Former Cal Football and now Oakland Raiders Quarterback Kyle Boller is set to marry former Miss California and Miss USA Carrie Prejean.
Frankly, having met Kyle Boller, Carrie Prejean could not have picked a nicer guy. But to think that one year ago Carrie was under fire for speaking out against Gay Marriage, then getting the boot from Donald Trump, after that the CNN Larry King meltdown, and of course the infamous sex tape issue, all this blogger can say is "Wow. That was fast!" Did the Oakland Raiders Al Davis and Amy Trask encourage this in some unusual indirect promotion for Raiders Season Tickets?
Kyle Boller and Carrie Prejean have been an item since the summer of 2009. The wedding's set to take place this Friday. Let's hope Kyle's marriage to Carrie improves his play in football. He's got a new start with the Raiders and is back in the Bay Area, next to Cal.
In what must be a wild coincidence, Anna Chapman - who looks a little like Angelina Jolie - is accused of being a real Russian spy just weeks before Angelina Jolie's Salt movie is released on July 23rd. And that news of two hot women (OK, Anna Chapman's way too skinny to be considered hot but why not play along?) has pushed the news about Megan Fox getting married off the trend charts for today. Sorry Megan, this blogger will get back to you.
According to the New York Daily News, Anna Chapman ran a New York online real estate company worth $2 million and is one of 11 accused Russian secret agents arrested by the FBI and who allegedly operated in Boston, Seattle and Arlington, Va.
Apparently, she was caught in the middle of a mission, but what the NY Daily News posts reads as no bid deal. There must be more than this:
FBI agents found the Verizon phone contract and Motorola charger along with packaging for calling cards that can be used for international calls in a trash can after Chapman was arrested, according to the complaint.
Angelina Jolie
The court document also details Chapman's interactions with an undercover FBI agent who fed her instructions for preparing a fake passport to transfer to another female spy.
She was instructed to hold a magazine a certain way to signal the other spy to initiate contact.
Chapman is quoted in the complaint repeating back the following instructions: "Okay, tomorrow at 11, I am going to be sitting at one of the benches, she is going to ask me if she saw me in California. I am going to say no, it was in the Hamptons. I will take the documents, tell her to sign. I will hold the journal, this is how she will recognize me."
She was arrested before the mission was carried out. Chapman appeared in Manhattan federal court on June 28, 2010 with four other alleged spies.
Fine, but what was she doing in the mission? Why?
It's about as interesting as Angelina Jolie's Salt movie, but in that case Angelina Jolie's a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy and goes on the run; we don't get to see Anna Chapman on the run. We do get to see her Facebook page.
The main question is what was this 11-person so-called Russian spy ring doing. That's not answered. In the Salt movie, we know Angelina Jolie is suspected to be planning to get the American President. But in real life, what was Anna Chapman doing?
U.S. Senator John Kerry (D - Massachusetts) is sharpening his knifes for the 2010 election season. Kerry just sent this blogger an email that is a perfect indication of how Democrats are going to paint Republicans as we head into the fall election season: as "dangerously radical."
But given that Kerry mentions Kentucky GOP Senate Candidate Rand Paul, he should call Rand "a wacky guy" because he is. And besides, being dangerously radical is too nice. No. John Kerry should call the Republican Party "dangerously wacky."
Well, here's John Kerry's email:
Hello Zenophon,
Republicans are betting that you don't care - that after all you did to beat them in 2006 and 2008, you're going to sit this one out.
So they're whipping up their base by blocking help to unemployed workers, blocking summer jobs for teens, apologizing to the big companies that gave us the spill in the Gulf, and doing anything else they can do to stop progress. They're betting that they can excite their radical base and you won't respond.
The stakes? Look no further than the truly radical candidates we're up against. Down in Kentucky, it's would-be Senator Rand Paul. Yes, that Rand Paul, who says freedom means a private business can discriminate against African-Americans, and that President Obama holding polluters accountable for the mess in the Gulf is "un-American."
And he's not alone. All across the country, the Republican Party has turned dangerously radical. One candidate calls Social Security "horrible policy," while another has said that Americans will turn to "Second Amendment remedies" against Democrats.
We have to stop them. Please contribute today to Jack Conway, Admiral Joe Sestak, and some other great Democrats. Tell the GOP that you do care and that we will stop them.
