Archives

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Mayor Strickland’s New Cabinet

So far, the major appointees of Mayor-elect Jim Strickland seem an acceptable bunch. Like the members of his transition team, they are a mix. Appropriately enough for mayoral bridegroom Strickland, the old nuptial saying applies: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

The “something old” component, previously announced, includes several retainees: interim, now permanent, public works director Robert Knecht; general services director Antonio Adams; information services director Brent Nair; libraries director Keenon McCloy; executive director of workforce investment Kevin Woods; finance director Brian Collins; and Memphis Police director Toney Armstrong.

Among the “something new” appointees: Douglas McGowen as chief operating officer (COO), a new position; Bruce McMullen as city attorney; Alexandria Smith as human resources director; and Ursula Madden as chief communications officer.

Madden, a longtime news anchor for WMC-TV, Action News 5, also qualifies in the “something borrowed” category, inasmuch as she is a lift from the ranks of the media, a rival “estate” to government in Edmund Burke’s category of major societal divisions.

And “something blue” as a category applies handily to Armstrong, the head of city law enforcement whose tenure in office has in the past few weeks endured despite dismissive rhetoric by two mayors. A C Wharton made a premature announcement of Armstrong’s departure in the aftermath of the election that proved to be, in the old Nixonian-era term, “inoperative.” And Strickland’s persistent refusals during his campaign to commit himself to re-employing Armstrong were widely read (and apparently misread) as a vote of no confidence.

Indeed, it would almost seem that Armstrong himself — as resourceful in the politics of survival, it appears, as in his celebrated detective work (chronicled for a nation in TV’s 48 Hours) — has the major say in his professional destiny, including whether he will abide by his erstwhile, Wharton-era decision to retire in 2017 or keep on keeping on. The director is remarkably direct in his statements, keeping a sense of independence and an even keel, as when he spoke of the “logistical nightmare” he faced after cuts in police benefits played havoc with his forces. And who among us even remembers that group of restive police dissidents he identified as “the monsters” when he took over as director in 2001. Without much fuss or fanfare, they were simply subdued.

And, speaking of independent hands, we confess to being intrigued by Strickland’s “buck-stops-here” determination to reorganize his administration with himself as the hands-on center of the wheel vis-à-vis his major appointees. This contrasts with Wharton’s approach, which was more of a sort of chairmanship relationship to a group of autonomous departments.

All in all, we think Strickland has begun cautiously and well. And, without being at all conspicuous in a ticket-balancing sort of way, he appears to be fashioning an administration that is diverse and representative of several points of view — an administration that does not break jarringly with the preceding one but clearly can move in its own chosen direction.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About the editorial, “The Whirlwind” …

I get the correlation between “Christianist” and “jihadist,” suddenly. But if you’re going to press the analogy, you’ll need someone other than Robert Dear. The jihadists whose pictures appear in the media don’t look like they’ve spent their lives away from church in a trailer in the woods.

Brunetto Latini

Those who are concerned about youngsters growing up inundated virtually 24/7 by violent video games, violent movies, violent TV shows, violent music lyrics, violent comic books, violent sports, and excuses for violent crime are ridiculed.

ALJ2

The owners of this country want those violent games, movies, TV, etc., promulgated. Helps recruit and inure to the idea of killing their armed forces who defend their global interests, er, our country.

Packrat

We’ve got a problem, America! The NRA says it’s people who kill people. It’s bullets fired from guns that actually do the killing and rip a person’s body to shreds. You don’t know where the next attack or rampage is going to occur, but you can be sure it is going to involve guns.

Republicans have created hundreds of new laws that restrict and reduce access to abortions around the country. So why can’t they create even one new law to alleviate the madness that is gripping the country. Why do Republicans continue to block gun legislation when surveys show that Americans support stricter laws on guns? Follow the money.

RLowe

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter From the Editor, “The Cocksure Candidate” …

Trump is just the online comment sections in human form. Unfortunately, he is now running for president.

