This Guy Never has Trouble Unscrewing the Lids from Stubborn Jars

This Woman Pleads Insanity

The Most Insane Homeowners Association Rules in America

The Gay Secretary

The astonishingly restrictive ways of homeowners associations (HOAs) came under scrutiny this month when a Sussex Square, Virginia, HOA demanded that a 90-year-old World War II vet remove an unapproved flag pole from his front yard. After receiving support from members of Congress, and even the Obama administration, Medal of Honor recipient Van T. Barfoot, who once singlehandedly took on three Nazi tanks, triumphed in his quest to fly Old Glory. Other homeowners haven't been as lucky in their battles against their own HOAs' "fascist" rules. Here are seven of the most controversial commandments:

1. Thou shalt not plant too many roses
A Rancho Santa Fe, California, homeowners' association targeted Jeffery DeMarco for exceeding the prescribed number of rose bushes allowed on his four-acre property. When DeMarco balked, the HOA levied monthly fines, threatened foreclosure, and ultimately defeated DeMarco in court. After a judge ruled that the willful rose enthusiast had violated the community's architecture design rules, DeMarco was forced to pay the HOA's $70,000 legal bill — and lost his home to the bank.

2. Thou shalt not use "inconsistent" shingles — even after a plane destroys thy house
After a plane crashed into the Sanford, Florida, home of Joe Woodard, killing his wife, Janise, and their infant son, he decided to rebuild a new home on the same lot. But his reconstruction came to a screeching halt when his HOA informed him that he'd positioned the new structure unacceptably and failed to achieve a perfect shingle match with his neighbors' homes. Threatened with a lawsuit, the grieving widower told a local reporter that he'd hoped to change things up to avoid "reliving" painful memories — but eventually capitulated to the unsympathetic HOA.

3. Thou shalt not post a "For Sale" sign
When Denise Hicks placed a "For Sale" sign in front of her Lebanon, Tennessee, residence, the Spence Creek homeowners association quickly reprimanded her for a breach of contract, citing a rule prohibiting signs, banners or billboards. Ultimately, Hicks was forced to display her realtor's signs in her home's windows, hidden from view.

4. Thou shalt not offer thy homeless granddaughter shelter
Assuming guardianship of their six-year-old granddaughter, Kimberly, after her drug-addict mother was ruled unfit, Jimmy and Judy Stuttler brought the child to live with them in their Clearwater, Florida, retirement village. Since Kimberly was not technically "over 55" or arguably "retired," the alarmed HOA tried to force the girl out. Attempting to move, the Stuttlers failed to sell their home even after slashing its price from $250,000 to $129,000 and were eventually sued by the HOA. Kimberley's fate is now in the hands of the courts.

5. Thou must carry thy dog at all times
After Pamela McMahan, a geriatric who walks with a cane, was fined $25 every time she failed to carry her cocker spaniel through the lobby of her Long Beach, California condominium, which stipulates that pets' feet must never touch the floor of common areas. "There are just too many things going on in the lobby," said Stormy Jech, the building's assistant property manager. "The dog might jump on someone or go to the bathroom." After racking up hundreds of dollars in fines, McMahan was forced to move.

6. No smoking — even in thy own bathroom
HOAs' ban on smoking in all public areas — including balconies, patios, courtyards, and swimming pool areas — has recently been extended into residents' homes. Citing the negative health effects of secondhand smoke, multiple court hearings have ruled in favor of HOAs. As Realty Times points out, "The Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to smoke in their homes...."

7. Thou shall maintain a consistently green lawn
The Beacon Woods Civic Association in Bayonet Point, Florida, took 66-year old resident Joseph Prudente to court for failing to properly maintain his lawn after a $600-per-month increase to his adjustable rate mortgage threw him on hard times. Though Prudente was ultimately jailed for failing to resod his lawn, other members of the community took pity on the faulty landscaper, and paid for new sod, flowers, mulching, and functioning sprinklers. Their charity was enough to spring their elderly neighbor from the slammer, but Prudente still faces court and association fines.

All the News Fit to be Censored is RIGHT HERE

American Scofflaw

Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
• 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
• 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
• 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
• 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
• 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
• 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
• 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
• 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
• 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
• 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
• 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
• 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
• 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
• 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
• 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
• 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
• 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
• 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
• 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
• 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
• 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
• 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

Why Scrooge Was Right About Christmas

By John Blumenthal

Ebenezer Scrooge is the most charming, lovable and delightfully rotten curmudgeon ever created. His lack of Christmas spirit is utterly refreshing. The sourpuss at the start is so much more entertaining than the transformed Ebenezer, who's about as interesting as egg nog.

When Dickens' A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843, London was one of the most dynamic cesspools in the civilized world. Every manner of vermin came from all over England to take in the city's slop-covered sights, bask in its sumptuous refuse and spread various and sundry plagues.

