When the Vikings were working on a deal to trade WR Troy Williamson earlier this year, some of the comments on the Strib articles that were directed at Williamson were pretty harsh. One commenter said that if the Vikes could get a cheeseburger for Williamson they should take the deal and run. Another said they should be happy if they could get a bag of footballs(for the record, the Vikes ended up with a sixth round draft pick for him). This morning comes news of a real life player for equipment trade in minor league baseball:
Minor leaguer traded for 10 baseball bats
During three years in the low minors, John Odom never really made a name for himself.
That sure changed this week—he’s the guy who was traded for a bunch of bats.
“I don’t really care,” he said Friday. “It’ll make a better story if I make it to the big leagues.”
For now, Odom is headed to the Laredo Broncos of the United League. They got him Tuesday from the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League for a most unlikely price: 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black, 34-inch, C243 style.
It sounds like the young man has a good perspective about it and you have to keep in mind that some of these minor league franchises operate on shoestring budgets. Still, I'd be a bit more chagrined than that player is, but maybe that's just me.
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I've been seeing generally positive reviews of the new Indiana Jones movie, including Rob's positive take on it here:
Some critics are obsessed with "freshness" and I was a little worried about what I might read from them beforehand. This was a movie where I was hoping to get exactly what I expected: "Goofy action". My worries were unfounded.
Good, that's what I want too. I'll probably wait a bit until the crowds die out and then catch a matinee or something. Anyway, the villains in this one are apparently 1950s era Soviet agents and it looks like some of the remaining communist party members in Russia are taking offense at the fictional movie:
Indiana Jones makes Russian communists see red
Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens.
"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.
"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.
Oh cry me a river. I will always be grateful that I wasn't born into the hideous totalitarianism that schmuck feels the need to defend. On the humorous side, their little temper tantrum brings back an oldie but a goodie though:
"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.
Hey Andrei, you're out of practice. That's supposed to be "imperialist running dogs" you idiot. But thanks for the laugh.
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From an MNF-Iraq press release from yesterday:
BAGHDAD – Iraqi Army Soldiers discovered a weapons cache hidden in a schoolhouse in Sadr City May 23.
At approximately 8 a.m., IA Soldiers from the 34th Brigade, 9 IA Division, discovered a weapons cache consisting of a remote-controlled improvised explosive device, six 155 mm artillery rounds, an artillery warhead, an anti-tank mine, four hand grenades, an unknown grenade, two PKC light machine guns, 450 PKC rounds, a 92 mm charge, a Katusha rocket launcher, two bottles of chlorine poison, eight Tamoud brand radios and five radio chargers.
The first charming thing to note is that Sadr's thugs used a schoolhouse as an arsenal. It doesn't say if the school was open or not, but neither situation speaks well for Sadr. Either they were denying the children their local school, or they were using students as human shields and forcing them to go to school right on top of live ammunition. Nice. I fully expect Human Right Watch to condemn this immediately....hahaha, sorry about that.
The second thing to note is that there is this meme about the government not forcing the Mahdi Army to disarm. It looks to me that the real situation is that the government of Iraq agreed to not force them to disband, but they are forcing them to disarm in the sense that they are confiscating everything they find beyond the single AK-47 or comparable that each household is allowed by law.
Finally, what's up with the "two bottles of chlorine poison"? Probably for their local water treatment plant, right? Right?
There is this myth that the Mahdi Army and Sadr's political organization is dedicated to providing services to the people that the government can't or will not. That was true in some ways until they morphed into greedy thugs who more preyed on the people in the areas they controlled than assisted them. They are being taken out not because they are political opponents of Prime Minister Maliki(which they are), but because they are standing in the way of real progress in Sadr City. They know that if the government is allowed to furnish the services that those people desperately want and need, a major reason for their existence goes away, as does a major source of their funding in the form of controlling food, fuel, and extorting protection money. They are also being taken out because they committed war crimes by indiscriminately firing rockets and mortars that killed almost 300 civilians in the past two months. Not that Sadr's apologists give a damn about that, but it enraged Maliki and other Iraqi leaders.
I wonder if they will actually dare to sabotage the coming infrastructure improvements. My bet is that some local Mahdi Army commanders will try and that Sadr will be forced to publicly disown them. It won't save him and his political stock will continue to decline.
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