Iowa has been a low turnover team, so last night was a bit of an anomoly. With that said, Fran's team's take an inordinate number of ill advised shots which costs them some of these close games. If the fast break isn't there, why throw up an off balanced three? Taking three point shots with no one underneath to get a possible rebound, not good. Thinking back on last night, we had players taking shots at critical times that really swung the pendulum in their favor. Not calling anyone out because Fran encourages everyone to shoot. Some that have not had much success all year. I still scratch my head with his substititions.

I'm sure Trump would rather have someone like Kari Lake as his VP, but if the Dems get out of their own way, he may need a balancer, not another extremist.

What do you think?

Too many good ones to list all of them so here are my top 2 in Chicago.

1. Pizzeria Bebu
2. Labriole

This dedication goes out to a whole lot of people on here.

Login to view embedded media

​

​

Middle Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening border agents, migrants​

Nashville Tennessean

A Middle Tennesse man is facing a federal firearms charge after he "illegally transferred" an unregistered silencer to an undercover employee and threatened acts of violence against border patrol and migrants, according to federal authorities.

Paul Faye Sr., 55, of Cunningham, was taken into custody earlier this week on a charge of possession of an unregistered silencer.

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, the FBI became aware of Faye while investigating a separate case involving Missouri man Bryan Perry.

"Based upon a review of Perry's cell phone seized during that investigation, Perry had extensive contact with Faye leading up to Perry's arrest in Missouri," the complaint said. "Specifically, Faye expressed a desire to travel with Perry and another individual to the U.S./Mexico border and commit acts of violence."

In March 2023, an undercover employee began messaging with Faye on TikTok, the popular video social media platform, before he offered his cell phone number. Weeks later, the undercover employee and two others met Faye in person.

"During the meeting, Faye inquired if the [undercover employees] were federal law enforcement," the complaint said. "After confirming that [undercover employees] were not law enforcement, Faye discussed his belief that the government was training to take on its citizens, and more specifically, that the federal government was allowing illegal immigrants to enter the United States to help the government."
The undercover employees saw a photograph on Faye's phone that showed a 6.5 Creedmoor rifle with what appeared to be a suppressor on the end, which was not on his National Firearm Registration and Transfer Record.

In later conversations, Faye stressed the importance of training before making the trip to the border and discussed how much gear they'd need. Faye said he'd have some extra weapons, and they could pick up any that "may be laying around," the complaint said.

"This statement, based on my training and experience, indicated that Faye believed there would be deceased individuals from whom the [undercover employee] could recover equipment," the complaint said.

Faye also implied has was gathering explosives for the trip, the complaint said.

In a November conversation, Faye told the undercover employee that he'd met with a North Carolina man who had been to the border and planned to return on Jan. 20 with members of a militia group, the complaint said.

"'Are we gonna go to work? Are we going down there to put eyes on or are we going down there to do work,'" the employee asked Faye, according to the complaint.

"'No no, we're gonna work, we're gonna work,'" Faye responded, indicating that he was "planning to conduct acts of violence," the complaint said.

In an early January conversation, the undercover employee asked if Faye had a suppressor for an AK47. Faye said he could provide him one that did not have a "tax stamp," marking it unregistered, the complaint said.

During a visit to Faye's home, the employee was shown into the "war room," which held several firearms, large amounts of ammunition, radios and a bullet proof vest. During this visit, Faye sold the suppressor to the employee for $100, according to the complaint.

After taking Faye into custody, federal agents found firearms, another firearm silencer, a militia patch, multiple jars of Tannerite, a brand of explosive targets that can be converted into improvised explosive devices, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

My kind of Republican.

Login to view embedded media

Former president Donald Trump has never had as strong of a hold on Senate Republicans as he does now.
The Senate GOP had been slow to get behind the former president. But Republicans’ tumultuous week fighting over strategy, policy and leadership has hardened the president's grip on the conference.



