Vebtoday International News

Amy Winehouse was forced to abandon a concert at the St Lucia Jazz festival because of “technical difficulties”, a spokesman has said.

It was the first time in months the 25-year-old singer had performed in front of an audience.

Her spokesman said: “Circumstances beyond anyone’s control meant that this special show did not go as planned.”

He blamed the bad weather and said Winehouse would like to “express her disappointment” that the gig ended.

Despite that fans have criticised her performance. Local resident Ben said her singing was “painful”.

He added: “What a wasted talent.”

At one stage Winehouse appeared to forget the words to a song and told the crowd, “Sorry, I’m bored”.

‘Heavens opened’

In a statement, her spokesman said: “Amy would like to express her disappointment that weather forced the abandonment of her show at the St Lucia Jazz Festival last night.

“The set started well, but as the heavens opened, a number technical difficulties occurred on stage, culminating with the lighting rig failing for two songs.

“In addition, rain began to flood the technical wings at the side of the stage which caused sound problems. Amy and the band tried to soldier on but the set had to be cut short.

“Amy is very disappointed as St Lucia has been wonderful to her and its people have welcomed her with open arms, but circumstances beyond anyone’s control meant that this special show did not go as planned.”

The singer is currently spending time recording on the island.

source : www.bbcnews.com

The new Star Trek movie has been dubbed by some critics as “Star Trek 90210″ - a reference to the good looks of the actors playing the iconic roles on board on the USS Enterprise.

So it is something of a relief to have a normal bloke-next-door like Simon Pegg in there as the starship’s chief engineering officer Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott.

The 39-year-old actor first came to attention with cult UK TV shows including Spaced and Big Train.

He has since starred in international hit comedies Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, and is soon to be seen in Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s Tintin.

There seems to be a split over whether fans are called Trekkies or Trekkers. Can you shed any light for us?

I think it’s both. There’s a certain element of the fan community who were fed up with people using the word Trekkie in a slightly derogatory way and wanted to distance themselves from that, so they became Trekkers. Whereas the people who remain Trekkies couldn’t care less what people think. So there are both but they’re equally very valid.

I’m very aware that I could be cutting myself off from half my family, but I think the character is a tribute to the Scots

I think you have to earn the title of Trekkie. I’m a big Star Trek fan and I do love it and know a lot about it, but I think a Trekkie is like a degree level Star Trek fan. That’s when you know every episode and every actor involved and every plot so I wouldn’t flatter myself.

As a self confessed sci-fi geek, just how excited were you to be in costume and actually standing on the bridge of the USS Enterprise?

It was amazing and I felt very honoured. I’m a Star Trek fan and to be on the bridge of the Enterprise in my red uniform and playing Scotty, who is a beloved and integral part of the starship Enterprise crew, was just crazy.

How do you follow the performance of a much loved actor like James Doohan and how conscious were you of taking on such an iconic role?

I was fortunate to reach out to Chris Doohan, James’ son, and we became pals. He was on set with me and was my assistant in the transporter room so I was able to have some connection to the Doohan family.

I wanted to make it very clear that I wasn’t just taking it lightly or doing an impression of James, but I would try and approach it like he did.

What about mastering the Scottish accent then?

Half my family is from the west coast so I channelled them, my wife and her family. There’s some argument about where Scotty’s from, some say Linlithgow, I think Dundee, and Aberdeen have claimed him. I figured he’d gone to Glasgow University and picked up a strong Glaswegian accent.

Simon Pegg and Star Trek cast members
Pegg (second left) takes on one of the series’ most beloved characters

Star Trek: What the critics think

Fortunately, [my wife] Maureen was on set with me all the time. I would come off set and say: ‘How was that, did that sound all right?’ I’m very aware that I could be cutting myself off from half my family, but I think the character is a tribute to the Scots.

How was working with Zachary Quinto who plays the villain Sylar in Heroes and Spock in Trek. Are you a fan?

