MLB – The Burning Platform

American Idols

Originally posted at Dispatches from Reality, by Scipio Eruditus. dfreality.substack.com

“The similarities between sport fandom and organized religion are striking. Consider the vocabulary associated with both: faith, DEVOTION, worship, ritual, dedication, sacrifice, commitment, spirit, prayer, suffering, festival, and celebration.”

— Daniel Wann, Sports Psychologist

Since the earliest days of man, contests of athletic prowess, politics, and religion have been inextricably linked. This relationship goes way beyond surface level comparisons or similarities in linguistic terms. Sporting events — whether it be the Greek Olympics, the Roman Coliseums, or the Mayan ballgame — were not purely for entertainment purposes alone: they served as vital rituals to enforce societal order and cohesion. A ritual is quite simply an ordered process in which specific acts are repeated in a specific manner, whether secular or religious in nature. When rulers held these sporting spectacles, they served not just as a useful distraction, but also as a tacit display of the sovereign’s wealth and power.

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DHS PROTECTING YOU FROM PANTY PAINTING TERRORISTS

You don’t even have to exaggerate or make things up to show how asinine, ridiculous and overbearing our government keepers have become. I’m sure this is what that blithering idiot Bush was thinking when he signed the Patriot Act back in 2001. You thought the Dept of Homeland Security was protecting you from ISIS terrorists. Think again. They are protecting you from illegal panty painters.

I guess these agents were in the illegal panty division. This is another example of a massive profit making machine like Major League Baseball using their wealth to make government drones do their bidding and crushing small businesses who are doing nothing wrong. WTF is DHS doing enforcing copyright law? This country is so fucked. And no one cares and no one is paying attention.

What would we do without the DHS drone army?

Homeland Security Agents Raided A Kansas City Panties Shop Over Illegal Underwear

A Kansas City lingerie shop owner was alarmed to find Homeland Security agents at her shop Monday morning, demanding she hand over illegal panties that she intended to sell in honor of her hometown baseball team.

Peregrine Honig, co-owner of Birdies Panties in Kansas City, told The Kansas City Star that she thought the panties, onto which she’d hand-painted a “K” and a “C” and the words “Take the crown,” would be a fun way for fans of the Kansas City Royals to support the team in the World Series. Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security didn’t see it that way.

“They came in and there were two guys. I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside. They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.”

The illegal panties, it seems, had run afoul of Major League Baseball’s copyright. How and why Homeland Security got involved in the illegal panties matter is not clear as of this post, but clearly they weren’t fooling around: according to KSHB (Kansas City), the Homeland Security agents even handcuffed the printer who printed the panties.

“It’s a lot to co-own a small lingerie store and feel like a criminal for printing crowns and KC on blue, cotton, American-made underwear. It seems like a lot.”

The problem, according to KSHB, was that the “K” and the “C” were connected, making the image on the illegal panties look too much like the Kansas City Royals’ logo. That was the point, but Major League Baseball apparently takes underwear-based copyright infringement seriously.

This is not the first time copyright enforcers have gotten a little, well, overzealous. Perhaps most famously, the Walt Disney Company forced preschools in Florida to remove the likenesses of Disney characters from their walls. But the Big Daddy of overzealous copyright enforcement has to be the RIAA, which has sued grandmothers and even confiscated the Winnie the Pooh laptop of a 9-year-old music pirate.

For their part, the Homeland Security agents involved in the illegal panty raid weren’t exactly thrilled with their job assignment that day, according to co-owner Danielle Meister.

“[The Homeland Security agents] felt like they were kicking a puppy.”

Despite the illegal panties seized by Homeland Security, the Kansas City Royals still fell to the San Francisco Giants in Game 1 of the World Series, losing 7-1.