Mr. Franken goes to Washington but no media coverage
Well it looks like Al Franken the darling of the Democratic party won't getting the big welcome to Washington and U.S. Senate that he thought we was going to get from all of the news media outlets including ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC who are now focusing on broadcasting and providing live and uninterrupted coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial service from the Staples Center in Los Angeles leaving Mr. Franken scratching his head wondering why the news networks didn't care about him, well to that I say boo frickin' hoo, the world doesn't exclusive revolve around you and everything that you do.
After many financial woes and bankruptcy proceedings that lasted nearly a year the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas can once again hold its head up high as it emerged from bankruptcy on Wednesday with Onex Corporation and former MGM Grand, Inc. CEO Alex Yemenidjian taking control and full ownership of the venerable property at 12:01am from Tropicana Entertainment and controversial parent company Columbia Sussex Corporation and their CEO William Yung III.
Columbia Sussex purchased the Tropicana Las Vegas in 2006 as part of its $2.75 billion acquisition of Phoenix, Arizona based casino and hospitality company Aztar Corporation changing the name to Tropicana Entertainment, LLC., however their luck quickly ran out when the New Jersey Casino Control Commission refused to renew the license of the Atlantic City Tropicana citing violations of New Jersey's Casino Control Act of 1976 and poor conditions at the property, this denial triggered a host of events including Tropicana Entertainment itself filing for bankruptcy along all of its subsidiaries and the transfer of control of the Tropicana Las Vegas to the bondholders including Onex Corporation when it emerged from bankruptcy later in the year.
The Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey which was once part of Tropicana Entertainment and a sister property to the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas is currently in the process of being acquired for $200 million by billionaire investor Carl Icahn.
Actor Karl Malden best known for extra large nose, As a Broadway performer during the 1930's and for starring and co-starring some of the most notable motion pictures and TV series in the 20th Century has died of natural causes at his home in Brentwood, California at the age of 97.
Malden's movie and television credits span for over four decades and include co-starring with Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (Academy Award For Best Supporting Actor) and On The Waterfront, Birdman of Alcatraz with Burt Lancaster and Telly Savalas, Patton with George C. Scott, The Sting II with Mac Davis and Jackie Gleason and in Nuts with Barbra Streisand and Richard Dreyfus. On television he co-started with Michael Douglas in the 1970s series The Streets of San Francisco and for nearly two decades as the spokesman for American Express Travelers Cheques urging vacationers "Don't Leave Home Without It!", He also appear in one episode of NBC's political drama The West Wing as Father Thomas Cavanaugh.
The words United States Senator Al Franken from Minnesota just makes me wanna wretch with disgust! It boggles my mind how Minnesota's Supreme Court has no conscience and just left the door wide open for him to steal the election outright, At every turn the appeals court and the Supreme Court have been playing partisan politics not taking into account whether the questionable votes should be investigated further as a legal vote or not a legal vote and the numerous absentee ballots that were excluded from the men and women serving in the U.S. Military which is clearly a slap in their faces because they are busy fighting to protect their fellow Americans from terrorism and the those who want to oppress your freedoms, Now according to the court's logic Al Franken already leads so there's no need to go on which just makes you scream oh sure that's because they know if they did included all of the absentees and cleared those questionable votes as valid then Norm Coleman would clearly have been declared the winner lock, stock and barrel.
I'd also like to point out that Mr. Franken has also stated without any hesitation that he hates Republicans and will not with them and will not be bi-partisan on any bills that are introduced by Republicans, Mr. Franken claims that he will work for every Minnesotan but obviously not if your a Minnesotan who also happens to be a Republican which means until a real qualified Senator takes office some residents of Minnesota are just plain out of luck and to be honest with you the people of Minnesota would have been better off if the second Minnesota Senate seat had stayed empty if Norm Coleman was not re-elected to office.
Well Bernard Madoff the 71 year old disgraced investment broker was sentenced on Monday by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to serve a maximum of 150 years¹ in federal prison for his elaborate ponzi scheme which stolen billions of dollars from unsuspecting clients including husband and wife actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick as well as actor John Malkovich, former Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher and Baseball Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, CNN talk show host Larry King and World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein. Madoff and his wife were also ordered to forfeit $171 billion dollars which includes personal assets, a home in Manhattan in New York City and two vacation homes, one in Montauk on Long Island in New York and in Palm Beach, Florida.
A statement by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in part "Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of irresponsible manipulation of the system is not merely a bloodless financial crime that takes place just on paper, but it is instead ... one that takes a staggering human toll".
Good for Judge Chin! All of this greed has got to stop and if making an example of Bernard Madoff is the only way then so be it.
¹ Under federal law the U.S. Bureau of Prisons does not have a parole system, federal inmates must serve their sentence in full before being eligible for release which means Bernard Madoff will not be eligible for release until June 2159 which is very unlikely to happen.
