Russians probably were doping, but until Dick Pound and his political cohort removes cannabinoids from their banned substance list, it's difficult to take WADA and their mandate seriously.

Rugby: Former All Black Brad Thorn coming out of retirement
 
5:47 AM Friday Aug 12, 2016

Evergreen rugby ironman Brad Thorn is at it again. He is coming out of retirement to play rugby at the age of 41.
 
Thorn will play for Queensland Country in the Australian national championship, with his first game coming on August 27 against the Canberra Vikings.
 
The New Zealand-born Queenslander has played 460 game of first class rugby league and rugby union over a staggering career spanning two decades and including Rugby World Cup, Super Rugby, European Cup, NRL grand final and State of Origin triumphs.
 
Since "retiring" from professional rugby last year, Thorn has been part of the coaching staff at the Brisbane-based Reds Super Rugby franchise.
 
He will assist as a coach for Queensland Country as well as playing for them.
 

That is all.

Red Terror while most of your posts about music etc are entertaining

As are some of your posts about rugby.
 
I don't really care if it's about property rights or not ...

I love the idea that the people defending this nutjob are "libertarian anti government involvement".
 
When what this guy is demanding is government subsidies to fund his lifestyle. If he had done ANY of the stuff he's done over the last 20 years - from not paying for grazing rights, to arson, to poaching (stealing) to a private company or indvividal he'd be sued, bankrupt & gone. He's only got away with it because the government half accept they have to subsidize this morons life.
 
9 times out of 10 when someone in the US says "I'm a libitarian!" they mean "I'm susidized to all fuck but too retarded to realise!"

I think you've nailed it.

The Harney County ranchers are paying the BLM $400,000 for the costs of fighting fires the BLM claims they set. [...]
 
(Father and son) were found guilty of two counts – the two fires they readily admitted to starting on their own property.
 
In order to draw the original court case to a close, the two men, in a plea deal, agreed that they would not appeal the 2012 sentence.
 
The Department of Justice news release said arson on federal land carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. Judge Michael Hogan, however, did not give the two men the minimum sentence called for under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, saying it would have been “grossly disproportionate” to the crime. He added that a longer sentence would not meet any idea he has of justice and that he didnâ€t believe congress intended that act to be applied in cases like the Hammond one. A longer sentence than the few months he gave them would “shock his conscience” he said.
 
The Department of Justice appealed for a full sentence.
 
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to a review of the case and District Chief Judge Ann Aiken went ahead with a full sentence – five years in federal prison for both men.

Throw the book at them.
 
Starting a brushfire on your own property, pay for the damages when it gets out of control, jesus-christ, that 70-year-old property owner richly deserves 5 years in the slammer as a "terrorist." It makes complete sense, and is really difficult to fathom why anybody -- even the original judge (bolded above, hoo-boy, says he has a "conscience," what a wingnut) might think it a "disproportionate" and excessive penalty. Doesn't this libertarian wacko realize they're the Fifth Column domestic arm of Al Qaeda? It's a damn shame they're not being waterboarded in Gitmo. Shurely this terrorist-sympathizer judge hasn't forgotten the Twin Towers. It's probably past time Federal Agents investigated him while they's at it.
 
Link: Where there's smoke.

your rants about the US govt and " neocons" etc are particularly cringeworthy.

Oh, I get it. United States sells more arms than any nation on earth. It's big business. Neocons and Libs want to export as many of them as possible to foreign governments as well as jihadists (cough my apology, "moderate rebels") and insurrectionists for political purposes, yet confiscate them at home where they are actually enshrined as a right in a constitution. I also get that so-called self-proclaimed conservatives who rant about liberalism yet love Big Government, defer to authority and want to regulate enshrined rights might, y'know, not be quite as conservative and ride quite so high in the saddle as they pretend. But what do I know? I'm just a 6th former.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/04/us/04oregon-listy.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-regionion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Uh-oh, first Drudge, now my personal newspaper of choice, the Grey Lady herself, the liberal NYT, seems to think the issue is about property rights. Looks like the right-wing wackos are manipulating them with their voodoo mind-control, too. Is there no escaping the lunacy?
 
Update: Answering my own question (above): No there is not. No escape, that is. Mind control. 
 
I just read another conservative mental-case who's parroting the New York Times. (Or is it the other way around. (Either way, 2016 is the Year of the ridiculous. Already!!))
 
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/01/03/full-story-on-whats-going-on-in-oregon-militia-take-over-malheur-national-wildlife-refuge-in-protest-to-hammond-family-persecution/

I'm feeling v-e-r-y s-l-e-e-p-y . . .

