Tag Archives: become-pregnant

Whitey Bulger Witness Found Dead; Stephen "Stippo" Rakes Was 59

Stephen “Stippo” Rakes, a possible witness in the murder trial of alleged crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, has been found dead, reports indicate. The body of Rakes, 59, showed “no obvious signs of trauma” and an autopsy is being done to determine the cause of death, officials said. The corpse was found yesterday at 1:30 p.m., police said. Rakes had been eager to testify that Bulger threatened his family at gunpoint and forced him to turn his liquor store into a front for the Winter Hill Gang. But earlier this week, prosecutors informed Rakes he would not be called to testify, a decision that left him “despondent,” a source close to his family said. The judge overseeing the Whitey Bulger trial hunkered down with lawyers in a confidential conference at the courthouse today where the trial is being held. Bulger, 84, alleged to be a notorious and murderous crime boss and federal informant, is standing trial after being found on the lam in California in 2011. Rakes was to testify that Bulger and Stephen Flemmi threatened his daughter at gunpoint, and took over his South Boston liquor store for Bulger’s headquarters. However, Bulger sidekick Kevin Weeks testified last week that Rakes’ contention that Bulger’s gang put a gun to his daughter’s head was bogus. News of his death investigation came on the same day that Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi was slated to take the stand against Bulger as well. The two men ran the Winter Hill Gang for decades while also working as informants for the FBI, according to prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Police told the Rakes family the death appeared to be a suicide. However, a source close to the Rakes family told ABC News early Thursday that “he had no phone, no wallet, and police are still looking for his car.” The body was positively identified as Rakes this morning. Rakes’ longtime friend Steve Davis, whose sister Debbie was allegedly murdered by Bulger, had met him for breakfast daily before court. Davis said he last saw Rakes Tuesday in court but then couldn’t reach him all night Tuesday and yesterday he did not meet him in the courthouse. “Stippo would not kill himself. Absolutely not,” Davis told ABC News. “He was looking forward to taking the stand. He told me over and over he had a big bombshell to drop. “He had everything to live for and was looking forward to his day in court.” Davis – who lost his sister, brother and father to homicide, and whose daughter was killed in a drunk driver accident – was devastated by the news. “It doesn’t make sense,” Davis said.

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Whitey Bulger Witness Found Dead; Stephen "Stippo" Rakes Was 59

Margaretta Wolf, 96-Year-Old Grocery Store Owner, Lays Smack Down on Robber

She may look like an easy target, but Margaretta Wolf, 96, turned the tables on a would-be robber at her neighborhood grocery store in Wisconsin. Looks can be deceiving, as they say. Having owned and operated her store for 54 years, she wasn’t about to cave to some armed intruder after he ordered her to open the cash register. “I said: ‘I’m not opening that register. That’s it, I’m not opening it. I said have all the Tootsie Rolls you want but I am not opening that cash register,'” she said. The man in the silver mask and carrying a knife continued to give Wolf orders during the robbery attempt Monday, but she was having none of it . “He said, ‘Walk in the back of the store.’ I said, ‘I’m not walking no place, I’m standing right here,’ ” Wolf recounted, then stood her ground even as he pulled a knife. “I said, ‘I’ll press a button and I’ll have somebody here in seconds,'” she said. Wolf said the would-be robber appeared frustrated and confused, looked around, saw a security camera in the corner, then took his knife and fled. Marshfield, Wisc., Police Lt. Darren Larsen said he’s just glad Wolf is okay. “In this instance, certainly again while not recommended with what took place, we’re just very, very happy Marge was not injured,” Larsen told WAOW-TV. Wolf said she has a few words for the suspect if the cops nab him. “What do I say to him? I say I think you got some punishments coming, and it will be a little bit more than scrubbing the floor,” she told her local news. Moral of the story … don’t mess with this granny!

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Margaretta Wolf, 96-Year-Old Grocery Store Owner, Lays Smack Down on Robber

Lea Michele Acted as Cory Monteith Guardian Angel, Did All She Could to Save Actor

Lea Michele tried. She really did. Aware that Cory Monteith had a history of substance abuse, Michele did all she could to protect her fellow Glee star during the year-plus they dated. According to a TMZ insider, Cory – described as sweet but naive – was surrounded by a ” a zoo of piranhas ” in Hollywood, with danger around every corner. But Michele stood by her man and took the lead in convincing him to attend rehab this spring after his addiction cropped back up. Unfortunately, she could not control Monteith’s behavior in his native Canada, which, as previously reported, contrasted greatly from his actions in Hollywood . He died last Saturday in a Vancouver hotel room after a night out with friends. This same source says Michele was instrumental in arranging Monteith’s cremation and memorial. She took the reins and made it a lot easier on Cory’s mother in the wake of her son’s tragedy. R.I.P.

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Lea Michele Acted as Cory Monteith Guardian Angel, Did All She Could to Save Actor

Angelina Jolie: Pregnant With Twins Again (Tabloid Claims)!

