Magic Johnson's teflon coating makes Ronald Reagan seem like a piker
One would think that almost anything involving Magic Johnson and his businesses would be news, especially for the Los Angeles Times. Try an experiment. Go to the newspaper's website at www.latimes.com and type "Magic Johnson debit card" or "Magic Johnson prepaid" and the results will be very interesting. The search terms will be modified to read "Martin Johnson" and there will be no results. Now if you just type "Magic Johnson", you will get over 1,200 results.
Was there recent news involving Magic Johnson and a prepaid debit card? Oh yes. The Magic Johnson prepaid debit card, offered through One West Bank is closing up shop. As of June 1st, holders of the cards could no longer add funds to their card and on June 30th, any remaining balances unused on the cards will be refunded to the owner of the card. From that point forward, cards will no longer work.
ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the like didn't cover this story. Why?
Why is it that after all the commercials that Magic Johnson did for Rent-A-Center none of them can be found on the web? Is Magic no longer taking pride in his association with a company that does little to make money except for their continual attempt to gouge the poorest part of the population?
When Magic Johnson was the spokesman for Jackson Hewitt Tax preparation services, they were still giving out their "Rapid Refund" loans, at an extremely high interest rate. The prepaid debit card he touted required a fee of $4.95 each month, plus another $4..95 to be set up. Considering how many "free" cards are available, this is also a form of gouging.
But it wasn't the backlash over fees that caused Magic to get out of the prepaid debate card business. It was a lawsuit. Seems that according to Reed Wallace, owner of Celebrity Cards International, he had reached a deal with Magic to market a Magic Johnson prepaid card. When One West couldn't get the suit dismissed and some of their board members were going to be deposed, the case suddenly settled.
Magic Johnson is a great guy and a smart businessman. His charitable endeavors are large and he is definitely an asset to any community he is a part of. Maybe that's why his business ventures that are designed to generate income from the poorest segment of the population sail under the radar of the mainstream media.
* * *
Were you a young athlete, specializing in one sport? While I played basketball, slo-pitch softball with adult friends, wrestled and played tennis during my pre-teen and teen years, my primary sport was bowling. I bowled constantly. Two leagues on Saturdays, one in the morning at my home bowling center and in a traveling league later in the day. I practiced at least three and often four days a week. I travelled to holiday weekend tournaments for Thanksgiving, July 4th, and several other major holidays. The state tournament was a summer trip that took up one full weekend, at different cities around the state. Bowling isn't as tough on the body as other sports are.
Young people who play basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, football and other major sports are playing year round these days. There are "summer leagues" when school isn't in session. Club leagues that go on during the school year when that particular sport isn't in season for school versus school competition. For young baseball pitchers, the growing number of adult pitchers who are forced to have the "Tommy John" operation should be a sign that they may need to cut back on their pitching.
Over the months of April and May of this year, 28 professional pitchers had the Tommy John surgery. All but two of those were 30 or younger. Five of them were 21 or younger.
It isn't a secret that anyone who can make it to the major league level as a pitcher is going to make millions eventually. That number goes up for left-handed pitchers. Parents sometimes push kids a bit further than they should. The kids believe they are invulnerable and will pitch every single chance they get.
There aren't any laws about this nor are there a lot of rules about this outside of Little League and some other levels of organized competition. But it is clear that someone, maybe the parents, maybe the coaches themselves, need to put their pitchers on pitch counts. Hit the maximum number, and it is time to being in another pitcher.
Zack Wheeler is a 24 year old, hard-throwing pitcher for the New York Mets. He has a bright future ahead of him. His older brother Adam might have been a better pitcher, had his career not been cut short because of arm trouble. There is little sadder than seeing a young man's dream shattered because he overused a body part and ruined it.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
The California Senate has passed a bill that would require verbal or written consent before people have sex on a California college or university campus. This is the nanny state running amuck. What's the point, when the consent can be revoked at any time?
People who think the underperformance of "Edge of Tomorrow" at the box office means the beginning of the end for Tom Cruise are deluding themselves.
The 20th anniversary of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman is coming up on June 12th. The analysis about what happened and why is already starting in the media. The bottom line is that O. J. Simpson, like many others before and since, got rich man's justice.
There's a letter in Dear Abby from a set of parents who have been helping out one of their two kids financially for many years. Both kids are adults and the parents want to know if Abby thinks it is fair for them to tell the one daughter that the handouts are coming out of her inheritance. Smart and fair.