Well-well Jegga, I apologize. I didn't know you were a leftie authoritarian socialist like me, I thought you were on the other side, so my mistake. 
 
Like yourself, a fellow liberal, I don't like guns either. I'm an hour from Buffalo and two from Detroit. A visit to a 7/11 in either city after hours means getting past a hired-gun, yes really, who'll sit at the door on a milk crate with a revolver in his lap. Kinda frightens me, and makes me pleased to escape back across the border. But I don't get too worked up about their system. My primary concern is what goes on in my own neighborhood, and what the government does with my taxes. I'm much more concerned about pissheads racing cars around town than what happens in a foreign country. Mostly because it concerns me directly and I might be able to do something about it. A very liberal perspective, I'm sure you will agree. And really, with the much higher fatality rate where I live accounted by drunk drivers rather than gunfire, I'm not sure whether I should be banning alcohol, automobiles, or both. I'm pretty sure if we did ban both, and permitted automobiles exclusively for the use of police, ambulances, and fire-trucks, we'd probably be safer. Sadly, economics, property rights and that damned Charter of Rights and Freedoms mean I lose and that pesky capitalist system you and me are trying to defeat, if I understand you correctly, prevails, again. So I'll just have to reseve energy and stop worrying and learn to love the status quo. Oh well. I can always browbeat those idiotic Americans and their stupid 2nd Amendment. Makes me feel better already.
 
This might interest you, it's a commentary ("The War Against Cowboys") about the current scandal, but beware, it's a conservative position that I despise and like me might make you pig-stomping mad because it actually does defend armed nutters, and if my liberal head explodes I'm pretty sure yours might too. Keep away from sharp objects. And liquor. And automobiles. Ahhh, safer already.

The govt is probably doing bugger all to deprive these clowns of publicity as much as they can. There's been a few of these fuckwits do similarly stupid things over the years, the Bundys mentioned in that article , Ruby Ridge, Waco those idiots that killed the talkback host in the 80s and they seem to inspire the next group of jackasses every time the govt cracks down on them.

It's usually a property rights issue. I thought you were conservative Jegga. Defending the state over the individual seems kinda, wellll, super-duper-socialist-liberal. Just sayin'!

I spent part of my holiday break watching all ten episodes of the new Netflix series "The Making of a Murder." correction, "Making A Murderer."
 
It's a single piece in ten hour-long installments. Probably (almost certainly) the most insane documentary I've ever watched. If you like a good murder mystery with roller-coaster twists & turns, be sure to check it out, understanding in a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction way that if it was a drama you wouldn't believe any of it. And it might -- just might -- make you question the legal system and motivation of rogue corrupt police forces

Motorhead's Lemmy reveals final wish to 'haunt Tears for Fears' from beyond the grave in last interview

"...more than a little jarring for people who believe in the paranormal."

Anybody see Spotlight yet?
 
(It's about the true story Catholic pedophile abuse scandal in Boston.)
 
Micheal Keaton has been having a very good comeback year, another gem for him. Funnily enough, the 2nd starring role for him in a "newspaper" movie, and this one is a lot better than the earlier Ron Howard film "The Paper" (1994) although that one is a guilty pleasure for me
 
One of the best reviewed films of the year (97% at RT), probably a little too lavish for my taste, but then newspaper critics seem to get bigger erections than usual for "newspaper" movies that get the small details correct that most audiences don't give a rats' ass, because it's about "them" and their "craft." Still, an excellent movie. Getting widely compared to "All the President's Men," and for good reason.
 
And in an incestuous way, whereas ATPM featured editor Ben Bradlee (Washington Post) as one of the main supporting characters (played by Jason Robards), this one has his kid Ben Bradlee Jr. (Boston Globe) as one of the main support actors (played by Mad Men's John Slattery). Bradlee wrote my fave book of the past couple years ("The Kid") so I was a little worried he was going to be the fall-guy in this suspense story.
 
Script, dialogue, pacing, suspense, acting all top notch, although Mark Ruffalo for my money needs to dial it down just a touch. He seemed a little too tightly wound in a way that wasn't fully explored.
 
I'll give it a 8.5/10. definitely worth seeing, but not necessarily on a big screen, a DVD rental will do the trick without losing much impact.
 
If the best newspaper flicks are Citizen Kane, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Circus (a.k.a. Ace in the Hole), Park Row (Samuel Fuller's fave film he ever directed), Deadline USA and the aforementioned All the President's Men (...any others I can think of off the top of my head...?), I'd say it belongs in that sort of select company.