Chicago Criterium presented by........?

Sad news from the western front as the Mayor's Office of Special Events failed to include the Chicago Criterium on its 2010 calender. However, this leaves the oppurtunity for a title sponsor to step up. Might I suggest a Chicago based one:

Things you can't say in the media

The nationally syndicated radio personality Don Imus was quoted :"That's some nappy headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that," on his radio show in a conversation with game producer Ron McGuirk. A racist and sexist comment made about a Rutgers University women’s basketball team, who one week ago today was playing for a National Championship against Pat Summit’s Tennessee Volunteers and lost.

We all learned in grade school the principle of: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Apparently Imus was absent with the flu bug on the day they gave that seminar. Understandably, a talk show host who doesn’t choose sides with some passion and perseverance will never last on public radio. On the other hand, there are some rules, a code if you will, that says you can’t touch the race card with a moronic sense of reality........No really, you can talk about a race all you want: Al Sharpton runs a successful radio show revolved utterly around the race card and Howard Stern touches the issue with the utmost care because he already has the FCC crawling up his ass everyday for his swearing and other antics, bottom line is this: don’t put a negative spin on it EVER!!

Don Imus will begin his two week suspension from his syndicated radio show and combo show with MSNBC today after receiving his punishment. Lets hope he doesn’t succumb to the two symptoms of hysteria, perspective and proportion. What he did was wrong, I am not arguing that point, but he might have been able to get his point across some other way.....like not calling them Nappy Headed Hoes!!! The emotionally hurt girls on the Rutgers basketball team, whose light from the 2nd place finish in Women’s March Madness will be turned to this issue, didn’t play soft basketball, they played hard and tough basketball. Majority wore braided hair during the games, some had tattoos; accompanied with body language and other antics this could lead someone to believe that they could have come from a hard background from the inner city, and because of that, they looked to have more self-confidence and may have come off as tough. Imus may have thought that the “toughness” they put-off should make them another stereotype of an inner city dweller. I think he was trying to make a point on his show about how they team carried themselves, BUT, he was a moron on the way he did it, and Shame On Him for that. He could have got his point across another way, and not have had to forfeit two weeks of work...........and some seriously bad pub.

Music World: Prepare To Be Taken By STORM!!!!!

Google paid $1.65bil for this?

In the absolutely least surprising news item of the day, Google was sued for $1 billion by Viacom over copyright infringement occurring on recently acquired YouTube. All I can say is...no shit. I love YouTube, but copyright infringement is what it's best at. Sure, YouTube does what it can to remove copyrighted materials, but that is usually done only at the copyright holder's request. Of course lawsuits were coming.

So Google paid $1.65bil for the right to be a party to a whole bunch of lawsuits from big media companies that are eager to fight infringement since we've all been stealing from them for the past decade. It didn't make sense to me at the time, and it still makes no sense. Now, they paid it in stock, so it was no cash off their balance sheet. What it did do was dilute their owners, though admittedly not by all that much.

When companies start spending their stock instead of cash, they are telling me that they think their stock is over-valued. So here's your stock tip of the day, sell Google. Obviously, these lawsuits won't be bringing Google down, but its management seems to be telling us that we're overpaying right now.

Case of the Monday's

On Sunday the ever eager Drudge Report reported on a Youtube.com video that showed Big Rudy Guiliani avidly attesting to pro-abortion funding in the late 80s. The clip, dug up by a gopher looking for some good dirt then aired on all major stations the following day. This sort of bad publicity is exactly what is going to kill decent candidates this election. Rudy's people's inability to find this video and control his press(releasing it on his own terms with good spin or burning the damn thing) may be the start of a trend of bad pub. Rudy has Republicans questioning his policies on specific issues like gays, abortion, and guns. However, his fundraising (numbers to be released at the end of the first quarter,March 31) may show to be enough to brush off these kidney shots from the spirits of bad press, and even dodge many other knockout blows. But hats off the guy(gal) that found the video............good digging for dirt.

In other news, a Swiss man accused of insulting the nation's monarchy by spray-painting over several portraits of the revered Thai king pleaded guilty today and faces a maximum 75-year prison sentence. The vandalism coincided with Bhumibol's (The Thai King) 79th birthday, which was celebrated across Thailand with fireworks and prayers on their own version of our "President's Day." The king is the world's longest serving monarch. On a side note, the plaintiff did say he was pretty drunk and regrets doing it......Man .......to bad that doesn't actually work !!
It makes me think about how they treat the leaders of their country over in Thailand. They are giving a guy some serious time in prison for bad mouthing their leader. On the other hand, the reporter who found the Rudy speech in which he was tarnishing his current campaign for Presidency and didn't even know it, will likely be praised and continue to do what he does for a living........gossip.

Rudy has problems ahead of him not limiting to bad press; he also has been married a few times. He also cleaned up our Nation's largest city, NYC, amidst the nastiest odds against him, the ugliest press against him, and a radical fundamentalist group(Osama) against his city. He took a shattered and star-struck band of un-united urbanites and transformed them both, the city and its people, into a respectable model of urban success.

i go to spring break for the STDs

As spring break rapidly rolls upon the college students across the country causing them to vanish south of the Mason-Dixon line for some must needed relaxation after midterms, don't expect federal funding to provide free condoms as you leave your respective Floridian/Texan/Mexican (Yes I know Mexico wouldn't get federal funding...blah blah blah.....but it helps with the allegory of 3 am hook-ups) disco techs with your sweaty and hammered drunk not-so-significant other. Why, you ask??? Because all of the federal funding apportioned for young adult sex issues like this is already spoken for in the form of low-quality, expensive, and ineffective abstinence-only programs. Understandably, free condom handouts in the middle of the night amidst the thumping of Darude's latest single is not the adequate resolution to the continuing spread of HIV-AIDS, with young females especially at risk (Washington Post 2-24-07), Congress must halt seven years of federal funding for programs that use overly simplistic and biased abstinence-only tactics.
I feel I have a special insight on this issue, coming from both educational backgrounds:1. Catholic Schooling K-8 promoting abstinence and 2. Public High Schooling providing vast education on sex, pregnancy, and STDs. Taking both into consideration when making a sex related decision would obviously be ideal, however, our friends alcohol and lust seem to take over at the most inopportune moments(stumbling around the bar at last call.)
Arguably, the majority of bad decisions to not use condoms or have relations with a not-so-suitable partner come when alcohol(Watkins) relations have taken over the mind, i mean, Jager really was NOT needed...............But.......no matter how many tailcocks I have had throughout the course of a drunken marathon, certain pictures of certain things from a certain health/sex-ed class seem to take over my imaginative side of my brain. I don't need to include details here, we have all seen the pictures that make you a little queasy, at the same time making you a little smarter the next time a decision comes around, hoping you had the proper education. Abstinence-only programs refute opinions revolving around full-disclosure believers that wish to put the decision into the hands of the kid, the educated kid, not the the dumbfounded "what the hell is that" kid. Without prior knowledge of things like herpes, pregnancy, and HIV-AIDS teenagers won't be making the correct decision based on all relevant facts. Wait, that sounds familiar, oh yeah, that's how the law works:you make a decision based on all relevant facts, not the ones that shelter our kids and keep them closer to adolescence longer than necessary. No kid has to be in the dark about this Congress, so stop paying for it to happen