Saturday, October 31, 2009
Look at one of the clowns in charge of helping Obama screw Honduras
The Obama Latin America Team is composed of: Thomas Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Frank Mora, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs and most importantly Dan Restrepo, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at The National Security Council… Since assuming the presidency in January of 2009, the Obama White House mainly follows the expertise of Mr. Daniel Restrepo on issues pertaining to Latin America.
Dan Restrepo and The Center for American Progress
Prior to moving to the National Security Council, Dan Restrepo was the director of the Americas Project at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, whose President and Chief Executive Officer is John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to then President Bill Clinton. This think tank has become so influential making personnel appointments in the Obama Administration that Time Magazine recently declared “there is no group in Washington with more influence at this moment in history.” [8]
One of CAP’s main contributors is billionaire speculator, George Soros. In fact, some independent groups that are more transparent, such as the Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center, criticize the Center’s failure to disclose its contributors, particularly since it is so influential in appointments to the Obama administration.
Trick or effing Treat, huh?
Pelosi's 'health care' bill is in part the "Trial Lawyer Protection Act",
it seems:
Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.
Tam started with a slightly off-angle reaction
to this story, so of course I had to go read it. Short version, girl hiking in woods attacked by a pack of tricksters, and died about twelve hours later. Nasty way to go, sad story. Until I got to this:
"We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature's fold -- it's the wildlife's terrain," Emily Mitchell's statement continued. "When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor's voice say, 'please don't, this is their space.' She wouldn't have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own. She was passionate about animals, was an environmentalist, and was also planning to volunteer at the Toronto Wildlife Centre in the coming months."
Oh, for (your favorite bleep's) sake. Lady, maybe you and your daughter wouldn't want the critters whacked; I doubt many other people would agree, especially those with kids. Especially when, if they've done it once, they'll do it again.
That's one of the idiocies that bothers me when a bear or a cougar or whatever eats someone and the immediate cry of the Bambiists is heard: "They were here first! It's their world!! It's our fault for being in the woods!" So many of these clowns have decided that it's perfectly acceptable for the carnivores to eat other people, and if you disagree you become The Hatemonger Bigoted Speciest Destroyer of Mother Earth. On a pogo stick. With herpes.
Screw you people. I like humans being on the top of the predator pyramid. Jeez. I wonder if she'd be willing to lecture some parents, after the pack eats their kid, about how "After all, it's the coyote's space, and you can volunteer at the nature center in memory of your child."
"We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature's fold -- it's the wildlife's terrain," Emily Mitchell's statement continued. "When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor's voice say, 'please don't, this is their space.' She wouldn't have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own. She was passionate about animals, was an environmentalist, and was also planning to volunteer at the Toronto Wildlife Centre in the coming months."
Oh, for (your favorite bleep's) sake. Lady, maybe you and your daughter wouldn't want the critters whacked; I doubt many other people would agree, especially those with kids. Especially when, if they've done it once, they'll do it again.
That's one of the idiocies that bothers me when a bear or a cougar or whatever eats someone and the immediate cry of the Bambiists is heard: "They were here first! It's their world!! It's our fault for being in the woods!" So many of these clowns have decided that it's perfectly acceptable for the carnivores to eat other people, and if you disagree you become The Hatemonger Bigoted Speciest Destroyer of Mother Earth. On a pogo stick. With herpes.
Screw you people. I like humans being on the top of the predator pyramid. Jeez. I wonder if she'd be willing to lecture some parents, after the pack eats their kid, about how "After all, it's the coyote's space, and you can volunteer at the nature center in memory of your child."
By the way, if someone starts the 'We have lousy health care!' noise,
point them to this:
American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn't even close:
American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn't even close:
U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average
U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD
Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered
Death panels: now in kids' sizes too! Infants being left to die.
And remember, this is what the socialists in the Evil Party, and a few in the Stupid Party, want to take over and screw up.Friday, October 30, 2009
Among this evening's news, the Obama Administration lied
(big surprise, huh?) about being involved in the 'subvert the NEA' action:
Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The piece of walking excrement who was convicted the other day in the Newsom/Christian murders is sentenced to death. With the usual "Please spare him" crap being thrown out:
Foster mother Flo Rudd and group home mother Alice Rhea told jurors Davidson was worth saving despite the fact that he turned to robbery and, ultimately, murder despite their efforts to rescue him from a troubled upbringing.
"He's my son," Rhea said. "I love him. He has such potential. If you put him in a structured environment, he does everything he should. I think he can be an influence to young men for years to come."
Yeah, I bet he'd be an influence; to a whole 'nother bunch of raping murderers. Ms. Rudd and Rhea, it may have escaped you but they discovered that one reason so many violent criminals do so well at the 'rehabilitation' game is that when they're in a highly-structured environment- like a prison- they play the game well and behave; and then when they get out- parole or escape- they commit more violent crimes. This piece of garbage can play 'bad childhood' all you want, it doesn't change what he is, and that he had some say in it. You'd better deal with that.
Insty points to Peggy Noonan discovering that having a bunch of socialists, commies and fascists in the White House and Congress is a Bad Thing; how could she every have managed this great discovery?[/sarcasm]
Hell with it, I've got dishes to wash. And I need to find something to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The piece of walking excrement who was convicted the other day in the Newsom/Christian murders is sentenced to death. With the usual "Please spare him" crap being thrown out:
Foster mother Flo Rudd and group home mother Alice Rhea told jurors Davidson was worth saving despite the fact that he turned to robbery and, ultimately, murder despite their efforts to rescue him from a troubled upbringing.
"He's my son," Rhea said. "I love him. He has such potential. If you put him in a structured environment, he does everything he should. I think he can be an influence to young men for years to come."
Yeah, I bet he'd be an influence; to a whole 'nother bunch of raping murderers. Ms. Rudd and Rhea, it may have escaped you but they discovered that one reason so many violent criminals do so well at the 'rehabilitation' game is that when they're in a highly-structured environment- like a prison- they play the game well and behave; and then when they get out- parole or escape- they commit more violent crimes. This piece of garbage can play 'bad childhood' all you want, it doesn't change what he is, and that he had some say in it. You'd better deal with that.
