Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Catherine Porter: Shelagh was here - an ordinary, magical life (the Star)
Shelagh Gordon died suddenly at 55 in February, 2012, leaving an ordinary but magical life. A Star team of reporters and photographers joined those paying witness.
Marc Dion: Dry Eye (Creators Syndicate)
I had to go buy a little bottle of artificial tears for my mother tonight. That's an odd thing to be buying in America right now - crying is very nearly forbidden. She's 87. She has dry eye. The rest of us don't cry because it means we're weak and we have feelings for things. School shootings. The homeless. The poor. We argue over those things, and we use them to score points, but we do not cry.
Dr. David Lipschitz: Recommendations to Treat Heart Disease Continually Changing (Creators Syndicate)
Not surprisingly, greater intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat dairy products, and seafood is encouraged. Overeating is highlighted as a major concern, and balancing calorie intake with activity levels is encouraged. Greater fruit and vegetable intake appears to reduce heart attack risk by as much as 40 percent.
Chuck Norris: Weighing in on Newfound Importance of Fat Consumption (Creators Syndicate)
"Fat plays a role in the diet and shouldn't be avoided," says Jim White, a registered dietitian, health fitness specialist and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "Your body needs healthy sources of fat, also known as essential fatty acids, because the body can't produce these fatty acids naturally."
John Cheese: 5 Things Only Poor People Understand About Poverty (Cracked)
Unless you've lived through it, you can't understand poverty. Not really.
Mark Hill: 8 Famous Political Scandals You Won't Believe Are Total Lies (Cracked)
Every day it gets harder to tell the difference between real life and the wacky, exaggerated reality of editorial cartoons. When you have a presidential candidate saying we should close our borders to all Muslims and stating that the party he's representing is made up of "the dumbest group of voters in the country," it's easy to see why people fall for bullshit political stories these days. Case in point: Donald Trump never said that about Republicans. Some meme-maker made it up.
Sophie Heawood: "Ellen Page: 'Being out became more important than any movie'" (The Guardian)
The Oscar-nominated Juno star talks about child stardom, her Vice TV show and why she had to stop living a lie.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
T-RUMP GOES TO ENGLAND!
AMERICAN COWBOYS RIDE THE RUSSIAN RANGE!
"HOW STUPID IS IOWA?"
THE PIED PIPER OF ZION.
EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS ARE RUNNING ON EMPTY!
MISOGYNIST REPUBLICAN PIG!
REPUBLICAN RACISTS CRAWL OUT OF THE WOODWORK AND LIE.
THE CREEPY REPUBLICAN AND HIS CREEPY MAILERS!
THE REPUBLICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast, but no rain.
Stop Offshore Fracking
California
A conservation group said the federal government must stop approving offshore fracking from oil platforms in California's Santa Barbara Channel under the settlement of a lawsuit it filed.
The group, the Center for Biological Diversity, in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, had challenged what it said was the U.S. Department of the Interior's practice of rubber-stamping fracking off California's coast without engaging the public or analyzing fracking's threats to ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and marine life.
The settlement reached on Friday prohibits officials from authorizing fracking practices in federal waters until the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement complete an environmental review, the Center for Biological Diversity said.
Oil companies have fracked at least 200 wells in Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and in the wildlife-rich Santa Barbara Channel, the Center for Biological Diversity said.
The settlement could potentially affect oversight of all federally permitted offshore fracking, including fracking in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the group said.
California
Saudi Prince Fires Back
T-rump
Saudi prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal bin Abdulaziz mocked Donald Trump for using a photoshopped image to argue that he co-owns Fox News.
"Trump: You base your statements on photoshopped pics? I bailed you out twice; a 3rd time, maybe?" the prince tweeted, linking to a news story about him buying Trump's yacht in 1991 when Trump was $900 million in debt.
On Thursday, Trump tweeted out a picture of Al-Waleed with Fox News host Megyn Kelly and another woman.
However, many have since said the picture Trump tweeted is indeed photoshopped. Snopes.com reported that the picture was fabricated, and that a photograph of Kelly was inserted into it.
Al-Waleed, who is chairman of the board of Kingdom Holding Company, an investment holding company, has slammed Trump on Twitter before. In December, when Trump called for the ban on Muslims entering the United States, Al-Waleed said, "You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America. Withdraw from the U.S presidential race as you will never win."
