Roger Goodell Unleashes the Banhammer on the New Orleans Saints

The NFL today announced how the New Orleans Saints will be punished for their "bounty hunter" program. Their punishment is as follows:

• Head Coach Sean Payton has been suspended without pay for the 2012 season, effective April 1, 2012.
• Former Defensive Coordinator (now with St. Louis Rams) Gregg Williams has been indefinitely suspended from the NFL.
• General Manager Mickey Loomis will be suspended without pay for the first 8 regular season games.
• Assistant Head Coach Joe Vitt will be suspended without pay for the first 6 regular season games.
• Fine of $500,000
• Forfeiture of 2012 and 2013 2nd Round Draft Picks

After the 2012 season, NFL commisioner Roger Goodell will review Williams' status and whether or not to reinstate him or make his suspension longer. Goodell has also publicly stated that he would have also have announced player suspensions, but the NFL Players' Association wants to review the case first and decide along with the NFL which players should be suspended and for how long. It is very obvious however, that Defensive Captain Jonathon Vilma will be hit the hardest for offering a $10,000 bounty to anyone who could knock out Brett Favre from the 2010 NFC Championship Game.

This is the harshest penalty the NFL has ever given out to a team for violating league policy. Although most people are surprised at how hard the league came down on the Saints, most are not arguing that the punishment is too harsh. The NFL had to send a message that the culture in the NFL must change for the betterment of player safety and paying players non-contract bonuses for knocking players out of games is unacceptable. Many Saints players have vented their frustrations on ESPN and the NFL Network, showcasing their incredible ignorance. Many players have said the NFL is punishing them for hard hits, which is absolutely untrue. Sean Payton and Gregg Williams had a bounty program which they deliberately tried to hide from the NFL. Drew Brees is also displeased, demanding an explanation for why the Saints were punished so hard... so Goodell explained exactly why in an interview with ESPN's lead NFL insider, Adam Schefter.

Goodell made it clear that he is confident there will never be another bounty program in the NFL. If there is one, you can expect a much harsher penalty. Now, I'm not one to usually say certain geographical regions are dumber than others, but just take a look at this poll ESPN took today:

It's not a coincidence the Deep South is opposed to the penalties incurred by the Saints.

Yep, I'm Making a Gossip Post

In October 2011, British comedian Russell Brand and Californian singer Katy Perry got married. Their marriage shocked most people in entertainment media who did not even know the couple knew each other. Many doubters of their relationship wagered bets that their marriage would not last a year, given how incredibly busy Katy Perry is with her concerts and Russel Brand with his comedy shows and film schedule, notwithstanding most insider's total inability to understand what, if anything, they had in common.


Well the couple in fact did last more than a year, but only by a few months. The couple has officially divorced and will both begin 2012 as single divorcees! This is wonderful news for pretty much any man between the age of 18-90 because now Katy Perry in her infinite weirdness is back on the market. Russell Brand is uh... also weird and I pray for the poor woman who has to listen to his voice on a daily basis.


Hey, it's a slow news day, cut me some slack Jack.


Update!: The Brands did not sign a prenup! Because of their wildly differing incomes, Katy Perry stands to lose A LOT of money.

Bill Maher's Hilarious Tweet About Tim Tebow

Bill Maher is an outspoken atheist comedian and makes no apologizes for offending religious people in his commentary. Some people are saying that this tweet is offensive. Some people say that Maher is "insensitive." That's a load of bullshit.


Tim Tebow prays before every game. And during the game. And after the game. He talks about Jesus being important in his life. He talks about Jesus being "partly" responsible for the result of football games. Every time he wins a game, he thanks God and/or Jesus for giving him a win. He never says Jesus was on the other team's side when he loses, of course.


Obviously, if Tebow, the guy whose life seems to revolve around either football or Jesus, loses a game that he says Jesus affects, then the devil must be smiling somewhere, taunting Tebow from the underworld.


A lot of people who are decrying Maher's tweet are also the same people who oddly enough believe that political correctness should be done away with and that this so-called "War on Christmas" needs to end. It's funny how those same people who hate political correctness also don't want anything negative being said about them.

Osama bin Laden's Death Causes People to Finally React with Their True Feelings

It hasn't even been a week since Osama bin Laden was killed and there are already conspiracy theorists saying that he isn't really dead. The horrifying part is that those people are inside of our own country. No, they're not Al Qaeda members, they're the people who work at Fox News. Since Monday, people like Andrew Napolitano and Glenn Beck have made allusions and insinuated that because the White House chose not to release the photo of a dead Osama bin Laden, there must be something that Barack Obama is hiding.

