Oh, I love it. There are only a couple of teams I really HATE- BYU and the Lakers.
Even when they suck, I delight in watching them lose.
Even better is when the lose at the hands of my Aggies & Jazz.
And best is when they get slaughtered by my Aggies & Jazz.
Such is the case tonight.
The Jazz are up by 20 in the 3rd quarter!
Blood lust, Jazz! Blood lust!
This was an interview I did with Ed Mayne on June 20, 2007.
-Tom
Tonight on KVNU’s For the People…
The UHP should be announcing at any moment the results of their investigation into the tasering of Jared Massey by Trooper John Gardner. We’ll give you the results and get your reaction.
Should Utah accept nuclear waste from Italy?
It’s Friday, time for KVNU’s For the People Friday News Quiz… your chance to win a $25 gift certificate to the Belle Monte restaurant at Sherwood Hills.
All of that, your phone calls and more, tonight on KVNU’s For the People!
The Tribune is reporting that there will be a news conference this afternoon at 4 PM to announce the findings of an investigation into the September tasing of Jared Massey by 14 year UHP veteran Trooper John Gardner.
We’ll talk about it tonight on KVNU’s For the People. Personally, I think the judgment must be weighed against Trooper Gardner’s 14 year record. If Trooper Gardner has an exemplary record, he should be severely punished but not fired. If however, Trooper Gardner has a record demonstrating an inability to successfully deal with beligerent people, then he gets the ax.
I also have to add that the timing of this press conference is suspect. 4 PM on a Friday?
I have a hard time believing that’s an accident.
If you want to have a press conference that gets minimal press- do it at 4 PM on a Friday. You’re not likely to make the national news broadcasts, and the local broadcasts won’t have full coverage until 10 PM. The newspaper stories will show up on Saturday morning and the entire thing will be forgotten when a new media week starts on Monday.
Maybe it’s a coincidence. But… maybe not.
-Tom
From today’s Tribune:
EnergySolutions simply wanted to jump through the necessary hoops to do what the company has always done – deal with radioactive waste.
But the Salt Lake City company’s application to import waste from Italy’s dismantled nuclear program is turning out to be anything but routine.
In fact, there is every reason to believe that its latest application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is about to spark a national discussion about what should be done with the world’s low-level radioactive waste.
Lawmakers from Texas and Kentucky last week began asking if plans for the Italian waste are safe or might set bad policy precedents. And on Wednesday, two South Carolina state senators urged members of Congress to help fight EnergySolutions’ import request.
The outcome of the debate may not only decide if EnergySolutions gets the contract for 20,000 tons of Italian waste over the next five years, but it also might determine whether the United States, and Utah’s west desert in particular, become a routine destination for the world’s nuclear waste.
My gut reaction to this is, no way!
What are your thoughts?
-Tom
Tonight on KVNU’s For the People…
A topic we didn’t get to last night… The Recording Industry Association of America is going after a single Utah State University student for $3,000 for having an illegal mp3 on his computer. Is this fair?
Suspects have been arrested in the robbery of a Logan Zions Bank last month. Logan City Police Sgt. Eric Collins joins us with details.
We’ve got a complete recap of last night’s Republican debate last night including the smackdown between Mitt and Rudy over immigration and a question about Biblical inerrancy.
All of that, your phone calls and more, tonight on KVNU’s For the People!
Listening to Mitt & Rudy personally go after each other on immigration tonight was sadistically entertaining. Both of them were full of it to their eyeballs and were but a millimeter away from cutting jugulars:
Republican presidential rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney scornfully debated immigration Wednesday in a provocative, no-holds-barred CNN/YouTube debate just over a month before the first votes are cast.
Giuliani, the front-runner in national polls, accused Romney of employing illegal immigrants at his home and running a “sanctuary mansion.” The testy personal exchange came after Romney said Giuliani had retained New York’s status as a sanctuary city while he was mayor.
Romney said it would “not be American” to check the papers of workers employed by a contractor simply because they have a “funny accent.” He had landscapers at his Belmont, Mass., home who turned out to be in the country illegally.
Giuliani shot back, calling Romney’s attitude “holier than thou.”
“Mitt usually criticizes people when he usually has the far worse record,” Giuliani said.
The audience, however, booed Giuliani as he tried to persist in his criticism of Romney.
I don’t know that there was a “winner” in the squabble as both candidates arose from the proverbial mud hole caked in crap.
What did you think?
Sometimes, when the Herald Journal quotes city leaders, the meaning of the quotes aren’t always made clear. Here’s such an example from yesterday, in a story about the Logan General Plan:
“I know what’s going on out there in the planning industry in this country,” said [Community Development Director Jay] Nielson. “And the solution to air pollution is that we stop driving, and we start walking. We start riding bikes, and we have mass transit. And you and I and our grandchildren decide to participate in population control and quit having children.”
Is Jay advocating these principles, or is he mocking the socialist “planning industry?” Or is it a combination of the two? I think he’s trying to explain what it could actually mean to thoroughly address air quality in the plan (the subject of the article) if planners had their way, but you never can tell with Logan city government.
