Yahoo! Sports reported yesterday that LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers was upset over comments made by USA Basketball managing director, Jerry Colangelo, last week.
James, the Cavaliers only MVP in NBA history, holds many youngest player records and has been a stand-out player since he was selected as the number one draft pick in 2003.
Colangelo told Yahoo! last Wednesday that “there would be no free passes to London” and “there are no special rules for anyone. If someone decides to pass [on playing in the World Championships] without a legit issue, they do it with an understanding of the risk.”
James also made comments Wednesday that he “would probably not be playing” in the World Championships in Turkey over the summer.
He is among other NBA players who have doubts whether or not they will attend the training camp and tournament, including Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade.
Wade and James are both facing free agency as of July 1st, one of the reasons James gave for missing Worlds.
He is arguably one of the most talented players in the game today, so the majority of basketball fans will be on the edge of their seats to see where he ends up.
As a free agent, he would have to meet with coaches, attend work-outs and see how he fits into team’s offenses, so it is understandable that he would want to keep an open schedule.
However, some of this can be done through video conferencing or before he leaves for Team USA’s training camp. It is also not uncommon for a coach to make an exception for a player on the national team.
James is one of the most recognizable stars of the NBA and is seen as a role model, therefore making him a perfect ambassador to represent our country on the world’s stage.
In yesterday’s article, he talked about how much commitment he’s had to Team USA so far. He played in 2004 in Athens and signed a 3-year contract in 2005, playing in all three summer tournaments afterwards, as well as helping take home the gold in Beijing.
This time around, Colangelo only asked for a 2-year deal and hoped to win in Turkey to automatically qualify for London, which would give the team the next summer off.
Without some of the team’s best players like James and Wade, the team has a lesser chance of winning, therefore forcing Team USA to play another summer tournament.
James asked, “So if we are jeopardizing the opportunity to be on the team in London, I mean, what can we do? What can we do?”
What can you do? You can play. That’s what you can do.
While his free agency is undoubtedly his main priority come summer, representing his country and helping defend the gold medal should come before marketing his shoes and filming a movie.
And if he simply cannot fit the FREAKIN’ OLYMPICS into his “busy schedule,” maybe he shouldn’t be playing anyway.
For the original report: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-worldchampionships040110
Yesterdays article: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=mc-lebronworlds040410
About a month ago, Navy and Defense Department officials notified Congress of their intent to lift the ban on women serving on submarines.
CNN.com reported that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, along with chief of naval operations and the secretary of the Navy, made the recommendation with no opposition from Navy leaders.
Under the plan, officers would be the first position to go co-ed and the larger, nuclear powered subs would carry the first females.
While this might not seem like a big deal in this day and age, it is. This is just another step toward lifting the ban on women serving on the “front lines.”
Women were first allowed to serve directly in the military with the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in 1948 and military academies became coeducation in 1976, and yet women are still banned from direct combat.
There are a lot of arguments as to why this is, most of them focusing on the physical and mental aspects of having females in combat units.
No one can deny that women are typically less physical then men, and do suffer from physical restrictions like menstruation. Likewise, women have been socialized to be more sensitive and with less of a killer instinct then men.
But the argument that is most compelling is not about what a woman can’t do, but what a man might do.
Men have been socialized to see women as mothers, sisters and wives. So to see a woman being blown up, killed, or captured could effect a male soldier more than seeing a fellow male.
The subject of sexual abuse has also been brought up after a Presidential Commission report was published saying it was found that male POWs, while being subject to physical abuse, were never subject to sexual abuse, and women were almost always subject to sexual abuse.
And while all of these arguments are valid, not allowing women to fight on the front lines is becoming more and more detrimental.
The U.S. is fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan with 122,000 soldiers deployed between the two as of Feb. 28, 2010 according to the Brookings Institute’s Iraq Index, and Army enlistment is at it’s lowest since World War I.
By not allowing women to serve in combat positions, the military is failing to utilize able-bodied American’s who want to serve their country alongside their male counterparts.
The majority of women in the military probably won’t be eligible or even want to fight on the front lines, but they should at least be given the option.
A man’s life is worth just as much as a woman’s, no matter how hard that is for people to accept.
As if my name didn’t give it away already, I am of Irish heritage. I am 3/4 Irish and was been raised with a strong sense of Irish pride and culture. So as it’s St. Patrick’s Day today, I feel obligated to inform the public about what St. Patrick’s Day actually means and dispel some Irish rumors and phrase that typically get mixed up.
So who was St. Patrick?
The reality is that nobody really knows. There are several accounts about who he was and how he came to Ireland. Two authentic letters about his life are in existence, one of which documents that he was born in Britain and then captured and sold into slavery. After he escaped, he joined the Church and returned to Ireland.
In the beginning, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated purely as a religious holiday, but is now celebrated outside of Ireland, namely in the U.S.
Oh yeah and that whole chasing the snakes out of Ireland has one fatal flaw: there weren’t any snakes to begin with.
Why do you wear green?
One of the most popular stories about St. Patrick is that he used the three leafed shamrock to teach the Irish pagens about the Holy Trinity. But in the beginning, people actually wore blue on St. Patrick’s Day and green was considered unlucky. Green is said to be the favorite color of the Good People aka fairies, and they liked to steal children who wore the color too much. Wearing green is most likely an American tradition.
There is also a myth that wearing green makes you invisible to leprechauns, who would pinch anyone they could see.
