From a Tea Party News Network (TPNN) artivcle by Greg Campbell a few weeks ago with the headlines: "Nevada Developer Found Guilty for Illegal Campaign Contributions to Harry Reid"
http://www.tpnn.com/breaking-nevada-developer-found-guilty-for-illegal-campaign-contributions-to-harry-reid/
Harvey Whittemore, a Reno, Nevada, businessman has been found guilty on three counts of making illegal campaign contributions to Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Whittemore, who maintains powerful political connections, has made a fortune from land development and it has been widely speculated that his land dealings have been greatly aided by political connections.
Whittemore has been found guilty on three of the four counts concerning unlawfully funneling more than $133,000 in campaign contributions to Sen. Reid. The jury has deadlocked on the fourth count. Jurors have told the judge that they have been unable to reach an agreement on whether or not the power broker willfully lied to the FBI. The jury sent a note to U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks, saying, “Judge Hicks, We have three counts resolved and one count we are deadlocked on. Even after a lengthy discussion we cannot resolve. How should we proceed?”
The judge has sent the jurors back for further deliberation.
The charges stem from a 2007 scheme where Whittemore funneled the money to Sen. Reid through third-party participants such as friends and family members to conceal the source of the campaign contributions.
How can it be that politicians like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton and others take political office then expotentially increase their net worth? People say that the last act of politicians in a dying country is to loot the treasury - is this what we are seeing?
Cowboys and the Tea Party political movement have a lot on common. Both believe in individual responsibility; judging a man by his actions not words; and, both are disgusted with government intrusions into our lives and particularly our God given rights.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
G-8 Countries Find America Under Obama No Longer Matters
This is a well written article by Mark Steyn of the respected Investor's Business Daily concerning just how far America has slid under the Obama Administration.
Descending from the heavens for the G-8 summit at beautiful Lough Erne this week, President Obama caused some amusement to his British hosts. The chancellor of the Exchequer had been invited to give a presentation to the assembled heads of government on the matter of tax avoidance (one of the big items on the agenda, for those of you who think what the IRS could really use right now is even more enforcement powers). The president evidently enjoyed it. Thrice, he piped up to say how much he agreed with Jeffrey, eventually concluding the presentation with the words, "Thank you, Jeffrey."
Unfortunately, the chancellor of the Exchequer is a bloke called George Osborne, not Jeffrey Osborne.
Obama subsequently apologized for confusing George with Jeffrey, who was a popular vocal artiste back in the '80s when Obama was dating his composite girlfriend and making composite whoopee to the composite remix of Jeffrey Osborne's 1982 smoocheroo, "On the Wings of Love."
I suppose it might have been worse. When Angela Merkel proposed a toast to a strong West, he could have assumed that was the name of Kim and Kanye's new baby.
At any rate, Obama's mishap had faint echoes of a famous social faux pas during the Second World War. Irving Berlin, the celebrated composer of "White Christmas," was invited to lunch at 10 Downing Street and was surprised to find that Churchill, instead of asking what's that Bing Crosby really like, badgered him with complex moral and strategic questions and requests for estimates of U.S. war production.
It turned out the prime minister had confused Irving Berlin with the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, then under secondment to the British Embassy in Washington, and thought it was the latter he'd invited to No. 10.
In the Obama era, any confusion is the other way around. It would be a terrible thing for the president to invite the eminent rapper Jay-Z to lunch only to find himself stuck next to the turgid British philosopher professor Sir Jay Zed.
Although Obama's confusion went largely unreported in America, the BBC's enterprising Eddie Mair got Jeffrey Osborne on the line and inveigled him into singing George Osborne's best-known words — "Tax cuts should be for life, not just Christmas time" — to Jeffrey's best-known tune.
The following day Mangue Obama — whoops, my mistake, Mangue Obama was the prime minister of Equatorial Guinea from 2006 to 2008, and has a way smaller and less incompetent entourage — Barack Obama departed for Berlin (the German city, not the American songwriter or British philosopher). Five years ago at the Brandenburg Gate, he thrilled a crowd of 200,000 with his stirring clarion call to himself, "Ich bin ein Baracker." This time, he spoke to an audience barely a 50th of that size — 4,500, most of whom were bored out of their lederhosen.
