52 thoughts on “Better Watch Out”

  4. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/adelita-grijalva-arizona-pepper-spray-ice-protest

    Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona congressperson, said she was “sprayed in the face” during a protest against a federal immigration raid at a Mexican restaurant in Tucson on Friday.
    In a video filmed after the incident, Grijalva said she joined a group of protesters assembled outside Taco Giro, a “small mom-and-pop” restaurant in Tucson Grijalva said she visits weekly. By the time she arrived, she said, the protesters had “stopped” a squadron of dozens of mostly masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
    The protesters, Grijalva said, were “afraid that they were taking people without due process”.
    A second video shared by Grijalva’s official account on social media shows a chaotic standoff between federal agents in tactical gear and protesters carrying anti-ICE signs. In the footage, Grijalva, a progressive Democratic representative, who has been sharply critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, can be seen approaching the officers, as an agent sprays an orange chemical in the direction of the protesters alongside her. She then urges the officers to “calm down” and “get out” as she coughs. The agent holding a spray can orders the group to “get out of the way” as protestors yell.
    In a video clip taken from another angle, a projectile lands behind Grijalva, producing a cloud at the her feet as she steps toward an officer.
    “When I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed aside and pepper sprayed,” she wrote.
    In a statement, DHS said immigration agents’ actions were not aimed at the representative.
    “If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel,” the DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said. “But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who was pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement.”
    McLaughlin said two law enforcement officers were “seriously injured” during the clash.
    “Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement,” she added, promising “more information forthcoming”.
    In a statement, Fernando Burgos, an ICE spokesperson, said special agents as well as officers from the agency’s homeland security investigations were “executing 16 search warrants” across southern Arizona as part of a “years-long investigation into immigration and tax violations”. Multiple individuals were taken into custody during the operation, he said.
    In a video filmed shortly after the incident, Grijalva, still coughing, says she arrived on the scene because she believed it was “important for me to have eyes on what’s happening here”.
    “I literally was not being aggressive, I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she said, adding: “I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”
    Grijalva and other local officials praised the Tucson police department for helping to calm the situation.
    In a joint statement, Regina Romero, the Tucson mayor and Lane Santa Cruz, the vice-mayor, both Democrats, said the enforcement operation in Tucson had “rapidly escalated into violence against the public”.
    “Their disproportionate use of force, smoke grenades and pepper balls against the public, including our own Representative Adelita Grijalva, is not justified and cannot be tolerated,” they wrote, encouraging bystanders to share video and photographs of the incident for “potential investigation and follow-up”.
    Arizona Democrats rallied around Grijalva. The representative Greg Stanton denounced the incident as “outrageous” while the representative Yassamin Ansari called it “absolutely unacceptable”. Senator Ruben Gallego wrote: “Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period.”
    At a town hall in Tucson later that day, senator Mark Kelly called it “horrific”.
    Grijalva was elected to Congress in September, winning a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of her father, the late representative RaĂșl Grijalva. However, she was not sworn in as a member of Congress until last month, after the House returned from a weeks-long recess during the federal government shutdown.
    “If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a Member of Congress,” Grijalva wrote on Friday, “imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community.”

  7. jamie, spot on with donald j gollum.

    BTW, enlarge and look closely at his left hand. what do you make of that oval shaped dark spot on it?

  8. Patd
    With the elderly some possibilities. He banged and bruised his hand is the most innocent cause as old hands bruise easily. He is getting injections of some kind. The make up to hide brown spots wore off.

    Whatever, the man is old and it is constantly on display.

  10. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/newsom-trolls-trump-over-made-up-peace-award/

    Gavin Newsom mocked the “peace prize” that FIFA gave President Donald Trump on Friday, saying it’s more like a participation trophy that means little.

    Trump, while attending the group draw ceremony for next year’s World Cup at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., was awarded a golden medal, which he put on himself, as well as a trophy and certificate by FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Infantino, as he has in the past, showered Trump with praise.

