NFL EXPANDS INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE SQUAD PROGRAM

NFL EXPANDS INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE SQUAD PROGRAM

From NFLMedia.com

To enhance the development of elite football talent from around the world, NFL clubs have agreed to expand the league’s International Practice Squad Program. The action was taken at the NFL Spring Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia on May 20.

The initiative, which enters its fifth year in 2008, will for the first time feature 16 players joining the practice squads of NFL teams.

The players will be selected and assigned to teams in the AFC North, AFC West, NFC South and NFC West in time for training camp. Participating players will be announced in mid-July.

Since the program’s inception in 2004, 22 players have participated, including 11 last year and nine that have participated twice.

One player, guard Rolando Cantu of Mexico, graduated from the International Practice Squad Program to see action in the NFL the following season. Cantu spent 2004 on the Arizona Cardinals’ practice squad before being elevated to the active roster by the club in 2005.

Cantu played in one game that year, the club’s season finale against the Indianapolis Colts, and was on the field when kicker Neil Rackers connected on his record-setting 40th field goal of the season, the most in a season in NFL history.

Cantu is now retired from football and serves as the Cardinals’ manager of international business ventures.

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Why This Talk Of Obama Assassination? A Sick Pattern That Must End

The latest was Fox News Analyst Liz Trotta (pictured), and Senator Hillary Clinton was just before her by three days. Then we had Arkansas Governor Mike Hucabee and also White Supremacist and friend to Fox News' Sean Hannity Hal Turner.

What do all of these people have in common? Well, all are over 50 years old, either in the mainstream media or have access to the mainstream media, are White, and all have suggested that Senator Barack Obama be harmed or threatened in some way.

It doesn't matter if it's said in a suggestive way, as Senator Clinton did, or directly as Turner did. The main question is why are they doing this, and also why is it that a frightening portion of people in the mainstream media -- again to date all White -- are giving these comments a pass.

(As a momentary aside, it's wrong regardless of color, but the pattern to date is an alarming one.)

Let's start with Senator Clinton's now famous statement, which you can read here. Regardless of your interpretation, she said what she said and one has to ask why in hell Clinton would even have the possibility of a June assassination in her mind.

Think about it.

Clinton said that it was not a good idea to want her to quit the race and gave several historical reasons why, including mentioning that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Well, how the hell is one to think anything other than that she had Senator Obama -- the only other person remaining in the Presidential Race -- in mind?

In my view Senator Clinton has a major problem with a moral compass that she turns off when the issue isn't apparently a directly moral one. Thus, she can say "it takes a President" in a very sloppy response to Fox News' Marshall Holman's question regarding Martin Luther King's legacy. This really terrible person filling in for Ronn Owens on his KGO Morning Show was not able or willing to wrap is mind around the fact that Clinton's "policy first" perspective was wrongheaded and so hung up on me on the call-in show this morning.

A very small action of an obviously very small person. I was happy to learn this so quickly.

And thus it -- since that person's part of the mainstream media and White and apparently at, near, or over 50 years old -- brings me back to my main concern: that these terrible comments aimed against Senator Obama are seemingly OK with the John Rothman's of the World.

What I was saying to him got on the air -- Senator Clinton has a moral compass problem. In other words, Clinton's so busy thinking about what she thinks (and Rothman thinks) is the right answer, but in reality is one possible answer and one without a moral adjustment where you consider how those who revere Dr. King (who was killed) would feel -- not the right one.

I didn't waste time calling Rothman back because to do so would have been, well, a waste of time. I've learned to ignore people like that and did so a long time ago.

But what's bothersome is that people like him and Trotta have jobs at KGO and Fox News. I'd love to see them fired and replaced with voices of color and young White voices who represent diverse communities.

I think a big part of the news media's problem goes back to the lack of newsroom diversity; it's all one kind of voice most of the time. This is certainly true for KGO, which is why I seldom tune in, if ever. I used to do so, but over the years I've observed Ronn Owens reflecting a dated viewpoint and the last straw was Owens guest, a totally stupid and psychotically racist man named Burt Prelutsky, who send email after sicko email expressing the desire to debate me online -- rather than in person.

(Owens and Burt are in the photo -- the one with the guys with the shirts I wouldn't wear!)



People like Burt are so sick, debating them in person is easy. I know his weakness and it stems from his own hatred of people of color and the fact that he sees himself as smarter than someone like me because I'm Black (Have doubts? You should hear that cracker!) -- his first error which comes from a personal God complex. He;s not the judge but because he thinks he's the judge makes him so fun to toy with -- in person. His emails I don't want at all. I'll leave it at that. He's a nut and Ronn was not only nuts for giving him a platform, but for sending him to me online and not setting it up so I could embarass Burt on Ronn's show. Ronn thought it was funny; I wasn't laughing but considered calling the cops at one point.

I'm serious.

It's people like those that are apologists for Senator's Clinton's RFK comments. Geez.

And if not the KGO myopics, then we have people like Liz Trotta, who are so mentally stuck in the "us" versus "them" mentality that talking about bring harm to Senator Obama is within the realm of possibility. Heck, Trotta did it.



But the real person who's just beyond the pale is Hal Turner (pictured with the cartoon-like comment(, the White Supremacist who's rants calling for Obama's assassination were so threatening the FBI and Secret Service were contacted. Sean Hannity's a friend of Turner and even had him on his show as recently as 2005.

