Yes, that’s the same James Blake I’m talking about. The former professional Tennis player who had a rather impressive record during his playing days with 10 singles titles and 7 doubles titles.
The incident is now apparently a case of mistaken identity. For his troubles, Blake suffered bruises on his leg and a cut on his elbow. He was later released after police realized they had wrestled and arrested the wrong man.
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According to his wife Christi, 56-year old John Gibson – a pastor and professor in New Orléans – struggled with addiction and depression in the past. And on August 24th after it was revealed by hackers that he frequented the cheaters website Ashley Madison, Christi found him dead in their home.
“It was a moment that life doesn’t prepare you for,” Christi told CNN. “How do you tell your kids that their dad is gone and that he took his own life?”
Christi also told CNN Gibson left a suicide note with an apology—she didn’t say what for, but the note did mention Ashley Madison. She also said her husband had struggled with addiction and depression in the past.
Gibson was set to teach classes at the New Orléans Baptist Theological Seminary the day after his death, but since the Seminary’s president announced Gibson’s death on Twitter, students and other teachers have been mourning him on Facebook.
We are not easily fooled here in the Big Apple! And when Donald Trump and his second or third or fourth wife Melania. made their presence known at the U.S Open yesterday to watch the Venus vs Serena match, some of the lucky few showed they appreciation for the Republican presidential wannabe by bestowing on him a much-needed and well-earned serving of BOOS!
Welcome home buddy!
For your watching and listening enjoyment!
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Dick Cheney is wrong. That’s all I need to say and this post will be complete.
But I’ll explain.
The former vice president, who has been wrong on everything that has to do with Iraq, went on Fox News last week. The host asked Mr Cheney to explain why anyone should listen to him on the Iran Deal, when he has been consistently wrong on Iraq.
“Because I was right about Iraq,” Cheney replied.
Newsflash – Dick Cheney lies a lot too!
That statement prompted the White House to released the following video showing just some of the many instances where Cheney has been wrong on Iraq, and the release of the video just happens to coincides with a Republican anticipated speech given by the former VP.
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Can you say dumb ass gun nut?
The dumb ass in this case is 23-year-old Phoenix resident Christen Reece. After bar-hopping with his six friends around 2 or 3AM last Tuesday morning, someone announced the marvelous idea of going to shoot guns!
“You know, there’s not really a lot to the story other than don’t drink and shoot guns,” explains Jim Molesa, chief deputy of the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office. “They were partying in the Valley, and then when the bars closed around 2 or 3, someone said, ‘Let’s go to the high country and shoot guns.’”
So the story goes Reece was so happy with his gun’s double safety feature that after bragging to his friends about how secure it was, he took the gun to his temple ato demonstrate and pulled the trigger. This is the point where I’ll say the gun did the shooting!
Reece dropped to the ground bleeding. His frantic friends took his body to a local fire station and ran away. The injuries were too much to handle at the fire station so Reece’s body was airlifted and taken to Scottsdale Osborn hospital and immediately taken into surgery. He remains in critical condition a day later.
“Having trouble sleeping at night?” the voice on the ad asks. “Too much energy? Need some low energy? Jeb — for all your sleeping needs,” as the video turns to Jeb speaking at a town hall and successfully managing to put an audience member to sleep!
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A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on
No award is going to bring back Freddie Gray, but $6.4 million is a step in the right direction.
The deal, announced Tuesday, appeared to be among the largest settlements in police death cases in recent years and happened just days before a judge is set to decide whether to move a trial for six officers charged in Gray’s death.
Gray’s spine was injured April 12 in the back of a prisoner transport van after he was arrested. Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died at the hospital a week later. In the aftermath, Gray became a symbol of the contentious relationship between the police and the public in Baltimore, as well as the treatment of black men by police in America.
The settlement still needs the approval of a board that oversees city spending. That board will meet Wednesday morning.
“The proposed settlement agreement going before the Board of Estimates should not be interpreted as a judgment on the guilt or innocence of the officers facing trial,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a news release. “This settlement is being proposed solely because it is in the best interest of the city, and avoids costly and protracted litigation that would only make it more difficult for our city to heal and potentially cost taxpayers many millions more in damages.”
Reminds me of an episode of Naked and Afraid, where the contestants came upon a dead rodent. Almost dying of thirst and hunger, the naked contestants ponder whether to eat the deceased animal. They did not know how long the animal had died, they did not know what caused its death or if it had a disease. But hunger is a mother-father, and the decision was made to feast on the beast!
No, the president wasn’t naked, not I’m not sure if he was afraid. But he and his guide came across a dead salmon, partly eaten by a bear. “Why wouldn’t the bear finish this sucker?” the President asked. His guide, a man named Bear Grylls, answered that bears usually eat the fattest parts of the meat, along with the eggs and skin.
And with that, the rest of the salmon carcass was put on a fire and cooked up. The President’s only critique? That there weren’t any crackers to go with the fish.
“It would have been nice if we had a cracker to go with it,” Mr. Obama said.
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And now, ladies and gentlemen, presenting The Weeknd, ah… I mean, President Obama – I cant feel my face.