As I wrote of Obama's Massachusetts yawnfest in 2010, he went to the trouble of flying in to phone it in. If the BBC's mash-up of Jeffrey Osborne's 1982 Billboard hit and Chancellor Osborne's recent speech at the Mansion House in London was something of an awkward fit, you could slip large slabs of "On the Wings of Love" into Obama's telepromptered pap and none of the 27 Germans still awake would have noticed the difference:
"Peace with justice means extending a hand to those who reach for freedom, wherever they live. Come take my hand and together we will rise, on the wings of love, up and above the clouds, the only way to fly ...
"Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons — no matter how distant that dream may be, just smile for me and let the day begin. You are the sunshine that lights my heat within, and we can reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking, because we are angels in disguise, we live and breathe each other, inseparable ...
"The effort to slow climate change requires bold action. For the grim alternative affects all nations — more severe storms, more famine and floods ... coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise, you look at me and I begin to melt, just like the snow when a ray of sun is felt ... This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time… That is our task. We have to get to work. We're flowing like a stream, running free, flowing on the wings of love ..."
The wings of love don't seem to carry Obama as far as they used to. MSNBC's Chris Matthews blamed the lackluster performance on the sun's glare affecting his ability to read the text. That's how bad it is: global warming melted his prompter.
But the speech itself was barely distinguishable in its cobwebbed utopian pabulum from the video for a nuclear-free world just released by Michael Douglas and other celebrities. And Douglas, who recently gave a fascinating interview to The Guardian in which he blamed his cancerous walnut-sized tongue tumor upon his addiction to oral sex, at least has a better excuse as to why his silvery tongue doesn't work its magic quite the way it used to. Der Spiegel, which is the very definition of mainstream media in Germany, described the president's Berlin stop as a visit by "the head of the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented" — and under the headline "Obama's Soft Totalitarianism".
Obama isn't a "soft" totalitarian so much as a slapdash one. His apparatchiks monitor the emails of both Jeffrey and George Osborne, but he still can't tell one from the other.
Likewise, in Syria as in Libya, "the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented" can't tell a plucky freedom fighter itching to build Massachusetts in the sands of Araby from your neighborhood al-Qaida subsidiary whose health care plan only covers clitoridectomies.
His G-8 colleagues have begun to figure out that America no longer matters. To be sure, the trappings of the presidency are a lagging indicator: He still flies in with more limos and Secret Service agents than everybody else, combined.
Then again, the other American story to catch the fancy of the Fleet Street tabloids in recent days is that of the unfortunate Las Vegas man with the world's biggest scrotum, weighing 140 pounds, yet unable to perform.
Of his talks with Vladimir Putin, the president said, "With respect to Syria, we do have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence." Putin aims to reduce the violence by getting his boy Assad to kill everyone he needs to. Obama aims to reduce the violence by giving a speech about the "intolerance that fuels extremism" — or is it the other way round? The world understands that Putin means it and Obama doesn't — just as in Afghanistan everyone knows the Taliban means it and the fainthearted superpower doesn't.
Thanks to the stork delivering his bundle to Miss Kardashian (see above), Americans seem not to have noticed that the U.S. has just lost yet another war.
But in Moscow, Beijing, Teheran, they noticed, and they will act accordingly. On the wings of love, up and above the clouds, Obama wafts ever higher on his own gaseous uplift. Down on solid ground, the rest of the world must occasionally wonder if they haven't confused the U.S. delegation with the world's most empty-headed boy band.
Descending from the heavens for the G-8 summit at beautiful Lough Erne this week, President Obama caused some amusement to his British hosts. The chancellor of the Exchequer had been invited to give a presentation to the assembled heads of government on the matter of tax avoidance (one of the big items on the agenda, for those of you who think what the IRS could really use right now is even more enforcement powers). The president evidently enjoyed it. Thrice, he piped up to say how much he agreed with Jeffrey, eventually concluding the presentation with the words, "Thank you, Jeffrey."
Unfortunately, the chancellor of the Exchequer is a bloke called George Osborne, not Jeffrey Osborne.
Obama subsequently apologized for confusing George with Jeffrey, who was a popular vocal artiste back in the '80s when Obama was dating his composite girlfriend and making composite whoopee to the composite remix of Jeffrey Osborne's 1982 smoocheroo, "On the Wings of Love."
I suppose it might have been worse. When Angela Merkel proposed a toast to a strong West, he could have assumed that was the name of Kim and Kanye's new baby.