The Republican Party believes they have the upper hand; they've made no secret of the fact that they plan to repeal healthcare reform if they win back control of Congress. But we have great candidates, and if we all work at it, we will beat them.
In Pennsylvania, Admiral Joe Sestak is running to keep Pennsylvania blue. In Illinois, Alexi Giannoulias is running hard to keep Barack Obama's seat Democratic. But we're not just playing defense. In New Hampshire, Paul Hodes is running neck-and-neck with his Republican opponent to take this seat for the Democrats.
Each of these candidates will make the Senate work better for average Americans. We need to do more than just play defense. Years of GOP mismanagement dug a deep hole. We've just started to turn our country around, passing healthcare reform, working to hold the big banks accountable for the Wall Street meltdown, pushing legislation to address climate change and end our addiction to oil. The GOP is betting big that saying "no" and blocking progress is a path to success in November.
What bet will you make?
We've still got a lot of work to do.
Thank you for all your help,
John Kerry
Again, John Kerry should just call some names and throw some dirt the GOP's way. That will liven things up a bit. Rand Paul's a wacky guy, not dangerously radical.
City of Oakland At-Large Councilmember and would-be Oakland Mayor's Race participant has announced she's going to make a "special announcement" and reports that it "Will be an eventful speech solidifying her position in the Mayoral race." It will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m at the Joyce Gordon Gallery 406 14th St.
In other words, after meetings, events, talks, and the parking issue, Councilmember Kaplan's going to officially run for Mayor of Oakland. And why not?
The Oakland Mayor's Race is wide open race and anything can happen between now and November, when the election for the next Mayor of Oakland is held. What I hear from Oaklander after Oaklander is that not one of the candidates is exciting to them.
That may be because they haven't seen all of them.
The Joyce Gordon Gallery is located on 14th Street between Broadway and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland.
While Arthur O. Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times, holds that Google is the NYTimes "friend" and they have a good working relationship - even to the point of hounding SFGate.com regarding this blogger's claims to the contrary - a recent Amici or "friend of the court" brief filed by the New York Times and other large news organizations openly attacks the work of online news aggregators like Google News.
If the New York Times likes Google so much, why would it attach itself to the friend of the court brief?
The backstory is the Barclay's Capital v. TheFlyOnTheWall.com case. In that case, New Jersey-based TheFlyOnTheWall.com was accused of taking information on bank upgrades and downgrades of stocks that was originally produced by Barclays and the other banks involved in the copyright infringement lawsuit lawsuit.
Barclays holds that TheFlyOnTheWall.com website “systematically and impermissibly accesses” its proprietary equity research and does none of its own. Barclays and the banks enjoined in the lawsuit, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc., contend their information is "hot news" and "that the regular, systematic, and timely taking and redistribution of their recommendations constitutes misappropriation, which is a violation of the New York common law of unfair competition," as the case reads.
Case was bounced around before
The Barclay's Capital v. TheFlyOnTheWall.com case originally started in June 26, 2006 and then reassigned to the court of U.S. District Judge Denise Cote on June 8, 2009, according to the case document presented in the link above. It never became a jury trial because Barclays and it's banking partners elected to waive a damages claim, and perhaps they reasoned a jury trial could go against them. Summary judgment motions that would have ended the case by tossing it out of court were denied on November 6, 2009; the case was set for a March 8th 2010 bench trial.
Copywrite claims and "Hot-News"
As part of the process of the original 2006 lawsuit against TheFlyOnTheWall.com (or "Fly") that company signed a confidentiality agreement and claimed the information on Barclay's and Merill's recommendations were coming from analyst and broker sources inside those banks's research departments which created the information. Barclay's claimed to end that pipeline of information and settlement talks started over statutory damages, which are much less that any a trial jury would be asked to evaluate. Fly agrees that it committed copyright infringement but that it is not liable for what is called a "Hot-News" misappropriation.
The basis for the "Hot-News" concept is a 1918 case called International News Service v. Associated Press. In that case, the AP reported World War 1 stories from Europe at its own expense and that the International News Service got from the AP by "copying AP’s stories from bulletin boards and early editions of newspapers printed by AP’s eastern affiliates" according to the Barclay's case text.
The International News Service then sent those stories to The West Coast where it sold the news stories paraphrased as its own story. The Associated Press got a permanent injunction blocking the International News Service from the Court of Appeals, after losing the original case decision.
