So, radio personality and Best of Tucson winner Jon Justice posted this joke(?)/remark about the continuing drama in Ferguson, Mo. on Facebook this morning:

Our question: is that racist? YOU DECIDE.

This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, but the men and women in blue have it rough. Most of a police officer's life is behind a desk, contrary to what you might believe or see in the movies. The Federal Bureau of Investigations have found that 8 out of 10 officers are over weight, according to CBS Dallas Fort Worth.

From CBS:

Bryan said he spends most of his time at work behind a desk, but still hits the departments on-site gym three days a week.

Researchers have said law enforcement personnel are 25 times more likely to die from weight related cardiovascular disease than the actions of a criminal.

“When you’re in a life or death struggle, you’ve got to win that fight, said Bryan about the importance of keeping fit.
But an estimated 80 percent of law enforcement officers are overweight, according to the FBI.

It's always tricky to opine on topical matters and hope that nothing changes before your words see print—a lesson the conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg learned the hard way last week, when a column criticizing President Barack Obama for failing to act to stop an impending massacre of Kurds in Iraq went online last Thursday shortly after Obama announced the start of a bombing campaign against the fundamentalist ISIS (or is it ISIL?) forces.

New York magazine's Jonathan Chait had some fun tweaking Goldberg for his column:

The column builds to this indignant conclusion:

You have to give Obama points for consistency. He remains as blasé about mass slaughter today as he was in 2007. Back then he presented our options as a choice between doing nothing and “deploying unilaterally” to put American troops in harm’s way. He plays the same rhetorical games today, insisting that critics who want to provide military aid to, say, the Kurds or the Ukrainians are really proposing war. And since no one wants war, we should accept our new role as bystander to slaughter.

It’s quite a legacy you’re working on there, Mr. President.

Fortunately for the Yazidi, but unfortunately for Goldberg, Obama announced a plan to aid the Yazidi and launch air strikes against ISIL last night at 9:30, two and a half hours before the the column appeared.

Even more amusing, the Arizona Daily Star went ahead and posted Goldberg's column—under the headline "Obama consistent in indifference to slaughter"—a full day after the bombing began, at 7 p.m. on Friday night.

Hmmm. Maybe it would have been a good idea to substitute something else, given the actual situation on the ground? Or is that plan to replace the editors at the Star with robots that have no ability to discern whether something is still relevant already underway?

Here's a million dollar idea: hire a staff that can't hear a word said. Anjan Manikumar opened a restaurant that employs deaf waiters, and this has never been done in Canada. The idea originated when Manikumar noticed a deaf customer ordering an item by pointing at the menu. Manikumar told CBC News, "I felt he wasn’t getting the service he deserved." 

From The National: 

Signs offers customers a chance to learn basic sign language through helpful graphics incorporated in the menu, cheat-sheets placed on tables and wall mounted photographs illustrating signs for common words needed in a restaurant like the names of alcoholic drinks.

"We expect our customers to order using sign language - our menus are designed in such a way that our customers can do that," says Manikumar. "This will allow our customers to experience the fun of learning something new."

What better way to include diversity in the workplace while providing a unique dining experience?

I don't now how long this video will stay up—Morgan Freeman's voice from the March of the Penguins, with video from American Juggalo.

You're welcome.

Darlena Cunha's recent article in the Washington Post, "This is What Happened When I Drove My Mercedes to Pick Up Food Stamps," got a lot of love and attention:

Sara Bareilles played softly through the surround-sound speakers of my husband’s 2003 Mercedes Kompressor as I sat idling at a light. I’d never been to this church before, but I could see it from where I was, across from an old park, abandoned in the chilly September air. The clouds hung low as I pulled the sleek, pewter machine into the lot. But I wasn’t going to pray or attend services. I was picking up food stamps.

Even then, I couldn’t quite believe it. This wasn’t supposed to happen to people like me.

But freelance journalist Rae Gomes, co-editor of The Nation's "Ten Things" column, wrote a piece in response that's also worth a look. Honest and true. Here's an excerpt from "This Is What Happened When I Took the MTA Bus to Pick Up Food Stamps" in The American Prospect:

It took me four months, but my version of a Mercedes—resourcefulness, education and networking—got me out of the welfare office. But here’s where the personal stops being the universally-applicable political. Both Cunha and I are exceptions to a history and a system designed for entrapment and failure. The trouble with applying her story—or even mine—writ large to an entire diverse group of women is more insidiously judgmental than her conclusion about value judgment would allow. You see, she felt judged when she showed up at a food stamp facility in her fancy car, and seems to equate that with the reproach that is visited upon those who live lives of seemingly intractable poverty, including poor black women.

