"Everyone is saying sell"?  Sigh.  You still don't get it do you?

If you want to waste your money do what everyone else is doing.  If you want to triple your money.... do the opposite.  Sure there is risk involved.  It wouldn't be any fun otherwise.

Italy's Berlusconi Told to Pay Nearly $50 Million Per Year in Alimony
By Eric J. Lyman

ROME – Francesca Pasquale, take note: apparently, it can pay to be the former Mrs. Silvio Berlusconi.

Just days after the 76-year-old Berlusconi, Italy’s billionaire media tycoon and three-time prime minister, announced he got engaged to Pasquale, 27, terms of divorce from Berlusconi’s second wife, Veronica Lario, were revealed.

He will pay her €36 million ($47.2 million) per year in alimony payments. That works out to be nearly €100,000 ($131,000) per day.

The final figure is below the €43 million ($56.3 million) per year Lario asked for, but ten times the €3.6 million ($4.7 million) per year Berlusconi offered.

The judge’s decision announced Friday is the culmination of a three-year divorce ordeal started in 2009 after Lario announced she was leaving Berlusconi because of his taste for young women, following the widely reported 18th birthday party of would-be Neapolitan showgirl Noemi Letizia, which Berlusconi attended, paparazzi in tow.

Berlusconi’s taste for young women did not abate after Lario’s comments. Even before his engagement to Pasquale, the former dancer nearly 50 years her fiancé’s junior, Berlusconi was linked to scores of young women through his famous “bunga bunga” sex parties. Berlusconi is under investigation for allegations of paying an under-age cabaret dancer named Karima el-Mahroug for sex.

But the case involving el-Mahroug -- who is best known by her stage name, Ruby the Heart Stealer -- is not the greatest of Berlusconi’s concerns at the moment. He is also under investigation for abuse of power, a more serious charge, and in October was sentenced to four years behind bars for tax fraud. Earlier this month, prosecutors asked a judge to sentence Berlusconi to at least a year in jail in connection to a wiretap case involving a political rival.

All the while, Berlusconi had time to orchestrate a political maneuver that triggered the resignation of Mario Monti, his successor as prime minister, and to start laying the groundwork for another run for prime minister in 2013.

Berlusconi is one of the richest people in Italy -- notwithstanding his divorce settlement with Lario -- mostly on the strength of the Mediaset television and cinema giant he founded. Mediaset includes three national television networks in Italy and one in Spain, plus Medusa, the film production and distribution house.

"This kid looks like a total fag!  Anyone know how I can achieve this look?"
                                                         --CN

 

Bay likey! 

Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton worked as high-priced escort
By Houston Mitchell

Former U.S. Olympic runner Suzy Favor Hamilton has been working for the last year as a high-priced escort, charging clients up to $600 an hour.

The story was first reported by thesmokinggun.com. A reporter for the website approached Hamilton in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel. At first she denied it, before finally admitting she was an escort.

On her Twitter account Thursday, Hamilton took full responsibility for her actions:

"I cannot emphasize enough how sorry I am to anyone I have hurt as a result of my actions and greatly appreciate the support from family and those closest to me.

"I fully intend to make amends and get back to being a good mother, wife, daughter, and friend."

She also talked about her reasons for becoming an escort:

"I was drawn to escorting in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging ... Time with my marriage and my life. It provided an escape from a life that I was struggling in. It was a double life."

And she said she was seeking help:

"I do not expect people to understand, but the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression.

"I have been seeking the help of a psychologist for the past few weeks and will continue to do so after I have put things together."

Hamilton is married and has a 7-year-old daughter. Her escort life was uncovered when she was outed by a client, but she told The Smoking Gun that she won't be vindictive by telling who it was.

“He totally broke all the rules by outing me. I don’t want to be like him. Because he is scum. And I will not become scum to make myself feel good,” Favor Hamilton said. “I will not do it. I would suffer rather than go that route of being vindictive.”

Hamilton ran in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics, failing to medal each time. She is a winner of nine NCAA running titles, specializing in the 800- and 1,500-meter events while at the University of Wisconsin.

I am a big fan of apocalyptic films.  How do people act or react when they think everything is coming to an end?  Any good additions to this list?

2012
28 Days Later
Armageddon
Deep Impact
Knowing
Last Night
Skyline

In Newtown, Nancy Lanza a subject of sympathy for some, anger for others
By Kevin Sullivan, Published: December 19

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Twenty-six. Not 27.

When many people in Newtown count the victims in last week’s massacre, they tally 20 children in Sandy Hook Elementary School, plus six adult faculty and staff members. Few count shooter Adam Lanza’s first victim: his mother, Nancy. Police said that before he attacked the schoolhouse, Adam Lanza pumped four bullets into his mother’s head as she lay in bed.

