The Wire Season 5 Promo

The greatest show on television returns January 6th:

Important NBA Off-Seasons

This is a compelling off-season for a significant amount of teams, with the nature of contracts coming on and off the books and the potential free agent market, though many of the biggest names are Restricted Free Agents, and we saw from Anderson Varejao, there are pitfalls to this. After the jump, I’m going to run through the five teams with the biggest off-seasons coming up in terms of the long-term potential of the franchise, saying why it is so important for them and what I would do if I were in their shoes.

Video – Us Placers (Kanye, Pharrell, Lupe, Thom Yorke)

This just dropped, courtesy of TSS.




Primary Preview – Republicans

Iowa is fast approaching, so its a good idea to catch up on the most interesting candidates. Republicans today, Democrats tomorrow.

Romney: Took a big hit during Huckabee’s rise and is now backpedaling on his expected results. He may still get a good vote total while Thompson continues to fade away and Guliani continues to focus on other states. His lead in New Hampshire will dwindle if he can’t finish well in Iowa.

More candidates after the break…

Hillary-Obama grudge match update…

I’ll be dropping a primary preview for both parties later this week, but in advance I wanted to give a few extra thoughts on the Hillary-Obama grudge match going on in Iowa right now.

1. Why I’m still not sold on Obama: he still doesn’t know how to finish. Bill Clinton pans him for being inexperienced and in response, he ends up reminding us how great he was. He had the opportunity to portray himself as the Washington outsider (George Bush’s “winning” tactic in 2000) and by comparison label Clinton as an old-style attack politician. All he had to do was point out that the true mark of idiocy is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. I’m willing to bet that would have been a huge hit with voters. At some point, he needs to learn to identify when he’s getting a fastball over the middle. If he wants to win in Iowa, he needs to use these moments to his advantage.

Two more points after the break…

new M.I.A. video – paper planes




New Jersey to ban death penalty…

The state commission in charge of evaluating the death penalty called it “inconsistent with the evolving standards of decency.” Big ups to the state, its lawmakers, and Governor Jon Corzine for bringing New Jersey, of all places, into the 21st century. According to many crime analysts, the death penalty has a relatively small effect on the rate of murders, primarily because of Hyperbolic Discounting. In the heat of the moment, irrational people don’t consider the last 10 years of a prison sentence or the likelihood that they will be executed for their crimes. More important are the subjective reasons for their crime and the likelihood that they will be caught. If that is our greatest form of deterrence, then shouldn’t it be our law enforcement priority?

The alternative punishment is slated to be life in prison without parole, which is the standard punishment for all state residents.

CA now able to regulate vehicle emissions

Under the radar this week: A Federal judge ruled that California was constitutionally capable of setting its own emissions standards for vehicles. The ruling follows a long effort by the California Air Resources Board to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state.

This is big news because if California (as well as a number of other states waiting on this verdict) sets emissions standards that manufacturers are currently not meeting, it will force auto makers to modify the vehicles they sell, and those changes will likely hold for all makes and models, not just those sold in California.

crack: now less whack

The United States Sentencing Commission finally reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. This is a good thing, and here’s why:

These are the facts they were faced with:

• The overwhelming majority of those incarcerated under these guidelines are non-violent low-level offenders. Thats street level dealers and minor users.
• Over 85% of those incarcerated for these offenses are African American.

We do not prosecute or target low-level cocaine offenders with anything even resembling the mania that we have unleashed upon crack offenders. But when it comes down to it, what are the main differences between these two groups? Race and violence.

In all, 20,000 low level offenders will now be eligible for reduced sentences. That is an overall good thing, because the value of incarcerating these individuals is, in most cases, almost nothing. I’ll explain how we know this after the cut:

Sharon Jones picked it up, laid it in the cut.

Its been over a week now, but I wanted to wait on a Sharon Jones review until I had some bonus stuff to post with it. Ms. Jones and the fabulous Dap Kings played the El Ray last Tuesday, not so much giving us a concert as giving us a party (Oliver Wang of Soul-Sides opened with a great DJ set). Jones is infectiously energetic; she was having so much fun on stage that I couldn’t help but think back to the story of how she got here. Sharon was rejected by the music industry in the seventies, first for being too short, then later for being too old. Years later, after working security at a prison and a bank, she got her shot. You can tell that she, more so than most, really appreciates every minute of the experience.

Speaking of that bonus, here’s a link to the Daptone remix album that recently dropped (Daptone is the record label for the Sharon and, as you can guess, the Dap Kings).

For those interested, the album art is under the cut.