    Trump, 79, was declared deserving of the hastily-created inaugural prize for “his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world,” claimed Infantino, 55, who encouraged the president to wear the medal “everywhere you want to go.”

    Newsom’s press team, however, soon offered a reimagining of the medallion.

    “If You Had Fun, You Won!” read the inscription on the 58-year-old governor’s rendering of Trump’s “participation” medal, which included a smiling gold star.

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Newsom’s post.

    Infantino rushed to invent the prize after Trump lobbied for—but lost out on—the Nobel Peace Prize in October, according to a report in The New York Times. In so doing, he apparently shocked senior leaders of soccer’s global governing body.

    Infantino, who has been cozying up to the president, said on stage Friday that the prize “is presented annually on behalf of the billions of football-loving people from around the world to distinguish an individual who exemplifies an unwavering commitment to balancing peace and unity throughout the world through their notable leadership and action.”
    [continues]

  11. jamie, yep could be just the usual bruise but looks like it’s edged with stiches (my interpretation of the small lines sticking out perpendicularly in my computer’s enlargement).

  12. Jamie, you can upload more than one image in a post. Use the attachment button below comment box, and select multiple images in your source folder (I hold Ctrl on keyboard to click multiple files).

    Testing — yes, that works

  18. https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/president-trump-wants-american-football-to-be-named-something-other-than-football

    “But when you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it’s again ‘soccer’ in the United States,” Trump said. “We seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football. But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called, I mean, this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.”

    There’s your assignment, NFL. It’s no big deal. Come up with another name for the nation’s dominant sport, and score some points at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

    And if you really want to get the administration on our side, perhaps in the hopes of scoring a revision to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to allow games to be televised on Friday nights and Saturdays all season long, the right answer is obvious.
    Trumpball.

    *Concussion ball?

  21. BiD… trumpie is probably still mad that the NFL blocked his attempt to buy the NE Patriots back in 1988. The commissioner back then was Pete Rozelle… and he knew way back then that trump would be bad for the NFL.

  23. Something I learned from my landlord days on ways to reduce insurance costs.
    1. the 3 year rule: every 3 years you switch insurance companies. I don’t know why but in my experience the first year is a “come on” rate, it raises every year after. So much so that it pays to switch.
    2. Limit the insurance company’s liability. My house is a great example, It is replacement rated at $350000, I can go down the street and buy one just like it for $200000. I’m over insured by $150,000.
    Pay only for the insurance you need. With some companies that will save you money, sometimes it won’t. But it doesn’t hurt to ask. Remember a little insurance is better than no insurance.
    3. If you just have to buy insurance from your golfing friend, church friend, or old school mate make sure they are independent agents with access to a variety of insurance companies.
    Jack

  24. If anybody is up for a live chat sometime this weekend, let me know.

    Meanwhile…
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    ‱ Can the pipe bomber suspect get a pardon?
    ‱ Can the ICC indict Hegseth?

  25. Nice piece on Steve Cropper from WaPo.

    “Play it, Steve,” Sam Moore chants during the chorus of 1967’s “Soul Man,” and it’s no mystery why.
    Sam & Dave’s No. 2 hit is driven by Steve Cropper, who opens the song with a series of sliding double stops, delivers a funky progression for the verse, and slides up the neck with a lick played with a Zippo lighter on the chorus.
    The “Play it, Steve,” probably an improvised aside during a recording session, effectively becomes a piece of the song. We hear it again when John “Joliet Jake” Belushi utters the phrase as the Blues Brothers perform their cover 11 years later on the “Saturday Night Live” stage with Cropper, in thick beard and shades, as part of the band.

    And yet, Cropper was anything but famous. Which is notable as we mourn his death this week at 84.

