Miscellany - on Wednesday Night!

Oy - you should see my hair.  You now how when you get sick your hair gets all weird looking and your mouth gets yucky?  That's me right now.  But before I wash my hair and clean out my mouth and go to bed (already scarfed down two time-release gel caps that are supposed to let me get to sleep and relieve my symptoms, we'll see) - I wanted to bring you these few stories I found interesting.

Wed Apr 28, 2010 2:49 pm EDT

China stripped of 2000 gymnastics medal for underage athlete
By Chris Chase
This story made me laugh.  The Olympic Committee strips China of the 2000 Team Bronze medals in Women's Gymnastics.  What?  When it was so fricking obvious that at least two little girls on the 2008 team were under-age. I mean, come on, they didn't have the start of breasts!  Sixteen year old girls have at least the start of breasts!  It was clear those girls weren't anywhere near 16, despite what their lying phoney papers said (attested to by the Chinese government, as if we're supposed to believe anything IT says). Ridiculous, just ridiculous.  Evidently 2008 medals earned by the cheating Chinese are sancrosanct, so they decided (finally) to pull the 2000 Women's GynasticsTeam Bronze medals instead. 

I can't believe this - a DUH story if ever there was one.  Why is this even news?
Illegal immigrants plan to leave over Ariz. law
By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press Writer
– 2 hrs 5 mins ago
Of course they're leaving - but don't count on the illegal aliens going back to home sweet home - they're not wanted in Mexico.  Nope - they will instead move to neighboring states that don't have laws against them, like Wisconsin, which seems to be teeming with illegals.  I swear half of Milwaukee's population is now illegals - you can tell by how filthy their neighborhoods are (I go through them five days a week on the bus to and from work so I see it every day). They don't seem to understand the concept of garbage cans and trash collection - not that they care.  They don't care enough to learn to speak English, why should they care about sanitation laws?  They throw all of their garbage, including food and used Pampers, into the gutters and yards.  In the few cases where the yards are clean and not filled with junked up cars, the Mexican colors they paint their houses (bright blues and oranges) are a give-away.  And then there is the ever-present Latino grafitti to add the finishing touches to what used to be neighborhoods filled with working-class descendants of Germans and Poles.  Oh, and don't forget to duck when you hear the gunfire. I grew up in one of the neighborhoods that has now been overrun with "Latinos."  It is no longer safe.  Reports of gang violence and nightly shootings. Yeah, call me a racist - guess I am.  I don't want the illegals here, either. 

Somebody is giving the Republicans really really bad advice.  A few weeks ago they held up a bill to extend unemployment benefit aid to the states; some of the Republican representatives actually claimed that it was unemployment insurance benefits that was assisting people is remaining unemployed, thus extending the Great Recession (I read this in The Wall Street Journal, which should be ashamed of itself for publishing such obvious drek). Obviously the dudes have no concept of what it means to try and live on approximately one-fifth of their regular income each month (if I made one-fifth of their income, I'd be on easy street).  Now they've been holding up action on banking reform.  Oh my - after the latest Congressional sub-committee testimony by the dudes who raped America while getting rich and laughed while doing it has been plastered all over the news.  So now they've decided they're going to play marbles after all - a day late and a dollar short (hope you like those mixed metaphors).  Like I said, really really bad advice.
GOP abandons blockade of banking regulation bill
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
– Wed Apr 28, 7:52 pm ET
 
And, tee hee hee, from The Christian Science Monitor, "Noah's Ark discovered. Again."

By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist / April 28, 2010
A Chinese Christian filmmaker is the latest in a long line of religiously funded expeditions claiming to have found the final resting place of Noah's Ark on Turkey's Mount Ararat.

State-Sponsored Cheating at Olympics

Hola! This will be my 1,501 post since the start of this blog on April 28, 2007. Well, no one ever accused me of being shy, retiring, and never having enough to say...