The splitting of the Senate Republican conference into two factions was on display in a Thursday vote to advance a $96 billion national security supplemental to provide military funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Funding for Ukraine has become a hot-button topic on the right, where Republican voters, influenced by Trump, are increasingly skeptical of spending billions of dollars to help Ukraine as it fights a stalemated war with Russia.
While the vote tally could change when the Senate votes on final passage, likely early next week, it’s clear the traditional, defense-hawk Republican wing is shrinking and the “America First” element of the party is growing.

When the Senate passed $40 billion of aid for Ukraine in May 2022, only 11 Republicans opposed it. Yesterday, 31 opposed it.

• Of the 17 Republicans who voted for the aid — just over one-third of the conference — only four have endorsed Trump: Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), John Cornyn (Tex.), John Neely Kennedy (La.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.).
• The Republicans who voted for the bill mostly consist of the defense hawks who believe in U.S. intervention, especially when Western interests are on the line, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his deputy, Sen. John Thune (S.D.).
• Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Capito, two other members of McConnell’s leadership team, also voted for it.

But Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the No. 3 Senate Republican, and Sen. Steve Daines (Mont.), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, often side with the Trump wing of the party and went along with the former president’s allies over Ukraine.

• Of the 31 Republicans who voted against the aid, just five of them — Sens. John Boozman (Ark.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), James Lankford (Okla.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Pete Ricketts (Neb.) — haven’t endorsed Trump. (Lankford voted against it because it didn’t include his border security deal, which his colleagues rejected.)

In the 2016 Republican primary, only one senator endorsed Trump: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whom Trump later nominated to be his first attorney general.
Now, after two impeachments, indictments on 91 criminal charges and an insurrection, Trump has the endorsements of 31 senators.

• “I think anybody that’s sticking with the old regime is probably going to be fewer over time. And I think when it comes to the policies, it’s very clear that many obviously are overcoming any discomfort they might have with [Trump’s] style,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said of the growing number of Senate Republicans backing Trump's ideology.

Trump’s influence was especially apparent when he helped to sink a bipartisan border security deal less than 48 hours after it was released this week. Only four Republicans voted for it, including the two who wrote it (Lankford and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who wrote the appropriations sections). Trump’s loyal ally Stephen Miller, the architect of his harsh border security policies while in office, is just one of the many in Trump’s corner who strongly criticized the border bill.


While Trump hasn’t weighed in specifically on the current Ukraine and Israel aid bill, he has vocally opposed sending aid to Ukraine.

Pressure on leadership​

The former president’s grip on House Republicans has been much stronger than in the Senate. The most fervent pro-Trump House members are also the most opposed to Ukraine aid, even threatening to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) if he brings it up.

The Trump loyalty test is also central to the Senate’s MAGA wing’s discontent with McConnell, who has no relationship with the former president and is at odds with Trump on a number of issues, especially Ukraine. The pro-Trump, anti-McConnell wing of the party is openly trying to defy him, putting pressure on the fate of Ukraine aide, the future of the party and McConnell’s leadership.

An idea of where Campbell will play for the #Hawkeyes, why I expect Tompkins' offer list to grow, thoughts from CF's head coach, and more.

STORY:

I filed in February,. Any chance the down market, and government costs associated with coronavirus will delay tax returns.

I e filed, so I thought I would have my money already. I have it earmarked to go into my Roth IRA before April 15th.

Bought two sets of 2 at around 300 each off StubHub for next home game.

What are the odds Clark gets over 40 against Nebraska?

If she doesn't... How much do I get for the tickets?

Bet one set pays for the others at least

Login to view embedded media
Where ya at @alaskanseminole, your place or mine?

8pm BTN

Penn St (16-6, 7-4) comes to Iowa city to face off against the Hawkeyes (21-2, 10-1). The Lady Lions are 7-3 in last 10 games that included a a blowout win at Maryland and a close loss to Indy.

PSU is no slouch and I could see a tight first half. In the end I still like the Bluder bunch 93-77.

