Thursday Valentine’s Day, 2008, noon.
Blog-o-rama is commemorating Cupid today by showing a little love for Mr. Can Do No Wrong Jim Calhoun, the UConn basketball coach.
He somehow gets away with intimidating reporters who cover UConn basketball. He just makes up reasons to paper over team scandals until he feels like releasing details, which usually emerge first from the UConn Police.
Autocrats can get away with it until they start losing, which the Huskies certainly did last year. And yet, it’s the taxpayers’ money that runs UConn, which is subject to state Freedom of Information Act laws, last we heard.
Anyway, Calhoun, who has two grandchildren with autism, is featured in a new public service campaign for the “Playbook for Prevention” program for young parents that’s available for free through the Connecticut Commission On Children.
It’s a way to promote social services, vaccination and early education programs for parents and their kids. Free copies are available by calling the commission at (860) 240-0290 or checking out the website (KidsForCT.org), which is going on-line today. I just came back from a news conference on the program.
The PSA shown during the event featured Calhoun in a familiar context: a pseudo “news conference” in which he imperiously fires off sports cliches that are tied into the Playbook.
Anyway, I hate it when someone I loathe does something that’s good. It makes me think that everything isn’t in black and white.
So I checked back with the Children’s Commission and indeed, Calhoun did two 30-second spots and one 10-second ad, at no charge.
The best part of the news conference was when Speaker of the House Jim Amann, D-Milford, started chanting a holistic mantra.
“Every year we spend a lot of money here in Connecticut on kids,” Amann said, taking a swat at “reactionary” lawmakers who wait for something nasty to happen before they act.
“It’s so simple taking the dollars we have and putting it in preventive care,” Amann said. “It’s not about more money. It’s about using what we have wisely. When I get older I hope we’ll have a strong, educated workforce that will take care of me in my later years.”
Speaking of love bombs, now, courtesy of Connecticut Post Washington reporter Peter Urban, we have the ultimate Valentine’s Day present: an engagement that ends with an explosion.
Yes, the federal Department of Defense announced Thursday that a satellite that was sent into orbit a little over a year ago is out of control and expected to plummet back to earth within a month.
“Because the satellite
was never operational, analysis indicate that approximately 2,500
pounds (1134 kgs) of satellite mass will survive reentry, including
1,000 pounds (453 kgs) of propellant fuel (hydrazine), a hazardous
material,” the DOD news release says.
“Although the chances of an impact in a
populated area are small, the potential consequences would be of
enough concern to consider mitigating actions. Therefore, the
President has decided to take action to mitigate the risk to human
lives by engaging the non-functioning satellite.”
Engagement, in this case, means plans to shoot the satellite down in late February or early March, before the UConn Huskies bomb out of the NCAAs.
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