Saw this news report. There have been other stories about the discrepency in reported ages for three of the Chinese "women" gymnasts and what their "official" passports say. Come on - I remember what Michelle Kwan looked like just after turning 13, and how her coaches try to "mature" her with costuming and fancy make-up. While Kwan was, indeed, a figure-skater mature beyond her years, no amount of make-up or costuming could disguise her youth when you saw her right next to a 16 or 17 year old skater.

These Chinese girls - they are babies. In this photo of He Kexin from a few days ago, she doesn't even have breasts - she could wear a tee shirt, she doesn't have enough bustline to fill out a training bra!

The world gymnastics federation says they accept passports issued by the government as valid proof of age (avoiding the issue, of course, about the veracity of the issuing authority!) and the US Gymnastics Association won't make a fuss - it's up to the world federation, they say. But we all know what the truth is. China's totalitarian regime and its butt-kissing yesmen can (bullshit - oops - delete that naughty word) DISSEMBLE all they want about the "true" age of these girls - and get the girls to parrot correct responses to the press (I mean, it can't be that hard for the girls and even their parents to lie with a straight face, who'd want to go down in history as a known cheat - and lose gigantic "face" under the mores of Chinese society?) I had a good laugh over Zhang Hongliang saying that the writers of CHINESE press reports in CHINESE newspapers didn't check to get the ages of the girls right! Yeah, right. That may fly as "truth" in Bejing, but it doesn't play here, darlings!

It's very sad. The Chinese don't HAVE to cheat. They've got more than enough talent who meet the age requirements (which have been around at least as long as the Chinese Communist government's extensive programs to breed and raise autobot athletes for the Brave New World). How pathetic that the Chinese government still feels compelled to cheat - not only in front of its own people this time, but in front of the entire world.

Yahoo news
State-media story fuels questions on gymnast’s age
By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press Writer 10 hours, 49 minutes ago
BEIJING (AP)—Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government’s news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week.

In its report Nov. 3, Xinhua identified He as one of “10 big new stars” who made a splash at China’s Cities Games. It gave her age as 13 and reported that she beat Yang Yilin on the uneven bars at those games. In the final, “this little girl” pulled off a difficult release move on the bars known as the Li Na, named for another Chinese gymnast, Xinhua said in the report, which appeared on one of its Web sites, www.hb.xinhuanet.com

The Associated Press found the Xinhua report on the site Thursday morning and saved a copy of the page. Later that afternoon, the Web site was still working but the page was no longer accessible. Sports editors at the state-run news agency would not comment for publication.

If the age reported by Xinhua was correct, that would have meant He was too young to be on the Chinese team that beat the United States on Wednesday and clinched China’s first women’s team Olympic gold in gymnastics. He is also a favorite for gold in Monday’s uneven bars final.

Yang was also on Wednesday’s winning team. Questions have also been raised about her age and that of a third team member, Jiang Yuyuan.

Gymnasts have to be 16 during the Olympic year to be eligible for the games. He’s birthday is listed as Jan. 1, 1992.

Chinese authorities insist that all three are old enough to compete. He herself told reporters after Wednesday’s final that “my real age is 16. I don’t pay any attention to what everyone says.”

Zhang Hongliang, an official with China’s gymnastics delegation at the games, said Thursday the differing ages which have appeared in Chinese media reports had not been checked in advance with the gymnastics federation.

“It’s definitely a mistake,” Zhang said of the Xinhua report, speaking in a telephone interview. “Never has any media outlet called me to check the athletes’ ages.”

Asked whether the federation had changed their ages to make them eligible, Zhang said: “We are a sports department. How would we have the ability to do that?”

“We already explained this very clearly. There’s no need to discuss this thing again.”

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has said repeatedly that a passport is the “accepted proof of a gymnast’s eligibility,” and that He and China’s other gymnasts have presented ones that show they are age eligible. The IOC also checked the girls’ passports and deemed them valid.

A May 23 story in the China Daily newspaper, the official English-language paper of the Chinese government, said He was 14. The story was later corrected to list her as 16.

“This is not a USAG issue,” said Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics. “The FIG and the IOC are the proper bodies to handle this."