One other thing: I believe that LA is correct about how teams are going to attack the Rams–they will Judo them to death. Use their strength against them. Let the speed guys come up and hit something quick behind them. Or mix in the occasional run against the blitz. Donald will be past the play.

If this is going to be an elite defense the linebackers will HAVE to make teams stop that attack. They will have to make them pay for that.

I talked to a guy in jail the other day. He was
denied a lawyer. Court wont appoint him a public-defender.
Why?
Because the crime he committed carries no jail sentence.
He wrote some worthless checks. Worthless check charges
only carry a FINE but no jail time.
The law in WV sez, you are only entitled to a court-appointed lawyer
if the crime you are charged with — carries a possible JAIL sentence.

So…he’s in jail because he cant MAKE BAIL — but the charge itself
carries no JAIL sentence — so…he cant get a Lawyer, to help him
…get…out of jail.

I could go on 🙂

It’s insane.

I caught bit of “…And Justice For All” last night—the old Al Pacino film. That also touches on the insanity of the system Good film.

I can’t imagine your level of frustration having to deal with it all the time. Maybe you just get numb after awhile–I don’t know. All you can do is do whatever little good you can do in this bizarre system. I have to believe when you get victories it feels pretty good, knowing what you’re up against.

Sounds good, wv.

Yeah–I think you’d really like “Divide”. It’s really eye opening in how the justice system works in different ways for different people. How delaying trials as a practice, can keep people in jail longer than their sentence would have been, how deals are made where people plead guilty to things they aren’t really guilty of and then as their record grows it becomes more difficult each time they are brought in–because as far as the law is concerned–they have a big record when a guy was just trying to make the best deal he could in a situation because bail is often set too high for lower income people to meet. Lousy options.

And the other part of the deal is about Wall Street and the banks and how THAT justice system works–or doesn’t really.

Justice is arbitrary–not some objective sacred thing that we’ve been led to believe.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Divide-American-Injustice-Wealth/dp/0812983637

Good customer review:

Whatever your viewpoint, this book likely will change it.
By Steven G Duff on April 20, 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
You could bookend this with Christa Freeland’s “Plutocrats.” But where that recounts a lot of dry history and statistics interspersed with its revealing interviews, Taibbi isn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and go to the story. This is a book written with a wry sense of the absurd situations it details. Corruption at both the top and the bottom of our society. But to very, very different ends.

Remember: this is the guy that went to the Florida “rocket docket” court, recording how thousands of people were stripped of their homes under the flimsiest pretexts, often with outright fabricated evidence. In “Divide” he goes again where the stories are: to Bed-Sty, the outer NYC boroughs, and the courts. And documents how miserably the system treats the disadvantaged. What you think you know from “Law And Order”, believe it: you don’t. Kafka himself couldn’t improve on some of this. At one point Taibbi refers to all this as a “descent into madness.” And after reading it, it’s hard to argue with that.

The “Divide” of course is cash. But this is no screed against “the rich.” If that’s what you think you’ve not read the book, or completely missed the point. To wit: if you commit a massive, white-collar crime, but you’ve got enough (i.e. near-infinite) cash, you’re now too much trouble and risk to even indict, let alone prosecute. And if — like me – you’ve wondered why none of the people who committed these global frauds on a massive scale have ever been prosecuted for any of it, this book gives you a detailed, compelling, and depressing answer.

Taibbi points out most of us will never see any of this. Out of sight, out of mind. The poor are segregated away. And the corrupt wealthy never have to interact with any of the people who are so profoundly impacted by their frauds. These are the guys who ripped off us off, burned down our 401Ks, rigged Libor rates to line their own pockets with our mortgages. And then moved on to other cushy positions, presumably doing much the same.

One review here (by someone who claims to have read all of 3 pages) complains about Taibbi’s assertion of “a miserable few hundred bucks” collected by welfare cheats in San Diego. But let’s be clear: Taibbi never suggests these people should be let off. But he does spend considerable ink contemplating for example, about the corrupt execs at institutions like HSBC. Execs who brazenly laundered money for the Iranians and the Sinaloa cartel. (They actually opened a special teller window to fit the boxes of cash that were brought in!) About how these guys got off scot-free with a fine paid by HSBC. And never even saw the inside of a courtroom. While people who buy those street dime bags that HSBC so thoughtfully enabled can spend years, or a lifetime, in prison. Lose their kids. Their right to vote. And then even if they do get out can’t get a job. “A billion dollars or a billion days.” Does that seem like “equal justice for all?” Not to me. Not to Taibbi. And it won’t to you after you read this.

Taibbi suggests a larger, deeper, and more sinister subtext. About what we claim to profess as a nation: due process, equal justice, simple fairness. Money and power have always had their sway of course. But the inescapable takeaway from this is that we’ve simply given up on these ideals; they’re now just too much trouble. As a nation we no longer give a damn. That’s the real divide. And the real outrage.

It was set in Hawaii and involved Giant talking pigs,
and a half-shark-half-man demigod, and a Volcano goddess, and
some Japanese billionaires who wanted to buy a resort and turn
it into a golf-utopia. Oh, and a ghost-hunting, naked, Mark Twain is one of the
main characters. Yes.

That sounds awful.

I may try ” The Abominable” at some point but I need a break from him right now.

I’m still reading “Divide” by Matt Taibbi, “Flashpoints” by George Friedman, “The Emperor of all Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukherjee(I’ve been working through that well over a year and I’m about halfway through it) and a paperback novel called “Influx” by Danial Suarez(labeled the Crichton of his time according to the book blurb). Hopefully I won’t start anything new until I finish these. I should set my limit at five at a time–period. I always have a hard time quitting a book when I should. I just keep going most of the time. So they can add up when I get bored.

Not that all of these are boring. “Divide” is fantastic, actually.

Tracking down this thread just made me realize how long it’s been since I finished a book. That’s what happens when you get five going at once.

So I did FINALLY finish “The Fifth Heart” by Dan Simmons.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Heart-Dan-Simmons/dp/031619882X

It was a chore. There were times I faded out–reading words like a zombie, flicking my eyes over the pages–absorbing nothing. I lost the plot or didn’t really care after awhile. Basically, the book is a collection of research that Simmons had left over from some other novels and he never met a piece of research he didn’t put into a novel so he threw it together here with the result being an odd story that involves characters who may not even be real. There are times that Simmons speaks directly to the reader about the characters and the effect is that it’s very difficult to accept these characters in any sort of way.

The plot with Sherlock Holmes wondering whether he is real or just a fictional character should have been better but it plays more like the film , “The Seven Percent Solution”, dispelling myths created by Dr. Watson(a similar plot is in the new film , “Mr. Holmes” based on “A Trick of the Mind”.

Simmons even brings in a character from an earlier novel called “Black Hills” for no apparent reason. Well–there’s a reason, I guess but it’s dumb.

The so-called plot involves Holmes using author Henry James as a sort of fill-in Watson, to uncover the mystery of Clover Adams death. Was it REALLY a suicide? But there’s fifteen other plotlines including the attempted assassination of Grover Cleveland at the world’s fair. There are numerous historical figures hopping back and forth from Teddy Roosevelt to Mark Twain who are there…well, just because Simmons wanted them there.

There are always moments of his writing that are brilliant and compelling. There are always interesting things to learn: I did not know that Henry Rathbone, the major who was with Lincoln when he was shot and who failed to stop Booth, eventually killed his wife, attacked his kids and was sent to a mental hospital.

But there’s too much here and too much nothing.

And I thought it was his worst novel to date.

The man needs to learn when to stop a novel and that every piece of research does not have to be wedged into a plot for pages on end.

Overall, disappointing.