It's truly disgusting that these two assholes could suggest something like that. These two morons seem to know nothing about how military operations work, shocking especially for Napolitano since he once served as a justice for the New Jersey Supreme Court. On the other hand, it's not that shocking since Napolitano was a draft dodger, but continues to spew Libertarian rhetoric. Beck on the other hand, is just a tool hired by the RNC to spew fringe views and make money for the party.


Another silly thing has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories, but rather in how people reacted to Osama dying. There was cheer and jubilation in the streets, cheering for the death of the man responsible for the World Trade Center bombing, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11th attacks. Last time I checked, we're a predominately Christian nation. According to scripture, cheering for the death of an enemy is just as bad as our enemy cheering for our death. Did any of that Bible stuff matter? Of course not, because young people are less religious than ever before. People my age really don't particularly give a shit about religion and will only claim to be a member of a certain religious group when it's convenient. So in the end, the cheering for the death of bin Laden wasn't just appropriate, it was natural.

Which brings us to the next moron, Rashard Mendenhall. In case you don't know who he is, he's a running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Mendenhall decided to spout his Christian bullshit saying we should never cheer for the death of another, but he also took time to spew his nonsensical "truther" nonsense. If you don't know what a truther is, they're the idiots who think that 9/11 was caused by the Bush administration detonating bombs at the World Trade Center and Pentagon to ensure that the twin towers would fall. The belief that a jetliner crashing into a building with full fuel would not cause it to collapse is just ridiculous. Mendenhall was extensively criticized for his comments and the Steelers organization put out a press release that Mendenhall's opinions do not reflect the face of the Steelers franchise. You can expect Mendenhall to be released from his contract if they feel that the locker room will be contentious whenever play resumes in the NFL.


Another AH HA! of this whole Osama bin Laden thing is how Pakistan has responded. When Obama was running for president, he made a somewhat controversial remark in the 2nd presidential debate that if he had intelligence that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and the Pakistani government was unwilling or unable to help, he would go in anyway and kill bin Laden. Well, that exact thing happened and the US has officially said that it did not contact Pakistan until after they got Osama bin Laden's body out of Pakistani airspace, admitting that they violated their airspace and sovereignty.

Afterwards, in a "closed-door" session of Congress, CIA director Leon Panetta said that Pakistan was either "involved or incompetent," which is an opinion shared by the majority of Americans; either the Pakistani government was harboring bin Laden, or their military is so incompetent that they could not find bin Laden living a mile away from their nation's largest military academy. To have the Pakistani military be that incompetent is like something from Super Sentai. Only a Super Sentai villain could maintain prestige while constantly failing over and over again.

A reporter tried to get cute with White House press secretary Jay Carney today, asking if Panetta's opinion was one shared by the White House. Of course, the reporter stupidly mentioned that it was a "closed-door" session, to which Jay Carney asked if he meant that it was a classified meeting with no reporters. The reporter said yes, so Carney immediately replied, "Then I have no answer."


Watching these press conferences the last 2 days has been truly hilarious as reporters accuse the White House of presenting two stories with wildly different facts. The fact of the matter is that the two narratives are not that different and the 2nd one actually adds more details. Here are the discrepancies between the two stories:

Brennan's Version

• Other than bin Laden, 3 men and 1 woman were killed, none were civilians
• 2 men were couriers to bin Laden, one of which owned the compound
• The other man was one of bin Laden's sons
• The woman killed was used as a human shield, either willingly or against her will, and was assumed to be bin Laden's wife
• Bin Laden was armed with a gun and participated in the firefight
• Bin Laden was killed by a shot in the head above the left eye
• The operation took about 40 minutes
• The majority of the 40 minutes was spent collecting intel, which was described as a "treasure trove"

Carney's Version

• Other than bin Laden, 3 men and 1 woman were killed, none were civilians
• 2 men were couriers to bin Laden, one of which owned the compound
•  The other man was one of bin Laden's sons, but Brennan got the name wrong
• The woman killed was killed in crossfire, and is assumed to be the courier's wife
• Bin Laden's wife was in the same room as Osama and assaulted Navy SEALs and was shot in the leg; she survived
• Bin Laden was NOT armed, but may have been reaching for a gun when he was killed
• Bin Laden was shot in the chest and in the head above the left eye
• The operation took about 40 minutes
• The majority of the 40 minutes was spent collecting intel, which was described as a "treasure trove"

So what are the discrepancies?

