Where Are My Keys?

Does Ray Rice have a case against the NFL? ***UPDATED***

Let me start off by making it perfectly clear that I think any man who lays a hand on a woman is scum, and deserves everything that comes from it, being loss of job, loss of family, and loss of his livelihood.

Here's what we know:

• Ray Rice was observed standing over his unconscious fiance outside of an Atlantic City casino elevator in the wee hours of the morning on Valentine's Day, 2014.  Both Rice and his fiance were later arrested and released.
• Rice was suspended for two games in late July, for violating the NFL's "personal conduct" policy.

• In a statment to Rice, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the punishment comes with the expectation that the running back will continue his counceling.

  "You will be expected to continue to take advantage of the counseling and other professional services you identified during our meeting," Goodell wrote. "As you noted, this additional assistance has been of significant benefit to you and your wife, and it should remain a part of your practice as appropriate.

  "I believe that you are sincere in your desire to learn from this matter and move forward toward a healthy relationship and successful career. I am now focused on your actions and expect you to demonstrate by those actions that you are prepared to fulfill those expectations."

• Additional video surfaced this week from inside of the elevator, showing Rice punching his fiance in the face several times, resulting in the Ravens cutting him from the team, and the NFL to suspend him indefinitely.
• The CFL (that's the Canadian Football League, for my readers in Tucson) said that they would extend the NFL ban to include the CFL.
• Rice also lost all of his endorsement deals, and is being "shunned" by his alma mater.

For all intents and purposes, he's lost not only his only sources of income, but will most certainly lose any future employment related to football (announcer, analyst, coach, etc.). 

Rice has nothing to lose if he brings suit against the NFL.  He's got no money, no future, and nothing but upside (financially). 

Hear me out, and see if this makes sense.

There is no question that the NFL and the Ravens knew Rice struck his fiance.  There was video of her lying unconscious outside the elevator, police reports stating there was an assault, and Rice's own admission to the Commissioner.  Rice was also indicted by a Grand Jury.  Raven's GM Ozzie Newsome even referenced how the video of Rice dragging his unconscious fiance out of the elevator "doesn't look good".

If you saw video of an unconscious woman, a police report showing an arrest and charge of striking his fiance, and a Grand Jury indictment, how in the world did they think the fiance became unconscious?

After the Commissioner handed down a two-game suspension, public outcry went through the roof.  Perhaps feeling the heat from the light punishment, the Commissioner admitted he "didn't get it right":

“My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment, and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families. I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values,” Goodell wrote. “I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.”

So now we are up to the events of this week.  New video surfaces, showing what took place inside the elevator, the attack itself.  Rice is seen brutally punching the woman he loves in the face/head, and we see her drop to the floor, unconscious.  It's impossible to watch the video, and not be sick to your stomach.  The ravens quickly cut Rice, and the NFL followed suit, banning him indefinitely.

Nothing about the facts of the case really changed, except we saw a man brutally beating a woman into unconsciousness, instead of assuming/understanding it happened prior to what we saw on the first video.

Can't Rice make the case that the Ravens and the NFL should have known what had happened inside the elevator, based on the overwhelming amount of evidence in front of them?  Does it pass the "reasonable doubt" test, that a jury of his peers would come to the conclusion that Rice beat his fiance in that elevator?  If so, why only a two-game suspension initially, and then a indefinite suspension after the new video came out?

Can't Rice make the case that the Commissioner (who freely admitted months ago the he "got it wrong" with the initial ruling) is now trying to cover his own ass by throwing the book at Rice? 

In other words, why was a two-game suspension a just penalty in the recent past, but now that the league is embarrassed by the new video, they have to look tough to save the image of the NFL? 

I'm no lawyer, but I think Rice brings a suit against the NFL and the Ravens.  Again, he has nothing to lose, and millions to gain.

I can see him saying that he came clean on the initial event, sought counseling, and has been a model person since his "mistake".  He didn't lie (that we know of) about what happened in that elevator, so why does a video of his actions carry more weight than his own words describing the account?

If I ran a red light, ran over a pedestrian, and dragged him several blocks under my car, and admitted to all of that, should video surface of the event from a nearby surveillance camera be allowed after the fact to change my punishment?

As someone on Twitter recently said, Rice didn't lose his job because the Ravens and NFL saw that video, he lost it because you did.  The Public called for his head, and they got it.

(Again, let me be perfectly clear, Rice deserves to lose everything he has lost, as hitting a woman is never justified, I just think the punishment should have happened the first time around - the evidence was there all along, in the form of Rice's statements, the police reports, the indictment, and the outside-the-elevator footage.  I'm not defending Rice's actions in any way whatsoever here, merely pointing out the NFL may have opened itself up to a lawsuit from Rice.)

