Richard S. Piccoli had a gift of gab and a message few could refuse. At a time when people watched their retirement funds evaporating by the month, Piccoli's mortgage company guaranteed them 7 to 8 percent interest on their investment.
If the offer sounded too good to be true, Piccoli, who ran Gen-See Capital Corp. in Williamsville, offered Catholic priests as references. He advertised in Catholic newspapers from Buffalo to Anchorage, Alaska, and hit up fellow Knights of Columbus members.
Since January 2007, more than $16 million came through his bank accounts. His clients included 50 priests, churches, religious orders and cemetery associations.
Continued on Page 49
#1
At a time when people watched their retirement funds evaporating by the month, Piccoli's mortgage company guaranteed them 7 to 8 percent interest on their investment.
Now that should scream at you like a siren.
What did he plan on paying off with? Communion wafers?
#2
How is this a "Catholic Ponzi Scheme" any more than the Madoff ponzi scheme is a "Jewish Ponzi Scheme". Do Catholics break the law? Sure but most of his victims were Catholic and many were clergy. To paint this as a "Catholic Ponzi Scheme" is just bigoted and the crack about communion wafers is just vile. Grow up.
#5
Carbon Monoxide: Madoff's was a Jewish Ponzi scheme, because he preyed especially on Orthodox Jews. This guy preyed on Catholics. So yes, properly it was "Ponzi Scheme preying on Catholics Derailed".
Somali pirates say they have released a Saudi-owned tanker carrying two million barrels of crude oil that they hijacked in the Indian Ocean. "All our people have now left the Sirius Star. The ship is free, the crew is free," Mohamed Said, the leader of the pirate group, told the AFP news agency on Friday.
Farah Osman, an purported associate of the pirates, told the Reuters news agency that a $3m ransom had been paid for the 330-metre tanker owned by the shipping arm of oil giant Aramco. "Pirates holding the Saudi ship took $3 million yesterday evening and then released the ship this morning," he said.
The pirates, who boarded the tanker on November 15, had demanded at least $15m to release the vessel. Saudi's hoping the price of oil was gonna go up in two months?
Andrew Mwangura, of the maritime group the East African Seafarers Assistance, confirmed that the vessel was on the move. "The last batch of gunmen have disembarked from the Sirius Star. She is now steaming out to safe waters," he said.
#3
"Pirates holding the Saudi ship took $3 million yesterday evening and then released the ship this morning,"
You think they flew in a bag man? There's a lot of money being made on 'processing' the transfer. I'd guess that the "Pirate" don't see more than third if that much of the real amount. It's the process and those doing the processing who are making the money and keeping the game going. Why shouldn't they act like most third world governments [which may in fact be one and the same here]?
(Xinhua) -- John Atta Mills, who was elected Ghanian president after a very close contest, officially took over the baton Wednesday from John Kufuor, who has served two terms since 2000, the constitutional limit, according to news agencies' reports.
Mills, representing the National Democratic Congress (NDC), won50.23 percent of the votes against 49.77 percent for the New Patriotic Party's candidate Nana Akufo-Addo, a leading edge of less than half percentage point.
The 2008 presidential election is the third time Mills has run as the presidential candidate of the NDC in a row.
He had twice run unsuccessfully for the presidency. He is believed to be well respected in Ghana because of his pedigree. He entered the political arena after a fulfilled career in the academics as a law lecturer at the University of Ghana. In 1988, Mills became the acting commissioner of Internal Revenue Service of Ghana and was named commissioner in 1996.
He was sworn in as vice-president of Ghana on Jan. 7, 1997. First elected by his party as its presidential flag bearer in December 2002, Mills also led the party to the 2004 elections.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/09/2009 00:00 ||
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When news director Francisco Cobo heard the explosion outside his television studio, as his two on-air anchors were presenting the evening news, he thought it might be a story. Then, Cobo said, he realized: We are the story.
The Televisa network news offices in the northern city of Monterrey were attacked Tuesday night in a commando-style raid by hooded gunmen who fired on the front doors of the building and then lobbed a hand grenade into the parking lot near a reporter and her cameraman. No one was hurt in the attack, which occurred at 8:40 p.m. in the prosperous manufacturing metropolis, which many executives consider one of the safer cities in Mexico.
The assailants drove a red Pontiac with Texas plates. They left a threatening message, a now-common tactic used by the heavily armed enforcers for drug-trafficking cartels and organized crime. The message read: "Stop reporting only about us, also report about the narco-officials. This is a warning."
The car, thought to be stolen, was later found abandoned with a .40-caliber handgun and a ski mask inside.
"We've had death threats before, by phone," Cobo said. "But we haven't had any threats for several months. And we haven't aired any big news about the narcos, just some smaller stories about some arrests."