I do like Heroes and when I met Zack, I told him I was a fan of the show and fortunately he was a fan of Shaun of the Dead as well and so we had a bit of a mutual appreciation. He’s great, he’s very funny and very dry and if you only know him as Sylar, it’s very surprising when you meet him because he’s very different. He can’t chop the top of your head off either.

You get your own Scotty action figure, how cool was that?

I’ve seen it and it’s pretty cool actually. As a fan of those things as a kid, I had plenty of action figures. To actually be one is a great joy, well, it’s five - two Shaun of the Dead, a Doctor Who one and two Star Trek figures. Yes, I play with myself regularly.

Pegg on his birthday party plans

You’ve been making Tintin with Steven Spielberg, that must be a real honour?

It was great, he’s fantastic and everything I hoped he would be. It was an amazing treat to work with him and hear him tell stories and just get close to him and tell him how much his films mean to me.

Can you tell us what you’re doing?

Nick Frost and I are playing the Thomson twins, which are the moustachioed detectives with the bowler hats. Obviously a band named themselves after them. I told a couple of people I was playing one of the Thomson twins and they think I’m talking about the band. But they’re bumbling detectives that are nowhere as good as they think they are.

It’s all motion capture, so even though we are physically different, when you see us on screen we look exactly the same.

source : news.bbc.co.uk

Sutherland charged with assault Advertisement

Kiefer Sutherland reported to a lower Manhattan police station

Actor Kiefer Sutherland has been charged with assault after he allegedly head-butted a fashion designer at a nightclub in Manhattan, New York.

He turned himself in to police on Thursday after claims he attacked Jack McCollough at SubMercer in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The actor, 42, who stars in US TV drama 24, will face a minor assault charge in court on 22 June.

He is currently on probation over a conviction for drink-driving.

The alleged assault took place at a party following Monday night’s Met Costume Gala, attended by A-list stars including Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham.

Jail sentence

Mr McCollough, who works for the Proenza Schouler fashion house, says he was head-butted after an argument with Sutherland.

US reports have suggested Sutherland confronted Mr McCollough after he bumped into actress Brooke Shields.

Kiefer Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland is on probation over a drink-driving conviction

Police have said they might question Shields over the alleged attack.

Mr McCullough says he was left with a cut nose.

In January 2008, Sutherland left jail in California after serving a 48-day sentence for drink-driving.

He was jailed after pleading guilty to being over the legal alcohol limit after leaving a party.

As well as being jailed, he was put on five years’ probation.

The Canadian actor, who rose to fame in films including 1987 teenage vampire movie The Lost Boys, is best known for his role as counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer in 24.

He also starred in Flatliners, with ex-fiancee Julia Roberts, and legal drama A Few Good Men.

source : news.bbc.co.uk

The lawyer for R&B star Chris Brown has asked to see paperwork from a police investigation into how a photo of his former girlfriend Rihanna was leaked.

A photo of the bruised singer surfaced online following Mr Brown’s arrest in February for allegedly attacking her.Mark Geragos hopes to discredit police witnesses at a June preliminary hearing according to a motion filed this week.Mr Brown, 20, remains free on bail following his arrest on assault and criminal threat charges.

If convicted, he could potentially face more than four years in prison.

Injuries

Mr Brown was arrested after rowing with Rihanna in a parked car in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles on 7 February.the alleged incident left the Barbados-born star with facial injuries that forced her to cancel a scheduled performance at the Grammys later that day.

Mark Geragos with Chris Brown
Geragos (left) is one of America’s most high-profile attorneys

In his motion, Mr Geragos alleges that a Los Angeles Police Department officer sold the photo of Rihanna to celebrity gossip website TMZ.

“The purpose of the leak was necessarily for profit and to vilify Mr Brown and poison the potential jury pool,” he wrote.

Mr Geragos believes that if police files contain evidence of misconduct they may form a basis for the case against his client to be dismissed.

The motions are scheduled to be heard on 28 May.

