Day: August 26, 2010

Jim Brown

Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

BLOWHARD PROSECUTORS V.S. BLOWHARD BLAGOJEVICH WHO’S GUILTY?

The score right now stands at former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich 23, federal prosecutors 1. The feds charged Blagojevich with everything but the kitchen sink, including shaking down a children’s hospital and selling the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by President Obama. With twenty-four felony counts against him, and after all the melodrama and hype by the prosecutors, he was convicted of the least serious change, and that could well be thrown out on appeal. So what do we have here — prosecutors gone wild?

A number of newspapers are sharply criticizing lead prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, editorializing that this grandstanding justice department lawyer was on a personal vendetta to bolster his own overblown ego. From day one, Fitzgerald has been “over the top” with his prejudicial pubic statements about the case.

When Blagojevich was first charged, Fitzgerald arranged to have the sitting governor arrested before dawn, like some thug accused of violent crimes, ready to blow town at a moment’s notice. At his grandstanding press conference, the U.S. Attorney spoke of “what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree,” accusing Blagojevich “of the most appalling conduct” that would have “Lincoln rollover in his grave… It was a truly new low,” Fitzgerald told the nation. Continue reading “Jim Brown”

In a jam – toe and traffic

If you’re having “one of those days” and totally frustrated, think how you’d feel if caught in China’s massive traffic jam could last for weeks or confronted with the question: Will Footsies During a Deposition Lead to Sanctions?

Triggered by road construction, the snarl-up began 10 days ago and was 60 miles long at one point. Reaching almost to the outskirts of Beijing, traffic still creeps along in fits and starts, and the crisis could last for another three weeks, authorities say…

In the worst-hit stretches of the road in northern China, drivers pass the time sitting in the shade of their immobilized trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors. Many of the trucks that carry fruit and vegetables are unrefrigerated, and the cargoes are assumed to be rotting.

On Sunday, the eighth day of the near-standstill, trucks moved less than a mile on the worst section, said Zhang Minghai, a traffic director in Zhangjiakou, a city about 90 miles northwest of Beijing. China Central Television reported Tuesday that some vehicles had been stuck for five days.

No portable toilets were set up along the highway, leaving only two apparent options – hike to a service area or into the fields. But there were no reports of violent road rage, and the main complaint heard from drivers was about villagers on bicycles making a killing selling boxed lunches, bottled water to drink and heated water for noodles…

The main reason traffic has increased on this partially four-lane highway is the opening of coal mines in the northwest, vital for the booming economy that this month surpassed Japan’s in size and is now second only to America’s…Although wages remain generally low, auto ownership and gridlock have grown so commonplace that Inner Mongolia authorities restrict cars’ movement to alternate days, based on odd or even numbers in their license plates.

Do you suppose the Brown Sims attorney who found himself in a toe jam has odd numbers on his license plate?  Above the Law has the story: Continue reading “In a jam – toe and traffic”

“Sparkle & Twang” – if you dress ’em up, you can take ’em out!

Mississippi Public Broadcasting has the story on Sparkle & Twang, on exhibit at Meridian’s Riley Center through September 18th:

“Country music history began in Mississippi with a man named Jimmie Rodgers in Meridian. Now, another Mississippian, country music star, preservationist and historian Marty Stuart is bringing his flashy collection of country music history back to the place where it all started…

Memories are the what the exhibit is all about. It’s called “Sparkle and Twang” and it celebrates country music history in all it’s gliz and glory. It includes Johnny Cash’s guitars, Hank Williams’ report card and handwritten lyrics to some of his greatest songs, a railroad lantern once owned by Jimmie Rodgers, and Patsy Cline’s makeup case and boots.

And then as a centerpiece, there are all those rhinestone studded stage outfits worn by the likes of Porter Waggoner and Webb Pierce.

The exhibit has toured the country. In addition to showing in Nashville, it’s been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the Gene Autry Museum in Los Angeles… Continue reading ““Sparkle & Twang” – if you dress ’em up, you can take ’em out!”