Charlie Eppes

Who cares how he got his money or whether he can dunk a ball or hang by his hair from the Brooklyn Bridge. He is beyond unqualified, and his popularity evidences America’s huge, bloated underbelly.

CL Mullins

The Trump joke is on us: a) scion of a moneyed and connected family; b) Ivy League B-school product; c) second-generation wealth via speculation (Manhattan real estate); d) more wealth via avarice (casinos); e) circus (reality TV star).

All the while, he presents himself as a “populist.” Only in America!

Jrgolden

About Kenneth Neill’s Viewpoint, “Damned Statistics” …

Implying that the City of Memphis and the Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area are congruent is just wrong. Using it to try and make the point that Memphis is safer is dishonest. Perhaps the city is safer. If so, use an apples-to-apples comparison to demonstrate it.

Arlington Pop

I think the city has many positive aspects. It could be a great city. However the negative aspects overwhelm the positive aspects. It isn’t an either/or proposition. You may wish it so. You may demand it so. You may imply anything you like. Reality, on the other hand, remains.

Ichabod McCrane

About Bianca Phillips’ story, “Majority of Uninsured Tennesseans Live in Shelby County” …

If you look at the Tennessee legislature, you’ll see that approximately 75 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate are black people from Shelby County. 15 percent are old-school, white Southern Democrats from Nashville, and the last 10 percent are black people not from Memphis, with the occasional oddball Democrat from the middle of nowhere.

That tells you all you need to know about why the state suppresses Memphis and Shelby County. If I was a Republican who viewed Democrats as the enemy, keeping a foot on the neck of Memphis would be my first step toward maintaining Republican control of Tennessee.

FUNKbrs

Well, that explains why our legislators don’t want to expand Medicare. Anything that helps Shelby County is going to be at the bottom of their list.

B

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About the Syrian refugee crisis and Randy Haspel’s column, “The Great Unfriending” …

I had to chuckle over Randy Haspel’s column. Seems he thinks that anyone who’s worried that accepting refugees from an alien culture from an area of the world torn apart by that same culture is a Nazi, an idiot, or both.

He was doing all right until the last paragraph, where he reminded us “that once our forefathers were accepted as refugees into this country by the indigenous population.” Yup, the natives here accepted people from a completely alien culture in large numbers. Tell us, Randy, how did that work out for them?

Bill Runyan

Having spent the majority of my years in Memphis, I was and am in awe of the tremendous work performed by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A big reason for the hospital’s success, not to mention its charity, was ALSAC, the American Lebanese Syrian Association Charities. Without the immigrants who formed ALSAC — those from Lebanon and Syria — many lives would not have been touched and saved by St. Jude. 

As the debate rages about preventing Syrian refugees into this country, consider the amazing work their predecessors, and all other immigrants, have performed here, how they’ve helped make this “Land of Immigrants” the great country it is today. Also, consider the hell these refugees are fleeing. Put yourself in their shoes, as well as in those of the kids and their parents who’ve been helped by organizations such as St. Jude.

Richard Banks

French President François Hollande has said that 30,000 refugees will be welcomed to France during the next two years. He also said that “the people of Iraq and Syria have fled because they are martyred by the same people who attack us today.”

The process of selecting and vetting refugees should be as strict and rigorous as possible, and we have to err on the side of caution. But the men, women, and children, who themselves have suffered at the hands of terrorists, should be allowed to settle here. 

If we see refugee camps created worldwide, there could be many in them who turn to extremism and violence because of their frustration and anger. Such camps could be the breeding grounds for future terrorists, and, if so, we will be even more unsafe in the future.

Philip Williams

It’s a raucous chorus, led by disciples of the Republican right.”No!  No!  No!” they chant.”No Syrian refugees in our back yard!” Eschewing the words written on the Statue of Liberty, our cowardly Congress now has passed legislation that effectively bars any significant influx of Syrian refugees into these United States.

