The Lorax, Bountygate, and Awesomeness

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. So The Lorax movie just came out and I grew up on Dr. Seuss and have a great love for him. I haven't really seen most of the Dr. Seuss movies though (but I do love The Cat in the Hat and how could you not love How the Grinch Stole Christmas?). So I'm pretty excited about The Lorax and plan to see it at some point. Of course there's a bit of an uproar about the content, not that anybody should have been surprised. The original book has a clear environmentalist tilt and I'm okay with that. I often haven't taken to the slants that are too preachy like in Happy Feet or Wall-E. Even those that seem to object to the content of The Lorax are somewhat permissive in this case.

BBC News has an interesting look into the lessons of The Lorax and I'm actually on board for most of these messages. Seuss had a way of giving those lessons like Mary Poppins administers medicine and it is sweet and cute and seemingly innocent (I respect people who take issue with that "innocence"). Of course I do laugh about the final lesson, Mazda using the movie hype to sell kids on their brand. Yeah, not a fan.

The NYTimes released one of the more bizarre reviews for the movie I've ever seen. I feel both assaulted as a conservative but somehow congratulated all at the same time. I'm really just confused by the whole experience, kind of like how people tried to go after the new Muppet movie for the oil tycoon villain.

RT isn't too hot on The Lorax, receiving a rotten rating currently (it's on the cusp). It hasn't reached 100 reviews yet, so that might change. I'll bet the political nature of it probably doesn't do it any favors though. Either way, I'm still excited (and at 56% it should be very watchable).

The President's personality. The NYTimes has an interesting look at David Plouffe, a key Obama election advisor. Very interesting person and a fascinating glimpse at who he is. Only wish they had something more to say about him.

Bountygate: the legal look. @mccannsportslaw takes a look at some of the legal implications of the Saints bounty scandal. Interesting on a purely speculative level, but I do feel like it's written in a semi-disingenuous manner. He mentions all of these potential legal consequences but basically says, at the end, "Well, they're not likely to happen." Which as a 1L, I would have assumed the same. I think the reasonable person would likely agree. I think it's interesting to have this kind of look for hypothetical/theoretical purposes, but you should really come out stating its more of a thought experiment rather than something that is likely to happen.

Mike Silver also takes a look at some of the implications for the league, likening the whole situation to Spygate of a few years back. As Mike says, this is going to be a whole lot worse though.

The malice at the palace. Grantland did an excellent piece detailing the whole circumstances of the crazy situation. It's written in an interesting manner in that it is recreated through quotes from the different individuals involved. Most of them were not willing to give current interviews, so it was bits and pieces of things they had said in the past. At first this kind of bugged me and I wanted more narrative but it grew on me as I read.

As far as the incident, I think my main beef of what went down resides in the refs. Refs are responsible for controlling the game. Undoubtedly players should be mature enough to control themselves, but that's just not how it works often times; things get heated and people get out of control, it's not right but it happens. So the game had become increasingly chippy and it was pretty much won already. The refs really should have called it tight and warned both benches (i.e. their coaching staffs). It doesn't sound like that was the case though.

It was interesting to see the comment about players demanding to meet their statistical requirement, not surprised by that much but I'm not sure I had ever seen a real comment about that ever.

Going back to officiating issues, it's interesting that Tim Donaghy was involved. Given what we've found out about him since, I wonder if the way he was calling the game was somehow influenced (you'd have to assume yes). Which means that potentially he was choosing not to call fouls due to his gambling problems. That's a scary thought. Also, since this was an issue that started on the courts I see absolutely no reason why the refs should have been allowed to run off of the court when it got out of hand. As I stated before, it is their responsibility to control the game. That means they should be ready and willing to put themselves into positions of danger to control the on the court situation. If the fans started flipping without an on court incident, I think their behavior could be excused, but that wasn't how this worked. I realize they are small, older men, but that seems like part of the responsibility they accept. If the NBA doesn't want it to work like that, then they need to have special security assigned to take that responsibility from the refs (and that's a fine alternative).

It's an incredibly long article, but I do recommend reading the portion about Ron Artest on the table. Just absolutely hilarious because he is such a bizarre individual. Ron breaking the fourth wall was a lot of what made this get out of hand. It was like he became a part of the crowd (and then he got real up close and personal). Of course it's too bad the NBA or the Palace didn't have a better way of enforcing known, unruly fans. Those guys that started the incident sound like they never should have been allowed in the building in the first place due to previous incidents.

UCLA Basketball is a mess. SI gave an interesting look into how much of a mess they've become. Of course to most of the article I say, "Whatever." Look I don't doubt the validity of what occurred and I certainly would never excuse any of the behavior, but they paint this as a huge institutional mess there and I don't think that's what's going on.

