- Would you like to own a piece of the financially strapped star of classic ’80s sitcoms “Taxi” and “Who’s the Boss?” Do you want to crash permanently in the former pad of the dude who once played Alyssa Milano’s TV dad? If so, your time has come. Actor Tony Danza’s Park City, Utah mountain home is now on the market for the very reasonable price of $2.7 million. That number may seem steep, but the median Park City list price is $775,00 and Park City is after all the place where the rich and privileged go to ski and escape the world they are otherwise forced to share with us commoners. Either Danza’s love of skiing has waned of late or he needs some extra cash, because the Brooklyn-born actor was offering the Utah home for short-term season rental as far back as 2008. Either no one took him up on that offer or the rentals have been few and far enough between that continuing in the landlord role just wasn’t that appealing. According to the property listing, the home was built in 1988 and sports ski chalet musts like stone and cedar throughout the interior and exterior. The home’s expansive great room includes floor-to-ceiling windows and a large stone fireplace and all told, the structure is 4,800 sq. feet on a nearly half-acre lot. Its four bedrooms and four bathrooms mean you’ll have plenty of places to rest, ice and recuperate after that nasty spill on a double diamond trail or when your first attempt at snowboarding goes awry. Oh, and there’s also a heated driveway so you don’t have to trouble yourself shoveling mountains of snow, along with an elevator reach all four stories of the house in case you actually do incapacitate yourself on the slopes. Looking at all of its great features, asking why Danza would give up such a sweet pad is an obvious response. He did receive an Emmy nomination for his guest role on “The Practice” and has scored small roles in several films of late, but those gigs likely don’t pay enough to hold onto a Park City vacation home a person might use one or two months out of the year. Danza can only hope to turn the same sort of profit he scored on his Sherman Oaks, Calif. home, which he completely rebuilt after the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 and sold in 2007 at a listing price of $6.15 million. Of course, his celebrity star has faded substantially since then, so odds are he’ll have to settle for significantly less this time around…………
- DE-NIED. Moammar Gadhafi made a hollow offer to NATO to bring its ongoing war on his regime to an end and NATO shot the offer down with prejudice. The conflict will continue and a NATO official said that its operations will go on as long as civilians in Libya are threatened. Gadhafi’s offer rang especially hollow after witnesses in the besieged western Libyan port city of Misrata said that forces loyal to Gadhafi shelled the city indiscriminately again Saturday, resulting in numerous casualties. In a complete coincidence, the attacks occurred just hours after Gadhafi once again demanded that rebels in the city surrender and urged NATO to accept a ceasefire and to begin peace negotiations. Aside from killing hundreds of innocent civilians, Gadhafi’s forces haven’t made much progress thus far in the conflict. That, along with the realization that civilians are still in grave danger on a daily basis, probably inspired NATO’s rejection of Gadhafi’s offer. As is his custom, the kooky leader made his demands during a rambling speech on Libyan TV. The address, which aired early Saturday and lasted close to an hour and a half, was meandering and confusing, but the main point seemed to be reiterating previous claims that Gadhafi holds no official government post from which to resign and that he would never leave his country. Only Gadhafi seems to believe that he truly did hand power over to the people after the revolution, but that is enough to keep him going and “defending” the country his ancestors defended against Italy in 1911. His speech also cited Saturday’s importance as the anniversary of the Battle of Cartaba, during the 1911 Italian invasion of Libya. In one of the more pointed portions of his soliloquy, Gadhafi vowed to take the current battle, which he calls an "open war," to Italian soil. As a backdrop to the dictator’s monologue, NATO planes bombed a Libyan government building in the capital Tripoli during the broadcast. The TV signal cut in and out during the speech, but Gadhafi either did not know or simply didn’t care. He went on speaking and condemned NATO for trying to kill him. In a mocking tone, Gadhafi asked if the bombings were part of U.N. Security Council resolution 1970 and whether destroying Libyan government buildings was a method of protecting civilians. Libya's rebel Transitional National Council derided the speech, with deputy head Abdel Hafiz Ghoga saying Gadhafi's true message to the world is clear: that he is mocking the will of the international community by saying one thing to the world while continuing the brutalize his own people to remain in power. A cynic might even argue that Gadhafi made his offer to NATO knowing it would be rejected and believing he could use that rejection for propaganda purposes…………
- How do you like your bake sales? With a lot of colorful, sweet and calorie-heavy treats crafted by moms and grandmas who want to raise money for the local Little League team or by a group of politically motivated agitators calling themselves a conservative activist group? For those seeking the former, finding the right bake sale shouldn’t be difficult because they’re going on nonstop in virtually every town in America. But for anyone who likes the latter type of bake sale, you probably missed the one and only chance you’ll ever have by not being there when the Young Conservatives of Texas hosted an affirmative action bake sale on the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Tex. on Friday. This particular bake sale was unique because of its blatantly racist pricing system, which most bake sale operators simply don’t have the kahones to implement. Organizers sold the same cookies at different prices, depending on the buyer’s race, gender and ethnicity. For