Happy 89th birthday to Barbara Bush.
I tend to agree with the owner of California Chrome that the Preakness should only be open to horses that ran in the Kentucky Derby, and that the Belmont should be open to only those horses that ran in both the Derby and the Preakness.
If it turns out that Qatar bribed people to have the 2022 World Cup held there, a new location should be selected.
I have to chuckle at the partisan-bashing going on in the comments section of any story on any news site, where liberals say conservatives have a monopoly on flip-flopping positions while conservatives say it is the liberals who hold the monopoly on flip-flopping. No one has a monopoly on that.
The first female Air Force fighter pilot is leaving the cockpit to become military assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Will Jeannie Leavitt make general? She's taking a job that Colin Powell once held.
There is something wrong with our system of justice if we're providing public defenders, supposedly at no cost, to those who can't afford them, and then turning around and charging them for the service. More on this in another blog.
June 8th in History:
68 – The Roman Senate proclaims Galba as emperor.
218 – Battle of Antioch: with the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus. He flees, but is captured near Chalcedon and later executed in Cappadocia.
632 – Muhammad, Islamic prophet, dies in Medina and is succeeded by Abu Bakr who becomes the first caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate.
793 – Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1042 – Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.
1191 – Richard I arrives in Acre (Palestine) thus beginning his crusade.
1405 – Richard le Scrope, the Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, are executed in York on Henry IV's orders.
1690 – Yadi Sakat, a Siddi general, razes the Mazagon Fort in Mumbai.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Trois-Rivières – American attackers are driven back at Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
1783 – Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.
1789 – James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives; by 1791, ten of them are ratified by the state legislatures and become the Bill of Rights; another is eventually ratified in 1992 to become the 27th Amendment.
1794 – Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.
1856 – A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
1861 – American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Cross Keys – Confederate forces under General Stonewall Jackson save the Army of Northern Virginia from a Union assault on the James Peninsula led by General George B. McClellan.
1887 – Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' – his punched card calculator.
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
1912 – Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures.
1928 – Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is changed to Beijing ("Northern Capital").
1929 – Margaret Bondfield is appointed Minister of Labour. She is the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
1940 – World War II: the completion of Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik at the end of the Norwegian Campaign.
1941 – World War II: Allies invade Syria and Lebanon.
1942 – World War II: The Japanese imperial submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.
1948 – Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater.
1949 – The celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.
1949 – George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is published.
1950 – Sir Thomas Blamey becomes the only Australian-born Field Marshal in Australian history.
1953 – An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.
1953 – The United States Supreme Court rules that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
1959 – The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
1966 – An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both planes during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
1966 – Topeka, Kansas, is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita Scale: the first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
1967 – Six-Day War: The USS Liberty incident occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171.
1967 – Six-Day War: The Israeli army enters Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs.
1968 – Robert F. Kennedy's funeral takes place at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City.
1972 – Vietnam War: The Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.
1982 – Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: 56 British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.
1984 – Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australian state of New South Wales.
1987 – New Zealand's Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.
1992 – The first World Ocean Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1995 – The downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
2001 – Mamoru Takuma kills eight and injures 15 in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in the Osaka Prefecture of Japan.
2004 – The first Venus Transit in modern history takes place, the previous one being in 1882.
2007 – Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the MV Pasha Bulker.
2008 – At least 37 miners go missing after an explosion in an Ukrainian coal mine causes it to collapse.
2008 – At least 7 people are killed and 10 injured in a stabbing spree in Tokyo, Japan.
2009 – Two American journalists are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labour.
Famous Folk Born on June 8th:
Robert Schumann
Ida Saxton McKinley
Frank Lloyd Wright
Dorothy Coburn
Byron "Whizzer" White (are there any other former U. S. Supreme Court Justices who played in the NFL?)
