A Compendium of Events Leading Up to Trump’s Insurrection January 6, 2021

As a treasonously wicked, son of perdition and Manipulator in Chief, Trump’s planned corruption played out in public, in print and broadcast news reports (he’s a media whore), on Twitter (he’s a narcissist), on other social media, like FaceBook, and Parler, the favorite of White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other right-wing extremists.

His followers are rightly called the “Cult of Trump.”

Recall what he’d said to Chris Wallace of Fox News in an interview July 19, 2020 at the White House:

WALLACE: In general, not talking about November, are you a good loser?

TRUMP: I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.

WALLACE: But are you gracious?

TRUMP: You don’t know until you see. It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do.

WALLACE: Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?

TRUMP: No. I have to see. Look, Hillary Clinton asked me the same thing.

WALLACE: No, I asked you the same thing at the debate.

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77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election

Within a few hours after the United States voted, the President declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.

By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt
January 31, 2021

By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts.

Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.

Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews.

The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.

As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.

Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play.

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.

Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.

Weeks later, Mr. Trump is the former President Trump. In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.

A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.

In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.

But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.

Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.

Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.

In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia

United Airlines Fly Flap Grounded In Written Policy

Like many, I recently read a couple articles about the dust-up involving United Airlines and their Dress Code for Employees who fly off-duty.

Most notably, the New York Times reported on the story, as of course, did others, and another unrelated passenger who took to Twitter to express their thoughts. The Times even interviewed the unrelated passenger, of whom they wrote, “The incident was first reported on Twitter by Shannon Watts, a passenger at the airport who was waiting to board a flight to Mexico. In a telephone interview from Mexico on Sunday afternoon, Ms. Watts said she noticed two visibly upset teenage girls leaving the gate next to hers. Both were wearing leggings.”

I confess that, in my haste, I made some remarks, in the form of questions, and later found a site which

Russian Meddling in U.S. Presidential Election: How Should Congress Proceed?

There is clear, unambiguous evidence that “Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.”

“Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment that has been provided to the President and to recipients approved by the President.”

A header appears upon EVERY page and states: “This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.”

Several “Key Judgments” are made in the report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence which is dated 6 January 2017.

Among them:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President elect-Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

• We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

• Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.

• Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals.

Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations — such as cyber activity — with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.” Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, has a history of conducting covert influence campaigns focused on US presidential elections that have used intelligence officers and agents and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as hostile to the Kremlin.

• Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.

• We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.

• Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assess es that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.

• Russia’s state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.

We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.

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Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking

President Obama in December. Some in his administration feared that intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 election could be covered up or destroyed. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, ADAM GOLDMAN and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

MARCH 1, 2017

WASHINGTON — In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.

Then and now, Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials, and at one point he openly suggested that American spy agencies had cooked up intelligence suggesting that the Russian government had tried to meddle in the presidential election. Mr. Trump has accused the Obama administration of hyping the Russia story line as a way to discredit his new administration.

At the Obama White House, Mr. Trump’s statements stoked fears among some that intelligence could be covered up or destroyed — or its sources exposed — once power changed hands. What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from Moscow.

It also reflected the suspicion among many in the Obama White House that the Trump campaign might have colluded with Russia on election email hacks — a suspicion that American officials say has not been confirmed. Former senior Obama administration officials said that none of the efforts were directed by Mr. Obama.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Credit Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik

Sean Spicer, the Trump White House spokesman, said,

Walking on Holy Ground: Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken Cafe & Museum, Corbin, KY

While in Kentucky, make certain you visit the National Corvette Museum, in Bowling Green.

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Journeys

In Kentucky, Fried Chicken History

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: August 24, 2012

WHEN making his rounds as a traveling salesman for a Chicago printing company, Duncan Hines would occasionally pull off the Dixie Highway in Corbin, Ky., and eat at Sanders Cafe. In the 1939 edition of “Adventures in Good Eating,” his pioneering restaurant guide, he recommended the cafe and its adjoining motor court as “very good place to stop en route to Cumberland Falls and the Great Smokies,” highlighting its “sizzling steaks, fried chicken, country ham, hot biscuits.”

