Everybody’s doing it, on the internet, on tv, in the streets, in the schools. It drives the fashion industry and now somebody’s finally calling it what it is. V Worship.
Question: Is V worship Idolatry or just good clean fun? Again, how do I kill that baby?
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday, saying he has some “real disagreements” with the man now occupying his former desk at City Hall.
As CBS 2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, de Blasio has been in office about 85 days – two weeks shy of the 100-day mark. But that is enough time for Giuliani to make a judgment – and to take the gloves off and unload on the current mayor.
“I know the economy of the city is going in the wrong direction,” Giuliani said. “People are talking about moving out of the city because they’re afraid of high taxes.”
It was a bald reference from the two-term former mayor, a Republican, to the Democrat de Blasio’s oft-stated desire to raise taxes on the rich to pay for universal pre-kindergarten.
Legislative leaders in Albany will not approve the new tax, but it is just one of several issues where the two part company – or as Giuliani described it, have “some real disagreements.”
Until this week, Giuliani refused to criticize de Blasio. But now, the two have apparently parted ways on the economy, charter schools, and the mayor’s desire to ban horse carriages.
Giuliani confessed that he himself thought about a ban on horse carriages in 1994 when he began his tenure as mayor, but quickly changed his mind after meeting the drivers.
“I feel kind of emotional about that, because I got to know the people. I was probably inclined to want to do it, and I went and visited the stables; met the people,” Giuliani said. “These are mostly hard-working legal immigrants. They rely on horse to feed their children. They take very good care of that horse.”
Giuliani said it would be a crime to put the horses out to pasture, because they like to work.
“They’ve got to find work for the horses, because the horses become depressed,” Giuliani said. “I hope the mayor changes his mind about it.”
A de Blasio spokesman issued a statement about Giuliani’s comments.
“We’re proud of the agenda we’ve set on public safety, education and income inequality,” the statement said. “Those are priorities that will benefit everyone, Rudy Giuliani included.”
Giuliani did agree with de Blasio on some issues, among them the choice to re-hire his old police commissioner.
“I’ve also seen in the new mayor a tendency to correct things. I thought he made a good choice in Bill Bratton,” Giuliani said. “He got himself into a lot of trouble over charter schools; he seems to be correct himself.”
Kramer asked Giuliani if he ever considered running for the job again. He said he is not, but is instead thinking about running a horse operation.
via Giuliani Slams de Blasio, Says He Has ‘Real Disagreements’ « CBS New York.
(Southern California Weather Authority.com) – Southern California is about to have one of the strongest dynamical storms in many years, with all the ingredients there for a severe weather event, including the possibility of tornado dynamics. Dynamics like this have not been seen in Southern California since March 1983, when numerous tornado reports across the Basins hit. The tornado environment is increasing.
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A healthy upper level jet flow will move over the area on Friday. This will produce heavy rainfall dynamics across the region. However with this upper jet in the area, instability will also be on the increase. Since the sun angle is becoming higher in the sky … warmer low levels will work with the mid-levels to produce higher than normal instability. This instability on Friday coupled with a Southwest upper level jet, and southerly low level jet of 30-35kts will bring rotation to thunderstorms across the Southern California area. Most of the dynamics are for some inland areas, but the closer to the basin and coastal zones you are … the more likely for severe thunderstorms and/or tornadoes.
In March 1983 a number of tornadoes hit Southern California, bringing a localize tornado outbreak with the highest rating of EF2 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
In addition the the thunderstorms, a large area of flooding where most areas will get well over an inch of rain, south and west of the mountains .. .will be likely.
SCWXA will issue the correct Flood/Winter/Wind etc watches overnight tonight or tomorrow so if on the alert system you will receive it.
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Hundreds of wrathful spirits being evoked over NY to take vengeance against Christians and those that oppose these gods of the underworld, were released in Manhattan NY as dazed and confused on lookers invite these wrathful water spirits to bring further distraction into Manhattan.
It’s really amazing how all this spiritual stuff works said one Bartender who’s father is a christian minister that privately practices Voo Doo.
President Obama met with the Dalai Lama in the White House’s Map Room, rather than the Oval Office, where the president traditionally brings a visiting leader for photographs. The meeting was private and did not allow access to reporters, this may be an attempt to avoid the appearance of a formal meeting between two heads of state.
“The U. S. leader’s planned meeting with Dalai is a gross interference in China’s domestic politics,” said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry. It is a sever violation of the principles of international relations. It will inflict grave damages upon the China-U.S. relationship.”
The Southwest of England has had major storms over the past week, destroying railway lines, restaurant on the coastline, houses and many trees as the surging high tides and strong gale force winds devastate the area.
Around 80 metres of the sea wall was destroyed by high tides and stormy seas, causing a significant stretch of railway to collapse into the sea.
The road adjacent to the railway and several houses has also been damaged, as was Dawlish station itself and several other sites in the area.
