Friday Afternoon Obits and News

Obituary:  Prominent rock music drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, 67, has died after a long battle with brain cancer. Peart had the horrible glioblastoma, and it is a miracle he lived as long as he did with that horrible form of cancer, just about the worst there is. Most with the disease die within a year.

He is known for his work in the band Rush.

Rush finished their final tour in 2015; Peart was done with the road and eager to spend more time with his wife, Carrie Nuttal, and daughter Olivia.

On August 10th, 1997, Peart’s 19-year-old daughter, Selena, died in a single-car accident on the long drive to her university in Toronto. Just five months later, Selena’s mother – Peart’s common-law wife of 23 years, Jackie — was diagnosed with terminal cancer, quickly succumbing. Shattered, Peart told his bandmates to consider him retired, and embarked on a solitary motorcycle trip across the United States. He remarried in 2000, and found his way back to Rush by 2001.

He had a lot of tragedy among the success.
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Another obituary to note is the death of New Age weirdo Marianne Williamson's presidential campaign.  The cause was public neglect and its refusal to take her campaign seriously.

Williamson's campaign has been little-noticed in recent months, as focus shifted to the Democratic contenders who were meeting the party's fundraising and polling thresholds to qualify for debates and Williamson repeatedly missed the cut.

Williamson's most notable policy proposal was likely her call for at least $100 billion -- but potentially as much as $500 billion -- in reparations for the descendants of slaves. She said the money would be divvied up by a council of black leaders.
"America will not have the future we want if we're not willing to clean up the past," she said in a TV ad in South Carolina focused on the issue.

By that logic, women should receive reparations as well given the fact they are the most oppressed group in history; in fact, they are the original oppressed group.

In any case, one down and a bunch more to go before it comes down to Biden.
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You can find the complete sermon (in three parts, with Lance Wallnau's nonsense also featured in part 3) on Jim Bakker's website, and it has to be heard to be believed.  He has gone completely off the rails over the past 40 years.  The man of today is nothing like the baby-faced televangelist with his doll-cute wife Tammy Faye of yore.  This guy is right down in batshittery.

A clip from RWW:

Jim Bakker issues a vague but dire warning that cities ranging from New York to Los Angeles to Tel Aviv will soon feel the wrath of the judgment of God. https://t.co/SISwtBGm4i pic.twitter.com/5MUhekpkHI

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 10, 2020

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Yes, it is all about the racist filth in the UK against Meghan Markle, and it is no wonder Prince Harry feels the way he does.

Not even Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has been treated this shabby, and that is saying a lot.
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Etc.

Take any ranking of cities with a huge grain of salt.
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Etc.

The protest movement against the elites has gone global.

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Former heavyweight champ Joe Frazier is in very bad shape with liver cancer. He is now under hospice care.

"We have medical experts looking into all the options that are out there," Wolff said. "There are very few. But that doesn't mean we're going to stop looking."

Wolff, who has been Frazier's manager for seven years, said the boxer had been in and out of the hospital since early October and receiving hospice treatment for the last week.

"We appreciate every prayer we can get," Wolff said. "I've got everybody praying for him. We"ll just keep our fingers crossed and hope for a miracle."

He's just 67 years old. It feels like it was only yesterday when he had those epic matches with Muhammad Ali.

Of course Ali is in bad shape himself.

News Briefs and Whatever

Obituaries?

What's-his-name is reportedly dead, and I don't think I am going to print the name because nobody seems to know how in the hell to spell it.

He was shot following his capture:

Deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has died of wounds suffered in his capture near his hometown of Sirte, according to a senior National Transitional Council military official and a government minister.

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

He was the head of Libya for years and years and years.

And the spelling of his name?

His name, rendered in Arabic, is "معمر القذافي," roughly transliterates to "Muamar AlQadafi." The part with his last name in question, is begins with a "ق" a Qoph, an Arabic letter that is definitely a "K" (if you ever studied Hebrew, its essentially the same letter as "kaf").