The Sanders Cafe and Museum in Corbin, KY / Jonathan Palmer for The New York Times

The cafe is still there, only now it incorporates a museum and holds down a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, for one huge, unignorable reason. The owner, chef and resident genius of the place was none other than Colonel Harland Sanders, who, on this hallowed ground, cooked the first batch of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Cumberland Falls does not work the magic it once did, and Corbin itself is not high on anyone’s list of tourist destinations. But the Colonel Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum is a modest must. In addition to capturing a pivotal moment in the mass-marketing of American vernacular food, it evokes a dreamlike time, before the arrival of the Interstate System and its proliferation of fast-food restaurants and chain hotels, when traveling the American highway was a thrilling, high-risk proposition, with marvelous discoveries and ghastly disappointments waiting at every turn.

In its present form, the Sanders Cafe and Museum was born in 1990, the 100th anniversary of Colonel Sanders’s birth. JRN, a Tennessee-based company that operates nearly 200 KFC franchises in the Southeast, was about to open a modern KFC restaurant next to the old cafe. To mark the great birthday, it put out a call for artifacts and memorabilia that would allow it to celebrate the Colonel, his cafe and his fried chicken.

All sorts of stuff

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, MD: Is Philadelphia’s horrific murder trial overshadowed?

In an earlier entry entitled “They kill babies… and women, too. West Philadelpia MD indicted on 8 counts murder” posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 I wrote in part that “The atrocities of this ONE incident make Nazi madman “scientist” Josef Mengele and madman/mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer almost pale by comparison. Body parts and bodies in freezers and refrigerators, corpse mutilation… all in the “City of Brotherly Love.””

Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial will be starting it’s sixth week, and with testimony such as:
Defense attorney Jack McMahon (heatedly): “After Digoxen and having its neck cut, you’re telling the jury that you saw the baby moving?”
Kareema Cross, 28-year-old employee from 2005 to 2009: “Yes, it was.”
– it doesn’t look good for the former physician, or for his untrained, unlicensed staff.

The indictment against him may be downloaded and read here:
http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf

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Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story

The dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures. It is thoroughly newsworthy.

By Conor Friedersdorf

Please note: This post contains graphic descriptions and imagery.

A procedure room at the Women’s Medical Society. / Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office

The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors,” it states. “The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate’s coverage includes testimony as grisly as you’d expect. “An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions,” the channel reports. “Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.’ He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, ‘it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'”One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, “Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell’s idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania.”

Until Thursday, I wasn’t aware of this story. It has generated sparse coverage in the national media, and while it’s been mentioned in RSS feeds to which I subscribe, I skip past most news items. I still consume a tremendous amount of journalism. Yet had I been asked at a trivia night about the identity of Kermit Gosnell, I would’ve been stumped and helplessly guessed a green Muppet. Then I saw Kirsten Power’s USA Today column. She makes a powerful, persuasive case that the Gosnell trial ought to be getting a lot more attention in the national press than it is getting.

The media criticism angle interests me. But I agree that the story has been undercovered, and I happen to be a working journalist, so I’ll begin by telling the rest of the story for its own sake. Only then will I explain why I think it deserves more coverage than it has gotten, although it ought to be self-evident by the time I’m done distilling the grand jury’s allegations. Grand juries aren’t infallible. This version of events hasn’t been proven in a court of law. But journalists routinely treat accounts given by police, prosecutors and grand juries as at least plausible if not proven. Try to decide, as you hear the state’s side of the case, whether you think it is credible, and if so, whether the possibility that some or all this happened demands massive journalistic scrutiny.

* * *

On February 18, 2010, the FBI raided the “Women’s Medical Society,” entering its offices about 8:30 p.m. Agents expected to find evidence that it was illegally selling prescription drugs. On entering, they quickly realized something else was amiss. In the grand jury report’s telling, “There was blood on the floor. A stench of

Should Wal-Mart Workers be Thankful for a Non-Living Wage?

In this season of giving thanks, we are again reminded that our neighbors, our friends, our family are abused by corporate overlords who treat their employees as chattel, mere serfs, by the world’s largest retailer, which is headquartered in Arkansas, in the United States of America – land of the free, and home of the brave, land where our fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride.

That is abuse and injustice.