That this is a thinly veiled act of bigotry directed toward Muslims is hardly debatable. But, more than this, it is an act of contempt aimed at the very core of our Judeo-Christian values. If there is any theme that courses through the teachings of the Old and New Testaments, it is the undeniable message of welcome to the stranger, the alien, the homeless, the outcast, the sick and the hungry. Those who are saying no to Syrian refugees are saying no to the very essence of the sacred scriptures. Such behavior can be compared to tossing the Holy Bible into a roaring fire fueled by hatred and fear.

Instead of being intimidated by such despicable hypocrisy, we who object must name it openly for what it is and challenge it wherever it is found. 

Rev. Thomas E. Sagendorf

United Methodist Clergy, Retired

About Frank Murtaugh’s post,

“Sweet Sorrow: Fuente Bids Farewell to Memphis” …

I’m not one who usually says, “What if … ” but I will this time. Can Tiger fans imagine how good we would be next year with both Fuente and Lynch back? The only difference I would like to see would be the development of our next quarterback.

I am thankful to all of the Tiger players for their play this year, and I wish all of the Tigers, Fuente and Lynch included, the very best, no matter where they land.

David Morelli

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Reaping the Whirlwind of Violent Words

In the aftermath of yet another act of senseless violence, this one in Colorado Springs at a Planned Parenthood center, we are again reminded of the power of one person to inflict death and injury via an easily obtained high-powered weapon. Guns are the new American way of death, as commonplace as accidental death by automobile.

We are also again reminded of the power of words — to inspire courage, or perseverance — or in this case, murder. We are well aware, as a media entity that puts thousands of words into the public discourse each week via the printed page and the Internet, that words have consequences. Words shape the perception of our city and our country.

Those in advertising also understand the power of words to entice consumption and shape public opinion toward a product. Likewise, those who are in public office— or running for public office — are quite aware of how words can win minds and influence the voting public.

But words have consequences. Ideas can move people to action. Knowing this, it behooves anyone with a public forum and public influence to choose words wisely. Buddha wrote that “words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace.”

Throughout history, leaders have used words to inspire action — evil action, in the case of Hitler, for example; good works in the case of Mother Teresa. So when candidates for high office call a woman’s legal right to abortion “murder,” when they falsely accuse Planned Parenthood of “selling body parts,” and when they create bloody horror-movie fantasies in nationally televised debates, as Carly Fiorina did recently, they shouldn’t be surprised when people who buy their heated rhetoric take bloody action.

Three innocent people are now dead in Colorado, one of them a devoutly Christian law-enforcement officer and father, killed while protecting helpless people from a deranged man intent on stopping the “selling of body parts.”

The purveyors of heated anti-abortion rhetoric — Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Fiorina, and others — have spent the past few days denying that their words had anything to do with the actions of Robert Lewis Dear. Those words are as empty as their souls.

Where are their demands for all Christians to denounce the actions of a Christianist terrorist? Where are the demands that we investigate the plague of gun violence by demented white loners? Where are the demands by outraged politicians and candidates that we “round up” these evil doers and give them ID cards? Unlike the theoretical dangers of Syrian refugees, our violent terrorists are all too real, their acts of bloodshed all too common.

The Bible says, “They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.” Too often, these days, we’re all reaping the whirlwinds spawned by American demagogues.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Pounds & Pennies in Memphis

Remember the old saw, “It takes money to make money”? That’s a classic, right up there with, “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” which makes the same kind of sense. The idea behind both sayings is that all good

results have to be seeded in advance from somewhere, somehow. Merely consider turning those two chestnuts upside down: “It takes the absence of money to make money;” “The Lord helps those who decline to help themselves,” and you get instant nonsense. Or at least fodder for debate.

And the same insight applies to some of the other standard proverbs. Such as, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” You gotta have the acorns to start with, of course.