And from ABC, this list of spellings:

Qaddafi, Muammar
Al-Gathafi, Muammar
al-Qadhafi, Muammar
Al Qathafi, Mu'ammar
Al Qathafi, Muammar
El Gaddafi, Moamar
El Kadhafi, Moammar
El Kazzafi, Moamer
El Qathafi, Mu'Ammar
Gadafi, Muammar
Gaddafi, Moamar
Gadhafi, Mo'ammar
Gathafi, Muammar
Ghadafi, Muammar
Ghaddafi, Muammar
Ghaddafy, Muammar
Gheddafi, Muammar
Gheddafi, Muhammar
Kadaffi, Momar
Kad'afi, Mu`amar al- 20
Kaddafi, Muamar
Kaddafi, Muammar
Kadhafi, Moammar
Kadhafi, Mouammar
Kazzafi, Moammar
Khadafy, Moammar
Khaddafi, Muammar
Moamar al-Gaddafi
Moamar el Gaddafi
Moamar El Kadhafi
Moamar Gaddafi
Moamer El Kazzafi
Mo'ammar el-Gadhafi
Moammar El Kadhafi
Mo'ammar Gadhafi
Moammar Kadhafi
Moammar Khadafy
Moammar Qudhafi
Mu`amar al-Kad'afi
Mu'amar al-Kadafi
Muamar Al-Kaddafi
Muamar Kaddafi
Muamer Gadafi
Muammar Al-Gathafi
Muammar al-Khaddafi
Mu'ammar al-Qadafi
Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi
Muammar al-Qadhafi
Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi
Mu`ammar al-Qadhdhāfī 50
Mu'ammar Al Qathafi
Muammar Al Qathafi
Muammar Gadafi
Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Ghadafi
Muammar Ghaddafi
Muammar Ghaddafy
Muammar Gheddafi
Muammar Kaddafi
Muammar Khaddafi
Mu'ammar Qadafi
Muammar Qaddafi
Muammar Qadhafi
Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi
Muammar Quathafi
Mulazim Awwal Mu'ammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi
Qadafi, Mu'ammar
Qadhafi, Muammar
Qadhdhāfī, Mu`ammar
Qathafi, Mu'Ammar el 70
Quathafi, Muammar
Qudhafi, Moammar
Moamar AI Kadafi
Maummar Gaddafi
Moamar Gadhafi
Moamer Gaddafi
Moamer Kadhafi
Moamma Gaddafi
Moammar Gaddafi
Moammar Gadhafi
Moammar Ghadafi
Moammar Khadaffy
Moammar Khaddafi
Moammar el Gadhafi
Moammer Gaddafi
Mouammer al Gaddafi
Muamar Gaddafi
Muammar Al Ghaddafi
Muammar Al Qaddafi
Muammar Al Qaddafi
Muammar El Qaddafi
Muammar Gadaffi
Muammar Gadafy
Muammar Gaddhafi
Muammar Gadhafi
Muammar Ghadaffi
Muammar Qadthafi
Muammar al Gaddafi
Muammar el Gaddafy
Muammar el Gaddafi
Muammar el Qaddafi
Muammer Gadaffi
Muammer Gaddafi
Mummar Gaddafi
Omar Al Qathafi
Omar Mouammer Al Gaddafi
Omar Muammar Al Ghaddafi
Omar Muammar Al Qaddafi
Omar Muammar Al Qathafi
Omar Muammar Gaddafi
Omar Muammar Ghaddafi
Omar al Ghaddafi

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One of the more outrageous stories of the past week or so was the case of the idiot in Ohio who released all of his exotic animals, including 18 Bengal tigers, an endangered species, out into the "wild" near Zanesville, Ohio. He committed suicide. Unfortunately, almost all of the big animals had to be killed as they did not respond to tranquilizers.

NOBODY should ever be allowed to have these animals apart from sanctuary groups.

Only six animals survived the incident.