On Monday it started to look like it was going to be one of those a Happy Go-Lucky weeks but then it all felt apart. On Tuesday it was reported that former Tonight Show announcer Ed McMahon passed away after suffering from long term health problems, then two days later on Thursday reports came that former Charlie's Angels star Farrah Fawcett lost her long battle with cancer succumbing to the disease during the night surrounded by her family and loved ones, then to make matters worst people who were mourning Farrah got the shock of their lives on the same day when the celebrity gossip website TMZ reported at 4:30pm (L.A. Time) that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop had apparently collapsed after suffering Cardiac Arrest and was being transported to the hospital, 50 minutes later at 5:20pm TMZ was reporting that after an hour long effort to revive Jackson, doctors pronounced him dead.
I have to admit that some of my writings on this blog about Ed McMahon were not that kind and somewhat critical which in retrospect I regret writing but it was done in the heat of anger because at the time media reports said that he mismanaged his money and was looking for hand outs from his Hollywood friends which as it turns out was not the case at all. As a performer he was truly an icon, especially with his 30+ years with Johnny Carson and a television host in his own right with such 80's show as Star Search. We can only hope that when he reaches heaven that Johnny Carson is standing there uttering those words, Heeeeeeeeeeeee're Ed! as the pearly gates swing wide open.
Current Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien broke his normal monologue to take time to pay both a personal and video tribute to Ed McMahon.
Farrah Fawcett, Oh man what I can say about her except that during the 1970's and 1980's she was every young boy's fantasy girl with her sexy posters plastered all over of their walls, A couple years ago there was a very unflattering made for TV about her and her co-stars days on the set of Charlie's Angels but I have to believe she was a good hearted person but was blinded by her manager and talent agent's mis-direction which ultimately cost her job on Charlie's Angels and I found NBC's recent documentary Farrah's Story very touching especially Ms. Fawcett's willingness to let the public see what she was going through during her cancer treatments, it was also sad to see that because of Fawcett's sickness Ryan O'Neal and other family members had decided kept the fact that their son Redmond was incarcerated in jail on drug charges but I was very glad to see that a judge allowed Redmond one last chance to see his mother before her passing. Now there is one thing that really is puzzling to me, the fact that at age 50 Farrah decided to post nude for Playboy Magazine, I mean come on that's just creepy, it's like looking at your mom in the nude which makes you want to scream out loud Ewwww!
Michael Jackson is the undisputed King of Pop, I remember during the 70s listen to Jackson Five and his solo records on the radio but over the past two decades he seems to have alienated his fan base more and more with his strange behavior which came to a head in 1985 after an accident on the set of a Pepsi-Cola commercial left him severely burned on his head, body and arms, like Howard Hughes, Michael Jackson became more and more reclusive and then accusations started arising of alleged sexual abuse of young boys during sleep-overs at his Neverland Ranch in Los Olivos, California, he beat the rap on criminal charges of child sexual abuse twice and was married three times, two of which produced three children and his brief marriage to Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie. Jackson was preparing for a series of come back concerts starting in London, England later next month. The preliminary autopsy report is expected to be release sometime later this week.
A notice that appears on the BBC website informing visitors who live outside of the United Kingdom that the live streaming video for BBC television stations are not available.
One of the things that I've enjoyed doing over these many years since getting full time Internet access is watching live television from other countries especially the various national legislatures and parliaments and for many years this could do this without any hassles, unfortunately though with the birth of flash video and geoblocking those days seem to have come to an end, essentially locking you and me out from enjoying programs that normally we wouldn't get to see in our own home country.
The main reason that the world's TV network have started using Geoblocking is first protect their exclusive rights to air the vast number of television programs that they have paid millions of dollars for and second is to cut back on the expenditure of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they pay each month for Internet bandwidth. Here in the U.S. the big four (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX) all use Geoblocking and display an error message when you try to access their video from outside of a U.S. assigned IP address. In Canada television networks like The Comedy Network use Geoblocking to completely block access outside of the Canada, for example if you are a visitors from the United States and enter thecomedynetwork.ca into your web browser instead of seeing The Comedy Network you would be forwarded to Comedy Central's U.S. website (comedycentral.com), this is because The Comedy Network has purchased the rights to air Comedy Central programming in Canada and vice-versa. In the United Kingdom television networks like the BBC, ITV, Channel Four and Channel Five not only uses Geoblocking to protect their exclusive licensing rights to air a program in their country but also because the UK government mandates that anyone who lives within the boundaries of the UK including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland obtain a television license for their television sets, the money received by the UK Television Licensing is used to fund the BBC and SC4 television networks and as you can see from the image shown above on the BBC website anyone living or accessing their website from outside of the UK will receive an error message.
Well it looks like Al Franken the darling of the Democratic party won't getting the big welcome to Washington and U.S. Senate that he thought we was going to get from all of the news media outlets including ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC who are now focusing on broadcasting and providing live and uninterrupted coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial service from the Staples Center in Los Angeles leaving