As the station was under attack, the two news anchors asked the police for help while on the air.
This is the latest in a series of attacks on journalists in Mexico, where drug cartels have been battling one another and the police in a vicious struggle for control of billion-dollar smuggling routes to the U.S. drug market.
"It is easy and cheap to commit such attacks," said DarÃo RamÃrez, a director of Article 19, an organization based in Mexico that defends freedom of expression and reports that 28 journalists have been killed and eight have disappeared in the country since 2000. "What we are saying is that the government, in its silence, has demonstrated a complete lack of responsibility."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/09/2009 00:00 ||
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Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) believes Caroline Kennedy is getting softer press treatment in her pursuit of the New York Senate seat than Palin did as the GOP vice presidential nominee because of KennedyÂ’s social class.
“I’ve been interested to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope,” Palin told conservative filmmaker John Ziegler during an interview Monday for his upcoming documentary film, “How Obama Got Elected.” Excerpts from the interview were posted on YouTube Wednesday evening.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”
Palin said she remains subject to unfair press coverage of her and her family. “Is it political? Is it sexism?” she asked. “What is it that drives someone to believe the worst and perpetuate the worst in terms of gossip and lies?”
She observed that Katie Couric and Tina Fey have been “capitalizing on” and “exploiting” her. “I did see that Tina Fey was named entertainer of the year and Katie Couric’s ratings have risen,” she said. “And I know that a lot of people are capitalizing on, oh I don’t know, perhaps some exploiting that was done via me, my family, my administration. That’s a little bit perplexing, but it also says a great deal about our society.”
The Alaska governor said that when she sees some of the coverage of her daughter Bristol especially “the momma grizzly rises up in me.”
Looking back on the Couric interviews, Palin said she knew things were not going well after their first session and asked the McCain campaign to pull the plug on the remaining sit downs but insisted the campaign made her go through with the rest. “I knew it didn’t go well the first day, and then we gave her a couple of other segments after that. And my question to the campaign was, after it didn’t go well the first day, why were we going to go back for more?” she said. “Because of however it works in that upper echelon of power brokering in the media and with spokespersons, it was told to me that, yeah, we are going to go back for more. And going back for more was not a wise decision either.”
Palin criticized Couric for the way CBS “spliced it together,” saying that “so many of the topics brought up were not portrayed as accurately as they could have, should have, been.”
She also expressed frustration with Couric’s characterization of her since the interviews. After being shown a clip of Couric complaining to David Letterman that no post-election interviewer has asked Palin why she would not tell the CBS anchor what newspapers she reads, the Alaska governor responded: “Because, Katie, you’re not the center of everybody’s universe.” Meeeow...
#1
Set up by McPain, eh ? Where is the little shit now ? Quiet as a church mouse. A worn out has been just like Jimmy the Peanut. Did you notice how he was shunted off to the side, the other day in the White House. No one wanted any lip from that dipshit. Same with McPain. Done for.
#2
True, McCain was everyone's LAST pick up till the very end. I have no idea how he got his foot in the door. And I don't care who disagrees with me, he WAS too old.
Huckabee deliberately and openly stayed in long enough to draw votes away from Romney. In fact, he went further - he ran ads that were intended to incite evangelicals in the South to see Romney as religiously toxic, then threw his support openly to McCain right before the relevant primaries.
#6
The tired old man got 46% of the vote on Election Day in spite of the Obama tsunami.
You name another Republican anywhere in this country that would have done that well.
Not Romney. Please.
Not Huckabee. Not even close.
Not Guiliani.
I can't think of a single one.
Sure McCain wasn't anyone's favorite. He hung in there nicely and was a point or two ahead in mid-September, right as the current economic 'crisis' broke (how convenient for Obama and all kudos to Mr. Soros).
So laugh at and pick on the old man, it's easy. Just remember, he's the one who brought us to the dance.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/09/2009 12:21 Comments ||
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#7
Dr. Steve, no matter the topic, you always seem, to me, to be the voice of moderation. Do ya hafta have that to be a Moderator?
Keep it up!
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/09/2009 13:11 Comments ||
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#8
You might have misjudged Romney, Steve. I am absolutely certain Romney would have been about 100 times more effective than McCain when the financial crisis hit and he had a significant ground operation ramping up in the West and elsewhere.
But no one can do more than guess at this point. All I can say is that I regard my contributions to McCain/Palin as a huge waste of money I really needed for other things.
#10
"You name another Republican anywhere in this country that would have done that well."
Fred Thompson.
If he'd decided to actually run.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/09/2009 14:15 Comments ||
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#11
You might have misjudged Romney, Steve. I am absolutely certain Romney would have been about 100 times more effective than McCain when the financial crisis hit and he had a significant ground operation ramping up in the West and elsewhere.
