PHILLY DEALS: Santorum is saying good-bye to a post that paid him $168,000 in cash and stock last year for attending board and compensation committee meetings, where his duties included approving a $10 million CEO cash, stock and insurance compensation package for Universal boss Alan B. Miller. Universal relied on taxpayer-funded Medicare and Medicaid payments for 38% of its $5.6 billion in revenues last year, according to the company’s annual report. The company collected profits totalling $230 million. MORE RELATED: The federal government exists to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Santorum says, “not to take care of […]
TONITE: Fringeology Live
As a staff writer for Philadelphia Magazine, Steve Volk has been built a solid reputation as an investigative reporter. His book, Fringe-ology is a journey into the unexplored territory where science and the paranormal converge. Join him as he moves into the heart of the paranormal universe to try to answer some of life’s most fundamental questions. Along the way Volk encounters a psychologist who concludes that there is life beyond death, people who claim to have survived alien abduction, a former N.A.S.A astronaut who is now an avid paranormalist, professional ghost-hunters and more. Volk pulls fact from fiction and finds that there is still […]
AP TICKER: Soda Taxation With Representation Is Not Tyranny, It’s Just Good Old Fashioned Common Sense
AP TICKER: Recently, Mayor Nutter proposed a 25 cent tax on soda pop to restore school district funding for things like all-day Kindergarten and school bus service. To which the soda pop lobby responded like the sky was falling. “It would decrease soda consumption and kill jobs”, they screamed, howled and belched. It’s true that studies show that when the price of delicious, life-giving soda goes up, consumption goes down. But in the middle of an epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes, is that such a bad thing? I think we can all agree that NO that is not a […]
In A Bizarre Spy Vs. Spy Maneuver, Pakistan Arrests CIA Informants That Helped Pinpoint Bin Laden
NEW YORK TIMES: Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials. Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration […]
EXCLUSIVE: Penn Relays Was A Magnet For Immigration Fraud According To Wikileaked Cable
U.S. EMBASSY KINGSTON JAMAICA: The Penn Relays track and field meet in April of each year is a major athletic event that is a significant cultural milestone for many young Jamaican athletes. Hundreds of high school and university students apply for visas each spring to attend the meet. However, many mala fide applicants apply for visas to attend the meet as well, disguising themselves as student athletes. MORE RELATED: In January, FPU intercepted a group of sixteen performers who had close ties to the Caribbean Alliance Group, a petitioner known to FPU to have associations with drug trafficking. While this […]
INCOMING: Soundgarden At Festival Pier
July 13th with Mars Volta. Sold out.
DOPE: Weed Killer Wants To Help Grow Killer Weed
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. has long sold weed killer. Now, it’s hoping to help people grow killer weed. In an unlikely move for the head of a major company, Scotts Chief Executive Jim Hagedorn said he is exploring targeting medical marijuana as well as other niches to help boost sales at his lawn and garden company. “I want to target the pot market,” Mr. Hagedorn said in an interview. “There’s no good reason we haven’t.” Sales at Scotts rose 5% last year to $2.9 billion. But the Marysville, Ohio, company relies on sales at three key retailers—Home Depot […]
SIDEWALKING: Windows On The World
Main street Coatesville, PA, 11:04 AM by JEFF FUSCO
SAD: South Philly Cat Lady Hoarding Horror Show
6ABC: “Deplorable” is what SPCA investigators are calling conditions inside Stephanie Sinkin’s home on South Chadwick Street. Inside they found dozens of cats – many in poor health, living in piles of trash. On Sunday, Pennsylvania SPCA investigators carted away 22 live cats and six dead ones in what they’re calling a classic case of hoarding. George Bengal of the PSPCA tells Action News, “As they started cleaning out the trash, there’s nests of cats all in this trash – from ceiling to floor, in every room in the house.” Investigators say they got suspicious after Sinkin brought three cats […]
JUST DESSERTS: Man Dies While Raping Woman
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Investigators said a man has died while in the act of raping an elderly South Texas woman. The Refugio County Sheriff’s Office identified the man as 53-year-old Isabel Chavelo Gutierrez. Sheriff’s Sgt. Gary Wright said the incident happened June 2 after he rode two miles by bicycle from his home to that of his 77-year-old victim in the tiny coastal community of Tivoli. Wright said the 5′-7″, 230-to-250 pound man sneaked into the woman’s house and raped her at knifepoint. During the assault, he said he wasn’t feeling well, rolled over, and died. MORE
EXODUS: Six Million Americans Quit Facebook In May
ASSOCIATED PRESS: According to Inside Facebook, the social networking site hit 687 million monthly users in June, though the growth rate overall has been slower than normal for the past two months. Though for the past year Facebook has grown by at least 20 million users each month, in April and in May, it grew by 13.9 and 11.8 million respectively. And in the U.S. and in Canada, Facebook actually lost users. U.S. accounts fell by close to 6 million, from 155.2 million at the beginning of May to 149.4 million at the end. This marks the first time American […]
GUIDED BY VOICES: Official Ironmen Rally Song
GBV plays Penn’s Landing on Friday with Wavves. Click HERE for tix. PREVIOUSLY: Even in its heyday, Guided by Voices always seemed like a time/space anomaly, like the Bud-swilling protagonists of some alternative history of rock-and-roll wherein the Beatles crawl out of the industrial shadows of the Midwest in the early ’90s instead of Liverpool in the early ’60s, and trigger the incontinent mania of record-store clerks, rock critics, and college-radio DJs. The old guard took the stage beneath a neon sign that declared “The club is open” (a lyric from “A Salty Salute” that has come to serve as […]
PINE BARON: Hiking To The Heart Of Darkness
[Illustration by Alyssa Grenning] CITY PAPER: As for me, Hank offered one last piece of wisdom before I set off into the Pine Barrens: “There’s nothing out there, dude,” Hank said, pausing a long while before adding, “That’s what’s nice about it.” […] I donned my pack and walked into the forest, following a short connector trail until I came to a tree marked with a pink blaze, the color designating the Batona Trail, the color that would guide me through the labyrinth of the Barrens for the next two days. The Pine Barrens is, after all, as great a […]