Insty points to Peggy Noonan discovering that having a bunch of socialists, commies and fascists in the White House and Congress is a Bad Thing; how could she every have managed this great discovery?[/sarcasm]
Hell with it, I've got dishes to wash. And I need to find something to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
It's kind of amazing how it freaks out liberals- modern version-
when someone says "I will hold to my oath. No matter what."
And how paranoid is the group? The list of commands its members have pledged to refuse includes some that don't strike me as likely, e.g., "orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people." But it also includes commands that are easier to imagine -- or which have already become standard operating procedure. One item on the list is "orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances." Maybe Waters and Potok haven't noticed, but American police forces infringe on free speech and free assembly at pretty much every major political summit. I wish there had been some Oath Keepers on the force in Pittsburgh during the G20 meeting last month, or at the Republican National Convention last year.
If you review Rhodes' writings online, you'll find complaints about the militarization of police work, a process he links to both the war on drugs and the war on terror; about the expansion of federal power in wartime; about the illegal disarmament of civilians after Hurricane Katrina. In other words, normal civil libertarian concerns about policies already in place, not frantic speculation about the apocalypse to come. (Note that two of the last three links go to essays Rhodes wrote during the Bush presidency. The Oath Keepers were founded this year, but the organizers behind them didn't need a Democratic president to discover the dangers of state power.)
This is the group that has the Southern Poverty Law Center invoking the specters of fascism and terrorism: a network of present and former public employees who are vigilant about the state of our civil liberties. If their vigilance sometimes shades over into paranoia, well, that's a hundred times truer of the SPLC.
And how paranoid is the group? The list of commands its members have pledged to refuse includes some that don't strike me as likely, e.g., "orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people." But it also includes commands that are easier to imagine -- or which have already become standard operating procedure. One item on the list is "orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances." Maybe Waters and Potok haven't noticed, but American police forces infringe on free speech and free assembly at pretty much every major political summit. I wish there had been some Oath Keepers on the force in Pittsburgh during the G20 meeting last month, or at the Republican National Convention last year.
If you review Rhodes' writings online, you'll find complaints about the militarization of police work, a process he links to both the war on drugs and the war on terror; about the expansion of federal power in wartime; about the illegal disarmament of civilians after Hurricane Katrina. In other words, normal civil libertarian concerns about policies already in place, not frantic speculation about the apocalypse to come. (Note that two of the last three links go to essays Rhodes wrote during the Bush presidency. The Oath Keepers were founded this year, but the organizers behind them didn't need a Democratic president to discover the dangers of state power.)
This is the group that has the Southern Poverty Law Center invoking the specters of fascism and terrorism: a network of present and former public employees who are vigilant about the state of our civil liberties. If their vigilance sometimes shades over into paranoia, well, that's a hundred times truer of the SPLC.
If the Annointed Oneess has this, what does The One have
taking care of him?
Michelle Obama, as we reported on July 7, is not served by twenty-two attendants who stand by to cater to her every whim.
She is served by twenty-six attendants, including a hair dresser and make-up artist.
The annual cost to taxpayers for such unprecedented attention is approximately $1,750,000 without taking into account the expense of the lavish benefit packages afforded to every attendant.
Little did American voters realize the call for “change” would result in the establishment of an Obama oligarchy.
Uh, guy? Some of us were expecting crap like this; unfortunately, too many fell for the 'Change!' bullcrap and desperate hopes, and we've got this socialist(or would fascist be more accurate?) clown in the Oval Office.
I rather doubt stories like this would be coming out about McCain & wife, which is one of the few ways he'd have differed from this pair of hypocrites.
Michelle Obama, as we reported on July 7, is not served by twenty-two attendants who stand by to cater to her every whim.
She is served by twenty-six attendants, including a hair dresser and make-up artist.
The annual cost to taxpayers for such unprecedented attention is approximately $1,750,000 without taking into account the expense of the lavish benefit packages afforded to every attendant.
Little did American voters realize the call for “change” would result in the establishment of an Obama oligarchy.
Uh, guy? Some of us were expecting crap like this; unfortunately, too many fell for the 'Change!' bullcrap and desperate hopes, and we've got this socialist(or would fascist be more accurate?) clown in the Oval Office.
I rather doubt stories like this would be coming out about McCain & wife, which is one of the few ways he'd have differed from this pair of hypocrites.
Senator Baucus(Evil Party Sleaze-MT) needs to be dragged into the town square
and horsewhipped. And then charged extra- excuse me, taxed- on any medical supplies used on his sorry ass.
When Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, proposed taxing medical devices to raise $40 billion over the next 10 years for his health care plan, opponents started digging in and looking at what would be taxed.
It turned out feminine products, like tampons, were classified as "class I medical devices" and thus, the "tampon tax" was born.
The backlash was quick and severe enough against the idea that the committee quickly drafted new language that would exempt those necessities from the tax, along with all other class I devices, like tongue depressors, and decided to only tax class II medical devices and higher that cost more than $100.
Hey, almost nothing will cost more than that, so it'll be a tax that rarely hits people, right?
Not exactly.
But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure, such as new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.
And all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men and women - such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles - will also be taxed whether purchased by patients or doctors.
So for daring to need the Nanny State-provided 'high-class' devices(SURGICAL NEEDLES?!?), Baucus and the other tax monkeys want to rape you; somehow, in their minds, it's only fair after all, to screw you so they can have more of your money to entrench themselves in power wi- er, take care of you with.
Hey, Montana, he's YOUR senator; what'cha gonna do?
Found at Sondra's place
When Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, proposed taxing medical devices to raise $40 billion over the next 10 years for his health care plan, opponents started digging in and looking at what would be taxed.
It turned out feminine products, like tampons, were classified as "class I medical devices" and thus, the "tampon tax" was born.
The backlash was quick and severe enough against the idea that the committee quickly drafted new language that would exempt those necessities from the tax, along with all other class I devices, like tongue depressors, and decided to only tax class II medical devices and higher that cost more than $100.
Hey, almost nothing will cost more than that, so it'll be a tax that rarely hits people, right?
Not exactly.
But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure, such as new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.
And all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men and women - such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles - will also be taxed whether purchased by patients or doctors.
So for daring to need the Nanny State-provided 'high-class' devices(SURGICAL NEEDLES?!?), Baucus and the other tax monkeys want to rape you; somehow, in their minds, it's only fair after all, to screw you so they can have more of your money to entrench themselves in power wi- er, take care of you with.
Hey, Montana, he's YOUR senator; what'cha gonna do?