Ol' Kasich, yet another dumb Republican governor, has tried to do contortion acts around the scandal.
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Student loan debt was made non-dischargeable in bankruptcy back in the 1990s, not in 2005, but the argument students are graduating with monstrous debt still holds.

It's not just young people, by the way, who are stuck with these loans.
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When you're a slave to a crackpot ideology, as Ron Paul is, facts have no bearing on it.

The problem is we have politicians in both political parties who believe this shit which is destroying this country's economy.

News, Etc.

At least Nevada is doing something right on the animal cruelty front.

People who abuse animals should get felony charges against them.
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Is the Democratic Party's expressions of "support" for Occupy Wall Street sincere or is simply a cynical ploy for Obama's re-election?

The irony of somebody who is so much in bed with Wall Street as Obama showing "support" for the protesters!

Obama, of course, is a big part of the problem.
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If Anybody Deserves Disability

it's those Chilean miners who survived being trapped for 69 days. They have not fared well, according to a 60 Minutes report:



I doubt they are doing any better now than they did this past winter.

News, Etc.

At least five are dead after the stage collapsed last night at the Indiana State Fair.
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This story made my head hurt.

Why would a gay man marry a transgendered woman instead of taking up with a gay man, unless the transgendered woman was not actually post-op? I don't get it at all.

Somebody is confused, and I don't think it is just me.

FreeRepublic isn't some site I quote here much at all, but this post was absolutely hilarious:

You know what? I have to rethink my original post. I was wrong. Why?

If a gay guy marries a gay guy who is a gay guy turned into a woman, then the gay guy turned into a woman is gay if the original gay guy thinks he married a gay guy, and not a woman. But if the original gay guy who married a gay guy turned into a woman thinks that it is not a woman but a gay guy, then the original gay guy is gay, but not necessarily the gay guy turned into a woman, because if the gay guy turned into a woman liked women, then the gay guy turned into a woman would not be gay, but if the gay guy turned into a woman liked gay guys, then the gay guy turned into a woman would be gay, unless the original gay guy switched his preferences and liked women who turned into gay guys.

Then all the bets are off.

45 posted on 08/13/2011 8:48:12 PM PDT by Flycatcher (God speaks to us, through the supernal lightness of birds, in a special type of poetry.)

I couldn't have said it better.

It hurts too much to try.

News, Etc.

It's been thirty years since entertainer Harry Chapin died in an auto accident on the Long Island Expressway, but his charitable work lives on.

He'd REALLY be busy with helping the less fortunate if he were alive today.

“He established the first food bank on Long Island,” says Pachter. “In 1980 there were only two other food banks in downstate [NY]. He was also so accessible. If you saw him, he stopped and he spoke to you. That resonates with Long Islanders. He influenced people to be that way. Harry was just there and he was tremendously passionate about this island. This was his home.”

Just one year after founding Long Island Cares, Inc., Chapin was traveling in the right lane of Long Island Expressway on his way to a free concert he scheduled at Eisenhower Park when, after passing exit 40 in Jericho, he put on his emergency flashers, presumably because of mechanical issues with his Volkswagen Rabbit. Chapin slowed to about 15 miles per hour and swerved in the center lane directly in the path of a tractor-trailer truck. The truck rear-ended Chapin and his car burst into flames, and while the driver of the truck was able to remove Chapin from his vehicle, he could not be revived. Officially, Chapin died of cardiac arrest, but there was no way of telling whether it was before or after the accident.

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Nitwits on the right always complain about the "government," but EVERYBODY, from Bill Gates to yours truly, gets help from it.

There are a lot of idiots out there. Democratic politicians haven't helped matters by trying to educate the public as to why government programs are necessary, especially like the president who parrots the right-wing talking points.
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I've said it 10,000 times on this blog, but it bears repeating that Obama is a no-good son of a bitch:

Emphasizing the scale of the cuts he has already accepted, he declared, “I am willing to take down domestic spending to the lowest percentage of our overall economy since Dwight Eisenhower.”