The railway line collapse means that Devon and Cornwall, 2 counties in the far south west of UK are cut off from the rest of the country for all rail travel and damage will take at least 2 months to repair.
Parts of Somerset county have been under water since January with villages evacuated due to flood water. Crops have been ruined as fields have become lakes with the constant rainfall and flooding, and the army have been called in to help residents.
The extraordinary weather is set to continue in the South west for the coming weeks with more storms forecast for Plymouth and the surrounding area.
Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops
ACLU seeks information on program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists.
CelleBriteThe Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.
ACLU learned that the police had acquired the cell phone scanning devices and in August 2008 filed an official request for records on the program, including logs of how the devices were used. The state police responded by saying they would provide the information only in return for a payment of $544,680. The ACLU found the charge outrageous.
“Law enforcement officers are known, on occasion, to encourage citizens to cooperate if they have nothing to hide,” ACLU staff attorney Mark P. Fancher wrote. “No less should be expected of law enforcement, and the Michigan State Police should be willing to assuage concerns that these powerful extraction devices are being used illegally by honoring our requests for cooperation and disclosure.”
A US Department of Justice test of the CelleBrite UFED used by Michigan police found the device could grab all of the photos and video off of an iPhone within one-and-a-half minutes. The device works with 3000 different phone models and can even defeat password protections.
“Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags,” a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device’s capabilities. “The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps.”
The ACLU is concerned that these powerful capabilities are being quietly used to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
“With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity,” Fancher wrote. “A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched.”
The national ACLU is currently suing the Department of Homeland Security for its policy of warrantless electronic searches of laptops and cell phones belonging to people entering the country who are not suspected of committing any crime.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over the trial, told lawyers he’ll determine the amount of any civil penalty at a later date. Assistant U.S. Attorney Pierre Armand asked the judge to impose a penalty of as much as $848 million, representing the gross losses to Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac. Armand said alternatively, Rakoff could fine Countrywide about $131 million, the estimated net losses to the two entities.
Countrywide, based in Calabasas, California, was once the biggest U.S. residential home lender, originating or purchasing about $1.4 trillion in mortgages from 2005 to 2007.
The bulk of them were sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities. Bank of America acquired Countrywide in 2008.
Bank of America fell 31 cents, or 2 percent, yesterday to $14.21 in New York Stock Exchange trading. The shares fell 0.3 percent today.
Following a four-week trial, the jury of six women and four men deliberated about five hours yesterday. After the verdict, a female juror said she and her colleagues on the panel agreed with the government’s view that Countrywide’s Full Spectrum Lending unit had shunted substandard loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) under the HSSL program.
“I knew something about what was going on in the mortgage debacle but it was certainly interesting to see how this happened first-hand,” said the woman, who declined to be identified. She is a freelance writer who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Videotape Deposition
The juror cited the testimony of John Boland, a former Countrywide employee who said some loan specialists were told they wouldn’t be allowed to go home for the night unless they approved a loan. Jurors asked to re-hear Boland’s videotape deposition just minutes before announcing their verdict.
Boland testified he had complained to Countrywide superiors repeatedly about the loan approval process under HSSL and an earlier program. He said it was “mind blowing” to learn that two employees who he criticized “lost their authority” regarding loans because that hadn’t happened before.
“Boland’s testimony was shocking,” the juror said. “Those employees were told to do ‘30 in 30,’ or 30 loans in 30 days. I will say in my opinion the bank and these employees were just passing off unsatisfactory loans as prime loans and Fannie and Freddie got stuck.”
The juror also said she and her fellow panelists weren’t convinced by the lender’s argument that a computer-generated underwriting process called “CLUES” was a satisfactory method for evaluating the quality of loans.
‘A Human’
“The defense seemed to be saying that with CLUES, the loan specialists didn’t need underwriters,” the juror said. “But we decided that there was no way that any machine could do that. You needed a human.”
Countrywide earned at least $165 million using HSSL, allowing the company to maintain revenue in a “cratering” market for subprime mortgages, prosecutors told the jury in closing arguments. Government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought single-family mortgages from lenders.
The U.S. last year joined the whistle-blower action against Bank of America filed by former Countrywide executive Edward O’Donnell.
O’Donnell, who came to court yesterday morning after jurors began their deliberations, declined to comment after the verdict. Under whistle-blower laws, O’Donnell testified he could collect as much as $1.6 million of any monetary damages awarded to the U.S.
28,800 Loans
Under the HSSL program, prosecutors said, the time in which more than 28,800 loans were processed was reduced to as little as 10 days from 60 days and safeguards were lifted to boost the number of loans the lender completed and sold to GSEs. Brendan Sullivan, a lawyer for Countrywide, said just 11,000 HSSL loans were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and quality wasn’t compromised.