Plain and simple.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

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Wal-Mart’s 6 biggest blunders

Haven’t we been here before? Remembering the biggest public relations crises in the company’s 50-year history.

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Walmart allegedly covered up an internal investigation proving its Mexican subsidiary bribed officials in the country. The retail giant’s stock fell sharply Monday following the expose. Should the market be really that surprised? Over the years, Walmart has made headlines for behaving badly even as executives work tirelessly to maintain its all-American image. Here, take a look at Walmart’s blunders.

1. Working conditions

A worker’s got a right to lunch. And get paid for overtime. That wasn’t always the case at some Walmart stores.

In 2005, a California jury awarded $172 million to thousands of workers who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks. The case was one of at least 40 similar suits filed nationwide at the time, alleging workplace violations.

The outcomes of the cases varied, but those that stood in court brought bad news for the company. In 2002, a federal jury in Oregon found Walmart employees were forced to work off the clock and awarded back pay to 83 workers.

And in a similar case in 2000, Walmart settled a class-action lawsuit against

Sky Diver Parachutist Felix Baumgartner Sets New World Records

As I had opined earlier, while the the otherwise reputable New York Times headlines him as “daredevil” (and doubtless, there is an element to that), he is much more than a mere thrill-seeker. There is significant, and legitimate science being undertaken in this mission.

Further, so-called “daredevils” rarely prepare 5ive years for their stunts, as did Mr. Baumgartner and his team.
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Daredevil Jumps, and Lands on His Feet

By JOHN TIERNEY
The New York Times
October 14, 2012

Before the jump, Mr. Baumgartner went through a checklist with help from Joe Kittinger, 84, the retired Air Force colonel who in 1960 jumped from 102,800 feet, setting records that remained more than half a century later — and that Mr. Baumgartner was hoping to break. – Credit: Balazs Gardi/Red Bull Stratos, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ROSWELL, N.M. — Felix Baumgartner, the professional daredevil, said he was not thinking about setting records or collecting scientific data in the moments before he jumped from a capsule more than 24 miles high.

He was just thinking about making it back to Earth.

“Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records anymore. It’s not about getting scientific data. It’s all about coming home,” Mr. Baumgarter said after returning by helicopter to mission control in Roswell.

“It was harder than I expected,” he said.

Music great Bob Dylan: “Wussies & pussies” claim plagiarism

Bob Dylan says plagiarism charges made by “wussies and pussies”

8:17pm EDT
By Chris Francescani

U.S. musician Bob Dylan (R) performs on the second day of the Hop Farm Music Festival in Paddock Wood, Kent June 30, 2012. Credit: Reuters/ Ki Price

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bob Dylan has angrily responded to charges he plagiarized some of his lyrics, calling critics “wussies and pussies” and saying musical appropriation is “part of the folk tradition.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for its Friday edition, the influential singer-songwriter made his first public comments on the accusations, saying that in folk and jazz music “quotation is a rich and enriching tradition.”

“Everyone else can do it but not me,” he complained. “There are different rules for me.”

Rolling Stone released excerpts of the interview on Wednesday and Reuters obtained a complete transcript.

In 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported that

Foxconn’s Chaotic Denial: We do not use forced student labor to make Apple iPhones

Where’s Chairman Mao when you need him, eh?
/sarcasm

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Foxconn denies using forced student labor to make Apple iPhones

By Jessica Guynn and Julie MakinenSeptember 11, 2012, 11:24 a.m.

Foxconn Technology Group is denying reports in the Chinese media that it forced vocational students to work at factories that make iPhones.

Tourist and Apple devotes stop and pose to take pictures of the Apple logo adorned front facade of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, USA, 09 September 2012, three days before the anticipated iPhone 5 announcement will be made. EPA/PETER DaSILVA

The controversy targeting Apple’s manufacturing partner in China comes as Apple is expected to unveil the latest iPhone on Wednesday.

Foxconn, which in recent months has come under heavy scrutiny in connection with working conditions in its factories, has conceded that

Does Ann Romney have horse problems? Super Hit, her old dressage horse wonders. So do we.

Ann Romney with her horse, Super Hit, in a 2006 photo. (Terri Miller/Handout)

Super Hit.

Who or what’s that?

Oh… just another dressage horse the Romney’s once owned – and tried to sell.