Robert Preston
LeRoy Neiman
(that's Neiman at the end of this clip, portraying the ring announcer)
Gordon McLendon
Lyn Nofziger
Barbara Bush
Charles Tyner (the firebug "Unger" in the original "The Longest Yard")
Jerry Stiller
James Goldstone
Joan Rivers
Bernie Casey
Nancy Sinatra
Chuck Negron
Willie Davenport
Boz Scaggs
Sara Paretsky
Kathy Baker
Sonia Braga
Bonnie Tyler
Keenen Ivory Wayans
Rob Pilatus
Marcos Siega
Teresa Strasser
Mark Feuerstein
Lindsay Davenport
Kanye West
Was there recent news involving Magic Johnson and a prepaid debit card? Oh yes. The Magic Johnson prepaid debit card, offered through One West Bank is closing up shop. As of June 1st, holders of the cards could no longer add funds to their card and on June 30th, any remaining balances unused on the cards will be refunded to the owner of the card. From that point forward, cards will no longer work.
ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the like didn't cover this story. Why?
Why is it that after all the commercials that Magic Johnson did for Rent-A-Center none of them can be found on the web? Is Magic no longer taking pride in his association with a company that does little to make money except for their continual attempt to gouge the poorest part of the population?
When Magic Johnson was the spokesman for Jackson Hewitt Tax preparation services, they were still giving out their "Rapid Refund" loans, at an extremely high interest rate. The prepaid debit card he touted required a fee of $4.95 each month, plus another $4..95 to be set up. Considering how many "free" cards are available, this is also a form of gouging.
But it wasn't the backlash over fees that caused Magic to get out of the prepaid debate card business. It was a lawsuit. Seems that according to Reed Wallace, owner of Celebrity Cards International, he had reached a deal with Magic to market a Magic Johnson prepaid card. When One West couldn't get the suit dismissed and some of their board members were going to be deposed, the case suddenly settled.
Magic Johnson is a great guy and a smart businessman. His charitable endeavors are large and he is definitely an asset to any community he is a part of. Maybe that's why his business ventures that are designed to generate income from the poorest segment of the population sail under the radar of the mainstream media.
* * *
Were you a young athlete, specializing in one sport? While I played basketball, slo-pitch softball with adult friends, wrestled and played tennis during my pre-teen and teen years, my primary sport was bowling. I bowled constantly. Two leagues on Saturdays, one in the morning at my home bowling center and in a traveling league later in the day. I practiced at least three and often four days a week. I travelled to holiday weekend tournaments for Thanksgiving, July 4th, and several other major holidays. The state tournament was a summer trip that took up one full weekend, at different cities around the state. Bowling isn't as tough on the body as other sports are.
Young people who play basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, football and other major sports are playing year round these days. There are "summer leagues" when school isn't in session. Club leagues that go on during the school year when that particular sport isn't in season for school versus school competition. For young baseball pitchers, the growing number of adult pitchers who are forced to have the "Tommy John" operation should be a sign that they may need to cut back on their pitching.
Over the months of April and May of this year, 28 professional pitchers had the Tommy John surgery. All but two of those were 30 or younger. Five of them were 21 or younger.
It isn't a secret that anyone who can make it to the major league level as a pitcher is going to make millions eventually. That number goes up for left-handed pitchers. Parents sometimes push kids a bit further than they should. The kids believe they are invulnerable and will pitch every single chance they get.
There aren't any laws about this nor are there a lot of rules about this outside of Little League and some other levels of organized competition. But it is clear that someone, maybe the parents, maybe the coaches themselves, need to put their pitchers on pitch counts. Hit the maximum number, and it is time to being in another pitcher.
Zack Wheeler is a 24 year old, hard-throwing pitcher for the New York Mets. He has a bright future ahead of him. His older brother Adam might have been a better pitcher, had his career not been cut short because of arm trouble. There is little sadder than seeing a young man's dream shattered because he overused a body part and ruined it.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
The California Senate has passed a bill that would require verbal or written consent before people have sex on a California college or university campus. This is the nanny state running amuck. What's the point, when the consent can be revoked at any time?
People who think the underperformance of "Edge of Tomorrow" at the box office means the beginning of the end for Tom Cruise are deluding themselves.
The 20th anniversary of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman is coming up on June 12th. The analysis about what happened and why is already starting in the media. The bottom line is that O. J. Simpson, like many others before and since, got rich man's justice.
There's a letter in Dear Abby from a set of parents who have been helping out one of their two kids financially for many years. Both kids are adults and the parents want to know if Abby thinks it is fair for them to tell the one daughter that the handouts are coming out of her inheritance. Smart and fair.
Happy 89th birthday to Barbara Bush.
I tend to agree with the owner of California Chrome that the Preakness should only be open to horses that ran in the Kentucky Derby, and that the Belmont should be open to only those horses that ran in both the Derby and the Preakness.