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Rice camp in the coming weeks.  If he does file suit (and I think he will), it will be along the lines of claiming the NFL and Ravens damaged his ability to earn a living.  He'll say that he came clean, accepted the punishment, and now has become a scapegoat due to the NFL admittingly botching what they did. 

He won't play the "I didn't do it" card, but will say that the NFL and Ravens got embarrassed, and did everything they could to remove the spotlight from them, and turn it back on to Rice. 

If he does file suit, I'll bet you he winds up getting paid.

The NFL currently looks either incompetent or a bunch of liars.  Either the all-powerful NFL couldn't get its hands on the elevator tape (which is being denied by local law enforcement), or it didn't think to review them.  You can bet your bottom dollar that the Rice defense team will jump all over a league that made $6 billion last year, to get their client paid.  If the NFL did indeed view the tape, and only game Rice a two-game suspension, they are toast.  If they didn't make an attempt to get their hands on a copy, they look like they didn't take the issue of domestic violence and one of their stars very seriously, which also toasts them.

Rice has nothing to lose by filing suit, and everything to gain.  The NFL has a whole lot to lose, and very little upside.

Rice will get paid, bank on it.

**UPDATE**

ESPN is reporting that Rice told the Commissioner that he punched his fiance in the face when they met in June:

Goodell made the statement Tuesday during an interview with CBS News, saying the latest video released by TMZ Sports about the incident was "inconsistent" with what the former Baltimore Ravens running back had told him. But four sources close to Rice say that during the disciplinary meeting in the commissioner's office on June 16, Rice told Goodell he had hit Janay Rice, then his fiancee, in the face inside a Revel Casino Hotel elevator in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and had knocked her unconscious.

"Ray didn't lie to the commissioner," a source with knowledge of the meeting told "Outside the Lines." "He told the full truth to Goodell -- he made it clear he had hit her, and he told Goodell he was sorry and that it wouldn't happen again."

"He told the truth," a second source said. "This is a public lynching of Ray."

A third source with knowledge of Rice's discussion with the commissioner said: "There was no ambiguity about what happened [in the elevator]." A fourth source also confirmed how the information was relayed at the meeting; however, a fifth source with knowledge of the meeting said Rice told Goodell he had "slapped" his fiancee.

The accounts given by the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, contradict Goodell's statement that he did not know precisely what had happened inside the elevator until he watched the TMZ Sports-released videotape on Monday morning. After The Associated Press reported Wednesday that a copy of the in-elevator video was sent by a law enforcement official to an unnamed NFL executive last April, the league announced former FBI chief Robert Mueller would lead an independent inquiry of the Rice matter, overseen by New York Giants owner John Mara and Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney.

Goodell will lose his job, and Ray is going to get a "severance" payment.

The first rule of holes is a simple one - when you find yourself in one, stop digging.  Goodell got a bigger shovel:

During the CBS News interview, the network's Norah O'Donnell reminded Goodell that an earlier TMZ Sports-released security camera video, made public last February, showed Rice dragging his fiancee's unconscious body from the elevator.

"We did not know what led up to that," Goodell replied. "We did not know the details of that. We asked for that on several occasions." Goodell has said the league asked for the video from four law enforcement agencies shortly after the incident and again after Rice was accepted into a pre-trial intervention program on May 20.

Besides the first TMZ video and Rice's own account of what happened during the June 16 meeting, Goodell also had access to an Atlantic City Municipal Court complaint, dated Feb. 15, which is public record. The complaint alleges Rice committed "assault by attempting to cause bodily injury to J. Palmer, specifically by striking [her] with [his] hand, rendering her unconscious, at the Revel casino."

My gut is that Goodell is playing loose with the facts - he didn't actually see a punch, so therefore it might not have happened.  At the same time, he didn't appear to have asked if a punch (or punches) were thrown, and by not viewing the video, insulates himself from actually having to see it.  In a way, he's telling the truth, but being dishonest by not doing everything in his power to try and find out what happened.

Again, Rice didn't get the boot because the NFL saw the tape, he got 86'd because you saw it.

If the NFL investigation shows that Rice was upfront about what he said happened (and it's looking more and more like that is the case), Ray is going to get paid.

The Ravens GM says what Rice told him, and what's on the tape match up:

Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome said this week that Rice was truthful about what happened inside the elevator in conversations with he and Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. "You know, Ray had given a story to John and I," Newsome told The Baltimore Sun. "And what we saw on the video was what Ray said. Ray didn't lie to me. He didn't lie to me."

So why lie to the League, but be honest with the team?  Rice and his handlers had to know they would compare stories.