The stench was overpowering because the science of sewage disposal involved dumping everything that stank in the Thames. There were rats everywhere and they were not spreading holiday cheer. If St. Nick gave the children anything for Christmas, it was probably cholera.

It was the start of the Industrial Revolution, so a few greedy people were fabulously rich, while everybody else was too poor to buy houses with walls. Kind of like what we have now.

Children were forced to slave away in filthy workhouses. Thieves lurked in every alley, waiting for fops to stumble by. Food was crawling with maggots, which is only slightly less revolting than Britain's cuisine is today. People threw feces out of their windows and then wondered why everybody was always sick.

Yet the royal family and the Peers of Realm lived in obscene splendor.

So being a curmudgeon was a sensible philosophy in Scrooge's day. He was a realist, a man who understood the miserable, depraved nature of humanity. And he was a miser because he was old and would one day need expensive assisted living. Plus, in those days, money was the only thing that stood between him and a miserable life in the polluted, thief-ridden, rat-infested gutters of London.

Besides, all curmudgeons are misers. It comes with the territory.There is no such thing as a magnanimous curmudgeon.

As for the book's other characters, Ebenezer's nephew Fred is a good-natured, middle-class twit, operating under the delusion that his uncle is actually a nice person, in spite all evidence to the contrary. Clearly, Fred is a little on the slow side, and doesn't seem to notice that the streets are teeming with impoverished skeletons even though he walks by them every day.

Bob Cratchit is optimistic to the point of insanity. He has a crippled son, barely enough food to feed a squirrel, a house so cold that everybody's snot freezes, and a wife who should have been hospitalized for inappropriate ebullience. Yet poor Bob suffers under the delusion that he's content.

Why? Because it was Christmas, so everybody had to appear joyous, even if they were too destitute to afford presents for their children, other than the occasional piece of wood with a badly-drawn face on it.

Thank God things are better now. Today, at Christmas, we open our checkbooks to help those less fortunate than ourselves. Do we do this out of the goodness of our hearts? Do we do it to please God? No, we do it for the tax deduction.

For More on John

Pizza Dropped on the Ground

Once Again: NEVER Call the Police for “Help”

American Scofflaw

Linda Hicks, a 62-year-old Toledo resident, was murdered by Officer Diane Chandler of the Toledo Police Department. “Murder” is the only suitable description for the entirely needless shooting death of Hicks, a group home resident who suffered from schizophrenia, depression, and hypertension.

Someone at the domicile made the fatal mistake of calling the police to report that Hicks had a “weapon” — a pair of sewing scissors.

When Chandler and Officer Rebecca Kenney arrived, Hicks was prone on her bed. When she refused to remove her arms from beneath a pillow, Chandler attempted to induce “pain compliance” by shooting the woman with her Taser, but the cartridge malfunctioned. Chandler then pressed the electro-shock torture device directly against Hicks’s skin to operate it in “drive-stun mode.”

Not surprisingly, this assault enraged Hicks, who reportedly got off the bed and said, “I’m going to kill you or you’re going to have to kill me.” Chandler then fired her gun at least four times, killing Hicks.

There are two elements of this story that deserve special attention. The first was the exculpatory comment by Chief of Police Michael Navarre that Chandler, like the rest of his force, is under a lot of stress because of recent lay-offs.

“It’s a difficult job out there,” Navarre told the Toledo Free Press. “Officers are being stretched to the limit.” The lay-offs supposedly have made criminals more “brazen,” he insists.

That assessment implicitly suggests that the stressed-out police are going to be more “brazen” in the use of lethal force.

More noteworthy still is the fact that Diane Chandler is “certified with crisis intervention training,” which should provide her with some means other than lethal force to handle a mentally ill senior citizen armed with sewing scissors.

“[Chandler] thought her life was in danger,” insisted Chief Navarre by way of justifying the shooting. Really?

Since Chandler could get close enough to Hicks to operate the Taser in “drive-stun mode,” couldn’t she and her partner have immobilized the woman long enough to take the scissors away? Weren’t there objects in the room — furniture, blankets, pillows — that could have been suitable to offer a shield against a pair of sewing scissors? Aren’t police given unarmed “combatives” training, and supposedly paid to take a few risks?

None of that matters, apparently. Linda Hicks is dead, Diane Chandler killed her, and within a few weeks we’ll all but certainly be told that Chandler’s actions were in accordance with “department policy.”

Once again: Unless you’re willing to see someone be severely injured or killed for no defensible reason, never call the police for “help.”

Despite Sense of Entitlement, US Companies Lose Iraq Oil Auctions

The Gay Secretary

I'm sure that folks like T. Boone Pickens were assured, behind the closed doors in the Bush/Cheney era, that they would get the rights to most of the oil in Iraq.

That is the only factor which can account for the absolute, self-aggrandizing arrogance of Pickens' statement that "...we're entitled to it."

One has to wonder just how many of Picken's relatives were on the ground during combat operations in Iraq. I would be willing to bet; absolutely none.

