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Rocknation
Rocknation's Journal
Rocknation's Journal
May 11, 2016
Why, yes -- as a matter of fact, my new grand-niece IS half black and half Italian
How did you know?
rocktivity
April 18, 2016
This is extra terrific news because the plaintiff and the plaintiff's lawyer are one and the same -- which means a dismissal of his law license can now be next item on the docket! CUE THE VONAGE THEME!
rocktivity
4/16 UPDATE: IT WAS A SUMMARY JUDGEMENT!
The details of the settlement have been released by Collette's legal team, and it contains a legal strategy Randi Rhodes taught me.
Randi was threatened with a lawsuit over something she said on the air, and said she had a filed a request for a "summary judgment" in response. Apparently that's the legal way of saying, "This case is so full of shit that neither you nor I should dignify it with a response, your honor." Well, Randi got her summary judgment. The plaintiffs appealed and won. Randi responded by asking for ANOTHER summary judgment -- and she got that, too!
Well, according to Collette's attorney:
Linked In.com: I prepared, filed and served a motion for summary judgment to dismiss all claims against McLafferty and for judgment on the counterclaim for abuse of process, and attorneys' fees, costs and sanctions against plaintiff. The uncontroverted evidence established...McLafferty took no part in the business decisions of Nevone's band...never met the plaintiff, never had a contract with the plaintiff, and did not know of Nevone's prior dealings with the plaintiff until the lawsuit was commenced.
The Court dismissed all claims against McLafferty and scheduled a conference for the purpose of scheduling a hearing on the issue of whether sanctions should be imposed on the plaintiff.
The Court dismissed all claims against McLafferty and scheduled a conference for the purpose of scheduling a hearing on the issue of whether sanctions should be imposed on the plaintiff.
This is extra terrific news because the plaintiff and the plaintiff's lawyer are one and the same -- which means a dismissal of his law license can now be next item on the docket! CUE THE VONAGE THEME!
rocktivity
March 13, 2016
But Blomgren's autistic son has managed to manage without him under the care of his elderly grandparents for the better part of a month, and apparently Blomgren's father isn't too elderly to travel from North Carolina to get him. And dare I hope that Blomgren will receive his ankle bracelet BEFORE leaving Oregon custody?
The seismic tremor you just felt was the result of a collective orgasm going through the entire Oregon federal system.
During the end of the standoff, one of the holdouts kept accusing the Feds of planning to bombard them with enough additional charges to keep them in jail permanently. It sure sounds like she was right, which makes Blomgren's release that much more mysterious. But if his statement about their discussing IEDs and drones gives the Feds a way to bombard them into prison permanently with the ULTIMATE domestic terrorism charges...Now, THAT makes sense!
rocktivity
Biggest Rat Deserts the Bundy Standoff Sinking Ship
OregonLive.com: Jason C. Blomgren, one of the 26 people now indicted...in the armed seizure of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon...pleaded not guilty to a new indictment charging him with conspiracy to impede federal officers and possession of firearms in a federal facility...
(The) Federal Magistrate Judge...agreed to release Blomgren from custody once his father arrives in Portland to return with him to North Carolina in Blomgren's vehicle. (He) will be on electronic monitoring and home detention, pending trial.
Blomgren...drove...from North Carolina several days after the leaders seized...the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge...(He) left his two sons with his elderly parents...(He) needs to return to North Carolina to help his 17-year-old son who has autism because Blomgren is the only one who can calm him down, said his court-appointed lawyer...
(The) Federal Magistrate Judge...agreed to release Blomgren from custody once his father arrives in Portland to return with him to North Carolina in Blomgren's vehicle. (He) will be on electronic monitoring and home detention, pending trial.
Blomgren...drove...from North Carolina several days after the leaders seized...the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge...(He) left his two sons with his elderly parents...(He) needs to return to North Carolina to help his 17-year-old son who has autism because Blomgren is the only one who can calm him down, said his court-appointed lawyer...
But Blomgren's autistic son has managed to manage without him under the care of his elderly grandparents for the better part of a month, and apparently Blomgren's father isn't too elderly to travel from North Carolina to get him. And dare I hope that Blomgren will receive his ankle bracelet BEFORE leaving Oregon custody?
