A Democratic leader in the New Jersey Assembly has been charged with public corruption for allegedly abusing his former position as Perth Amboy's mayor by using city money for personal expenses such as his son's basketball camps and refreshments served after his father's funeral. Prosecutors also accuse Joseph Vas of rigging a lottery so his driver would win.
In an 11-count indictment, Vas, 54, is charged with conspiracy, official misconduct, bid-rigging and record tampering. Attorney General Anne Milgram announced the charges at a news conference yesterday. "Joseph Vas took an oath as mayor to honestly and faithfully serve his city, but instead he shamelessly exploited his position for personal gain," Milgram said.
Corruption? For this? Cheez, we see worse in Chicago every day. Hmmmph, I thought Joisey had corruption, not this nickel and dime stuff.
Vas, the Assembly's deputy majority leader, has not been arrested. He will plead not guilty, said his lawyer, Alan Zegas. "We will vigorously contest the charges," Zegas said.
Milgram said Vas is accused of billing $5,000 in personal expenses to the City of Perth Amboy, including $289 for refreshments served after his father's funeral and $1,450 in basketball-camp fees for his son. "This is over $1,400 in city taxpayer money that was spent so that Vas' son could learn to play basketball courtesy of the residents of Perth Amboy, many of whom can't afford to send their own kids to basketball camp," Milgram said.
Prosecutors also say Vas rigged a public-housing lottery in favor of his personal driver. According to the charges, Vas arranged for an index card with his driver's name to be selected in what was supposed to be a random drawing among 40 participants, entitling the driver to buy low-income housing through a first-time buyers' program. The driver, Anthony S. Jones, 48, of Perth Amboy, also was indicted.
Vas was mayor of Perth Amboy, in Middlesex County, for 18 years, ending last year. He remains on the planning board and redevelopment agency. Since 2004, he has been a member of the Assembly, where he has sponsored 22 ethics bills on corruption, campaign finance and election reform.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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Shocked, shocked I tell you!
Posted by: Steven ||
03/13/2009 0:25 Comments ||
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Awww, not playing the "Guess the party" Game.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/13/2009 2:26 Comments ||
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...and $1,450 in basketball-camp fees for his son.
But did he deduct these fees as a child care expense on his 1040?
Questions have been emerging over the last few months about the actions of an L.A. congresswoman who reportedly set up a meeting between federal regulators and a bank seeking $50 million in bailout funds. Maxine Waters did so even though her family had financial ties to the bank. The Wall Street Journal has been reporting this story for a while, and today the New York Times weighed in:
Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at OneUnited, one of the nation's largest black-owned banks. Ms. [Waters'] husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank's board of directors until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 in stock in the institution. Treasury officials said the session with nearly a dozen senior banking regulators had been intended to allow minority-owned banks and their trade association to discuss the losses they had incurred from the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Kevin Cohee, OneUnited's chief executive, instead seized the opportunity to plead for special assistance for his bank, federal officials said.
A few years ago, The Times' Chuck Neubauer and Ted Rohrlich did an in-depth report on similar themes: "U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters' family members have made more than $1 million in the last eight years by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that the influential congresswoman has helped."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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I got the impression last month that Waters was so massively ignorant about basic banking concepts that she might do something about this in a state of pure innocent incompetent cluelessness.
But I'm apparently in a charitable mood this evening.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/13/2009 16:57 Comments ||
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A senior White House official tells NBC News that the president's choice to be the nation's chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, has taken a leave from his position until further details become known of the FBI's investigation into Kundra's Washington, D.C. IT offices.
While the FBI has said Kundra is not connected to their investigation of a contractor that was under Kundra's supervision, the appearance apparently is enough to force Kundra to take a leave from the White House.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said.
The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters.
At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city's technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar's Washington home and that he posed a serious flight risk.
Technology consultant Sushil Bansal of Dunn Loring, Va., was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area. Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they were hopeful that a plea agreement could be reached in his case.
Acar worked under Kundra, Obama's pick to coordinate federal computer systems. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether the White House knew the investigation was under way when it named Kundra last week, but called the case "a serious matter."
Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, said she was "very confident" Kundra is not a target of the investigation.
Bansal's lawyer, David Lamb declined to comment. It was not immediately clear who would represent Acar in the case.
Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city's computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents.
Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and "ghost" contract employees who did not work. The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged.
Bansal, a native of India who turns 42 next week, is a former city employee and the founder and chief executive of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. The company has offices in Washington and India and did more than $13 million in business with the District of Columbia government in the past five years, according to court documents.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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I had quite a chuckle over this when I got the news yesterday morning. I work for a tech company in DC and actually met with Kundra shortly after the DC property tax refund embezzlement scandal (to the tune of $50m+) from about a year ago. Clearly, the DC gov was in need of better financial control and disbursement oversight. My company sells software that helps with this. But he dismissed the issue and us by saying that no technology could have deterred or detected the fraud. Excuse me? Your supposed to be the tech guy and you don't think there's a tech solution to what is essentially a data visibility problem? It was at that point that my antennae went up on this guy.
I came away from that meeting with the sense that he is the ultimate self-marketer. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he were involved with all of this nonsense somehow or was such a ineffective manager that he had no clue what was going on right under his nose.
If you have spent anytime watching the charade which passes as congressional banking hearings chaired by Barney Frank, the performances of Maxine Waters have been stunningly symptomatic of the epidemic of financial illiteracy and stupidity which graces the benches at those hearings. She epitomizes the extent to which commonsense and basic skills are an anathema to the current ruling class. This article drips in irony. I don't know how it will play out but the only person I can recall who can come close to her level of idiocy in her utterances is the much missed, lamented and currently furloughed Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
WASHINGTON -- When Rep. Barney Frank was looking to aid a Boston-based lender last fall, the Massachusetts Democrat urged Maxine Waters, a colleague on the House Financial Services Committee, to "stay out of it," he says. The reason: Ms. Waters, a longtime congresswoman from California, had close ties to the minority-owned institution, OneUnited Bank.
Ms. Waters and her husband have both held financial stakes in the bank. Until recently, her husband was a director. At the same time, Ms. Waters has publicly boosted OneUnited's executives and criticized its government regulators during congressional hearings. Last fall, she helped secure the bank a meeting with Treasury officials.
New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine is losing ground in a public opinion poll.
He could spend $100 million on a re-election and still lose ...
A Quinnipiac University poll out today finds the Democratic incumbent trailing Christopher Christie, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, by 9 percentage points. Corzine trailed Christie in a February poll by 6.
Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie is widening his lead over Gov. Jon Corzine, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.The poll has little good news for Corzine: Half of those polled disapproved of the job he's doing even before he unveiled a bad news budget on Tuesday.
Pollster Clay Richards says Christie could gain momentum as more voters find out who he is. Only 44 percent say they're aware he is a former federal prosecutor with a string of political corruption convictions. The telephone poll of 1,386 registered voters taken March 4-9 has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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You can't feed those pigs in Trenton enough tax dollars.
NJ is a blackhole of political corruption, IMO makes the guys in Chicago look like pikers.
Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration. It's the third withdrawal of a top Treasury Department staff pick in less than a week.
I reported last week that Cohen was likely to be officially nominated for the Deputy Treasury Secretary position. Cohen has been a counsel to just about every major player on Wall Street, which perhaps complicated his nomination.
Now, the nomination is off.
Democratic sources said that an issue arose in the final stages of the vetting process. As one source put it, "it's back to the drawing board."
Cohen had risen to the top after the withdrawal last week of expected deputy treasury secretary pick Annette Nazareth. Nazareth was forced to withdraw from consideration for the deputy treasury slot because senators made it clear she would face tough questioning over her time at the Securities and Exchange Commission -- tenure that overlapped with the agency's failure to catch Bernie Madoff.
And the candidate for Undersecretary for International Affairs, Caroline Atkinson, was told she had to withdraw after a "tax problem" was revealed early in the vetting process, according to officials.
Last week an administration official conceded to me that "it's not easy to find qualified people who don't have conflicts" adding that "dozens of candidates" across the government have been forced to pull out because they couldn't meet President Barack Obama's ethics standards or overcome other vetting issues.
And his ethical standards don't seem to be very high in the first place ...
Obama administration officials have pushed back hard at critics who argue that failure to fill key Treasury Department positions is hampering their response to the economic crisis. The administration has argued that they have more appointees in place than previous administrations and have done big things: housing, stimulus, and the beginning of their bank plans.
