Friday, January 17, 2014

Wait, didn't someone say the economy is improving?

The jobless rate is down, and the economy is rebounding.  Or is it?  74 people in the news-gathering business at the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise.  2,000 people who work for J. C. Penney's are being laid off and the retail giant is going to close 33 stores nationwide.  Macy's is laying off 2,500.  Best Buy stock fell through the floor after disappointing holiday sales results were announced.

Are things really getting better?


* * *

I don't normally disagree with Earvin "Magic" Johnson when it comes to basketball, but this time I do.  He said that the problems currently being experienced by the Los Angeles Lakers are due to Jim Buss, currently the member of the Buss family overseeing basketball operations (his sister Jeanne manages everything else).  He's right about that.  But Magic is wrong that the answer is to bring Jerry West back.

At least that's how I interpret Magic saying "...you've got to get a guy like Jerry West to be the face of the team..." not once but twice.  Aside from the fact that West is now a consultant to the Golden State Warriors, a position that came with a minority ownership stake, there's no point in getting anyone to replace Mitch Kupchak.  The answer is to unfetter him.  Let Kupchak make the decisions and don't overrule or micromanage him.  I'll wager dollars to dimes that it was Jim Buss who made the call to not bring Phil Jackson back to coach.  Even in a situation where Jackson would only coach home games and some of the road games (but all playoff games), he's better than anyone else they've given a shot to.  Mitch Kupchak was the man behind West for a long time (Kupchak started as Lakers Asst GM in 1986).  He's the guy who brought Pau Gasol and Ron Artest to the Lakers.  He pulled off a brilliant trade that would have Chris Paul in a Lakers uniform if it hadn't been vetoed by NBA Commissioner David Stern.  Kupchak's record in selecting players isn't perfect, but without him the last two Lakers' championships probably would not have happened.

Jim Buss should hold a press conference and announce that while he will continue to "consult" with Kupchak, it will be Kupchak who is the decision-maker and the "face" of the team.  Since Buss needs to sign a new deal with Kupchak (his contract ends this year), that would be a good time to make the announcement.

The most successful owners of sports franchises are those who are smart enough to get out of the way and let their GMs run things.  The Miami Heat have won the last two NBA championships and three consecutive conference titles.  Do you know the name of their owner?  It's Micky Arison.  He let's Pat Riley run things, signs the checks and holds up the championship trophies when they come in.  The New England Patriots have won two of the five most recent Super Bowls.  Robert Kraft, their owner, lets Bill Belichick more or less run things.  Kraft did step in and without him recent league labor problems wouldn't have been solved, but he isn't deciding every spot on the roster.  The San Francisco Giants won the World Series twice in the last four years.  They are owned by a partnership who lets the team's GM run things.

Jim Buss, step aside and let your GM (Kupchak or his successor) run things.  Do what must be done and then prepare to be doused in champagne when the next championship is won.

* * *

Mark Ridley-Thomas is not the first name that comes to mind when the words corrupt and politician are used.  At least not in my mind.  But the revelation that employees of Los Angeles County did work at the home of Ridley-Thomas worth more than $10,000 is troubling.  It brings back reminders of his early days in office as a County Supervisor.  At that time he was about to spend over $700,000 on improvements to his offices.  County services were being cut, hiring was frozen and he was going to spend a lot of money the county did not have, on creature comforts.  His protests that his offices hadn't been improved in 25 years were quickly debunked when Yvonne Braithwaite-Burke, who had the offices before him, described improvements she had done while in office.

That county supervisors get a gratis security system installed at their homes is a separate issue.  Installing an air-conditioner in the garage he is converting into an office is not something that would have been necessitated by the installation of that security system.  The county is delaying release of the records on this work that were requested by the Los Angeles Times.  So is this above-board or not?

A prediction.  He will step forward and claim he was planning to pay for the cost of the work from personal funds all long.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

Apparently Shia LaBeouf doesn't grasp that retiring from public life means you don't headbutt people in public.

I couldn't agree more with an article pointing out that Susanna Hoffs, who turns 55 on Friday, still looks fabulous.  She is also an extremely nice, generous person.  Her amazing talents are already well known so I don't need to mention them.

Are the lower ratings for the season premiere of "Duck Dynasty" due to the controversy, or just a continuing decline that was going on last season?  The latter, I think.

Conservatives who are calling Harvey Weinstein a hypocrite because he's going to make a movie opposing gun ownership and the NRA, when many of the films he backs are fraught with gun violence seem to have lost sight of the fact that movies (except documentaries) are fiction.

Radio DJ pranks are sometimes not well thought out.

Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine was involved in a precedent-setting court case involving freedom of speech.  That story became the film "The People vs Larry Flynt" and Courtney Love was brilliant in the role of Flynt's wife.  She got a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.  Now she's involved in what could be a precedent-setting court case involving freedom of speech for a tweet she sent out.  Coincidence or just one of Fate's little jokes?

Naturally with the approach of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, people are recycling the story of Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.  It is interesting that after his appearance in the 1988 Winter games, the IOC made a new rule about athletes having to qualify to compete in the Olympic games.

