Gilbert Gottfried Fired By Aflac For Tsunami Jokes On Twitter

Gilbert Gottfried, best known as the voice of the duck in the now-famous Aflac commercials, has ducked up. Aflac, the insurance company, wasn't too secure with his Twitter tweets about Japan and the Japanese in the wake of the worst natural disaster in that nation's history. So, Aflac fired Gottfried.

Apparently Mr. Gottfried knew he was wrong and wanted to maintain his job because he removed the offensive tweets. But that was too late, as they were picked up by a number of blogs, of note, The Huffington Post. Here are the Twitter tweets of concern:

I just split up with my girlfriend. But like the Japanese say, "They'll be another one floating by any minute now."

Japan is really advanced. They don't go to the beach. The beach comes to them.

One thing's for certain, Gottfried is out of a job. But this blogger has to question Aflac, because from reading his remaining Twitter tweets, it's OK to insult black men! Witness:

RealGilbert Gilbert Gottfried
@.@LisaLampanelli Black convicts are RMAO (ramming my ass off)!
11 Mar

RealGilbert Gilbert Gottfried
@.@LisaLampanelli Maybe no more black convicts for you, but I constantly visit Rikers Prison for a good ass fuck.
11 Mar

RealGilbert Gilbert Gottfried
.@LisaLampanelli You married a white cop! Does he mind you fucking black convicts?
11 Mar

RealGilbert Gilbert Gottfried
@Abner_Malitee What did he say this time?
10 Mar

RealGilbert Gilbert Gottfried
My doppelganger or my Sammy Petrillo, which ever you prefer. Marlee Matlin's interpreter, Jack Jason. #Roast http://twitgoo.com/20owp2
10 Mar

RealGilbert Gilbert Gottfried
Me backstage at the #DonaldTrump #Roast with a very large black gentleman. http://twitgoo.com/20obop
10 Mar

Good for Gilbert Gottfried getting fired, but couldn't Aflac have been more comprehensive in its reasons?

Oakland Marathon and Running Festival 2011: Gene Brtalik Interview, Lake Chalet, Oakland

Gene Brtalik and this blogger got together again and for the second time in a year to talk about the Oakland Marathon and Running Festival 2011 to be held March 26th and 27th 2011. We met for lunch on a beautiful Friday on the dock at The Lake Chalet; a perfect lake shore backdrop to talk about the running race that will pass by it on March 27th.

Gene's the Director of The Oakland Marathon, and has settled in to being a Bay Area resident and head of a successful event that promotes the city. He moved here two years ago, noticed that Oakland didn't have a race, and talked to the head of Corrigan Sports Enterprises back east in Maryland about starting one in Oakland. The result was the 2010 Oakland Marathon that drew 6,300 runners. A good 20 percent of them from outside the Bay Area.

The race course they run, as Gene points out on the video, takes in much of central Oakland, from Jack London Square, to Lake Merritt, then the Oakland Hills, and finally downtown Oakland; 26.2 miles for the full run, 13.1 for the half marathon. And all along the course, music groups played, and will be there again.

Changes For 2011

Gene says that many of the Oakland Marathon's changes for 2011 center around making the course more "driver friendly." For example, last year they went down Fruitvale; this year they're going down Coolidge. And this time the course avoids Bellevue for those who want to go to Children's Fairyland.

The Runners Expo is bigger this year, and the 5K this year is at Jack London Square, where as it was at Lake Merritt in 2010.

Registration At 7,000 Runners

Already there are more runners registered this year than last year: 7,000 as of the writing of this blog post. You can still register at the website here: www.oaklandmarathon.com

Oakland Marathon: The Best Of Oakland

Gene reports that a post- 2010-race survey revealed that 90 percent of people surveyed said that they left with a positive image of Oakland.   One person saw Lake Merritt and loved it so much, he bought a house there.  That's the best news of all because, as Gene says "Oakland's not as bad as members of the media have made it to be."

Atlantis Found in Spain

Time magazine online reports that researchers are claiming that they may have found the lost city of Atlantis in Spain:

"The new proposed site of Atlantis is 60 miles inland, submerged in the swampy Dona Ana Park north of Cadiz, Spain."

Discovery Channel's show Finding Atlantis aired last night, Sunday, showed that the city which was swamped by a tsunami may be found. Reuter's reports that the U.S. led research team used satellite images:

""This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters.