• Bin Laden's son's name
• The identity of the woman killed
• Whether or not bin Laden was armed
• The amount of times bin Laden was shot

Is this really what journalistic integrity is about these days? YOU GOT HIS SON'S NAME WRONG, WHY DID YOU GET ONE OF HIS 56 CHILDREN'S NAME WRONG!? YOU SAID IT WAS HIS WIFE THAT DIED BUT NOW YOU SAY SHE'S ALIVE! WHO IS THIS OTHER WOMAN? YOU SAID HE WAS ARMED, BUT NOW YOU ADMIT TO SHOOTING AN UNARMED MAN! YOU SAID HE WAS SHOT ONCE BEFORE, NOW YOU SAY TWICE, WHICH ONE IS IT?

For the part of his son's name, who really gives a shit? The man has 56 kids, you can't expect for them to identify which one he is right away. As far as the identity of who the dead woman is, again, who cares? Bin Laden never shared details with his family about his work with Al Qaeda, so she wouldn't know his activities whether she was alive or not. As far as whether bin Laden was armed or not, again, who gives a shit? HE'S OSAMA BIN LADEN, YOU HAVE TO KILL THE BASTARD. Then, my favorite part, the amount of times bin Laden was shot. In the first version, they never actually said he was only shot once: they only said the shot to the head killed him; The 2nd version said he was shot twice.

Clearly, anyone with a brain can see that reporters try to spin the facts right after receiving them. Another offensive thing that White House reporters have been doing is trying to grill the White House for further details when they have repeatedly said there are still many details that need to remain classified.

HOSTILE TAKEOVER!

Citing poor financial management and poor executive management, MLB commisioner Bud Selig announced last night that the MLB will be taking over all day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers until a new owner can be found. Frank McCourt the (current and legal) owner of the Dodgers, has said that he will fight to keep his team, even though he is in the middle of an incredibly messy divorce with his wife, with the Dodgers the biggest bid at stake. There's disagreements over whether Frank should be the sole owner of the franchise after the divorce is finalized, or whether his wife should be the 50% owner post-divorce. In the midst of this, the Dodgers were unable to meet payroll and Frank McCourt was planning to borrow $30 million of TV time money from Fox to finance the team, but Fox declined. Instead, McCourt planned to take a personal loan from Fox in order to pay the team, a serious no-no.

If you thought that was bad, it is without a doubt, McCourt's direct fault the savage beating on opening day at the Dodgers Stadium parking lot, because he fired the head security chief in the offseason and did not bother to hire a new one. Because there is still no security chief, the LAPD has taken over being security guards.

Bud Selig is pissed, especially because the Dodgers are one of the premier legendary franchises in Major League Baseball, among the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, and Giants. This move is actually welcomed among Dodger fans, especially because it means that McCourts might be out of the news for a while and management of the team can improve, hiring a better General Manager and raising ticket prices for example; season ticket prices dropped from $27,000 to $17,000 in just one year.

This situation is actually a first for baseball, while the Montreal Expos and Texas Rangers were both at one point owned by the MLB, both were given away voluntarily, not taken over as in the case with the Dodgers. When the Expos were owned, the MLB decided to move the franchise to Washington to become the Nationals (which are still the butt of the league's jokes) and the Rangers went to the first World Series (cannot possibly be a coincidence). People can hope that the Dodgers will go through a "magical" turn-around like the Rangers, but it's not likely to happen with their complete lack of a bullpen or reliable hitter other than Andre Ethier.

The Battle of the News Anchor Babes is ON!

I remember when CNN vs Fox News was about unbiased journalism against conservative propaganda. Apparently, most people want to hear news with a slant, so they love to tune into Fox's opinion based shows, Fox and Friends, America Live, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, The O'Reilly Factor, and Hannity. That's a hell of a lot of opinion based shows for a network that claims to be "Fair and Balanced." Those shows are all at least an hour long, America Live being 2 hours long and Fox and Friendsbeing 3 hours long. That's 9 hours of conservative slant programming, but many of those shows are broadcast more than once per day. The total amount of biased programming on Fox throughout the entire day is actually 13 hours, more than half of our oh-so-dear 24 hour day.

So what does any of that have to do with anything? Well, in CNN's effort to increase their ratings, they've attempted to make their own opinion based shows, which all fail miserably.Their latest project, Parker Spitzer, failed so hard in ratings and in host chemistry that Kathleen Parker had to leave and now Eliot Spizer remains with his own show, In the Arena, which is also not doing so hot. One of the projects that did work for a while was Rick Sanchez as the 3-5pm ET timeslot host of CNN Newsroom. Unfortunately, Sanchez just had to make some comments about CNN's executives that were anti-Semitic in nature while claiming that he has had a difficult career as a Latino journalist in English media., even though he is a light-skinned Cuban who started their career in Miami, the easiest place for someone like Sanchez to get ahead.