Login to view embedded media

Iowa Football:

As of this morning … Trump 50.1% … Biden 30.9%. Odds are updated every 5 minutes from a collection of betting sites.

https://www.electionbettingodds.com/

What happened to Molly last night? She started, then left the game and I don't remember seeing her ever enter the game again. Did she get hurt? Did make a mistake and Bluder was sending a message?

I thought I was beyond shockable, but this week has been profoundly shocking for me. I spent the bulk of my adult life on the right-wing side of things, generally rooting for the Republican Party, because I thought that party best served America. People like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump chased me out of the Republican orbit (gradually and then all at once), but I have still held out the hope that my many friends on the right are kind of like an occupied country. They have to mouth the Trumpian prejudices to survive in this era, but somewhere deep inside, the party of Reagan still lives in their souls.
After this week, and the defeat of the immigration-Ukraine-Israel package, it’s hard to believe that anymore. Even if some parts of the bill survive, the party of Eisenhower, Reagan and McCain is just stone cold gone — and not only among House Republicans, but apparently among their Senate colleagues too.
My progressive readers are now thinking: Have you not been paying attention? Donald Trump has owned this party for years. If he told them to kill the immigration compromise because he needed a campaign issue, they were going to kill that proposal.
To which I respond: I don’t think you quite understand what just happened. This wasn’t just about Republicans cynically bending their knee to Trump. Rather, I’m convinced that Trumpism now pervades the deepest recesses of their minds and governs their unconscious assumptions. Their fundamental mental instincts are no longer conservative, but Trumpian.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


Here are some of the convictions that Republicans had to assent to in order to do what they did this week:
Democracy is for suckers. In a democratic society, opposing parties negotiate and try to strike a compromise that’s, on balance, better than the status quo. This week’s immigration-Ukraine-Israel package is one of the most one-sided compromises I’ve ever seen. Republicans got most of their long-term priorities, while Democrats got almost none of theirs. “By any honest reckoning, this is the most restrictive migrant legislation in decades,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted. “This is almost entirely a border security bill, and its provisions include longtime G.O.P. priorities that the party’s restrictionists could never have passed only a few months ago.”
And yet Republican after Republican came out against the package, arguing it doesn’t have absolutely everything they want. They have adopted the Trumpian logic that under him, they will never have to compromise. The dictator will issue commands, and everything Republicans want will just happen. Meanwhile, Republican James Lankford, who conducted a lavishly successful negotiation, is being savaged on the right side of the internet for being a weak-willed compromiser.
Entertainment over governance. Under Trump, the G.O.P. is less a governing party and more an ongoing entertainment complex. It doesn’t have supporters; it has audience members. The Trump show has certain story lines: Washington is an unholy mess that will never get anything right. America is in chaos. Joe Biden is an inflexible left-wing radical who will never tack to the middle. Only Trump can save us. Passing this package would have upended all these narratives. The package had to be destroyed in order to save the story.

Showmanship has eclipsed even simple governance. Republican senators just ditched a compromise that could have passed, and they are already heroically parading behind ideas that have no shot at getting 60 votes. As Mitt Romney put it: “Politics used to be the art of the possible. Now it’s the art of the impossible. Meaning, let’s put forward proposals that can’t possibly pass so we can say to our respective bases — look how I’m fighting for you.”
Foreigners don’t matter. When Dwight Eisenhower defeated Robert Taft for the 1952 Republican nomination, the G.O.P. became an internationalist party and largely remained that way for six decades. Now isolationism is the dominant G.O.P. pose. Isolationism is the attitude that the outside world doesn’t matter much to American security and that global problems can be safely ignored. It’s based on the fictional notion that America once lived in splendid isolation until those elite globalists took over. Opposing further aid to Ukraine is the quintessential isolationist act, a position that now seems to be embraced by a majority of Senate Republicans and an implacable majority in the House.