"It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut, professor who lead an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.

To solve the age-old mystery, the team used a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city to find the site just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient, multi-ringed dominion known as Atlantis."

It will be interesting to see what more is found as the series progresses.

Pi Day

Today is March 14 - 3/14 - 3.14, which is also the first three digits of pi, which is a never ending number non repeating. Pi represents the relationship between a circle's circumference and diameter and is used in equations for solving.

In schools across America students celebrate pi-day with eating pies and playing games in the classroom. This is the 22nd annual pi day as reported on the Pi Day web site Exploratorium.

The site includes all sorts of fun activities, because it is the one day where math can actually be interesting and entertaining; as well as delicious.

So eat some pie and enjoy the day.

SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi On SF Police Surveillance Video Scandal

The San Francisco Police video Surveillance Scandal has hit the media and led to what ultimately could be a sweeping investigation and eventually a wholesale change in how police work is done. This blogger met (for the first time) with San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi to talk about the scandal and its implications on Friday for this video interview.



Mr. Adachi presides over an office of 90 lawyers, a budget of $24 million, and has handled about 25,000 cases over his tenure since he was elected in 2002. Adachi explains that the one truism is "everyone has an eye on you."

That "eye" is the camera, be it a camcorder, standard photo camera, a camcorder, or in the case of the surveillance scandal, a surveillance camera. What happened is a couple of weeks ago, we had a case where the client said the police came into my room without a warrant." Adachi says the police filed a police report that claimed otherwise - that they had consent to enter the place.

What the San Francisco police officers filing the report didn't count on was the existence of a video right in the hallway and which captured their every move and "directly contradicts what the police said."

The Public Defender says "police have to have a warrant in order to go into your home. This is America. This is the constitution." The officers were caught on camera violating the basic constitutional rights of the very people who's homes they broke into. "In one of the videos, you can even see one of the police officers, who knows the surveillance camera is there, put his hand over the surveillance camera." Then the officer took it away once the police were ready to leave. The trouble is, he didn't keep his hand up long enough.

This is the video Adachi's referring to:



"The bottom line," Adachi says, "is the conduct the officer did is illegal and it contradicted what he put in the police report." Jeff says that when an officer writes a police report there's a box that writes "under penalty of perjury." That means if the report is false, the officer has lied to the court with the stroke of a pen.

Even with that, Adachi says the officers don't take the issue of perjury seriously. In the Surveillance Video Scandal, the officer gave testimony consistent with the police report, even as the video contradicting him was shown in court.

Eventually, that, and other videos, led to the San Francisco District Attorney dismissing 57 cases last week. And there may be more.

That's because once an an officer is found to have committed perjury in one case, or officers involved in 57 cases here, that can be applied to other past cases. So this scandal is what Mr. Adachi describes as the "Pandora's Box" that could lead to discoveries of other San Francisco police misconduct examples.

Former Police Chief Backs Off Investigation

The announced investigation that was to be ran by Former SF Police Chief and now San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, but Gascon has announced he will not lead the investigation of the SFPD on this matter. The FBI will take charge of the investigation. (And while they're supposed to, Jeff Adachi says that as of this report, the FBI has yet to contact him. Adachi wants to be kept informed by the FBI.)

On The Matter Of A Master Key

In another case that came to Mr. Adachi and involving the Lutx Residential Hotel, San Francisco Police went to the landlord's office and pushed and intimidated him, demanding a master key. The police used the key on six different occasions to enter rooms, again without a search warrant.  The landlord says he believes in the police, but they can't use him to go into people's apartments, as they have done.

Even with Adachi's public complaint, and the video scandal, San Francisco Police Chief Jeff Godown says his charges will continue to use a master key in drug busts. In a press conference Friday, at about the same time as I was talking with Adachi, Godown said "We're not doing anything (different)," and argued that a "pass key is no different than someone booting down the door with their foot or using a ram."  Adachi has said he would seek legislation to make the police stop their current practices.

The San Francisco Riders Case?

To this blogger, the San Francisco Police Surveillance Video Scandal has all of the marks of Delphine Allen v. City of Oakland, known as The Riders Case in Oakland.  In that famous episode in Oakland Police history, four Oakland Police Officers, beat, intimidated, and abused West Oakland residents, then lied about their activities in their police reports.