Mark Geragos is one of the highest profile lawyers in the US whose clients have included Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder and Michael Jackson.

Last year, he was awarded $18m (£12m) damages from an air charter firm that secretly filmed him and Jackson in 2003.

source : news.bbc.co.uk

Google (GOOG) dominates Internet search, but a growing number of companies are trying to come up with something better. On May 15, British mathematician Stephen Wolfram plans to launch an online service intended to provide more useful answers to search queries than the standard list of Web pages. IBM (IBM) just took the wraps off a computer program designed to field questions well enough that it can compete on Jeopardy! with the game show’s best human contestants. And Microsoft (MSFT) is planning to relaunch its own search service this spring, though the details are top secret.

Why challenge a company that has crushed every contender to date? Certainly, rivals want a slice of Google’s $20 billion in search-related revenue. But they also see that search has loads of room for improvement. Too often, search engines return a list of Web sites people must comb through for information, and that’s if they get the right sites at all. The Google challengers, as well as Google itself, aim to divine the essence of what people are searching for and to provide answers that come closer to what they actually want than the standard list of blue Web site links.

These services have been hyped as “Google killers,” but they’re really no such thing. Google remains essential to most Internet users, and the new services are often more complementary than competitive. For its part, Google has been relentlessly tweaking its own search engine, trying to prevent others from getting a toehold. “It’s a huge challenge for anyone to break the Google habit,” says Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Web site Search Engine Land. “But there are a lot of things Google doesn’t do that are necessary, so there is a need for alternatives.”

The most ambitious is WolframAlpha, which takes a new approach to collecting information and presenting it. Its staff of 250 culls government and other public databases and crunches the data so they can be presented quickly as useful facts and figures. The idea is to “give everyone expert-level knowledge of everything,” says Wolfram.

For instance, a search on “New York Tokyo” gives you the populations of both cities, a map of their locations, and the estimated flying time between them. Search on “$100,000 at 5% ARM,” and you’ll see tables on mortgage payments and principal balances over time for several interest-rate scenarios. “When you’re doing [traditional] search, you’re being told: ‘Here are some places where you might look,’ ” says Wolfram. “We’re trying to compute answers for questions that people have.” It is hardly an all-purpose search tool, though. For many everyday queries, say, “Chicago restaurants,” WolframAlpha produces few helpful results or nothing at all.

Other startups are staking out new territories of data that Google hasn’t yet conquered. Twitter, which lets people post short public messages about what they’re doing or thinking, has just added a way to search all posts. Twitter has quickly become the go-to place to find out what’s happening in real time—from airplane crashes to the latest Apple (AAPL) rumors. Because it takes hours or days for Google to index most Web pages, the search giant’s results generally don’t offer the same immediacy.
USING FRIENDS

Perhaps the most promising new search enhancement is bringing people and their knowledge and contacts more overtly into the search results. The startup Aardvark, for instance, whose staff includes five former Google employees, lets people send questions by instant message or e-mail to friends whose social networking profiles show they’re knowledgeable about particular subjects. Ask Aardvark what’s the best off-road bicycle to buy, and a friend who’s a cyclist

Another startup, Mahalo.com, uses a staff of people instead of computer algorithms to organize search results for the most popular search terms. That helps eliminate unhelpful sites and save time.

Then there’s Microsoft, which has tried unsuccessfully for five years to slow Google. When the software giant relaunches its search engine later this spring, it’s likely to focus on giving people all the tools and sites they need to accomplish a given task, such as booking a hotel room in the city they’re flying to. “[Users are] looking for insight and knowledge rather than just links that navigate you to a Web site,” says Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice-president of Microsoft’s Online Audience Business Group.

Google isn’t standing still. Already, its searches usually return not just text links to Web sites but also photos, maps, and other information. On Mar. 24, Google unveiled a technology that helps it understand the meaning of words and their associations with similar words. For instance, if you search “Star Trek,” you get videos, news on the new movie, and a list of related searches at the bottom of the page, such as “spock star trek.” “You should expect to see great new things in the next few years,” says Udi Manber, Google’s vice-president of engineering for core search. “We should just solve your problem.”