Selling horses is not illegal, immoral, or unethical.

However, to attempt to sell a horse that is so doped up in an effort to masquerade, conceal or hide a defective, sick, injured or wounded condition… well, now, that’s a horse of a different color.

Ann Romney was named as a defendant in such a case.

Here’s what Dr. Stephen Soule, DVM – an expert in equine podiatry – said of the horse Mrs. Romney was trying to sell:

“In my 38 years of practice, I have never come across a drug screen such as this where the horse has been administered so many different medications at the same time.”

This was not some long-ago issue, for the complaint was filed February 10, 2010 in California Superior Court, Ventura County, is case number 56-2010-00372707-CU-FR-SIM, and was set for trial September 12, 2011.

Here’s the nut of the case:

In 2010, a San Diego woman – Catherine Norris – sued Mrs. Romney, dressage trainer Jan Ebeling and his wife Amy for fraud, claiming that the severity of a foot defect in Super Hit, a dressage horse she purchased from Mrs. Romney for $125,000, was concealed.

The expert equine veterinarian, Dr. Stephen Soule, stated in the record that, “In my professional opinion, based on 38 years of experience in equine veterinary medicine and in conducting nearly 2000 pre-purchase examinations during this time, the HA-VETALOG injections to the left front coffin joint coupled with Super Hit’s inconsistent show record, decline in test scores, consistency in the remarks of different show judges on score sheets that Super Hit was “tense,” had “tension” and “tight” and “stiff,” and the fact that he was not shown for nearly 2½ years prior to the sale in February 2008, Super Hit was more likely than not chronically lame prior to Catherine Norris’ purchase in February 2008.”

A pre-purchase drug screen/toxicology study performed February 13, 2008 by Center for Tox Services, Inc. – an Arizona lab – on 6 blood collection tubes drawn from the horse Super Hit found Butorphanol (a synthetic opioid pain killer), Detomadine (a α2-adrenergic agonist, used as a sedative in horses), romifidine (another sedative mainly used on large animals such as horses), and xylazine (a medication used in horses for sedation, anesthesia, muscle relaxation, and pain relief) in the horse’s system.

Also named in the suit was Dr. Doug Herthen, DVM, the veterinarian who treated Super Hit, and who purposely failed to disclose the nature of his relationship with Ann Romney and Super Hit to the purchaser, Mrs. Norris. In his testimony, Dr. Soule wrote that, “The professional ethics standard in veterinary medicine is to disclose any implied, apparent, or actual conflicts of interest before agreeing to conduct the pre-purchase examination. In other words, there is no such thing as dual representation without disclosure. In my professional opinion, the failure of Doug Herthel to disclose to Catherine Norris his existing and/or prior professional relationship with the defendants Amy and Jan Eberling, prior to the pre-purchase examination, was a breach of his professional duties and ethics.”

For very nearly a decade, Mrs. Romney has held a financial and ownership stake in The Acres, a horse training ranch about 45 miles northwest of Los Angeles, which is also owned by Jan & Amy Eberling. Mr. Eberling is a dressage trainer from Germany. With the Romneys, the Eberlings own Rob Rom Enterprises LLC, a foreign corporation registered in Delaware, which buys and trains dressage horses.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is nothing new for the Romneys, because in a 1994 interview with the Boston Globe while Mitt was campaigning for Massachusetts governor, Ann described their years as “struggling students,” saying that “neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock [from his father] that we could sell off a little at a time.”

Yeah. That’s gotta’ be a struggle.

Of course, it goes without saying – but here it is, anyway – that, in an interview with Neal Cavuto of Fox News in March 2012, Ann Romney said, “I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing.” Many people would probably find that interesting, too – particularly given that Mitt’s estimated wealth is in excess of $250 Million. Perhaps $100,000 horses are but chump change to that crowd.

The New York Times covered the issue with the following story, which also mentions the $77,000 tax deduction the Romneys took in 2010 for Rafalca, another of the Romneys’ expensive dressage horses.

Other newspapers covering the story included the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Because of the location of the case

Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. Yes, there’s such thing as a STUPID question.

The title says it all.

But the title doesn’t explain why.

Read on for more understanding.

