I guess it all starts at home...

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   The mother of Adrian Peterson came to his defense Wednesday in her first public comments since the running back's indictment for child abuse, saying he has six kids and "wants to be a good father to them all."

    "I don't care what anybody says," Jackson, 50, said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle from her home in the Houston suburb of Spring, where Peterson also has a house. "Most of us disciplined our kids a little more than we meant sometimes. But we were only trying to prepare them for the real world."

    [snip]

   "When you whip those you love, it's not about abuse, but love," Jackson said. "You want to make them understand that they did wrong."

"It's not about abuse, but love?"  Are you fking kidding me?

Last week here in LA the police were called, supposedly by staff member(s) of the Directors Guild of America, regarding a couple parked in front of a tee vee studio and supposedly having sex in the front seat of their car with the door open.

The woman was black actress Danielle Watts, of Django Unchained fame, etc., and her white celebrity chef boyfriend.

(There seems to be some confusion as to whether the guy is her boyfriend or her husband, however she refers to him as her "boyfriend" in the recordings of the incident, so that's what I'm going with.)

Long story short, when the po po arrived the two were no longer inside the car. Danielle qas on the phone with her dad, and her boyfriend was just hanging out. When the po po asked for ID, DW went ballistic and then she got handcuffed while she asserted her right not to have to show ID.

During and after the incident, DW and her boyfriend claimed the police response was racist.

As it turns out, the officers who responded were all minorities; an openly gay white male, a Hispanic male, and a female. This does not mean, of course, that they could act in a racist manner.

But most if not all of the incident was recorded by one or more the officers on the scene and the recordings seem to pretty much exonerate the officers.

The gay officer, Sgt. Parker, said:

he fears that if he and other officers had not recorded their run-in with Miss Watts, her allegations would have ruined their careers.

And, fwiw, there are photos of the couple "getting jiggy with it" in the car with the door open, and pretty graphic descriptions of what they were doing, if the linked article is to be believed.

Anyway, it seems to me that these cameras can protect both the public and police with regard to such incidences.

The latest trailer for Terry Gilliam's latest opus, The Zero Theorem, has landed, and it's every bit as visually arresting as it is philosophically dense. Here, Christoph Waltz plays computer genius Qohen Leth as he struggles to solve the titular Zero Theorem, an impossible proof that would effectively verify the meaninglessness of existence. Grappling with existential angst in his dark, ad-drenched future, he finds solace in "the girl with pink hair" and eventually a reason for being.

Almost 4.3 million people -- 97 percent of the electorate -- had registered to vote, including 16- and 17-year-olds, enfranchised for the first time. Analysts forecast a turnout in excess of 80 percent at about 2,600 polling places stretching from urban centers to remote and sparsely populated islands and far-flung settlements in the Scottish Highlands. Only residents of Scotland were permitted to vote.

The NFL is about selling a product, and by appearing in a Jesus shirt, he took the spotlight off of the product.  That would be true whether it was a quote from the Koran in Arabic, a portrait of Buddha, or that of Ganesh, the elephant-headed deity of the Hindu Pantheon.

If he wants to appear on his own free time in a Jesus shirt, that's fine, but when you're on the clock, you're not allowed to wear ashes and sackcloth to work because it's the Feast of St Francis of Assisi or whatever.

Finally, Someone Tells Sonya To Get Rid Of That Ugly Jacket

Four patriotic students were forced to take down the American flags hanging on their trucks when they arrived to school on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks this year.

Aaron Fulmer, the principal of Woodruff High School in Spartanburg County, South Carolina confiscated the flags from the students because he said it was a "violation of school policy." The flags purportedly drew too much attention to the students' vehicles and thus went against school code.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that something like this has happened in schools. Recently, 24-year Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker attempted to talk to his daughter's guidance counselor at school, but was turned away because he was in uniform.

Security officers at Rochester Adams High School in Michigan said that Baker would not be permitted onto school grounds until he changed into civilian clothes because it could possibly offend students. School officials at Adams High later apologized for the misconduct.

An incident in South Carolina from 2013 was even more demonstrative about a schoolteacher's disdain for the U.S. flag and what it stands for. A Chapin High School teacher named Scott Compton was reported to have thrown down an American flag and stomped on it in front of his Honor's English class.

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