This is a staggeringly right-wing position: The Eisenhower administration, 1953-1961, presided over a much different America, in which the only significant federal social program was Social Security. (Although the top tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent—a fact that neither Obama nor the Republicans would care to recall).

He's a stupid bastard and probably doesn't even know anything about Ike. Ike, like Nixon, would be a flaming liberal today.

Hell, Bush II and Reagan would be flaming liberals today thanks to these fascistic pieces of shit overtaking both political parties.

This asshole's ONLY constituency is the Wall Street brigade headed by the likes of crooks such as Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner.

Etcetera and Outrages

At least this California employee wasn't a teacher or even a school administrator:

Rohlfing isn't the only doctor in California's cash-strapped prisons earning big money to shuffle paper. Dozens have been relegated to the chore in recent years, according to Kincaid, who said it's the standard assignment given to physicians when questions arise about their clinical ability. Some eventually return to treating patients, some quit and others are ultimately fired, she added.

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Tax cuts do nothing to help the economy. Tax cuts don't work. Period.
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Slimeball senator Mitch McConnell may end up on top during this "crisis," thanks to a wimp for president.
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If anybody should be blamed for the various education cheating scandals in the U.S., it is the Obama administration.

Etcetera

One thing people should realize is they can be easily manipulated to believe false allegations in order for those peddling them to achieve political ends.

Here I am referring to Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  That was a setup if there ever was one.
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How can anybody expect Obama to "clean up" the Wall Street mess when he himself is a tool of Wall Street interests?

The crooks responsible for the economic mess should be in jail and their assets should be seized, but nothing is going to happen with a neoliberal in the White House.

Just because he is a "Democrat" doesn't mean he is any better than the garden variety Republican.
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Reno-Sparks has something to be proud of--NOT.

It's a dying area right now.

Etcetera

This person was trying very hard for the Darwin Award when he flipped over his motorcycle while protesting helmet laws.

He died, of course.
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Forty years ago today I had finished my second year of high school. We were returning from a trip to Crater Lake, I believe it was, when I heard about the death of rocker Jim Morrison.

He was 27 years old but looked about 17 or 18.  It was a total waste of a life looking back on it.
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Fox "News" employs outright propaganda techniques, yet those techniques are responsible for the channel's "success."

I'd say much of the problem is the person who owns the network came from a country and background where opinion was perfectly acceptable for mainstream news.  It wasn't in the United States until he came along.

The lack of a Fairness Doctrine also helps in the network's rise.  Propaganda 24/7 is allowed, with no other points of view accepted.

Etcetera

Incredibly, Wal-Mart didn't make the list of the most hated companies in the country.
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Railroad workers for Amtrak long feared the intersection at Highway 95 in Nevada, and they were right, tragically:

But Elam and Rice said it seemed like only a matter of time before something bad happened at that crossing.

"There are so many close calls. ... Sometimes they'll stop, and sometimes they'll just crash through the gates," said Rice, who has been driving trains since the early 1970s.

"In the last year or so, I've been real close to hitting cars or trucks at that same crossing at least four or five times," he said. "It goes on all the time."

The problem, he said, is that cars and trucks speeding along Highway 95 don't notice the warning signals until the last second. They either screech to a stop or try to outrun the train, Rice said.

"Some people are just stupid," Rice said. "They think they can avoid a train. They can't. You have no chance against the train. There's none. You're just dead."

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Since "libertarians" are basically fascists and anti-democracy, they WANT the economy to crash. Wrecking Obama in next year's elections has nothing to do with it.

If anything, Obama is actually part of the same mentality in destroying the economy to benefit the very few.
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Prince Albert of Monaco finally got married but not to either mother of his two children.

link

News, Comments, Etc.

The death toll in the Nevada Amtrak crash is now up to six.
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William Koch, one of the least known of the Koch clan, decided to buy a gift for his corrupt brothers Charles and David:

After winning the bid, Koch shook the hand of Steve Upham, whose family owned the photograph, and said, "I'm glad you all benefitted from it."