On the FaceBook page of Loyola University New Orleans, a photograph was posted of a… well, here it is.

Are the Kentucky Derby horses abused animals? Here’s what you may not know about horse racing.

Again, here is an issue about which many – if not most – are unaware.

Did you know, that on average, 24 horses a week die at racetracks in the United States?

Would you inject cobra venom in your pet?

Would you deliberately numb its pain just so it could race and possibly win?

What if afterward it breaks its legs and must be destroyed?

“Since 2009, more than 6,600 horses have broken down or showed signs of injury. An additional 3,800 horses have tested positive for illegal drugs. That figure underestimates the problem because few horses are tested for substances. At least 3,600 horses have died either racing or training at state-regulated tracks.”

At what cost winning?

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A Derby Win, but a Troubled Record for a Trainer

May 10, 2012 By JOE DRAPE and WALT BOGDANICH

Last summer, the trainer Doug O’Neill was formally sanctioned after one of his racehorses at Hollywood Park in California tested positive for illegal drugs.

A year before, in 2010, O’Neill was punished for administering an illegal performance-enhancing concoction to a horse he ran in the prestigious Illinois Derby— the third time he had been accused of giving a horse what is known as a milkshake. Four months later, he was accused again of giving a milkshake to a horse in California.

Doug O’Neill, in this 2006 photo – trainer for 2012 Kentucky Derby winner “I’ll Have Another” – has been cited for giving drugs to his horses. (photo by Chris Carlson/Associated Press)

Over 14 years and in four different states, O’Neill received more than a dozen violations for giving his horses improper drugs. O’Neill’s horses also have had a tendency to break down. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the horses he trains break down or show signs of injury at more than twice the rate of the national average.

But none of it — the drug charges or the rate of damaged horses under his care — has much impeded O’Neill’s rise in the ranks of racing, and so there he was last Saturday, saddling I’ll Have Another, the surprising 3-year-old who won the 138th Kentucky Derby.

O’Neill’s Derby victory places him — and his troubled record — center stage at a time when thoroughbred racing is facing perhaps its greatest ethical reckoning. There is legislation before Congress calling for federal regulation of the sport. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has appointed a task force to investigate a spike in the number of catastrophic breakdowns at Aqueduct Racetrack, which races thoroughbreds.

Industry groups representing breeders, owners and racetracks are proposing new drug rules and integrity measures to better protect the horses and riders.

“I have been guilty of

Sure, money is power. But, is it also liberty and freedom? Or, is it a tool?

As Bob Dylan sang some years ago, “The times, they are a-changin’.” Our laws should reflect those changes while adhering to the values ensconced in our Constitution. In essence, the argument is about freedom – freedom from the large corporations that supply “content” via the Internet. As well, openness and honesty – popularly termed as transparency – should be the hallmark of all dealings, by government and enterprise.

In short, what we’re encountering in this age, in this era, is an almost unprecedented and wholesale onslaught of money and the power that comes with it. It is, in essence, a corrupting influence. It is, in essence, a type of bribery – and bribery is itself, a form of theft. Bribery is a form of theft because it takes away, removes, or forbids resources from going where they ought, or rightfully should. In this case, it robs freedom from the people. Not only does it usurp their decision-making capacity, it is a blatant announcement and condemnation of freedom, because it says that the rich, the wealthy have freedom, while the poor and disenfranchised have none.

If – as the Supreme Court has declared – money is the equivalent of free speech, and neither cannot, nor should not be limited, what freedom does the poor man have? Again, if money is equated with free speech (that is, our First Amendment rights), the poor man has none. And that, my dear readers, is but one reason why such a ruling is not only ANTI-Constitutional, but is antithesis of freedom.

Making a further case, our nation’s specie – that is, the currency and coinage – is the property of the United States government. It is NOT private property. Money is a thing used to represent something else. So again, I ask rhetorically… in such instances, and in this case, what does it represent?
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Google Says “It’s Our Web”–and they bought it fair and square

April 23, 2012 Chris Castle

Who can forget then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s classic line at the 1980 New Hampshire candidate’s debate:  “I’m paying for this microphone!”  And Google probably is wishing that whichever Ivy League idiot thought of rebranding their anti-SOPA campaign site with the double entendre “It’s Our Web” had not been quite so…uh..transparent…about it all.

