July 14, 2012

Eugene Robinson: Forget his success — Paterno failed the only test that mattered

Outside the Penn State football stadium stands a statue of legendary coach Joe Paterno, his arm raised in victory. Right next to it, university officials should erect another figure in bronze: A young boy crying out in anguish and being coldly ignored.
    
Penn State's Board of Trustees commissioned former FBI Director Louis Freeh to investigate how child molester Jerry Sandusky — for years one of Paterno's most trusted and loyal assistants — could have committed his awful crimes under the noses of university officials. The answer is simple and shocking: Those officials simply looked the other way.
    
"The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims," the report states. "Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University ... failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade."
    
Those four powerful officials include Paterno, who died earlier this year of lung cancer. Almost literally a sainted figure in the world of big-time, big-money college sports, Paterno became aware of seriously inappropriate behavior by Sandusky with young boys at least 14 years ago, according to Freeh's report. Paterno's inaction was shameful.
<snip>
more:
http://www.postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1502487

Word!

July 14, 2012

The Deadspin 5 point plan to punish PSU and not shut down the FB program: (NSFW language)

<snip>
HOWEVER, we at Deadspin do not endorse such extreme measures. Nor do we consider the abolition of PSU football to be a good idea. And it's not because we think that it would unjustly punish the current players or coaches. Fuck them. I could give a shit about their feelings. The problem is that if you abolish PSU football, you're essentially giving the school the martyr complex it so desperately craves. You're giving the school a reason to become even more embittered and more insular. The cries of injustice would instantly override any lingering sadness and shame stemming from Joe Paterno's death and the Freeh Report. You don't want that. You don't want Penn State to become even more warped than it already is.

Furthermore, getting rid of Penn State football means giving it an unjustified clean slate once it returns. You can already see the narrative coming. That first win for Penn State after their return from the death penalty will be treated like fucking Hoosiers. There will be any number of soft-focus Tom Rinaldi pieces about the program rising from the ashes. THE FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE SPORTS YEAR. That one- or two-year death penalty would essentially serve as a shortcut to the program's redemption. They wouldn't have to do much of anything to generate a decent comeback narrative. They'd just simply have to begin existing again. And Penn State doesn't deserve such shortcuts. That's why, instead, we offer the following five-step plan.

(Read the details for each point)
1. Keep playing football. With one caveat...
2. No more Grand Experiment. That phrase alone makes me wanna throw up in a sand bucket. No more hypocrisy. No more pretending you're better than anyone else
<snip>
3. Change the school name. Pennsylvania Tech. Remember when ValuJet had that crash that killed Rodney Culver and everyone was like, "Fuck that, I'm never flying ValuJet again"? And then they changed their name to AirTran and everything was hunky dory (except for the fact that AirTran kinda blows)? That's you, Penn State.
<snip>
4. Sell out. The Paterno Library becomes the Verizon Library Built By The Home Depot. And we can finally pick up those swooshes on the jerseys and slap them right on the helmets. With a bunch of little swoosh stickers on the back for every slobberknocker hit: I JUST DID IT®! No more of this, "Our uniforms are simple because we're good simple folk" bullshit.
<snip>
5. The first person to cry out WE ARE PENN TECH gets tased. That's just common sense. It's gonna big a big change for you old PSU fans, but I think you'll comforted by the fact that you still have a football program, and that your football program will never again have its head up its own ass.
http://deadspin.com/5925757/the-deadspin-five+point-plan-to-rescue-penn-state-football

This IS punishment.

July 14, 2012

Mother smacks down her son on Facebook after he expresses his devotion to JoePa:

http://deadspin.com/5925921/in+denial-paterno-fan-gets-facebook-smackdown-from-his-mother

Now that's swift punishment!

July 14, 2012

PSU ignored the federal Clery Act for SIXTEEN YEARS.

