[SBNATION] Tuesday, the FBI shocked the sports world by announcing bribery and fraud charges against four prominent college basketball assistant coaches and six peripheral hoops figures, implicating Adidas in a player-payments scheme, putting NCAA-probation'd Louisville in some really dangerous territory, and promising more names to come.
The shock wasn't learning how college hoops works. The sport long ago turned over its pre-college circuit to shoe companies and agency runners. It was jarring to see the breadth of the investigation, to notice the level of detail and leak-proof professionalism that an NCAA investigation typically lacks, and to realize the feds cared about routine recruiting transactions in the first place. Oh, and we got hard numbers for what star one-and-dones can make up front: $100,000 and $150,000, in a couple cases.
So far, the probe includes only basketball, at least publicly. When FBI assistant director William Sweeney said, "we have your playbook," he was referring to hoops' use of eventual apparel sponsorship deals to steer recruits toward certain universities. That's been a hidden-in-plain-sight element of college basketball that's rarely even been alleged in, say, football.
Football payments to players are a little less structured. It still happens, and allegations of six-figure offers still abound. But in football, the NCAA-created black market is filled less by apparel/agency types who want to make money and more by sports fans who want to see their teams win (and yeah, there are exceptions on both sides). With that, we turn once again to Steven Godfrey's "Meet the Bag Man:"
[BB4SP] The NFL purposefully choosing “Gold Star Mothers Day” to have their own protest that is the most hateful, vile, disrespectful action, I have ever seen in my lifetime. All my respect and admiration goes to Allan Jones.
Hardwick Clothing is America’s oldest suit maker.
In his statement, Jones said, “Our companies will not condone unpatriotic behavior!”
The Times Free Press reported: Two years ago, Cleveland, Tenn., businessman Allan Jones was proudly showing off his newly acquired Hardwick Clothing-brand suits by providing the wardrobe for NBC’s on-air talent during the network’s broadcasts of NFL football games.
But after NFL players and coaches challenged President Donald Trump and many took a knee during the national anthem played before their games over the weekend, Jones said he is through sponsoring the wardrobes or advertising on stations that air the National Football League.
Jones, CEO of the payday lending chain Check Into Cash and owner of Hardwick Clothes — America’s oldest suit maker — tweeted his criticism and change of heart Tuesday.
#1
Yeah, but he's doing it on principle. It'll take a drastic ratings drop to get the big boys to pull their ads. They're far less interested in principle than the bottom line. They'll probably hold on for a while even after the ratings drop. But when they do go the NFL will be hurting very badly.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/28/2017 14:50 Comments ||
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[DAWN] FOR the first time in many a decade, the far right will have a vocal presence in Germany’s parliament, after Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) exceeded expectations in last Sunday’s elections by winning almost 13 per cent of the popular vote, which entitles it to 88 seats in the Bundestag.
The centrist parties ‐ Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom... ’s Christian Democrats (CDU) alongside their Bavarian sister party, the somewhat more conservative CSU, as well as the Social Democrats (SPD) ‐ mustered their lowest shares of the vote since the 1940s. Jointly, their parliamentary representation is more than enough to carry on governing the country as a ’grand coalition’, but the SPD has opted out of maintaining the trend.
Its primary motivation may be self-centred, insofar as it hopes greater ’product differentiation’ could improve the party’s chances of reviving its fortunes, but the move will have the decidedly positive side-effect of denying the AfD the right to claim the mantle of the largest opposition party.
It poses a challenge, though, for Angela Merkel, whose status as chancellor remains unchallenged, but who is now obliged to forge a new coalition. With 33pc of the vote, the CDU/CSU alliance will need to co-opt two of the smaller parties in order to obtain a working majority. The only feasible option in this respect is a ’Jamaican coalition’, wedding the CDU/CSU’s black insignia to the yellow of the classically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which returns to the Bundestag after dropping below the 5pc threshold in 2013, and the natural colour of the Greens.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/28/2017 00:00 ||
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[CNN] At least one of the Facebook ads bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, sources with knowledge of the ads told CNN. Chesimard still enjoying sanctuary in Communist Cuba is she ?
Ferguson and Baltimore had gained widespread attention for the large and violent protests over police shootings of black men.
The decision to target the ad in those two cities offers the first look at how accounts linked to the Russian government-affiliated troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency used geographically targeted advertising to sow political chaos in the United States, the sources said.
Facebook has previously said that roughly one-quarter of the 3,000 ads bought by the agency were geographically targeted, but it has not revealed any specific locations. Facebook has also not revealed which demographic groups and interest groups were targeted by the ads. The digging into this 'inconvenient truth' must stop immediately. All files must be sealed and placed alongside the Soetoro passports and college transcripts for 65 years.
In the Weekly Standard, one Dominic Green writes that "there is no reason why an independent state in Iraqi Kurdistan should destabilize the region." Mr. Green means well--he supports the Kurds, as do I--but the root of our problem lies in our misguided desire for stability. Of course a Kurdish state will destabilize the region. That's precisely why we should support Kurdish national aspirations, although we may have to take care to keep the control rods in the fission pile. Our problem is that we have diplomats and generals who don't want to make waves, and we face opponents who know how to shift the burden of uncertainty onto us.
At a twenty-year horizon neither Turkey nor Iran can be stabilized, for demographic reasons I have detailed in Asia Times. Iraq and Syria, the twin products of Sykes-Picot colonial state-construction, cannot be put back together again. What Vladimir Putin understands well, and we refuse even to consider is that the question isn't whether chaos, but whose.
[Washington Examiner] Since 1979, the State Department has maintained a State Sponsor of Terrorism list.
Three laws inform the designation: (1) The Export Administration Act of 1979; (2) The Arms Export Control Act; and (3) the Foreign Assistance Act. If the secretary of state determines a country "has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism," onto the list it goes. Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, and Syria were charter members of the list, and Cuba, Iran, and North Korea all joined in the 1980s. In 1993, Secretary of State Warren Christopher added Sudan, which at the time hosted Osama Bin Laden.
Over the next several years, however, the State Department removed most countries: South Yemen left the list in 1990 when, upon Yemeni unification, it ceased to exist, and Iraq was removed after Saddam Hussein's ouster. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice removed both Libya and North Korea less because either state abandoned terrorism, and more to advance unrelated diplomatic initiatives. Secretary of State John Kerry acted similarly with regard to Cuba.
Today, only Iran, Syria, and Sudan remain listed, and it's likely that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will remove Sudan soon. The shrinking of the state sponsorship list against the backdrop of worsening terrorism, much of it supported by governments, highlights how subjective short-term diplomatic considerations corrupt what should be a tool to pressure states to stop using terror.
It's time to return the terror list to its original purpose: calling out states which embrace terrorism, no matter whether they are U.S. allies or not. Certainly, Iran and Syria deserve to be on the list. The Palestinian Authority would too, if it was a state. Rice removed North Korea for all the wrong reasons, and the Trump administration should rectify that mistake. But, what about the other countries that have never been on the list but deserve to be?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
