Is Rob Ford just Marion Barry revisited?
Ever since Toronto's mayor Rob Ford finally fessed up and admitted that he had indeed smoked crack cocaine, people have been comparing him to former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry. Barry, who has served as a city council member in D.C. since 2005.
The parallels are way, way off base. Barry comes from poor origins. Ford grew up a privileged child of wealth and focused on little more than football. It may surprise you to know that Barry is not just a college graduate, but he earned an M.S. degree in organic chemistry. Ford left college after one year.
Barry has been in and out of trouble with the law since he was arrested and convicted of possession of cocaine; although to this day he maintains he was entrapped. He's tested positive for drugs, failed to file tax returns, was censured for steering a contract to an ex-girlfriend who repaid him with money she earned from the contract, and has been suspected of other corrupt acts while a member of the D.C. city council. Ford was accused of one serious conflict of interest, but he prevailed in court.
The only thing they have in common is both used crack while mayor of a large city.
Oh, and both initially denied it.
* * *
It sounds great. Aereo is a service that lets people watch live television content from broadcast networks on their computers, for only $8 a month. Live streaming and time-shifted programming is available.
What it may portend is the end of free television and that's just wrong. Aereo won a court battle on the East Coast, with an appeals court ruling that their retransmission of broadcast content isn't a "public performance" and therefore not a violation of the copyright.
I just can't agree. These people are taking something that is sent out over the air for free and then re-selling it. Those who create the programming and pay to put it out over the publicly owned airways get nothing from the deal.
I hope Congress will act quickly to prevent this from bringing about the end of free television for those who can't afford cable.
* * *
If I'm ever able to work full-time again, I want to work for the city of Bell. But only under the old regime, where Robert Rizzo's top deputy Angela Spaccia managed to take 18 months off of work to care for ailing family members and still received her full pay and benefits. In fact, she used the additional vacation she earned during that time to repay illegal loans to the city.
Obviously Bell has learned its lesson. But as we watch city after city going into Chapter 9 bankruptcy (Detroit is probably just the first really big city to do so), has the entire public? Do we not need to pay more attention as a whole to who is controlling the coffers of our elected government?
Maybe you're okay with our federal government spending $384,949 to study the "Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genetalia. Or giving out a grant of $1.5 million to study why 75% of lesbians are obese while most gay males are not. Or Housing and Urban Development giving a "community development block grant" to a business that makes pet shampoos and pet toothpaste; so they could buy machinery. That company had revenues of $140 million when the grant was made. How about $198,000 for a study to determine if unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?
At a time where the L.A. DWP is funneling tens of millions to some not for profits that exist solely to improve relations between the utility and the largest union representing it's employees; where a San Mateo County Harbor Commissioner is earning $1,094 per hour for attending 21 meetings that took a grand total of 26.95 hours; and when the state of California was caught paying over $1 million per year to rent a vacant building it wasn't using, something needs to be done.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Perhaps the public has had enough of Brandi Glanville's descriptions of Joanna Krupa's vagina? Even one description was way too much.
If I were asked to sign a contract that would cause me to owe someone $3 million in order to work at or attend a party, I'd just go home. Then again, $3 million probably wouldn't be enough to get me to go to a party at Justin Bieber's place. Maybe for $10 million.
The fact that I think very highly of Jim Belushi does not have any impact on my opinion that's dead-right about Emile Hirsch being a poor choice to portray John Belushi on the big screen. Jim's son Robert would be a much better choice.
George Zimmerman will wind up in prison eventually, but he won't be in a "prison" tonight as CNN has been reporting. He'll be in a jail. There is a difference. And why he needed an assault rifle and a shotgun boggles the mind.
Having a food drive for fellow employees in need isn't proof that WalMart is evil.
The more chocolate teens eat, the less belly fat they will have? Oh to be a teen again.
How bold of that 63 year old French man to escape 11 months of being held hostage, and then taking a taxi to the police station.
Kyle Ayers is a genius. He live-tweeted the breakup of a couple on a roof where he was within earshot. I think he's gained 15,000 Twitter followers.
Playing to allow one player to score massive amounts of points is something Grinnell College's men's basketball team does. It's a bad thing.
When I heard that Bloomberg News had laid off its theater critic, I was shocked. I didn't know they covered live theater.
* * *
November 18th in History:
326 – The old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
401 – The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade northern Italy.
1105 – Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV.
1180 – Phillip II becomes king of France.
1210 – Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.
1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam (One Faith).
1307 – William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.
1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as Sint-Elisabethsvloed.
