Blood, Sweat and Tears.

You've made me so very happy.
I'm so glad you came into my life...

*Now that's using your head...

Fighting smart isn't all instinct.
Done properly, it can be a learned behavior...

Northwestern University football players — led by former quarterback Kain Colter — reportedly have signed union cards in their attempt to form a labor union for college athletes.

ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” reports Ramogi Huma, the president of the National College Players Association, filed a petition in Chicago on behalf of an undisclosed number of Northwestern players to the National Labor Relations Board. The NCPA also filed union cards signed by the players, according to the report.
...
Huma told “Outside The Lines” that the move to unionize players at Northwestern started with quarterback Kain Colter, who reached out to him last spring and asked for help in giving athletes representation in their effort to improve the conditions under which they play NCAA sports. Colter became a leading voice in regular NCPA-organized conference calls among players from around the country.

After the ESPN report was released, Colter spoke with the Chicago Tribune‘s Teddy Greenstein:

“A lot of people will think this is all about money; it’s not,” Colter said. “We’re asking for a seat at the table to get our voice heard.”

Regarding the prospects of unionizing, Colter said: “Everything now is in the hands of the lawyers. We’re not expecting a decision to be made right away. It might take a year or two or go all the way to the Supreme Court.”
...
The NFL Players Association supports the efforts of the NCPA, according to a statement to Pro Football Talk.

“Resolved, that the NFLPA pledges its support to the National Collegiate Players Association (NCPA) and its pursuit of basic rights and protections for future NFLPA members.”

It's "Glynn".

Like Flynn, the "y" takes an "i" sound.
As in "in", or "win".*
------------
(click pic -- click on the picture, twice --  for greater warmth and clarity. Green is good! )

*or "sin" or "spin", the reportoire really is endless...

Character Counts.

The question is,
Are we prepared to say as lawyers that a man who is no longer considered moral enough to be a journalist is moral enough to be a lawyer? If people flame out in journalism because of dishonesty, is the law open to them? I think the answer is no.”

Stephen Glass ... de-nied.

“We're mentally prepared for honest mistakes. And everybody lies. But most people lie because they're afraid, not because they get pleasure out of deceiving or because they have contempt for people and standards of probity.”
~Leon Wieseltier

Sunday Morning...

Another nice dusting of snow... an inch or two, but so very light and fluffy, it is so cold out there.

The world at the street level, has that white bluish aura that lends a magical tinge to the everyday things... trees, fences, birdfeeders and stored materials for ongoing projects.

Saturday morning...

We got into the 20s here yesterday, then a pretty covering of fresh snow, just enough to buck us up through the next cold spell.  We will definitely appreciate spring this year, though it should be quite interesting to see what happens in the melt.

Still,
meat keeps better in the freezer than dried out:  I'd still choose this over California's conditions, weatherwise...  my body/skin couldn't take that dry heat.  Frigid, perhaps temporarily, but not arid.

It's weather austerity, is what it is...
Pick your poison, and no cost-shifting "back-outs" later, when the piper comes to collect his fees.

Love Will Turn You Around ...

Turn You Around.

Like a Rhinestone Cowboy...

Like a rhinestone cowboy
Riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo
Like a rhinestone cowboy...
Gettin' cards and letters from people I don't even know
And all folks callin' over the phone...

*I link this one for those youngsters who missed the Bicentennial.

One Love.

Happy birthday to Malcolm, (camping on the beach somewhere outthere, in a tent with wifi even...) and Michelle, (the nation's first lady, looking nifty at 50...)

*Remember: stubborn old goats need love too.

Make it a great weekend, readers, no matter the temperature differential between where you're at today, and where you'll be when your work comes to fruition... 

 ie/ Fresh tropical fruit in January.
And good coffee too.
Life is sweet. 

"I wonder what wacky way ...

the Professor thought of to get us out of here for good..."

"I don't know, little Buddy. But it looks like this time it worked." *grinning broadly, checking an empty hut*  "Go Professor. Get help, and get back to the island..."

"You really think he's gonna make it home, Skip?"

"I really think he's gonna make it home this time, Gilligan."

"Let's go tell the girls..."

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money...

the Benghazi report hits the stands.

The only question in my mind: have we learned from Libya?

If we had it to do over, would we have stayed 'neutral', and not supported the Libyan rebels in the government overthrow of  their country?  Left them to their own devices?