The Supreme Court supported the Court of Appeals ruling under the view that the AP spent money and worked to make the story that the INS then used as the basis for its own news sales. In other words, INS made money off the AP's initial work, even though it was not a direct copy, and did no original work of its own.
You can see where this can apply to the modern Internet news debate. It's the reason The New York Times and Gannett (which owns USA Today) jumped in and filed "friend of the court" briefs. If they can successfully reintroduce the hot-news legal argument it will allow them to sue Internet companies with glee.
But standing in the way of such a modern application is Justice Brandeis minority Supreme Court view of that time: “the general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions -- knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas -- become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.”
While the INS hot-news legal view was challenge by the Second Circuit court's Judge Learned Hand as not intended to establish a general doctrine, it still became part of state common law in several states, including New York. The most famous recent "hot-news" case was National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc. in 1997.
In National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc., the hand-held pager displayed NBA game action news as the games were in progress. The information that was sold by Motorola via its SportsTrax device and for profit triggered the hot-news argument. The NBA won.
The NBA "Hot-News" view is pre-Twitter
The major problem with the Hot-News view is that it comes from a time before Twitter and smart phones. Now, a person can sent a tweet about an NBA game in progress that is then picked up by Twitter and can be used as a news feed on a blog that gains revenue from ads placed on it. The fan-generated information was not produced by the NBA itself. No sports stats sheet needs to be obtained.
But arguably the person who created the "Hot-News" is the fan, and not the NBA. The NBA can't control what its fans see its players do on the court and report to others. Adding a "no-tweet" ticket disclaimer would be impossible to legally justify if challenged. That's like asking a person not to talk about a game it saw. There's a numbers issue: the NBA game itself is so large and reaches so many people that it becomes a public event, thus the information from it is public.
Now you can see why Twitter jumped into this issue with Google. Indeed, the problem in the Barclay's case is that the "size of the impact of information" was not considered. In other words, in the view of this space, information that can be agreed to impact a large number of people should be considered public and thus more easy to distribute, even if it's for profit. The profit-takers will eventually have such a large market they will reduce the price for the information. In fact, one can claim that's what the Internet is causing to happen.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote's March 2010 Decision
In March 2010, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote established a creative injunction in the Barclay's v. TheFlyOnTheWall.com case that blocks TheFlyOnTheWall.com and other similar firms from releasing information from a research report not before four hours after the release of that report. TheFlyOnTheWall.com asked the appeals court to delay Judge Denise Cote's order while it files an appeal. This is where Google and Twitter are battling The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gannett, McClatchy, Belo, Scripps, Time, and the Newspaper Association of America, all of which filed a "friend of the court" brief that counters Google and Twitter.
The central problem with the Amici brief filed by The New York Times, et al, it is a direct attack on Google News. Page 25 of the brief reads:
One of the greatest concerns among news originators is inexpensive technology that allows easy aggregation of news. Aggregation can take many forms, including the indexing of fresh news content from one or more websites, by engines of various kinds. News stories are traditionally written to compress the key facts of a story into the opening paragraph. The output of indexing engines can reproduce the headlines, opening paragraph or sentences from originator news stories, and thereby convey the essence of the original news item. Even where an aggregator website or news application contains a hyperlink to the news item on the originator’s website, the risk remains that readers will find that reading the aggregator’s output keeps them sufficiently informed of the latest news. As a result, they may never click through to the originator’s website. If a significant number of readers find the news reproduced by the aggregator to be an acceptable substitute for reading the original story, courts should conclude that the two products compete in the INS/Motorola sense even though the two parties are not in identical businesses.
That is a direct attack on Google News and on the same process that Arthur O. Sulzberger himself has said gives a significant amount of traffic to The New York Times. I will go a step beyond that and say that Google does The New York Times a favor by in effect presenting it in Google News, and perhaps on more occasions that it had a right to have. Even if there is no click through to the website, the NY Times still has the benefit of being seen as the news producer.
Here's the full Amici brief from the news organizations:
According to Bloomberg, Google and Twitter's counter is that...
"In our brief, we're not taking sides or focusing on the details of this particular dispute between the parties," Chris Gaither, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Google, said today in an e-mailed statement. "But we believe that the case raises important issues of law that could affect the free flow of important factual information online."
It's clear we're at ground zero of what will be an important legal battle that impacts the future of news online. In this, we can now see true colors of the The New York Times : it has an issue with Google, otherwise it would not have joined the Amici brief in the Barclay's case that attacks news aggregators. Perhaps the NYTimes thought it was making a sneak attack; not any more.