Craig
Jared Massey is asking people to leave Trooper Gardner alone:
“I wish people would have some common decency every once in awhile,” Mr Massey said.
“When I posted the video it wasn’t to vilify the guy, demean him or destroy him, and that’s one of the things I hate about this.
“I wish people would realise and think about this: Trooper Gardner is a real person, he’s got a real family. Real lives are being affected.”
Also, ridiculously, a United Nations committee declared that the use of Taser’s X26 stun gun by police amounts to torture.
Craig
Tonight on KVNU’s For the People…
We’ll talk with Rob Miller, Vice Chair of the Utah Democratic Party and proprietor of UtahAmicus.com about the recent passing of State Senator Ed Mayne as well as other issues.
The Recording Industry Association of America is going after a single Utah State University student for $3,000 for having an illegal mp3 on his computer. Is this fair?
And Mitt Romney says that he wouldn’t consider appointing a Muslim to his cabinet to deal with national security issues. What gives?
All of that, your phone calls and more, tonight on KVNU’s For the People!
From today’s Tribune:
U.S. Muslims are charging Mitt Romney with hypocrisy for refusing to consider appointing an Islamic believer to his Cabinet if he is elected president.
At a fundraiser earlier this month in Las Vegas, Pakistani financier Mansoor Ijaz asked Romney whether he would “consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his Cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that ‘jihadism’ is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today.”
According to an opinion piece Ijaz wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, Romney replied, ” . . . based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage of] our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”
Now U.S. Muslim leaders have called for a meeting with Romney, and commentators are pointing out out how often Romney claims religious discrimination against him due to his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Did Mitt really say it? The only quotes available come two months after the incident in an op-ed piece. To be fair to Romney, the quote may not be accurate. Anyway, here’s how Mitt spins the controversy:
On CBS on Tuesday, Romney claimed what he actually said was: “No, I don’t think you have to have a Muslim in the Cabinet to be able to take on radical jihad any more than during the World War II we needed a Japanese American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan.”
He told CNN’s “Situation Room” Monday that “to fill spots based on checking off boxes of various ethnic groups is really a very inappropriate way to think about how we staff positions.”
Classic spin: when you give a bad answer, try and change the original question.
The original quetion was whether Romney would consider, not commit to having a Muslim on his cabinent to deal with national security issues. Big difference. Mitt’s I-don’t-want-an-ethnic-check-list answer doesn’t address consideration, but rather a commitment.
It’s totally hypocritical of Mitt not to consider a Muslim, assuming that’s what he really said. It makes him sound like the ill informed so called Christian Iowa bigots and hicks in today’s New York Times that denounce Mormonism.
Oh, and by the way Mitt, Islam is a religion, not an ethnicity.
-Tom
From the Utah Statesman:
Last week, USU received advanced notice about an early settlement offer from the Recording Industry Association of America to an unidentified USU student over the matter of a single song he had available to download from his computer. Information Technology Security Team Coordinator Bayn said of the hundreds of take-down notices a year USU has received concerning students sharing music and other electronic files on the USU server, this is the first time a copyright watchdog has taken the step of starting litigation.
The amount of the offer the RIAA is proposing? Three thousand dollars.
“I think (the recording industry is) trying to create uncertainty and publicity and some fear,” Bayn said. “This student getting this next level hasn’t done anything different than the others that I’ve seen.”
Copyright watchdogs monitor college campuses because students on average commit more copyright infringements than other demographics. Students at universities and colleges across the country have received notices warning of potential consequences if file sharing doesn’t stop. When they find a computer on a university server with file-sharing software like LimeWire, BitTorrent, KaZaA or dozens of other programs, they send a notice to the university giving the IP address of the offending computer, and the university contacts the student.
The student, whom Bayn declined to identify pending a subpoena if the student does not settle with the RIAA, received a take-down notification in September, a day when several other similar notifications were sent to USU. Bayn said it appears this student has done nothing worse than what other students have done, yet he is the only one at USU who has been picked out by the RIAA so far. So far in all his dealings with the watchdogs and students, Bayn said he has never had to give out any student’s personal information. But, if the subpoena is issued, he will have to report the student, he said.
I’m not going to defend illegal file sharing. People shouldn’t do it.
However, I have several objections:
Tonight on KVNU’s For the People…
KVNU’s Craig Hislop speaks with Logan City’s Community Development Director Jay Nielsen about the City’s new general plan.
The People for Wet Water have posted an explanation of why they lost the election complaining that their own candidates were inadequate, that the Herald Journal treated them unfairly and that they suffered the attacks of a last minute smear campaign.
Slate.com’s atheist columnist Christopher Hitchens is demanding that Mitt Romney weigh in on the LDS Church’s pre-1978 ban on blacks and the priesthood.
Might Nibley City ban beer sales on Sunday? We’ll talk live with City Councilman Larry Jacobsen.