But I want every family member of every US solder who fought, died, or got maimed for life to understand just what the objective of this war and occupation truly was; control over Iraq's oil.

This was about private companies profiting from the blood and money spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq to obtain its oil.

And now, it appears that is absolutely not going to happen.

Over 275,000 Federal Workers Are Tax Deadbeats

American Scofflaw

Over 276,000 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3 billion in back income taxes in 2008 (up from $2.7 billion owed in 2007).

The cabinet departments with the largest percentages of employee/retiree tax deadbeats are:

1. Housing & Urban Development: 4.05%
2. Veterans Affairs: 3.91%
3. Health & Human Services: 3.86%
4. Army: 3.76%
5. Education: 3.60%
6. Air Force: 3.25%
7. Defense: 3.16%
8. State: 3.14%
9. Navy: 3.01%
10. Commerce: 3.00%

The agencies and commissions with the largest percentages of employee/retiree tax deadbeats are:

1. National Capital Planning Commission: 10.42%
2. Advisory Council on Historic preservation: 9.26%
3. U.S. Office of Special Counsel: 8.65%
4. U.S. Election Assistance Commission: 8.51%
5. Federal Labor Relations Authority: 7.20%
6. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: 7.14%
7. Federal Mine Safety & Health Review Commission: 6.82%
8. Government Printing Office: 6.29%
9. Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board: 5.33%
10. Court Services & Offender Supervisors: 5.23%

Other departments and agencies:

• Federal Reserve Board: 4.32%
• U.S. House of Representatives: 4.17%
• U.S. Senate: 3.19%
• SEC: 2.56%
• U.S. Tax Court: 1.43%
• Treasury Department: 0.98% (the lowest delinquency rate among cabinet departments)

Wouldn't you like to JOIN them!!!!

Wall St. Bonuses Boom; Luxury Sales Are Proof

By TROY MCMULLEN

A year ago, plunging stock portfolios and massive layoffs dampened year-end bonuses on Wall Street, forcing high-flying traders and hedge fund managers to put a lid on lavish spending.

But with the stock market up sharply and financial firms from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America once again reporting soaring profits, big bonuses are expected to return to Wall Street.

Not all financial firms will be doling out big bonuses, of course. Just last week the Obama administration's pay czar, Ken Feinberg, released new rulings that will curb pay packages for some of the highest-paid employees at companies receiving what the administration deems "exceptional assistance" from the government, including AIG, Citigroup, General Motors and GMAC.

President Barack Obama lashed out at Wall Street on Sunday, calling bankers "fat cats" who "don't get it."

"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," Obama said in an interview broadcast on CBS's "60 Minutes."

Still, luxury retailers who cater to this group are already reporting a sharp rise in interest from monied financial industry employees.

"We've already seen stronger sales," said Wayne Duris, general manager of New Country Porsche of Greenwich, Conn., a Manhattan suburb packed with money managers and investment bankers.

Duris said November sales at his showroom doubled compared with last year and that December is already off to a strong start, thanks to interest from Wall Street traders. His company recently sold two new Porsches -- with price tags of more than $100,000 -- to Wall Street professionals.

"People are feeling like they can spend again as the economy gets a little bit better," Duris said.

There are other signs that bankers are loosening their wallets as bonus season approaches.

A recent auction of modern art at Sotheby's beat estimates by bringing in $182 million. Retail sales at luxury retailers such as Saks and Burberry also rose for the first time in more than a year. And five-star restaurants in Manhattan are once again packed.

One Wall Streeter recently spent about $38,000 to rent out the lower Manhattan restaurant Tribeca Grillfor 100 guests, according to a manager there. Nobu, another expensive eatery in Tribeca, has seen bookings for parties by Wall Street firms soar in recent months compared with the same period last year, the restaurant said.

Another reliable indicator that Wall Street is expecting a big bonus season: high-end real estate sales are on the rise. Kathy Cole, a property broker with Coldwell Banker Timberline Real Estate in Vail, Colo., said she has already fielded calls from several people in the financial industry wanting to see listings for ski homes with price tags north of $3 million.

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note

The Gay Secretary

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another "surge." It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.

For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama's West Point speech as "encouraging." It was "a good thing," he said, that Obama was finally speaking as "a war president."

But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol's armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, "A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?"

Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, "erred" about Iraq's WMDs and Saddam's links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.

In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol's professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it's worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender's proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the "godfather" of neoconservatism, "drive a knife in the heart of Israel."

"Jews don't like big military budgets," the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. "But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel."

Oh yeah, that collective snickering sound you're hearing is that created by Russian leadership, trying not to laugh their heads off at how completely the US and NATO are making every single mistake that the old Soviet Union made during its occupation of Afghanistan.

A Reader can learn a great deal from the party-line as to what we can expect our government to do

The Gay Secretary
I have said this before; I like to get the kosher-party-line first, before I try to find out what is actually going on in the world. Not only is the kosher-party-line virtually all Western civilization ever hears, a savvy reader can learn a great deal from the kosher-party-line as to what we can expect our government to do.

