Riccardo Riccò gets suspended and I get a rant. Seems fair to me. Extra Bonus Expulsion: Hosni Mubarak. For some reason all this brings to mind this scene from “Clerks II.”
To the moon, Riccò!
Riccardo Riccò gets suspended and I get a rant. Seems fair to me. Extra Bonus Expulsion: Hosni Mubarak. For some reason all this brings to mind this scene from “Clerks II.”
Mad Blog Media 
Been watching the live CNN feed from Tahrir Square (incredible), also available to watch: Live coverage from the CPACers…what a contrast in pure joy and pure horseshit.
What dictatorial regime will be next to fall? I laughed at some Bush-regime ass-hat on TV other day crowing “if you want freedom and democracy you must get it yourself”…and wondered why that didn’t apply to Iraq a few years back? I wonder what will happen when/if all these newly liberated folks realize the USA was shoveling our tax dollars into propping up these corrupt regimes they’re finally tossing out?
You’re assuming, of course, that the powers that be in the UCI and elsewhere really want to clean the sport up …
As long as it keeps making them money, they’ll continue to look the other way when stars get caught, unless somehow it’s leaked to the public first, in which case they have to throw the book at the offender.
And all parties involved will continue to deny, deny, deny … is it any surprise that Contadoper is using the same language as Lance Dopestrong? “I’m the first, second and third most test athlete!”, “I’ve never tested positive (until now)!”, “It doesn’t matter that many of my teammates (past & present) have been busted in organized doping programs!”, “It’s a witch hunt!”
Wonder what all them liberated Egyptians are going to do when they look around and see that just getting rid of the dictator mean nothing. Jobs don’t grow on trees in a country with much industry or natural resources. Sure, the freedom will be great, but life won’t really change that much for the average Joe. Poor is poor, no matter who is in charge. Same for corruption.
I was watching the BBC live feed for a while, then caught some Al Jazeera … amazing stuff. ‘Course, as some BBCer noted on NPR this afternoon, the army was in charge and remains in charge — the top dogs will look different between now and elections in September, but beyond that, all samey same. Come Election Day, now, that may be where the rubber hits the road.
As regards the UCI and the other bloodsuckers with their suckers attached to pro cycling, for sure it’s about the filthy lucre. And there won’t be any serious change beyond parading the odd transgressor through the town square bedecked in tar and feathers until the money starts going away because nobody’s buying the act anymore.
Given the fiscal health of American professional sports, I am not encouraged. People who will watch feets ball, baskets ball and bases ball and think they’re strictly on the up and up must believe in Santy Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
Per Egypt: “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss…”. All this talk of “Democracy” seems strange when it is the military that ran old man Mubarak out the door. Time will tell.
I think we should draft the character of Sgt. Schultz to run the UCI. Cut to the chase, guys.
Ah…politics and heart…..
So glad the Rant is back on a consistent basis. Always a pleasure to read.
So ready for news sites to ditch the comments sections, VeloNews included. Leave the comments to the blogosphere where I’m less likely to see them. News sites can return to “Letters to the Editor” so the aluminum beanies can be filtered out and bandwidth can be preserved.
With regard to removing Egypt’s despot, a power vacuum doesn’t usually result in a democracy where there’s never been one. I’m no fan of despots, but it seems that the removal of them causes way more chaos than first expected. Since Egypt’s military is really in charge now, I guess its a changing of The Man, so no real power vacuum will ensue. I assume the upcoming election will be nothing more than a public relations exercise.
And now, I’m gonna go ride my bike!
Same here. Gonna ride my bike. Finally.
As far as Egypt and the army. Mubarak was the leader of the Air Force (a general) when he became VP. Anwar el Sadat and Nasser were members of the officer’s corps who overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in ’52. The Egyptian Military is just doing its job, taking over when things start to crumble. I suspect this will not be much different than the ’52 overthrow, but if its a real revolution, I think the brass are going to be in for quite a surprise.
Have a nice ride McPatrick!
Okay, I turn, as usual, to this page for enlightenment. Enlighten me on this subject one and all: I’ve watched the main stream media, I’ve read blogs, and I even read Huffington Post before it went all AOL on me, and through it all I’ve read Mubarak described as a despot and a dictator. I’ve watched TV reports that show lots of people dancing in the streets at the prospect of his departure (the MSM says millions of people danced in the streets, but I don’t make a habit of trusting their numbers). God help me, I even watched more than 15 minutes of Nightline last night hoping to be enlightened (I wasn’t). The one thing I haven’t heard is what is it this guy has done that has so many people hating his guts? I assume since nobody is saying exactly what that he was, therefore, a despot who happened to be on “our” side.