T-rump
On Charity Navigator's Watch List
Wounded Warrior Project
In another response to the on-going CBS News investigation of Wounded Warrior Project, Charity Navigator, a national evaluator of charities, put the country's most prominent veterans charity on its watch list.
Wounded Warrior Project is facing criticism from more than 40 former employees about how it spends the more than $800 million it's raised in the past four years, reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.
CBS News asked Marc Owens, a former director of tax exempt organizations at the IRS, to review the Wounded Warrior Project's tax documents. "What was your biggest concern in reading these forms?" Reid asked him.
"That I couldn't tell the number of people that were assisted. I thought that was truly unusual. If the organization is asking for money and spending money -- purportedly spending money -- to assist veterans, I would like to know," Owens said.
Wounded Warrior Project says 80 percent of their money is spent on programs for veterans. That's because they include some promotional items, direct response advertising, and shipping and postage costs. Take that out, and the figures look more like what charity watchdogs including CharityWatch and Charity Navigator cite -- that only 54 to 60 percent of donations go to help wounded service members.
Wounded Warrior Project
Bali
David Bowie
Rock legend David Bowie wanted his ashes scattered in Bali "in accordance with the Buddhist rituals," and he left most of his estate to his two children and his widow, the supermodel Iman, according to his will filed Friday in Manhattan.
The 20-page document, filed under his legal name David Robert Jones, said the estate was worth about $100 million, but didn't break down the finances.
The "Fame" singer left his SoHo home he shared with Iman to her, and half of the rest of his worth. His son Duncan Jones from a previous marriage received 25 percent and his daughter Alexandria also received 25 percent as well as his Ulster County mountain home. Bowie left $2 million to his longtime personal assistant Corinne Schwab and left her shares he owned in a company called Oppossum Inc. He left $1 million to Marion Skene, Alexandria's nanny.
Bowie prepared the will in 2004. He said if cremation in the Indonesian island was "not practical" then he wanted his remains cremated and his ashes scattered there still. According to the death certificate, filed with the will, his body was cremated Jan. 12 in New Jersey.
David Bowie
PAC Burning Through Cash
Mrs. Palin
In a blaze of rhyming, rambling glory, Sarah Palin this month glommed onto Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Trump beamed. Comedy shows rejoiced. And Palin, who's belly-up online channel, kaput Fox News contract and son's domestic violence arrest rank among recent indignities, thrust herself backinto lame-stream media headlines.
But the former Alaska governor's own political action committee, once prodigious, is flaming out: Palin's appetite for luxury travel and pricey consultants has depleted its cash reserves to historically low levels, a Center for Public Integrity review of new federal records indicate.
During 2015, SarahPAC expenditures ($1.4 million) outpaced income (about $950,000), federal records show. This, from a former politician who markets her "fiscal responsibility" bona fides and once urged lawmakers to "cut spending - don't just simply slow down a spending spree" as an elixir to the Great Recession.
By another measure: the $457,459 SarahPAC reported raising from July 1 through Dec. 1 represents its smallest half-year haul since its formation in early 2009.
Mrs. Palin
Cop Sues Family Of Teen He Killed
Chicago
A Chicago police officer plans to sue the family of a black teenager he shot and killed, claiming emotional distress, US media reported Friday.
The teen's neighbor -- a mother of five -- was caught in the crossfire after answering the door and was also killed by police in the December 26 incident.
City officials apologized for the death of Bettie Davis, 55, but have said Quintonio LeGrier's shooting was justified.
The family of LeGrier insists there was no need to respond to the mentally disturbed teen with deadly force when all they were doing was asking for help.
Officer Robert Rialmo plans to file a civil suit against LeGrier's estate, citing emotional distress and assault, his lawyer Joe Brodsky told WGN-TV.
Chicago
Big Pay Day For Lawyers
Utah
A legal consulting team hired by the state told lawmakers this week that they've devised a credible way to sue the federal government to get the state control over public lands, but Gov. Gary Herbert said the potential $14 million price tag is making some state officials pause.
"There is a good, sound case here," attorney John Howard told lawmakers, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. "It's a strong, arguable case with constitutional principles and rooted in constitutional law."
Supporters of the state's push to seize management of federal lands that make up two-thirds of the land in Utah say the state's legal claim lies in the Utah Enabling Act, which led to Utah's statehood.