Stop digging, Commissioner.

What's making these kids sick?

First it was in Denver, now in Cincinatti:

Medical officials admitted a record number of children to a local hospital over the weekend because of what they believe to be a rare respiratory virus spreading throughout the country.

Although there's been no confirmed cases of the enterovirus at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, officials admitted 540 patients Friday, said Dr. Derek Wheeler, associate chief of staff at the hospital.

The previous record was around 515, Wheeler said.

Some reports out of Missouri and Colorado suggest the virus, with symptoms similar to the common cold, brought sicker patients to hospitals, Wheeler said.

"We're just seeing the (increased) volumes, we haven't seen (patients) sicker than usual yet," he said.

Hospitals from other states have placed restrictions on visitations, but Wheeler said there are no plans to do that in Cincinnati.

The virus is similar to what doctors treat during cold and flu season. That means nothing really changes if a child comes down with the rare virus, he said.

"The bottom line is this is a virus you wouldn't treat with antibiotics, so other than the (high-level of) interest, there's no reason we would need to know it's an enterovirus," Wheeler said.

This particular type of enterovirus — EV-D68 — is uncommon, but not new. It was first identified in the 1960s.

"I suspect that it's something that hasn't been around for a while and so there's a lot of people susceptible to it," Wheeler said.

Has anything changed recently in this Country, in regards to people being sick?

Why have any advisors or meetings??

The President has shown a pattern of not knowing anything about his Administration, until it hits the news:

Preferring to look ignorant rather than irresponsible, President Obama said last week that he only recently learned of scandals at the Department of Veteran Affairs through news reports. He spoke of the problems at the department as if they had blindsided him, despite the fact that as a candidate in 2008 he railed against the “the broken bureaucracy of the V.A.” and decried outrageous delays in treatment for veterans.

He didn’t need news reports to inform him of the depth of the department’s flaws; he could have reviewed his own campaign speeches. His long familiarity with the department’s problems gave his press conference last week an air of adding insult to injury. Somehow he was at once aware of the department’s deplorable condition and unaware of it.

Obama doesn’t mind appearing as the hapless spectator on the sidelines of his government if that saves him from the charge of dereliction of duty about a known problem. Yet the plight of veterans at the hands of indifferent bureaucrats clearly lost its urgency for him once the 2008 campaign ended and only now resumes urgency for him as an annoying political problem.

He said last week that he won’t “tolerate” mistreatment of veterans but he managed to tolerate it easily enough since he gave those speeches over five years ago. His aides claim he is “madder than hell” about the scandal, but at last week’s press conference he implied that his anger was provisional. He is still not sure if the “allegations” of mistreatment are true and needs to wait for more investigations in order to determine whether or not “accountability” is required.

Learning about problems in his own government through random news reports has become one of Obama’s common refrains. Last year he said that he learned of the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups through glancing at the newspaper and he made a similar claim about his knowledge of various Justice Department scandals. Historians, looking for a simple snapshot of his administration’s fecklessness, can cite the frequency of Obama’s admission.

Obama also learns of non-events through news reports, as evident in his administration’s reliance upon fragments of reporting from the foreign press to claim that the Benghazi terrorist attack was a demonstration over an Internet video that turned violent. Former Obama administration spokesman Tommy Vietor commented to Fox News, “What I’ve seen is, in a number of outlets, reporters talked to people on the scene that night… who said they were there because they were upset about this video.” Vietor suggested that “guys quoted in newspapers saying that’s why they were there” was the reason for the bogus storyline.

All of this contributes to a picture of an administration that is hopelessly superficial, dishonest, and incompetent. It also exposes Obama’s ideology as false: the federal government is clearly too big to know and too dysfunctional to control if he can only keep up to date on its failures through news accounts.

An Afterburner I had missed..

GWK will probably have a few things to add to the thoughts in this video:

 

Sorry I've been away..

Been a little hectic around WAMK World HQ lately.  We had out-of-towners last week for Ali's service, have partially moved Geno in, and have finished up with Thanksgiving.  Plus, had a big project for work, that kept me pretty occupied up until today.  Speaking of work, you did buy a few shares of PINC, right?  At Market close on Tuesday, we saw some strong gains, and saw more upward movement today.

So things have calmed down a bit; Geno is getting settled in, the fetching Mrs. P has moved her office downstairs next to mine, and I shouldn't have too much travel for the rest of the year.

That means you'll see more regular posts.  I've been able to keep abreast of things on Twitter somewhat, but acknowledge the blogging has been sparse.  Not to worry, dear reader.  We'll get it straightened rigth out!

This is why you'll be losing seats in 2014, Democrats..