But the main reason the new services face steep odds is that they’re not yet businesses—or not lucrative ones. Google’s huge impact was not so much in search technology but in perfecting a way to make a lot of money by matching relevant ads to search results. Wolfram says his company can profit in several ways, including by posting advertising alongside search results and by licensing WolframAlpha technology to companies to help them crunch internal data. He says he may yet turn to an established Internet company, such as Google or Yahoo! (YHOO), to develop the advertising business. “There are certainly discussions along those lines,” Wolfram says. “We’re open to all sorts of partnerships.”

source : www.businessweek.com

For the first time in more than a decade, ESPN is making a push into the regional sports business. But this time ESPN is going online, instead of offering a service on TV.

The launch a month ago of ESPN Chicago, a Web site for sports fanatics in the Windy City, has the potential to set off a digital war in regional sports as the existing stalwarts with local sports networks, Fox (NWS) and Comcast (CMCSA), prepare to fend off ESPN. Fox is launching new Web sites while Comcast is upping investment in its local sports sites, including expanded coverage. “I feel confident,” says Jon Litner, president of the Comcast Sports Group. “That’s because we’ve always been about local and we work where we live.”

ESPN executives say they have no plans at this time to roll out more local Web sites. But it really seems like a no-brainer for the sports media giant because it can pull off that strategy with minimal new investment.

Fans can’t seem to get enough sports online. Of 192 million unique visitors to the Internet in March, sports sites attracted about 80 million of them, according to Web tracker comScore (SCOR). The leading sites were Yahoo! Sports (YHOO), with 26 million visitors, followed by ESPN with 21 million.
ESPN Could Launch in L.A., Too

In Chicago, ESPN is using editorial content from its local AM radio station, WMVP—aka ESPN 1000—as well as from the ABC affiliate there, WLS-TV. (ESPN and ABC are both owned by Walt Disney (DIS).) Anchors from ESPN’s operations in Los Angeles and Bristol, Conn., do Chicago-centric video that is streamed as a Chicago SportsCenter and a local Baseball Tonight program on the site. ESPN.com writers are tapped to do Chicago-focused stories for the site and ESPN’s existing Chicago multiplatform advertising sales team is selling ads for the site. The advertisers are a mix of national and local businesses, ranging from StubHub and MillerCoors to Chicagojobs.com and Binnys Beverage Depot.

ESPN’s legacy Web offering in Chicago—the WMVP Web site, with much leaner offerings—is now part of the larger ESPN Chicago site. ESPN also owns radio stations in New York, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, where it might be able to replicate the Chicago model. In addition, the company has more than 300 affiliate stations.

Since its launch, ESPN Chicago has logged nearly 5 million page views from more than 1 million visitors, says John Kosner, ESPN’s senior vice-president and general manager of digital media. Kosner says the traffic is exceeding initial audience projections for the site by 300%.

“The whole idea here is to superserve Chicago sports fans,” Kosner says. “And they are passionate, so that’s one big reason why we decided to launch a trial there. We can take our infrastructure from our newly redesigned ESPN.com and deliver it on a modular basis in Chicago.”
Will ESPN Bid for Local TV Rights?

The launch couldn’t have come at a better time, with baseball season starting, the Bulls and the Blackhawks in the playoffs, and quarterback Jay Cutler being traded to the Chicago Bears. “And then, of course, there is the First Fan himself—Barack Obama—being so passionate about Chicago sports,” says Kosner.

Those who follow the sports business say such a move was inevitable. “This is just another way that ESPN is extending its brand,” says Neal Pilson, owner of sports media consultancy Pilson Communications, “and staying in touch with sports fans around the country on ever more platforms.” Pilson says the move to local raises the question about whether ESPN one day might bid for local sports TV rights now secured by Fox and Comcast. “It will be interesting to see where this leads them.”