Sixteen years after the Clery Act went into effect — and even as a child sexual predator roamed its main campus — Penn State was still twiddling its thumbs.
<snip>
Jeanne Clery was a 19-year-old freshman at Lehigh University in Bethlehem when she was raped and murdered in 1986. Her murder — at the hands of another Lehigh student who entered her dormitory through a propped-open door — highlighted the underreporting of crime on college campuses.

Among other provisions, the law enacted in her name requires universities to collect crime statistics and provide public warnings of Clery crimes, a category that includes sexual assaults.
It also requires campus security authorities — a group that includes the director of athletics and team coaches — to report crimes to the university police department.

In the 17 years after the law’s passage by Congress, the lone staffer at Penn State tasked with Clery Act compliance was not provided with formal training, nor was he aware of many of the university’s obligations.
<snip>
In 2009, Penn State failed to conduct background checks on 234 of the 735 coaches paid to work at summer sports camps before the camps began.
<snip>
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/07/is_penn_state_lacking_in_its_c.html#cmpid=v2modk_be_smoref_twitt

Bastids!
The Feds can really smack them because of this inaction.

July 14, 2012

Why the PSU football program should be shut down:

<snip>
Redd was then asked what kind of message his unconditional support for Paterno sends when so many people are outraged about the coach's actions.

"They don't know him like how we know him," the running back said. "I mean, opinion is opinion, everyone is going to have one."
<snip>
"I was in 2nd grade in 2001, so it has nothing to do with me," Redd said.

Linebacker Michael Mauti said he didn't turn on the TV on Thursday or Friday because his only concern is getting ready for football.

"It's just a distraction, just like anything else," Mauti said of the media coverage of the scandal. "I'm worried about what we're doing this year, I'm worried about our team and how we can get better for the season."
<snip>
http://altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/562448/PSU-players-still-support-Paterno---He-s-the-best-college-football-coach-ever---says-Redd.html?nav=5017

They don't get it, and they don't care. Many of the football player alums are just as bad.

This horror is being minimized by a lot of people. If this kind of crime can be excused or ignored, then what does that say about the culture that enabled it. There are many people in the athletic department for years. There are also people with ties to JoePa all through the PSU. Many would support him unquestioningly if he was still there.

They need to shut down this program and put all of it througMh extreme scrutiny. This will slap people upside the head and maybe get them to just begin to see how terrible this was. A lot of people think it's just one failure in JVP's life. They do not understand that untold numbers of lives were ruined because he failed to act.

PATERNO failed. Others failed right along with him, but he was the paragon of virtue held up for all to admire. It's time to at least get people to stop and realize what unquestioned power can lead to.

Everybody is talking about Paterno. I have been too. It's past time to talk about the victims and what happened to them. It's time to put their suffering in the spotlight. (I don't mean drag the victims out to go over it ad nauseum. Some are talking. The trial transcripts will suffice. Other victims of abuse from groups who are speaking should be on teevee not Jay Paterno.)

Everybody talks about the suffering the players will go through if there is no football. That's a year of inconvenience as they sort out their athletic options. It's not even in the same universe as the suffering of the victims.

July 14, 2012

Mitt's Political Vortex (The Mitt Boson-my term))

The entire column is funny.
...........
Do you think it’s a coincidence that ever since the world’s physicists announced that they had discovered a possible breakthrough in the study of mass and energy last week, our politics has taken on a kind of black-hole quality?

First, Bain Capital. Let’s see if we can get this straight. In 1999, Mitt Romney quit his hypersuccessful financial career at the private-equity firm in order to run the troubled Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. “I would walk away from my leadership at Bain Capital at the height of its profitability and take a position without compensation,” he wrote in his book “Turnaround.”

He was out, gone — walked away. Get it? It is very important that you do because given the hysteria with which the Romney campaign is defending this 1999 termination marker, you would think that in the next few years Bain had embarked on a new and lucrative path involving the slave labor of My Little Ponies.
<snip>
So to summarize: Romney was at Bain after 1999, but not necessarily in the sense of occupying physical space. He was employed by folks in Utah, but not in the sense of the people who made out his paycheck.