Found at Sondra's place
'DNA sample may be required for hiring'
The new rules at Akron were adopted by the Board of Trustees in August, but most faculty members only learned of them in a recent e-mail list of announcements sent by the university to all employees. The rules state that background checks will be performed on all candidates selected for employment and that all offers will be "contingent on successful completion" of the check. Further, they state that all applicants "may be asked to submit a DNA sample." The rules specifically state that all employees, including faculty members, are covered.
Laura Martinez Massie, spokeswoman for Akron, said that the university would not comment on the resignation of Williams. She also said that to date, the university has not collected DNA and has no plans to do so, but is "merely reserving the right to do so."
'Merely reserving the right', yeah. And they wouldn't do that if they didn't have plans to use it.
Pointed to by Insty
Laura Martinez Massie, spokeswoman for Akron, said that the university would not comment on the resignation of Williams. She also said that to date, the university has not collected DNA and has no plans to do so, but is "merely reserving the right to do so."
'Merely reserving the right', yeah. And they wouldn't do that if they didn't have plans to use it.
Pointed to by Insty
Since the word on Honduras has already ruined the morning,
here's something that's slightly better, except for the background: they've arraigned four in the gang-rape. That they've got four of them is good; that these miserable little excuses for humans did this at all, and a bunch of people stood around approving- some joining in- is truly disgusting. Were it possible I'd like to see everyone who just stood around also charged and prosecuted.
I'll make a wager: an investigation will show either no fathers in the homes, or 'fathers' who change around depending on who the mother is sleeping with currently and who's in jail. A lot of the people whining and moaning about 'hate against women', etc., are- many of them- people who've insisted for years that fathers aren't necessary, marriage is slavery and so forth. And this is part of the end result of their work. They ought to be happy in one way: it gives them more ways to talk about how horrible males are.
Hey, wait, wouldn't that make them guilty of a hate crime, with all the hating on men?
Oh, that's right, women and minorities can't be guilty of such; I forgot. Unless they're white women hating on a minority, then they can. Sometimes.
I'll make a wager: an investigation will show either no fathers in the homes, or 'fathers' who change around depending on who the mother is sleeping with currently and who's in jail. A lot of the people whining and moaning about 'hate against women', etc., are- many of them- people who've insisted for years that fathers aren't necessary, marriage is slavery and so forth. And this is part of the end result of their work. They ought to be happy in one way: it gives them more ways to talk about how horrible males are.
Hey, wait, wouldn't that make them guilty of a hate crime, with all the hating on men?
Oh, that's right, women and minorities can't be guilty of such; I forgot. Unless they're white women hating on a minority, then they can. Sometimes.
Worst news of all:
supposedly Thomas Shannon has been pressuring the congressmen to vote for the restoration of Zelay or else! The exact words were that “Shannon scared the living hell out of everyone here including Micheletti.” Yeah, remember the press conference? “We’re just here to help. We aren’t going to intervene. We’ll respect any decision that the Hondurans make.” Yeah, right. Now they are even threatening elected Honduran officials that they won’t recognize elections unless they vote yes. I’m sure there must be economic threats as well.
El Heraldo (in Spanish) makes it clear that US State Dept. envoy for Latin America Thomas Shannon went to Honduras to twist arms: his position was that the November 29 elections would not be recognized unless Zelaya was returned to power. I guess nothing ensures democracy like restoring to power the guy who did his outmost to undermine democracy, at least in Shannon’s eyes.
So Obama has shown his true colors, if there were any doubt: he and his striped-pants thugs in the State Department(headed by Hillary Clinton, let us not forget) has forced a communist Chavez thug back into power; he must be so proud, now he can feel like he deserves a real pat on the head from Hugo and Fidel. I'll bet his tail is wagging fast enough to start a small dust devil.
El Heraldo (in Spanish) makes it clear that US State Dept. envoy for Latin America Thomas Shannon went to Honduras to twist arms: his position was that the November 29 elections would not be recognized unless Zelaya was returned to power. I guess nothing ensures democracy like restoring to power the guy who did his outmost to undermine democracy, at least in Shannon’s eyes.
So Obama has shown his true colors, if there were any doubt: he and his striped-pants thugs in the State Department(headed by Hillary Clinton, let us not forget) has forced a communist Chavez thug back into power; he must be so proud, now he can feel like he deserves a real pat on the head from Hugo and Fidel. I'll bet his tail is wagging fast enough to start a small dust devil.
One of the end results of the 'self-esteem at any cost-
bullcrap is whining like this:
The thug rang us and said: "I'm going to sue. I've got everyone staring at me because of this.
"He should be apologising to me. What have I got to apologise for ? I got arrested for it at the time and I got a fine. Now I feel all depressed."
Well, boo-freakin'-hoo. If you've not run across this before, here's what brought this on:
After complaining to police FIFTY times in a year, the 15st karate and jiu-jitsu black belt snapped when Andrews swore and pushed him on his doorstep.
Yesterday Jason said: "These thugs repeatedly abused me and my family and damaged our property. I've never gone out looking for trouble but think you've got to be able to defend yourself." He has now moved away from the estate with daughter Boudiccia, 22 months, and wife Rebecca, 23.
Attention British Police: If you don't do the damned job, people are going to start doing it themselves. In this case, the troublemaker got decked; if things get worse, it wouldn't surprise me if clowns like this started turning up dead. Or just disappearing(shallow graves, LOTS of watery places in Britain, etc.) Because there are a lot of people in Britain who DO remember something about being British.
The thug rang us and said: "I'm going to sue. I've got everyone staring at me because of this.
"He should be apologising to me. What have I got to apologise for ? I got arrested for it at the time and I got a fine. Now I feel all depressed."
Well, boo-freakin'-hoo. If you've not run across this before, here's what brought this on:
After complaining to police FIFTY times in a year, the 15st karate and jiu-jitsu black belt snapped when Andrews swore and pushed him on his doorstep.
Yesterday Jason said: "These thugs repeatedly abused me and my family and damaged our property. I've never gone out looking for trouble but think you've got to be able to defend yourself." He has now moved away from the estate with daughter Boudiccia, 22 months, and wife Rebecca, 23.
