This subhead of the week sort of sums things up nicely on the massive spending bill Congress is poised to ram through to passage:
The full legislative text of the 1,012 page "minibus" spending package was released by Johnson's office around 2:30am on Thursday. One House member called it a "monstrosity."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has proven to be every bit as powerless as his predecessors in taming the Swamp’s hunger for the American taxpayer cash. It is the same tired story, the appropriators dangle millions in front of members for their districts and they instantly collapse and run with the money. Well, only so long as the money is worth something. And the clock is surely ticking on the matter.
To be clear, Missouri v Biden should be a 9-0 slam dunk reaffirmation of the First Amendment. That we sitting here hoping that a bare majority dances on enough pinheads to arrive that the conclusion that no, there exists no such thing as non-coercive government limits on the speech of American citizens shows just how much fascism has been normalized in the US in recent years — and how stupid SCOTUS has become.
Related, recall that our out of control DOJ believes memes that are too effective violate the law.
I have been expecting a massive gambling scandal to hit American pro sports for awhile now, convinced that the leagues and networks have jumped into bed with sport books without anything like the required safeguards. But did not have this particular formulation on my bingo card, especially involving Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and an illegal bookmaker. Deets:
…reporters asked an Ohtani spokesman questions about why $4.5 million in wire transfers had been sent from Ohtani's bank account to a bookmaking operation.
The theft allegation came after his spokesman initially told ESPN that the slugger had transferred the funds to cover the gambling debts of Ohtani's former interpreter and friend, Ippei Mizuhara.
Mizuhara on Tuesday evening told ESPN the same and laid out his story in great detail, including saying that Ohtani had sat with him, and the two transferred the money in $500,000 increments in several different settings. But as ESPN prepared to publish a story Wednesday, the spokesman disavowed Mizuhara's account.
In a subsequent interview with Mizuhara, he told ESPN he had not been truthful -- that Ohtani had no knowledge of his gambling activities, debts or efforts to repay him.
On Thursday, a source close to Ohtani gave an explanation for the changing storylines: As Ohtani's handlers tried to determine what had happened, they initially relied solely on Mizuhara, who continued to translate for Ohtani.
O-kay. MLB needs to get to the bottom of this ASAP, which is now being termed a theft by Team Ohtani. Realistically, what else can they say? Instead MLB officials have gone into turtle mode, no doubt awaiting whatever law enforcement makes of the matter. But a violation of law is a much higher bar than endangering the integrity of your sport. Stay tuned.
Here again at the intersection of sports and money we find Clemson University suing the ACC. Bottomline, Clemson asserts it will not be able to compete with “peer institutions” given the status quo media rights situation. That much was expected. What was unexpected is the fire the filing lit under UNC Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer.
"I think that what Clemson is doing is 100 percent proof positive that a significant portion of the membership of the conference is unhappy,” Preyer declared.
And then he continued to drop bombs, including on UNC AD Bubba Cunningham, with whom Preyer said there was a “potential conflict.” Specifically:
I don't see how it is in anyone's interest for the ACC leadership to try and browbeat its member schools from getting access to information and being transparent. And that's kind of the case Clemson is making.
I think this shows that what is supposed to be a member-based organization is not being led in a way that represents the best interests of all the members, but instead, it's really representing the bottom tier of the membership at the expense of the top tier, which is why Clemson and Florida State are doing what they're doing. I think that's just obvious. … It is a potential conflict and it's something that is disturbing based on some of the comments [Cunningham] made recently which seem to support the ACC at the expense of Carolina – that’s a bad look. I think we all recognize that change is hard, but sometimes change is exactly what is needed. We all have to fight the comfort of complacency. And I think that now is the time to be very open to pursuing all options, including those beyond remaining in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
This language in 180 degrees away from the direction Cunningham had been headed the last few months after FSU filed suit against the ACC to leave the conference for greener pastures. Like conference officials, Bubba portrayed FSU as uniquely unhappy with the media rights situation. Well, the CEO of his institution just cut him off at the knees on that one.
Dvorak was always must reading in his old PC Mag column days. He must truly wonder what has happened to the profession.