ReverbPress.com: It appears as if there were extenuating circumstances that warranted (the pretrial release)...but it’s hard to imagine that his confession of what the Oregon standoff leaders had planned didn’t play a role...
“Blomgren told authorities that the occupation leaders never booby-trapped the wildlife sanctuary but talked about using ‘IEDs,’ or improvised explosive devices, when planning for a worst-case scenario and using at least two drones to spy on the FBI, the prosecutor said.”
The seismic tremor you just felt was the result of a collective orgasm going through the entire Oregon federal system.
During the end of the standoff, one of the holdouts kept accusing the Feds of planning to bombard them with enough additional charges to keep them in jail permanently. It sure sounds like she was right, which makes Blomgren's release that much more mysterious. But if his statement about their discussing IEDs and drones gives the Feds a way to bombard them into prison permanently with the ULTIMATE domestic terrorism charges...Now, THAT makes sense!
rocktivity
March 9, 2016
WV lawmakers legalize drinking raw milk, celebrate by drinking raw milk...
and...spoiler alert!
rocktivity
March 9, 2016
What's the point of a higher nutritional content if it has so much other stuff that makes you sick?
rocktivity
WV Lawmakers celebrate legalizing raw milk by drinking raw milk -- and getting sick
WSAZ.com: In the weeks after passing a bill allowing West Virginians to drink raw milk, one delegate brought the drink in to celebrate and...several lawmakers have gotten sick...An anonymous complaint is in at the state Department of Health and Human Resources...now state health officials have to investigate why at least one person is saying the raw milk was given illegally and got these lawmakers sick...
Several lawmakers say a delegate who sponsored the bill, Scott Cadle (R - Mason, 13), brought in the drinks. " (He) caught me in the hallway, offered a cup to me, and you want to try to be a gentleman," (said) Pat McGeehan (R - Hancock, 01). "I had a small sip and walked away and tossed the rest of it."
...(S)upporters say raw milk has a higher nutritional content and is more ethical. "I don't think it's any riskier than eating raw oysters or anything like that," says McGeehan...(who) is quite sick himself...(A) recent stomach bug has been making the rounds for weeks. "I highly doubt raw milk had anything to do with it, in my case..."
Governor Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed a similar bill last year...(H)e signed this...bill because it has precautions in place to better protect people's health...Cadle declined an interview request from WSAZ.
Several lawmakers say a delegate who sponsored the bill, Scott Cadle (R - Mason, 13), brought in the drinks. " (He) caught me in the hallway, offered a cup to me, and you want to try to be a gentleman," (said) Pat McGeehan (R - Hancock, 01). "I had a small sip and walked away and tossed the rest of it."
...(S)upporters say raw milk has a higher nutritional content and is more ethical. "I don't think it's any riskier than eating raw oysters or anything like that," says McGeehan...(who) is quite sick himself...(A) recent stomach bug has been making the rounds for weeks. "I highly doubt raw milk had anything to do with it, in my case..."
Governor Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed a similar bill last year...(H)e signed this...bill because it has precautions in place to better protect people's health...Cadle declined an interview request from WSAZ.
What's the point of a higher nutritional content if it has so much other stuff that makes you sick?
rocktivity
March 2, 2016
Substitute Governor Soprano for Gatsby, Donald Trump for Tom Buchanan, Bruce Springsteen for Daisy Buchanan, and you've got a remake in the making!
rocktivity
An Amazing Summation Of Christie (Written Thirty-Five Years Ago)
about a character who was invented nearly one hundred years ago:
The Great Gatsby...is a very great American novel with a considerable bearing...on any story in which social...reality, spirit, and money are understood in their relation to each other...
A half century ago...(Gatsby) was already inventing American society although he mistakenly supposed that it existed, and that it was Daisy and Tom Buchanan. What defined his life was not our present-day belief that money buys class, but the far more radical conviction that if money was legitimately come by, it was class, and...(therefore) conferred moral stature. When he died, Gatsby was still seeking not only a means of self-realization but a means of social incarnation as well...
(The Great Gatsby's author) F. Scott Fitzgerald was not afraid of the word "vulgar"...