Attention British Police: If you don't do the damned job, people are going to start doing it themselves. In this case, the troublemaker got decked; if things get worse, it wouldn't surprise me if clowns like this started turning up dead. Or just disappearing(shallow graves, LOTS of watery places in Britain, etc.) Because there are a lot of people in Britain who DO remember something about being British.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Asset forfeiture, British style,
and just as effed-up as it often is here; but rarely on such a scale.
The police rolled through London in a convoy: scores of patrol cars, armed-response vehicles, outriders on their bikes, vans with their windows shielded by metal cages. With a Met film unit recording everything, detectives forced their way past startled security guards, demanding receptionists open the secure doors that led to the normally hushed strong rooms, which in the three centres housed 6,717 safety deposit boxes
...
There was a lot at stake. Never before had the British police been granted a warrant as broad as this. The raids had been made possible under a controversial law, the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA), which came into being in 2002 and introduced an array of wide-ranging new powers to seek out and confiscate dirty money - the houses, cars and boats bought by criminals.
However, lawyers watching the police operation unfold were quick to warn that the strong-arming of these vaults and the crashing into each and every box was tantamount to the police having obtained permission to smash down the doors of an entire housing estate.
David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, one of the largest criminal defence practices in London, says, 'POCA was never intended for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted.'.
Big raid, lots of rehearsal, lots of evidence found. But there's a slight problem:
However, by talking to scores of box-holders, none of whom have spoken before, Live has uncovered a different version of Operation Rize, one that shows how the vast majority of those caught up in the raids were innocent. They have had their lives turned upside down over the past 17 months. Many have struggled to recoup their money and possessions, been forced into legal trench warfare with police lawyers and told they must prove how they came by the contents of their boxes.
This is also a story told through secret legal papers, including confidentiality agreements struck with some vault depositors whose cases threatened to topple the entire operation. Although the police told a judge that 'nine out of ten' of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded, criminally connected or felons, the paper trail reveals that perhaps only as few as ten per cent of the boxes have any connection to serious crime.
Which is bad enough, but when you get further in, you run into the same mindset we run into over here:
Many of the clientele were families who had fled turmoil, pogroms, coups and wars and long had a cultural preference for locking away money and jewels, building up a vehement distrust for the integrity of traditional banks. Here, stepping down the spiral staircase at the back to the darkened boxes below, they felt reassured that their most important possessions were safe.
One survivor of Nazi Germany in his seventies told us how he had placed a bag of diamonds there - security if ever he or his descendents needed to run again.
...
A Hindu priest described to Live how his family's valuables had been carried in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'.
Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come from.'
There've been lots of horror stories over here about police seizing property and, if you could not prove it was 'innocent' they assume it's illegal profits/property and they keep it. Same thing here, and just as disgusting: how does someone prove that property that may have been in the family for years, or generations, is yours? How do you 'prove' to people convinced you're a crook that the cash you saved over years, sometimes decades, is honestly gained?
And it's not just money and valuables seized:
One angry box-holder rented Box 73 at the Park Lane depository. Alexander Temerko, formerly a vice president of Russian oil giant Yukos, whose billionaire boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky had fallen foul of President Putin, had fled to London as Khodorkovsky was jailed for eight years in Russia.
On his arrival in the UK, Temerko had locked five crates of legal documents into his safety-deposit box. However, as a result of Rize, the papers were now in the hands of the Met, which claimed they were evidence of an alleged criminal conspiracy whose participants were British, obliging the police to investigate.
Depending on your situation, records like that can be worth far more to you than money. This was one of the people who were able to hire serious legal assistance:
Montgomery and Burton highlighted case law that specifically stipulated 'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would later prove to be criminal. The legal team also demanded sight of the police evidence that had convinced the judge to issue the warrant in the first place.
And here's where the story starts coming out in ways the Met had tried very hard to prevent:
The Met hired Kennedy Talbot, one of Britain's most experienced barristers dealing with POCA. Talbot approached a senior judge at Southwark Crown Court in November 2007. But Southwark rejected the request. The police application was also riddled with simple errors, according to the skeleton document, including a claim by undercover officers that there were 18,000 boxes, three times the actual number.
Police also named Leslie Sieff as a director, when available records showed that he had sold the majority of his shareholding as far back as 1998 and would soon resign as a director.
And on:
Having amended the number of safety-deposit boxes to a correct 6,717, and after admitting 'there is a lot we don't know', the police claimed to have found a shredded list behind one of the centres that when reconstituted revealed the identities of boxholders. SCD6 had analysed it and concluded that in a sample of 391 names between '82 per cent and 90 per cent were suspicious or connected to crime'.
A statistician was then hired who used this sample of only five per cent of the total client base to conclude that nine out of ten of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded or felons, an opinion later expressed more stridently with Judge Macrae, who was told that 'all of the boxes might contain criminal property'. Macrae was swayed. He authorised a warrant under POCA on May 30 2008.
And on:
Minutes had been taken of the judge's meetings with Talbot and Ponting. They tell how the Rize plan had been rejected by one senior judge only to be put to a second who was wooed with statistics rather than hard new evidence. Other court documents obtained show that the legal teams preparing their judicial reviews took the 32-page transcript to pieces and in so doing lambasted the whole Rize operation.
'The warrant was extraordinarily broad,' Temerko's team warned, and 'completely unprecedented', representing the widest ever seen by lawyers in Britain, one that on this ground alone was liable to be quashed by High Court judges. The police had only provided the court with 'bare assertions' rather than hard evidence.
A High Court judge was advised, 'The gross interference in privacy outweighed any benefit to the investigation.'
And friggin' on:
Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but they had five crates belonging to Temerko.
The police changed course. They notified Temerko's legal team that they were now acting under the Criminal Justice and Police Act, which allowed such privileged documents to be held.
'However, this law can only be invoked when a written notice has been given to everyone, box-holders and vault owners,' said Egan. Alerted, the police ran around serving the directors of the Park Lane vault and their box-holders with written notices - without realising that the law could not be applied retrospectively, and that the notice had to be handed over 'at the time' of the raids.
'Coverup after the fact', anyone? And it gets even worse.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: 'Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as "under investigation", of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.'
This figure represents just over five per cent of the total money stored in the vaults, although the Met has 690 ' suspect' boxes that it is still investigating.
That means of the total number of boxes, around ten per cent are being probed for villainy, a long way from the nine out of ten cases the Met surmised they would find while wooing Judge Macrae.