Lets start with Coach Howland. Frankly I'm surprised he's found so much success by being the type of coach he's portrayed to be in the article. My guess is that means he's a good recruiter and typically has recruited good, disciplined players (till more recently). I think it's fair to suggest there is a lack of institutional stability in that the head coach drives everything. If there are problems with the head coaching, undoubtedly issues will abound. However, it does sound like historically Howland has had a good eye for great players who have a good work ethic and great skills. Maybe he got lucky or maybe it's skill on his part. Of course things seem to have changed more recently, I think it's more of an issue that he brought bad apple(s) (I'd attribute that mostly to Reeves Nelson, but we'll get to that in a few) rather than his methodology fosters improper behavior in general. And maybe it's because of his recent success that he became more lax in those he selected for his program. Sure, I think he could and should improve and his hands off approach is not likely to fix problems. But I don't think this entails a complete institutional breakdown.

Now for the players. This is mostly where my "whatever" comment is driven. There's this big huge painting of the improper behavior of players and I just want to scream at society when I see this. Look most of what occurred does not sound any different that what is typically going on with most D1 programs. You have got to be kidding me that kids aren't partying quite regularly. And personally I don't find that to be acceptable, but I don't force my value system on others. They're adults, they're allowed to make up their own mind on acceptable behavior. However, the issue arises when they let that get out of balance as it appeared this UCLA Basketball team did. Maybe Howland could have helped with that, I don't know. I do know that a number of the players let the balance of off court stuff affect their on court stuff. Even with that going on though, that doesn't seem to be nearly the killer that Reeves Nelson was. Maybe this atmosphere of bad behavior encouraged the attitude of Nelson, I couldn't say for sure. However, he clearly seems to be a particularly vile individual in the way he chooses to behave. Unfortunately the coaching staff (i.e. Howland) failed to reign this in early and it turned into a big fiasco. But really Nelson is responsible for so much of what is going on now because he was clearly such a bad apple. That still all falls on Howland's shoulders, but I wouldn't be surprised to see UCLA rebound from this a bit. Their history is enough to rise above this current negative PR. But Howland may not be the coach that reaps those benefits.

Beautifully crafted ad. Bravo Guardian. Just tremendous work.

I know nothing about the genesis or purpose behind this, I just know it's fun, beautiful, imaginative, and really awesome. Clearly there is some influence from The Wizard of Oz behind it.

This might be the greatest sport ever invented. I really can't say much more about it. It's that awesome.

The Fulmer Cupdate. Just sheer genius as always. The story about the South Carolina kid is so masterfully crafted it brought a tear to my eye.

And in more awesomeness.

Titles: You Thought This One Had a Point, Didn't You?

So I read the White House Blog. It's an interesting read because of the fact it gets information out so promptly about what the Obama Administration is doing. Plus they post the Weekly Address, which I think is great because we should know what the President has to say. So recently I ran into a couple of interesting posts that mostly what I found a little odd were the titles and their relation to what was actually being said. The first was entitled "$100 million there, $100 million here". Now when I saw that I just kind of scratched my head, because with all of the spending that the government has participated in, it seemed like that was just a terrible endorsement of handing out even more cash. Really what it was about is President Obama's budget because he is seeking to slim it down by $100 million or so, which is a great thing and I hope they can accomplish such a task. Being more efficient with money is certainly praiseworthy and I applaud the administration for taking on such a task. However, this really didn't seem like a good title for this blog post. I'm all for clever, fun, witty titles but you have to make sure they convey proper messages and this particular one seemed to fail a bit with that.

The other post I found of interest was entitled "What Makes the United States Special". In this post they discuss President Obama's recent release of the "torture memos" and quote him in a speech he gave to the CIA. I found this title to be interesting; it drew my eye immediately when I saw it on the list of my RSS feed. However, I wasn't expecting it to be about the memos first of all and secondly, I didn't think their way of jumping into their post was necessarily wise. This post begins by acknowledging the release of this information, so my first thought was "So they're saying the U.S. is special because we release this kind of information," which is somewhat of a special thing so I was able to buy it. However, then it proceeds to talk about how the memos spoke of interrogation techniques, which really sent my head for a spin, because it almost seemed like they were saying "The U.S. is special because we torture people." The eventual outcome was speaking of how we're special because we don't resort to the same level as many of our enemies. However, yet again, it didn't seem like a wise use of title to text.