-- Diana Trilling, Mrs. Harris: The Death Of The Scarsdale Diet Doctor, 1981
Substitute Governor Soprano for Gatsby, Donald Trump for Tom Buchanan, Bruce Springsteen for Daisy Buchanan, and you've got a remake in the making!
rocktivity
February 19, 2016
Brennan doesn't seem to realize that he's employing the exact same strategy that got Knott convicted. She's just TOO gosh-darned respectable AND female to be treated like -- well, a common criminal? Neither the jury nor the judge agreed -- and more to the point, Mr. Brennan left a single pivotal word out of his argument.
Knott's co-defendants were adjudged guilty by plea DEALS (which, in case he also didn't know, were offered with the victims' blessings). The "disparity" in sentencing that Brennan (and DUer RobinA) noticed is that probation was the co-defendants' "reward" for sparing everyone the time and stresses of a trial. Knott turned down her plea deal -- now she deserves a lesser sentence on the grounds that she didn't get acquitted?
rocktivity
UPDATE: New Attorney Files for Mulligan on Plea Deal
Philadelphia Gay News.com:
Ten days after (she was) ordered to prison...Bill Brennan, who has taken over Knott’s defense...filed a motion for reconsideration...
“In multi-defendant cases, courts historically have tried to show some commonality, some parity of sentences. The individuals in this matter who actually physically inflicted the harm, the striking blows, received sentences of non-incarceration,” Brennan said. “We understand that Ms. Knott exercised her right to trial but, in the final analysis, all three defendants have been adjudged guilty — two by pleas and one by a verdict — so we are going to ask the court to reconsider partially based on a disparity in the punishment imposed.”
MyInforms.com:
According to Brennan, Knott “has learned a lot in the (past) 18 months,”...and her sentencing should be more rehabilitative... “In this case, the individual has a clean background, no prior contact with the justice system, and is serving prison time for a mid-level misdemeanor...”
Brennan doesn't seem to realize that he's employing the exact same strategy that got Knott convicted. She's just TOO gosh-darned respectable AND female to be treated like -- well, a common criminal? Neither the jury nor the judge agreed -- and more to the point, Mr. Brennan left a single pivotal word out of his argument.
Knott's co-defendants were adjudged guilty by plea DEALS (which, in case he also didn't know, were offered with the victims' blessings). The "disparity" in sentencing that Brennan (and DUer RobinA) noticed is that probation was the co-defendants' "reward" for sparing everyone the time and stresses of a trial. Knott turned down her plea deal -- now she deserves a lesser sentence on the grounds that she didn't get acquitted?
rocktivity
February 12, 2016
Misogynistic and vile? Hell, yes -- because the joke trades on the inconvenient truth that people who exchange money for sex (traditionally male) have moral, social, and legal ascendancy over people (traditionally female) who exchange sex for money. But if you substitute loyalty, integrity, or ambition (especially political ambition) for the sex, and any kind of reward or favoritism for the money, the joke also functions in the "respectable" world. I actually heard an MSNBC commentator say it of a politician, "Well, now we know what he is -- AND we know his price!"
rocktivity
Here's how I originally heard the joke
"Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"
"Yes."
"Would you sleep with me for five dollars?"
"Hell, no! What do you think I am?"
"We've ESTABLISHED what you are. Now we're just negotiating the price."
Misogynistic and vile? Hell, yes -- because the joke trades on the inconvenient truth that people who exchange money for sex (traditionally male) have moral, social, and legal ascendancy over people (traditionally female) who exchange sex for money. But if you substitute loyalty, integrity, or ambition (especially political ambition) for the sex, and any kind of reward or favoritism for the money, the joke also functions in the "respectable" world. I actually heard an MSNBC commentator say it of a politician, "Well, now we know what he is -- AND we know his price!"
rocktivity
February 10, 2016
Easy on the melodrama, Huffpo -- two primary contests, one of which was held in a candidate's back yard, do not a "protracted struggle" make. But it does mean that it's time to get this out of the mothballs:
As for Hillary's treasury of superdelegate commitments, here's another little artifact from 2008:
I'm not saying that Hillary's approach can't work, just that it didn't work last time.
rocktivity
This is not the campaign that Hillary Clinton and the party envisioned...
Huffington Post: Sen. Bernie Sanders' victory over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary all but guarantees the party what it wanted to avoid: a long, costly, and potentially damaging primary fight to determine the nominee...