Speaking of Leprechauns…
Despite what St. Patrick’s Day decorations and children’s books like to tell you, leprechauns are not cute, pot of gold guarding men. They are drunk, grumpy, mean little creepers. They make shoes for fairies and play pretty nasty tricks on humans, not sell cereal and dance a jig.
“You won? Oh it must be the Luck of the Irish!”
Ok seriously? What sort of luck brings 1,000 of years of invasion, colonization, exploitation, starvation and mass emigration? And when we moved to THIS country to try and have a better life, we were treated as 4th class citizens (behind the rich, the middle class and African-Americans) until the Gold Rush.
The term “Luck of the Irish” came when some of the most successful and prosperous miner were Irish or Irish American. Unfortunately, this still carries negative connotations, because it basically says we got rich on pure luck and not on brains or talent.
And for the love of St. Patrick stop trying to shove corned beef down my throat
Yes, the Irish did have cows, but beef was used almost exclusively as an export because it was expensive. So no corned beef in Ireland. However, poor immigrants began eating the stuff in Lower East Side New York, a meal they borrowed from their JEWISH neighbors.
So as you recover from your green beer hang over and cringe at the video of you singing “Danny Boy” tomorrow, remember Erin Go Braugh, my friends.
Last week, news mediums all over the country reported that President Obama had called for a bipartisan summit on health care reform. The president is making an effort to bridge the ever-growing gap between Republicans and Democrats and resolve one of the most pressing matters facing Congress today.
Sounds great, right? The Republicans didn’t think so.
House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio told Fox News that he questioned the president’s “sincerity,” and wondered if the president would be willing to “start over,” in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Now I can understand that the Republicans want to make sure that their points are included in any health care reform bill, but start over? The first versions of the bills were due around the holidays, and now it’s mid-February. To start over now would just be another set back in the long list of thing the president and the Democrats have been trying to pass.
The Republican’s got to see government mandated health care first hand as the Republican National Committee met in lush Hawaii in January. Hawaii is one of the states that has already adopted universal health care, along with Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Hawaii adopted their health care system with the Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act, which took effect in 1975. This means that the citizens of Hawaii have had universal health care for 35 years, and Republicans keep insisting government mandated health care won’t work?
The Democrats could just as easily use their considerable majority to pass a health care bill without any Republican votes. In the Fox News article, Republicans said “Obama runs the risk of appearing insincere if he convenes the bipartisan gathering without showing greater willingness to shelve or greatly change his party’s proposals.”
Basically, the Republicans are saying they don’t to play nice if the Democrats aren’t going change their beliefs to what the Republicans want.
I’m 20 years old and unlike most people my age, I’m not in the best of health. I’ve been suffering from kidney stones for the last 14 years, and while they’re not life threatening, they are a major health problem. In the last 2 years, I’ve been to emergency room twice, and without insurance, I racked up quite a bill.
Like millions of other men, women, and children, I can’t afford high-priced health insurance, so a universal health care system is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Congress needs to stop and think about what their bickering is doing to the people of this country. The longer they fight, the more and more people go through every day without health insurance. For some this is merely an inconvenience, but for others, it can mean the difference between life and death, as well as mounting debt.
Everyone deserves to be healthy and no amount of selfishness and interest groups will ever stop that. At least, I hope so.
“Republicans Privately Worry Obama May Be Laying Trap With Televised Health Care Summit” — Headline from Foxnews.com on Feb. 9, 2010.
The first week of school is always crazy. You have to get to school before 8 just to get a decent parking spot, there is a line out of the door of the Sip and good luck if you’re trying to add classes.
Speaking of trying to add classes, I was talking to a friend about her classes and she had an interesting story. She is enrolled in a speech class, where there is a 40 person maximum per class. Now usually, 5 or 10 people wander into all the GE classes on the first day looking to add. I remember seeing them in my political science and math classes.
But in this particular speech class, there were 60 PEOPLE trying to add. That means that today, somewhere on our campus, there were 100 people in one classroom.
What the heck is going on here?
We’ve been hearing about budget cuts for a year now, and while the numbers and dollar signs might not mean much to us, we’re starting to see exactly what they mean.
As Sacramento continues to spend more money then they are bringing in, it seems like education has become an easy target for budget cuts because corporate interests, unions or federal laws protect everything else. In a state that has always valued their educational institutes, they are continuing to cut funding.
And for what? So they can put more money into the prisons? Invest in people who messed up their lives instead of the people who are trying to better theirs? 11 percent of the general fund of the state budget was alloted to prisons, according to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s State of the State speech on Jan. 6. Eduction recieved 7.5 percent.
The governor is seeking to change this by approving an amendment that would keep money for education from going towards corretions. Which sounds awesome besides the fact that it won’t be effective until 2014.
So while the state continues to cut funding, raise tuition to cover the cut funding and causes general chaos in our school system for the next four years, at least we have that to look forward to.
In the meantime, let us enjoy our full to the brim classes and think about how inmates are getting their degrees before we do.
According to www.thefreedictionary.com, newsworthy means:
news·wor·thy
adj. news·wor·thi·er, news·wor·thi·est. Of sufficient interest or importance to the public to warrant reporting in the media.
This blog will discuss just that.
In TV news, it may seem like all news is big news, but that is not the case for print journalism.
I’ve been a newspaper journalist for five years now, and so I’ve learned to pin point what is the big news and what isn’t.
In this blog I will be analyzing and commenting on the big local, national and international news of the week.
Whether its the Iraq Conflict or the big winners at the Oscars, it’s News Worthy.