- Because #Russia. In the communist tundra on the north side
of Asia, mysteriously evil things are always happening to those who dare to go
against the grain or get in the way of the powers that be. Really, it was only
a question of when and how a Russian lawyer linked to a case exposing
corruption in Moscow would die. Anyone who had “plummeting to his death from
his fourth-story apartment on a chilly March day,” you’ve won the Nikolai
Gorokhov Death Pool. His top clients immediately called the death suspicious,
which definitely fits a lawyer falling from his fourth-floor apartment as a
crane was lifting a large bathtub into his home. A neighbor who called an
ambulance for the fallen Gorokhov said he tumbled down just as workers were
lifting a Jacuzzi through the window and noted that the equipment being used by
the workers was shaky and haphazard at best. As could be expected, media
outlets with a healthy fear of Vlad Putin’s regime described it as an accident
and reported that a rope on the crane snapped, but Gorokhov’s former employer,
British businessman Bill Browder, called the incident “extremely suspicious.” He
went so far as to tie the incident to Gorokhov's work challenging Putin's
government, pointing out that Gorokhov has spent the last seven years exposing
their complicity in the death of Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky was a Russian
whistleblower who died in jail in 2009 and he’d hired Gorokhov, who just
happened to be due to represent Magnitsky’s mother in a Moscow court and was
acting as a witness in a U.S. money laundering case. It’s quite a string of
coincidences in a land where there’s no such thing as a coincidence when it comes
to dubious deaths for enemies of the state………
- The last one lost a lot of money, but what the hell, let’s
make some more. The latest reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise, last year’s all-female
version starring Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kristin Wiig and Kate McKinnon
and directed by Paul Feig, garnered plenty of hate and criticism before it
dropped and was a commercial failure, bringing in $128 million on a budget of
$144 million after spending just one weekend in the top spot at the box office.
Yet despite failing at the one thing that matters most to a studio, the project
prompted Rory Bruer, president of Worldwide Distribution at Sony, to say
“there’s no doubt in my mind [a sequel] will happen.” Despite his ill-advised
words, there has been no further news of a sequel since then….until the
director of the original Ghostbusters movie, Ivan Reitman, suggested that the
reboot was a good idea and that he is “developing live-action films.” “We
certainly would’ve loved to have a larger hit. But considering the last film
was almost 30 years ago, it really did extremely well,” Reitman said. “I think
the film cost too much, frankly, and that’s the real issue. I personally had
other points of view in terms of where the film should go and it was kind of a
continuous conversation with Paul about that.” He explained that he wanted to
give Feig room to make the movie the way he wanted and while he may have
succeeded in that pursuit, it’s hard to find anything else about the project
that could be called a success - or would justify additional films in the
franchise……….
- A winner, yet still a loser. An Indiana man who was
initially denied a vanity license plate reading "ATHE1ST" triumphed
in his battle to force the state to give him the personalized plate, but that doesn’t
make him a winner. Anyone who spends money on a vanity plate still has to be
classified as a loser by simple virtue of the fact that vanity plates are a
lame waste of time, but that’s not why the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles
denied Chris Bontrager's first request in February. In fact, we don’t really
know that the reason was because the bureau didn’t cite a specific reason. Its denial
letter to Bontrager noted the agency could refuse a personalized plate if it
had a connotation offensive to good taste or decency, was misleading or deemed
improper, yet didn’t specify which of those criteria it had used in his case. Bontrager
suspected that the decision was religiously motivated and his first step was to
file an appeal with the state. He received plenty of help from his new friends
at the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and with their assistance, he
was able to move quickly through the appeals process without actually having to
testify before an appeals panel. "My intention was never to litigate this
matter," Bontrager said. "I just felt that the process should be more
transparent." He received his new plate this week but even in the wake of
its legal loss, the snippy BMV issued a short statement on Bontrager's case,
affirming the state's ability to deny any plate at will. Yet in the past, both the
Indiana Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have sided with the state's
ability to decide whether a message on a personalized plate would be approved
or denied on the grounds that
the messages amount to "government speech." And
paying for a vanity plate speaks as well, namely in support of a person not
being all that wise with their cash………
- Wherever Lane Kiffin goes, pissed off people, ugly
accusations and even uglier firings tend to follow. So it makes perfect sense
that former University of Alabama receiver Antonio Carter has filed a lawsuit
alleging fraud against Lane Kiffin, Florida Atlantic University and the state
of Florida. This lawsuit may or may not have merit, but either way it’s not a
surprise that Kiffin, FAU’s new head football coach, is being sued by Carter,
who played for Alabama for three seasons and was a graduate assistant, but had
most recently accepted a position at FAU as assistant wide receivers coach and
assistant strength and conditioning coach. The hiccup occurred when two prior
misdemeanor charges showed up on a background check, a background check after
which Carter claimed Kiffin assured him that he deal was done and he could
begin work. Instead, the job offer was pulled even though Carter claims he was already
recruiting a junior college prospect from his hometown to come play for FAU. "It
is believed that this relationship between plaintiff Antonio Carter and the
coveted prospect was known to the coaches and defendants at the time he was
hired," the lawsuit states. It further alleges that Carter sent Florida
Atlantic documentation showing resolution of the misdemeanor charges on his
record and received no response from either Kiffin or athletic director Patrick
Chun, so he’s now seeking charges of reckless fraud, fraud through mistaken
false statements, breach of contract, unjust enrichment and promissory fraud
and conspiracy. Coincidentally, this isn’t the first time any of those words
have been directly associated with Kiffin………
No comments:
Post a Comment