As this heartbroken town tries to process Friday’s horror, there is considerable anger toward Lanza’s mother. Her name is noticeably absent from many of the impromptu shrines, memorials and condolence notes placed around town.

At the foot of the street leading to Sandy Hook Elementary, 26 Christmas trees stand to honor the dead at the school, each bearing the name of a victim, but no Nancy Lanza.

Outside the Newtown Convenience and Deli in the town center, 26 small plastic Christmas trees with twinkling blue and purple lights stand next to a sign that says, “In loving memory of the Sandy Hook victims.”

The University of Connecticut honored the shooting victims Monday with a ceremony before a men’s basketball game, with 26 students standing at center court holding lighted candles.

“I am feeling that there is more anger toward the mother than there is toward the son,” said Lisa Sheridan, a Newtown parent.

“Why would a woman who had a son like this, who clearly had serious issues, keep assault rifles in the house and teach him how to shoot them?” she said. “To deal with that, there’s a feeling here that we’re just going to focus on the 26 innocent people who died at the school.”

Emotions in Newtown are painfully raw. A half-dozen more funerals and remembrances were held Wednesday, creating almost nonstop funeral processions. Black hearses and limousines drove through the streets, led by police escorts. Nearly 50 police motorcycles, from departments all over the state, were parked outside St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, waiting to escort the next funeral.

Firefighters and police in formal dress uniforms lined the church driveway as a funeral procession arrived. A man in jeans and a flannel shirt watched from a nearby Starbucks parking lot, wearing a green-and-white ribbon in honor of the Sandy Hook colors.

Men in black suits filed out of the funeral, many of them wearing white shirts and green ties. Women wept as they walked out of funeral services for yet another child.

Nancy Lanza apparently broke no laws and suffered a violent, tragic death. People who knew her — those who played in her regular dice game and those who saw her at her regular restaurant — said she was devoted to her son and kind and generous to others. They see her as a victim like any of the others.

But for some, how to refer to her — and what to think of her — is a subject of much conversation. While some call her the first victim, many think she bears at least some of the blame.

“Maybe somewhere there is a deep thought that the shooter’s mother could be responsible for leaving the guns available,” said Himansu Patel, the Newtown Convenience and Deli owner, who decided to leave Nancy Lanza out of his memorial to the victims.

“How could he reach those guns?” Patel said. “If she had kept them in a safer place, this thing might not have happened.”

Police have not said where they believe Nancy Lanza stored her guns or how her son gained access to them.

When President Obama came to Newtown this week and spoke at an interfaith memorial service, he went out of his way to mention the names of all 26 students, faculty members and staff members who died at the school. He never mentioned Nancy Lanza.

As Obama spoke, people gathered in respectful silence to watch on television at the bar in My Place, a Newtown restaurant where Nancy Lanza was a regular. They heard the president say, “We gather here in memory of 20 beautiful children and six remarkable adults.”

“Seven,” a woman at the bar was heard saying under her breath, referring to her lost friend.

Much remains unknown about Adam Lanza and his mother. But everyone here knows that Nancy, 52, was the legally registered owner of the powerful .223-caliber, military-style Bushmaster rifle that was used in the nation’s second-deadliest mass shooting. And they have heard that federal investigators have determined that mother and son visited numerous shooting ranges together.

It is also known that Adam Lanza had psychological or emotional problems that made the most basic elements of daily life — such as school and social settings — challenging for him. The state medical examiner said he had been advised that Adam had Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental disorder that is not associated with violence.

Those facts have left questions hanging over Newtown. Did Nancy Lanza do enough to try to keep her guns out of her son’s hands? Should she have helped a young man with psychological problems learn how to shoot?

Alexander Isgut, a Newtown pediatrician, said his daughter bought Nancy Lanza’s house in Kingston, N.H., where she lived before moving to Newtown in 1998. He said his daughter still lives in the house and is friends with Nancy Lanza’s brother, who lives next door.

Isgut said he never met Nancy Lanza. But he said many parents in Newtown, some of whom he has been treating for stress, cannot understand how Adam Lanza gained access to his mother’s weapons, which also included several semiautomatic handguns.

“If you are going to have an army, you have to be responsible for it,” he said. “Nobody else but you should have access to it.”

Nancy Lanza had another son, Ryan, 24, with her husband, Peter, from whom she was divorced. She has a large extended family in New Hampshire.

H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, said Nancy Lanza’s body, and her son’s, were not claimed until Tuesday, four days after the killings. He said the funeral home that claimed them asked not to be identified and planned to transport them “discreetly.”

Ex-Olympian admits to double life
Former track star says she worked for high-priced escort service in Las Vegas, offers reasoning.
By The Associated Press


Three-time Olympian runner Suzy Favor Hamilton has admitted leading a double life as an escort.