But critics have disputed that argument, and the Legislature's own attorneys warned in 2012 that the demand and any attempt to enforce it would likely be found unconstitutional.
Howard and the rest of the consulting team last month recommended a Republican-dominated commission of Utah legislators to urge the governor and attorney general to take on the lawsuit, even while warning it could cost up to $14 million, take years to play out in the courts and saying it would be far from a sure victory.
Utah
Running For Wyoming's US House Seat
Cheney
The elder daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney (R-Unindicted War Criminal) is running for Congress, following up a failed U.S. Senate campaign two years ago with another attempt to woo voters in a state where she has been a full-time resident for only a few years.
Liz Cheney (R-Shameless) filed federal election documents Friday showing she's running for Wyoming's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Campaign officials said she plans to formally announce Monday in Gillette, a northeastern Wyoming town hit hard by a downturn in the coal industry. Her plans suggest she will base her campaign on fears that the Obama administration is waging a "war on coal" with climate-change regulations and a recently announced moratorium on federal coal leasing.
"I can't say that I'm surprised," fellow candidate State Rep. Tim Stubson said Saturday of Cheney's entry. "We know that she brings with her kind of a big Washington machine and lots of national money, which certainly changes the complexion of the race."
Cheney, 49, ran a brief and ill-fated U.S. Senate campaign in 2013. She tried to unseat Wyoming senior U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, a fellow Republican, but failed to gain traction among Wyoming's political establishment. The former Fox News commentator drew considerable nationwide attention but virtually no mainstream Republicans in the state endorsed her - despite the fact that the GOP dominates Wyoming politics at every level.
Cheney
$2 Million In Gold
Forrest Fenn
An antiquities dealer who inspired tens of thousands to search the Rocky Mountains for $2 million in hidden treasure now leads an increasingly desperate mission to find one of his fans.
Forrest Fenn has been flying out in chartered helicopters or planes, searching remote stretches of the upper Rio Grande for any sign of Randy Bilyeu, now missing in the wild for more than three frigid weeks. Fellow treasure hunters also are searching for Bilyeu, who was last seen on Jan. 5 while trying to solve Fenn's mystery.
Fenn, an eccentric 85-year-old from Santa Fe, has inspired a cult following since his announcement several years ago that he stashed a small bronze chest containing nearly $2 million in gold, jewelry and artifacts somewhere in the Rockies. He dropped clues to its whereabouts in a cryptic poem in his self-published memoir, "The Thrill of the Chase."
The hidden treasure has inspired thousands to search in vain through remote corners of New Mexico, Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere in the mountains. Treasure hunters share their experiences on blogs and brainstorm about the clues. The mystery has been featured by national media, igniting even more interest.
Fenn gets about 120 emails a day from people looking for his 40-pound box, and believes 65,000 people have searched for the stash, some using family vacations to venture into the woods.
Forrest Fenn
In Memory
Mike Minor
Mike Minor, best remembered as Steve Eliot on the "Petticoat Junction" TV series has died. He was 75 years old.
Mike Minor always longed for a career in professional baseball (there is currently a major league player named Mike Minor, who is no relation to the actor), but his natural athletic ability was accompanied by a fine singing voice. He began taking voice lessons at 10 and was already signing in clubs as a teenager.
His character of Steve Eliot was on "Petticoat Junction" over four seasons, marrying Betty Jo Bradley (Linda Kaye Henning) and having the child Kathy Jo as the series continued. However, the rumor that Minor sang the show's title song is false (it was sung by composer Curt Massey). During his time on the series, he released two albums and several singles, and appeared with Ozzie and Harriet Nelson on stage in "The Impossible Years."
When "Petticoat Junction" left the air in 1970, Minor worked in daytime drama, appearing on "The Edge of Night," "As The World Turns," "Another World," and "All My Children." His last TV acting appearance was on a 1993 episode of L.A. Law. In 1999, Minor performed on Broadway as Inspector James Ascher in "A Perfect Crime."
Minor was born Michael Fedderson, and was the son of television producer Don Fedderson, best known for the "My Three Sons" TV series. His late younger brother, Gregg Fedderson, was also an actor. Minor was married Linda Kaye Henning in real life for five years, but they had no children. He has a son from a former marriage.
Mike Minor
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