ESPN has been predominantly a national brand and service with national rights deals. Back in 1998 it did attempt to enter the local sports market in Los Angeles through a channel to be called ESPN West. Those plans were abandoned when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought the Los Angeles Dodgers and secured the rights to broadcast the team’s games for its Fox regional sports network there.
Comcast Beefs Up Local Offerings

While Fox currently does not offer local Web sites for its 19 regional sports networks, it plans to begin rolling out city-specific online sites for those networks later this year. A Fox Sports spokesman says plans for local Web sites (it does operate foxsports.com, the fourth most visited sports site) were already in the works before ESPN Chicago launched.

In turn, Comcast, which operates 10 regional sports nets, just hired an executive to head its online strategy in local markets and to bolster those Web offerings. On May 6, Comcast’s Litner announced that Eric Grilly, formerly president of the Web site for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, would become executive vice-president and chief digital officer—a new post for Comcast Sports Group. Comcast is going head-to-head online with ESPN in Chicago through its regional sports network’s own Web site.

Between local bloggers, professional teams operating their own sports channels, and now even universities looking to launch 24/7 sports networks, the media market for hometown sports is becoming increasingly competitive. “What we do to distinguish ourselves is that we live, breathe, cry, shout right along with the fans, owners, and players in these cities,” says Comcast’s Litner. “We don’t parachute in on a Thursday night and pull out of town on Sunday. We’re there.”

source : www.businessweek.com

Chelyabinsk, Russia - At first glance, the Chelyabinsk Forge-and-Press Plant looks like a relic. A notice near the factory gate proudly relates how, in the grim winter of 1941, hundreds of men and women evacuated from Moscow built the facility from scratch. Inside the vast production halls, murals of Lenin and stern-jawed proletarians still gaze down on toiling workers. Overhead, a red banner proclaims: “Glory to the Working Class!”

These days, though, the plant serves more as a showcase of management smarts than as a model of socialist industry. Sure, sales of the factory’s auto parts and other forged-metal products are off by half since last summer, and the workforce has been cut from 4,400 to 3,500. But Andrey Gartung, the 26-year-old CEO, believes the global economic crisis offers an opportunity to boost productivity. This year he is adding new product lines, ordering every department to trim costs by 15%, and asking workers to ferret out waste wherever they find it—with prizes of up to $300 for the best ideas. “The companies that will survive are the ones that are efficient,” Gartung says.

Despite Russia’s 7%-plus economic growth recently, much of its industry is little changed from Soviet times. Factory productivity is just 16% of the U.S. level, according to Strategy Partners, a Moscow management consultancy. Over the years, a buoyant domestic market, high oil prices, and monopolies inherited from Soviet days let dinosaurs stay in business. But now some companies are changing.

Take Chelyabinsk Forge-and-Press: It remains Russia’s only producer of the huge wheels used on the Ural truck. And for years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the plant had few other customers. But in 2005, owner Valery Gartung, a former engineer at the factory and now a member of Parliament, put his 21-year-old son, Andrey, in charge. “Everybody was shocked,” says the junior Gartung, who holds a management degree from South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk but had little practical experience.

One of Gartung’s first decisions was to reduce the factory’s dependence on the Ural. He sought out untapped markets and added new products such as components for railways and the oil industry—just in time, it turns out, as Ural sales hit the skids late last year. Early attempts to interest foreigners in his wares didn’t go well: In 2006, Gartung says, a delegation from Daimler told him he’d be better off leveling the factory and starting over. But he persevered. This year exports will likely represent 8% of sales, up from 2% last year. By 2011 he’s aiming for 50%.