(But) even amid the dour news on Tuesday night, there was confident talk. "We'll do well in March. And that's where the ballgame is," Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta said. The (Clinton) campaign released a three-page memo...touting (her) strength in the upcoming states and noting, rightly, that there were far more delegates to gain there...
(T)he memo read..."In total, 1,875 delegates will be awarded in the first 15 days of March, including nearly 900 on Super Tuesday alone. When you take into account the large number of Super Delegate commitments we’ve secured, as well as Hillary’s commanding lead in the polls in delegate-rich states, she is in a very strong position to become the nominee."
That Clinton's team has to rely on sharp analytics and delegate math-crunching to make the case for her winning the nomination is, in and of itself, remarkable. She wasn't supposed to be in this type of protracted struggle, certainly not against someone who wasn't even a Democrat...
(But) even amid the dour news on Tuesday night, there was confident talk. "We'll do well in March. And that's where the ballgame is," Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta said. The (Clinton) campaign released a three-page memo...touting (her) strength in the upcoming states and noting, rightly, that there were far more delegates to gain there...
(T)he memo read..."In total, 1,875 delegates will be awarded in the first 15 days of March, including nearly 900 on Super Tuesday alone. When you take into account the large number of Super Delegate commitments we’ve secured, as well as Hillary’s commanding lead in the polls in delegate-rich states, she is in a very strong position to become the nominee."
That Clinton's team has to rely on sharp analytics and delegate math-crunching to make the case for her winning the nomination is, in and of itself, remarkable. She wasn't supposed to be in this type of protracted struggle, certainly not against someone who wasn't even a Democrat...
Easy on the melodrama, Huffpo -- two primary contests, one of which was held in a candidate's back yard, do not a "protracted struggle" make. But it does mean that it's time to get this out of the mothballs:
As for Hillary's treasury of superdelegate commitments, here's another little artifact from 2008:
I'm not saying that Hillary's approach can't work, just that it didn't work last time.
rocktivity
February 10, 2016
Show me a bad loser, and I'll show you a possibly psychotic overgrown brat. And a bad leader. AND a loser....
rocktivity
Newton isn't sorry for acting like sore loser
Courier-Tribune: Cam Newton isn’t apologizing for acting like a “sore loser” after the Super Bowl. The league’s MVP has been widely criticized for walking out of a three-minute press conference after a 24-10 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday in which he answered questions with mostly one- and two-word responses while sulking in his chair wearing a black Carolina Panthers hoodie over his head.
“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser,” Newton said Tuesday as players cleaned out their lockers at the team’s downtown stadium.
“If I offended anybody that’s cool, but I know who I am and I’m not about to conform nor bend for anybody’s expectations because yours or anybody’s expectations would never exceed mine...Who are you to say that your way is right? I have all of these people who are condemning and saying this, that and the third, but what makes your way right?”
Panthers coach Ron Rivera said while he prefers his fifth-year quarterback would have handled the situation a little better, he understands where he is coming from and what he felt at the time. “That’s who he is. He hates to lose, that’s the bottom line,” Rivera said. “That is what you love in him. I would much rather have a guy who hates to lose than a guy who accepts it. The guy who accepts it, you might as well just push him out of your locker room because you don’t want him around..."
“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser,” Newton said Tuesday as players cleaned out their lockers at the team’s downtown stadium.
“If I offended anybody that’s cool, but I know who I am and I’m not about to conform nor bend for anybody’s expectations because yours or anybody’s expectations would never exceed mine...Who are you to say that your way is right? I have all of these people who are condemning and saying this, that and the third, but what makes your way right?”
Panthers coach Ron Rivera said while he prefers his fifth-year quarterback would have handled the situation a little better, he understands where he is coming from and what he felt at the time. “That’s who he is. He hates to lose, that’s the bottom line,” Rivera said. “That is what you love in him. I would much rather have a guy who hates to lose than a guy who accepts it. The guy who accepts it, you might as well just push him out of your locker room because you don’t want him around..."
Show me a bad loser, and I'll show you a possibly psychotic overgrown brat. And a bad leader. AND a loser....
rocktivity
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Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 44,922