The case, brought under the Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 or FIRREA, has been used by Bharara’s office at least six times. The office has used the statute and another law to obtain almost $500 million in mortgage fraud recoveries.
The case is U.S. v. Countrywide Financial Corp., 12-cv-01422, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
It’s unfortunate that Snopes didn’t dig any further into the matter. It could have, for instance, sourced an 11-page exposé of Blum and Feinstein published by the online site FoundSF entitled “Richard C. Blum and Dianne Feinstein: The Power Couple of California.” There Snopes would have found how this couple, through a continuing series of events that could only be called crony capitalism on steroids, grew their wealth, starting in 1980 when they were married, from a modest sum to well over $100 million.
In that exposé they would have uncovered another source, this time from the Los Angeles Times, which noted the couple’s illicit activities from the beginning:
A review of the senator’s first two years in office found that Feinstein supported several positions that benefited Blum, his wealthy clients and their investments. She was a vocal proponent of increased trade with China while Blum’s firm was planning a major investment there. She also voted for appropriations bills that provided more than $100 million a year in federal funds to three companies in which her husband is a substantial investor.
Visiting the Times article would have led them to another source that explained in detail her votes as head of the Military Construction Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee (MILCON), which funneled $1.5 billion worth of military construction contracts to URS Corporation, an engineering, design, and construction company located (where else?) in San Francisco — in which Blum had a significant financial interest. Her committee also funneled millions into Tutor Perini, one of the largest general contractors in the country, also located in California, and in which Blum also had a significant financial interest. When Blum sold his interests in URS and Tutor Perini, he booked profits estimated at between $5 and $10 million.
It gets even better. While Blum was an owner in URS, it bought a substantial piece of another company, a defense contractor called EG&G, which just happened to enjoy a windfall contract, thanks to Feinstein’s MILCON committee, of $600 million.
There are other egregious examples of how Feinstein, denials notwithstanding, funneled taxpayer funds into companies either controlled or heavily invested in by her husband. But the aforementioned examples should suffice to prove two points: Snopes often fails to dig deeply enough to discover the depth of corruption and deceit and denial in its efforts to “vet” a story like that from the Ventura California Tea Party. Second, the rampant self-dealing and obvious conflicts of interest go far beyond just a little agreement to sell some post offices through a company controlled by Feinstein’s husband.
If one listens only to Snopes and fails to dig more deeply, one may be left with the conclusion that “there’s nothing to see here. Just move along now, and thank you.”
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15579-snopes-misses-larger-story-on-sales-of-post-offices-by-california-sen-feinstein-s-husband-s-company
Tibetan rituals, sand mandolas, and his un-holiness focus on New York and New Jersey… no wonder Nancy Pelosi brings him into Washington DC… it works !
— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he disagrees with it, but he will comply with a state Supreme Court ruling that makes same-sex marriage legal in the state starting Monday.
Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak says in a statement that the governor “firmly believes that this determination should be made by all the people of the state of New Jersey.”
But he says the state Health Department will help towns carry out Friday’s state Supreme Court ruling.
The court denied the Christie administration’s request to delay a lower-court order that the state recognize same-sex marriage beginning Monday.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
Same-sex marriages will begin within days in New Jersey after the state’s highest court ruled unanimously Friday to uphold a lower-court order that gay weddings must start Monday and to deny a delay that was sought by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration.
“The state has advanced a number of arguments, but none of them overcome this reality: Same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today,” the court said in an opinion by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. “The harm to them is real, not abstract or speculative.”
A judge on the lower court had ruled last month that New Jersey must recognize same-sex marriage and set Monday as the date to allow gay weddings. Christie, a Republican who is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate, appealed the decision and asked for the start date to be put on hold while the state appeals.
The state’s top court agreed last week to take up the appeal of the lower-court ruling by Judge Mary Jacobson. Oral arguments are expected Jan. 6 or 7.
This speech was broadcast by legendary ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965:
If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . .
If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them.
If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing.
AFP – France’s mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party.
The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with RECORD UNEMPLOYMENT, RISING TAXES AND A PERCEIVED INCREASE IN CRIME AND INSECURITY.
While millions of Americans were busy watching the elephant puppet battle the ass puppet at the latest political circus, the United States Congress quietly introduced a new piece of legislation ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to begin preparing for mass casualties throughout the country.
House Resolution 6566, also known as the Mass Fatality Planning and Religious Considerations Act, would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to mandate that FEMA immediately begin conducting “mass fatality planning” in preparation for a major event or series of events that may kill off untold numbers of people.
Introduced by Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.), H.R. 6566 provisions that the Administrator of FEMA — William Craig Fugate currently holds the Administrator position at FEMA (http://www.fema.gov/leadership/william-craig-fugate) — provide “guidance and coordination” for dealing with a mass casualty event arising from a natural disaster, terrorist act, or “other man-made disaster.”