WTF NHL? NHL announcement of Kid Rock as All-Star Game entertainer gets icy reaction

The NHL proudly announced Tuesday its headlining entertainer for the league’s All-Star Game, to be played in Tampa on Jan. 28. Apparently, more than a few fans felt that “Only God Knows Why” the league went with Kid Rock.

In other words, plenty of folks were willing to give the NHL “All Summer Long” to come up with a more relevant, less polarizing act. Those have been references to Kid Rock’s hit songs, by the way. “Bawitdaba,” anyone?

One way to measure the reception the announcement received is via the “ratio” earned by a pair of tweets the NHL posted. In both cases, the number of comments far outweighed the number of retweets, which is bad, and not in an “American Bad Ass” way.

https://twitter.com/NHL/status/953418084991238144

Kid Rock alluded to some of the backlash he has experienced for his expression of conservative political views, including support for President Trump, opposition to Colin Kaepernick’s protests during the national anthem and a penchant for displaying the Confederate flag during concerts after he switched to more of a country-rock music style. Last year, the Detroit-area native, who has also been accused of homophobia, teased the possibility of running for a U.S. Senate seat against Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) before acknowledging it was a publicity stunt to promote a new album and concert tour.

“I haven’t done TV in quite some time — no pun intended, but it’s been kind of a turnoff, with all the politics that go into it, what you can and can’t do, and blah, blah, blah,” Kid Rock told NBCSN, which will televise his show during the second intermission of the All-Star Game. He praised the network for “really trying to make this a musical moment inside of a great weekend and a great event.”

Not everyone was of the opinion that adding Kid Rock to the all-star festivities was such a great idea. Here is a sampling of some of the negative reactions online:

https://twitter.com/YahooSportsNHL/status/953420264578088960

https://twitter.com/tonyposnanski/status/953436412443021313


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/01/17/nhl-announcement-of-kid-rock-as-all-star-game-entertainer-gets-icy-reaction/?utm_term=.1872a366312a


Personally, I think this the NHL's way of rubbing Trump's hatred, misogyny, racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia into the face of North American hockey fans. Never in my life have I appreciated Justin Bieber's existence than I do now. WTF is the NHL thinking?

This about courage...

Facebook post from a friend in Hawaii (Oahu) during yesterday's false alarm...

The White House office tackling the opioid epidemic is run by a 24-year-old with a penchant for...

...embellishing his resume. This story is unreal.

Meet the 24-year-old Trump campaign worker appointed to help lead the government’s drug policy office



In May 2016, Taylor Weyeneth was an undergraduate at St. John’s University in New York, a legal studies student and fraternity member who organized a golf tournament and other events to raise money for veterans and their families.

Less than a year later, at 23, Weyeneth, was a political appointee and rising star at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the White House office responsible for coordinating the federal government’s multibillion dollar anti-drug initiatives and supporting President Trump’s efforts to curb the opioid epidemic. Weyeneth would soon become deputy chief of staff.

His brief biography offers few clues that he would so quickly assume a leading role in the drug policy office, a job recently occupied by a lawyer and a veteran government official. Weyeneth’s only professional experience after college and before becoming an appointee was working on Trump’s presidential campaign.

<snip>

Weyeneth attended St. John’s University in Queens, according to his résumés. He joined a fraternity, worked part time in various jobs and volunteered at the Passionist Monastery in Queens. He enrolled in a master’s program at Fordham University in the Bronx.

All three résumés say “MA Political Science” at Fordham’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy. The first résumé he submitted to the government provides no dates for his graduate studies, and the other two say he did his course work from 2016 to June 2017.

Fordham University spokesman Bob Howe told The Post that “a student named Taylor Weyeneth is enrolled in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham, in a Master’s program for electoral and campaign management. He has not completed his degree yet.”

In the first résumé, Weyeneth said he volunteered for more than 275 hours at the monastery between 2012 and 2016. The second résumé he submitted to the government said it was more than 150 hours. The résumé provided by the White House does not mention volunteer work at the monastery.

