off without superpower nations, even those with intentions they consider good. .
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: I don’t think we’ve lived(or will live) in that world for the last 500 years, at least.
Robert Sneddon
@Viva BrisVegas: Russia is one of the largest producers of oil and natural gas in the world and intends to continue exploring, extracting and selling fossil carbon fuels for the next fifty years and more. China’s longer-term plans involve burning about 3 billion tonnes of coal a year to generate electricity to meet increasing demand from a wealthier populace. They’re both doing their bit for global climate change.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Oh, I know.
SectionH
@Amir Khalid: No fucking shit.
I kept typing replies to you for a while, and deleting them, but srsly, we (yeah I’m an American) have basically blown it. The Superpower shit is – and always has been completely a stupid media thing. That Republican BS from the get-go.
Ok, story: Mr S has read most of Harry Truman’s autobiography. He firmly believe there was a reason FDR picked Truman to be his VP for his last election, instead of the dude who thought he was entitled…
Sorry, back to Harry’s autobiography. The big quote was (of course I’m paraphrasing) was “Yes, I’m optimistic about the future of the US. The one thing that worries me most is that All of the Ad Agencies are owned and run by Republicans.”
I’m paraphrasing, of course, but dammit.
JR
Tom Brady is a weird dude with very few scruples or sense. The bigger surprise is Ice Cube promoting Pierce’s article.
bluefoot
@Anne Laurie: This happened to my parents when my baby sister was born here in an upper-middle class suburb in the oh-so-enlightened US of A. The doctors and hospital staff were insisting my sister was better off in an institution. Luckily for all concerned, my parents prevailed, they got OT for my sister, who grew up to be one of the most lovely and generous people I know. She’s a teacher in the NYC public school system, a musician, wife and mother, and generally kicks ass.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
We’re supposed to put a ;-) after a joke like that… dry but witty, and capable of misunderstandings. ;-)