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.
1494 – French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy.
1601 – Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire, utterly defeats Habsburg forces, commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.
1626 – St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
1686 – Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France's anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants.
1730 – The future Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.
1803 – The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
1809 – In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Krasnoi ends in French defeat, but Marshal of France Michel Ney's leadership leads to him becoming known as "the bravest of the brave".
1863 – King Christian IX of Denmark signs the November constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.
1865 – Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.
1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
1903 – The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
1904 – General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup.
1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
1909 – Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of José Santos Zelaya.
1916 – World War I: First Battle of the Somme – in France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."
1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
1929 – 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.
1930 – Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed Soka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda.
1938 – Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
1943 – World War II: Battle of Berlin: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
1944 – The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba.
1947 – The Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.
1949 – The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.
1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
1987 – King's Cross fire: In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city's busiest underground station, King's Cross St Pancras.
1988 – War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
1991 – Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives.
1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution, expanding voting rights and ending white minority rule.
1999 – In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when the 59-foot-tall (18 m) Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
2003 – In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective.
2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4 to 3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Famous Folk Born on November 18th:
Dorothy Dix
Clarence Day
Carl Vinson
George Gallup
Klaus Mann
Imogene Coca
Johnny Mercer
Jocelyn Brando
Georgia Carroll
Anne Sargent
Alan Sheppard
Ted Stevens
Gene Mauch
Hank Ballard
Brenda Vaccaro
Linda Evans
Alan Dean Foster
Margaret Atwood
Jack Tatum
Delroy Lindo
Kevin Nealon
Sinbad
Elizabeth Perkins
Kim Wilde
Gary Sheffield
Owen Wilson
Mike Epps
Megyn Kelly
Chloe Sevigny
David Ortiz
Sam Cassell
Movie quotes today come from "28 Days" a film about addiction, with Elizabeth Perkins as the long-suffering sister of the star/addict, Sandra Bullock:
Cornell: You know, if your counselor catches you using you could get in big trouble.
Gwen Cummings: I don't plan on discussing it with him.
Cornell: Too late.
#2
Lily: Gwen, you make it impossible to love you.
#3
Equine Therapist: Folks, the definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviour over and over again, expecting different results.
#4
Gwen Cummings: [Breaking down] I'm sorry I make it impossible for you to love me.
Lily: [Consoling her] Oh, Gwen, you make it impossible for me not to love you.
The parallels are way, way off base. Barry comes from poor origins. Ford grew up a privileged child of wealth and focused on little more than football. It may surprise you to know that Barry is not just a college graduate, but he earned an M.S. degree in organic chemistry. Ford left college after one year.
Barry has been in and out of trouble with the law since he was arrested and convicted of possession of cocaine; although to this day he maintains he was entrapped. He's tested positive for drugs, failed to file tax returns, was censured for steering a contract to an ex-girlfriend who repaid him with money she earned from the contract, and has been suspected of other corrupt acts while a member of the D.C. city council. Ford was accused of one serious conflict of interest, but he prevailed in court.
The only thing they have in common is both used crack while mayor of a large city.
Oh, and both initially denied it.
* * *
It sounds great. Aereo is a service that lets people watch live television content from broadcast networks on their computers, for only $8 a month. Live streaming and time-shifted programming is available.
What it may portend is the end of free television and that's just wrong. Aereo won a court battle on the East Coast, with an appeals court ruling that their retransmission of broadcast content isn't a "public performance" and therefore not a violation of the copyright.
I just can't agree. These people are taking something that is sent out over the air for free and then re-selling it. Those who create the programming and pay to put it out over the publicly owned airways get nothing from the deal.
I hope Congress will act quickly to prevent this from bringing about the end of free television for those who can't afford cable.
* * *
If I'm ever able to work full-time again, I want to work for the city of Bell. But only under the old regime, where Robert Rizzo's top deputy Angela Spaccia managed to take 18 months off of work to care for ailing family members and still received her full pay and benefits. In fact, she used the additional vacation she earned during that time to repay illegal loans to the city.
Obviously Bell has learned its lesson. But as we watch city after city going into Chapter 9 bankruptcy (Detroit is probably just the first really big city to do so), has the entire public? Do we not need to pay more attention as a whole to who is controlling the coffers of our elected government?
Maybe you're okay with our federal government spending $384,949 to study the "Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genetalia. Or giving out a grant of $1.5 million to study why 75% of lesbians are obese while most gay males are not. Or Housing and Urban Development giving a "community development block grant" to a business that makes pet shampoos and pet toothpaste; so they could buy machinery. That company had revenues of $140 million when the grant was made. How about $198,000 for a study to determine if unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?