At any rate, Obama's mishap had faint echoes of a famous social faux pas during the Second World War. Irving Berlin, the celebrated composer of "White Christmas," was invited to lunch at 10 Downing Street and was surprised to find that Churchill, instead of asking what's that Bing Crosby really like, badgered him with complex moral and strategic questions and requests for estimates of U.S. war production.
It turned out the prime minister had confused Irving Berlin with the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, then under secondment to the British Embassy in Washington, and thought it was the latter he'd invited to No. 10.
In the Obama era, any confusion is the other way around. It would be a terrible thing for the president to invite the eminent rapper Jay-Z to lunch only to find himself stuck next to the turgid British philosopher professor Sir Jay Zed.
Although Obama's confusion went largely unreported in America, the BBC's enterprising Eddie Mair got Jeffrey Osborne on the line and inveigled him into singing George Osborne's best-known words — "Tax cuts should be for life, not just Christmas time" — to Jeffrey's best-known tune.
The following day Mangue Obama — whoops, my mistake, Mangue Obama was the prime minister of Equatorial Guinea from 2006 to 2008, and has a way smaller and less incompetent entourage — Barack Obama departed for Berlin (the German city, not the American songwriter or British philosopher). Five years ago at the Brandenburg Gate, he thrilled a crowd of 200,000 with his stirring clarion call to himself, "Ich bin ein Baracker." This time, he spoke to an audience barely a 50th of that size — 4,500, most of whom were bored out of their lederhosen.
As I wrote of Obama's Massachusetts yawnfest in 2010, he went to the trouble of flying in to phone it in. If the BBC's mash-up of Jeffrey Osborne's 1982 Billboard hit and Chancellor Osborne's recent speech at the Mansion House in London was something of an awkward fit, you could slip large slabs of "On the Wings of Love" into Obama's telepromptered pap and none of the 27 Germans still awake would have noticed the difference:
"Peace with justice means extending a hand to those who reach for freedom, wherever they live. Come take my hand and together we will rise, on the wings of love, up and above the clouds, the only way to fly ...
"Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons — no matter how distant that dream may be, just smile for me and let the day begin. You are the sunshine that lights my heat within, and we can reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking, because we are angels in disguise, we live and breathe each other, inseparable ...
"The effort to slow climate change requires bold action. For the grim alternative affects all nations — more severe storms, more famine and floods ... coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise, you look at me and I begin to melt, just like the snow when a ray of sun is felt ... This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time… That is our task. We have to get to work. We're flowing like a stream, running free, flowing on the wings of love ..."
The wings of love don't seem to carry Obama as far as they used to. MSNBC's Chris Matthews blamed the lackluster performance on the sun's glare affecting his ability to read the text. That's how bad it is: global warming melted his prompter.
But the speech itself was barely distinguishable in its cobwebbed utopian pabulum from the video for a nuclear-free world just released by Michael Douglas and other celebrities. And Douglas, who recently gave a fascinating interview to The Guardian in which he blamed his cancerous walnut-sized tongue tumor upon his addiction to oral sex, at least has a better excuse as to why his silvery tongue doesn't work its magic quite the way it used to. Der Spiegel, which is the very definition of mainstream media in Germany, described the president's Berlin stop as a visit by "the head of the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented" — and under the headline "Obama's Soft Totalitarianism".
Obama isn't a "soft" totalitarian so much as a slapdash one. His apparatchiks monitor the emails of both Jeffrey and George Osborne, but he still can't tell one from the other.
Likewise, in Syria as in Libya, "the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented" can't tell a plucky freedom fighter itching to build Massachusetts in the sands of Araby from your neighborhood al-Qaida subsidiary whose health care plan only covers clitoridectomies.
His G-8 colleagues have begun to figure out that America no longer matters. To be sure, the trappings of the presidency are a lagging indicator: He still flies in with more limos and Secret Service agents than everybody else, combined.
Then again, the other American story to catch the fancy of the Fleet Street tabloids in recent days is that of the unfortunate Las Vegas man with the world's biggest scrotum, weighing 140 pounds, yet unable to perform.
Of his talks with Vladimir Putin, the president said, "With respect to Syria, we do have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence." Putin aims to reduce the violence by getting his boy Assad to kill everyone he needs to. Obama aims to reduce the violence by giving a speech about the "intolerance that fuels extremism" — or is it the other way round? The world understands that Putin means it and Obama doesn't — just as in Afghanistan everyone knows the Taliban means it and the fainthearted superpower doesn't.