That was the big mistake, getting involved in other people's  wars to remake the Middle East (and now Africa ).  Many of us foresaw it at the time too.

What have we learned from our mistakes of yesterday that will serve us well tomorrow?

What does HRC know today about the costs of bulling her way through -- based on where's she been in her most  previous career position -- that Chris Christie has yet to learn?

Convince me we won't continue to repeat these foreign follies; couple that with an ambitious domestic economic plan to rebuild and grow non-elite yet not-yet-impoverished American communities that have been hit hard at home, and you'll earn my vote, as well as others.

Si se puede.

Time for sleigh rides...

"In those days, they had time
for everything: Time for sleigh rides,
and balls, and assemblies, and cotillions,
and open house on New Years, and all-day picnics
in the woods, and even that prettiest of all
vanished customs: the serenade."

~The Magnificent Ambersons.

Cinco de Mayo. 2013.

with a snowy breeze coming in from the north...

Don't get me wrong: I like the cold and the change of seasons too. You learn to be smart, and work with the weather, not to stubbornly bully your way through it.

This year, we've got a lot of snow: 3-foot banks along the sidewalks -- the little dog must think he's in a luge tunnel and has to mark his trail out -- but when you take it day to day, it's manageable, and more.

There's time, if you can take it step by step, to work on the things that were put away when the weather was nicer and life outside called. It's an investment in the future and meat keeps better in the freezer anyway.

May we all come one step closer today towards whatever it is worthwhile we're working on...

-----------------
More:
I had shoveled a path to the street early that morning -- and was heading to the temporary work project that took me to the western suburbs of Minneapolis for the workweek, but had to jump out of the car and capture the spring snow scene.

*Turns out, it was still on the ground on the 5th, but the storm pushed through a few days prior.

These are the Tines to Remember...

'cause they will not last forever...
These are the tines to hold onto,
but we won't, although we want to...

Speaking of old-school reporting (and I mean that in a very good way, so help me Mike Royko), one of the best things about those who have been around the block a few times -- on foot even, is they know the stories well. 

Not so much where the bodies are buried -- though they might have a lead or two on that too -- but an accurate recollection of how things went down in the past. 

With so much short-term memory loss abounding these days in political and populist circles alike, it's important  to still have some writers who can make comparisons to others they've known...

...
I would like to speak up on behalf of the fledgling New York mayor’s de Blasphemy, now universally deemed his first mistake and possibly grounds for impeachment: daintily carving up his smoked-mozzarella-and-sausage pizza at Goodfellas in Staten Island with a knife and fork.
...
Pizza can be hazardous to an administration. We all remember what happened when a Clinton intern delivered a pie to the Oval Office during a government shutdown.
...

Unlike de Blasio, some pols use food as a way to seem more populist. The aristocratic Poppy Bush pretended his favorite snack was pork rinds, offsetting his request for “just a splash” more coffee at a New Hampshire truck-stop diner.

...

As with Christie the Bully, embarrassing incidents hurt politicians when they resonate about a deeper suspicion.

 

Sargent Shriver calling for a Courvoisier in an Ohio mill town bar. Jerry Ford at the Alamo, biting into a tamale without removing the corn husk. Jimmy Carter’s fishing trip that turned into “Paws,” fending off a Killer Rabbit. Michael Dukakis advising farmers to grow Belgian endive, and Barack Obama talking the price of arugula. When John Kerry ordered Swiss cheese on his Philly cheesesteak in 2003, it buoyed Republican efforts to paint him as a Frenchie, fromage-loving surrender monkey.

“The whiff of a limousine-liberal factor,” G.O.P. strategist Mike Murphy told me, does not hurt de Blasio because he comes off as such “a humble, likable guy.” ... The question lurking beneath the surface with de Blasio is: Has he been promoted out of his league?

...and if they're funny enough, in a positive way, they'll still be on the job whilst their subjects are off, busy painting their toes in the bathtub.

How 'bout a Heineken?

Still working?
How 'bout a Hiaasen* then?

"You just cover a lot of territory and you do it aggressively and you do it fairly and you don’t play favorites and you don’t take any prisoners. It’s the old school of slash-and-burn metropolitan column writing. You just kick ass. That’s what you do. And that’s what they pay you to do."
~ Carl Hiaasen

------------------

* old-school reporter for the Miami Herald, who mined his daily columns for Florida fiction.

I prefer his non-fiction myself, taking my truths straight up...