​

Today’s Republican isolationists have no grand strategy. Their foreign policy approach is based on a non sequitur — that because we have to spend more defending our southern border, we have to spend less defending Ukrainian democracy. People like J.D. Vance really seem to believe that if we let Vladimir Putin win his wars of conquest in Europe, it will have no consequences for us back home. Somewhere even Neville Chamberlain is gaping in disbelief.
Lying is normal. Politicians always distort proposals they disagree with, but Trump has given his colleagues permission to make things up with abandon. In the hours after the package was released, Republican officeholders produced a Vesuvius of misinformation about what was in it.
Representative Steve Scalise asserted that the package “accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day.” No, actually it doesn’t, a Fox News reporter explained. Representative Dan Bishop asserted that undocumented immigrants “not from Mexico or Canada won’t be counted toward total encounters.” No, the financier Steven Rattner corrected, this provision refers only to unaccompanied minors, of whom very few arrive from noncontiguous countries. The president doesn’t need new laws to halt illegal immigration, Speaker Mike Johnson asserted. Then why did House Republicans go to all the trouble to pass H.R. 2 last year, an attempt to create an ambitious new law to halt illegal immigration?
Trump has erased the assumption that credibility is a nice thing to have.
America would be better off in a post-American world. As Noah Rothman noted in National Review, if you had presented the pre-Trump G.O.P. with an enforcement-only immigration bill linked to provisions to contain Russian, Chinese and Iranian aggression, you would basically have fulfilled every Republican fantasy all at once. But today’s party rejected the deal, not only because it didn’t like the immigration bits, but also because it no longer believes in the American-led international order.
The American economy is enjoying one of its greatest growth periods of our lifetimes, and yet many Republicans have persuaded themselves that the nation is in ruins and can’t afford foreign commitments. In the 60 years after World War II, America and its allies built and preserved a global order that produced a world vastly safer and richer than the world that came before, and yet Republicans have persuaded themselves that the United States is impotent, that its foreign entanglements perpetually fail. The Republicans say they oppose Xi Jinping’s regime in China, and sometimes even pretend to oppose Putin’s regime in Russia, but operationally they also share many of Xi’s and Putin’s goals — to reduce America’s role in the world, to destroy America’s confidence in its ability to project power, to reduce America to a regional superpower.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


We’re living through one of the most dangerous periods of modern times. As the historian Hal Brands noted recently in Foreign Affairs, the situation today is reminiscent of the mid- to late 1930s. Back then, fascist Italy assaulted Ethiopia. Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. Japan ravaged China. These three regional conflicts had not yet metastasized into a global world war, but even in 1937, Franklin Roosevelt warned of an “epidemic of world lawlessness.”
That epidemic of lawlessness is back. Russia, Iran and China have started or raised regional tensions in ways that threaten to coalesce into something truly nasty. Groups like the Houthis seek to fill the vacuums left by American weakness. The storm clouds are gathering.
You’d think these trends would inspire a note of seriousness among the men and women elected to represent the people of this nation. It hasn’t. Trumpism was once a posture most Republican officeholders donned to preserve their political viability. But it’s an eternal verity of human psychology: If you wear a mask long enough, eventually the mask becomes who you are.

State courts would be permitted to order the deportation of immigrants arrested in Iowa while in the country illegally, and local officials would be given legal immunity when assisting in immigration enforcement measures under a bill advanced in the Iowa Senate.



Senate File 2211 would create a state crime for migrants who enter or re-enter the state illegally from another country and would give Iowa law enforcement authority to arrest undocumented immigrants in the state.


It also allows state judges the option of ordering some migrants to return to their home country instead of pursuing prosecution.





Officers and state agencies would be cleared to transport undocumented migrants to ports of entry to make sure they comply. If migrants refused to comply with an order to return, or those who were ordered to be removed after being convicted of a felony, could be charged with a Class C felony and face up to 10 years in prison and a $13,660 fine.