This principle — call it “priming the pump” — came to mind this week when we read that the federal government is going to try to reclaim from the city of Memphis some $3.8 million that it advanced the city to build an automobile inspection station off Appling in East Memphis. That’s the amount that was advanced by the feds under an air-quality initiative to build a facility that cost a total of $6 million to construct. That’s real American money, nothing theoretical about it, and, unless our various representatives in the state and federal government can work out some swaps or pro rata reductions that will take the city wholly or partly off the hook, it will take … $3.8 million to pay the money back.

That’s dead loss, and if you start to consider some of the intangibles involved in the affair, you begin to realize that it’s more than likely that the abolition of the testing station on Appling and the others that the city used to operate will already have resulted in various damages to the ecology and urban infrastructure in undetected air pollution, a greater incidence in traffic accidents and fatalities, and work-time lost from unanticipated glitches in people’s personal transportation.

A similar loss has afflicted the city with the departure of an estimated 300 to 400 first-responders who have resigned, due to a loss of or decrease in their health benefits as a result of budget cuts undertaken by the mayor and city council over the last couple of years.

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland made it a chief plank in his electoral platform to reinforce public safety, so as to make Memphis a desirable place to live and work, and to stabilize and stop the drain of people and resources from the area. But as councilman, Strickland had been among those advocating and voting for the cuts in benefits. Now the circle has come full and the problem is back in his mayoral lap. To which, we say, good luck, Jim!

We’re not even going to get started on the abysmal cost to the state of Tennessee — hundreds of millions of dollars, plus lives lost, health ruined, and hospitals shuttered — as a result of the state government’s refusal to accept Medicaid-expansion. The sheer moral and fiscal irresponsibility of that folly continues to counter all human logic.

But, so be it. Can we be penny foolish and pound foolish at the same time? The answer appears to be yes. Oh, well, Happy Thanksgiving, all the same!

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ story “New Day at the CA (Again)” …

What concerns me is that now that Gannett will own most of the newspapers in Tennessee, it will attempt to have “one newspaper” for the state, which for Memphis will be tragic, because we aren’t like the rest of the state.

I am happy that we still have at least one locally owned media outlet.

B

Here is an idea for the Flyer: Purchase the rights to use the banner of the Memphis Press-Scimitar or some other historic paper (like the Memphis World or the original Memphis Press) or prepare to launch a new banner such as the Memphis Post. Leverage the foundation provided by the Flyer in concert with the talents of the soon-to-be-unemployed journalists from the CA under the new newspaper banner.

Marketing would not shy from the fact that it is essentially a reconstituted version of the CA, with a renewed focus on local news and continued provisions of national and international information. Absorb advertisers from the CA as local readership and web counts inevitably decline and eventually force the CA out of publication with the new banner assuming the role of the daily newspaper of record.

If I won one of the asininely huge Mega Millions jackpots, I would give you guys the money to do it, with the only caveat being you would hire a staff of top English majors to review each article for spelling and grammatical errors.

Barf

I have been to Des Moines twice within the past few months, most recently at the end of September. As the article indicated The Des Moines Register is now owned by Gannett, and in my opinion, the local coverage of such things, including high school football, has suffered.  The main reason I take the CA is the fairly decent coverage of local events across spectrums. Once the change to Gannett is made, I think many CA subscribers will be disappointed.

MKBW

About Bianca Phillips’ post “Independent Autopsy Shows Hog-tying Killed Troy Goode” …

I don’t think facedown hog-tying is the usual means of restraint in hospitals.

CL Mullins

Surely some sedatives could have been found that would have been safer than hog-tying him.

Smitty 1961

It’s really simple. Treat intoxicated people, and people having a psychological break, differently than violent criminals. The former group doesn’t have the normal protective reflexes that the latter does, so they can die if hog-tied. This was a preventable death.

OakTree

Now that an independent autopsy has been released on the death of Troy Goode, what is being done to hold the correct parties responsible? Have the officers involved been fired? Suspended? Anything?

As friends of Troy Goode, we were angry when he was taken from this world in such an unnecessary and violent manner. However, we did not react violently. We did not call for retaliation. We protested peacefully and waited for answers. Now that those answers are here, we demand swift and fair action.