example, whites and Asians paid higher prices for their cookie, brownies, cupcakes and other treats, while African-Americans and Hispanics were able to buy the same items at the lower prices. Women of every race were able to buy cheaper treats than men of the same race and for some bizarre reason, many people on the TTU campus had an issue with the bake sale and the message behind it: satirizing and drawing attention to what the Young Conservatives of Texas deem the injustice of favoritism in academia. Their pricing system - at least according to them - was derived from which groups of people are most disenfranchised by the idea of affirmative action. In other words, the people who may lose scholarships or admission to a school or university because that university is required to set aside a certain number of spots for minorities. The message is far from fresh and underprivileged white men have been beating the same drum for as long as affirmative action has existed. Finding a true winner in the controversial event wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t the Young Conservatives of Texas, nor was it their political rivals who felt the group made itself look like a collection of rich, whiny jackasses. The true winner? Native Americans, who ate for free. No word on whether the white bake sale operators went and ripped the desserts of those Native Americans, then replaced them with week-old, moldy, rock-hard brownies…………
- Dammit, this cannot happen! For no reason and under no circumstances can the tobacco industry be allowed to win anything in the United States. Whether it’s a lawsuit, a case in mediation, a game of checkers or a footrace to see who gets to play on the jungle gym first, these imbeciles must be beat. Merchants of death sticks must be beaten down, demoralized and run from America’s shores. That’s definitely not what happened this week, when Philip Morris USA and other major industry companies won a lawsuit Friday filed by 37 Missouri hospitals seeking $455 million in reimbursements for treating sick smoking patients without insurance. It was a massive case, involving six tobacco companies. The case, filed as City of St. Louis v. American Tobacco Co., featured hospitals claiming that cigarette companies were liable for the costs incurred to their consumers by delivering an “unreasonably dangerous product.” These hospitals treated dozens of patients with smoking-related health problems who did not have health insurance and could not pay their bills, leading to $455 million in unpaid hospital bills. Of course, Big Tobacco couldn’t want to gloat after winning its first court battle in what seems like 50 years. "The jury agreed with Philip Morris USA that ordinary cigarettes are not negligently designed or defective," Murray Garnick, Altria Client Services senior vice president and associate general counsel, said in a statement. "Compelling evidence was presented to the jury, including testimony from hospital witnesses, that confirmed the hospitals were not financially damaged as they asserted," Ronald S. Milstein, Lorillard senior vice president and general counsel, added in a separate statement. Enjoy it now, you jackasses. Your products have been killing people and making them suffer for decades and even though it flies in the face of everything the American judicial system is about (although expediency, logic and fairness do the same thing), any tobacco company should be automatically declared the loser in any court case before a single motion is filed or a single witness testifies. Even if this particular case seemed to swing on an apparent lack of financial injury suffered by the Missouri hospitals, the actual facts are irrelevant. Does anyone involved with this indefensible verdict - other than the tobacco companies themselves - really believe it’s a good thing when the companies involved in the case all saw their stock prices jump in the aftermath of the case? Remember, the goal is to drive them out of business, not to fortify their position in the economy…………
- Some fights never end. As long as there is one man left to fight for it, no cause is lost……or so the saying goes. Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff is one such man, willing to fight the seemingly lost battle. His cause is a worthy one: killing the albatross that is the Bowl Championship Series, the asinine postseason system that ruins what should be great about college football on an annual basis. Rather than having a fair system to give deserving teams a chance at a national championship, the BCS creates a mashup of unexplainable computer rankings and polls to come up with two major conference teams to play for the title. That system inevitably leaves non-BCS-conference teams on the outside looking in and that annual injustice has Shurtleff’s dander up. he is still looking to file a federal lawsuit aimed at disbanding the BCS system and has put out a request for proposals from national antitrust firms to help with the case. Shurtleff said Thursday he expects the suit, accusing the BCS of being an illegal monopoly, to be filed by this summer. The suit will seek to-be-determined damages for schools including the University of Utah and Boise State that have lost out on millions of dollars under the BCS because the existing system keeps non-preferred programs and conferences out of the mix for the title game. Even though Utah is fixing that problem by joining the Pac-12 Conference in July, Shurtleff was quick to state that the move changes nothing because the system is still inherently flawed. The announcement comes just one week before conference commissioners and athletic directors are set to meet in New Orleans. Auditioning antitrust firms and selecting one will take at least one month, Shurtleff said, and in the meantime he is seeking other states to join in filing the lawsuit. "But if not, I'll do it alone," he said. Now THAT is the sort of dogmatism I like to see. Give a giant middle finger to everyone who dares to suggest that an attorney general’s time would be better spent on other issues and keep this fight alive…………
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