North Korea's saber-rattling over next month's military exercises in South Korea makes me feel old.  29 years ago, I was stationed in South Korea and took part in those annual "war-games", called Team Spirit back then.   They rattled sabers then as well.

When you're famous and people impersonate you, attacking one while you're wasted is definitely a sign you need to go to rehab.

Robert Redford hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that his failure to land an acting nomination from the Academy for "All Is Lost" is probably due to the studio that distributed the film not spending any money on a campaign.  It is very sad that Oscar recognition is more about campaigns in the media than the quality of the work.

Just because skater Johnny Weir is gay doesn't mean he has a higher responsibility than a non-gay skater or anyone else for that matter, to call for a boycott of the Winter Games in Sochi.

Is there really a law in Texas that prohibits someone from holding a sign while standing on public property?

* * *

January 16th in History:

27 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire.
378 – General Siyaj K'ak' conquers Tikal, enlarging the domain of King Spearthrower Owl of Teotihuacán.
550 – Gothic War: The Ostrogoths, under King Totila, conquer Rome after a long siege, by bribing the Isaurian garrison.
929 – Emir Abd-ar-Rahman III established the Caliphate of Córdoba.
1120 – The Council of Nablus is held, establishing the earliest surviving written laws of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1362 – A storm tide in the North Sea destroys the German city of Rungholt on the island of Strand.
1412 – The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy.
1492 – The first grammar of the Spanish language is presented to Queen Isabella I.
1547 – Ivan IV of Russia aka Ivan the Terrible becomes Czar of Russia.
1556 – Philip II becomes King of Spain.
1572 – Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England.
1581 – The English Parliament outlaws Roman Catholicism.
1605 – The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid, Spain.
1707 – The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Act of Union, paving the way for the creation of Great Britain.
1761 – The British capture Pondichéry, India from the French.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Cape St. Vincent.
1786 – Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.
1809 – Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of La Coruña.
1847 – John C. Frémont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory.
1862 – Hartley Colliery Disaster: 204 men and boys killed in a mining disaster, prompted a change in UK law which henceforth required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape.
1878 – Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) – Battle of Philippopolis: Captain Aleksandr Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule.
1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is passed.
1896 – Defeat of Cymru Fydd at South Wales Liberal Federation AGM, Newport, Monmouthshire.
1900 – The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands.
1909 – Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.
1919 – Temperance movement: The United States ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition in the United States one year after ratification.
1920 – The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France.
1924 – Eleftherios Venizelos becomes Prime Minister of Greece for the fourth time.
1939 – The Irish Republican Army (IRA) begins a bombing and sabotage campaign in England.
1942 – Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard.
1945 – Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker.
1956 – President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine.
1964 – Hello, Dolly! (musical) starring Carol Channing opened on Broadway, beginning a run of 2,844 performances.
1969 – Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before.
1969 – Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.
1970 – Buckminster Fuller receives the Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects.
1979 – The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt.
1986 – First meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force.
1991 – The Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War (U.S. Time).
1992 – El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, Mexico ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives.
2001 – Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards.
2001 – US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War.
2002 – The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban.
2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.
2005 – Romanian university lecturer and novelist Adriana Iliescu gives birth at 66 to her daughter Eliza, breaking the record for the oldest birth mother in the world
2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state.

Famous Folk Born on January 16th:

John C. Breckenridge
Harry Carey
Samuel Jones
Ruth Rose
Edith Frank
Ethel Merman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmZdqsCW8vM was her final appearance in a feature film)
Dizzy Dean (last pitcher to have a 30 win season in the National League, and also the man who once described a base runner having "slud into third base")
Carl Karcher
Stirling Silliphant
Elliott Reid
Francesco Scavullo
General James Robinson Risner (two-time recipient of the Air Force Cross, seven year POW)
Dian Fossey
Susan Sontag
Michael Pataki
Rene Angelil
Ronnie Milsap
Sara Jane Olson
Laura Schlessinger (her Doctorate is in Physiology, not Psychology, but she does hold a MFCC and a license from California)
Oliver Humperdink
Debbie Allen
Caroline Munro
Fuad II of Egypt
Ronnie Lee Gardner (murderer who was executed by firing squad)
James May
Roy Jones, Jr. (pound for pound, one of the best boxers ever to lace up gloves)
Aaliyah
Albert Pujols
Mark Trumbo

Movie quotes today come from a Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me" since Caroline Munro had a role in it as "Naomi":

M: Moneypenny, where's 007?
Moneypenny: He's on a mission sir. In Austria.
M: Well, tell him to pull out. Immediately.
[scene cuts to Bond making love to a woman]

#2
[Amasova is telling Bond about survival strategies she learned]
Major Anya Amasova: That it's very important to have a positive mental attitude.
James Bond: Nothing more practical than that?
Major Anya Amasova: Food is also very important.
James Bond: Mm-hmm. What else?
Major Anya Amasova: When necessary, shared bodily warmth.
James Bond: That's the part I like.

#3

[last lines]
[Bond and Anya are discovered making love]
M: 007!
General Anatol Gogol: Triple X!
Sir Frederick Gray, Minister of Defence: Bond! What do you think you're doing?
James Bond: Keeping the British end up, sir.