Court-approved wiretaps will answer questions or will they?

It's taken a few days for it to have been confirmed, albeit through unnamed sources that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps. Some honesty and full disclosure would be nice as opposed to the variety of sources coming forward only giving tidbits of information. It would also demonstrate that our future president elect was serious about his belief in transparency.

How long will the tapes remain a secret becomes the next question. Realistically the sooner the truth comes out, good or bad, it is the only way to end the speculation of exactly what was said and by whom.

This has also spread to some demanding that Jesse Jackson, Jr. resign since it has been speculated that he was involved the arrangements to raise money for Gov. Rod Blagojevich in exchange for his being appointed to President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat.

Ever wonder why CNN's comments are typically pro-Obama?

CNN is selective about commenting, showing that their bias exits. It also means some of the hateful tripe that gets posted? Was approved by a moderator. If you post a comment this is what you will get:

Thank you for contributing. Comments are moderated by CNN and will not appear on this story until after they have been reviewed and deemed appropriate for posting. Unfortunately, due to the volume of comments we receive, not all comments can be posted.

So, for a speech that was called Most Macho Speech of the night given by a woman there was not one comment that stated the speech was well done when I visited.

If that's not purposely trying to create a false impression, I don't know what is. It's impossible that not one single person felt that speech was well delivered when CNN posted the article.

Gee Bigfoot turns out to be a hoax and Biscardi plays innocent...

Bigfoot in a freezer turns out to be rubber suit.

The hoax was discovered after an "expedited melting process," Kulls wrote. "A break appeared up near the feet area ... as the team and I began examining this area near the feet, I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot."

Kulls said he contacted Tom Biscardi, the self-described "Real Bigfoot Hunter" who has been searching since 1971 for the creature of legend and appeared alongside Whitton and Dyer at the news conference.

"Later that day, Tom Biscardi informed us that both Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer admitted it was a costume," the posting said.

Yet, let's look at what Biscardi said at the time of the press conference:

Biscardi showed reporters two blurry photos, claiming one was the mouth of the "creature" while the other was another creature running through the Georgia woods. The men claimed they "stumbled on the creature," but would not reveal more because they were concerned about it being an "endangered species."

Biscardi reiterated his invitation to FOX News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly to come to Georgia and view the body, and plugged his Internet radio show.

He said there wouldn't be anything more revealed Friday, but promised that he would "assemble" a group of scientists to examine the alleged corpse.

It gets worse for one of the fraudsters, according to Fox, he's now out of a job:

As for Whitton, he doesn't seem to have a job to come back to in Georgia.

Asked for comment on Officer Whitton, Clayton County, Ga., Chief of Police Jeffrey Turner, corrected FoxNews.com. "You mean ex-officer Whitton."

"As soon as we saw it was a hoax," Chief Turner explained, "I filed the paperwork to terminate his employment."

Turner said he hasn't heard from Whitton, and that he was mystified at the former officer's involvement in such a blatant scam.

"He was a real go-getter," Turner said, citing Whitton's wounding in the line of duty earlier this summer while apprehending a suspect who had allegedly shot a woman in the head. "For someone to do a complete three-sixty like that, I can't explain it."

Let's hope the net rumors that they got $50,000 from Biscardi is true, sounds like they might have some legal bills...

Will it turn out to be bigfoot or a big hoax?

That's the question we are left with when you read Body proves Bigfoot no myth, hunters say. There's a photo but it looks like someone wearing a bad gorilla suit. Yet according to:

Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, a pair of Bigfoot-hunting hobbyists from north Georgia, say they found the creature's body in a wooded area and spotted several similar creatures that were still alive.

I guess it's creating quite a stir, and according to Fox News the pair are getting death threats from "Sasquatch fanatics" who'd you think would be happy if it is proven true. Unless they are mad because they too see too much resemblance to this Halloween costum.



So let's compare!

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Reserve spokesman Tom Mackenzie told the Associated Press his agency isn't taking the claim seriously and won't investigate.

"It's not on endangered species on any list that we've got," he said.

Hoax or not, Tom Biscardi, a Bigfoot “expert” who has inspected the carcass and claims that it is genuine, has a financial interest in the myth, selling Bigfoot merchandise from his website and it appears he's having a very good few days.

:-)

Avoid spending $20.00 to learn about "blog paycheck"

I just got this email advertising a site called www.easywordpress.com/paidtoblog that tells you if you buy his program now at the low low price of $20.00 compared to $37 he'll tell you how to make money by doing paid blog posts.

Save your money...What he doesn't mention is to get paid $200 a post you have to have a very high google page rank which very few have and that if you do paid blogging for companies like PayPerPost where you have to install an identifiable code on your blog, Google will kill your page rank which means any income is short term for that particular blog. This blog had a google page rank of 6, doing paid posts from companies like PayPerPost is considered a violation of the Google terms of service and I was lucky to have only been dropped to a 3 rather than a zero as some experienced. Thankfully I had been established enough before that...

If you are really interested in the different get paid to blogging programs out there? A year ago I did a series for the Toledo Free Press on this very topic that gives you probably more information that you'd get for the $20.00 for free...

So you want to be a blog mogul

More blogging for dollars.

It goes without saying that this series was written before Google cracked down on the paid blogging industry. However, if you are interested in this? There's no reason to pay anyone for the information...

Someone with the initials L.W. must be declared the winner!

One of the more popular Publisher Clearing House scam messages is the use of "your" initials and the magic words that "someone with the initials of...must be declared a winner". I've gotten that missive more times than I have that Andy Hagler was going to win my money if I didn't act.

What's funny is the almost desperation in the messages increases, as well as the number of times you get emails. It used to be only once or twice a week but the past few days I've been getting the emails from Publisher's Clearing House several times a day. Each time pointing out that while it's not required to purchase anything, I haven't purchased anything yet.

Nor will I, but I can promise that if I ever do win any money? Then I will buy things, not from them of course but I have to do whatever I can to be "the L.W." who will win (lol).

Charities claiming to help veterans offer very little real charity...

The problem is not just that we need government regulation of charities, the real problem is that people do not do enough research as to how much money donated to a charity really ends up in the hands of the person that particular charity is designed to help. When you realize there are charities out there who claim to be helping veterans yet only one penny out of every dollar ends up being given to veterans, it's a sign of the time that some of these charities, related to the military or not, have become money making schemes for those involved. Read some of the examples shared in the Washington Post, but I recommend going even deeper, take a look at the salaries earned by some of the top charities in the United States:

Harold Varmus, M.D., President/CEO, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center $3,016,138
Kenneth L. Connelly, Asst. Chief Scout Executive Boy Scouts of America - N.O. $1,076,626
Donald E. Thomas, COO American Cancer Society $974,819
Wayne Lapierre, Executive VP National Rifle Association $953,110
M. Cass Wheeler, Exec. Dir./CEO American Heart Association $926,467
Gloria A. Feldt, Past President Planned Parenthood Federation of America $926,106
Roxanne Spillett, President/Governor Boys & Girls Clubs of America - N.O. $878,567

ABC News has an additional report on this I recommend watching that states a much higher dollar amount, over 400 million that has been donated to military charities, the Washington Post reports this at $266 million.

It should also be pointed out that Roger Chapin, head of the California-based charity, Help Hospitalized Veterans, has gone into hiding rather than to testify before Congress. They've also provided a pdf so you can see which charities received an A+ so that if do want to donate to a charity that is designed to help veterans, you'll know who you can trust...