Provo Tax Day Tea Party

So I went to the big Tea Party today. It was an interesting experience. The rally was decent sized, they announced an estimate of 500 but the guy said he figured it had to be well over a thousand (which I think was probably more to accurate). I could definitely tell people were coming and going regularly. There were plenty of entertaining signs and interesting speeches. My roommates and I just kept giggling regularly at all of the terrible logic that was thrown out. So many things were just about getting the crowd going and motivated. I honestly think most people weren't listening hardly, they just waited for the proper moments to clap or cheer. I wish I could recall some of the good sings or had pictures of my own to show, but alas, I do not. Here's some photos my sister took:

Some of the random signs and such. "Caesar Obamius you're taxing my patience"

"Tired of paying too much in taxes? Become an Obama cabinet member"

"My piggy bank is not your pork barrel"

I must say it was a pretty entertaining experience, not only because of my satirical nature, but it was just interesting to see people rally like that. One of the funny things was the fact that there was a lot of praise for "our troops" (meaning the actual military) which I can't imagine happens too often at your typical protests. But I think the thing that really disappointed me was when they started praising Glenn Beck. I have voiced before that I am definitely not a Beck fan. Frankly I think he's kind of a moron. I know that sounds awful. I recognize he's a member in full fellowship with my Church and he's highly revered by many different individuals. However, he just seems to do things in such a dumb way. He does a great service for a lot of people and such, but I just don't get his logic in how he does pretty much anything. It's sad really and just a downright shame. I just don't get why he masquerades as a journalist but is so biased in everything he says. I realize there are plenty of others out there that are similar and some that I could go off on more (e.g. Keith Olbermann) but a lot of these individuals at least know how to separate the fact from the opinion. Beck doesn't seem to know how to do this (neither does Olbermann, he would be my liberal "news" guy I'd pick on). Anyway, I don't mean for this to turn into a rant about Beck, but it just really disappointed me because they were so highly touting him and his 9/12 thing.

I don't know how I feel about the whole Tea Party thing and such. I'm glad that individuals are voicing these concerns because my concerns are similar at the very least. I really enjoyed Rick Santelli's tirade when it first occurred. However, I didn't like some of the scope of the protest since it seemed to go to avenues that I didn't enjoy as much. For example, I don't like Obama hating. Sure, I didn't want the guy in office either. However, I'm willing to accept that he's the President and try to work with what we've got. He isn't destroying the world and there are certain things we need to take a stand on, but we'll be okay. Being that kind of extreme (and hating in general) is just going to make you look ignorant. I hope some change can come about from these protests. At the very least I hope consideration for the voice of this portion of the population is given. However, I'm a bit more cynical than that and I don't think this is really going to amount to much of anything. The money will keep pouring out of Washington and I'm not sure there will be nearly the accountability there needs to be. Either way, I'm going to keep my hope.

Here's an article from Slate about the national movement.

President's Weekly Address 03.07.09

President Obama gave his address for the week. It's entitled Toward a Better Day. Here's the vid:

For the complete text click here.

I definitely have to give it to him, he certainly does everything he can to keep things sounding optimistic. Although if there's one thing I'm critical of, it's this focus on the past. He just keeps talking over and over about this huge deficit that he's inherited and how so many terrible mistakes have been made in the past and they'll change that. I hope he's right that they'll change it, but I think most of us have gotten the message about the economic irresponsibility. I mean we feel it on "main street" as he so often likes to reference.

Of course he mentions ARRA and about how it's going to create so many jobs. But assuming it all works the way he plans, it still worries me. He says the jobless rate is up to 4.4 million and ARRA is supposed to create 3.5 million jobs. That doesn't sound too bad, other than he says those jobs are supposed to come over the next two years. Now I'm no math major, but I'm pretty sure that 3.5 million is almost a million less than 4.4 so that means we would still have 1 million less jobs than we did beforehand and those 3.5 million aren't even supposed to come around for 2 years? Yeah, I see a little bit of a problem there. Now the one thing I will say, we can't expect him to be a complete miracle worker, but it seems like there must be something faster than that. I don't know, economics definitely is not my specialty.

Of course I still feel like I'm getting the same Barack Obama campaign politics I got before he was elected. I think there are few people that love hope and change more than myself, but I fail to see the substance of it really coming from President Obama. Sure, Barack is definitely a major change from President Bush in most of his core beliefs, but what about the actual processes? It seems to me like we're still getting more of the same. I just never felt like Obama really had a plan and it seems to be a continuation of that. ARRA and everything else they have been working on they admit isn't necessarily going to solve the problem (and I'm enough of a realist to realize that A. there's no quick fix and B. it probably will take multiple things to fix it) but there seems to be enough uncertainty there that it worries me. They stand confident that they will fix the problem, but do not necessarily seem confident that their policies will fix the problem. The planning just doesn't seem to be there. I said while he was on the campaign trail that I didn't feel like he had real plans articulated, but rather just those rather grandiose ideas of hope and change. Sure it makes you feel good inside, but when it comes down to actually getting it done what is going to happen? Currently it seems like the Obama Administration is simply doing something for the sake of doing something. They don't want to be caught sitting on their hands, which I think is a reasonably admirable quality. Of course it seems like a better idea to really find out what is best and what will work and implement that. Right now it seems like they're simply fueling the fire by throwing money at it and hoping it extinguishes the problem.