Just being a “dictator” doesn’t necessarily make him a bad guy; after all, I can visualize a benevolent dictator (I could be one!). So I ask you Khal, Jeff, and even our resident journalist Patrick, for some enlightenment in the form of examples and descriptions of how big a jerk this guy was.
John, the long and the short of it is, as Khal notes, that Mubarak was just the latest uniformed dude to run an autocratic show that played very well in DeeCee. Foreign Policy magazine has some pretty extensive stuff that’s worth a look (I used to subscribe back in the day and still check in online from time to time).
We’ve always been sort of OK with whatever a guy wants to do within his own borders as long as he hews to the DeeCee line, and Mubarak has been no exception. He had a nifty little police state-slash-ATM machine going on there, and I guess folks just got tired of being shoved around by a Yankee stooge, albeit a fairly low-key one.
There’s been a lot of chatter about how the Innertubes were used as a communications device in this uprising, but I wonder whether it wasn’t more of a trigger than a chatroom. Despots and revolutionaries alike know you need control of the communications apparatus to make things happen, and the Innertubes are notoriously slippery. A guy sees folks acting out on YouTube, maybe he thinks it would be kind of cool to act out himself.
Having read Khal’s and Patrick’s posts, I think what just happened to Mubarak was a “vote” against the incumbent. The military plays the roles of both Congress and the Supreme Court and recognizes the vote as valid. The incumbent gracefully exits.
I think in President Mubarak’s case, it was not a graceful exit. Sounded to me like he stalled and got the bum’s rush.
Egypt has been in a sort of state of emergency for some time and even its feeble legal protections have been suspended. You get picked up by the police and tossed into jail sans anything like habeas corpus, adding the occasional broken jaw or other form of corporal punishment to put some spice into your suddenly restricted life. Kinda like waking up with a bunch of guys sitting on your head, being bundled into a plane blindfolded, and finding yourself in Gitmo, only far worse. In fact, some sources suggest Egypt was part of our Extraordinary Rendition deal, not that I would know one way or the other.
So Gen. Mubarak was not entirely a benevolent despot, albeit he was probably quite far from the worst.
To some degree, I think this was a bit of a “domino effect” after Tunisia but time will tell what happens. This is indeed a rebellion against the status quo but what I want to know is how all those guys with brass tickey-tacky on their shirts will deal with this, assuming they can.
I need to spend some time reading what Egyptians think. I suspect seeing this through Yank eyes is kinda irrelevant.
K said: “I suspect seeing this through Yank eyes is kinda irrelevant.” Especially when the media are reporting that after all the hubbub, the Egyptian people are out there in the square cleaning up the mess they made during their uprising. Talk about a concept foreign to the Yankee mind.
Regarding Egypt and human rights. Not that I believe everything the ACLU says, but looky here:
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordinary-rendition
…In the words of former CIA agent Robert Baer: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear — never to see them again — you send them to Egypt.”
Egypt and Tunisia has more to do with demographics than politics. Egypt(and Jordan and Tunisiaetc) had a baby boom in the 79s, 89s and 90s. Egypt’s populationha doubled in 30 years, but the economy, run with a lot of centralized government direction hasn’t grown fast enough.
So you end up with a lot of unemployed young college grad engineers with no prospects. Unemployed engineers are much more dangerous than unemployed lawyers as they can make things and manage projects.
Big difference from the overthrow of the Shah. Egypt so far is about jobs and western like freedom. Not so much about religion.
True enough. They can start the shit rolling downhill, but can the engineers control it?
While we are on the subject of U.S. interactions, and with a tip of the hat to Tuli Kupferberg…
http://www.google.com/url?url=http://ilike.myspacecdn.com/play%23The%2BFugs:CIA%2BMan:677084:s39440718.10638116.18606284.0.2.93%252Cstd_0b9f7c4c1baa4457ad7d68127a391569&rct=j&sa=X&ei=L1pXTc2xIJG4sQPcvISjDA&ved=0CCUQ0wQwAA&q=fugs&usg=AFQjCNGyPpjwEA02TT1w_-M9mFIIlh60VQ&cad=rjt
Egypt? Just the final word in “BFE.” Really.
John, I think part of the problem with the MSM in ‘merica is that they cater to the mouth breathers of the great states. Therefore you won’t find any ‘discussion,’ ‘talking point’ or ‘analysis’ as to what happened. However in this specific case you had high unemployment, out of control economic factors and a person in charge who was so out of the loop that he probably never saw this coming. A perfect storm which will have long term implications across north Africa for a time.
Caballeros,
Here’s something that has worried me for some time: What’s going to happen here when today’s young people realize we’ve left them up to their earbuds in a landfill that has only entry but no exit?