But with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner struggling to contain a national economic crisis and helming a department with vital staff positions unfilled -- the latest withdrawal will give critics more ammunition.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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It's getting hard to find sufficiently unethical people with the right qualifications who are willing to board the Titanic on its maiden voyage.
#3
"have been forced to pull out because they couldn't meet President Barack Obama's ethics standards"
Like to get a drivers license you need to show your birth certificate because thats the law. But to be a President you don't have to show your birh certificate, even if its the law. So confusing to understand his ethics, ain't it.
FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration's National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask -- as numerous members of Congress had begun to do -- whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.
It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel -- and his statement was a grotesque libel.
For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman's appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn't bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman's most formidable critic -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- was incensed by his position on dissent in China.
But let's consider the ambassador's broader charge: He describes "an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics." That will certainly be news to Israel's "ruling faction," which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.
What's striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that "it is not permitted for anyone in the United States" to describe Israel's nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges -- and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them
Because they were unaware of his position on China?
I'm disturbed by the fact that no one in the Obama administration seemed even slightly bothered by the fact that this bastard is so openly anti-Semitic and sides with the ChiComs against the democracy movement. In what alternate universe is a clown who thinks like that even remotely acceptable as a key national security advisor--or even a not-so-key advisor, second deputy assistant undersecretary to the advisor, or even "guy you'd give the time of day to"?
Posted by: Mike ||
03/13/2009 16:25 Comments ||
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Republican Norm Coleman's case in the U.S. Senate trial, once built on the prospects of counting thousands of rejected absentee ballots, is now down to 1,360 ballots or fewer.That's the number his lawyers gave to a three-judge panel Wednesday in hopes that the ballots will yield enough votes for Coleman to surmount a 225-vote lead held by Democrat Al Franken.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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Tony West, a high-powered San Francisco lawyer whose clients have ranged from corporate giants to "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, has been nominated by President Obama as an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Division.
What's the over/under for him withdrawing due to an 'unforeseen tax problem'?
West, 43, an Oakland resident, met Obama in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention and was one of his finance co-chairs in California last year, when the campaign raised a record $65 million in the state.
A graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School, West worked as a Justice Department attorney under President Bill Clinton, a federal prosecutor in San Francisco and an assistant state attorney general before becoming a litigator at San Francisco's Morrison & Foerster in 2001.
While representing companies in civil and criminal cases, he has also served as a lawyer for Mark Klein, the former AT&T technician who testified that the telecommunications company was sharing customers' phone calls and e-mails with federal agents in the Bush administration's electronic surveillance program.
West was co-counsel for former Oakland Raiders receiver Marcus Williams, who in 2005 won $340,000 in damages from ex-teammate Bill Romanowski for punching him during practice.
He also took part in the defense of Lindh, the Marin County man who was a 20-year-old Taliban soldier in Afghanistan when he was captured in November 2001. Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002 to serving in the Taliban army and carrying weapons and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
West, who ran unsuccessfully for a state Assembly seat in San Jose in 2000, has acknowledged that the Lindh case dampened his political prospects, but said it was the kind of work he believed in. "I really believe that in working on that case, I was recommitting myself to those principles of due process, fairness - things that separate us from most nations in the world," he told The Chronicle in an interview last year.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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West worked as a Justice Department attorney under President Bill Clinton
BINGO
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/13/2009 2:33 Comments ||
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Yeah, Barry sure can pick 'em.
Any bets on if Johnny Boy will be home for Christmas Ramadan?
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner found himself at ground zero of U.S. economic discontent on Thursday. He faced tough questions at a Senate hearing on President Barack Obama's $3.55 trillion budget plan and other big-spending items that will leave America heavily in debt, and he expressed confidence.
"We are a strong and productive country. This is about our will, not about our ability," he said.
It has been an uneasy transition to Washington for Geithner, the 47-year-old former New York Federal Reserve wunderkind who survived his own tax problems to gain Senate confirmation as treasury secretary.
Stocks dropped sharply last month after Geithner's bank rescue plan was criticized for lacking details and clarity. He was parodied last week in a satirical skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in which a Geithner impersonator offered toll-free hotline callers a $420 billion cash reward if they could come up with a workable plan to fix ailing banks.