I suppose many have seen this already, even if you're not regular Colbert Report viewers, but as a long-time fan of SNL's Father Guido Sarducci I wanted to share it here, too.
Prophet Glenn Beck - Father Guido Sarducci Incidentally, Fox News took little notice of the significance of August 28th as an anniversary date in 2008, when Democrats nominated Senator Barack H. Obama to run for President of the United States.
As the Oscar Grant / Johannes Mehserle murder trial nears and end and fears that former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle increase, the fears that a riot, or series of riots, will happen in Oakland, Los Angeles, and other cities and towns in California increase, and for good reason. There are clear and visible signs that individuals and groups will take some kind of action that could include violence and property damage, and nowhere is this more apparent than around Lake Merritt in Oakland. There, property damage has already happened.
This video blogger received a tip from a YouTube viewer:
Not sure if you're aware, but there is graffiti in red spray paint throughout the running/walking path in Lake Merritt regarding Oscar Grant and Johannes Mesherle, just thought you may want to possibly cover it, and the peoples reactions while viewing it.
Take Care
On Sunday, I did just that. My vlogging (video-blogging) journey started with a message painted in red spray paint at the AC Transit bus shelter at the intersection of Perkins Avenue and Grand Avenue in Oakland's Adams Point District. The message read "Mehserle must die too!" and seemed to imply there was at least one more graffiti tag like it around somewhere. So, I went for a walk.
At first, as I arrived at Bellevue and Grand closer to Lake Merritt, there was no other graffitt tag message. So I continued along the walking and running path through Lakeside park until I arrived at what's locally called "The Columns," the structure on the northeastern shore of the Lake that serves an an informal meeting and viewing place between Grand Avenue and Lakeshore Avenue.
There, starting at the end of The Columns on the Grand Avenue side, was the first of three messages. It read "Mehserle must die." The other two are located in what I call the center court area, and at the opposite end of The Columns on the Lakeshore Avenue side.
But it graffiti tagging didn't stop there; it continued around the path next to the Lakeshore on the Lakeshore Avenue side of the water. The majority of the messages, which varied in tone from bad to awful, were next to the benches along the path.
In all I counted 11 messages, all in the video. A sure and clear sign that someone already took action to send a warning of what they either intend to do or wish someone else would do if the Oscar Grant trial ends with Mehserle going free.
The problem is Mehserle just may walk free.
The reason is the charge is murder, not manslaughter. The prosecution in the case has to prove that Johannes Mehserle intended to kill Oscar Grant last year. This is an issue I talked about with Oakland City Attorney John Russo just weeks ago. While not saying outright that Mehserle would "walk," Russo explained that it was going to be difficult to get a murder conviction.
If Johannes Mehserle is set free, Oakland's not going to be the safest place to be on the day of the verdict.
http://5cculturalcenter.org/index.html
FYI, the food is delicious. I had a fresh carrot pudding desert that was vegan and out of this world delicious and blueberry lemonade.
Don't forget to watch my YouTube series on Giuseppi Logan from finding him all alone in Tompkins to helping him reunite with his son for the first time in 40 years!
The miracle of Apple teaching me video and YouTube helped me work a miracle.
I filmed Larry Roland, a bass player who was playing with Giuseppi Logan giving Gisueppi a rest break with a solo performance.
Larry Roland read his poem dedicated to African American jazz greats, known and unknown. Larry Roland told me when I interviewed him after the gig that "Jazz", America's Art form was kicked off by slaves. Larry told me his concerns for jazz greats known and unknown some in homes, forgotten, with no health insurance. He expressed a real feeling for Giuseppi Logan. He told me jazz greats known and unknown are dying and their spirits come down...Dying quietly.
Larry Roland's poem: Poem all of the beautiful ones Known and unknown
Also please note Matt Lavelle is dedicated to Giuseppi Logan booking him gigs and playing with him as well as providing support and encouragement to "G" as Matt calls him.
I used the very cool new feature which I tap the screen and the camera switches to the front and I can myself as I film myself. I am not blushing...we are having a heat-wave!