Yet another really good source for the kosher-party-line gospel is London based, The Times. Much like virtually all of the other major Western news media, The Times is a Jewish owned and operated company. But I think it is really one of the best illustrations of Jewish media control and ownership in history.

Much like the before referenced Washington Post, The New York Times, UK’s The Times is Jewish owned. It is owned by the media conglomerate, News Corporation which was founded and is currently headed by the Jewish Rupert Murdoch. Calling News Corporation a media conglomerate is really a gross understatement. This multibillion dollar media empire is the second largest in the world (only slightly behind the Jewish owned The Walt Disney Company, that one chaired by the Jewish Bob Iger). Rupert Murdoch is one of the most powerful Jews in the world! Go to the News Corp. website and just click through the various divisions (film, television, etc). Believe me, News Corp pumps the kosher-party-line poison across the globe! And it is The Times that carries the poison through parts of Europe.

So we recently learn from Murdoch’s The Times some extremely alarming news. The article is called Secret document exposes Iran’s nuclear trigger. A trigger for a nuclear bomb? Yikes! Double gasp!!

Expect a whole new litany of taxation as the US government, deprived of the expected windfall from Copenhagen, struggles to save itself from default b

American Scofflaw

House Ways & Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) yesterday introduced H.R. 4337, the Regulated Investment Company Modernization Act of 2009. The press release outlined the three goals of the legislation:

1. Modernization: The tax rules that relate to RICs date back more than a half century. Although these rules have been updated from time to time, it has been over twenty years since these rules were last revisited. In that time many changes have occurred that eliminate the need for certain rules, including rules that prevent mutual funds from earning income from commodities, rules that relate to preferential dividends, and rules that require mutual funds to send separate annual dividend designation requirements to shareholders.
2. Excise tax interactions: In 1986, Congress enacted an excise tax on the undistributed income of RICs. Over the past twenty years, mutual funds have identified a number of instances in which interactions between this excise tax and other tax rules can create problems for mutual funds and their shareholders. The bill would make a number of technical changes that would seek to remedy these interactions.
3. Corporate tax interactions: Mutual funds are subject to special tax rules that only apply to regulated investment companies under the tax code. However, mutual funds are also subject to the general corporate tax rules that apply to redemptions and dividends. Sometimes, the interaction between these two sets of rules can create problems for mutual funds and their shareholders. The bill would make a number of technical changes that would seek to remedy the adverse effects of these interactions.

President Obama Destroys the US Dollar and economy for Political Windfall

The Gay Secretary

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we've been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president's real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial "reforms" that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street's political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer's role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama's top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals.

How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed.

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

by Rajeev Syal

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

"That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was," he said.

The IMF estimated that large US and European banks lost more than $1tn on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 and more than 200 mortgage lenders went bankrupt. Many major institutions either failed, were acquired under duress, or were subject to government takeover.

Gangs are now believed to make most of their profits from the drugs trade and are estimated to be worth £352bn, the UN says. They have traditionally kept proceeds in cash or moved it offshore to hide it from the authorities. It is understood that evidence that drug money has flowed into banks came from officials in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and the US.

British bankers would want to see any evidence that Costa has to back his claims. A British Bankers' Association spokesman said: "We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind. There was clearly a lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks."

Global Warming is a Fraud That Has Been Exposed

And then check this!!!!!!

What were the 9.11 hijackers onboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats doing there?

Less than one week before 9/11 several of the hijacker 'patsies', including Atta, boarded a Sun Cruz Casino Boat in Florida. Nobody knows why, and it has never been investigated.

Were Precision Guided Planes Used In 911????

Precision guided plane anyone?

The plane hitting WTC North Tower

The first plane to hit the WTC (North Tower) hit the computer room of Marsh & McClennan, which had recently acquired Kroll Associates, which was owned by son of AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg & Jules Kroll. Precision guidance equipment in office?

When fired at point-blank range, a beanbag round can seriously injure or even kill a victim

American Scofflaw
Two police officers should be able to handle an unarmed 12-year-old girl, even one who weighed 150 pounds, most of it bad attitude.

"I don't care how big she is," commented retired police officer Mike Davis, a 30-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau. "Two grown men using proper holds should be able to subdue her and get her into the police car without incident."

Davis, who now works for a fitness company, believes that episodes of this sort are the inevitable product that results from adding "less lethal" toys to the arsenal of physically unfit police officers.

"The officers are in pathetic shape, for the most part," Davis told The Oregonian. "If you don't have any confidence that you can handle something physically, you go up the ladder too quickly on the continuum of force." As a result, police "rely too much on all these little tools we've go: Taser. Mace. Beanbag gun. Asp. You can't shoot everyone. You can't Taser everyone. Well, maybe we can."