    For all the weeping we do over singers and frontmen, it is so often the unrecognizable guy who was the true genius behind the music that defines an era. And no guitarist defined the rise of groove soul more than Cropper and the crisp riffs he delivered on his Fender Telecaster.
    He is part of a long line of criminally overlooked session musicians, a thread that runs through “5” Royales guitarist Lowman Pauling, Elvis Presley TCB bandleader James Burton and contemporary sideman king Charlie Sexton. But Cropper’s influence is easily the most expansive of the group.
    As a member of the Memphis-based Stax Records house band, we hear his guitar on “Soul Man,” Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” which Cropper also co-wrote. As a member of Booker T. & the MG’s, he was a key part of 1962’s unexpected instrumental hit “Green Onions,” which was recorded during a jam after singer Billy Lee Riley failed to show up for a session. 


    It goes on. Not a bad resume.

  28. Steve and Booker T were our guys
. Mix in Isaac Hayes and Rufus and Carla and Otis
..for the 60’s that was us. I thought the Beatles were a phenomenon for the ages, but we didn’t really do very many of their songs in the bars. A rocker here and there but mostly Stax-Volt. It all topsy-turvied again in the 70’s but then wham
..there’s Duck and Steve and Blue Lou on SNL banging out the “Soul Man” another round. Yeah—Play it, Steve.
    Belushi and
    Ack knew where to go for the real deal.
    And we knew where to go during the 60’s as well. The four of us were real life Blues Brothers Thanks to cats like Steve and them .

  32. as for the ICC, we have to clean up our own mess, no one is going to do it for us

    say what you will about Trump but he looked around and he saw a lot of weakness and he wasn’t wrong

  33. if baseball is about making bases and basketball is about making baskets, then the NFL’s game might be called fightball

  34. reducedaggregateintelligenceball

    opiateforthemassesball

    to be fair, it’s the perfect sport for this nation of vicious idiots, and trump is the perfect President

    the government we deserve

    my favorite is when people talk about football in a historical context like anybody’s gonna give a shit in 100 years who threw a ball

    hey i actually do sincerely appreciate football for keeping traffic light on beautiful autumn Sundays for real 👍

    i’ll think to myself, “why is society so livable today? Oh that’s right football is on, hooray.”

    đŸ‡ș🇾 ✌

  38. Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide

    Sarah Betancourt
    December 05, 2025
    Updated December 06, 2025
    Becoming a U.S. citizen takes years and involves immigrants acquiring a green card, extensive interviews, background checks, classes and a citizenship test. The naturalization ceremony is the final step to the process, where the oath of allegiance and a citizenship certificate are granted.

    Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall Thursday — known as the country’s cradle of liberty — for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn’t proceed due to their countries of origin.

    More at link

  39. Stink-Foot Ball

    Macedonian Phalanx Ball.

    Brain Damage Ball

    Stupid Ball Ain’t Even Round Ball

    SeparatingThe Fools From Their Money Ball.

  41. Metric has never taken hold in the US, so we will always call it soccer
and not be as invested in it as the rest of the world.

  42. Some of the countries which drew to play at US sites are on a US travel ban.

    Is ICE (or bounty hunters) going to be nabbing non-white, non-English speaking fans?

  45. I don’t gamble so I had to be told that the reason it’s so popular now is because of all the gambling people do on it

    and Internet sports gambling is so weird now they’re betting on individual outcomes as much as final scores. It’s bizarre and apparently it is fleecing an entire generation of young men.

    from what I hear

    and you might think I’m being unfairly negative about pro football but the NFL gives nothing back, maybe a few sports camps so they can run that one ad they run and nothing else, they’re terrible community members

    welfare billionaires 😑

    so hopefully you do like it cause if you live in a state with a pro team, you’re paying for it whether you do or not

  46. This James Cameron movie bombed at the box office, probably because it’s good- the main character is a cyborg roller-derby fighter in a ruthless corporate gladiatorial society

    sound familiar?

  49. The ads for FanDuel and the other sportsball betting stuff is non-stop. It’s right up there with crypto on the not-to-do list.

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