Two monastery rectors, one current and one former, contacted by The Post did not dispute that Weyeneth volunteered there but said they had no memory of him and no paperwork related to his volunteer work.

The administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity acknowledged that the first résumé contained errors. He said in later résumés Weyeneth included dates referring to a master’s degree as projections of when he expected to receive it.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/meet-the-24-year-old-trump-campaign-worker-appointed-to-help-lead-the-governments-drug-policy-office/2018/01/13/abdada34-f64e-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html

US Ambassador To Panama Resigns Over Trumps Racist Comments, First In US Diplomatic Corp To Do So

The US ambassador to Panama has resigned from his post on principle, writing in a resignation letter to the State Department that he can no longer serve the Trump administration, according to Reuters.

<snip>

"As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the President and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies.

"My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honour-bound to resign. That time has come," Mr Feeley said.

According to local media, his decision was taken before the Washington Post reported Donald Trump had referred to "s***hole countries" in a meeting about immigration.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-ambassador-panama-resigns-donald-trump-john-feeley-not-work-president-a8156116.html

Sheriff Joe Arpaio learns his presidential pardon was actually an admission of guilt:

This encapsulates "constitutional conservatism" perfectly. For all their love of symbols of the law, especially force, conservatives have very little understanding of the actual ideas behind the laws.

https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/951687736196501505

http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/watch-joe-arpaio-learn-his-pardon-was-an-admission-of-guilt-1135157315748?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

Trump is no genius, but hes smart at playing dumb

From his days as a tabloid staple to his scandal-ridden campaign, Donald Trump operated under the rubric that there is no such thing as bad publicity. As long as the focus was on him – and as long as a ruthless team of NDA-granting lawyers could help him buttress the blows – all attention was welcome. Mr. Trump could not be shamed, for he had no shame; he could not lose, because he'd rewrite the rules. Lies were always truths for Donald Trump.

<snip>

But Fire and Fury is also an incomplete portrayal – and here is why the book is useful to Mr. Trump. The book begins with a bold and implausible claim: that Mr. Trump never wanted to win. It is followed by a secondary claim: Mr. Trump, not expecting to win, wandered haplessly into the White House as a political neophyte. He is presented as clueless instead of corrupt, as are the staffers surrounding him.

This is simply false: Donald Trump sought the presidency for 30 years, flirting with a run or running in 1988, 2000, 2012 and 2016. His campaign team consisted of seasoned GOP operatives like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, both of whom are implicated in the Russia probe. Mr. Trump very likely wanted to win, and then keep winning – which means ruling like a king instead of a president, a goal he hasn't quite achieved. Mr. Wolff omits the president's political history as well as his abuses of power in office: there is nothing about his slick violations of the emoluments clause, for example, or even his infamous confession of obstruction of justice to Lester Holt.

The takeaway, instead, is that Donald Trump is a moron. While this may be true in terms of his geopolitical acumen, it is not the full picture. He may be purposefully ignorant of policy and emotionally volatile, but he understands power and spin, and his 40-year history of dodging criminal prosecution and manipulating the media testifies to a certain kind of skill. It is not the kind of skill that Mr. Trump – or apparently Michael Wolff – wants highlighted.

The "Trump is too much of a neophyte to have knowingly committed a crime" narrative is a favourite of the GOP, and they have been spouting it since the spring. Fire and Fury gives it renewed life, as do Trump's tweets on Saturday, in which he proclaimed in an ostentatiously moronic way that he's not a moron. As evidence mounts in the Mueller probe, Mr. Trump seems to be casting himself as a dupe instead of a deceiver.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/trump-is-no-genius-but-hes-smart-at-playing-dumb/article37518954

Trump getting booed outside stadium

"Farm country is god's country" -- Donald Trump, 1/8/18

Trump in 1999. Oprah would have been his first choice for VP