Lawyers have seen their Rize cases squeezed and intimidated. Sara Teasdale revealed how the police were first adamant that her client's money was criminal cash, threatening forfeiture, only to try and turn the box-holder's business partner against him, enticing him to wear a wire so as to entrap him into admitting it was also money stolen from his own company.
Teasdale said: 'They first tried "wrong money". Then it was company money. Even when they dropped criminal proceedings against him in February 2009, they inexplicably continued with civil forfeiture proceedings.' The Yard was trying all it could to get the cash.
'They were sitting on almost £1 million, and having referred to my client anonymously in press releases as an example of why they had raided, they needed to win.'
But this case was recently lost by the Met too, leaving the box-holder with £200,000 in fees, money he is now seeking back from the police.
To make very bad even worse, the inevitable:
One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an o fficial complaint.
'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them my books.'
His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 o fficers.
'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond earrings.'
...
The Met has strenuously denied all allegations of theft, pointing out that anyone stealing from the boxes would have been caught on camera since offi cers videoed the entire operation.
Another box-holder who is alleging theft, a wealthy Russian émigré party-planner from north London, who had £64,000 in cash and £250,000 worth of jewellery, including heirlooms from Russia, successfully challenged the police to produce the video.
'I am meticulous,' she said. 'I have a receipt for everything. When I got my box back, £9,000 cash and some smaller items of jewellery were missing - a gold baby's bracelet and an 18-carat gold ring.'
The initial police footage, she claims, had a time code and showed her box being carried to a table. But then the tape was interrupted and when it restarted the footage was being shot from a new camera, at a diff erent angle and without a time code, with real time having moved on many seconds.
She told Live: 'It only takes seconds for a small envelope of cash or a gold ring to be swiped from the table and into someone's pocket. I was staggered.' After failing to get adequate answers from the Met's own Directorate of Professional Standards, her lawyers have gone to the independent Police Complaints Authority, along with 70 other box-holders.
So now you've got either messed-up procedure on documenting the process, or deliberate gaps in the recordings. And accusations of missing property. With the Met still claiming it was an 'absolute success', of course. This part near the end points to the same mindset that leads to so many of the problems here:
Facing hefty fees for defending itself before two Judicial Reviews, being pursued for millions of pounds in legal fees by innocent box-holders, and now facing inquiries into theft, the political, judicial and financial costs of the operation are beginning to stack up.
And yet when it first kicked o ff, one of the things that had endeared Rize to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'
Just effing wonderful. Deliberately setting targets of 'assets' to seize is a serious indication of trouble in the making, because if you aren't near your target, there's going to be real pressure to do things you probably shouldn't to meet the target. Which looks like was a big factor in this mess.
I'd suggest reading the whole article; it's worth the time. One thing that really surprise me was this line: Determined to clear their names, the Selts put up the £50,000 needed to launch their own Judicial Review that also focused on the lawfulness of the original warrant.
So not only do you have to find a way to prove your money and possessions are really yours, and legitimate, you have to come up with a serious amount of cash to get this type of review started. Which makes it even harder for you, and even easier for the government to keep your property; wonderful thing for official thieves, isn't it?
The police rolled through London in a convoy: scores of patrol cars, armed-response vehicles, outriders on their bikes, vans with their windows shielded by metal cages. With a Met film unit recording everything, detectives forced their way past startled security guards, demanding receptionists open the secure doors that led to the normally hushed strong rooms, which in the three centres housed 6,717 safety deposit boxes
...
There was a lot at stake. Never before had the British police been granted a warrant as broad as this. The raids had been made possible under a controversial law, the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA), which came into being in 2002 and introduced an array of wide-ranging new powers to seek out and confiscate dirty money - the houses, cars and boats bought by criminals.
However, lawyers watching the police operation unfold were quick to warn that the strong-arming of these vaults and the crashing into each and every box was tantamount to the police having obtained permission to smash down the doors of an entire housing estate.
David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, one of the largest criminal defence practices in London, says, 'POCA was never intended for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted.'.
Big raid, lots of rehearsal, lots of evidence found. But there's a slight problem:
However, by talking to scores of box-holders, none of whom have spoken before, Live has uncovered a different version of Operation Rize, one that shows how the vast majority of those caught up in the raids were innocent. They have had their lives turned upside down over the past 17 months. Many have struggled to recoup their money and possessions, been forced into legal trench warfare with police lawyers and told they must prove how they came by the contents of their boxes.
This is also a story told through secret legal papers, including confidentiality agreements struck with some vault depositors whose cases threatened to topple the entire operation. Although the police told a judge that 'nine out of ten' of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded, criminally connected or felons, the paper trail reveals that perhaps only as few as ten per cent of the boxes have any connection to serious crime.
Which is bad enough, but when you get further in, you run into the same mindset we run into over here:
Many of the clientele were families who had fled turmoil, pogroms, coups and wars and long had a cultural preference for locking away money and jewels, building up a vehement distrust for the integrity of traditional banks. Here, stepping down the spiral staircase at the back to the darkened boxes below, they felt reassured that their most important possessions were safe.
One survivor of Nazi Germany in his seventies told us how he had placed a bag of diamonds there - security if ever he or his descendents needed to run again.
...
A Hindu priest described to Live how his family's valuables had been carried in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'.
Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come from.'
There've been lots of horror stories over here about police seizing property and, if you could not prove it was 'innocent' they assume it's illegal profits/property and they keep it. Same thing here, and just as disgusting: how does someone prove that property that may have been in the family for years, or generations, is yours? How do you 'prove' to people convinced you're a crook that the cash you saved over years, sometimes decades, is honestly gained?
And it's not just money and valuables seized:
One angry box-holder rented Box 73 at the Park Lane depository. Alexander Temerko, formerly a vice president of Russian oil giant Yukos, whose billionaire boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky had fallen foul of President Putin, had fled to London as Khodorkovsky was jailed for eight years in Russia.
On his arrival in the UK, Temerko had locked five crates of legal documents into his safety-deposit box. However, as a result of Rize, the papers were now in the hands of the Met, which claimed they were evidence of an alleged criminal conspiracy whose participants were British, obliging the police to investigate.
Depending on your situation, records like that can be worth far more to you than money. This was one of the people who were able to hire serious legal assistance:
Montgomery and Burton highlighted case law that specifically stipulated 'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would later prove to be criminal. The legal team also demanded sight of the police evidence that had convinced the judge to issue the warrant in the first place.