It cost the City of Oakland $10.9 million in paid settlements to 119 Oaklanders and their lawyers, and sweeping changes in how the Oakland Police conduct activities with potential suspects. And the OPD is under the watch of an independent monitor, who reports to the Federal Court on a regular basis.

Adachi is not prepared to go as far as to suggest the San Francisco Police have a "Riders" problem with rogue police officers, but that was before Godown's statements. Overall, the appearance is that the San Francisco Police Department's not going to change its practices on its own.

A Hotline To Call

Mr. Adachi says if you have an incident of police misconduct to report, call 415-575-4290. Another practice is to purchase and wear a tiny pen-mounted video camera or use a camera-equipped clock that can rest on your desk.  A cyber walk to Spycameras.com reveals a wide variety of cameras, many at affordable prices.

Another way is to use your Samsung Android smartphone and download Qik.com.  You can activate the Qik.com app, and use the smartphone to livestream any illegal police activity happening before you, then send the video out to you Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts.  If you leave the Qik.com app on for about five minutes, it will broadcast a true livestream video to your viewers.

It's the only way one can protect themselves against illegal police actions and obtain evidence.   Technology is the ultimate disruptive force that can protect the civil rights of innocent San Franciscans.

Stay tuned.

Some things & Other Things: the Locked Out edition

By Dr. Bill Chachkes-Executive Editor-Football Reporters Online

Everyone is pointing the finger at each other since this past Friday afternoon. The owners accusing the players of not bargaining in good faith, the players accusing the owners (and by extension the league) of wanting this to happen all along. The Players filed a class action suit (Brady Vs. the NFL) after voting to decertify. What drives me nuts here is the players never asked for anything then what they had asked for since 2009: for the owners to open the books. The feeble hearted attempt to do that at the 11th hour was just that. Feeble. Are you telling me the owners really don’t care about how much money they are leaving on the table? That the players really wanted to go the route of litigation as opposed to negotiation?

The league released a “summary “ of it’s proposal, amid other press releases coordinated by Team Owners, and in combat directed at the players. While they all were apologetic to a fault to the fans, not once did they offer to extend the deadline to keep talking, even though the owners claimed up until Friday that they were closer then they ever had been to a settlement. Remember they initiated this by “opting out” of the 2006 extension, because they felt they had given up too much.

The Players never got even the little things they asked for from the Owners Group..

The fact is that the Players never waivered on two serious issues: The extended 18 game schedule was a deal breaker for the players. While the owners and The NFL told us that the “fans want more meaningful” games, the owners never truly showed us they cared about the wear and tear on the players bodies. Did the NFL really take a survey of the fans asking them: do you want two more regular season games and two less pre-season ones? Where are the results of this research?

The second issue was player health and safety, for both current players and the “pre-1993” players. Five years of post career health insurance is just unacceptable in the modern age, while the NFL gets doctors to “lie” in Hearings that “Concussions caused by playing football” don’t lead to “Permanent Brain Injury,” or a lifetime of “headaches.” Just ask Brent Boyd, the former Vikings Offensive lineman who has been to capital hill to testify. He runs a great organization called Dignity After Football (DAF.Org), and if you aren’t totally swayed by what I say, talk to him for 10 minutes. I wonder if he’s had a good night’s sleep since he left the game in 1987.

I have a great deal of respect for Mr. John Mara, and I believe he and Bob Kraft were part of the moderate camp in this mess. Did you notice how he was at the front of the negotiating panel the last several days. That’s because I believe he really wanted to get something done. That’s why you didn’t see Richardson or Jones speak much recently, because no one really wants to hear what “they” were saying. These were the guys who wanted to “Break the players will” just a few weeks ago, that went on 60 Minutes and said a “Lockout wouldn’t be such a bad thing” Remember? I did…

They all talk about how they give to charity and help the less fortunate, but what did they just do to the working class and small businesses that depend on the NFL to earn it’s living. They have already priced out the working class with PSL’s and rising ticket prices, but wanted the players to “see the reality” that the economy was shrinking their profit margins, keeping them from building new stadiums. Why not rebuild the ones that are already in place? Why spend money that you don’t have, or expect local cities to come up with it? To me, the players take all the risks. They are the ones who could die or be paralyzed in a quick moment, or suffer permanent head or spine injuries like so many do, and don’t realize it until long after the fact.