Koch founded Oxbow Carbon, with sales of $4 billion annually. His twin brother is David Koch, who, along with an older brother, Charles, run the energy giant Koch Industries. David and Charles are prominent conservative activists and are reportedly in the Vail area this weekend, hosting their semiannual conservative action retreat.

William and a fourth brother, Frederick, have sold their interests in the company.

Saturday night, William Koch left little doubt who would win the tintype as the bidding climbed from about $300,000 to $2 million in about two minutes.

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A fake "Democrat" uses fake signatures to "sign" legislation.

How apt.

But the president couldn't get around explaining how the Patriot Act got signed into law without briefly shining a spotlight on the autopen. Once that news was out, though, the White House clammed up. It declined to provide any further details about how many autopens the administration uses, what they look like, where they're kept, or who makes the machine.

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News, Etc.

Same-sex marriage got legalized in NY last night to a bunch of fanfare.

Meanwhile, unemployment doesn't appear to be declining to any great extent, the economy is in the shitter, and few jobs are being created.

But hey, SSM is far more important than whether people live or die.
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Babe Didrikson Zaharias may have been the greatest all-around athlete, but in the year of her centennial, she appears to be forgotten even in her hometown:

But if her name may mean increasingly little to a young generation of sports fans, Didrikson, who was born 100 years ago, was perhaps America’s greatest all-around athlete, male or female.

No athlete excelled at more sports and games than Didrikson. She was an all-American basketball player, a two-time Olympic track and field gold medalist and a golf champion who won 82 tournaments, including an astonishing 14 in a row. One of the 13 founding members of the L.P.G.A., Didrikson became the first woman to play against men in a PGA Tour event and the first American to win the British Women’s Amateur Championship. She was also an outstanding baseball, softball, tennis and billiards player, diver and bowler.

...

Perhaps Didrikson’s most spectacular athletic achievement occurred at the amateur track and field championships in Evanston, Ill., on July 16, 1932. She was the lone representative of Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas, competing against company teams of 12, 15, even 22 women. When Didrikson was introduced, she ran onto the field by herself, her arms waving wildly. The crowd gasped at the audacity of this “one-woman track team” (a phrase Didrikson coined).

Over the course of three hours on a sweltering track, she sprinted from event to event, with barely enough time to catch her breath. She finished first in five events: broad jump, shot-put, javelin, 80-meter hurdles and the baseball throw. She tied for first in a sixth event, the high jump. In qualifying for three Olympic events, she amassed a total of 30 team points for Employers Casualty. The second-place team, the Illinois Women’s Athletic Club, scored 22 points — with 22 athletes.

Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.
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Obituaries: Fred Steiner, 88, best known as the composer of the theme of the television series Perry Mason.

Track vet Mark Gerard, 76, of a stroke. He was famous for treating Secretariat and other famous racehorses, but he ruined his reputation when he got involved in a betting scandal:

But a $200,000-a-year practice wasn't enough, and in 1977 Gerard put over one of the biggest betting coups in New York history, running a champion from South America in a cheap horse's name and collecting almost $80,000 on bets. He put it over, that is, until racing officials investigated. For running a very good horse under the name of a cheap plater, Gerard was sentenced to a year in prison. He was only in his 40s, but his career as a caretaker for marquee horses was over.

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News, Etc.

Obama won't do jack shit about the problem with the USPS.

Why not? He's nothing but a Republican anyway.
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Why doesn't he appoint himself dictator and get it over with?

He thinks he is smarter than everybody else simply because he went to Ivy League schools.
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This is a fairly good piece about Diane Ravitch, explaining why she has changed her view about public education "reforms."

It would be good if the work of Lois Weiner were more widely known.
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Awful train crash near Fallon, Nevada, which has killed at least two people.

Highway 95 is the main highway going south from Reno to Las Vegas.

