July 23, 2015

Gaming the system--the high school transfer system has been abused for decades

Part 1 of 4:

Part 1: Gaming the system Transfer system has been abused for decades, and that won’t end anytime soon
Part 2: No new trick UIL has tried to rein in Texas high school athlete recruiting before
Part 3: No simple solution Conflicts of interest, UIL funding weigh on high school transfer regulation
Part 4: Who can you believe? High school athlete transfer system pits parents’ word against coach’s

When a high school team wins a state championship, it’s not only the players who celebrate. Teams are honored in parades, are congratulated on storefront billboards and are the subjects of city council proclamations. Their achievements are often displayed in the highest-profile space many towns can offer: the water tower.

It’s a victory for the entire community.

But more and more, those state championship teams feature players who have not been part of the community for long. The rampant transferring in all sports, the result of a combination of factors that has led to what some coaches describe as a “free-agent mentality” among athletes, has changed the landscape of high school sports.

At last year’s UIL boys state basketball tournament, the state champions in the largest three classifications (6A, 5A and 4A) each included more than one notable transfer in the starting lineup. The most extreme example was 4A champion Bridgeport, whose four best players transferred to the school before the season. In Bridgeport’s state semifinal win over defending champion Madison, the four transfers scored all 68 of the team’s points.

Read more: http://interactives.dallasnews.com/2015/on-the-move/index.html

July 23, 2015

Cowboys running back Joseph Randle receives deferred adjudication in shoplifting case

This week Cowboys running back Joseph Randle received deferred adjudication in connection to a shoplifting arrest in Frisco last fall.

Randle was arrested in October at Stonebriar Mall after police said he tried to take a bottle of cologne and a pack of underwear from Dillard’s. A security officer stopped him at the mall. If Randle stays out of trouble for the next 180 days, the class C misdemeanor theft charge will be dismissed.

“He’s just relieved and ready to move on and focus on training camp,” said his attorney, Steven Bell, who noted that Randle regretted the situation. “He’s a good young man.”

Randle told Frisco police he didn’t pay for the items because he didn’t want to take the time to do it and that he “should have just kept walking to his car if he knew he would be arrested,” according to the arrest report. Later he called it the “biggest mistake of my life.”

Read more: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2015/07/cowboys-running-back-receives-deferred-adjudication.html/

July 23, 2015

A treaty to keep the nukes for the empire only

ONE OF the most depressing and surreal aspects of world politics in recent years has been the regular calls for the U.S. and/or Israel to go to war against Iran--as if the past decade of disastrous wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan had never happened. These calls have come not from random cranks, but powerful people, like Republican Sen. John McCain and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

So it's natural that many people reacted with relief to the news that the Obama administration and Iran had reached an agreement that will, according to its supporters, prevent war between the two countries by limiting Iran's nuclear program.

But we should be clear that while this agreement may reduce the threat of a U.S.-Iran war in the short term, it isn't a step forward for peace. Rather, it is a new maneuver by the most violent country in the world--that would be the U.S.--to maintain its domination over the Middle East. That imperialist domination has and will continue to produce endless war in the region.

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THE HEART of the accord reached last week is that Iran will allow international monitoring of its nuclear energy program to ensure that it is not building weapons--and in exchange, devastating economic sanctions engineered by the U.S., both unilaterally and through the United Nations and by pressuring the European Union, will be lifted, though the timeline for easing sanctions is uncertain.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/07/23/keeping-the-nukes-for-the-empire-only

July 23, 2015

Texas Counter Jade Helm Leader – When Blacks Are Killed, I Smile

Pete Lanteri, former Marine and the organizer of “Counter Jade Helm,” the volunteer surveillance keeping tabs on the military training exercise known as “Jade Helm 15,” is also a violent racist, reported Talking Points Memo.

Lanteri’s Facebook page is loaded with bigoted, hateful posts about killing black people, “commies,” Muslims, and his desire to “kill thousands of {liberal} fucks.” One post is a photo of people burning the American flag, and he wrote that it’s “time to machine gun these scumbags.” Another is a photo of Michael Brown’s grave. Above it, Lanteri wrote “when his smile ended, mine started.”

During an interview, Fox News Radio’s Alan Colmes asked Lanteri about his Facebook page. Lanteri backpedalled and said he doesn’t actually think what he writes.

“I tend to write something before I think, and a lot of people do that,” said Lanteri about his post calling liberals “useless fucking Americans.” Colmes then asked about the post describing Lanteri’s desire to kill a thousand people. I’m a “Sicilian hothead from the Bronx,” said Lanteri. “I admit I wrote it and I admit it was stupid. And guess what? I get hotheaded at times.”

Read more: http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2015/07/texas-counter-jade-helm-leader-when-blacks-are-killed-i-smile-machine-gun-down-un-americans/

Related thread:
Texas Jade Helm Leader: ‘Liberals Are Useless – Can’t Wait To Kill Thousands Of These F*cks’

July 23, 2015

'Roots' remake, set to begin New Orleans filming in mid-August, issues casting call for extras

New Orleans-area filming on a "Roots" remake, slated to air on three A&E networks in 2016, is expected to begin in mid-August. An open call for background actors was issued Tuesday (July 21) by Caballero Casting. The project, to be simulcast on History, A&E and Lifetime, was announced in April.