When fired at point-blank range, a beanbag round can seriously injure or even kill a victim, so the victim was lucky to escape with a bad bruise. But this is not the only reason the girl shot by Officer Humphreys could consider herself fortunate. The last time Humphreys was involved in a case of excessive force, the victim didn't survive.

Surfer Mike Parson's tow-in surfing a 65 foot wave

Oil Reserves in Venezuela Push US to Brink of War in South America

The Gay Secretary

Chavez is many things, but he's not an idiot.

The positioning of American forces in Columbia does not bode well for peace in the region.

And of course, as reported here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Venezuela

"There were 80 billion barrels (13×10^9 m3) of conventional oil reserves in Venezuela as of 2007, the largest oil reserves of any country in South America."

Let's see if I have the formula correctly. Foreign oil reserves, plus a government the US doesn't particularly like, equals... vigorous US attempts at destabilization of that government, including military confrontation, if the US thinks it can get away with it.

Any questions?!?!?

Billionaire Who Had Sex with Sixteen Year-olds Claims He's the Victim Now

by Adrian Chen

Jeffery Epstein, the billionaire money manager who recently finished a prison sentence for soliciting under-aged prostitutes, is now claiming he is the victim of racketeering at the hands of a lawyer who represented women suing him.

Cityfile reports on the egg-shaped-penis-having
billionaire's lawsuit against Florida lawyer Scott Rothstein, who represented some of Epstein's victims (good), but was recently charged with running a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme (bad):

This week Epstein filed suit against Rothstein and his former partners alleging they "prejudiced his defense of criminal and civil actions related to his alleged sexual activities," and used his name to attract investors to the Ponzi scheme by claiming-falsely-that 51 women had sued him for his sexual misdeeds (instead of three) and that he'd agreed to settle the suits for $200 million (which he had not).

Basically, Rothstein allegedly dangled a huge settlement in front of potential investors by making Epstein appear ever-so-slightly more despicable than he actually is; then Rothstein scammed them. According to the ABAJournal, Epstein is seeking "unspecified damages in excess of $15,000."

But if using Epstein's scum-bagginess to make money is "racketeering," what does that make us? God knows we've mined that rich vein for a long, long time.

Chemistry student killed by 'exploding chewing gum'

American Scofflaw
A CHEMISTRY student has reportedly been killed by what is believed to be exploding chewing gum.

A 25-year-old chemistry student was found dead with his jaw blown off after he was working on a computer at his parents’ house in the St. Paul, MN.

"A loud pop was heard from the student's room," a city police chief aide said.

"When his relatives entered the room they saw that the lower part of the young man's face had been blown off."

The man was studying at the University of Minnesota and was known for his habit of dipping chewing in citric acid.

Police found both citric acid packets and “some kind of explosive material” on a table in his parents’s room.

They believe he may have confused the two packets, dipping the gum into the explosive material rather than the citric acid.

Forensic experts will travel from Kiev tomorrow to investigate the substance, as local authorities feared it may explode if transported.

Employees Working for No Pay

American Scofflaw

Dozens of employees at a local company work without pay for weeks. In May, WJG Enterprises in Charlotte got a four million dollar state grant to expand and add jobs, but that growing company isn't even paying the workers it's got. Several workers at WJG Enterprises they all say they've been getting paid late for weeks. They say, last Friday, they finally got paid for the week of Thanksgiving. They have yet to receive money from the last two pay periods. Some say it's so bad they've had their water and heat turned off because they've been unable to pay the bills.

Owner Bill Grice says all employees will get paid everything by the end of next week. He says his customers have been slow in paying the plastic molding company for their orders. On top of that, banks have been unwilling to give loans, so Grice hasn't had the money to pay his workers on time. Grice says his company is still expanding and adding jobs.

Homeland Security Embarks on Big Brother Programs to Read Our Minds and Emotions

By Liliana Segura

In the sci-fi thriller Minority Report, Tom Cruise plays a D.C. police detective, circa 2054, in the department of "pre-crime," an experimental law enforcement unit whose mission -- to hunt down criminals before they strike -- relies on the psychic visions of mutant "pre-cogs" (short for precognition) who can see the future. It may be futuristic Hollywood fantasy, but the underlying premise -- that we can predict (if not see) a person's sinister plans before they follow through -- is already here.

This past February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a one-year, $2.6 million grant to the Cambridge, MA.-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to develop computerized sensors capable of detecting a person's level of "malintent" -- or intention to do harm. It's only the most recent of numerous contracts awarded to Draper and assorted research outfits by the U.S. government over the past few years under the auspices of a project called "Future Attribute Screening Technologies," or FAST. It's the next wave of behavior surveillance from DHS and taxpayers have paid some $20 million on it so far.

Conceived as a cutting-edge counter-terrorism tool, the FAST program will ostensibly detect subjects' bad intentions by monitoring their physiological characteristics, particularly those associated with fear and anxiety. It's part of a broader "initiative to develop innovative, non-invasive technologies to screen people at security checkpoints," according to DHS.