She apologized Thursday after a report by The Smoking Gun website said she had been working as a prostitute in Las Vegas.

The 44-year-old Favor Hamilton lives in Madison, Wis. The Smoking Gun said she has been working for the last year for an escort service.

Soon after the story appeared online, Hamilton released a series of tweets saying in part that she was "drawn to escorting in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life."

A middle-distance runner, Favor Hamilton competed for the U.S. at the Olympics in 1992, 1996 and 2000 but did not win a medal. She won seven U.S. national titles.

You're still here?  Please follow your leader and exit stage right. 

Are you still feeling rejected?  I know it stung but get over it; someone some where out there will find you attractive--just not me.

Have you seen Joe Ladnier?  Like that. 

He should follow Mitt's lead: leave--and don't come back.  He was never welcomed at the party anyway. 

Wrong.  Plenty of people love their "jobs" and derive great satisfaction from going to work.  My mentor in graduate school was such a man.  He came from a well to do family and did not need to work at all.  He only taught in the fall semester and took the spring off to help raise his kids.  Except for working with is protégés he did not "work" in spring and summer.  He was also a very productive academic churning out a new monograph every few years.  And these weren't puff pieces; he was a national authority in his field and a widely respected scholar.  When he retired earlier this year, he thanked the university by endowing a scholarship that would support two students a year in perpetuity.  I know lots of professors who love their work.  I see a similar dynamic in Silicon Valley.

x2. A silly comparison. 

Hit too close to home did I?  And now you want to shoot me with your gun from Walmart?    

Can you imagine electing a President who kept his money in the Caymen Islands, Swiss bank accounts, and god knows where else offshore?  When he was on the scene, George Romney insisted that candidates should reveal 10+ years of tax returns because recent returns could be prepared and doctored specifically in anticipation of a run for office.  Mitt (who frequently spoke of his father's example) balked at that particular suggestion and declined to share his tax returns. 

I wonder how many of these people are either unemployed or have less than $10k in a checking or savings account. 

x10

ha ha ha ha ha he is a "young fool.  Only now, at the end, do you understand."

I wish we would carve out a space (perhaps a few states) where all the gun lovers, hunters, etc could go and live among one another.  Those who want to carry concealed or open firearms could freely do so.  All the parents who want to raise there kids in gun culture could do so and all the gunfire, accidental shootings, and kids who go crazy and kill their parents (or even other kids) would be limited to them (other gun lovers) and the rest of us could live in peace. I don't think anyone would be mourning over what happened in Newton, CT if we all knew that they lived in my theoretical "gun state" and all had parents who also had all manner of guns at home.  It seems oddly fitting that the Newton shooter would use the guns in his own house (purchased by his gun loving mother) to first shoot her before turning his attention to others. 

Would anyone be in mourning if you learned that some unbalanced person snuck into an NRA convention and suddenly gunned down dozens of the people in attendance?  I don't think so.

Remember when Dick Cheney accidentally shot his friend in the face?  

You have asked and answered your own question.  One does not find many former drug users publicly bragging about how they indulged.  Talking about drug use moves the conversation away from their own effort, discipline, etc. and focuses it on the pill or syringe.  No athlete wants that.  Just ask Lance Armstrong. This is true when the stakes are very high (Olympic/pro athlete) and very low (former IFBB Pro).

Is Mitt Romney's Campaign Team Gouging Press Corps with ‘Exorbitant Charges’?
By Heather Manes, Tue, December 18, 2012

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s press corps received unexpectedly high bills for expenses while following the campaign trail, and is now collectively contesting those expenses with Romney campaign officials.

Nine news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today, sent a joint letter detailing the contested costs to Romney’s former campaign manager Matt Rhoades and some senior advisers on Monday.

The news outlets, which have reported on quite a few campaign trails and understand the usual costs of following a candidate during a national election, wrote that they were surprised about “what appear to be exorbitant charges for food, filing centers/holds and ground transportation.”

The letter points out specific, unexpectedly high charges: “Some examples: $745 per person charged for a vice presidential debate viewing party on Oct. 11; $812 charged for a meal and a hold on Oct. 18; $461 for a meal and hold the next day; $345 for food and hold Oct. 30.”

The press corps also mentions that ground transportation costs exceeded $1,000 per day at times, which was a higher cost than Romney’s campaign charged in the primaries.

To combat the charges, the press corps is asking the campaign officials for details on charges over $200. A few outlets, according to the letter, have already alerted American Express to contest the charges.

That's what CN wants. 

Remember FatPanda?  Yeah, it's like that.



 

Either way it's not happening for you.  Make peace with it.

So, your goal us to be a schmoe admiration object?