He is still working without top deputies, although the White House last weekend put forward several nominees for other senior positions. In a fresh setback on Thursday, prominent Wall Street lawyer Rodgin Cohen withdrew from consideration to be the No. 2 official, the second person to have done so within a week.
"The president has great confidence in his economic team," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters when asked about Geithner's credibility with some financial market players.
U.S. stock markets have swooned since Obama took office on January 20, but have clawed their way back a bit as the administration has tried to address the discontent and repair public confidence this week.
Mostly by having Bambi shut his mouth for most of the week ...
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance. This has to be the Dumbest Proposal Ever.
Lawmakers say they'd reject a proposal to make veterans pay for treatment of war wounds with private insurance. If they didn't they wouldn't be back in Washington. Probably be tarred and feathered.
But the proposal would be "dead on arrival" if it's sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.
Politicians know how to count, and Murray knows just how many vets would be riled up in her state.
Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.
No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama voicing their opposition to the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration. How could he even consider this?
The groups also cited an increase in "third-party collections" estimated in the 2010 budget proposal -- something they said could be achieved only if the Veterans Administration started billing for service-related injuries. Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under "consideration."
"A final decision hasn't been made yet," he said.
Currently, veterans' private insurance is charged only when they receive health care from the VA for medical issues that are not related to service injuries, like getting the flu.
Charging for service-related injuries would violate "a sacred trust," Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis said. Davis said the move would risk private health care for veterans and their families by potentially maxing out benefits paying for costly war injury treatments.
A second senator, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, said he agreed that the idea should not go forward. "I think you will give that up" as a revenue stream if it is included in this April's budget, Burr said.
Murray said she'd already discussed her concerns with the secretary the previous week. "I believe that veterans with service-connected injuries have already paid by putting their lives on the line," Murray said in her remarks. "I don't think we should nickel and dime them for their care." AMEN!
Eleven of the most prominent veterans organizations have been lobbying Congress to oppose the idea. In the letter sent last week to the president, the groups warned that the idea "is wholly unacceptable and a total abrogation of our government's moral and legal responsibility to the men and women who have sacrificed so much." I do wonder about the Government's morals but they seem to be in the right so far on this proposal.
The groups included The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
At the time, a White House spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the option was being considered. We can say nothing!
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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How could he even consider this?
Serious answer, he's out to destroy the Armed Services, this is undermining and demeaning, (Yes, he knows it, but if it'll kill recruitment, he's all for it, no recruits, no military without returning to a draft, and THAT, is the biggest killer of the services there is)and that's the desired result.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/13/2009 2:24 Comments ||
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If he wants to make a political point, okay.
I rather have private health care. If a vet needs it, they should get help with it.
This administration if forcing an evil way for a simple context with no reasoning.
You haven't understood. The problem is not private healthcare but that veterans would pay insurance from own pocket. In other words if you are deployed to a war zone you face the perspective to be wonded and, once you are back in the States, to starve as your pension will go in helthcare. In other words if you enlist you face the perspective of starving later. Now if your goals is that America loses the WOT then it is a brilliant plan.
#6
Didn't take them long to come after the wounded Vets. Absolutely deplorable. Barry's running a high class operation. Hat to you ya General Shinseki. You're performance as VA Secretary is exactly as anticipated. At the first mention of this, you should have immediately held a press confernece and announced your resignation.
#7
Hey, if it forces him to pay for private care for toops, that is one thing, but if he cuts the troops off from care during war, then it is time to raze all of washington DC to the ground.
#9
What am I saying? Washington should have been burned 10 years ago. Aholes all of them.
Unless you evacuate the collections first, try to carry a lightened cigarette within ten miles of the National Air and Space Museum and I will cross the Atlantic to kill you. :-)
#10
Any reading of history shows that any government that shortchanges its soldiers usually ends up not being the government for long. It literally took the full prestige and personal bearing of George Washington to prevent that at the very beginning of the republic. We no longer have a Washington.
When Jefferson wrote about the "consent of the governed" in the Declaration of Independence, he was not referring to the 'vote', he was referring to what Lincoln would write some four score and seven years later about 'last full measure of devotion'.
#11
Amazing. Amazing. 7 weeks in and they have now floated a balloon to alienate another section of the community. Another rule change for all those who have chosen a life of service and who anticipated a modicum of recompense to at least not be guaranteed impecuniosity.
