Overtime!

NFL Overtime: Coin Toss Means More Than It Should

Is that the Way it Ought to Be?

When the NFL team captains come together to start overtime in either a high or low scoring game, apparently the most critical play of the game is taking place

Picture this, two high scoring NFL offenses are going back and forth, trading touchdowns for sixty minutes of playing time (about an afternoon in real time, or three days in dog years), and inexplicably, suspensefully, beer-bar happily are tied at the end of Regulation and they go into Overtime. 

Flip a coin, if the first team with the ball scores a touchdown, they win – Huh?

Well, if you lose the Coin Toss, you're toast.

Does such an outcome really say which is the better team?  The second team never even had possession.  Why are the NFL gods so anxious to go into Sudden Death when there's only 16 games in a season?  Is there a premium placed on defense, or just the TV time slot allotted to the game?  Did the Players' Union negotiate Overtime Pay?  Even Major League Baseball, with its 160,000 games per season, allows the other team during extra innings equal time to try to win or tie the game. 

And don't even get me started on soccer shoot-outs....

Biden, Hell and Islamic Brand Management

Biden's warning to ISIS militants: 'We will follow them to the gates of hell'

 Unless, of course, there's no flight available...

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Brand Management
Muslims Only Lose If They Don't Keep Their Own House Clean

It's correct and proper that our leaders are diplomatic about Islam and its relation to Islamic extremists**, but it doesn't mean much if the Muslims themselves don't step up to the plate and stop these "true believers" from defining their religion for them.

Here are a few recent examples of the items that apparently DO get a rise out of the Muslim population:

• Jews for being Jewish in France (given its permissive atmosphere for certain violent expressions of hatred)
• "Protests and violent attacks" in Egypt and Libya over a Youtube trailer for the amateurish film, Innocence of Muslims 
• Riots, death threats and an axe attack in Europe over published cartoons featuring Mohammad
• Celebrations by Muslims in Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and even Germany and Italy in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on America   

Given the past furors, fatwās and riots over the The Satanic Verses and Danish cartoons, I almost believe there will be more (at least overt) objections in the Muslim world to our president's rather innocuous defense of Islam than to the atrocities carried out every day in its name.  Something ought to change on this.

And this is in jolly old England...

  

This is (one scholar's interpretation of) what the Jihadist Muslim Extremists believe:

"The Muslim jihad... was perceived [by Muslims] as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule.…" 

I dare say that's not the most comforting thought for the rest of the world's occupants, and the past 50 years or so of terrorism has shown it has not been an idle one.  

Defenders can argue all day long about how this is not the opinion of the vast majority of Muslims, or that it's been disavowed by many clerics.  At the end of the day, terrorist acts continue unabated, terrorist groups are generally led/guided by religious leaders, Islamic nations have done very little to denounce or combat it (and many have tacitly supported it in one way or another), and it's just bad press. 

Where are the throngs of righteous Muslims rising in protest and calling for immediate action against these hijackers of a "religion of peace" when they rape, torture, bomb and massacre innocent men, women and children over and over again?

While terrorists define Islam, Muslims the world over violently react to more worthy slights

** President Obama's recent address to the American people and request for Congressional support included the statement,  “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents…. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.” 

This was not without precedent, as President Bush said a mere six days after 9/11:  "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace, they represent evil and war."

What do Ray Rice and Ferguson have in Common?

 Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Just Videotape

A video from TMZ "allegedly" shows Ray Rice punching his now-wife Janay Palmer on Feb. 15, 2014

The Baltimore Ravens management terminated running back Ray Rice's contract today in the wake of this videotape.  To their credit, it appears they weren't waiting on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to show he could be a little tougher than the woefully inadequate 2-game suspension already imposed (he was, and a year's suspension sent a message to any team considering picking up Mr. Rice).

What's odd is that it took a videotape of the actual punch before this kind of discipline took place.
Why?  -  The facts were clear from the beginning.  He punched her out, he pulled her out of the elevator (on a previous videotape) and dropped her there on her face.

If we have incontrovertible proof that a player is using drugs or has committed assault/manslaughter, how is it that a videotape so massively changes the equation for league punishment?
Answer = THE MEDIA

The same appears to be true of police beatings - investigations launched, people indicted and the vastly different public reaction to videos versus simply the facts.  There have been many well documented cases of excessive use of force by the police that register nary a blip, but if it gets on Youtube, we're all agog.

Does a crime not matter (relatively) unless it's accompanied by primo video fodder for the masses?
Shouldn't it?

And how sad is it that his then fiancee Ms. Palmer still married him?