Thanks to the stork delivering his bundle to Miss Kardashian (see above), Americans seem not to have noticed that the U.S. has just lost yet another war.
But in Moscow, Beijing, Teheran, they noticed, and they will act accordingly. On the wings of love, up and above the clouds, Obama wafts ever higher on his own gaseous uplift. Down on solid ground, the rest of the world must occasionally wonder if they haven't confused the U.S. delegation with the world's most empty-headed boy band.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Taliban Murders Innocents
As reported by the Associated Press, at least a dozen Islamic militants wearing police uniforms shot to death nine foreign tourists and one Pakistani before dawn this last Sunday as they were visiting one of the world's highest mountains in a remote area of northern Pakistan that has been largely peaceful, officials said.
Make no mistake about it, Jihadist's hate everything Christians and Westerners stand for. There is no reasoning with them. There is no rehabilitation. They must be wiped off the face of the earth.
The foreigners who were killed included five Ukrainians, three Chinese and one Russian, said Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. One Chinese tourist was wounded in the attack and was rescued, he said.
The local branch of the Taliban took responsibility for the killings, saying it was to avenge the death of a leader killed in a recent U.S. drone strike.
The shooting was one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in recent years and is likely to damage the country's already struggling tourism industry. Pakistan's mountainous north — considered until now relatively safe — is one of the main attractions in a country beset with insurgency and other political instability.
The attack took place at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world at 8,126 meters (26,660 feet). Nanga Parbat is notoriously difficult to climb and is known as the "killer mountain" because of numerous mountaineering deaths in the past. It's unclear if the tourists were planning to climb the mountain or were just visiting the base camp, which is located in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan.
The gunmen were wearing uniforms used by the Gilgit Scouts, a paramilitary police force that patrols the area, said the interior minister. The attackers abducted two local guides to find their way to the remote base camp. One of the guides was killed in the shooting, and the other has been detained and is being questioned, said Khan.
"The purpose of this attack was to give a message to the world that Pakistan is unsafe for travel," said the interior minister in a speech in the National Assembly, which passed a resolution condemning the incident. "The government will take all measures to ensure the safety of foreign tourists."
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack, saying their Jundul Hafsa group carried out the shooting as retaliation for the death of the Taliban's deputy leader, Waliur Rehman, in a U.S. drone attack on May 29.
"By killing foreigners, we wanted to give a message to the world to play their role in bringing an end to the drone attacks," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.
At least a dozen gunmen were involved in the attack, local police officer Jahangir Khan said.
The attackers beat up the Pakistanis who were accompanying the tourists, took their money and tied them up, said a senior local government official. They checked the identities of the Pakistanis and shot to death one of them, possibly because he was a minority Shiite Muslim, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
Although Gilgit-Baltistan is a relatively peaceful area, it has experienced attacks by radical Sunni Muslims on Shiites in recent years.
The attackers took the money and passports from the foreigners and then gunned them down, said the official. It's unclear how the Chinese tourist who was rescued managed to avoid being killed. The base camp has basic wooden huts, but most tourists choose to sleep in their own tents.
Local police chief Barkat Ali said they first learned of the attack when one of the local guides called the police station around 1 a.m. on Sunday. The military airlifted the bodies to Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, Sunday afternoon.
"We hope Pakistani authorities will do their best to find the culprits of this crime," the Ukrainian ambassador to Pakistan, Volodymyr Lakomov, told reporters outside the hospital where the bodies were taken.
The Pakistani government condemned the "brutal act of terrorism" in a statement sent to reporters.
"Those who have committed this heinous crime seem to be attempting to disrupt the growing relations of Pakistan with China and other friendly countries," said a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry.
Pakistan has very close ties with neighboring China and is sensitive to any issue that could harm the relationship. Pakistani officials have reached out to representatives from China and Ukraine to convey their sympathies, the Foreign Ministry said.
Many foreign tourists stay away from Pakistan because of the perceived danger of visiting a country that is home to a large number of Islamic militant groups, such as the Taliban and al-Qaida, which mostly reside in the northwest near the Afghan border. A relatively small number of intrepid foreigners visit Gilgit-Baltistan during the summer to marvel at the peaks of the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, including K2, the second highest mountain in the world.
Syed Mehdi Shah, the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan, condemned the attack and expressed fear that it would seriously damage the region's tourism industry.
"A lot of tourists come to this area in the summer, and our local people work to earn money from these people," said Shah. "This will not only affect our area, but will adversely affect all of Pakistan."