If it turns out that Qatar bribed people to have the 2022 World Cup held there, a new location should be selected.
I have to chuckle at the partisan-bashing going on in the comments section of any story on any news site, where liberals say conservatives have a monopoly on flip-flopping positions while conservatives say it is the liberals who hold the monopoly on flip-flopping. No one has a monopoly on that.
The first female Air Force fighter pilot is leaving the cockpit to become military assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Will Jeannie Leavitt make general? She's taking a job that Colin Powell once held.
There is something wrong with our system of justice if we're providing public defenders, supposedly at no cost, to those who can't afford them, and then turning around and charging them for the service. More on this in another blog.
June 8th in History:
68 – The Roman Senate proclaims Galba as emperor.
218 – Battle of Antioch: with the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus. He flees, but is captured near Chalcedon and later executed in Cappadocia.
632 – Muhammad, Islamic prophet, dies in Medina and is succeeded by Abu Bakr who becomes the first caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate.
793 – Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1042 – Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.
1191 – Richard I arrives in Acre (Palestine) thus beginning his crusade.
1405 – Richard le Scrope, the Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, are executed in York on Henry IV's orders.
1690 – Yadi Sakat, a Siddi general, razes the Mazagon Fort in Mumbai.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Trois-Rivières – American attackers are driven back at Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
1783 – Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.
1789 – James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives; by 1791, ten of them are ratified by the state legislatures and become the Bill of Rights; another is eventually ratified in 1992 to become the 27th Amendment.
1794 – Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.
1856 – A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
1861 – American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Cross Keys – Confederate forces under General Stonewall Jackson save the Army of Northern Virginia from a Union assault on the James Peninsula led by General George B. McClellan.
1887 – Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' – his punched card calculator.
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
1912 – Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures.
1928 – Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is changed to Beijing ("Northern Capital").
1929 – Margaret Bondfield is appointed Minister of Labour. She is the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
1940 – World War II: the completion of Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik at the end of the Norwegian Campaign.
1941 – World War II: Allies invade Syria and Lebanon.
1942 – World War II: The Japanese imperial submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.
1948 – Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater.
1949 – The celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.
1949 – George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is published.
1950 – Sir Thomas Blamey becomes the only Australian-born Field Marshal in Australian history.
1953 – An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes.
1953 – The United States Supreme Court rules that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons.
1959 – The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
1966 – An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both planes during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
1966 – Topeka, Kansas, is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita Scale: the first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
1967 – Six-Day War: The USS Liberty incident occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171.
1967 – Six-Day War: The Israeli army enters Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs.
1968 – Robert F. Kennedy's funeral takes place at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City.
1972 – Vietnam War: The Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.
1982 – Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: 56 British servicemen are killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.
1984 – Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australian state of New South Wales.
1987 – New Zealand's Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.
1992 – The first World Ocean Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1995 – The downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia.
2001 – Mamoru Takuma kills eight and injures 15 in a mass stabbing at an elementary school in the Osaka Prefecture of Japan.
2004 – The first Venus Transit in modern history takes place, the previous one being in 1882.
2007 – Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of a trade ship, the MV Pasha Bulker.
2008 – At least 37 miners go missing after an explosion in an Ukrainian coal mine causes it to collapse.
2008 – At least 7 people are killed and 10 injured in a stabbing spree in Tokyo, Japan.
2009 – Two American journalists are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labour.
Famous Folk Born on June 8th:
Robert Schumann
Ida Saxton McKinley
Frank Lloyd Wright
Dorothy Coburn
Byron "Whizzer" White (are there any other former U. S. Supreme Court Justices who played in the NFL?)
Robert Preston
LeRoy Neiman
Gordon McLendon
Lyn Nofziger
Barbara Bush
Charles Tyner (the firebug "Unger" in the original "The Longest Yard")
Jerry Stiller
James Goldstone
Joan Rivers
Bernie Casey
Nancy Sinatra
Chuck Negron
Willie Davenport
Boz Scaggs
Sara Paretsky
Kathy Baker
Sonia Braga
Bonnie Tyler
Keenen Ivory Wayans
Rob Pilatus
Marcos Siega
Teresa Strasser
Mark Feuerstein
Lindsay Davenport
Kanye West
posted by me at 8:04 PM
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