True, no one forces these men to play the game. Many do it for the love of competition. Many do it because it is their only way to a better education and a better life. But if they are going to play, can’t they get the protection they deserve from severe life threatening injury? Can’t they have lifetime insurance? To me this is more important then how to split an extra few million.

Well, at least the draft isn’t cancelled….

You are now going to see the real worth of various teams’ scouting departments. With no free agency period in sight (unless a court ruling forces the parties back to the table and the NFL resumes team operations), the NFL Draft will now be the defining moment for teams to fill their needs. Still, after the player is selected, beyond the initial phone call, no team can have contact with a drafted player until the CBA conflict is settled (at least not legally). Sucks if this was your year to get a QB…

While this doesn’t directly cost me financially, it does impact me in that I only have “half” a sport to report on, the college side of the game. If it doesn’t get settled by the summer, you are going to see a lot of angry fans, a lot of people financially hurt and even businesses ruined, and people asking the question that no one wants to hear: “why bother to watch the NFL anymore?” Is that what the owners truly want?
Why should we feel bad for someone who tells his team “your taking a pay cut of twenty five percent until this is settled, as several teams have done already.

Baseball never fully recovered from the strike of 1994, and Hockey didn’t recover from their strike & lost season several years back either. Can The NFL really survive this? All we can hope for is a quick resolution by the courts at this point.

Jeff Adachi and John Russo: Talks With SF's Public Defender and Oakland's Lawyer

This is an "introductory blog post" for two of this blogger's longest and most informative videos given by Oakland City Attorney John Russo, and San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi. The follow-up blog posts will be dual: one with the title of "John Russo, Oakland City Attorney, Gives Gang Injunction Update," and the other with the title of "SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi On SF Surveillance Scandal."

Both videos are long: approximately 67 minutes in total, combined. They're part of this blogger's on-going effort to produce deliberate long-form online interviews featuring experts, personalities, and celebrities on issues of importance to various audiences.

This blog presents some highlights:

First, on the matter of the San Francisco Police Surveillance Video Scandal, where 57 cases were dropped after members of the San Francisco Police Department were caught on camera committing civil rights violations against mostly poor and minority suspects, and yet, even under penalty of perjury wrote false police reports, covering up flagrant violations, Mr. Adachi says that District Attorney George Gascon, the former police chief of San Francisco, has announced he will not lead the investigation of the SFPD on this matter. The FBI will take charge of the investigation. (And while they're supposed to, Jeff Adachi says that as of this report, the FBI has yet to contact him. Adachi wants to be kept informed by the FBI.)

Second, Adachi says that this may be the tip of the iceberg of such police misconduct in San Francisco.

On the issue of Oakland's Gang Injunction Update, Russo explains that the Gang Injunction does not violate the civil rights of the person's who are the focus and that it's designed as a kind of restraining order. He also explains that of the 15 men who are part of the injunction, there has been only one arrest since it's application. The injunction they are pursuing now is against The Norteños gang which operates in Oakland's Fruitvale District, and what Russo describes as more "common" gang, with colors and symbols. In that case, the gang injunction targets 40 men.

And regarding the assertion made by The East Bay Express on March 2, 2011, that John Russo had not attended an Oakland City Council Closed Session Meeting in two years, he expressly said that was not true. However, he's not pursued a retraction from The East Bay Express because he thinks it just gives more attention to what he considers a small issue. But the bottom line is The Express was wrong.

Russo also said that closed session was not that valuable because some of the people attending were "not prepared." He's referring to certain Oakland City Councilmembers.

Russo also says that Oakland's "Beat Feet" program, where the Oakland Police would take the car used by a suspect in a narcotics bust, regardless of who owned the car, was declared unconstitutional in 2009.

John's not firing the City of Oakland entirely, but only on the issue of the pursuit of cannabis production in violation of Federal law. Russo says his jobs is to be the city's attorney and not to pursue his personal feelings. Russo was not trying to "stop the council" because of his position. Indeed, he was only one of two of 125 public officials in California to come out in favor of Proposition 19, which if passed, would have legalized pot use; it failed last November.

Here are the videos:

Adachi:



Russo:



Stay tuned.