Such a beautiful place, you wonder why no other president even considered making the trip. President Obama took the time to travel and even went behind the camera to talk about his recent trip to Alaska, and why it’s necessary to recognize the effects of Climate Change.
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Former vice president Dick Cheney is a liar. He is so good at lying, that an entire party believes the things he say, especially the things he say about President Obama. Often times, Fox News will parrot these lies as truths, but not on Sunday when Dick Cheney encountered Fox News host, Chris Wallace.
Talking about the Iran Deal, Cheney bagged his usual talking point, that the deal is a travesty which will result in Iran getting nuclear weapons and becoming even more stronger than before. Then Chris Wallace asked him about his 8 years in the White House and why the Bush/Cheney administration did nothing to stop Iran from trying to get a nuclear weapon.
“You and President Bush, the Bush-Cheney administration, dealt with Iran for eight years, and I think it was fair to say that there was never any real, serious military threat,” Wallace noted. “Iran went from zero known centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000.”
“So in fairness, didn’t you leave — the Bush-Cheney administration — leave President Obama with a mess?” the Fox News host asked.
“I don’t think of it that way,” Cheney replied. “There was military action that had an impact on the Iranians, it was when we took down Saddam Hussein. There was a period of time when they stopped their program because they were scared that what we did to Saddam, we were going to do to them next.”
“But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000,” Wallace pressed.
“Well, they may have well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch,” Cheney wrongly insisted.
“No, no, no,” Wallace fired back. “By 2009, they were at 5,000.”
“Right,” Cheney grumbled. “But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East.”
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Foreign affairs used to be the one area where the country supported the president to show the world that, although we might have messy domestic issues, the United States was indeed united when confronting the world.
Oh how things have changed.
I support the Iran deal for three basic reasons:
1. I assume that Iran already has a nuclear weapon or are very close to developing one. If there’s one thing that we should have learned by now, it’s that scientific knowledge cannot be stopped. If Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon or two at this point, they will in a few years. The key is what they are willing to do with them and what the rest of the world is willing to do about them. My firm belief is…nothing on both accounts. The Iranian government likes to talk tough about how they’re going to destroy the Great Satan and Israel, but that’s just jawboning from a regime whose clock is ticking. Because the other truth of the matter is that Israel has between 80 and 100 nuclear weapons and Iran knows that they will be turned to dust if they throw one or two weapons towards Jerusalem. That’s not likely to happen. Nuclear weapons have still only been used once in the world and rational governments know that they simply will not get away with their wanton use. Despite media reports and overblown hype from the left and the right, Iran’s government, and most importantly its people, want to live in the world. So even if they get more weapons within fifteen years, it’s important to remember that…
2. Capitalism destroys religion and always has. Think about it. The Catholic Church reached the zenith of its power on the eve of the First Crusade in 1095. It’s been downhill from there. And the reasons for its continued decline, and the decline of most western religions, is capitalism and trade and money and banking and the secular pursuit of tangible, materialistic objects that make our economic system hum. So let’s throw open the Iranian economy to the rapacious pursuit of stuff and let that do our dirty work for us. The religious leaders in Iran will try to invoke laws that attempt to limit western influence in the country as it tries to hold on to the revolutionary ideals under which it was founded, but that won’t work. Iran has a long history of capitalism and western ideals and it has a middle class that is modern and enthusiastic to join the capitalist system. Yes, economic sanctions are taking their toll on the country, but they are also inhibiting the fertile, educated minds of the very people we want to engage in trade and business.
You want a model? Look at what’s happening in China. The Communist government said that it would give its citizens the power to get rich if the citizens accepted the power of the intrusive, repressive state. That’s all well and good, but what happens when the money stops flowing? We’re seeing that now. The Communists can’t control a capitalist economy for very long and neither can a religious one. The Saudis are finding that out now as the price of oil is devastating their balance sheets. The money they earn goes into the same type of repressive religious state that the mullahs in Iran want to keep. Both states will find it extremely difficult to maintain this. There was a reason that 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudi; there was intense governmental repression against any opposition and Al Qaeda exploited that. In Iran, the radicalism will not come from the religious as it did in the 1979 revolution. It will come from the capitalists and they will win.
This then brings us to reason number…
3. Fifteen years is a very long time. Time does seem to be flying, but think back to the world of 15 years ago. It was 2000. A Clinton was president. The Internet bubble was underway. Boris Yeltsin was drinking his way out of the Kremlin. There was a presidential election between two very boring white guys. You get the point. The world was very different. Fifteen years from now…well, who knows? But fifteen years of Iran being watched by the US, Russia, China and western European countries will have some effect on their development. Putin will likely be gone and so might the hardliners in Beijing, both of whom support Tehran. The nuclear deal puts eyes on the Iranians and allows for inspections and testing that will likely turn something up that the regime, if it lasts that long, will not be able to finesse.
The deal will now go through, either as an Obama veto or, if 3 more Democrats support the deal, as a filibustered footnote to the summer of 2015. So let’s get this out of the way and focus on North Korea and Pakistan, which are the real, irrational threats to the world today.
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