NFL vs. NBA
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36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71, I repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested! for shoplifting
21currently are defendants in lawsuits,
and 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year!
Can you guess which organization this is?
Is it the NBA or NFL?
Neither, it's the 535 members of the United States Congress
The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year
designed to keep the rest of us in line. h/t plad
http://www.factcheck.org/archives/searc ... &sa=Search
"I've explained before that we did not run a list of names because we could not determine the outcome of all of the cases. Some civil and domestic matters are settled out of court and the settlements are sealed. Some were dropped. We ran the numbers to show a pattern."
We find that explanation hard to accept. For one thing, Thompson claimed to know the outcome in some categories. For example, he wrote then: "Our research found 117 current and recent members of the House and Senate who have run at least two businesses each that went bankrupt, often leaving business partners and creditors holding the bag." Now he won't say who the 117 are. So there is no way to check on the accuracy of his claim.
Says Thompson: "I'm proud of that series and I stand by every fact and item used in it." The fact remains, he won't document the numbers.
Footnote: Mangling Mark Twain
Thompson took the title of his series from a famous witticism by author Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. But Thompson got the quote wrong.
He led off the series with these words: "America, Mark Twain once said, is a nation without a distinct criminal class 'with the possible exception of Congress.' "
What Twain actually wrote was this: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
You don't have to take our word for it. Unlike Thompson and the anonymous authors of viral e-mails, we cite our sources and link you to them whenever possible so you can check them out for yourself. Twain's quip appears as a heading to Chapter VIII of his 1897 book, "Following the Equator," and he attributed it to his fictional character Pudd'nhead Wilson. The full text of Twain's book, no longer covered by copyright, is available online at the Gutenberg Project.
-Brooks Jackson
Sources
Jackson, Brooks. "Did President Bush call the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper?" FactCheck.org. 12 Dec 2007.
Thompson, Doug. "Congress: America's Criminal Class" Parts 1-V. Capitol Hill Blue Web site, 16 – 20 Aug 1999 (accessed 21 April 2009).
Thompson, Doug. Interview with author via e-mail, 18 – 21 April 2009.
Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens). "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar." Qtd. in Twain, "Following the Equator," 1897. Project Gutenberg EBook edition released 18 Aug 2006.