The “new poor,” by which she meant people like herself, she explained in the video accompanying the article, should be immune from the judgment of those “who never had anything.” While she makes attempts to reconcile her experience with a one-size-fits-all lesson of “just don’t judge anyone,” she ignores the decades of a campaign aimed at shaping the way we see welfare and food stamp recipients, especially those who are black. Workers in the welfare offices, policy makers, and the general public have all absorbed the message.

The mythic vision of a black woman driving her Cadillac to the welfare office is a powerful piece of American lore and has a much different connotation than Cunha in her Mercedes. While Cunha and her status symbol may have drawn some sidelong glances, she was never accused of gaming the system, or of using government funds for material wealth. Her fancy car came from a past life of relative luxury, and she looked the part.

Despite the fact he seemingly hated any segment idea I ever had, I'll miss Fook, the morning show guy at KFMA for the last two years or so, who announced this morning that he and co-host Mishell Livio are leaving the station for a larger market and a more talk-oriented opportunity ("a standard better gig"). The two made it clear that they weren't being kicked off the station and that they weren't actively pursuing another opportunity, but did take a few shots at the standards of the station's management and the quality of the technology they worked with. Today is their last show.

Updates on their replacements and their destination (they're not allowed to discuss it currently, apparently).

As an aside, Fook gave me a weekly opportunity to be on his show nearly since the start of his time on the air and I couldn't be more appreciative of the chance I've had to discuss whatever weird thing has been on my mind, from the Aussie Party fallout to where adults find new friends. He and Mishell put on a solid five mornings of entertainment each week, and while I'm happy they're moving on to something bigger and better. Best of luck, you two.

WASHINGTON – More than three years after her 9-year-old daughter was shot and killed, Roxanna Green’s heart breaks all over again when she sees another shooting on the news.

“When we laid her to rest, my heart broke,” Green said of her daughter, Christina-Taylor, one of six people killed in the Tucson shooting that wounded then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011. “My heart is still broken.”

Green joined other relatives of victims from other mass shootings – some grieving for years, some for less than a month – at a news conference Tuesday where they called on Congress to take action and put an end to gun violence.

They stood tearfully, holding pictures of loved ones who were lost to gun violence – in Tucson, at Virginia Tech, at Aurora, at Newtown, at the University of California Santa Barbara and in other attacks.

Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher Michaels-Martinez was killed last month at UC Santa Barbara, cited Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was killed in the 1999 Columbine shooting.

“My son Chris has been dead for 26 days, and there is a hole in my heart that nothing can fill,” Martinez said. “Daniel Mauser has been dead 15 years and what has been done?”

It was Martinez who demanded “not one more,” after his son’s death. That rallying cry was taken up by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, who kicked off a postcard campaign demanding action from elected officials on gun violence.

They said that more than 600,000 people have signed up to send a “Not One More” postcard to their congressman, their governor and each of their senators- more than at least 2.4 million postcards in all.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is one of those targeted in the campaign, with the two groups pledging to deliver the postcards to his Phoenix office Friday.

Loving the World Cup? Then yeah, this Durex ad for condoms makes absolute sense.

Soccer players, especially our Latino brothers, know the art of dramatizing fake fouls with fake injuries in order to get a penalty called against the opposing team.

But if they #dontfake it, where's the fun in that?

More on flopping and evidently American soccer's dislike of this soccer tradition in the Wire:

Another World Cup has begun and that means another opportunity to explain away America's global soccer failures on our stubborn obsession with fairness and sportsmanship.

Experts agree that American soccer players are particularly bad at one essential skill of the sport: flopping. On the cusp of the U.S. team's opening match against Ghana, The New York Times reminded us why the U.S. just doesn't flop very well, or much at all. The practice of the flop is a tried-and-true method of manipulating each game's referee to make calls go your way by aggressively exaggerating fouls or the appearance of fouls. The benefit — as Brazil's Fred showed on the opening day of the World Cup (image above) — can be as decisive as an occasional undeserved penalty kick.

The world is full of hate for people and things we don't understand. The whole concept of people wearing $1,200 Google spectacles hasn't caught, yet. There have been some instances where people felt threatened by the self proclaimed "Explorers" because they are infringing on the privacy of people around them.


One Glasshole's frames was ripped from his head at a movie theater in January. There are some establishments like strip clubs and casinos that banning and prohibiting Google Glasses.

Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones questions a group of "Explorers" and grills them on how ridiculous this trend seems despite all the crimes that have been committed against them.