Benghazi, Fast and Furious, NSA spying, IRS, the list of scandals surrounding this Administration go on and on.  While each is damaging and disgusting on its own accord, they don't "stick" with the average American for one reason-they don't affect the average American. 

They are "merely" stories in the paper or online, ones that upset people, but to quote the Democrat 2016 frontrunner, "what difference does it make"?  Most of us were unlikely to be touched by the scandals mentioned (beyond disgust, that is), so what politically fallout exists?  Maybe a few demonstrations that get minimal media coverage, but it's mainly preaching to the choir.

The difference with Obamacare?  It's affecting millions of folks, Republican, Democrat, and Independant.  It's also affecting folks in the Media, who can't ignorethe ramifications of the implementation of this poorly written law:

 Dean Griffin liked the health insurance he purchased for himself and his wife three years ago and thought he'd be able to keep the plan even after the federal Affordable Care Act took effect. But the 64-year-old recently received a letter notifying him the plan was being canceled because it didn't cover certain benefits required under the law.

The Griffins, who live near Philadelphia on the Delaware border, pay $770 monthly for their soon-to-be-terminated health care plan with a $2,500 deductible. The cheapest plan they found on their state insurance exchange was a so-called bronze plan charging a $1,275 monthly premium with deductibles totaling $12,700. It covers only providers in Pennsylvania, so the couple wouldn't be able to see the doctors in Delaware whom they've used for more than a decade.

"We're buying insurance that we will never use and can't possibly ever benefit from. We're basically passing on a benefit to other people who are not otherwise able to buy basic insurance," said Griffin, who is retired from running an information technology company.

As much as Obama and his friends try and spin "if you like it, you can keep it" into "of course some policies will have to be scrapped, but only a small amount", the average American recalls what he saw and heard Obama proclaiming over and over on the campaign trail.  It's likely a substantial reason many voted for Obama in the first place.

With the other scandals, they don't really "hit home".  A cancellation notice sent to your mailbox, telling you your policy is going away specifically because of Obamacare does.

Expect to see/hear account of folks jumping the aisle in 2014, and most likely again in 2016:

Bill Fullner has reached his breaking point.

It started with the letter from his health-insurance company informing him it was canceling his plan and offering him a new one that’s nearly twice as expensive. Then the 60-year-old retiree from Mount Vernon heard about more people like himself with canceled plans and soaring premiums. Finally, he spent hours on the phone and computer trying — and failing — to find a new option that he likes.

“This whole experience has converted a lifelong Democrat into a foot soldier for the Republican Party,” Fullner said.

He’s not alone in his frustration.

In Washington, most of the 290,000 people covered by insurance plans they purchased on the individual market received letters this fall telling them that their plans are going away.

Ezra Klein weighs in on the debacle that is Obamacare..

From today's Wonkblog:

In the months before the launch almost every senior member of the Obama administration had a little calendar board tacked up in a prominent spot in their office. "75 days until Obamacare" it would say. The next morning they would tear off the page. "74 days until Obamacare" it would say. The message -- to them and to their visitors -- was clear: This was the White House's top priority.

We're now negative 14 days until the Affordable Care Act and most people still can't purchase insurance. The magnitude of this failure is stunning. Yes, the federal health-care law is a complicated project, government IT rules are a mess, and the scrutiny has been overwhelming. But the Obama administration knew all that going in. They should've been able to build an online portal that works.

Early on, President Obama like to compare the launch of the Affordable Care Act to Apple launching a new product. Can you imagine how many people Steve Jobs would've fired by now if he'd launched a new product like this?

So is anybody going to be held accountable? Is anybody going to be fired? Will anyone new be brought in to run the cleanup effort? Does the Obama administration know what went wrong, and are therr real plans to find out?

What's abundantly clear to anyone who reported on the run-up to the federal health-care law's launch is that the White House had no idea how badly the Web site would perform. They expected problems. But the full extent of the disaster was either obscured or ignored. Heads should roll for that. Changes should be made because of that.

Of course, no heads have rolled, and likely none will.  How many people lost their jobs over the Benghazi mistakes?  IRS scandal?  Fast and Furious?

Read the whole thing.

Not a bad first effort..

I have to admit I'm a little rusty on the target range, as it has been quite a while since I last put a few rounds downrange.  Took some time yesterday to break in my new acquisition, with results better than I had expected:

I did most of my shooting between 7 and 10 yards.  Even those shots that didn't find their way into black, still would have been "stopping" shots.

Did you catch this on TV this morning?

 

Putting the floods in perspective..

Check this rainfall map from the Denver Post.  It's interactive, so zoom in and out to check out the info.