Those whose removal followed being convicted of two or more misdemeanor drug crimes, crimes against a person, or both, could be charged with a Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,245 fine.


Law enforcement officers would not be allowed to arrest or detain an undocumented migrant on the grounds of a public or private school, place of worship, at a health care facility where a migrant is receiving medical treatment or those receiving a medical examination for sexual assault.


The bill was advanced on a 2-1 vote and is now eligible for consideration by the full Senate Judiciary Committee.

Democrats opposed​

Immigrant rights organizations and Democrats voiced strong opposition to the bill, which would have major implications for migrants across the state and is certain to trigger lawsuits.


Read More:
Capitol Notebook: Migrant activists rally against anti-immigration bills in Iowa


They noted the bill is unconstitutional as immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.

​

Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ruled that immigration laws can only be enforced by the federal government.


Republican lawmakers in Texas passed and Gov. Greg Abbott signed a similar measure in December that’s being challenged in court. Supporters of the Texas law have said they hope to push the issue back before a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court.


Immigrant rights advocates warned that the bill would lead to widespread racial profiling and a circumvention of protections asylum-seekers have under constitutional law and international obligations. The bill does not provide funding or a requirement to train officers on immigration law, despite authorizing them to make decisions about a person’s immigration status.


Opponents also raised concerns that parents may be separated from their children if arrested under the new state crime, and lead to migrants being sent across the southern border regardless of their legal status in the United States.

‘Instill fear’​

“It’s going to instill fear, and it’s going to drive immigrant families that have been living here like mine for 30 years,” said Kenia Ceron, of Des Moines.


Immigration and refugees have helped sustain rural areas, while domestic migration has drawn people away.


In 2022, Iowa lost nearly 7,300 people to domestic migration, but gained nearly 7,300 international migrants, according to U.S. census data.


“What we have in Iowa is mixed-status families,” comprised of both U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants, Ceron said. “What this bill will do is … drive Iowans — U.S. citizens Iowans — out of the state in fear for their families’ members that will be persecuted under this bill.”


She said the bill would also undo years worth of work by Iowa law enforcement to build trust with Iowa immigrant communities to report crimes, identify issues and establish mutual respect and communication.


“What this bill will do is make immigrants like myself more fearful of our law enforcement as they’re acting as federal agents,” Ceron said.

‘Soft invasion’​

Salmon noted arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico reached an all-time high in December. The U.S. Border Patrol recorded 249,785 arrests on the Mexican border in December, up from 191,112 in November and up from 222,018 in December 2022, the previous all-time high.


“This is unsustainable,” she said, adding border agents have encountered individuals on the terror watchlist trying to enter the U.S. via Mexico.


Salmon said Iowa needs to defend itself, attributing increases in fentanyl seizures, drug overdose deaths and human trafficking to illegal immigration issues and what she said has been a failure of Democratic President Joe Biden administration’s to secure the border and enforce federal immigration laws.


“This is something we can do to help protect out state and protect our nation,” Salmon said.


After a weekend trip to Texas, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds this week said she plans to once again send Iowa State Patrol officers and Iowa National Guard troops to aid Texas authorities with border security efforts.

‘Not their job’​

Erica Johnson, executive director of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, said the bill would place pressure on Iowa law enforcement and Iowa judges to interpret federal immigration law, “which is not their job.”


“It’s a nonsense law,” Johnson said, calling Salmon’s talking points on the bill “a list of grievances and laying them at the feet of immigrants.”


Tom Chapman, representing the Iowa Catholic Conference, said the group is opposed to the bill, noting much of it is clearly preempted by federal law and the U.S. Constitution.


“We don’t encourage illegal immigration,” Chapman said. “ … We support our country’s right to control its borders, and we understand the situation at the southern border cannot continue as it has,” but the issue needs to be solved at the federal level with passage of “border protection policies that are consistent with humanitarian values.”

Federal vote​

U.S. Senate Republicans voted Wednesday against advancing a bipartisan border security deal that was part of a larger emergency foreign aid package to fund the war in Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific security.


