….Friday.
February 29th, 2008’s bissextile day, or the extra day contained in a (this) leap year, is today:
Friday, 2/29/08.
(And you thought I was going to carry on about sex change operations or same-sex marriages or both!)
Generally speaking, unless there’s an extraordinary circumstance or anomoly adverse to the essential American criminal justice system, lying under oath is perjury, a Felony 1. That’s time, at the least, with a hefty fine afterwards–with heavy IRS scrutiny along the way. Anyway Roger views it, it’s non-plea-bargainable time.
As the wheels grind, and as I shared in a post a month or two ago, Clemens is going down. Just how far down is for a grand jury to decide.
Will MLB strip him or ‘asterix’ him after winning a whole bunch of Cy Young awards, and will his strikeout total mean anything more than a bad dream? I couldn’t tell you. The MLB ‘judging’ its players is akin to The Gestapo adhering to cleanliness standards at Dachau.
What matters here is that this is United States Justice Department, baby. These guys have nailed some pretty big fish in their day. They’ve sentenced big names, dwarf the IRS in resources, outgun and outman any other government organization, and can deploy over twice the manpower and budget as the CIA and FBI combined.
They’re going to NAIL Roger’s artificially enhanced ass. He’s going down, folks. As for his jury trial that’s as sure to come as the sun rising around the spherical orb we sit upon…
…we can thank Roger for his final act — his ONLY meaningful act (of perjury) — that we’ll honestly remember him for. For now, though, let’s see what a ’steroidless’ Roger can do with the ball–he sure can’t ‘hide it’ anymore.
In the twenties, not very many silent picture stars were able to switch from silent pics to sound. Megastar John Gilbert, for instance, had a high sqeaky voice. Hollywood (silent) screen superstarlet Lilian Gish got emotionally distressed by the pressures of the agents and such that full-feature ’soundies’ brought with them.
Even tougher, though, was the relatively small, relatively underpaid Vaudeville acts. The essential venues where on Broadway, not Hollywood, where all the production money and talent scouts were. A colleague of violinst Larry Fine and Fine’s producer Ted Healy (as in ‘Larry’ of the Three Stooges), Burt Lahr played for sold-out audiences every show in which he performed his comedy routine, even donning animal costumes…
…including that of a cowardly lion.
Lahr indeed made it to Hollywood as a bona-fide star, and will remain as a member of the elite and tiny group of performers ever to accomplish such an act. An eventual Oscar winner, we know Lahr, of course, as the Cowardly Lion with the Brooklyn brougue who once kept a very grateful–and very young–Judy Garland under his wing. If Lahr’s biographers were so much as halfway accurate, this man was a darned friendly guy, and lived the epitome of recovery through a rather nasty youth–the definition of ‘recovery’ here being somebody to turn sadness into greatness.
Forbes mag is in a tough spot. As a magazine that touts as much positive energy about the American (World) economy and industries, they rather stumble upon a downside (downSIDE, not downSIZE) now and again.
This is the piece of journalism, folks, that have lionized ‘greats’ like the Indians Vakram Talwar and Bharat Desai, both of whom you’ve never heard of. Let’s throw in the name Raj Gupta, a CEO who also hails from India. (more…)
From the Latin word ‘decreet’, a decision or ruling, comes the English word decree. ‘Judicial Decree’ is one way that laws are made; a magistrate, and not an elected body, drops a gavel on a ruling and it becomes law. The divorce decree has withstood the test of judicial precedent (meaning that it’s been enacted and not overruled as unconstitutional) and of the bewildering number of attempts to knock gender bias out of it. Like it or not, the judicial precedent of the awarding of custody of children is here to stay. (more…)
I wouldn’t be saying anything about this or any post office in America–you’ve heard me advocate ’snail mail’ bill paying to keep First Class mail volume high so as to prevent layoffs of people who make more money per hour than they could possibly make elsewhere.
Here, though, is the exeption to my rule on that. On Sanibel/Captiva, there are two (2) post offices, one north (Captiva) and one south (Sanibel). One US Post Office mail courier truck stops at each station two times daily five days a week, plus not one, but two times daily on Saturday. The driver(s)-usually only one–scoops out the boxes on the island (there’s six from what I counted on the island), plus, of course, all the letters and packages from the stations. (more…)