Noting the commentary in today's WSJ this administration is doing a fine job is spending its political capital. They are taking as much care of that as they are the national wealth. Won't belong before the middle ground which keeps wanting to give them a little more time, decides that times up. At that point a few democrats who acknowledge the problems [read see risks to themselves at the next election] start to take serious issue.
Pretend that you're throwing a bomb and the secondary doesn't realize it's going to be a run to the outside until it's too late.
Anything that gives "Absolute Moonbats®" like Murray (who on the campaign trail praised Osama bin-Laden) some 'cred' with current military and veterans has to be a set-up so she (and others) can come back in two years saying "look how we supported our brave young people".
Another faux-issue 'deflection' from his real problems - brought to you by 'The One'.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/13/2009 10:47 Comments ||
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While I'm not a vet myself, I have worked in three different VA hospitals as a physician/medical student in my training. My solution would be simple:
1) close most of the VA hospitals. They're for a bygone era. I'd keep certain specialty services that are specific to service-connected needs, including orthopedics, psychiatry, etc. You need a few VA hospitals around in case we ever again have a war with large numbers of casualties, but most VA hospitals are around today for political reasons.
2) every vet with a service-connected disability gets the medical equivalent of a platinum Amex, with 100% of the costs for service-connected medical care covered by the government. The vet goes where he likes for his care, the government pays.
3) every vet with non-service-connected disabilities gets medical care based on paid premiums to a government-run insurer, along the lines of Tricare or Champus. Pay the premium and get the care you need.
In this way service-connected vets get everything they need without argument, non-service connected disabilities get care no matter the status of the vet at a cost that can be negotiated, and the VA returns to what it's supposed to do: provide only that care that the private system can't provide.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/13/2009 11:53 Comments ||
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Interesting comment, Doc. The late management guru Peter Drucker made almost the exact same recommendation in the 1990s. It made sense then and even more sense now.
#16
..: provide only that care that the private system can't provide.
But the usual suspects have talked themselves into a corner by harping incessantly about the 'Health Care Crisis'(tm). Overall health care and care for the poor is light years ahead of where it was circa 1960, people are living longer, and we probably have the largest population of over 70s in the world. However, now to put vets out into an environment that political media defines as in 'Crisis' is only going to sell to Obamanauts who can hold two contradictory concepts in their minds without their head exploding [along the story line that you can have an Ice Age during Global Warming].
#17
Serious answer, he's out to destroy the Armed Services...
And...
1. ...the productive working class.
2. ...the social/moral fabric of out society.
3. ...the economy (banking/investing...etc).
4. ...too damn many to list.
He is out to do nothing short of destroy this Nation. No surprise really, there are many that were saying this 2 years ago.
I'd just like to extend a hearty Thank You to the douche nozzle Independents that voted for this shit bag and the Republicans that stayed home out of spite. /sarc You won't be forgotten.
You Know This Guy We Haven't Told You About? Well, He's Not Going to Be Important! During the Trent Lott scandal, if I remember right, there was speculation that the blogosphere would really have arrived when a high public official suddenly resigned over an Web-borne scandal without the scandal being mentioned in the respectable mainstream press--so if you had only read the New York Times or Washington Post you'd have no idea why this person quit or what the scandal was until he or she was gone. Poof! Killed by ninja blogs. Well (without regard to the merits of the dispute), the Charles Freeman withdrawal is close to that case, no? WaPo apparently printed its first news story on the controversy the day it ended--i.e. when Freeman withdrew. Ditto the New York Times. ... What does this event signify? Not to be too portentous, but it signifies you can no longer be a well-informed citizen if you just read the Times and Post print editions. You have to go online. Sorry, Mom! ...
Posted by: Mike ||
03/13/2009 06:50 ||
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If all the liberals were like Mickey Kaus I'd have no problem with all the liberals ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/13/2009 11:40 Comments ||
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Kaus isn't a liberal in the modern definition. He's more of a heretical neo-con who never left the Democratic Party. From the Moynihan branch of neo-conservativism. People mistake him for a liberal because most people don't actually understand what neo-cons are, namely, conservative on utilitarian grounds, rather than from conservative principles.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/13/2009 16:51 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