Iowa's two Republican U.S. senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst both voted against the deal their own party members helped negotiate.


Grassley, in a statement, said while he appreciated efforts made to negotiate border policy, “the resulting deal fails to address the border crisis caused by President Biden’s open border polices and refusal to enforce our immigration laws, which have allowed 8.8 million illegal immigrants and counting into our country.


“Gaping loopholes, poor border enforcement mechanisms and a lack of accountability measures make this legislation woefully inadequate,” Grassley continued. “Ultimately, this bill would yield massive discretionary power on border policy to President Biden and his administration. I will not vote to advance a bill that would codify ineffective policies and give President Biden more power to abuse what he has already so badly broken.”

Iowa bill​

Republican state Sens. Lynn Evans, of Aurelia, and Jeff Reichman, of Montrose, voted to advance the bill, with state Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, opposed.


Weiner said Iowa’s legal system is not set up and lacks the legal expertise to deal with immigration issues.


“I worry that what we’re heading for is the use of more Iowa taxpayer dollars to try and defend an unconstitutional law,” she said. “ … I suggest, rather than passing this bill, we call our (federal) senators and representatives and ask them to revive” the failed border security deal.


Reichman, echoing Salmon, said “something’s go to be done" absent the political clout in Congress to curb illegal border crossings.


Evans said changes are needed to the bill “to clean up some of the language” as it moves forward.

I have two tickets for sale, unfortunately had something come up and won’t be able to make it.
Section K, row 23, seat 5&6. Directly across from the tunnel.
$30/ticket.

Update, 8 February 2024: A jury unanimously decided in favor of Mann in the lawsuit against Simberg and Steyn. The pair were found guilty of defamation. Mann was awarded more than $1,000,000 in damages.

The defamation trial brought by climate scientist Michael Mann comes to a close this week after Mann, defendants Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, and several witnesses took the stand. The trial began on 18 January in Washington, D.C., 12 years after Mann first sued Simberg and Steyn, climate change deniers and prominent right-wing voices, for years of defamation.

She had been scoring 35+ points a game for about 5 games. She scored 27 last nite iirc which puts her about 40 points from the record. I think they play at Nebby and then back home so if she scores in mid 30s then she would be in line to break the record at home.

What an accomplishment and scene that will be.

Seiji Ozawa, the Japanese conductor who amazed audiences with the lithe physicality of his performances during three decades at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was a former Ravinia Festival music director, has died, his management office said Friday. He was 88.

The internationally acclaimed maestro, with his trademark mop of salt-and-pepper hair, led the BSO from 1973 to 2002, longer than any other conductor in the orchestra’s history. From 2002 to 2010, he was the music director of the Vienna State Opera.

Ozawa was music director at Ravinia in the 1960s and returned regularly over the years to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in performances at the Highland Park festival.




He died of heart failure Tuesday at his home in Tokyo, according to his office.

He remained active in his later years, particularly in his native land. He was the artistic director and founder of the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, a music and opera festival in Japan. He and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1984, won the Grammy Award for best opera recording in 2016 for Ravel’s “L’Enfant et Les Sortileges” (“The Child and the Spells”).

In 2022, he conducted his Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival for the first time in three years to mark its 30th anniversary. That turned out to be his last public performance.

Ozawa exerted enormous influence over the BSO during his tenure. He appointed 74 of its 104 musicians, and his celebrity attracted famous performers including Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. He also helped the symphony become the biggest-budget orchestra in the world, with an endowment that grew from less than $10 million in the early 1970s to more than $200 million in 2002.


When Ozawa conducted the Boston orchestra in 2006 — four years after he had left — he received a hero’s welcome with a nearly six-minute ovation.

Ozawa was born Sept. 1, 1935, to Japanese parents in Manchuria, China, while it was under Japanese occupation.