I was under the impression that McCain was taking Romney's advice while he was making various decisions during the crisis, i.e. suspending his campaign, etc.
#13
Don't complain, C.Fool, I live in HI - talk about a wasted vote. Have I mentioned that I really don't like the electoral college - winner take all thing....
#14
I think Sarah gooned it; by opening her mouth to make this statement she only opened herself up for more lebtard criticism, along the lines of 'she can dish it out but can't take it.'
would have been better to let others make that kid glove statement and she remain aloof. 2012 is only ( consults calendar) too far away.
#15
McCain had a chance to fight for the people to stop the first bailout. At least for enough time for the public to see how we got here. But, no, he cozied up to all the other senate crooks and went for it. He is just Senate business as usual.
Opensecrets.org has the top contributors from 2003 to 2008 to McCain. Read it and weep. He is part of the problem.
Merrill Lynch $370,020
Citigroup Inc $305,151
Morgan Stanley $264,277
Goldman Sachs $255,645
JPMorgan Chase & Co $221,457
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/09/2009 21:36 Comments ||
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LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.
The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.
Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can. Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.
Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.
But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected. There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission). In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.
ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe. "The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."
Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy. Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise -- there just aren't enough of them.
"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."
The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.
For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery. "We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe.
"This is what makes science so exciting," Seiffert said. "You start out on a path to measure something -- in this case, the heat from the very first stars -- but run into something else entirely, some unexplained.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/09/2009 17:22 Comments ||
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#10
ION SPACE, RENSE > FOXNEWS - [NAOS]POWERFUL SOLAR STORM COULD SHUTDOWN THE US FOR MONTHS [130 Milyuhn Amers affected]; + RUMORMILLNEWS > PLANET X MAY HAVE BEEN PHOTOGRAPHED. Mauvet-colored spot on Auroroa Borealis photo back on 01/5th/2008 vee SPACEWEATHER.com.
Also on RMN > Artic includes rference to NASA anticpating a "PROBLEMATIC WEAKENING OF THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELDS" come Year 2012 [ weakness = Pole Flip]???
WEIRD > What interests me personally in the above is that last nite, after 7:00PM+ Hrs 1/09/2009 Guam time, my attention was suddenly disturbed by seeming "MOON MOTIONS/FLIPS" + EM disturbances in the evening skies oer Guam; + later on, in the Post-Midnite/0000 Hrs [dark early AM 1/10/2009] I also thought I saw a [half-dollar sized]MAROON/REDDISH "COLORED SPHERE" = SKY SPOT "MOVING" OVER HAGATNA BAY. EVEN THE GROUND WAS MOVING OR HEAVING.
ITS EITHER TRUE, OR SOMETHING IN THAT D *** NGED BUT DELISH WINCHELL's CHICKEN SOUP MESSED UP MY HEAD.
#1
FOX NEWS AM > IIRC news ticker at bottom of CAVUTO SHOW segment indic that the USGovt was becom interested in BUYING DIRECT SHARES IN FAILING/PROBLEM BANKS, AS AN OPTION INSTEAD OF A "NEW BAILOUT"??? I'd caught only a glimpse of the news ticker so my read could be wrong.
Oil prices have extended recent losses amid hopes of resolutions to the Gaza conflict and European gas row.
On Thursday, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in February dropped 1.17 dollars to 44.69 dollars a barrel in late afternoon trade on London's InterContinental Exchange.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for February, fell 1.29 dollars to 41.34 dollars.
Crude futures had on Wednesday tumbled by around five dollars on news of buoyant energy stockpiles in the United States.
"While a truce in either of these situations is far from close, a potential solution will no doubt ease some geopolitical fears" that were previously pushing up oil prices, said Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/09/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
While a truce in either of these situations is far from close, a potential solution will no doubt ease some geopolitical fears
It seems that this opinion, re Gaza, is widely shared. Well, I'm sure the people of Sderot will be happy to live under rain of rockets---as long as it assures cheap ride for their betters.
Geez, what's a greedhead to do? NEW YORK -- The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical and legal quandary. What they thought were profits was likely money stolen from other clients in what prosecutors are calling the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Now, they are confronting the possibility they may have to pay some of it back.
The issue came to the forefront this week as about 8,000 former Madoff clients began to receive letters inviting them to apply for up to $500,000 in aid from the Securities Investor Protection Corp.
Continued on Page 49
#3
Whether you answer or not, wouldn't there be copius records of what you put in and took out over the years?
Rhetorical Question, the answer is yes. Records on everything.
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.
Thousands of Europeans will remain without Russian gas amid freezing weather as talks between Russia and Ukraine failed.
LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.
NEW YORK -- The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical and legal quandary. What they thought were profits was likely money stolen from other clients in what prosecutors are calling the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Now, they are confronting the possibility they may have to pay some of it back.