Dear Blog Readers: NYU's president is John Sexton. He ran down to City Hall to testify Mike Bloomberg must have a third term. Let me translated John Sexton' who is paid 1.8 million a year plus real estate and other perks courtesy of NYU. NYU has big financial deals and real estate investments -- huge greedy goals that good friend Mike Bloomberg and socialite mega millionaire Amanda the people's Burden will aid and abet and a mayor and a real city planner -- that actually cares about the people would have said "NO!". No is a word that NYU can't seem to understand when the community says no more mega dorms, no more supersizing our neighborhoods, no to supersizing.
I posted this comment on Crain's website and see my YouTube on a letter I wrote President Obama asking the President of the United States of America to help protect our community from NYU and helping us to get community outreach resource centers in every mega dorm where NYU and universities copying NYU's real estate greed use the term, "community facility" to exclude the communities.
By the way I continue to ask if NYU's president, John Sexton can even vote here in NYC? Sexton supported Mike Bloomberg flushing democracy down the toilet by denying us, the people a referendum so Mike could buy, steal, win a third term -- nice example for NYU students.
Parents of NYU students, visit 120 East 12th Street and see the facade of St. Ann's Church from 1847. St. Ann's survived everything all these years except NYU's need and greed to build yet another mega dorm.
Here is the comment:
Good to know NYU, the evil empire, posing as higher education so NYU can buy up and displace as many people and small businesses as possible is expanding their endeavors. Karma served NYU by hiring someone who was suckered by Bernie Madoff. NYU could care less about the communities where they occupy and gobble up prime real estate. NYU only has one focus "greed" and being a big business that uses "higher ed" as a tax shelter for "higher greed".
You're Cut Off is like rehab for "spoiled brats." The nine young women on this show are self proclaimed princesses. They have relied and mooched off their families' money. The surprise comes in the first episode when life coach Laura Baron declines their credit cards and tells them what's really going on. The girls had originally thought they would be appearing on a reality tv show that filmed them shopping.
The nine ladies watch video testimonials from their family members. Each video ends with the phrase, "You're cut off!" This means that instead of living the ritzy lifestyle they are put into a house together (not one of those flashy mansions that most reality tv stars get to live in).
The girls are so surprised that there is not a maid there to wait on them. There is one bedroom with bunk beds that they have to share, and Baron gave each girl one duffle bag to fit all her things in. These women live like Paris Hilton, and now they are living like "middle class" citizens. The girls are given $200 a week for groceries if they follow their life coach.
The life coach hopes to teach some lessons that will instill values and make it known that money is earned. These girls are encouraged to become productive members of society, and Baron has them complete daily chores, among other things.
"Laura Baron is a professional lifestyle and relationship strategist who is regarded as a premier change agent. Laura's clients report greater success using her signature intuitive and customized methods over traditional therapy. Her clients include CEOs, entrepreneurs, celebrities and women in transition," VH1 informs.
In part of an episode the girls were cleaning Omarosa's house. One of the girls, Gia, got in Omarosa's face and refused to clean her house. That must be one of the most disrespectful moments caught on reality TV. That was Gia. Gia has a baby girl at home and refuses to change her diaper. Gia makes it known in the first half hour of the show that she will not cook or clean, ever. She says, "I don't even know what color my kitchen is!"
Gia is a wife and mother from California who also refuses to wake up in the middle of the night to take care of her baby. Her husband hires nannies while Gia smokes on her hookah all day. She claims she could not survive without her hookah, and when listing the most important things in her life she mentioned her family AFTER listening all the material items. Gia divorced her first husband, because he could not keep up with her lifestyle. Her current husband is extremely fed up with it and is cutting her off. He even admits he looks in the mirror some days and wonders what he's doing.
Gia is only one of the divas on this show. It's entertaining to watch, because it's hard to believe that this type of person exists. There rest of the divas include:
Chrissy, the rotten princess from LA. She is the most disrespectful of all the girls. She has the nerve to do her make up and stare at herself in her hand mirror while others are speaking. She does not think that it is rude at all to interrupt others or to constantly stare at herself while having a conversation with another person. Her highest goal in life is to be married THREE times so she can have three fabulous weddings, but she won't say "I DO" unless the ring costs at least $300K. Her grandmother says Chrissy is "acting a fool," and prays that by cutting her off she will learn some responsibility.
Leanne is a diva from California who is supported entirely by her father. She didn't like the color of the Mercedes S-Class her dad bought her, and she decided to buy a $375K Ferrari while he was out of time; she crashed the Ferrari a few weeks later. Leanne will not knave the house without her six bodyguards, a make-up artist, or her best friend. Her father is cutting her off, because he has had enough of her spending all his hard-earned money.
