Chelsea to visit Stanford, with Club America

Old news now, but Chelsea are coming!

When English Premier League power Chelsea faces Mexico's popular Club America on July 14, the London soccer club's business chief is certain that every one of the 50,000 seats at Stanford Stadium will be occupied.

"We're expecting it to be sold out for sure," Chelsea business affairs director Paul Smith said Thursday at a news conference officially announcing the exhibition match.

Chelsea is promoting the game but says it won't be pocketing much money because it must pay Club America an up-front fee and split revenues with Stanford.

Smith said Chelsea had another reason for visiting: branding.

The number of Chelsea fans in England, Smith said, "has reached a finite level."

Being Ali or Being Owned

If you haven't read Dave Zirin before, do it now. Check out his open letter to Lebron:

At the tender age of 22, you have the galactic talent to make us wonder if a mad scientist had Magic and MJ genetically spliced. But talent ain't wisdom. In a recent interview, you said that your goal in sports was to become "the richest man on earth." You also told ESPN, "I'm trying to be a global icon...on the level of Muhammad Ali." These dreams are compatible only if you choose to emulate Ali the icon and not Ali the man.

If you're a sports fan, I highly recommend this book.

Bush Fires A Few Good Men

...or at least one man who did lots of good for common soldiers, and lots of evil for Republicans, but it was when he stopped doing evil for Republicans that Bush showed him the door:

We turn to the latest in the US attorney firing scandal. Nearly half of the US attorneys slated for removal by the Bush administration last year were targeted for not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud. According to the Washington Post, of the twelve US attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by presidential advisor Karl Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud: Kansas City, Milwaukee, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were fired.

...

AMY GOODMAN: And that was the excerpt of A Few Good Men from Greg Palast’s piece. Greg Palast, investigative journalist, his latest book just out on paperback called Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans, Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Greg Palast joins us in the studio now.

Greg, I just want to start where you left off and started this film: A Few Good Men. I don't think most people understand this about David Iglesias.

GREG PALAST: Yes, well, Iglesias was the guy played by Tom Cruise in the film A Few Good Men, which is a real story about how a young military attorney stood up to military brass to uncover the truth. And somehow they thought that this -- you know, this Tom --

As Chomsky has mentioned, when the President of the United States can break multiple serious domestic and international laws at will, one has to question whether the phrase 'the rule of law' still has any meaning.

Man, they totally politicized the inJustice Department. I knew that already, but I didn't know it was this bad. I guess I should have.

But...they fired Tom Fuckin Cruise? The Tom Cruise lawyer character in A Few Good Men? The hero of the movie? Shit is bizarre. Which is about par for the course for Bush.

SFist's rita joins jon in the Rape/Murder Cheap Laughs Parade

Let's just say I don't think it's cool make light of someone else's extreme suffering. And SFist has a running policy, it seems, of doing just that. The latest installment comes from 'rita', who had this to say:

And in other clusters of crime news -- not only did Berkeley chalk up its first murder of 2007 this weekend, there was two other incidents early Monday morning in the middle of the city, where a man first stabbed a woman in the arm (on Milvia and Dwight) and then stabbed two firefighters at the firehouse on Shattuck and Derby 15 minutes later. He had gotten into the fire house because the door had been left open by crews going out to treat the first victim. The man was later found, by search dogs, hiding under someone's patio on Milvia and Parker.

Granted - upon first reading, without prior knowledge of SFist's "watch how cool I can be by acting crudely in the face of some person i don't know getting raped and/or murdered" ways - this particular 'chalk' statement is not so bad, but read a few days and you'll see a trend. And it is not as if all moral conscience has left the authors of SFist - on the contrary, it seems they go out of their way to lampoon the suffering of others.

Anyone can say whatever they want, of course, but we all have to decide what type of society we want to live in. If you think white supremecy is a good thing, by all means say it loud and proud. If you are into getting over on the victims of rape and murder, go for yours and congratulate the authors of SFist.com for their good work. And if you don't approve of these things - do you part and publicly condemn them.

I submitted a comment and am quite certain it will not survive. I think the appropriate characterization is 'bent':

the way you fuckin losers talk about rape and murder, one could easily be led to believe that you are celebrating. what fuckin assholes you all are. are even Republicans that fucking sadistic?

chalk that up, bitches.

[2] Posted by: Peter | May 8, 2007 2:27 PM