To me the only remedy is the wholesale sacking of people like these and by others within their peer group who have enough internal strength to say "Look, that's enough. You're finished." Only then will this crap stop and we can move on toward achieving a more healthy American Society.

Right now, it's pretty fucked up.

LIZ TROTTA SHOULD BE FIRED FOR SAYING OBAMA SHOULD BE KILLED

See this video because Fox News had the never to allow this person Liz Trotta to say that Barack Obama should be killed. What the fuck is going on here? Why are we allowing this steady diet of people -- frankly older White folks in news -- making comments that Obama should be killed or shot at?

Moreover, why is Liz Trotta allowed to keep her job? Why isn't the FBI or Secret Service paying attention to this overall string of scary commentary blasted before us?

This is a parade of sick individuals before the public eye.

See this:



UPDATE: This post has led to a lively conversation, but someone asked that I write a follow-up of more detail. I did. It breaks down the details behind who has been making these comments and offers a view of the possible reasons, one of which is the lack of diversity in newsroom's like that of Fox News.

See: http://zennie2005.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-this-talk-of-obama-assassination.html

Hillary Clinton Off Deep End: Blames Obama For Her RFK Assassination Gaffe

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton simply must either get out of the presidential race or be forced out. Just three days after her gaffe heard 'round the World, Clinton expressed the total nerve to blame Senator Barack Obama and his staff -- himself who was the unfortunate "target" of her not-too-hidden idea that the possibility of his assassination in June was a good reason to stay in the race -- is now blaming Obama for her sick comments.

This after Obama accepted her apology without fanfare.

No kidding. Clinton's charge is that Obama and staff -- rather than the NY Post or Keith Olbermann at NBC -- ran with this story and fanned its flames. Wow.

Instead of letting her appology stand, Clinton and her staff have decided to act like a wounded animal backed into a corner, and are now lashing out recklessly. The one best way to end this really is for uncommitted Superdelegates to come out and give Obama the 49 delegates he needs as of this writing to close this campaign.

Enough is enough.

Kirk Wright Suicide: Former NFL Financial Advisor Commits Suicide In Jail

In a very sad end to a story about a person that had so much initial promise, Kirk Wright, the man convicted of up to 710 years in jail for mail and securities fraud and who had formed frauduent reports to clients to cause them to think they were making money from his investment portfolio, when he was losing money, killed himself in jail in Union City, North Carolina. Some of his clients were NFL players.

The result was that he fled from capture and when found was sentenced to prison for a term longer -- much longer than his life. He was -- to my knoweldge -- given no chance to clean up his act with the people he harmed or society in general.

And now, this young man is dead at 37.

It's sad. Sad to know that a professional Black young man with vast connections could wind up in the position he found himself in. And he probably saw himself as having failed after trying to reach above where society seems to say where he should be, only to find himself in a mostly-Black prison system, and with no way out.

So Kirk created one. God bless his soul.

A Democratic Landslide In November?

As the contentious and historic battle between Democratic heavyweights Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton arrives at an abrupt finish, the limelight and attention can now be focused on both sides ability to emerge victorious in states usually reserved for the opposing party.

Can Obama court elderly Jewish voters in Florida and blue collar workers in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania? Can McCain convince the residents of Michigan that he is correct on the economy and will the established status quo citizens of the sunshine state play it safe and cast their vote for what many perceive as a Bush third term? Moreover, these are the hotly debated questions in these pivotal swing states that's going to differentiate which candidate is going to win in November.

While it would seem evident that in one of the most horrific and appalling years in United States history, with a misguided and debilitating war, an economy in peril, 47 million uninsured Americans, zero respect from allies and adversaries, an administration allergic to effective leadership and immune to responsibility, an absent minded energy and foreign policy, an environment on the brink of disaster and an educational system that's stealing the future of millions of hard working children and teenagers, that Democrats would cruise to victory this fall and recapture the White House.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. Barack Obama is not going to easily slither his way to the mountain top without a highly competitive and combative contest from John McCain. Republicans might not know how to run the country, but they know very well how to run a campaign.

SF Supervisor Chris Daly Called For Riot in San Francisco During Olympic Torch Protest

Just as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was worrying about the very possible future of violent protests along the route of the Olympic Torch Relay on the evening before the day of the event, April 9th, here in my video below, is Supervisor Chris Daly calling for protesters to "shut down" San Francisco, stating that it's part of the city's history to have such things happen.

Appearing before a crowd of about 8,000 people and as part of a well-done Olympic Torch Protest event at United Nations Plaza and featuring actor Richard Gere, Supervisor Daly took the stage with Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and after saying "Free Tibet" and waiting for the crowd to respond, he said "to do any less than take the streets of San Francisco would be un-san franciscan.

Daly continued by stating that in "1934, labor shut San Francisco down. In 2003, 300 people were on the streets of San Francisco saying 'no' to an illegal war and occupation of a country where the people were not inviting us in.." and continued as Supervisor Mirkarimi clapped in celebration of his speech, and the crowd got more excited.

Then Supervisor Mirkarimi took the mic and said that Supervisor Daly was called the "Daly-Lama" around City Hall.

Ok.

Still, one wonders what may have happened if Mayor Newsom had not secretly altered the Olympic torch path the next day. Not only would there have been violent protests and perhaps deaths, but Chris Daly would have hit his objective of protests being held, which would have cost the City itself a lot of money in police hours and the almost certain flood of lawsuits that would have been filed.

Here's the video:



Video also on Dailymotion and AOL , and MySpace.