I had hoped for a proactive response from local government. I  suppose a reactive one will have to do. These murderers cannot be allowed to keep their jobs. Hopefully, they will be charged with the crimes for which they are guilty.

Kyle Wojt

About Eileen Townsend’s Viewpoint, “A Zoo Solution” …

With over one million visitors annually, the Memphis Zoo is the No. 1 tourist attraction in Memphis and the sixth-largest tourist attraction in Tennessee, according to the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development.

Memphis has few assets. The Zoo is an incredibly important one. We should remember that.

datGuy

About the Flyer’s editorial, “Countering Daesh” …

Don’t want refugees entering your country? Then stop electing criminals who bomb theirs.

Mickey White

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About “The Dark Side,” our cover story on fall beers …

The Flyer staff at the end of the day’s tasting:

“I think I can see the air.” — CM

“Who knew the asphalt was so soft? I mean, I’m lying here and it is sooooo sofffftttt.” — AP

“I’M KING OF THE WORLD!!!” — CS

“I could take down Ronda Rousey. She ain’t nothing!” — BP

“F**kin’ lightweights.” — BV

Charlie Eppes

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter From the Editor, “Game Changer in Missouri” …

I think the most important part of the story is in the last couple paragraphs. College athletes hold the majority of the power, and I think this incident is the first real example we’ve had of that in this age of the TV deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m sure some similar form of strike will happen soon to get athletes a bigger piece of the pie.

This Missouri thing seems to be a symptom of a much bigger problem with my generation. The millennials in general seem to believe they are entitled to not being offended. The minute someone says or does something that’s slightly off-putting, my generation calls to arms and demands someone be fired, even if that person really had no impact on what was said or done.

Racism sucks. However, I don’t get what they expect the university president to do about some individual actions, some of which were occurring off campus. I guess maybe he should’ve sponsored a few more diversity events. But that wouldn’t do a damn thing to prevent the bigot from doing exactly what he was doing anyway. This is a school that, despite only being seven percent black and despite being filled with a lot of conservative rural kids, did elect a black, gay student body president. This is a university that generally backed Michael Sam. If there are a handful of bigots on campus, how does that make Missouri different from anywhere else in the country?

The real world isn’t a nice place. No one is going to hold your hand, and you’re going to have to deal with ignorant people.

GroveReb84

About Alexandra Pusateri’s story, “Three Sculptures Celebrate Binghampton History” …

I’m all for hiring the best person for a job, but it seems odd that a city that won’t hire better police or fire personnel because they don’t live here keeps contracting public art executed by people with no roots or ties to our city.

ALJ2

Can you imagine a great world-class city only commissioning local artists? With all due respect, your comment is the definition of provincial.

BP

This city is filled with amazing artists. To say that the city is better represented by someone who barely knows the history of the place is insulting to those who invest their lives in this city, to say the least. We’re trying to attract settlers, not locusts.

FUNKbrs

A nice mix is healthy. I’m thankful it doesn’t work the other way around and Memphis artists can compete in other cities. I’d hate to think the ones with skills to throw down on a public scale would be limited to work that’s available locally.

Chris Davis

About MATA …

After living in a medium-size city (150,000 people) in Germany for a number of years, I noticed that their public transportation system outdoes any in the U. S. Make me the czar of MATA!

First, rename the main station; “terminal” is a bad name. Clean the bathrooms. Add a serving counter where one can sit and have a coffee and snacks — there or to go. Keep prices down; a dollar for a canned drink is way too much for poor people who have to ride a bus.

Put in a machine where people can buy bus tickets. (Think Coke machine.) Add a machine to each bus so passengers can swipe their cards at the back door. Duh! And there should be easy-to-read maps of the entire system at all real bus stops.

Finally, print out 10,000 month-long passes, and give them to people waiting in line at unemployment offices. You’re welcome.