I hope it does Mr. Obama. Or else I'm really going to want a change.

Pay-Rod

Well I already discussed Roland Burris, and so this might seem a bit backwards discussing Governor Rod Blagojevich now, but here it goes anyway. In case you haven't gotten most of the background information about the circumstances, Governor Blagojevich is accused of attempting to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. It looks like it should be a rather open and shut case. The FBI has been investigating Pay-Rod for quite some time and has many audio recordings concerning his dealings. Frankly, the guy doesn't seem like a particularly good guy in general and kind of a jerk. Immediately after he was charged, many called for him to step down and resign as governor. Of course he emphatically refused to give up the fight and insisted he would continue forward as the governor. One of the big issues as well was the potential of Barack Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, having conversations with the governor about the Senate seat, which of course turned out to be rather innocuous. Impeachment talks began shortly thereafter but certainly took a decent while to come to fruition. Before any real action was taken against Blago, he appointed Roland Burris to Barack Obama's Senate seat. Shortly thereafter he was finally impeached by a landslide 114-1. Currently he is still awaiting trial both in front of the Senate and the federal courts.

So I would typically say this is a rather quick open and shut case, but there are a lot of things that seem a bit fishy here. First of all, the Federal Prosecutor seemed to leave the state legislature in the dark concerning a lot of the proceedings. He didn't seem to give them much in the way of assistance in helping them to get the man out of office. I guess there was some talk about him being concerned he might hurt his own case, which is logical, but it seems like if he's really done something so wrong, that shouldn't be too big of an issue. We'll see. Also, the legislature sure took their time to get up the gumption to finally impeach the guy. I mean they let him beat them to the punch by appointing somebody before they could do anything. According to Burris' representatives, Blago and Burris really have no relationship, so this only makes Pay-Rod look innocent. Brilliant move by him to attempt to save his hide. Finally, this guy seems really confident that he will be exonerated. Most individuals that seem to get caught up in something like this resign. Maybe he's insane, I definitely have read some things stating that he is a different guy to say the least. Then again, maybe he knows something we don't all know. Maybe he has that ace up his sleeve. Maybe his lawyers have done their homework and have found some sort of loophole or maybe he never really committed a crime. You would expect the Federal Prosecutor and the FBI to be on the right track as far as their actions, but you never really know. As I stated earlier, I would expect this guy to go to prison for what he did under normal circumstances, but the oddity it seems to be playing out with is incredible. I guess we'll find out pretty soon what really is going on.

(Picture from Getty Images)

New Year, New Ideas

OK, so maybe my title is a little misleading. I make it sound like this post will be about New Year's and resolutions and other goofy things like that and honestly, it won't be. Actually what this post is about is first and foremost me neglecting my blog. I haven't written in a decent while, although I did attempt a doomed dabbling in my sports blog. I think the problem there was it was technically too generalized, but at the same time all I was speaking about were bowl games. Also, I was a bit too lazy with it. I'm thinking about changing it over to a BYU sports blog, but we'll see. Also, I need to get cracking on the 203 blog, but I guess we'll see how that goes because I'm not planning on putting anything more into that than anybody else does. So that means if I start posting and nobody else contributes, I will probably just let it die. Pretty pathetic on both accounts, I know.

But there is reason for me to hope. As I think everybody knows by now, I really like the news. I keep up on it heavily and am always posting articles to my wall on Facebook and such. Well, over the break there was mostly a dearth of news (I wrote a status update about it). I mean seriously, the most exciting thing was what flavor of shaved ice was Barack Obama's favorite. That's really started changing for a large part more recently. Now there's Blagojevich, Burris (which is partially the same thing, but there is more to it than that), Israel-Palestine, and various other topics. Something I see different about a lot of these types of topics: They are great for discussion. I love posting quirky news but a lot of that comes at face value. Also, certain topics are so politically loaded (e.g. abortion, the environment, and presidential candidates) that I feel like the sides are drawn and no useful discussion is really going to flow from it. However, I feel like in a lot of these cases (maybe not Israel-Palestine as much) things are a bit more neutral or most people are on the same side (or maybe neither and it's more of a fence-sitter kind of thing), but there are still interesting ideas to be discussed. So with this I'm going to start exploring these topics in posts and hopefully getting some good discussion going. I guess that's probably all presumptuous because that would require a reading base and I really don't have one. I guess there's always potentially hope and no harm in trying. But we'll see how it goes. I'm going to approach topics in a particular order, but that's mostly because of the time in which I see the issue as either falling out of the news or being resolved. So really it's not because I value one more than another or find anything more interesting. I find them all very interesting and this was mostly sparked by a good discussion I had with my good friend Jordan about some of these topics. But we'll see where it all goes from here.