- Not
everyone has received the message: The United States doesn’t give a damn about
hosting the Olympics. Boston tried to make that clear when it backed out of
being the U.S. bidder for the 2024 Olympics , with its mayor smartly refusing
to sign a document guaranteeing that taxpayers would foot the bill for any cost
overruns in staging the Games. That should have ended the drama and clued U.S.
Olympic Committee officials in to the fact that becoming a logistical nightmare
for two weeks, becoming a top terrorist target for the same time period and
throwing down billions of dollars for an event that won't even come close to
breaking even financially is something Americans want no part of. Instead, U.S.
Olympic leaders are looking to Los Angeles as a bidder on the belief that 81-percent
support in a recent poll and a supportive mayor makes the City of Angels an
ideal candidate. The U.S. Olympic Committee announced Wednesday it is close to
making L.A. its candidate to bring the games back to U.S. soil for the first
time since Salt Lake City in 2002 and the first time for the Summer Games since
1996 in Atlanta. "There are some complicated issues in the discussion,"
USOC CEO Scott Blackmun said. "But I'm very optimistic we'll get to a good
place for both of us." Really? Because a good place for Americans would be
as far from the Olympics as possible. There is no national pride on the line
here, no need to show the world how great we can be as the staging grounds for
the planet’s biggest sporting event. The International Olympic Committee's
deadline to nominate a city is Sept. 15 and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
said he'd have no problem signing the host city contract that Boston Mayor
Marty Walsh refused to sign. "The L.A. Olympics would inspire the world
and are right for our city," Garcetti said in a statement. Yes, but they
can inspire your drought-ravaged city without actually taking place there and
creating fiscal headaches that will linger for years to come……….
- Riot
Watch! Riot Watch! It was a day for the ladies in Brazil, where more than
30,000 rural women took part in a march Wednesday demanding sustainable
development, agrarian reform and an end to gender violence and inequality. The
average person with a limited knowledge of international affairs might not
realized that gender equality is still a thing in Brazil, but any doubt of that
was erased by the fact that the Brasilia police department estimated 35,000
women participated in the three-hour "Marcha das Margaridas." The
gathering was named for Margarida Maria Alves, a human rights activist and
union leader killed in 1983 by a hired gunman in the northeastern state of
Paraiba. These bold protestors marched from the capital's Mane Garrincha
stadium to a large grassy area in front of Congress and back to the stadium,
where they listened to a speech by President Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff played to
the crowd, telling the women that her government is determined to
"guarantee more rights and more opportunities for women." She also
acknowledged that violence against women is a serious problem in the country. There
is zero tolerance in my government for violence against women," Rousseff
said, adding that she is committed to "fighting violence against women in
all of its forms. "We are all partners in the struggle for justice,
freedom and democracy." The spirit of the day was great and its aims are
praiseworthy, but there are plenty of such uprisings that haven’t yielded any
actual change……….
- The
television equivalent of “Kill Bill” is about to unfold. Just as Quentin
Tarantino’s two-movie action epic began as one film and was serialized because it
became too long for a single sitting, the much-hyped “Twin Peaks” revival series helmed by director David Lynch will
originate from a single script as a continuous movie and be sliced down into
multiple episodes. Showtime president David Nevins revealed the decision at the
Showtime TCA executive session in Los Angeles. Lynch and series co-creator Mark
Frost wrote the long script for the series and shooting the project will fall
to Lynch. This is the biggest news for the project since Showtime announced
last October that it was bringing back the show for nine new episodes, although
this announcement likely means the series will extend beyond nine episodes because
its exact length won't be known until after filming is completed. In between October
and now, the project nearly lost Lynch when he announced in April that he had
pulled out of the revival series, but then confirmed in May that he was back on
board. "I never had doubt we would get him back, Twin Peaks is a
huge priority for us," Nevins said. "It became clear it would take
more than nine episodes, which we had planned and budgeted for. We had to sort
that out. Lynch wanted to direct all episodes, and we wanted him to direct all
episodes. We are looking to be in great shape." The original “Peaks” ran
from April 1990 to June 1991, getting canceled during its second season with a
cast that included Lara Flynn Boyle, Mädchen Amick, Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee
and Sherilyn Fenn. This is a hell of a lot of attention for a show that couldn’t
make it past its sophomore reason, but remaking old sh*t is the most popular/lazy
thing to do in Hollywood these days, so let the unoriginality roll…………
- Brandi
Lee Weaver-Gates has four names, two identities and one chance of being an
unstoppable force in this world. Yes, it looks bad right now for the reigning Miss
Pennsylvania U.S. International, but don’t bail on Weaver-Gates so quickly. As
ugly as it is for a person to be accused and criminally charged with faking
cancer in an elaborate scheme that raised thousands of dollars, the simple fact
is that hot women have an advantage in life and someone who combines beauty
with a cunning, devious and soulless side necessary to bilk dozens of donors
out of money is a force to be reckoned with - once she’s prosecuted, jailed and
released back into society. Weaver-Gates led everyone to believe that she had
been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in March 2013 and since then,
she held multiple fundraisers to pay for the treatment she did not need.
According to police, the most recent event was held in April and raised
$14,000. An investigation revealed no evidence that Weaver-Gates had ever been
under a doctor's care for cancer and State Police Trooper Thomas Stock labeled her
efforts to make people believe she had cancer "an elaborate scheme." That
elaborate scheme allegedly saw Weaver-Gates have relatives drive her to Johns
Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, where she would go to another part of the
hospital and chillax while the relatives waited in the lobby for hours for her
return. She also shaved her head to sell the story and it worked until an
anonymous letter to police tipped them off to the scheme. "When confronted
with what the investigation revealed the accused advised that she did not want
to incriminate herself and invoked her right to an attorney," police said
in a release. Sadly, the pageant doesn’t appreciate Weaver-Gates’ skill set and
is pulling her Miss Pennsylvania U.S. International title. The real tragedy
here is that she didn’t get to flash her truest talents during the skills
portion of the pageant……….
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