President Obama had dinner with technology moguls February 17, 2011 in California’s “Silicon Valley” at the home of John Doerr, venture capitalist and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in Woodside, California. Flanking the president are (L) the late Steve Jobs, Founder/CEO of Apple Computer, and (R) Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of FaceBook. Also present are:Cisco CEO John Chambers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO of Genentech, is on the Apple board of directors, and was also present. White House press secretary Jay Carney said after the dinner President Obama exchanged ideas with the business leaders “so we can work as partners to promote growth and create good jobs in the United States,” and discussed research and development spending proposals with the CEOs. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Because it certainly is “their web” and they bought it fair and square according to

American Corporate Corruption: Wal-Mart Bribed Mexico Government Officials

Sam Walton spins in his grave.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before the eventual or inevitable happened.

Since the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are persons, there should be no reasonable argument against arresting the corporation.

The problem is, how to do that?

The Chief Executives are not the corporation, so ostensibly, they couldn’t be arrested.

But then, could those Chief Executives be charged with criminal behavior for the actions of the corporation?

However, if we consider the The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA) (15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, et seq.) which is part of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the elimination of some of the most important provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, we might wonder if Republicans would have any problem eliminating the FCPA, since it addresses accounting transparency requirements under the and bribery of foreign officials.

It will definitely be interesting to see how Congress decides to handle this case.

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Wal-Mart Hushed Up a Vast Mexican Bribery Case

April 21, 2012

By DAVID BARSTOW

MEXICO CITY — In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.

The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.

Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”

The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.

Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.

Neither American nor Mexican law enforcement officials were notified. None of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s leaders were disciplined. Indeed, its chief executive, Eduardo Castro-Wright, identified by the former executive as the driving force behind years of bribery, was promoted to vice chairman of Wal-Mart in 2008. Until this article, the allegations and Wal-Mart’s investigation had never been publicly disclosed.

Some bloggers censor, censure, limit & forbid comments. I don’t.

I may take a different tack than some bloggers, and I have only in extreme cases (translate: virtually never) blocked, deleted or censored comments.

The reason why is rather simple.

And it is, that often, the comment says more about the commenter than the topic.

Sure, some folks have written nasty, vile & vitriolic commentary upon some entries posted here, but fortunately, they are the exception, rather than the rule.

Even if a topic is hotly debated, discourse should be civil, though the bane of many forums is that remarks upon them are not.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a 20th Century British man of letters, towering intellect and stature.

Regarding disagreement, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a man of towering intellect and stature – who in addition to being an English journalist by profession, was a respected man of letters, novelist, essayist, author & poet who also produced works on philosophy, social and literary criticism – had several thoughts on disagreement and quarrels, among others.

He once wrote that

Making Health Insurance Obsolete

Make no mistake about it, insurance companies exist to make money.

Regardless of their commercials, they neither care for you, grandma, babies, or puppy dogs… much less love you.

They love money.

In addition to raising premiums, one of the ways they make money is by not paying claims. And I mean to refer to them not paying legitimate claims by weaseling and fenagling out of paying claims such as by denying “pre-existing conditions,” or by making ludicrously asinine assertions, such as “you forgot to fill in line 39,” or something like “we didn’t receive your premium on time,” or something even worse – such as “we don’t insure on Thursdays from noon to 1:30PM.”

If money is a tool which can and ought to be used for the things it can do, then why is it important to maintain a hoard of of it? Tools are utilitarian things, which derive their exclusive value precisely because they are used, not capable of being used. Similarly, money only has value because it is a tool as a medium of exchange.

Insurance, like any other pecuniary enterprise, ought to be regulated precisely because of the risk for fraud is greater than in other businesses. That is, by nature it is more susceptible to deception. Deception in pecuniary enterprise is also known as “theft.”

Nevertheless…

Be certain you read on to learn

How a $1,000 test could destroy the health-insurance industry

Here’s your Sunday Morning Homelessness Moment

“Mr. Bloomberg announced a plan to reduce homelessness by no longer giving homeless families priority in public housing.”

Yeah.

Makes absolutely ZERO sense. Right?