And here's where the story starts coming out in ways the Met had tried very hard to prevent:
The Met hired Kennedy Talbot, one of Britain's most experienced barristers dealing with POCA. Talbot approached a senior judge at Southwark Crown Court in November 2007. But Southwark rejected the request. The police application was also riddled with simple errors, according to the skeleton document, including a claim by undercover officers that there were 18,000 boxes, three times the actual number.
Police also named Leslie Sieff as a director, when available records showed that he had sold the majority of his shareholding as far back as 1998 and would soon resign as a director.
And on:
Having amended the number of safety-deposit boxes to a correct 6,717, and after admitting 'there is a lot we don't know', the police claimed to have found a shredded list behind one of the centres that when reconstituted revealed the identities of boxholders. SCD6 had analysed it and concluded that in a sample of 391 names between '82 per cent and 90 per cent were suspicious or connected to crime'.
A statistician was then hired who used this sample of only five per cent of the total client base to conclude that nine out of ten of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded or felons, an opinion later expressed more stridently with Judge Macrae, who was told that 'all of the boxes might contain criminal property'. Macrae was swayed. He authorised a warrant under POCA on May 30 2008.
And on:
Minutes had been taken of the judge's meetings with Talbot and Ponting. They tell how the Rize plan had been rejected by one senior judge only to be put to a second who was wooed with statistics rather than hard new evidence. Other court documents obtained show that the legal teams preparing their judicial reviews took the 32-page transcript to pieces and in so doing lambasted the whole Rize operation.
'The warrant was extraordinarily broad,' Temerko's team warned, and 'completely unprecedented', representing the widest ever seen by lawyers in Britain, one that on this ground alone was liable to be quashed by High Court judges. The police had only provided the court with 'bare assertions' rather than hard evidence.
A High Court judge was advised, 'The gross interference in privacy outweighed any benefit to the investigation.'
And friggin' on:
Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but they had five crates belonging to Temerko.
The police changed course. They notified Temerko's legal team that they were now acting under the Criminal Justice and Police Act, which allowed such privileged documents to be held.
'However, this law can only be invoked when a written notice has been given to everyone, box-holders and vault owners,' said Egan. Alerted, the police ran around serving the directors of the Park Lane vault and their box-holders with written notices - without realising that the law could not be applied retrospectively, and that the notice had to be handed over 'at the time' of the raids.
'Coverup after the fact', anyone? And it gets even worse.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: 'Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as "under investigation", of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.'
This figure represents just over five per cent of the total money stored in the vaults, although the Met has 690 ' suspect' boxes that it is still investigating.
That means of the total number of boxes, around ten per cent are being probed for villainy, a long way from the nine out of ten cases the Met surmised they would find while wooing Judge Macrae.
Lawyers have seen their Rize cases squeezed and intimidated. Sara Teasdale revealed how the police were first adamant that her client's money was criminal cash, threatening forfeiture, only to try and turn the box-holder's business partner against him, enticing him to wear a wire so as to entrap him into admitting it was also money stolen from his own company.
Teasdale said: 'They first tried "wrong money". Then it was company money. Even when they dropped criminal proceedings against him in February 2009, they inexplicably continued with civil forfeiture proceedings.' The Yard was trying all it could to get the cash.
'They were sitting on almost £1 million, and having referred to my client anonymously in press releases as an example of why they had raided, they needed to win.'
But this case was recently lost by the Met too, leaving the box-holder with £200,000 in fees, money he is now seeking back from the police.
To make very bad even worse, the inevitable:
One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an o fficial complaint.
'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them my books.'
His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 o fficers.
'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond earrings.'
...
The Met has strenuously denied all allegations of theft, pointing out that anyone stealing from the boxes would have been caught on camera since offi cers videoed the entire operation.
Another box-holder who is alleging theft, a wealthy Russian émigré party-planner from north London, who had £64,000 in cash and £250,000 worth of jewellery, including heirlooms from Russia, successfully challenged the police to produce the video.
'I am meticulous,' she said. 'I have a receipt for everything. When I got my box back, £9,000 cash and some smaller items of jewellery were missing - a gold baby's bracelet and an 18-carat gold ring.'
The initial police footage, she claims, had a time code and showed her box being carried to a table. But then the tape was interrupted and when it restarted the footage was being shot from a new camera, at a diff erent angle and without a time code, with real time having moved on many seconds.
She told Live: 'It only takes seconds for a small envelope of cash or a gold ring to be swiped from the table and into someone's pocket. I was staggered.' After failing to get adequate answers from the Met's own Directorate of Professional Standards, her lawyers have gone to the independent Police Complaints Authority, along with 70 other box-holders.
So now you've got either messed-up procedure on documenting the process, or deliberate gaps in the recordings. And accusations of missing property. With the Met still claiming it was an 'absolute success', of course. This part near the end points to the same mindset that leads to so many of the problems here:
Facing hefty fees for defending itself before two Judicial Reviews, being pursued for millions of pounds in legal fees by innocent box-holders, and now facing inquiries into theft, the political, judicial and financial costs of the operation are beginning to stack up.
And yet when it first kicked o ff, one of the things that had endeared Rize to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'
Just effing wonderful. Deliberately setting targets of 'assets' to seize is a serious indication of trouble in the making, because if you aren't near your target, there's going to be real pressure to do things you probably shouldn't to meet the target. Which looks like was a big factor in this mess.
I'd suggest reading the whole article; it's worth the time. One thing that really surprise me was this line: Determined to clear their names, the Selts put up the £50,000 needed to launch their own Judicial Review that also focused on the lawfulness of the original warrant.
So not only do you have to find a way to prove your money and possessions are really yours, and legitimate, you have to come up with a serious amount of cash to get this type of review started. Which makes it even harder for you, and even easier for the government to keep your property; wonderful thing for official thieves, isn't it?
So this is the kind of foreign policy advice Sen. John Effing Kerry
(Evil Party Slimeball-MA) is giving the President: (Updated)
A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a “coup” and demanded reversed for its illegality. To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing Zelaya for his crimes against their constitution, although they determined that his exile broke Honduran law. Now John Kerry wants the Law Library to retract its findings, apparently trying to rewrite history to hide the facts of the case:
Wonderful, isn't it?