If we ever manage to really get our heads around Higgs boson, perhaps we will also be able to understand the Mitt Romney Olympics period.
<snip>
The Republicans currently have a symbolic legislative agenda and a presidential candidate who can be in two places at one time, but whom nobody likes.

Other than that, it’s all good. Nobody’s brought up the dog on the car roof for days.
more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/collins-mitts-political-vortex.html?smid=tw-nytimescollins&seid=auto

Loves me some Gail Collins.
She has a Phd in Political Physics.

July 14, 2012

Paterno Won Sweeter Deal Even as Scandal Played Out (won=blackmailed some for)

In January 2011, Joe Paterno learned prosecutors were investigating his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for sexually assaulting young boys. Soon, Mr. Paterno had testified before a grand jury, and the rough outlines of what would become a giant scandal had been published in a local newspaper.
That same month, Mr. Paterno, the football coach at Penn State, began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract, with the timing something of a surprise because the contract was not set to expire until the end of 2012, according to university documents and people with knowledge of the discussions. By August, Mr. Paterno and the university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation, had reached an agreement.

Mr. Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.

The university’s full board of trustees was kept in the dark about the arrangement until November, when Mr. Sandusky was arrested.
<snip>
In the end, the board of trustees — bombarded with hate mail and threatened with a defamation lawsuit by Mr. Paterno’s family — gave the family virtually everything it wanted, with a package worth roughly $5.5 million. Documents show that the board even tossed in some extras that the family demanded, like the use of specialized hydrotherapy massage equipment for Mr. Paterno’s wife at the university’s Lasch Building, where Mr. Sandusky had molested a number of his victims.

The details of Mr. Paterno and his family’s fight for money seem to deepen one of the lasting truths of the Sandusky scandal: the significant power that Mr. Paterno exerted on the state institution, its officials, its alumni and its purse strings.
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/sports/ncaafootball/joe-paterno-got-richer-contract-amid-jerry-sandusky-inquiry.html?_r=1

He knew the shitstorm was coming. He wanted everything he could get. I'll bet they had lawyers working overtime to find ways to shield their money from lawsuits. BTW the Patern's have a 3.2M beach house. And he was such a simple man.

I hope lawsuits wring every penny out of them.
They fight for every penny while who knows how many victims never got help.
ASSHOLES!

July 13, 2012

Think the Freeh Report is the end of the Sandusky case investigations? Think again:

<snip>
While the state grand jury continues to meet, federal investigators are also investigating and appear to be focusing on areas the state’s case hasn’t gone — Penn State and The Second Mile. The NCAA opened an inquiry, and the U.S. Department of Education is investigating Clery Act compliance.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/07/analysis_fbi_director_louis_fr.html

There is more shite heading their way. Good!

July 13, 2012

My old furbaby kitteh is stone deaf.

She is 15 years old and still chases a laser pointer all over the place. She looks about the same, but she can't hear a thing.

Her name is Scat. I can stand 3 feet from her and shout. She doesn't move a muscle. If there is no visible sign or vibration, she doesn't move. I shake where she is sleeping to wake her up. I don't want her to be dreaming about eating a mouse and suddenly find my hand as a substitute.

She doesn't act much differently if you aren't watching. She has no clue I am around sometimes. Her sister Mouse can be quite the terror. I haven't seen any abnormal interaction because she is taking advantage of the situation. I think that Scat has long had a 'Mouse sensor' in order to survive.

So on we go. Mouse can't see. Scat can't hear. I am hopeless in many areas. Nothing like living in a M*A*S*H unit.
Mouse

Scat


Edit to add: they were found in a dumpster and taken to my vet. They called me, and I would have taken them if they had had 3 heads. They could eat solid food. However, they were too tiny to get in a regular litter box. I had to get an aluminum pan for them until they grew some.

July 12, 2012

Jay Paterno on ESPN:

"Joe did not cover anything up.
There are other investigations, and we have to wait for all the facts."

Dear Jay,
I don't think you are going to like any new facts either.
Quit digging.(Law of Holes)