"A native of Florida, author of such thrillers as Lucky You and Strip Tease, and a journalist for the Miami Herald, Hiaasen comes by his dislike for Disney honestly. He has witnessed the relentless success of the Disney machine firsthand with the development of Disney World and other properties around Orlando.  

In Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World, Hiaasen paints a witty and sarcastic portrait in this nonfiction account of a company who can control the press, manipulate local governments, and because it's Disney, get away with it. Team Rodent is a quick, entertaining read that even the most loyal Disney shareholder (except maybe Michael Eisner) will find enlightening and amusing. "
~ Harry C. Edwards

Yee-haw.

Cops tell man, 80, to stop shooting icicles from roof

By Stephanie K. Baer
Tribune reporter
7:16 p.m. CST, January 14, 2014

An 80-year-old Kane County man used an uncommon method to remove icicles hanging from the edge of his roof last week. He shot at them with a .22-caliber revolver, police said.

On Friday morning, Kane County sheriff's police responded to a call of gunfire in the 6 N 300 block of Essex Avenue in unincorporated St. Charles, according to Lt. Pat Gengler, spokesman for the sheriff's office. When they arrived, police found the man shooting at the icicles on his roof, Gengler said.

Police ordered him to stop.  No charges had been filed as of Tuesday, but the incident was still under investigation, Gengler said.  "It's still unincorporated, so some of those places it's OK to shoot a gun," Gengler said.

"I'm not sure why somebody would want to do this to begin with. … I've never heard of anybody shooting a gun at icicles. That's something new."

Oh come now, little lady.

Online cultural pundit Ann Althouse this morning takes issue with the Irish version of the marital eve, old-wives advice tale: "Just close your eyes and think of England."

I did not think modern American columnists, especially females who want to be regarded as feminist, would repeat something like this without disapproval, but here's Dowd adopting and admiring it:

Calling his deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly “stupid” and “deceitful,” he threw her off the bridge, without talking to her himself or, as Niall O’Dowd slyly wrote in IrishCentral.com, even extending the courtesy of the old Irish wedding night admonition: “Brace yourself, Bridget.”

Irish culture can be a teasing one, and it's actually produced plenty of strong women, whose accomplishments perhaps come from the strength found in pushing back, gently and with considerable verbal skill, I might add. Crude and raw perhaps, but vulgar not so much.

To me,
this is ultimately a smarter route than say, backpedaling: depending on junior, sexually conservative male writers like Ross Douthat to protect the sensitivities of upper middle class women, who increasingly have an outsized say in defining women's issues and the true problems confronting them in the economy today.

Where the personal is political, the political becomes personal more quickly, and the grotesque abuse that liberal, feminist writers can receive for being liberal feminists is a scandal that conservatives, especially, need to acknowledge and deplore.
...
Sometimes this rebellion is just coarse and libertine: think of lad magazines, or the world of pick-up artists, or Seth MacFarlane on Oscar night. But where it intersects with status anxieties, personal failure and sexual frustration, it can turn vicious — in effect, scapegoating women (those frigid castraters, those promiscuous teases) for the culture’s failure to deliver a beer-commercial vision of male happiness.
...
Instead, it needs to be answered, somehow, with a more compelling vision of masculine goals, obligations and aspirations. Forging this vision is a project for both sexes. Living up to it, and cleansing the Internet of the worst misogyny, is ultimately a task for men.

Addressing conservative male behavior is exactly what editor O'Dowd is doing here with his colorful description of how Ms. Kelly indeed got screwed -- unless you just think she screwed herself alone.*

Don't focus on the superficial offenses that honestly do no damages, look deeper at what -- and who -- is really hurting women's progress today. Sometimes the seeming saviors carry you back to same old abode.
------------

* I don't, because that background -- Catholic schooling all the way up -- does not generally reward the behaviors of someone who would step out of line and act independently in the planning and crafting stages, in such a big way.

There's simply no pattern of such independent action indicated in her past. Organizing effectively  somebody else's plans, with specific focus on the fine details, appears to be more Ms. Kelly's forte and previous role in Team Christie.

Look closer.

Quiet congratulations ...

 go to (((Lily Tomlin  + Jane Wagner))).

They seem like a funny, smart, nice... healthy couple.
Hardworking, but low key.
Complementary.

*~Remember we're all in this alone.

Setting Words to Music...

" Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere.
We got one last chance to make it real ...
 ~ The Boss.