Update: Sailor Curt has a lot more detail, go take a look.
A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a “coup” and demanded reversed for its illegality. To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing Zelaya for his crimes against their constitution, although they determined that his exile broke Honduran law. Now John Kerry wants the Law Library to retract its findings, apparently trying to rewrite history to hide the facts of the case:
Wonderful, isn't it?
Update: Sailor Curt has a lot more detail, go take a look.
Ok, what the hell is the Attorney General doing?
President Obama isn’t taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled.
Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad.
Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad.
Apparently the Reclusive Leftist doesn't like questions
She has a post up on the Protected Species Crime Bill(no, she doesn't call it that) the Evil Party tacked onto the defense bill, and how there should have been more noise made about protecting women from hate crime. So I asked a question in comments: Why hate crime laws? Why not prosecute a rape as a rape, murder as murder, etc.? Why screw around with 'hate crime' legislation?
I just checked back, and the comment/question has been deleted. Apparently you're not supposed to question the need for some groups to receive special protection. Which is exactly what this crap is, you're saying that some groups are more human, or more important than others, therefore a crime against the protected species is worse than a crime against a plain old not-as-important human.
I just checked back, and the comment/question has been deleted. Apparently you're not supposed to question the need for some groups to receive special protection. Which is exactly what this crap is, you're saying that some groups are more human, or more important than others, therefore a crime against the protected species is worse than a crime against a plain old not-as-important human.
I was going to say 'well done' to Obama for meeting the returning dead,
until I read this:
Meanwhile, he managed to slip off to Dover AFB between 12:30 and 4 AM last nightto greet returning caskets of 18 servicemen recently killed in Afghanistan. Despite the late hour, the event was anything but discreet. Turns out they managed to get a family of one, Army Sargent Dale R. Griffin, to agree to allow press coverage of the 15 minute ceremony, securing an inspiring photo op for the event.
Damn the bastard. He can screw around for months trying to decide whether or not to take Gen. McChrystal's call for more troops("Because I care about them"), and then he does this. For a God-cursed photo op, to show how much he 'respects' the troops. If he actually had any respect for them, he'd do the same thing I've heard Bush often did: meet the incoming with no media and keep it quiet. I'm still mad as hell at Bush for a number of things, but this damn sure ain't one of them.
Meanwhile, he managed to slip off to Dover AFB between 12:30 and 4 AM last nightto greet returning caskets of 18 servicemen recently killed in Afghanistan. Despite the late hour, the event was anything but discreet. Turns out they managed to get a family of one, Army Sargent Dale R. Griffin, to agree to allow press coverage of the 15 minute ceremony, securing an inspiring photo op for the event.
Damn the bastard. He can screw around for months trying to decide whether or not to take Gen. McChrystal's call for more troops("Because I care about them"), and then he does this. For a God-cursed photo op, to show how much he 'respects' the troops. If he actually had any respect for them, he'd do the same thing I've heard Bush often did: meet the incoming with no media and keep it quiet. I'm still mad as hell at Bush for a number of things, but this damn sure ain't one of them.
This kind of idiocy ought to come up on a Monday
Taking a hot shower is harmful to Mother Gaia, and the enviroweenies want you to stop. Hey, they want to use cold water only when it's coming out of the tap at make-your-balls-disappear temperature, they're welcome to.
Connections, connections... and this is the kind of thing that makes me think that, whatever it is, there's something at least highly embarrassing(to them at least) in the documents.
Hey, if Obama can blame all his problems on Bush, Anita Dunn can blame hers on a dead Republican.
Who's lying to who? Interesting question. Did Gingrich just not make sure of the facts, or is there some idiot reason he's pushing the liberal?
Hmmm. US federal agents said they shot dead the leader of a radical fundamentalist Islamist group after he refused to surrender on several criminal charges. The US attorney’s office said Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, was killed while exchanging gunfire with agents yesterday at a warehouse in Dearborn, near Detroit.
Ok, if this little bastard Levi Johnston wants to make veiled threats, maybe someone should start digging into everything about him. For starters, is he paying child support out of all this money he's making?
If only they reacted so swiftly to developments in other wars, such as in Afghanistan. They seem to care more about their own political image than they do about our military.
Now while they claim these job numbers are being corrected, their own web site still has what they claim is the wrong information.
Oops.
Like he says, Hey, AP, welcome to the enemies list!
Question has become not "Will the Brits reach a tipping point?", but "Did it pass and they let it?"
A council has banned parents from supervising their children in public playgrounds until they have undergone criminal record checks.
Adults have been excluded from two adventure play areas in Watford, apart from a handful of council-vetted 'play rangers' who will assist youngsters, it emerged today.
Parents will be forced to watch their children from outside the perimeter fence.
Watford Borough Council claims it is just following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.
The Nanny State has your own interests at heart. And control of your kids. Wonder what these kids are hearing at school?
She said: 'Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
Actually, for parents it often is, while the kids play; just because you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.
And get this part:
'We have reviewed our procedures, so although previously some parents have stayed with their children at the discretion of our play workers, this is not something we can continue to do.
So they're claiming that even before this, their 'play workers' had the power to tell parents to leave their kids. Isn't socialism wonderful, where Great Britain used to be?
Even more risible, though, is the claim that the administration “is going to speak truth to power.” Hello, Valerie? Your boss is the president of the United States! No one is more powerful. As we suggested Friday, it really seems as if Obama and his men do not understand what it means to be president. Because their power is constrained–thank you, Founding Fathers!–they labor under the delusion that they are powerless.
Yet while this is all hilarious, it is also scary when you think it through. Great power entails great responsibility. There is little to suggest that Obama and his aides appreciate their responsibility, and much, including their incessant complaining that the previous president did a lousy job, to suggest an attitude of total irresponsibility.
The job of those in power is not to “speak truth to power,” though it would be nice if they spoke the truth once in a while.
Yeah. From the comment Insty published,
But he’s finding out that governing by fiat doesn’t work for long in this country. The tags for his presidency so far seem to be Radical, Naive, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Socialism and Screw Up.
I'd change that slightly, to 'Screw You'.
Here's a bit more on the islamist in Detroit; think the AG will charge them with hate crimes over this language?
The complaint says that the imam or leader of the group, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, repeatedly used rhetoric that urged Muslims to seize power with violence and establish a society where Muslims would rule over non-Muslims.