Robert Smith

Categories
Editorial Opinion

How Do We Counter Daesh?

When you have declared enemies so fanatic that they will not only risk their lives to deprive you of yours but will pursue such a suicidal end as a glory to be achieved at all costs, how do you arrive at the right sort of disincentives to discourage them? That is rapidly becoming the main theological conundrum of our times, and, as such things go, it is somewhat more compelling than, say, that famous question that medieval scholastics used to ponder: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

And, unfortunately, as last Friday’s tragic events in Paris most recently demonstrated, the question of the suicide bomber (or suicide shooter or what-have-you) is inescapable. How we answer it when it comes around to the U.S. will, as they say, determine our final grade. It goes beyond politics or statecraft or even religion. It is, in the most literal sense, existential.

So what do we do? None of the instant solutions tendered so far have that Bingo ring to them. Not, for example, Donald Trump’s seat-of-the-pants recommendation that we “take the oil,” the previous raw material the minions of Daesh (the latest name for ISIS or ISIL) are selling on the black market to finance their caliphate. And how do we do that? By “bombing the s**t” out of it at its source — pipes, scaffolding, sand and all.” Oh.

Trump is nothing if not versatile, however; his ex post facto remedy for the carnage in France was that the assassins could have been stopped if only their victims had been packing their own heat. Never mind that he borrowed this from Wayne LaPierre, the sage of the NRA, and that its actual point of origin was probably a 1970s episode of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker advocated that airlines start handing out guns for self-defense to all enplaning passengers.

At the other extreme of possible action, there seems to be no practical way to bargain with the jihadists, who would appear to be insisting on absolute surrender on the part of us infidels — a category that, to judge by events, is virtually all-inclusive: Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Buddhist, secular humanist, trash-talking atheists, and even, it would seem, their moderate co-religionists in the Islamic world, who are as likely to be turned into corpses or sex slaves as anybody else, and who in several well-publicized cases have been forced to pay with their heads, despite their conversion to Islam.

But there, if anywhere, lies the clue to success — not in routine denunciations by fanatics on our side of “radical Islam” (by which, they usually mean, Islam of any persuasion) but in coming to closer terms of cooperation with the governments and societies (Jordan, Turkey, the Emirates, to name several) that practice Islam in a way congenial not only to the Koran and the prophet but to the principle of coexistence in a world of diversity.

That’s not a complete answer, we know, and we’re not talking about trying to line up such actual and potential Arab allies on the firing line as “boots on the ground.” That hasn’t worked out too well. But active cooperation of some sort beats hell out of our trying to become Holy Warriors in our own right.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ post, “Urban Land Institute: Save the Coliseum, Youth Sports for Fairgrounds” …

I see nothing new here, minus the fact of complete demolition of the Coliseum. The idea of a “shell” of a building was introduced at the Roundhouse Revival, and carried along by a very few to the charrette meetings the following week. I see nothing that we did not expect. What was the fee for this study?

SmoothieMovie

The report does not call for saving the Coliseum, but repurposing part of it in homage to the original, the same recommendation as the preliminary report.

TjonesMfs

Move the Zoo! The Fairgrounds property is roughly three times the size of the current Zoo property, and there is room to expand even beyond that. The Zoo is one of our best attractions. Double its size and provide enough parking to create a world-class facility that would likely become the No. 1 attraction in Memphis. Move the Zoo and solve umpteen problems at once, not just for today but for decades to come.

Jeff

The only way moving the Zoo works (financially) is if the current Zoo property is sold to private interests for development. If it reverts to public-owned parkland, you get no return on all that capital and sunk costs. That’s the only way you would be able to raise the kind of seed funds to make it viable. Even then, there is probably too much money sunk into the current location. Where is this community going to come up with the $100 million or more that it would take to build a new world-class zoo from scratch?

Packrat

I suggest Corrections Corporation of America. Either location. The Zoo is obvious. The Coliseum, I believe, has been suggested as the next Thunderdome.