After his family returned to Japan in 1944, he studied music under Hideo Saito, a cellist and conductor credited with popularizing Western music in Japan. Ozawa revered him and formed the Saito Kinen (Saito Memorial) Orchestra in 1984 and eight years later founded the Saito Kinen Festival — renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival in 2015.

Ozawa first arrived in the United States in 1960 and was soon hailed by critics as a brilliant young talent.



He attended the Tanglewood Music Center, where he caught the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1961-62 season. After his New York debut with the Philharmonic at 25, The New York Times said “the music came brilliantly alive under his direction.”

He directed various ensembles including the San Francisco Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra before beginning his tenure in Boston in 1970.

At the time, there were few nonwhite musicians on the international scene. Ozawa embraced the challenge and it became his lifelong passion to help Japanese performers demonstrate they could be first-class musicians. In his 1967 book “The Great Conductors,” critic Harold C. Schonberg noted the changing ranks of younger conductors, writing that Ozawa and Indian-born Zubin Mehta were the first Asian conductors “to impress one as altogether major talents.”

Ozawa had considerable star quality and crossover appeal in Boston, where he was a well-known fan of the Red Sox and Patriots sports teams. In 2002, Catherine Peterson, executive director of Arts Boston, a nonprofit group that markets Boston’s arts, told The Associated Press that “for most people in this community, Seiji personifies the Boston Symphony.”


Ozawa is largely credited with elevating the Tanglewood Music Center, a music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, to international prominence. In 1994, a 1,200-seat, $12 million music hall at the center was named for him.

His work at Tanglewood had some controversy. In 1996, as music director of the orchestra and its ultimate authority, he decided to move the respected academy in new directions. Ozawa ousted Leon Fleisher, the longtime director of Tanglewood, and several prominent teachers quit in protest.

Despite glowing reviews for his performances in Europe and Japan, American critics were increasingly disappointed in the later years of his tenure with the BSO. In 2002, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote that Ozawa had become, after a bold start, “an embodiment of the entrenched music director who has lost touch.”

Many of the orchestra’s musicians agreed and even circulated an anti-Ozawa newsletter claiming he had worn out his welcome in Boston.



Ozawa won two Emmy awards for TV work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra — the first in 1976 for the BSO’s PBS series “Evening at Symphony” and the second in 1994, for Individual Achievement in Cultural Programming, for “Dvorak in Prague: A Celebration.”

Ozawa held honorary doctorates of music from the University of Massachusetts, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. He was one of five honorees at the annual Kennedy Center Honors in 2015 for contributing to American culture through the arts.

In later years, Ozawa’s health deteriorated. He was treated for cancer of the esophagus in 2010, and in 2015 and 2016 he canceled performances for various health problems.

Ozawa’s management office said his funeral was attended only by close relatives as his family wished to have a quiet farewell.


He canceled some appearances in 2015-16 for health reasons, including what would have been his first return to the Tanglewood music festival — the summer home of the Boston symphony — in a decade.

Working on the recap for the men's game, but thought you may enjoy this as much as I did.


*Disclaimer -- this is about the Petras tweet, please take any political thoughts you may have to the OT board, thank you.
Login to view embedded media

As typical in dictatorships, state GOP wants to control local developers with regards to EV charging stations. This bill would make it illegal for developers to install more EV charging stations than the state dictates. So much for all those tourists in EVs. They must be punished with long charging lines. Its interesting how even a backward state like Georgia is so far ahead of Florida.

Florida GOP Moves To Restrict EV Charging Stations​

February 9, 2024 Politics, Republicans


Florida Politics reports:

Language in legislation (SB 1084) advanced by the Senate would preempt local governments from requiring a higher number of parking lot spaces to be reserved for electric vehicles. Instead, state regulations would be the only threshold imposed.
But during committee discussion, Sen. Jay Collins, a Tampa Republican carrying the bill, made clear the measure would outlaw extra spaces even if developers want to put them in. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services will have control over setting thresholds.

Click to expand...