Raw video:



Another video:



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This is the story of "due process" for teachers, which does NOT exist in the United States of America.

The ONLY reason school districts want to gut tenure is to not have to pay for these sham hearings. They want to be able to get rid of any teacher who dares offend these shitbag administrators, and then taunt them into suing in federal court. Of course, few lawyers will bother taking on teacher lawsuits, as I found to my dismay.

I also went through "unpaid" administrative leave for the purpose that WCSD could "settle" for a piddling $10,000 and forfeit my right to sue (which was a joke) and unemployment compensation (which I did get). Of course if I had been able to get a real attorney instead of a shyster from Carson City in bed with the district via WEA, I might have been able to get a decent deal, including WCSD paying my Social Security for the four years I worked there as a licensed teacher.

News, Etc.

No experience or training in the field of education required, despite state certification laws.

Just have the right "attitude" in supporting the wholesale destruction of public education.

Hell, if you are a "superintendent," you might get a gig with Rupert Murdoch.
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Al Gore has little good to say about Obama and the issue of global warming.

Of course, no REAL Democrat would have anything good to say about Obama.
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This is a perfect gift for the Koch brothers. Perhaps they could both slash their wrists with it and save the world a lot of misery.
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Sad news about Glen Campbell, 75, as he has revealed he has Alzheimer's disease.
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This article tells me everything I never wanted to know about coroners.
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News, Etc.

A woman who gave birth to a political Frankenstein has died. Charlotte Bloomberg, 102, died Sunday. Her son, billionaire and idiot education "reformer" Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced the death.
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It's certainly good to know Hugh Hefner isn't the only cradle robber out there.

Disgusting.

Etc.

Nobody can answer why a light bulb has been burning for 110 years.
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The voyeurism in us, or in many of us, is behind the popularity of new "reality-television" shows exploring the phenomenon of hoarding.

Hoarding is really a type of mental illness, and it should be differentiated from being a slob.
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The Jury Was Clearly Sending a Message

in this case, which the award will be no doubt reduced.

The jerk who did this to the woman is being prosecuted and is awaiting trial.

Snip:

But in her lawsuit and in court documents, Alford claimed that a sexual assault by her supervisor came after almost a year of escalating harassment in a workplace "rife with sexual jokes and lewd propositions."

The store's then-general manager, Richard Moore, began by making inappropriate comments, nicknamed her "Trixie" and "Trix," and pinched her, the suit says. It claims that he gave her clothes and chocolates, progressed to groping, and that he sneaked up behind her as she was sitting on the floor of the stockroom and hit her on the head with his penis in the fall of 2006.

On Oct. 12, 2006, the suit alleges, Moore threw Alford to the ground, lifted her shirt and masturbated over her as he held her down. He was arrested later that day and awaits trial in St. Clair County Circuit Court on a charge related to the accusation. His attorney did not respond to a message left Thursday.

He never returned to work. Alford stayed for roughly six more months.

 

The suit says Alford called a company harassment hotline in May 2006, but an investigator never contacted her. At some point after the call, the suit claims, she was approached by Moore's supervisor, who confronted her in front of Moore about his alleged harassment and warned Moore to "watch his back" because of the complaint.

Outrageous, but of course some will say this is a "frivolous" lawsuit.

You can read the original complaint here.

Since Clark County School District

is now laying off personnel, there is obviously NO shortage of teachers or other staff, and therefore there is NO need whatsoever for the "double-dip" loophole to continue in Nevada or in other states.

There is NO teaching shortage, and in fact there never was a real one.  The only real "critical needs" area is in math; this loophole was just an excuse for people to be able to line their pockets once it was clear Clark County School District was no longer hiring thousands of new teachers a year.

I have written that here in the Rogue Valley, the same shit happens when retirees are allowed to take longterm sub jobs and take those jobs away from others who are desperate for work.  This is solely so the district or ESD doesn't have to pay benefits.  It's not right.