The "non-invasive" claim might be a bit of a stretch. A DHS report issued last December outlined some of the possible technological features of FAST, which include "a remote cardiovascular and respiratory sensor" to measure "heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia," a "remote eye tracker" that "uses a camera and processing software to track the position and gaze of the eyes (and, in some instances, the entire head)," "thermal cameras that provide detailed information on the changes in the thermal properties of the skin in the face," and "a high resolution video that allows for highly detailed images of the face and body … and an audio system for analyzing human voice for pitch change."

Ultimately, all of these components would be combined to take the form of a "prototypical mobile suite (FAST M2) … used to increase the accuracy and validity of identifying persons with malintent."

Coupled with the Transportation Security Administration's Behavior Detection Officers, 3,000 of whom are already scrutinizing travelers' expressions and body language at airports and travel hubs nationwide, DHS officials say that FAST will add a potentially lifesaving layer of security to prevent another terrorist attack. "There's only so much you can see with the naked eye," DHS spokesperson John Verrico told AlterNet. "We can't see somebody's heart rate…. We may be able to see movements of the eye and changes in dilation of the pupil, but will those give us enough [information] to make a determination as to what we're really seeing?"

Giant Waves Crash on Hawaii's Beaches

FBI Snooping Snags an innocent Citihzen

The Gay Secretary

So, just HOW did the FBI know that this totally random individual had downloaded this particular "Girls Gone Wild" video, and more to the point, how did the FBI know that this particular "Girls Gone Wild" was really child porn?

Just how is it that they knew to knock on his particular door?

Where is the crime? There was no intent to acquire the child porn. The file in question did not reveal its contents ahead of time. The computer user deleted the file. So there was no intent.

In other words, there seems to be no probable cause and no way for the FBI to know about this "crime" unless the FBI itself planted the file at LimeWire.

What is next, emailing child porn to everyone in the USA to generate arrest numbers? I guess real crime in the USA is so non-existent that the FBI has time to spend hunting for online porn abusers. On the other hand, given that the FBI's advice is to notify it when you recieve child porn and let them take your computer, then by the simple expedient of emailing you a child porn image, the FBI gains access to your entire computer WITHOUT A COURT WARRANT!

Not quite the image J. Edgar Hoover worked so hard to craft in Jimmy Stewart's "The FBI Story", is it?

Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax.

American Scofflaw

Cap and Trade Top Ten List

• Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax.
• It Will Not Make A Substantive Impact on the Environment.
• It Will Kill Jobs.
• It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase
• It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade
• It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing, and Haircuts
• It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption
• It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst.
• It Will Cost American Families Over $3,000 a Year.
• President Obama Admitted "Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket" under a cap-and-trade program (January 2008)

The Federal Reserve is Destroying the Value of the Dollar

American Scofflaw

The Federal Reserve debased our currency. Take a look at your coinage. See any gold or silver there?

The founders of this nation knew that banks left to themselves, would substitute cheap metal tokens for real money. They had seen it happen in England, and they saw the results; massive unemployment and poverty for the people.

So the Founders created a monetary system based on government-issued currency of fixed real value, for the use of the people without interest. And the United States flourished.

Then the bankers wormed their way back into the system, bought the Congress and a President, replaced the government issued public currency with currency borrowed from their banks at interest... and debased the gold and silver coinage.

By that last act, every member of the Federal Reserve system (and their enablers in Congress and the Treasury) is in violation of Section 19 of the coinage act of 1792.

PEARL HARBOR: It Wasn't an Accident but a Planned Surrender

The Honolulu Advertiser dated November 30th 1941, one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
American Scofflaw
President Roosevelt (FDR) provoked the attack, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn the Hawaiian commanders. FDR needed the attack to sucker Hitler to declare war, since the public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe. It was his backdoor to war.

FDR blinded the commanders at Pearl Harbor and set them up by -

1. denying intelligence to Hawaii (HI)
2. on Nov 27, misleading the commanders into thinking negotiations with Japan were continuing to prevent them from realizing the war was on
3. having false information sent to HI about the location of the Japanese carrier fleet.

And Here's How it all Began:
The discovery of the midget submarine confirms the account radioed to naval command at Pearl Harbor at 6:45 am on Dec. 7, 1941 . A Japanese submarine was shot through the conning tower and then depth charged trying to enter Pearl Harbor behind the USS Antares. The crew of the attacking USS Ward , an older style four stack destroyer, saw the midget sub lifted out of the water by depth charges after firing the fatal shot from its four inch side gun. The Ward's crew were Naval reservists from St. Paul, Minnesota. Unfortunately, Naval command in Pearl Harbor ignored the Ward's report and the aerial attack began at 8 am. At the Pearl Harbor investigation, some question was made of the accuracy of the Ward's report. The Ward is now vindicated. The Ward itself was later targeted by the Japanese and sunk in a kamikaze attack, ironically on Dec. 7, 1944, in the Philippines.