Pamela claims that she worked on Wall-Street. She is a New York girl that says she WAS a princess and now she's a QUEEN. Pamela is really good at spending her family's money. They are cutting her off in hopes she will make something of herself.
Erica is a pampered princess who will never be seen without a tiara. She is from Texas and her father is a plastic surgeon; she spends over half a million dollars of her dad's money ever year. Erica lives at home and consults her personal astrologer for every life decision. She can't imagine life without bottom and lip injections. Her family is cutting her off in hopes she will learn to value money and make something of herself.
Jessica belongs on The Jersey Shore. This girl could have some fun with Snooki and J-WOWW. This girl is a loud Italian, and she doesn't care what people think about her. She doesn't cook, clean or do anything to help society. She does however like to nag, insult others, and spend money. Her mother is cutting her off in hopes Jessica can learn to survive on her own.
Courtnee is the North Carolina "it-girl." This socialite is being cut off by her family, because they don't understand how their "little princess" turned into a demanding diva. Her father is cutting her off so that she stops treating him like an ATM, and she starts putting her people skills to good use.
Amber, the southern belle hails from Georgia and admits that she always judges people by what they are wearing. She took a semester off from college to catch up on her shopping. Her father is cutting her off in hopes that she will take school more seriously, and apply herself.
Jacqueline is the one to pay attention to. She is the daughter of a successful business executive. Her house is 10K square feet, and she has three walk-in closets. She says there's nothing wrong with checking a man's bank account before going out. Jacqueline got her first Chanel bag at age five, and now her parents are cutting her off. They hope their college graduate will stop with the endless partying and reckless spending.
At the end of the season (8-weeks) the girls will be reunited with the people who cut them off, and that will be the test to whether the girls PASS or FAIL. The girls will need to adhere to new guidelines if they want a chance of getting back in good graces with the loved-ones that put them on this show.
Give this show a try. You're Cut Off can be watched online or tonight, Monday, June 28, at 7PM, 8PM, and 9PM. There are three episodes total, and hopefully by the end of the season these unrealistically superficial barbies will become humble and hard working and respectful young ladies. Follow VH1 on Twitter for more updates. Psst. Perez even makes an appearance.
(All images courtesy of VH1 and Starcasm except for the Nikky Raney ones)
After months of legal paperwork, Academy Award-winning Actress Sandra Bullock's divorce from her husband Jesse James is final according to TMZ.com.
The news marks and end to their four year marriage and points the way to Sandra Bullock raising her adopted baby Louis Bullock as a single paren without Jesse James, and with her adoption paperwork nearing completion.
Sandra Bullock, who won the Oscar For Best Actress in A Leading Role for her portrayal of Lee Anne Touhy, the tough-minded Houston socialite who takes in a homeless Michael Oher in The Blind Side, learned that Jesse James was having an affair with a woman named Michelle "Bombshell" McGee as she was making the film.
Then, in a process of two weeks, gossip websites revealed that Jesse James had slept with four different women over the course of their marriage and their adoption of baby Louis. As James went to therapy for sex addiction, Bullock moved to seek a divorce.
Now, it's final.
Bullock, in hiding for a while, has finally come out into the public eye, most notably at the MTV Movie Awards, where she planted one on Iron Man 2's Scarlett Johansson.
The Runaway General, the Rolling Stone Magazine article that cost Gen. Stanley McChrystal his job as commander of Allied Forces in Afghanistan, and exposed a culture of McChrysal's aides that were hostile to civilian military officers, is out on newsstands and online, and it opens with the now famous blast against NATO allies slated to attend a dinner he was assigned to go to.
While Gen. McChrystal's comment that there was no one in the room who could beat him up, or:
"I'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner. Unfortunately, no one in this room could do it."
..made the press, there's more that didn't, until now. This is what else McChrystal's aide said after the writer Michael Hastings asked "Who's he going to dinner with?" The McChrystal aide says "Some French minister. It's fucking gay."
Hastings says McChrystal's staff consists of "a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs."
Overall, the article paints a picture of a man who's every bit the schoolyard bully portrayed in this space and shows that he was trying, but failed, to bully President Obama. (It also confirms my system dynamics blog post from Saturday.)
President Obama made the right move in ousting Gen. Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal was toxic; that's the view this space gains from The Rolling Stone.