It’s kinda’ like ending hunger by ceasing to feed the hungry.

How or why?

Because they eventually die.

But, ’tis true.

In a New York Times story by Alan Feuer published, February 3, 2012 entitled “Homeless Families, Cloaked in Normality,” Mr. Feuer wrote “In 2004, Mr. Bloomberg announced

The Last Fair Deal Gone Down: Robert Johnson, Racism and Abortion

Late American Blues guitarist/singer/songwriter Robert Johnson, a Negro, died at the tender young age of 27, in 1938. There are less than 50 recordings of his, of which historians are aware. Among musicologists, researchers and others, his performances are considered treasures and remain the subject of great debate, even today.

If Robert Johnson’s mother were alive today, living in New York City and in the prime of her childbearing years, the flower of her youth, and were to become pregnant with him today…

They kill babies… and women, too. West Philadelpia MD indicted on 8 counts murder

The atrocities of this ONE incident make Nazi madman “scientist” Josef Mengele and madman/mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer almost pale by comparison. Body parts and bodies in freezers and refrigerators, corpse mutilation… all in the “City of Brotherly Love.” Read on.

Black Children are an Endangered Species - Modern American Genocide - (Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times)

The majority of abortions are performed in ethnic minority communities.
A 30-year study by the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute revealed that “Black women account for 37% of abortions, non-Hispanic White women for 34%, Hispanic women 22% and women of other races 8%.”
Minorities account for 67% of all abortions, while those same non-White populations account for about 1/3 (33%) of the American population.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 57.4% of the abortions performed in Georgia in 2006 were performed on African-American women, but Blacks make up only 30% of Georgia’s population. Nationwide, the pattern is similarly stacked against Black babies — Black women have approximately 37% of all abortions each year, while Blacks make up only 13% of the national population.
Genocide?
You decide.
(Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times)

DA: West Philadelphia abortion doctor killed 7 babies with scissors

Updated at 0214 on 19 January 2011

By PATRICK WALTERS and MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

WEST PHILADELPHIA – January 19, 2011 (WPVI) — A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Do NOT be deceived! -OR- I can say whatever the f*k I like!

Words have NO meaning, and you are FREE to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. (I write sarcastically in the first instance, and seriously in the second. For you are free – however, your freedom must not be used as an excuse to trespass upon another.)

And remember… whatever you say makes no difference.

You can say or write anything you want without consequences.

For example, this phrase

AZ Congresswoman Shot; 6+ Tucson fatalities

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot in head

Posted by Max Brantley on Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 12:38 PM

• U.S. REP. GABRIELLE GIFFORDS

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot in the head at point blank range in Tucson today and several staffers were wounded. She was at a public event at a grocery store. The shooter was tackled by a bystander and is in custody.UPDATE: A sheriff’s spokesman has said that Giffords has died, one of at least six fatalities, and at least 12 people were shot. But a variety of sources are saying at 2 p.m. Little Rock time that the congresswoman remains in surgery in critical condition. CNN says one may have been a federal judge.

The New York Times quotes a witness who said the gunman fired at least 20 shots. He was described as a white male in his 20s who was shabbily dressed. The article notes that her House office was vandalized hours after the House approved health care reform legislation, which she supported. She told MSNBC then that she was not afraid, despite numerous threats. “Our democracy is a light, a beacon around the world” because it effects change at the ballot box, not by violent acts.

Regards a topic addressed earlier today, just for the record from opencarry.com

Arizona is one of our “Gold Star” open carry states. There is complete state preemption of all firearms laws, open carry is common and law enforcement is well educated as to its legality.

People with guns may be asked to store their firearms or leave places open to the public in Arizona Though Giffords has supported some legislation supportive of concealed carry, she earned a D from the NRA for overall voting record, such as support for background checks of gun purchasers at gun shows. There is, of course, no way to know if the shooting today was related to gun issues or other hot-button issues that roil Arizona, such as

The Priests who Survived the Atomic Bomb

Miracles happen daily.

They just don’t get much press.

Why?

“… a small community of Jesuit Fathers living in a presbytery near the parish church, which was situated less than a mile away from detonation point, well within the radius of total devastation. And all eight members of this community escaped virtually unscathed from the effects of the bomb. Their presbytery