On the shop floor today you wouldn’t know the world is suffering an economic crisis. Workers proudly show off metal links produced for Koch, a German manufacturer of conveyor belts. In April the factory signed up ZF, a German company that builds transmissions and other parts for the likes of BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The Russians will make transmission gears for trucks. “The most important thing is that we now make far, far more kinds of parts,” says Alexander Gorkushka, a section head in the forge.
HOLISTIC VIEW

Much of the progress is due to Gartung’s decision to engage a consultancy called the Kaizen Institute. The firm, which evangelizes Toyota Motor’s (TM) production methods and counts Ford and Lockheed-Martin as clients, found plenty of inefficiencies at Chelyabinsk Forge-and-Press. Brian Saylor, a Kaizen senior consultant from Texas who started advising the plant in 2007, says the first thing he noticed was piles of unfinished products lying around. The factory was organized “to make as many pieces as they could at each operation, but not to work as a whole,” Saylor says. He recommended factorywide goals rather than production targets for individual employees.

The plant’s layout also forced workers to constantly step off the line to fetch parts. Simply by reorganizing production, Gartung managed to boost productivity 50% on some lines. He is trying similar changes in accounting, sales, and other white-collar departments, where countless hours are wasted on unnecessary paperwork.

That’s typical in Russia. “There’s an assumption that the more reports people make, the more the situation is under control,” says Konstantin Akimov, deputy managing director of Basic Element, a sprawling conglomerate. “In Japan, only the problems get reported to the top.” Akimov, a 37-year-old with an MBA from the University of Chicago, earned a reputation as a management whiz after turning around Poliar, the country’s largest maker of commercial refrigerators. There he doubled revenues by identifying production bottlenecks and figuring out which products were most profitable. “The biggest problem in Russia is that everybody’s busy, yet it may only be one section that needs to work harder,” Akimov says. Now he is attempting to use the same strategy at Basic Element.

For many Russian factories, it may be too late to change. Back in Chelyabinsk, Andrey Gartung gleefully predicts bankruptcy for his less nimble competitors. “Some companies are chronically incapable of making quality products,” he says. “Sooner or later, they’ll exit the market.”

Such a shakeout could be just what Russia needs to rid itself of its inherited industrial weaknesses and give dynamic companies the chance to grow. “The crisis has given a very positive push toward increasing efficiency,” says Alexander Idrisov, managing partner at consultancy Strategy Partners. “If you want to survive and emerge stronger from the crisis, you have no alternative.”

source : www.businessweek.com

During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.

Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President’s office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

I stated, “By nailing this petition to the door of the President’s office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges.”

After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice’s responsibility for war crimes — including torture — and for selling the illegal Iraq War:

As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice’s image on campus.

In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees’ office which demanded that Stanford “halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia.”

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military

source : www.huffingtonpost.com

Sweet sassy molassey! A column in the recent issue of D Magazine is freaking everybody out today, and with good reason! It contains the line:

From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.

Here’s the amazing part! The column was written by David Feherty, who is best known as CBS’ golf analyst. Yes. You read that correctly. CBS’ GOLF ANALYST. Talk about a good walk spoiled!

“Mr. Feherty’s violent comments about Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are disgusting,” said Media Matters president Eric Burns. “Suggesting that our troops would attack the leaders of the very democracy they’ve sworn to sacrifice their lives for is an insult to their integrity, honor, and professionalism. CBS Sports should demand its golf analyst apologize to our soldiers.”

OK, so: context! The line comes in a larger article about President George W. Bush and wife Laura moving to the Dallas suburb of Preston Hollow, and if I could sum up the theme of Feherty’s piece in a sentence, it would be: “I, David Feherty, have an intense loathing of everyone who lives in this community and very soon, President Bush shall know of my pain and despair.”

And now, a mea culpa! This article by Feherty is part of a larger collection of ruminations on Bush 43’s return to Texas that have been available online for a long time, and which I mentioned back in the beginning of April. Somehow, and I don’t remember how, Feherty’s contribution to this effort escaped my attention. I sort of feel bad about this now, I can tell you!

