Elder financial Abuse: Stealing from Grandpa and Grandma

What will happen when you die?

Who will get your personal belongings and whatever money you have?

Do you even care? Should you care? Do you have a will? Even if you do, will it be carried out like you intended?  

The story plays out thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands of times — every year across the country, a scourge of old age

“America's vulnerable, graying population, and the concentration of wealth among older adults, has created a massive opportunity for fraud. Hard statistics are not available, but experts suspect that perhaps half a million elderly adults are ripped off by family members, lawyers and accountants every year, potentially taking $2.6 billion from infirm older Americans. The crime is known as elder financial abuse. Financial expert and consumer advocate John Wasik has called it "the crime of the 21st century."

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Want to be class president? Not if you're black, in one Miss. school

Mother moves her family after learning about segregation in class elections

It’s hard to believe such blatant racism is tolerated today, but as this article points out, it’s just the way things are in Nettleton Middle School in Nettleton, Miss. The fact of the matter is racism is rampant in America today, and to prove my point look at Glenn Beck’s plans for this weekend (see Post below). 

Beck and Palin to lead ‘extreamist’ rally – they have a dream, but unlike King, it’s only for wealthy white America

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Beck’s bogus “God inspired” idea to overshadow Martin Luther King’s famous speech is based on nothing more than prejudice and hate. Beck loves the limelight and has no trouble calling Obama a racist or anyone else. It’s the pot calling the kettle black – but Beck seems to get away with it. At least with his rabid followers who want to “take America back!”

We're about to crash, jet passengers told in error

'They said the pilot hit the wrong button'

A while back I wrote a column about flying in airplanes and how I dread the experience.

I can just imagine if I’d of been on this flight!

Revenge of the Cat: ‘Cat Bin Lady's’ Internet infamy grows

The Internet abhors a cat dumper.

Never was that sentiment more clear than in its ongoing outrage over the infamous "Cat Bin Lady" of Britain, who made international news after video captured her petting an unsuspecting cat, then incongruously dropping the friendly tabby in a nearby garbage bin.

Gawker's Adrian Chen, himself a victim of the /b/board Internet horde, reports on 4chan's rapid identification and dissemination of the woman's identity, including her name and contact information, as well as that of her employer. Fitting, considering 4chan is responsible for the LOLCat phenomenon enjoyed by the general Internet population today. As was the case when 4chan targeted adolescent viral video star Jessi Slaughter,

Guess who is going to reclaim the civil rights movement?

Just when you thought you heard it all from Glenn Beck he comes up with shit like this. The sad part is, he has a willing (and extremely stupid) audience.

What’s next? No! Don’t tell me.   

Glenn Beck Says Obama’s Not a Muslin But a Perverted-Christian Whatever

“Prominent theologian Glenn Beck has been busy hanging streamers and making his favorite Metamucil-infused punch in preparation for this weekend’s “Restoring Honor” rally, where he and Ted Nugent will reclaim the civil rights movement from the Ghost of Martin Luther King Jr. and riddle it with bullets. Beck says his festival is going to be “the Woodstock of the next generation,” as well as “the anti-Woodstock.” He’s also calling the event an “American miracle,” which sounds more credible than the Woodstock stuff given Beck’s an expert on religion.”
Read more here.

Real tiger cub found in luggage with stuffed toys

Bangkok airport officials got suspicious when suitcase was X-rayed

A live tiger cub was found drugged and hidden among stuffed-tiger toys in the luggage of a woman at Bangkok's airport, a wildlife smuggling watchdog group reported Thursday.

Photo -This two-month-old tiger cub was found in a woman's suitcase at the airport in Bangkok, Thailand

Meet Lorenzo the cat, a complete clotheshorse

This feline loves to wear fancy shirts and mug for the camera

Not many cats have thousands of fans and a couple of museum exhibits under their belts.

Of course, not many cats could wear belts.

Lorenzo is a 2-year-old Maine coon who happily models the latest fashions for his owner, photographer Joann Biondi.

Mendocino County: There’s a Whole Lotta There There

I found this author’s observations/conversations to be interesting. You can go to his website and read the whole article. I was researching alternative vacations when I discovered: 

Max Hartshorne (shown here) who is the editor of GoNOMAD and his blog Readuponit. 

Hartshorne’s description of Mendocino sounds a lot like Humboldt. I suppose they are somewhat akin.

However, in my experience, when I tell people I’m from Humboldt County they automatically think “Marijuana.” If you say Mendocino, the odds are some people will relate it to wine. More informed types will know better, because bud production is a primary crop there. 

Excerpt:

“I asked Richard about the topic that many people quickly associate with the name Mendocino: Marijuana. “Oh, that. Let’s not go there. There are many things more important than that.”

But what he’s referring to is an underground economy of nearly $1.5 billion. Scores of local residents have good jobs trimming the marijuana buds, easy work that pays $25 per hour.

“Try hiring somebody to clean motel rooms, if they can make that for trimming,” an innkeeper told me that night.

In November 2010, an initiative on the California ballot will give voters the chance to legalize pot, both growing it, smoking it, and owning it will be legal. Most people said they thought it was a good idea, eyeing the tax revenues that would be produced for the state.

Everyone here is plain sick of the mess their state finances are in... looming giant deficits and cuts that go far beyond the acceptable. So this new source of tax revenue has to be tempting.

Yet when I visited a winery and spoke to people there, they said that they feel that legalization would kill the many pot businesses, and then big conglomerates would come in and take over the growing operations.

There are already plenty of Mexican drug gangs profiting handsomely from ‘illegal grows’ in the huge state forests of the county. Many people told me about how they showed the DEA where to find the growers who were invading their land with illegal planting...and they said they were fed up with it.

Who knows what will happen? At GoNOMAD we’re interested in promoting tourism, travel and spreading the gospel of going. I think if Mendocino follows the example of Amsterdam, it might be the biggest tourist draw since Disneyland. "This Bud's For You!" might be the perfect slogan for California's new tourism campaign.”

New treatment for advanced melanoma shrinks tumors

Drug reduced tumors in 80 percent of patients, study says, but effect may be fleeting

“An experimental targeted cancer drug shrank advanced melanoma tumors in 81 percent of patients with the deadly and hard-to-treat cancer, doctors said Wednesday.

The findings were part of an early phase study used to determine the best dose of the experimental drug PLX4032, now in late-stage clinical trials. It is designed to target tumor cells with a mutation in a gene called BRAF. The drug is made by Roche and privately held Plexxikon.

In two patients, tumors went away completely. In 24 others, the tumors shrank by more than 30 percent, the team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The team said 81 percent of 32 patients with a BRAF mutation showed complete or partial shrinkage of their tumors.”