After Sanchez's firing, CNN replaced him with Don Lemon initially, but poor Lemon has zero charisma and flopped hard. Instead, CNN tried the Fox News formula and placed frequent Sanchez guest Brooke Baldwin as host instead. While Baldwin has thus far tried to avoid having an opinion based show, there's no denying that her place on the network has become the other cornerstone that Fox loves to have: hot babes doing the news!

The host of America Live, Megyn Kelly (yes, that's how she spells her name...), is also incredibly hot even though her opinions are fucking stupid. There's little one can do about Kelly though, she is a former attorney after all. Even though Kelly is dumb as bricks in things outside of law (and that's debatable), she is super super hot and awesome to look at. Brooke Baldwin is a super hot redhead and is on only an hour after Megyn Kelly is off the air!

It's quite a dilemma really, what to watch, actual news with a fiery hot redhead or opinionated bantering with a blonde bombshell.

I really don't even care anymore, I just get my real news sent to me from Reuters and the AP.

Update: Apparently, Brooke recently missed almost a week of work because she was diagnosed with a very mild form of skin cancer and had the tumor removed from her nose. She returned to the airwaves today sporting the cutest placed Band-Aid I have ever seen, as can be seen in this video where Brooke acknowledges her predominantly male fanbase.

Lakers vs Mavericks? No, no, no, it's really Jason Terry vs Matt Barnes.

Two days ago, the Lakers and Mavericks played an incredibly important game that would more than likely determine the future seeding in the Western Conference. The Lakers absolutely demolished the Mavericks, supposedly their strongest competition, by 28 points, while also holding Jason Terry to 2-10 shooting whereas Lamar Odom at one point scored 3 3-pointers in a row. During the game, Jason Terry shoved Steve Blake after a hard foul and the two had a minor altercation that was little more than barking at each other. Matt Barnes came in and tried to shove Terry, but was stopped a by a referee and later involved Brandon Haywood trying to stick up for Terry against Barnes. All four players were ejected, Terry receiving a flagrant-2 foul which allowed the Lakers an opportunity for 3 free throws. In the aftermath, Barnes was suspended for a game for escalating the situation.

After all was said and done, Chris Webber took an opportunity to dig in to the Mavericks and lambast them for being such a soft team that their 6th man, a Guard, had to be the one to show physicality, but it was when the Mavs were losing by 20 points. Because of Terry's awful shooting night and the Mavericks poor performance, it was easily viewed that Terry was incredibly mad that he and his team were vastly outplayed and outclassed with no hope of ever defeating the Lakers in a 7-game series. Later, Kobe responded to a comment Jason Terry made about Kobe not being able to keep up with Dallas' younger guards. Kobe responded along the lines that Terry's hopes of becoming a TV analyst are over after making such a ridiculous statement.

Of course, Jason Terry didn't learn how to shut up and decided to just fan the flames. Terry publicly called out Barnes and said, "I call Barnes the Charminator. You know what that is? That is a guy that's soft as Charmin' toilet paper. It's not only that he's a Pac-10 guy and he's a Bruin, and so you know we hate those guys -- us Wildcats, we hate Bruins. I don't care who you are. Whenever you don that uniform, I can't stand you, other than Reggie Miller. Barnes, I remember you when you were at Golden State, you're a journeyman. You put on that Laker uniform and you turn into Jerry West, Kareem, and Worthy, and Magic. Those are the real Lakers, not Barnes."

Barnes' response? "I'm not worried about what he's talking about. In Golden State we showed how to beat Dallas. You take it right to their chin and they back down. I don't see that nothing's changed since then so hopefully we see them again."

In case you have forgotten or are not aware dear reader, the #8 seed Golden State Warriors defeated the #1 seed Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 playoffs to become the first #8 seed to ever defeat a #1 seed in NBA playoff history.

tl;dr

Jason Terry is extremely butthurt that Dallas was shitrolled by the Lakers, so much so that he has to let everyone know how much his ass hurts.

Jalen Rose Experiences MAJOR Karma Backfire

Pictured is Jalen Rose's mugshot from his DUI arrest 3 weeks ago. Well that's ok, it's not the first time someone involved in media has been arrested; the same happened to Charles Barkley a little over a year ago. However, Rose failed to report his DUI to ESPN, a serious no-no since ESPN has a policy of anchors, reporters, and analysts to report anything that might become embarrassing in the future immediately so that ESPN can deal with it in private. The DUI arrest happened around the same time as Rose's "The Fab Five" documentary was aired, which received unbelievably negative reviews for portraying the Fab Five as a much better team than they really were and for Rose continuing to call black athletes at Duke "Uncle Toms," including current Phoenix Sun Grant Hill.

