but instead...

Let me comment on the magnificent game I saw yesterday which featured Derek Jeter's last home game as a Yankee, and possibly his last game as shortstop.

It was beyond scripted.

Not only was he responsible for the Yankees catching up to Baltimore - by a hit and an error by Baltimore - but then - as a Hollywood scriptwriter might have penned it - when Baltimore was allowed to catch up in the top of the ninth inning, Jeter comes to the plate in the bottom of the ninth and knocks in the winning run.

To burnish his badly tarnished status with his party, Sarkozy has spoken out against the legalization of same-sex marriage in France, claiming that it "humiliates families and those who love the family."  

While catnip for his party, it is a curious approach to counter the French electorate's impression that he is "yesterday's man."  However, Sarkozy does know something about marriage, not only in that he has been married three times, but also, that as a one-time mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine--he performed marriages.   Indeed, Sarkozy, performed the wedding for a couple, this occasion being the way he met the woman who was to become his second wife.

Sarkozy still needs to shake felony charges of corruption including alleged illegal financing of his 2007 election campaign by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi who is alleged to have contributed about $70 million.  Sarkozky became the champion for military intervention in Libya, urging the UK and, then, the US to overthrow Gaddafi.  Enough to fuel questions even for those who do not ordinarily wear a tin foil chapeau.

Thursday night's Ferguson protests included a new twist: A white business owner pulling a gun on protesters. Here's the video of that, resplendent with sirens:

I have been to the ME and it varies, but I never went in deep, big cities and high traffic areas.  I felt way more uncomfortable in Turkey with what we called darth vadors, women in black with a tiny slits for their eyes in temps reaching 100F, that we saw around the famous mosques.  I suspect a soldier is going to see a whole lot, but I also suspect a person who grew up with it would see more than any of us.

I didn't consider Istanbul part of the middle East, my point was that I found the woman's dress attire more disturbing that what I saw in the actual Middle East I visited, which included about a week in each: UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Kuwait.  I am not certain where turkey lies, it certainly butts up next to the ME, but I believe they are, or are trying to be part of the European Union.  

The mosques are what, two miles from Europe, and even though we went much deeper into Turkey(Asia), Istanbul is the only place we saw the darth vaders, which thinking back, is a very poor choice of words.  And I am not even positive about what bothered me more, that we were not suppose to stare, that you couldn't tell if they were girl, woman, or man for that matter, that they were so different, or that it was nearly 100 and they were in head to toe black, literally.  I don't really know.  But I will say there are enough Muslim women in Houston wearing hijabs, that I don't blink when I see an woman wearing one.

I just felt uncomfortable, but I agree, it was a total melting pot and I suspect with a little time, the uncomfortableness would have wore off once I got accustomed to the differences.  Some of it certainly had to do with the fact that we were visiting some very important religious places, and that stuff, even here, always put me on edge a little.

How U2 became the most hated band in America
"All That You Can't Leave Behind" gave the group renewed relevance post-9/11. Now they're an Internet punchline

IS   - Islamic State
ISIS - Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
ISIL - Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

Wiki on Levant:

The Levant today consists of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and part of southern Turkey

It's not clear to me is ISIL is rebranding of ISIS, or just a broader term, or both.  I am going with both.

Devin Sean James, who is overseeing public relations for Ferguson after the Michael Brown shooting, once shot and killed an unarmed man.

James, 32, began working for the city about two weeks after Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson killed the unarmed 18-year-old Brown on Aug. 9.

He has been handling media requests and overseeing Ferguson's public relations strategy, including arranging a video statement released Thursday in which Ferguson police Chief Thomas Jackson apologized to Brown's family.

Ferguson officials knew of James' conviction before they signed a contract with him, Mayor James Knowles III said Thursday.

Police in Ferguson, Mo., have violated their own reporting standards since last month's controversial fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson.

Ferguson Police Department protocol requires that a use-of-force report be submitted after all such incidents -- lethal, nonlethal and even when barehanded physical force is used.

A written directive signed by Chief Thomas Jackson in 2010 states "early and accurate reporting helps establish agency credibility."

Supposedly he had been trying to convert people to Islam.

But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department's handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party -- a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months -- Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.

"This doesn't have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration," said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims "in the initial discussions" of the Panther case last year.

"My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president," Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.

The criticism has focused attention not just on Thernstrom, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, but on the partisan nature of the Civil Rights Commission and on a story that, like the controversy over the anti-poverty group ACORN, has raged almost completely outside the mainstream media.

But unfortunately for the Mets' ticker tape parade hopes that season, they ran into Kirk Gibson in an MVP year, and also Orel Herscheiser, who was well on his way to a Cy Young award, having just closed out the season by pitching 60 consecutive shutout innings to break Don Drysdale's old mark of 58 scoreless innings, set 20 years earlier.

Bottom line, Gibson and Herscheiser led the underdog Dodgers over the Mets in the 1988 NCLS, 4 games to 3, and the Boys in Blue went on to stun the equally heavily favored Oakland A's to win their last World Series championship.

More often than not, regular season records mean nothing come MLB playoff time. It's all about who gets hot at the right moment.

Landscapers said 3 officers were there right at the time of the shooting, and Lo and Behold, here immediately after the shooting we see 2 officers on foot and atleast 1 in the SUV having a big pow-wow next to Wilson's body.

This has to have been immediately afterwards since even the police event report says that the 2nd unit arrived at 12:02:22.  That would be 8 seconds after the final shot.  

So when did the third officer in that video arrive?? He's on foot and his SUV is parked on the south side of the street. Was he there at the time of the shooting???

Landscapers said that after the shooting Wilson left the scene. Well there is Wilson in the video leaving the scene after the big pow-wow, and Brady makes note of that as well.

Then he points out that he returns to the body where he is later photoed standing to the other cop at 12:05.

Still no crime scene tape up at 12:05. So who put that up???

Brady points to a 4th SUV that arrives pulling into a driveway up by him right as he starts videoing at about 12:03. It's there at the start of the BC tape circa 12:07 but has pulled away after a few minutes.

At 12:06 when the BC tape starts Wilson and the other cop have wandered up to Wilson's SUV driver door for some reason and the crime scene tape is up all around.

The 4th cop that the Ferguson Event Report says did not arrive until 12:10 must have done that remotely.

So by 12:04 we have atleast 4 cops on the scene -- Wilson and 3 other SUVs.