Why Sports No Longer Matter

The "Deflategate" scandal involving the New England Patriots sounds small and even ridiculous, until you see the larger pattern involving athletes and anti-social behavior. New England Quarterback Tom Brady has been exposed as another asshole jock together with Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and Jose Canseco, among others. Remember how we grew up being told that "sports build character?" It seems that the "characters" that sports build fall somewhere between narcissism and sociopathy. So much for "teamwork" and "self discipline." Maybe it mattered when Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics or when Jackie Robinson made it into the Major Leagues in 1947. Today, sports have just become another form of trashy entertainment, a reflection of everything that's wrong with the world today.

The Real Problem With Washington

The Congressional Debate over Trade Promotion Authority, which gives him the power to cut trade deals and expedite their passage through Congress without amendments or procedural hurdles shows us how Washington really works. The same Congressional GOPers who say that President Obama can't be trusted to pass Immigration Reform or negotiate with Iraq, are willing to give him unprecedented authority to negotiate trade agreements. Does this sound strange? Unless you see the influence of big corporate interests, who use the misleading label of "free trade" to advance their own interests.

Carly Fiorina: A Whole Lot of Nothing

Carly Fiorina, the ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is now seeking the GOP nomination for President. Just to recap, while Fiorina presided over Hewlett-Packard, she engineered a merger with Compaq which caused a sharp drop in HP's stock value. She also fired 30,000 employees. Fiorina was so inept that many observers call her one of the worst CEOs of all time. Fiorina was ousted from HP in 2005, but she received a golden parachute of 20 million dollars.

Now Fiorina is touting her business "expertise" in her run for the White House. She claims that she "knows how the economy works," a line that didn't work for Mitt Romney in 2012. The rest of her speech was the usual bilge against "big government" and "bureaucracy." The same garbage that her generation imbibed back in the 80's. Fiorina represents a class that that has long passed from mere arrogance to delusional narcissism.