At a time where the L.A. DWP is funneling tens of millions to some not for profits that exist solely to improve relations between the utility and the largest union representing it's employees; where a San Mateo County Harbor Commissioner is earning $1,094 per hour for attending 21 meetings that took a grand total of 26.95 hours; and when the state of California was caught paying over $1 million per year to rent a vacant building it wasn't using, something needs to be done.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Perhaps the public has had enough of Brandi Glanville's descriptions of Joanna Krupa's vagina? Even one description was way too much.
If I were asked to sign a contract that would cause me to owe someone $3 million in order to work at or attend a party, I'd just go home. Then again, $3 million probably wouldn't be enough to get me to go to a party at Justin Bieber's place. Maybe for $10 million.
The fact that I think very highly of Jim Belushi does not have any impact on my opinion that's dead-right about Emile Hirsch being a poor choice to portray John Belushi on the big screen. Jim's son Robert would be a much better choice.
George Zimmerman will wind up in prison eventually, but he won't be in a "prison" tonight as CNN has been reporting. He'll be in a jail. There is a difference. And why he needed an assault rifle and a shotgun boggles the mind.
Having a food drive for fellow employees in need isn't proof that WalMart is evil.
The more chocolate teens eat, the less belly fat they will have? Oh to be a teen again.
How bold of that 63 year old French man to escape 11 months of being held hostage, and then taking a taxi to the police station.
Kyle Ayers is a genius. He live-tweeted the breakup of a couple on a roof where he was within earshot. I think he's gained 15,000 Twitter followers.
Playing to allow one player to score massive amounts of points is something Grinnell College's men's basketball team does. It's a bad thing.
When I heard that Bloomberg News had laid off its theater critic, I was shocked. I didn't know they covered live theater.
* * *
November 18th in History:
326 – The old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
401 – The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade northern Italy.
1105 – Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV.
1180 – Phillip II becomes king of France.
1210 – Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.
1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam (One Faith).
1307 – William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.
1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as Sint-Elisabethsvloed.
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.
1494 – French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy.
1601 – Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire, utterly defeats Habsburg forces, commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.
1626 – St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
1686 – Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France's anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants.
1730 – The future Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.
1803 – The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
1809 – In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Krasnoi ends in French defeat, but Marshal of France Michel Ney's leadership leads to him becoming known as "the bravest of the brave".
1863 – King Christian IX of Denmark signs the November constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.
1865 – Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.
1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
1903 – The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
1904 – General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup.
1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
1909 – Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of José Santos Zelaya.
1916 – World War I: First Battle of the Somme – in France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."
1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
1929 – 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.
1930 – Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed Soka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda.
1938 – Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
1943 – World War II: Battle of Berlin: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
1944 – The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba.
1947 – The Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.
1949 – The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.
1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
1987 – King's Cross fire: In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city's busiest underground station, King's Cross St Pancras.
1988 – War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
1991 – Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives.
1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution, expanding voting rights and ending white minority rule.
1999 – In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when the 59-foot-tall (18 m) Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
2003 – In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective.
2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4 to 3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Famous Folk Born on November 18th:
Dorothy Dix
Clarence Day
Carl Vinson
George Gallup
Klaus Mann
Imogene Coca
Johnny Mercer
Jocelyn Brando
Georgia Carroll
Anne Sargent
Alan Sheppard
Ted Stevens
Gene Mauch
Hank Ballard
Brenda Vaccaro
Linda Evans
Alan Dean Foster
Margaret Atwood
Jack Tatum
Delroy Lindo
Kevin Nealon
Sinbad
Elizabeth Perkins
Kim Wilde
Gary Sheffield
Owen Wilson
Mike Epps
Megyn Kelly
Chloe Sevigny
David Ortiz
Sam Cassell
Movie quotes today come from "28 Days" a film about addiction, with Elizabeth Perkins as the long-suffering sister of the star/addict, Sandra Bullock:
Cornell: You know, if your counselor catches you using you could get in big trouble.
Gwen Cummings: I don't plan on discussing it with him.
Cornell: Too late.
#2
Lily: Gwen, you make it impossible to love you.
#3
Equine Therapist: Folks, the definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviour over and over again, expecting different results.
#4
Gwen Cummings: [Breaking down] I'm sorry I make it impossible for you to love me.
Lily: [Consoling her] Oh, Gwen, you make it impossible for me not to love you.
posted by me at 12:16 PM
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