“America must fall,” Abdullah said, according to the complaint. At another point, he “told followers that they need to be with the Taliban, Hizballah, and with Sheikh Bin Laden.”
“We should be figuring out how to fight the Kuffar,” Abdullah said at another point, the indictment states. Kuffar “is a highly derogatory term” used to describe non-Mulisms, the document states.
Nah, I don't think so either; how can he charge a protected species with a hate crime, racial coward that he is?
Gee, it's nice that Obama nominates such wonderful people for such critical offices...
FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had “no conversations” with anyone at the DA’s office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.
But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter’s campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.
And, as I've pointed out many times,
It can be a crime to access the National Crime Information Center computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose.
So not only did President Obama's appointee lie- under oath, yet- about matters, the FBI failed to do their damn job right. Wonderful, isn't it, how some questions don't get asked of Obama appointees? Of course, it's possible this was simply incompetence, but I doubt it.
The Working Families Party, yeah; breaking the law fortheiryour own good...
Lots of links from Malkin today.
I noticed the other day that while the defense appropriations bill being signed was reported, most media stressed the Special Protected Species "They're more human than you" Hate Crimes Law" that was tacked onto it; probably because if you actually talk about the bill, you might have to discuss all the slimy politicians raiding the troops funds for vote-buying earmarks.
Oh, goody. Maybe they'll call the company Jackson's Whole. And start farming clones for parts.
Bleah. I need tea. And it's raining, again, and a front coming in this afternoon just to chill things again. Talked to son last night, and daughter-in-law is sick, and it's worse than it should be because she didn't want to go to the doctor for days; yeah, she'll fit right into the family.
Connections, connections... and this is the kind of thing that makes me think that, whatever it is, there's something at least highly embarrassing(to them at least) in the documents.
Hey, if Obama can blame all his problems on Bush, Anita Dunn can blame hers on a dead Republican.
Who's lying to who? Interesting question. Did Gingrich just not make sure of the facts, or is there some idiot reason he's pushing the liberal?
Hmmm. US federal agents said they shot dead the leader of a radical fundamentalist Islamist group after he refused to surrender on several criminal charges. The US attorney’s office said Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, was killed while exchanging gunfire with agents yesterday at a warehouse in Dearborn, near Detroit.
Ok, if this little bastard Levi Johnston wants to make veiled threats, maybe someone should start digging into everything about him. For starters, is he paying child support out of all this money he's making?
If only they reacted so swiftly to developments in other wars, such as in Afghanistan. They seem to care more about their own political image than they do about our military.
Now while they claim these job numbers are being corrected, their own web site still has what they claim is the wrong information.
Oops.
Like he says, Hey, AP, welcome to the enemies list!
Question has become not "Will the Brits reach a tipping point?", but "Did it pass and they let it?"
A council has banned parents from supervising their children in public playgrounds until they have undergone criminal record checks.
Adults have been excluded from two adventure play areas in Watford, apart from a handful of council-vetted 'play rangers' who will assist youngsters, it emerged today.
Parents will be forced to watch their children from outside the perimeter fence.
Watford Borough Council claims it is just following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.
The Nanny State has your own interests at heart. And control of your kids. Wonder what these kids are hearing at school?
She said: 'Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
Actually, for parents it often is, while the kids play; just because you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.
And get this part:
'We have reviewed our procedures, so although previously some parents have stayed with their children at the discretion of our play workers, this is not something we can continue to do.
So they're claiming that even before this, their 'play workers' had the power to tell parents to leave their kids. Isn't socialism wonderful, where Great Britain used to be?
Even more risible, though, is the claim that the administration “is going to speak truth to power.” Hello, Valerie? Your boss is the president of the United States! No one is more powerful. As we suggested Friday, it really seems as if Obama and his men do not understand what it means to be president. Because their power is constrained–thank you, Founding Fathers!–they labor under the delusion that they are powerless.
Yet while this is all hilarious, it is also scary when you think it through. Great power entails great responsibility. There is little to suggest that Obama and his aides appreciate their responsibility, and much, including their incessant complaining that the previous president did a lousy job, to suggest an attitude of total irresponsibility.
The job of those in power is not to “speak truth to power,” though it would be nice if they spoke the truth once in a while.
Yeah. From the comment Insty published,
But he’s finding out that governing by fiat doesn’t work for long in this country. The tags for his presidency so far seem to be Radical, Naive, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Socialism and Screw Up.
I'd change that slightly, to 'Screw You'.
Here's a bit more on the islamist in Detroit; think the AG will charge them with hate crimes over this language?
The complaint says that the imam or leader of the group, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, repeatedly used rhetoric that urged Muslims to seize power with violence and establish a society where Muslims would rule over non-Muslims.
“America must fall,” Abdullah said, according to the complaint. At another point, he “told followers that they need to be with the Taliban, Hizballah, and with Sheikh Bin Laden.”
“We should be figuring out how to fight the Kuffar,” Abdullah said at another point, the indictment states. Kuffar “is a highly derogatory term” used to describe non-Mulisms, the document states.
Nah, I don't think so either; how can he charge a protected species with a hate crime, racial coward that he is?
Gee, it's nice that Obama nominates such wonderful people for such critical offices...
FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had “no conversations” with anyone at the DA’s office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.
But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter’s campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.
And, as I've pointed out many times,
It can be a crime to access the National Crime Information Center computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose.
So not only did President Obama's appointee lie- under oath, yet- about matters, the FBI failed to do their damn job right. Wonderful, isn't it, how some questions don't get asked of Obama appointees? Of course, it's possible this was simply incompetence, but I doubt it.
The Working Families Party, yeah; breaking the law for
Lots of links from Malkin today.
I noticed the other day that while the defense appropriations bill being signed was reported, most media stressed the Special Protected Species "They're more human than you" Hate Crimes Law" that was tacked onto it; probably because if you actually talk about the bill, you might have to discuss all the slimy politicians raiding the troops funds for vote-buying earmarks.
Oh, goody. Maybe they'll call the company Jackson's Whole. And start farming clones for parts.
Bleah. I need tea. And it's raining, again, and a front coming in this afternoon just to chill things again. Talked to son last night, and daughter-in-law is sick, and it's worse than it should be because she didn't want to go to the doctor for days; yeah, she'll fit right into the family.
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