She's not an advice-giver columnist, but my guess
after reading Maureen Dowd is were she a close staffer,
she would have urged Gov. Christie* to come clean already,
for strategic if not ethical reasons.  (not that I speak for the lady
herself, but that's what I took.  ~copyeditor's soundtrack to read by. )

--------------------
*fwiw: He's always reminded me of old man Daley, but without the competence, loyalty and local long plan.  There was a strategic git-er-done politician, but parochial; working better on the local, not the national level.

He wasn't into power for it's own sake necessarily, but knew how to use it to build and get what he wanted, unlike the current president.

Both bullies  as m.o.'s though...





*modus operandi; I don't do Latin.

Doubling Down on Dead.

"Your candle burned out long ago...
now it's time for you to go."

Ariel Sharon, aka
Arik the Bully;
his mind dead at 77,
his body at 85.

After a full accounting,
may G-d have mercy on his soul.
-----------

*That's all I have; know
your history and learn from it.

(aka do your own damn homework,**
and live by your own judgement calls:
A fitting tribute to a hard cold man.)

** ...Sharon's closeness to the land of Israel. He was born and grew up there, and joined the paratroopers when he was quite young. ...the tragic story of his own life and how one child died of a gun accident, and then how his wife died... his battle - that he won in a New York court - to clear his name of the deaths in the camps in Lebanon...

~ J. Robinson on January 7, 2006.

Blame it on the Girl ?

Oh come on.

The girl did not act alone. 
He's not that dumb.

*and if he is, we do not need another president to convincingly tell us he has no idea what the employees working for him are doing during his time of leadership.

He needed to know, and if he's saying he didn't that is just as bad in the end result.
It happened on his watch, period.  Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi.
----------------

*Next thing they'll be telling us this guy's wife has cancer and he fathered a baby out of wedlock with his staff videographer.  No way.

Two America's indeed.

Take Away the Podium.

Have the man plead his case standing on his own two feet, not lecture-leaning for 3 hours.

Will the country as a whole offer redemption in this midwinter passion play?

Comes the crowd cry:

"We want Snooki...
We want Snooki...
We want Snooki..."

*Well, in their defense, it has been a long cold lonely winter, and Mrs. Snooki does have an adorable new son. But mostly nobody likes to be lectured to for what seems like 3 hours, when you're supposed to be putting on the humble apologetic...

ok, nobody normal.
I think the political press peeps were looking for some excitement now that *Gov't Shutdown 2014* has been indefinitely postponed due to previous poor reviews.

Gotta put your partisan horserace coverage somewhere, even if we're not really covering a presidential campaign just yet.

No real substantial news happening elsewhere or anything; political gamesmanship is a 24/7 priority beat.

Something about a bridge in New Jersey affecting the fates of a fat white prince living out east...

Big Print Headlines
and every political analyst on this story,
twittering and tweaking and twerking LIVE...

tells me this must be like a big storm hitting the coast or the day those two planes crashed into the towers...

No?
'we don't break new stories,
we make news stories...'
= journ-o-lism today.

Sure it's a story, but such overkill? c'mon...

I'm not watching, just digesting the coverage secondhand, but did he wag a finger and go all 'that woman' on the lady at fault? Reporters, inside reporters, eat that drama up...
-------------------------


*ADDED: Scandal or not, I don't see the country as a whole -- including the Republican upper Midwest and the West -- electing Chris Christie, or Paul Ryan for that matter, president.

Not the same type of necessary appeal outside the East Coast. Ask or John Kerry or Mike Dukakis, and yes I'm aware they're Democrats.

Hold Your Head Up.

~Uriah Heep, off Raging Silence.

Local Boy Makes Good.

or, He's Been Here Before. Played Like It Too...
Colin Kaepernick and cousin at Lambeau.

2013* ?

From 1982, this is a funny one...

These last few weeks of holding on
the days are dull, the nights are long
Guess it's better to say ...Goodbye to you
Goodbye to you
Goodbye to you
Goodbye to you

2014 is a turning point, trust my words.

Too many people have waited and worked too long for us to fail now.
Something about hitting the bottom hard, as surely we did last year, before the rebound and stealthy ascent back to the top**... there's no substitute for substance, afterall.  (never forget.)

Stay warm, be good to those who are good to you, and ... happy new year !
-----------------
*Pity it's over now.
No need to talk about it

** Kind of the opposite of dropping a ball, if you think about it...


*ADDED: Bonus Track ... Gloria!
~Laura Branigan.