I was fortunate enough to know what I wanted to do from an early age — be an minor-league asshole and get paid for it — and live in an era where that could still pay a living wage. But what about today’s aspiring young assholes? Abusing grumpy fatties through the drive-up window just doesn’t have the same cachet.
“…you had high unemployment, out of control economic factors and a person in charge who was so out of the loop that he probably never saw this coming.”
I think I’m getting the picture: the guy was just fine with torture, couldn’t care less about the masses, was totally clueless, ran the economy into the ground, and was generally a sorry piece of shit.
So, it was pretty much like 30 years of Bush?
“hat’s going to happen here when today’s young people realize we’ve left them up to their earbuds in a landfill that has only entry but no exit?”
Give them a poster of this and hope for the best:
http://www.despair.com/mercy.html
Yeah. Kinda is a wakeup call for not only Egypt, but a lot of other countries where people have been getting their pockets picked at the point of a gun.
Of course in the USA, we have been willing accomplices; we get our pockets picked at the point of a FAUX News camera. As Larry’s wife Prof. Heather says, people are stupid. They get constantly conned into voting for the guys who steal with one hand while waving the flag with the other. The Tea Party could actually do some good if it dug deep enough rather than catering to mouth breathers.
Just don’t let the Government mess with my Medicare and Social Security, right?
“Keep the gummint hands off the socialist programs that benefit ME and screw the rest of you!” sums up the feelings of a lot of folks. As the wife is constantly reminding me, PEOPLE ARE STUPID. Read a bit in The Nation about some Brits getting wound up about all the draconian cuts they’re facing, while a lot of the fat cats who live in the UK pay nothing in the way of taxes. Sort of like Warren Buffet in the USA. The Tea Party should do something about THIS rather than pursue their KKK-like agenda– might have some positive effect on the Repuglican Party.
One minor victory, Larry, albeit likely short-lived. Apparently twenty six Republicans, some of them new Tea Party folks, voted with 122 Dems. to block fast track passage of unfettered renewal of the PATRIOT act. Of course, Obama and many Dems, (such as Diane Feinstein), now entrenched with ever more unconstitutional power, don’t want it repealed or even toned down.
As PO’G said a few months back, if we wanted more Cheney, we would have voted for him.
Patrick: What will our young people do? I’ve heard grumblings of emigration, not just short-term ex-pat or Peace Corps stints, but permanent “adios, bitches” relocation. And for a combination of reasons: healthcare cost, quality of life, intellectual stimulation, and to put what they know to use in a place where its appreciated.
In one way, I’m excited about this because, to me, it means the world is getting flatter and less scary (for some of us). And it’s refreshing to think a few Americans consider other places in the world worth going to and becoming a part of. In a less optimistic way, it tells me that younger folks have paid close enough attention to all the current static to decide the aircraft carrier America is so big and so rudderless that it’s easier to abandon the ship and try somewhere else.
I made a point of asking folks I worked with in Bremen what they thought of quality of life with those legendary high taxes, sky high gas prices, and socialistic health care, mass transit, and bike path systems. People seemed happy, but mind you, one cannot equate a thriving high tech firm with the plight of the downtrodden Volk masses.
The Germans actually build shit they can sell abroad (so do we, but we buy more than we sell from overseas). That includes Volkswagen, which has, shocking to say, a strong labor union. How do they do it?
There are other models out there. We gotta stop spinning our wheels or good people will be leaving and only the wheezing old farts and idiots will be left behind. Yes…a nation entirely made up of Repuglicans (insert humor icon here).
I did a bit of digging around on the interwebs about taxes vs happiness awhile back. Surprisingly (especially to the so-called Taxed Enough Already folks) the countries with the highest personal tax rates also rate the highest on surveys measuring the general happiness of the citizens. Seems like having guaranteed healthcare availability, reasonable retirement options and those other socialist programs makes folks pretty content even when they pay a ton of taxes to get ’em. Perhaps this is why the Tea Partiers are so pissed off….they don’t pay ENOUGH tax! Our goal is to retire in the high-tax country of Italy…assuming we can save up enough dough in low-tax America to afford it, that is.
Here in Texas, there are quite a few retirees moving to Mexico and to different Central American countries–despite the crazy shit going on with the cartels. Obviously they aren’t moving to border towns. They’re way down south on the Mayan Riviera or down in Nicaragua and Panama. But they make adjustments to the “manana” schedule, they have nice communities with other like-minded Americans, they do assimilate to some degree with the locals, and they have a much richer life on the same amount of money that would have left them scraping and greeting folks at Walmart all the way to the bitter end.