- Hopefully, Kevin Trudeau is proud of himself. Then again,
he’s a television
pitchman and author who amassed a fortune selling lies and fraud, so of course
he’s proud of himself. He may be headed to federal prison for the next decade
after being sentenced on a conviction for violating a 2004 federal court order
that prohibited him from making misleading infomercials and misrepresenting his
weight-loss books, but the hubris of an infomercial pitchman knows no bounds.
For years, Trudeau solid his glorified scam of how to get free money, lose
weight and cure a number of illnesses the natural way and he made millions
doing it because….well, people are morons. He was convicted of criminal
contempt by a jury in November 2013, with evidence presented at trial that he appeared
in three infomercials in 2006 and 2007, and in those infomercials he
misrepresented the contents of one of his weight-loss books. The U.S.
attorney's office in Chicago seized upon those facts to argue that those
infomercials were not only untrue, but they violated the 2004 court order that
prohibited the infomercials. When Trudeau was convicted and sentenced, he also
received a verbal excoriation from U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman, who lit
him up like the Las Vegas strip on a Saturday night. "Since the age of 25,
(Trudeau) has attempted to cheat others for his own personal gain," Guzman
said at the sentencing hearing. Judge Guzman’s words mirrored those in a
sentencing memo by prosecutors, who called Trudeau an "unrepentant,
untiring, and uncontrollable huckster who has defrauded the unsuspecting for 30
years." All of this is very shocking from such a credibly and reputable
individual who has had several of his books reach No. 1 on the New York Times
bestseller list and scammed, er, helped so many people……….
- Bo Jackson may be 51 years old, but arguably the biggest
physical freak to play American professional sports in the past century still
has an edge to him. Jackson did the two-sport athlete endeavor better than
anyone who has come after him and now that a current athlete is dabbling with
the idea of following in his footsteps, Bo is dead set against it. Seattle
Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson is spending part of his offseason in Texas
Rangers spring training camp, pretending to be a baseball player after the club
selected him in the Rule 5 draft in December. Wilson, who led the Seahawks to a
Super Bowl victory in February, said he missed baseball after playing in the
minor leagues during his college career. You never say never," Wilson said in early March. "I've always
had the dream of playing two sports. If somehow it was a miracle that it could work out, I'd consider it. At the
same time, my focus is winning the championship with the Seattle Seahawks and hope to be playing for a long time."
Jackson, the only athlete to be named an All-Star in both football and
baseball, thinks that plan is garbage. "Stick to what got [Wilson]
in the headlines, not baseball," Jackson said. "Twenty-five or 30
years ago when I did it, I'm not trying to say anything negative about other
athletes, but the talent pool wasn't that deep.” Jackson explained that the
advanced training methods and dietary wisdom today’s athletes have at their
disposal makes it impossible for an athlete to split his time between two
sports and play at an elite level in either one. He admitted that even a
physical freak like himself probably couldn’t do today what he did 20 years
ago. Jackson played in the majors from 1986-94 and was a Heisman Trophy-winning running back at Auburn and played for the
Los Angeles Raiders from 1987 to 1990 before a catastrophic hip injury ended
his football career……….
- Either Sri
Lanka forgot about its upcoming United Nations censure vote or it has given up
on its case and is throwing sh*t to the wind. That’s the message a nation sends
when it arrests two leading rights activists including a Catholic priest under
anti-terrorism laws weeks ahead of an expected UN censure vote. Police
announced the arrest of Father Praveen Mahesan, head of the Peace and Reconciliation
Centre in the war-torn Jaffna region, and Ruki Fernando of the Colombo-based
INFORM advocacy group. The duo were detained on Sunday as they met relatives
who lost loved ones during the Tamil separatist conflict. "The two
suspects were arrested under provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act for
trying to cause communal disharmony and disturbance," said police
spokesman Superintendent Ajith Rohana. The arrests occurred in Kilinochchi,
which was the last major stronghold of the Tamil Tiger rebels before they were
routed at the end of the war in 2009. Udaya Kalupathirana, director of INFORM, confirmed
Fernando's arrest. "We have come to know of Ruki Fernando's arrest as the
police had informed the family. Still we are not aware of the charges against
him. We are looking for more information," Kalupathirana said. The arrests
led to immediate condemnation from the international community, which called
for continued scrutiny of Sri Lanka's human rights record. Amnesty International
lit Sri Lanka up in a report last month, decrying a "climate of fear"
by stepping up harassment of human rights activists in the build-up to a
meeting of the UN's Human Rights Council at the end of March. At that meeting,
the United States is expected to introduce a resolution calling for an
international investigation into allegations that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians
were killed after government forces ordered them into a no-fire zone in the
war's finale. A vote is expected in Geneva on March 28 and let’s just say that these
arrests and whatever happens to the prisoners in between now and then probably
won't help Sri Lanka’s case……….
- Just because no one is paying attention to you is no
reason to start saying outlandish, scary things, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA). The space agency’s budget is shrinking, it can no longer
send humans into space and has to hitch rides with the Russians and NASA
officials are understandably cranky. Having said that, there is no need to
issue a dire prediction that global industrial civilization could collapse in
the next few decades if the reasons for the decline remain unaddressed. In a
thinly veiled attempt to convince people that its still matters, NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center has released a study allegedly showing the rise and fall of
civilizations to be a recurrent cycle found throughout history. Cases of severe
disruption of a civilization due to "precipitous collapse, often lasting
centuries, have been quite common.” To further its alarmist claims, NASA wrote
in the report that even advanced, complex civilizations are susceptible to
collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilization.
The authors go on to claim that there are holes in the theory that technology
will resolve the great challenges faced by civilization. All of this is based
on the dubious investigation of the human-nature dynamics of past cases of
collapse in order to (allegedly) identify the most salient interrelated factors
that might help determine the risk of collapse today: population, climate,
water, agriculture and energy. All of the above have played a central role in
the process of collapsed civilizations over the last 5,000 years. Near the end
of the report, after trying to send everyone into a full-fledged panic, the
authors offered a glimmer of hope that their dire prognostications can be
avoided. "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if
the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and
if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion," the
report concludes……..
- Again, Chris Martin? Yes, the Coldplay frontman’s wife is
a recurring character on the music-mangling menace that is “Glee,” but that
doesn’t mean the respectable frontman of one of the world’s biggest rock bands
needs to flush away his credibility too. That is precisely what Martin is doing
by appearing in three episodes of NBC’s reality show “The Voice Karaoke” as a mentor. Martin
will assist all four of the show’s hack coaches as they train up their teams of
aspiring characters ahead of the second knockout round of the season, whatever
the hell that means. Martin's episodes will air on March 31, April 1 and April
7 and unfortunately for anyone hoping there is still time for him to pull out
of this train wreck of an idea, those episodes have already been filmed. Martin
confirmed his presence on the set of a show that is playing a big role in
trashing music as we know it by tweeting a photo collage of himself with all
four “Voice Karaoke” coaches. His stint on the show is not exactly altruistic,
as Coldplay is set to release its sixth studio album, “Ghost Stories,” on May
19. The promotional process for any major album release is an extensive one and
last month, Coldplay released “Midnight,” a new track from the album that came
accompanied by a music video directed by Mary Wigmore. The band than previewed
several tracks from the album at the South by Southwest festival in Austin,
Tex., performing at the first ever iTunes Festival show at the event. Give them
credit for still working hard to promote their music this far into their
career, even if their frontman’s choice of venues leaves much to be desired………..
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