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have just experienced the mother of all “pregnancy shockers” and are – wait for it, and breathe – expecting TWINS! AGAIN**! ** – According to the new cover of OK! While fake weddings and pregnancies are standard celebrity gossip fare, this publication takes the cake as far as bogus Brangelina scoop goes. Not that it’s any surprise at this point. Jolie, the magazine says if you actually read the article, wants to become pregnant again – with twins, hopefully, before her ability to have kids ends. Considering Ange’s recent medical procedures – she underwent a double mastectomy and may have her ovaries removed next – we sort of doubt it. That and she and fiance Brad are devoted parents to six beautiful children already. Six! Unless you’re Michelle Duggar , that’s a lot to handle.

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Angelina Jolie: Pregnant With Twins Again (Tabloid Claims)!

More Kos-MSNBC Drama: Phil Griffin Bans Markos From Guest Appearances

When you’re too crazy for MSNBC… Markos Moulitsas, founder of the far-left blog Daily Kos, announced today that he has been ” blacklisted ” by MSNBC for taunting “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough. “I just don’t know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time,” MSNBC president Phil Griffin told Moulitsas. Griffin’s ostracism marks the second instance in recent days that a prominent MSNBC personality has spurned Kos or his blog. A couple weeks ago, Keith Olbermann accounced he would no longer be writing for the site. He returned a few days later. Still, there seem to be some reservations even at liberal MSNBC about the often crude, pugilistic style employed by so many of the Kossacks. What set off the most recent tiff? A tweet exchange, recounted below the fold. JoeNBC: The Sestak story is as unbelievable a cover story as Nixon throwing little Checkers under the bus. A farce on it’s face. Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1. The press will let this laughable story slide. markos: Like story of a certain dead intern. RT @JoeNBC: Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1. Markos: But if you want to talk about bullshit “scandals”, @JoeNBC, there’s this one about Joe Sestak and the White House you might’ve heard of. JoeNBC: @markos Unbelievable. You have a long history of spreading lies suggesting I am a murderer. This is the 3rd or 4th time by my count. Markos: @JoeNBC, I’ve never suggested you’re a murderer. I’ve noted media hypocrisy in going after Gary Condit. But he was Dem. You aren’t. JoeNBC: Anyone in media who interviews @markos, know that you’re extending your credibility to someone who regularly suggests that I’m a murderer. Markos: A bit touchy, @JoeNBC? Links for where I accuse you of being a murderer please. Moulitsas didn’t get any links, but he did get this message from Griffin: Markos, Blog if you must, but here is my on the record statement to you which I ask that you print in full: Yes, after I became aware of the ugly cheap shot  you  took at Joe on Twitter, I asked the teams to take a break from booking you on our shows for a while. I found the comments to be in poor taste, and utterly uncalled for in a civil discourse. I’m hoping this will be only temporary and that the situation can be resolved in a mature fashion, but until then I just don’t know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time. The DailyKos community has been among the most supportive of MSNBC, and we continue to appreciate that support. Markos thinks that Griffin responded the way he did in defense of the cable network’s “token conservative.” “I’ve criticized Chris Matthews before, sometimes harshly,” he whined, “and it never led to me being banned.” Moulitsas fails to grasp — as one Kos reader put it — that he didn’t go after Matthews like that… I mean don’t get me wrong, that tweet was some piping hot ether and I admire it from a trolling perspective, but c’mon. You were clearly taking a swing at Joe’s jaw with the “dead intern” line. You connected, his skull reeled like Balboa in Round 10, he winced in pain. You weren’t trying to make some larger point about media bias. You were looking to bust somebody upside they head. And that is the Kossack way. Just not the MSNBC way, apparently.

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More Kos-MSNBC Drama: Phil Griffin Bans Markos From Guest Appearances

Cox Reporter Rips Right-Wing Luminaries for ‘Rumor’ About Offshore Drilling Plans in Cuba, Burns Herself

