Give credit where credit is due...
The $15 Mar-vels
Knick undercuts pricey Jordanshttp://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/443907p-373823c.html..."Knicks star Stephon Marbury is putting his name behind a pair of $15 basketball shoes that he's hoping will give underprivileged kids the chance to wear sneaks fit for the pros."..."The groundbreaking sneaker, the Starbury One, is Marbury's attempt at combating the trend toward astonishingly high-priced basketball shoes."..."Marbury has vowed to wear the shoes he's hoping will enable disadvantaged kids to feel like stars."- Vox
New Yankee Stadium = Bad News for The Bronx
Locals hurt as Yanks break ground
"Residents of Highbridge, the easily ignored neighborhood surrounding the park, are feeling the pinch."
"While the Yankees are gearing up for their new play-space with a groundbreaking ceremony this morning, locals are seeing the reality of losing ground. Macombs Dam Park, a 16-acre oasis of hard-to-find green space, is now closed."
"It upsets everybody," said tennis player Ernesto Brito, 46, a construction worker who moonlights as a Yankee Stadium parking attendant. "How much are they going to invest in the community? [Yankees owner George] Steinbrenner, he doesn't care about it."
I am a life-long Yankees fan, but this is bad news for the Bronx. For those of you who think this is a good deal, read the details of the plan the city made with the Yanks. Well detailed here.The main reason for a new Yankees Stadium? Two words: LUXURY BOXES. The people that use these luxury boxes will arrive to the VIP parking lots and leave the same way, never soiling themselves by touching foot in 'the jungle' of The Bronx.- Vox
The Mexico Presidential election: a huge MEDIA BLACKOUT
UPDATE 2-Mexico leftist claims election recount proves fraud"Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist who claims he was robbed in the July 2 election, said the recount of 9 percent of ballot boxes was only half complete but inconsistencies from the original tallies already topped 100,000 votes."Why the US media blackout? Because THIS is how you protest an election:"Lopez Obrador's supporters have crippled central Mexico City for the past 12 days by setting up camps in the Zocalo and on the main boulevard that runs through its business district.""Their campaign also has included blockading the stock market building, the headquarters of international banks and government offices, as well as throwing open highway toll gates. They blocked access to Mexico's main tax office on Friday.""In the spirit of Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we seek to make our voices heard," he (Obrador) wrote in Friday's New York Times."Vox prediction: Obrador will win in the end (not that it will make any big difference to us).- Vox
French fries back on House menu
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5240572.stm"French fries are back on the menu in the US House of Representatives, three years after the name was ditched in favour of "freedom fries".""The patriotic name change hit the headlines at the time but the change back is getting much less coverage."I am sooo embarrassed by this whole saga.- Vox
NY1 Silences Debate
Refuses to allow Clinton challenger Tasini in television primary debate"There is a heated debate among Democrats about the direction of the party, with centrist party stalwarts facing challenges from the left on issues like the Iraq War. But New York City voters will have a more difficult time seeing this debate play out, as New York City cable news channel NY1 (which is owned by Time Warner) has blocked the anti-war Democratic challenger Jonathan Tasini from a primary race debate against incumbent Sen. Hillary Clinton.""In a statement (Village Voice, 8/2/06), the channel said it had "established criteria to identify which candidates would be invited to participate" in the debates: poll at least 5 percent and have spent and/or raised $500,000.""In a recent Marist poll (7/19/06), Tasini stood at 13 percent, but his campaign has only raised $150,000.""By contrast, Tom Suozzi, seeking the Democratic nomination for governor of New York, is less popular with voters—at only 9 percent in a recent poll (NY1.com, 7/24/06)—but he was included in NY1's July 25 gubernatorial debate, having spent over $6 million on his campaign (Ithaca Journal, 6/26/06)."- Vox
What?
Blair: Western values must triumph over radical Islam
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/01/mideast.blair/index.html
"It's about modernization within Islam and out of it. It's about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs."
"And this is not just about security or military tactics...It's about...showing them what our values at their best stand for..."
A-ha, the old "forced values from the barrel of a gun" stretegy. An empirical manifesto if I ever heard one.
- Vox
