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Creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti got taken to the cleaners. In his divorce settlement with his ex-wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, here's what the New York Post reports : Under the settlement, Avenatti will have to pay his ex-wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, more than $1.9 million in retroactive child and spousal support upfront, according to court documents filed in Orange County and viewed by TMZ . Avenatti, a fierce critic of President Trump, will also have to turn over a number of his assets for liquidation, including five luxury wrist watches and a sculpture by architect Frank Gehry. He will also has to...

IRISH TENOR Ronan Tynan delivered another moving, powerful performance that touched onlookers far and wide at the state funeral of George HW Bush. The performance came just days after Tynan paid a special visit to the bedside of the 41st President in the final few hours of his life. Surrounded by friends and family, Bush could be seen reportedly mouthing along as Tynan sang Silent Night and an Irish Gaelic song for a man who held him in the highest esteem. Tynan's close relationship with the Bush family is well documented. The 58-year-old Kilkenny-born vocalist performed at the 8th birthday...

Evidence of more incompetence and cowardice has been exposed from the Parkland school shooting. Seventeen students and staff were murdered on February 14, 2018, at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School.  I will not name the murderer. You have probably read and remember the armed school resource officer, Deputy Scot Petterson, failed to confront the killer immediately. He did not run to the sound of the gunfire. Instead, he waited outside the school for others to come. Eventually, there were seven or eight deputies outside the school waiting. Officers from another jurisdiction showed up and immediately entered, but it was...

People who oppose immigration often argue that migrants bring disease with them, and that they then become a burden to health systems in their new countries because they’re so sick. But that's not true, a team of experts argued in a new report released Wednesday. In fact, they point out that immigrants make up a significant portion of the healthcare work forces in their new homelands. "There is no evidence to show that migrants are spreading disease," said Dr. Paul Spiegel, who directs the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "That is a false argument...

Good Morning/Afternoon,MEGABACKHOMEDITTOS!

Is it possible to receive an unbaptized person into the Orthodox Church without baptizing him? What would it mean to do such a thing? You might not expect a book about the Second Vatican Council to elicit such questions from Orthodox sacramental theology but Fr. Peter Heers’s 2015 doctoral thesis, published with the title The Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II (ERV2), does just that. The book examines the theology and practice of baptism in the Latin West as it was articulated at the Second Vatican Council (V2), tracing its development from the time of St. Augustine, and contrasts this narrative,...

The insane, mentally deranged liberals at the University of Texas, Austin now want masculinity to be designated as a mental illness. You know, there was once a day when things like this were the stuff of satire, but today this garbage is nothing short of mainstream, every day liberalism. It would make the job of The Onion harder these days… you know, if The Onion ever made fun of anything on the left, that is. But now we’ve reached peak lunacy masquerading as sentient thought by liberals and treated as legitimate by the illiterati in the media and our system...

WASHINGTON — Track workers blamed for what Metro had called faked inspection reports are getting their jobs back, after an arbitrator found the reports were done as Metro had instructed. A court filing this week suggested Metro and five track workers who had filed a federal lawsuit over their firings reached a settlement in the case, and Metro and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 confirmed Wednesday that an agreement covers most of the at least 16 front-line workers and five supervisors who were publicly disciplined about two years ago. Three of the workers who challenged their firings are not covered...

Do You Want to Have a Good Christmas? Then Listen Carefully to this Advent Message: “You Need a Savior!” Msgr. Charles Pope • December 5, 2018 • One of the goals of Advent (in many ways a penitential season) is to meditate on our need for a savior. In daily Mass and in the Liturgy of the Hours, we read lengthy passages from Isaiah and the other prophets, who speak boldly and bluntly about the people’s sin. Some of the passages are even a bit humorous. Here are a few: Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the LORD...

Bible teachers making predictions for when the End Times will arrive, which prove to not be true, has led to damages to the credibility of evangelicals, a Christian author and theologian has said.Kenneth R. Samples, the senior research scholar of philosophical and theological apologetics at Reasons to Believe, tackled on Tuesday several questions people have when it comes to End Times prophecy.The questions and comments were framed in responses to his 2013 book Christian Endgame: Careful Thinking about the End Times, which warned about excessive speculation regarding the timing of Jesus Christ's return to earth.One person wrote: “I am convicted...

A 61-year-old woman in Cincinnati has been arrested after dumping hot grease on another woman during an argument, police said. Charlene Thompson is facing charges of felonious assault after the attack on Sunday at a residence in the 5100 block of Hawaiian Terrace, according to an affidavit obtained by WLWT. The victim was left with severe burns to her back and arms following the alleged attack, court documents show. Thompson was scheduled to be arraigned early Wednesday, according to the station.

Larry Wallace, a top aide to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), resigned Wednesday, amid allegations of harassment during his tenure at the California Department of Justice. “We were unaware of this issue and take accusations of harassment extremely seriously,” Lily Adams, a spokesperson for Harris, said in a statement. “This evening, Mr. Wallace offered his resignation to the senator and she accepted it.”

Most everyone watching the live coverage of yesterday’s George H. W. Bush’s memorial service was touched by the comments made about the man. However, interesting enough, I overhead two 50 something (assumed to be liberal) women talking about former Congressman Alan Simpsons comments about the former President and it struck me as to how different we think, men vs. women / conservative vs. liberal. What Alan Simpson said was, “George H. W. Bush hated no one.” He went on to say, “hatred corrodes the container it’s in.” That was an amazing statement about a man that the media had put...

US President Donald Trump fired another shot across OPEC’s bow on Wednesday, a day before the oil cartel is set to meet in Vienna to discuss possible production cuts. “The World does not want to see, or need, higher oil prices!” the Tweet read, in part.

It’s an old episode of The Twilight Zone: A woman sits in a hospital with her head heavily bandaged. A surgeon is warning her that this is his last attempt and that if this procedure of plastic surgery doesn’t take, there’s nothing else he can do. So far, we haven’t seen any of the faces of the other people. The surgeon begins to remove the bandages, and when he is done, he expresses shock: No change! The camera shows us a normal, indeed beautiful young woman, then pans to show us that everybody else is grotesquely misshapen. The young woman...

China is demanding the release of telecoms giant Huawei's chief financial officer, who has been detained in Canada. Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company's founder, could face extradition to the US. She was arrested in Vancouver on 1 December, but the news was not made public at her request. The charges remain unknown but the US has been probing Huawei over possible violation of sanctions against Iran. China says her detention is possibly a rights abuse. Ms Meng has sought a publication ban on the details of the arrest, which has been granted by the courts. Huawei said it...

Some of you will be familiar with this topic. I sure am. Here is Deuce Spriggins and his 1952 recording of Hungover. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Lawmakers say they have reached a deal on the massive farm bill, which has been hung up for weeks over demands by President Trump and House Republicans for new work requirements for food stamp recipients. Negotiators have agreed to jettison those requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which were included in the House version of the bill but not the Senate version. However, the White House has not yet signed off on the agreement and House conservatives may not support a bill that lacks work requirements.

That next summit meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un needs to have a few blank spots on the agenda to leave room for new items of business. One of them should be the latest satellite pictures showing that two of Kim’s missile bases up in the mountains are not only failing to be dismantled but show signs of ongoing work to expand them. The Independent has some of the photos and details this week. North Korea has reportedly expanded a long-range missile base within its mountainous interior, despite a promise from Donald Trump the country was “no longer...

Polk County Sheriff's Office announced the success of a major undercover Human Trafficking operation this week, that saw 104 people arrested in Florida. Detectives led a six-day Human Trafficking sting from November 27 to December 2.