Rush has spent a considerable portion of today’s broadcast ripping into this article by Christine Stapleton of Cox Newspapers, and rightly so, for the first three of the four opening paragraphs that follow: Despite the warnings of Dick Cheney, George Will, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, the Russians are not drilling for oil off Cuba. Neither are the Chinese. In fact, no one — not even Cuba — is drilling for oil off Cuba. The pesky and persistent rumor, bubbling back up with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, is still nothing more than a pesky and persistent rumor — aired in 2008 by former Vice President Cheney (who got the misinformation from conservative columnist Will), repeated on Fox News and recently revived by conservative radio commentator Limbaugh, who told his listeners 10 days after the spill: “The Russians are drilling in a deal with the Cubans in the Gulf. The Vietnamese and Angola are drilling for oil in the Gulf in deals with the Cubans.” However, as oil from BP’s exploded well continues surging from the Gulf floor and washing onto Panhandle beaches, the rumor is poised to become fact. Repsol, a Spanish company, expects to begin drilling off Cuba in 2011, according to published reports and oil-industry analysts. Companies from at least 10 other countries, including Russia and China, are negotiating or already have signed lease deals to drill off Cuba. It’s as if Cheney, Limbaugh, and Will have been making things up out of thin air all along, nothing at all has happened until now, and they’re all of sudden just getting lucky. Horse manure. Stapleton’s comeback would more than likely be, “I’m right, because no one is drilling right at this very moment.” Well, ma’am, if you’re going to get that technical, I will too. This Wall Street Journal story notes that Repsol did some drilling in 2004, and then stopped after results were disappointing. So the Spanish company isn’t about to “begin” drilling, it’s going to “resume” doing so. And while we’re at it, Ms. Stapleton, a person doesn’t issue “warnings” about what is happening, they do so about what’s coming. So when you try to claim that the conservative trio was claiming that substantial drilling was already occurring two years ago, anyone reading and listening in context knew that they meant that the Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Angolans — and for that matter, Petrobas , the Brazilian-owned oil company in which George Soros has hundreds of millions of dollars invested (how did she miss that?) — are attempting to work out and in several cases have worked out arrangements with the Cuban government that would or will lead to drilling operations. The linked article also notes that: Cuba’s portion of the Gulf of Mexico (Click image at top right to enlarge — Ed.) has been divided into 59 blocks, of which 17 have been contracted out to companies including Spanish oil giant Repsol and its partners, Malaysia’s Petronas, Brazil’s Petrobras, Venezuela’s PDVSA and PetroVietnam. Shazam! They already have contracts (for what that’s worth in dealing with Fidel Castro’s communist workers’ paradise). Rush also pointed to this Associated Press item from July 2006 carried at the Washington Post. From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation — a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come. What has changed the equation? Oil. To be more specific, recent, sizable discoveries of it in the North Cuba Basin — deep-water fields that have already drawn the interest of companies from China, India, Norway, Spain, Canada, Venezuela and Brazil. This, in turn, has reheated debate in the U.S. Congress and the Cuban-American community on an old question: Has the time finally come to shelve the embargo — given America’s need for more sources of crude at a time of rising gas prices, soaring global demand and the outbreak of war in the Middle East? Thus, there has been interest in Cuba’s oil for four years. This, along with the contractual arrangements cited above, makes the existence of plans to drill in Cuba far more than the “pesky and persistent rumor” Ms. Stapleton cited. Ms. Stapleton should have put a hold on the bashing and stuck to reporting the relevant facts. Instead she chose to insult informed readers’ intelligence by taking cheap and ineffective shots at people who have been proven right time and time again — including this time. Your loss, ma’am. Graphic found at the Palm Beach Post . Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Cox Reporter Rips Right-Wing Luminaries for ‘Rumor’ About Offshore Drilling Plans in Cuba, Burns Herself

Newsweek Promotes Parent-Free Pill Access for Teens

Should it be easier for your teenage daughter to get birth control pills without your knowledge? One Newsweek contributor thinks so. In a July 7 op-ed , Meredith Melnick praised the “movement” to make the Pill more accessible by making it available over the counter, in part because it would remove parents from the equation. “ Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to access problems because it is harder for them to get to a doctor without a parent’s help,” Melnick said. “Almost 20 percent of sexually active teens who do not want to become pregnant are not using contraceptives, according to the Guttmacher Institute,” Melnick wrote. “And teenage girls who do not use contraception during their first sexual experience are twice as likely to become teen mothers as their counterparts who use protection.” Melnick did not inform readers that the Guttmacher Institute is affiliated with Planned Parenthood, a liberal pro-abortion organization. Melnick highlighted complaints that prescription-based access to birth control is “patronizing to women, limits contraceptive freedom, and is ineffective against intractably high teen-pregnancy rates.” But she never mentioned the fact that the pill does not protect against HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). Melnick glossed over the side effects of birth control hormones, suggesting that an over-the-counter, progestin-only pill “might be safer to use” than so-called “combined” pills, which include progestin and estrogen. Melnick’s report and others like it, including June 21 New York Times op-ed Ibis Reproductive Health President Kelly Blanchard, have joined what has been a month-long media celebration of the 50 th anniversary of the Pill. Media outlets have used the anniversary to provide one-sided coverage of the Pill, promote more potent hormone contraceptives and criticize abstinence education .

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Newsweek Promotes Parent-Free Pill Access for Teens

BP Spills Coffee

This is one of those “if it wasn't so true I would laugh” videos. It pretty much sums up the whole thing. http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/6472/bp-spills-coffee added by: booksellergirl

iPhone 4 display showcased in gorgeous detail

The iPhone 4 display has been showcased in some beautiful, high resolution photos that should not be missed. added by: admillios

Activism at Fort Lauderdale’s Federal Court House 6/10/10 – Police Laugh At Free Speech

handing information to interested parties. Greg told them that it’s his first amendment right to hand out information and the police officer laughed….. Click here to read full story… http://florida.fija.org/activism-at-fort-lauderdales-federal-court-house-continu… added by: shanklinmike