And it’s the YouTube video that has Utah and the entire nation abuzz- Utah Highway Patrol Trooper John Gardner tasering driver Jared Massey. Have you seen the video? Was the use of the taser justified?
All of that, your phone calls and more, tonight on KVNU’s For the People!
Mitt Romney appears to think that, in respect of the bizarre beliefs of his church, he has come up with a twofer response. Not only can he decline to answer questions about these beliefs, he can also reap additional benefit from complaining that people keep asking him about them. In a video response of revolting sanctimony and self-pity last week, he responded to some allegedly anti-Mormon “push poll” calls in Iowa and New Hampshire by saying that it was “un-American” to bring up his “faith,” especially “at a time when we are preparing for Thanksgiving,” whatever that had to do with it.
More:
According to Byron York, who has been riding around with Romney for National Review, it’s working, as well. Most journalists have tacitly agreed that it’s off-limits to ask the former governor about the tenets of the Mormon cult. Nor do they get much luck if they do ask: When Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation inquired whether Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden is or was or will be in the great state of Missouri, he was told by Romney to go ask the Mormons!
More:
It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith. It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.
I’ll be the first to say that the pre-1978 ban on blacks holding the priesthood was a mistake. It was a policy begun without a revelation and ended with a revelation. It’s an unfortunate blemish on the history of a Church that I believe has a divine mandate but is lead by very fallible, very well intentioned people.
To indict an entire belief system based upon a single policy and mistake and then make a tenuous appendage indictment of Mitt Romney is a spurious argument at best. Even if we accept the argument that the priesthood ban proves that the LDS Church is a morally bankrupt organization, Hitchens never bothers to deliver the most critical part of the argument- the impact on how the allegedly morally bankrupt LDS Church would effect Mitt Romney as President of the United States. Hitchens demands answers but never offers a solid link between his objections to Mormonism and how those objections would negatively impact the duties of the President.
Furthermore, Mormonism is non-unique in terms of doctrines that seem odd to outsiders or mistakes in history. Is the Eucharist or the Trinity any more logical or believable than the Garden of Eden in Missouri, or that a Garden of Eden existed at all? These are all claims that can’t stand empirical scrutiny and must be taken on faith.
Hardly! The only difference is that Americans are familiar with these doctrines and not with Mormonism.
And yet no other candidates are getting the kind of treatment that Hitchens and others are blasting Romney with, even though the dogmas of their faith are just as odd as Romney’s.
Unless you can impact the link between doctrine and policy, there isn’t much of an argument to be made.
-Tom
We mentioned this on KVNU’s For the People tonight but didn’t have time to get to it because of the early Jazz game. Here’s the link to the PFWW’s explanation on the election.
-Tom
Tonight on KVNU’s For the People…
Utah lost a great Statesman last night- State Senator Ed Mayne. Today Utah’s political community pays tribute to a giant of a man.
Do you have a Black Friday War Story? Did you get up at 3 AM and trample little old ladies to get that deal on an LCD screen? We want to hear your story!
The winter time ban on overnight parking in Logan City is in effect. Is this an ordinance that should be changed?
All of that, your phone calls and more, tonight on KVNU’s For the People!
Jeff has an engaging response to Mount Poulsen’s recent letter to the Herald Journal on homosexuality. I’ll warn you that it’s PG-13 (for those that might be offended).
-Tom
hat tip to jess.
Utah has lost a great statesman: Senator Ed Mayne. My personal interaction with Senator Mayne was limited, but let me tell you my impression of the man- he was a friend to all regardless of party or political philosophy and a salt of the earth kind of guy who identified with regular working Utahns.
More from across the Bloghive:
From the Salt Lake media:
You can do it online here:
http://highwaypatrol.utah.gov/contact_uhp.html
-Tom
These stories are getting to be a dime a dozen, but here’s one more example of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do coming from the global warming crowd, via In From the Cold. Not only is the next big UN climate meeting going to be held in an exotic, faraway locale (Bali), but such a heavy influx of private jets is expected that the Bali airport won’t have enough room to park them all. Instead, they’ll have to fly on to Indonesia to find a parking spot.
Let’s see…how much fuel does a Gulfstream V burn on a flight from Europe or North America to Bali. Then, you’ve got the “parking hop” from Ngurah Rai to another airport, the flight back to Bali and the journey home. Quite a carbon footprint, eh?
Not that we’d expect U.N. swells and their environmentalist friends to use commercial flights for that trip to Bali. Why, it’s a 24-hour flight from LAX, and depending on their routing/airlines, they’d probably have to change planes in Seoul or Taipei. No need to fly with the tourist riff-raff when you can arrive in style on your own private jet.
IFTC concludes:
Not that it really matters. This is merely another example of the environmental movement–formally institutionalized by the UN–asking the rest of us to emulate their rhetoric, rather than their deeds. For all their concern about “greenhouse gases” and “global warming,” they have no problem discussing those issues in Bali (one of the most distant, albeit beautiful locations on earth), and flying to the conference in a fleet of inefficient, private jets.
Craig
The Podcast