Because Rose failed to report his DUI and the story was broken by TMZ, ESPN decided to pull Rose off the air. This news is absolutely fantastic because Rose no longer gets to do the Pre-Half-Post Game show, spewing his absolutely ridiculous opinions. Unfortunately, we still have to deal with Jon Barry, who infamously claimed that Kobe is too old for the Lakers to win and is now eating his words with a giant spoon.

Stuart Scott is also dealing with cancer, so he is out of action (at least for the regular season) so that's 2 down, 1 to go to get the Pre-Half-Post Game show to be decent! Now I'm not wishing any ill will towards Scott, I hope he makes a full recovery; I just wish his recovery to be as slow as possible so that he stays away from television as long as possible.

"Friday" by Rebecca Black

Yeah I know, I'm like 2 months behind this whole "Friday" thing, but I really don't care for Youtube celebrities unless they roll out multiple videos in succession and they're GOOD.

On February 10, 2011, a video was posted on Youtube, featuring the debut single of 13-year-old Rebecca Black, "Friday." Her label, Ark Music Factory, decided that Youtube would be the best place for exposure. Apparently, AMF did not exactly understand that Youtube has a Like/Dislike system rather than 1-5 Stars and people have the ability to comment on videos. As of the writing of this sentence, "Friday" has 69,665,519 views and 1,319,187 dislikes compared to 160,595 likes. Unfortunately for Rebecca, her song is just absolutely horrendous for so many reasons. The lyrics are just atrocious with lines like "Friday, Friday, fun, fun, fun" and "Yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday." The melody sucks too, it's just impossible to sing along with the song (although why anyone would want to is beyond me). And just to top it all off, Rebecca is not a good singer and she needed to be auto-tuned to sound even remotely like she was singing.

She also has a face that stares into your soul.

It's very sad really. Even 5 years ago, Rebecca's single would probably have hit the shelves, maybe an iTunes only single, and then no one would ever hear of who she was. Now with so many singers putting their official music videos on Youtube, music labels are taking risks and putting new singers for the whole world to critique.

This whole "Friday" fiasco is one of the biggest reasons that I believe the music labels are the main culprits of ruining the music industry. Artists are not allowed to own their own music unless they purchase it and even then, it's an auction for the highest bidder. Because of this lack of ownership, there's been a trend ever since the death of Kurt Cobain of musicians making music to make money and not because they love singing and the poetry behind songs. The boy band craze, the teeny boppers of the early 00's, and the Black Eyed Peas; all of these were created by musicians with a relative amount of talent wanting money. The artists who actually sing because they could care less about the money noticeably release songs and albums much more infrequently than those who are all about the cash.

And then, there's weird cases like Lady Gaga. Stefani Germanotta was an unsuccessful and struggling artist in her late teens early 20s, but she possessed uncanny lyrical writing and a voice like few others. Follow in the footsteps of Alicia Keyes, Germanotta did not reinvent herself to become a professional singer and rather just stayed Stefani. None of this worked of course, and she eventually was reborn as Lady Gaga, a woman? who dresses incredibly crazy and has songs you might find in a club. One thing that set those songs apart though, was her ability to actually sing and lyrics with weight behind them. It was a success and now, even though Gaga still dresses crazy and makes songs intended to be danced to, people generally know Lady Gaga to be a fantastic singer with poetry behind her music. Unfortunately, she had to reinvent herself to become known and bring her love of music to the world. As much as she says "this is who I am," it's very clear in interviews that she is incredibly uncomfortable dressing in the outlandish ways she does, similar to how Christina Aguilera was not a fan of all the pop songs she had to sing to compete with Britney Spears.

Left, the Christina manufactured by Disney. Right, X-Tina breaks free from Disney to become herself.

Tim Linceum Apparently Can Not Gain Weight

3 Double-Doubles, 2 orders of Fries, and a Milkshake. According to Tim "The Freak" Lincecum, this is exactly what he regularly orders at In-N-Out Burger every time he goes. In case you forgot what Tim Lincecum looks like....

Like a boss. Expect San Francisco In-N-Out Burgers to change the above order to "The Lincecum" or "The Freak".

Apparently, Timmy actually desires to gain weight this season, recently weighing in at 168 pounds (with clothes) at his allegedly 5'11" (more than likely he's actually 6'1") frame. Meanwhile, poor Pablo Sandoval, to quote Jim Caple of ESPN.com, "...probably gains weight just watching Lincecum eat."

"If I could get my hands on those burgers, I could get up to 300 lbs.!"