World Cup Draw Incites Conspiracy Theorists

By JERÉ LONGMAN

It is anyone’s guess how the 32 teams in the 2010 World Cup will be grouped by the draw Friday in South Africa, but one thing is for sure: the event will elicit sightings of things as far-fetched as U.F.O.’s and the Virgin Mary’s image on a potato chip.

Soccer luminaries, with the help of the honorary hostess Charlize Theron, will pull plastic balls out of pots to determine the eight first-round groupings of four teams each. Someone will inevitably claim that the draw was rigged. No proof? No problem. Not since “Forrest Gump” have table tennis balls supposedly been so vulnerable to manipulation and sleight of hand.

Television networks around the world will be on alert. They will replay the video forward and backward, in regular speed and slow motion, seeking evidence of plots and schemes, as if this were a sporting equivalent of the Zapruder film.

At the draw for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Sophia Loren picked a ball that placed the United States in the host team’s group. Considering that the Americans had not played in the World Cup in 40 years, this struck some as akin to putting the Yankees in the same group as the winner of the Little League World Series.

None other than the soccer legend Diego Maradona claimed the draw was rigged to favor the host Italians over defending champion Argentina. Those who saw conspiracy speculated that Loren had magnetized her rings to pick a certain magnetic ball out of the pot.

At the draw for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the television network Sky Italia thought it saw duplicity in the way the former German soccer star Lothar Matthäus selected Italy’s group. The station claimed that the balls had been heated and cooled so that Matthäus knew which teams he was selecting as he placed Italy in a daunting group with the United States, the Czech Republic and Ghana.

“The Italians are mad if they think that,” Matthäus said at the time. “That is utter nonsense.”

Considering that Italy won the World Cup that year, Matthäus had a point.

Of course, soccer’s world governing body, known by its acronym FIFA, steadfastly denies that high jinks are involved. Outside experts say there is no proof that the process is illusory.

“We are not David Copperfield, and Siegfried and Roy,” Guido Tognoni, a former spokesman for FIFA, said in Las Vegas at the draw for the 1994 World Cup.

Yet conspiracy theories abound. In 2005, the issue was part of a final exam in a cryptology course at the University of Virginia.

Part of the suspicion comes because soccer is a global sport that evokes national passions, said Mike Woitalla, the executive editor of Soccer America magazine.

Americans do not usually root as a nation in a sporting sense, cheering instead for our alma maters and local professional sports teams. The Olympics are an exception, and the Super Bowl draws more interest in the commercials than the game. But much of the rest of the world reaches a fever pitch over soccer.

“In America, you might have fans from Boston thinking they were robbed by a bad call, but in soccer it’s an entire country feeling that somebody treated them unfairly,” Woitalla said. “It’s a fan’s feelings multiplied by millions.”

Conspiracy theories regarding soccer are likely to flourish readily in countries where authorities and elites have often failed the public, said Andrei Markovits, a professor of politics and German studies at the University of Michigan.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a much greater notion of conspiracy in countries like Argentina, Italy and Greece and much less in places like Sweden, Norway, Britain and Germany,” said Markovits, author of the forthcoming book, “Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture.”

FIFA also has opened itself to charges of deception by arbitrarily changing the rules of the draw from one World Cup to the next. One time, performances in the two most recent World Cups are given priority in seeding teams. Another time, it is the three most recent World Cups that count. International rankings wax and wane in importance. Next time, who knows, the standard might be appearances on “Dancing with the Stars.”

And it does not help matters that Friday’s draw comes amid a sprawling match-fixing scandal involving club teams in Europe and soccer officials.

“I hate conspiracy theories,” Markovits said. “They’re an easy way out for people seeking explanations for complex things. That said, I don’t think the draw is rigged, but I’m less likely to completely dismiss it as a crackpot simplification than I would have been three weeks ago.”

In truth, the World Cup draw is not as entirely random as the weekly Powerball lottery. FIFA seeks geographic diversity in each of the eight four-team groups. And it gives the host nation a top seed, believing that local interest is boosted if the host team stays alive. No home team has failed to advance beyond the first round.

For the 2010 World Cup, the host, South Africa, will have a top seed even though it is ranked 86th in the world. Thus it will avoid such powers as Brazil, Germany and Argentina in group play.

“I never thought any of the draws were rigged,” said Bruce Arena, who coached the United States in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups. “The only thing that seems odd to me is how the host country gets decent draws. They never end up in the Group of Death.”

Well, almost never. Arena also coached the United States at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Upon realizing that the opening match was against Argentina, he lamented about American naïveté, saying, “We’re too stupid to fix a draw.”

Criminal Justice System Arrests man For Stepping on His Own Property

Jeremy Engelking will appear in Douglas County court this afternoon to face a trespassing charge. But here’s the kicker: The Superior man allegedly trespassed on his own property.

Engelking, 27, aimed to hunt deer Wednesday morning when he noticed a pipeline crew on his land. He hopped on his ATV and told workers they had no right to be on his property because he had received no compensation from Enbridge Energy Partners L.P. for an easement.