Anyway, among the great works of Feherty that I haven’t read is a book called An Idiot For All Seasons, so maybe he was encouraged to go for broke, throw every last stitch of intense, crazyfaced emotion he had in him at the page, and managed to strike gold with his insane Nancy Pelosi death fantasy. Here’s a Brief and Lamentable Collection of Wackery that didn’t quite rise to that level:

…I mean, what a nightmare of a time that was to be president of the United States! His two terms must have felt like the rest of the world had inserted the Washington Monument into him and it was his job to heave it out….

…I hate my neighbors because of their very proximity, or at least I hate the ones that want to talk to me who aren’t doctors or gun dealers or who don’t have their own airplanes….

…If I have to visit someone, he had better either be in jail or the hospital, and to be honest I’d prefer jail. I do golf commentary on CBS and sometimes star in television commercials wherein I jump on a trampoline while wearing a skirt….

.No, when I make it home, I slam the door behind me and peek out the letterbox to see if I’ve been spotted by any of the bastards who live nearby….

…Even with their Secret Service entourage, the Bushes are going to be besieged by herds of North Dallas McMansion-dwellers, more brown-nosed and full of BS than any longhorn. Nouveaux riche and face-lifted old-monied fossils alike will descend upon them like ants to the honeypot every time they set foot outside their door….

Feherty also offers us a brief glimpse into his political views:

I believe in the death penalty, especially for pro-lifers, child molesters, those opposed to gay marriage, and for stupid dancing in the end zone. I believe in the abolition of estate taxes and the Pickens Plan. I’d lower the legal drinking age and raise the driving age to 18 nationwide, make Kinky Friedman governor of Texas, and make all schools, public and private, start earlier with one hour of physical exercise.

So there you have it. Now you know what Crash Davis’ “I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days” monologue would have sounded like if it had been spoken by a thoroughly insane golf analyst, and not Kevin Costner.

Former Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes and 21 other protesters were arrested this morning when they refused to leave the Notre Dame campus during a protest of President Obama’s upcoming commencement address there, authorities said.

Keyes and the others were arrested on trespassing charges when they refused to leave campus, a university spokesman said. All 22 were being held in the St. Joseph County Jail on misdemeanor criminal trespass charges, in lieu of $250 bond each, said St. Joseph County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bill Redman.

Keyes was among a group of 26 protesters, some of them pushing baby carriages with dolls covered in fake blood, who entered the campus and were greeted by Notre Dame police, said university spokesman Dennis Brown.

The protesters had “publicized their intentions in advance,” and were handed notices advising them that university policy bans protests unless they are organized by student groups and approved in advance, Brown said.

University policy is to arrest anyone who refuses to leave campus after being notified of the policy, and Keyes and other protesters who stayed were arrested about 12:15 p.m. Eastern Time, he said.

“We’ve got a long established policy that only members of the university community can organize or lead a protest, and they have to be approved by our office of student affairs,” Brown said.

The first protester was booked on a trespassing charge at the St. Joseph County Jail at 1:14 p.m., Redman said. The protesters were a mix of local residents and others from out of state, he said.

Those arrested would appear in St. Joseph County Court next Monday if they fail to make bond, he said.

Notre Dame announced earlier this spring that Obama would be the commencement speaker at its May 17 graduation ceremony. Since then, Notre Dame, a Catholic university, has become the target of protests by groups who say Obama’s stance on abortion should disqualify him from speaking at a Catholic institution.

Activists including Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion rights group Operation Rescue, who was arrested at the campus last Friday, have begun targeting the school for protests in recent weeks. A student group, Notre Dame Response, has organized its own protests regarding Obama’s visit.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this afternoon that Obama had no plans to decline an honorary degree that will be given to him as part of his appearance at Notre Dame. Such an honor has been especially troubling to some opponents of his appearance at the school.

“We are honored to have received the invitation,” Gibbs said. “Notre Dame has a good history of robust, civic debate and the president looks forward to speaking to the graduating class.”

Gibbs said Obama planned to “accept the degree, and come back to the White House.”

source: www.huffingtonpost.com