The area has been cordoned off by police and paramilitary soldiers, and a military helicopter was searching the area, said Shah.
"God willing we will find the perpetrators of this tragic incident," said Shah.
The government suspended the chief secretary and top police chief in Gilgit-Baltistan following the attack and ordered an inquiry into the incident, said Khan, the interior minister.
Make no mistake about it, Jihadist's hate everything Christians and Westerners stand for. There is no reasoning with them. There is no rehabilitation. They must be wiped off the face of the earth.
The foreigners who were killed included five Ukrainians, three Chinese and one Russian, said Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. One Chinese tourist was wounded in the attack and was rescued, he said.
The local branch of the Taliban took responsibility for the killings, saying it was to avenge the death of a leader killed in a recent U.S. drone strike.
The shooting was one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in recent years and is likely to damage the country's already struggling tourism industry. Pakistan's mountainous north — considered until now relatively safe — is one of the main attractions in a country beset with insurgency and other political instability.
The attack took place at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world at 8,126 meters (26,660 feet). Nanga Parbat is notoriously difficult to climb and is known as the "killer mountain" because of numerous mountaineering deaths in the past. It's unclear if the tourists were planning to climb the mountain or were just visiting the base camp, which is located in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan.
The gunmen were wearing uniforms used by the Gilgit Scouts, a paramilitary police force that patrols the area, said the interior minister. The attackers abducted two local guides to find their way to the remote base camp. One of the guides was killed in the shooting, and the other has been detained and is being questioned, said Khan.
"The purpose of this attack was to give a message to the world that Pakistan is unsafe for travel," said the interior minister in a speech in the National Assembly, which passed a resolution condemning the incident. "The government will take all measures to ensure the safety of foreign tourists."
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack, saying their Jundul Hafsa group carried out the shooting as retaliation for the death of the Taliban's deputy leader, Waliur Rehman, in a U.S. drone attack on May 29.
"By killing foreigners, we wanted to give a message to the world to play their role in bringing an end to the drone attacks," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.
At least a dozen gunmen were involved in the attack, local police officer Jahangir Khan said.
The attackers beat up the Pakistanis who were accompanying the tourists, took their money and tied them up, said a senior local government official. They checked the identities of the Pakistanis and shot to death one of them, possibly because he was a minority Shiite Muslim, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
Although Gilgit-Baltistan is a relatively peaceful area, it has experienced attacks by radical Sunni Muslims on Shiites in recent years.
The attackers took the money and passports from the foreigners and then gunned them down, said the official. It's unclear how the Chinese tourist who was rescued managed to avoid being killed. The base camp has basic wooden huts, but most tourists choose to sleep in their own tents.
Local police chief Barkat Ali said they first learned of the attack when one of the local guides called the police station around 1 a.m. on Sunday. The military airlifted the bodies to Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, Sunday afternoon.
"We hope Pakistani authorities will do their best to find the culprits of this crime," the Ukrainian ambassador to Pakistan, Volodymyr Lakomov, told reporters outside the hospital where the bodies were taken.
The Pakistani government condemned the "brutal act of terrorism" in a statement sent to reporters.
"Those who have committed this heinous crime seem to be attempting to disrupt the growing relations of Pakistan with China and other friendly countries," said a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry.
Pakistan has very close ties with neighboring China and is sensitive to any issue that could harm the relationship. Pakistani officials have reached out to representatives from China and Ukraine to convey their sympathies, the Foreign Ministry said.
Many foreign tourists stay away from Pakistan because of the perceived danger of visiting a country that is home to a large number of Islamic militant groups, such as the Taliban and al-Qaida, which mostly reside in the northwest near the Afghan border. A relatively small number of intrepid foreigners visit Gilgit-Baltistan during the summer to marvel at the peaks of the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, including K2, the second highest mountain in the world.
Syed Mehdi Shah, the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan, condemned the attack and expressed fear that it would seriously damage the region's tourism industry.
"A lot of tourists come to this area in the summer, and our local people work to earn money from these people," said Shah. "This will not only affect our area, but will adversely affect all of Pakistan."
The area has been cordoned off by police and paramilitary soldiers, and a military helicopter was searching the area, said Shah.
"God willing we will find the perpetrators of this tragic incident," said Shah.
The government suspended the chief secretary and top police chief in Gilgit-Baltistan following the attack and ordered an inquiry into the incident, said Khan, the interior minister.
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