The four-night, eight-hour project will film here through December. Filming will also take place in Africa, an A&E spokesman said Wednesday.

Laurence Fishburne will portray Alex Haley in the "Roots" remake, based on Haley's novel "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" as well as new historical scholarship, according to A&E's initial announcement of the project.

The original 12-hour 1977 miniseries, starring LeVar Burton as the slave Kunta Kinte, was a cultural landmark and ratings powerhouse. Burton is a co-executive producer of the new project.

Read more: http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2015/07/roots_remake_new_orleans_filmi.html#incart_2box_nola_river_orleans_news

Cross-posted in the Louisiana Group and African American Group.

July 23, 2015

Anti-Gay Wedding Venue Owners Tell Ted Cruz: ‘We Were Devastated to Hear That We Were Bigots’

Complete with an entirely inappropriate inspirational soundtrack, GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has released an interview with Dick & Betty Odgaard, the Mennonite couple from Iowa who earlier this year lost a lawsuit after they refused to allow a gay couple to use their wedding venue.

In 2013, the Odgaards told Lee Stafford and his fiancé, Jared that a same-sex wedding at the venue would be in conflict with their religious beliefs.

In the interview, Betty Odgaard tells head-nodding king of the homophobes Cruz that “it’s devastating to hear that we were bigots, we were homophobes, we were haters.”

The Odgaards have since closed their business.

http://www.towleroad.com/2015/07/ted-cruz-interviews-anti-gay-wedding-venue-owners-discriminated-gay-couple-video/

[font color=330099]The truth hurts, doesn't it Dick & Betty. BTW, the Gortz Haus was a church until they transformed it into an art gallery, frame and flower shops, and bistro.[/font]

July 23, 2015

Texas Lawmaker To Host Anti-Gay Hatefest At Church Where He Serves As Pastor

Anti-LGBT activists in Texas are showing no signs of giving up in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.

Last week, we told you about a new anti-LGBT coalition that launched in Dallas to fight the ruling, amid absurd warnings that it will lead to teachers encouraging kindergarteners to try anal sex.

Sanford.ScottNow, anti-LGBT hate groups are planning a rally — called “The Texas Response: Pastors, Marriage, & Religious Freedom” — at a church in Dallas’ northern suburbs. The groups include Texas Values, the Texas Pastor Council, the Liberty Institute and Concerned Women for America. And the event will be held at Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church, where the executive pastor is anti-gay state Rep. Scott Sanford (right), the author of both a so-called “Pastor Protection Act” and a failed license-to-discriminate adoption amendment.

From Texas Values:

Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2015/07/texas-lawmaker-host-anti-gay-hatefest-church-serves-pastor/

July 23, 2015

Ted Cruz Can’t Sleep At Night If A Woman Can Still Get a Pap Smear in America

It’s a move that will certainly win him the endorsement of the Club for Cancerous Growths and any other organization that just can’t be happy if women are healthy and free to make their own reproductive decisions.

Ted Cruz is trying to force a vote in the US Senate to defund Planned Parenthood, because Ted Cruz can’t sleep at night unless millions of American women can’t get a pap smear.

According to The Hill, Texas’s friendless junior Senator and known avocado hater is also going after Obamacare —

— because if he can simply kill off enough young voters from lack of to access to basic medical care, he might have a shot at this thing!

Read more: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/30646/ted-cruz-planned-parenthood

July 23, 2015

Brain-eating amoeba found in St. Bernard water system, DHH says

The state Department of Health and Hospitals said Wednesday (July 22) it found Naegleria fowleri amoeba – brain-eating amoeba – in St. Bernard Parish's water system.

The department said tap water is safe to drink in St. Bernard, but people should avoid getting water in their noses.

The brain-eating amoeba was found in the parish's water system in recent years, and two families filed lawsuits after their family members' deaths were linked to the amoeba.

Department of Health and Hospitals officials said Wednesday they found the amoeba at the site of a leaking sampling station and notified parish officials.

Read more: http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2015/07/brain-eating_amoeba_st_bernard.html#incart_2box_nola_river_orleans_news

July 23, 2015

Oz dance club bought for $8.175 million by Mike Motwani

Local developer Kishore "Mike" Motwani outbid Sidney Torres IV on Wednesday (July 22) for the ownership rights to the Oz, agreeing to pay $8.175 million for the Bourbon Street dance club.

Motwani must close the deal and pay in cash by Aug. 15. If he fails to do so, the rights go to Torres whose final bid was $8.125 million.

The live auction took place before Judge Elizabeth Magner in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Louisiana.

The sale of the business and property at 800 Bourbon St. came after the owners -- Johnny Chisholm, Doyle Yeager and Bobby Warner -- declared bankruptcy in October, unable to pay off millions of dollars in loans that came due that summer.

Read more: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/07/oz_dance_club_bought_for_8175.html#incart_most-read_