Engelking said workers told him he was in an unsafe place and asked him to come to an equipment staging area, where he continued to argue his case.

But just as he was turning to leave, Engelking said an officer from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene and approached with a Taser drawn.

“He ordered me to 'get down on the ground now!' And he said that I was being arrested for trespassing,” Engelking said.

When Engelking protested, pointing out that he was on his own property, he said Sgt. Robert Smith told him: “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to jail. You can tell it to a judge tomorrow.”

Engelking offered no resistance, but Smith placed him in handcuffs then transported him to the Douglas County Jail. After posting a $200 bail bond, Engelking was released that afternoon. He also had to pay about another $100 to recover his impounded ATV.

The incident report says Engelking parked his ATV in front of pipeline equipment, stopping workers. Engelking said it wasn’t his intention to physically block work.

Lorraine Grymala, a community affairs manager for Enbridge, said access to work sites is restricted in the interest of safety.

"We can't have people in the right of way without an escort and the proper gear," she said. "People could get hurt."

Engelking’s arrest Wednesday is the latest episode in a long disagreement he and his father, Jerry Engelking, have had with Enbridge, dating to the company’s last pipeline expansion in 2002.

Jerry Engelking, who owns 200 acres next to his son, said he refused to sign off on changes proposed to the original 1949 easement across his property because he felt the revisions put too many restrictions on how he could use his property. That original easement said future pipes laid along the same route would require payments in advance.

According to court documents, Enbridge sent a $15,000 check to Jerry Engelking and also tried to hand-deliver payments, but Engelking refused to accept them.

Engelking said that to claim the money he would have had to broaden the scope of the existing easement across his property, so he turned the checks down. When the latest pipeline project came along, the Engelkings again refused to modify the original 1949 right-of-way agreement.

The family sought a restraining order against Enbridge on Sept. 24, arguing the company intended to use the pipeline for transporting petroleum products other than those originally allowed, protesting that they had not been paid and citing damage to property.

Douglas County Circuit Court Judge George Glonek granted a temporary injunction but lifted it the following day, saying the company’s plans for the pipeline were appropriate and efforts had been made to pay the Engelkings.

Jerry Engelking said the fight’s not finished yet.

Officers reported no similar incidents along the path of the Enbridge pipeline construction in Douglas County, said Lt. Gerald Moe of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.

Grymala said that Enbridge has worked with about 1,500 landowners as part of the pipeline project.

“We recognize construction is an inconvenience to people; people want access to their land,” she said. “We strive to be respectful of that, to have a good working relationship.”

American Scofflaw

Jesus H . Christ!!!!, you folks need to get a grip on your area. Out in most parts of the West (excluding CA, and some parts of Oregon/WA), a cop walks up to you on your own property and you tell him to GTFO of there, come back with a warrant. I grew up in the mid-west, but you guys are just falling down all over yourselves to please the man. I get the whole mid-western thing, but you guys need to say "enough is enough". A cop wouldn't even get out of his car for this out here. He would just say its a civil matter and let the lawyers handle it. Stand up for yourselves!!! Make a former mid-westerner proud.

ClimateGate Fraud Exposes Dirty Tricks Agenda For Global Government

Wall Sreet Scofflaws Raking in Millions in Compensation via US Taxes

American Scofflaw

In the following article Bloomberg columnist Alice Schroeder writes that workers at Goldman Sachs are applying for concealed gun permits in record numbers. I don’t think Goldman’s employees have anything to worry about considering how passive the American public has become. The economy will have to get much worse before people will go shooting Goldman executives.
By David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
If passed as it is, the financial reform bill winding its way through Congress will create a "permanent bailout mechanism," and will give complete control over future bailouts to the White House, says columnist Matt Taibbi.

In a video preview of an upcoming Rolling Stone article, Taibbi explained how the Obama administration started selling out to Wall Street interests almost as soon as the 2008 election was over.

"The really big thing that's in these bills that's really, really scary is that it kind of outlines a permanent bailout mechanism," Taibbi said. "If it survives in the way that it was originally conceived, it's basically going to formalize an arrangement whereby the government is expected to bail out the top 20 to 25 largest financial companies. ... It will be entirely up to the White House to determine whether or not these companies are in trouble in the future, so there won't be any congressional role in deciding when and when not to give a bailout."

Taibbi's words echoed the concerns of some in Congress that, far from ensuring that America's financial system will be healthy, the financial reform being proposed will make Wall Street more dependent on taxpayers than it is already.

US House Rep. Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, said in October that the financial reform plan would create a "permanent bailout authority." And Paul Volcker, the Jimmy Carter-appointed former head of the Federal Reserve who is widely credited with successfully fighting off inflation in the 1980s, said the Obama administration's proposed financial reform would maintain the "too-big-to-fail" mentality and could lead to further bailouts.

Story continues below.

Polar Bear Hip Hop Barbecue Roasts Global Warming