Dayn Rand

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “Officer Who Shot Darrius Stewart Will Not Face Criminal Charges” …

It is often said that a district attorney could indict a ham sandwich. I can’t help but wonder how enthusiastically Weirich made her case.

Randy Osborn

A young career criminal,who has two out-of-state outstanding warrants, assaulted a law enforcement officer with handcuffs while wrestling on the ground, which resulted in the officer shooting said criminal in self-defense. And now it’s time for Al Not-So Sharpton to come to Memphis and profit from the naive and the stupid? Or is it Jesse Jackson’s turn to fly in and line his pockets? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s time for Obama to metaphorically adopt another “son”?

Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler, do you know of any instances of police brutality or unjustified shootings?

CL Mullins

About Kevin Lipe’s post, “Warriors Hand Grizzlies the Worst Loss in Franchise History” …

Chris Wallace shouldn’t be allowed to GM this team after this season. He’s responsible for all this oldness on the team. The Grizz need a fresh vision for the future.

Dave Joerger hasn’t been the coach he was said to be — a guy who could renovate the offense and develop young players — but I’m not a fan of sacking coaches who consistently win 50-plus games a season. I think it’s the GM’s fault. We don’t have the personnel to play the kind of offense that is needed, and the team keeps adding old players, which makes it difficult to develop young players.

Iggy

I said before the season began that we have to attempt to trade Tony Allen for a younger wing player who can shoot. We cannot play four-on-five basketball on offensive and expect to win. While it may not be popular in town, we need to get rid of Allen while he still has some value. Until we do, why not start Barnes instead. Then let Beno, Wright, Jeff Green, Adams, and JaMychal Green come off the bench, and use Tony as a spot take-on defender with either unit from time to time?

Fred

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Veterans Day

CREDIT: DVIDSHUB - Flickr

DVIDSHUB – Flickr

As American holidays go, Veterans Day is right up there with Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Passover on the reverence scale. Though it lacks the same kind of religious content and is probably more solemn than celebratory, the annual November 11th homage to the men and women who have served in our armed forces commands universal respect, across all demographic lines.

It was originally known as Armistice Day, for the obvious reason that, when proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, it commemorated the end of hostilities, one year earlier, of what was then known as the Great War. Wilson’s proclamation cited America’s “solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service,” and its “gratitude for the victory,” but hailed above all “the opportunity … given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.”

There is a less ennobling and not very well-known fact about the calendar date on which the armistice was signed between the Allies and the Central Powers (as the two contending sides were then known). Germany, as the most important and last active combatant of the latter group of nations, had been signaling for days its wish to surrender the fight, but the Allied military leaders chose to delay armistice proceedings for the pure symbolism of ending things on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. In a savage war which had bled dry every European country involved, costing the lives of millions, the few thousands who perished during the waiting period apparently counted for less than the ceremonial symmetry of the date.

Even so, November 11th engendered a sense of uplift during its annual observances, though the mission of “the war to end wars” was obliterated by the even bloodier renewal of struggle 20 years later that caused the conflicts to be known thenceforth as World Wars One and Two. That fact, and perhaps the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and other continuing conflicts worldwide, persuaded Congress to rename the holiday Veterans Day.

Still, that concluding phrase of President Wilson’s proclamation, raising the hope of “peace and justice in the councils of the nations,” continues to resonate as a feature of the holiday. And, in that sense, it was more than appropriate that, on the very eve of this week’s commemoration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington on a mission of reconciliation with President Barack Obama. The intent was to smooth over the jarring discord between the two leaders over the recent agreement reached by Obama and various European leaders with Iran, intended to keep the latter country free of nuclear weapons but regarded by the Israeli leader as too soft.

Obama and Netanyahu formally pledged their continued search for peace in the Middle East through a two-state solution in Palestine. Maybe that’s more rhetoric than reality, but it keeps hope alive, the same hope Wilson sought to express in his formulation of reasons for the holiday.