News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
The Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper is reporting that Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, a memoir of her State Department experiences is a bomb.
The book has sold 60,000 hard covers the first week and 24,000 ebooks according to Halper. Publisher Simon & Schuster was hoping for 150,000 print the first week.
Mrs. Clinton reportedly received a $14 million advance for the book — she’s not going to donate it to charity, btw . Simon & Schuster is not expecting to make it back.
The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule proposed last July by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would give the feds “more effective means to affirmatively further the purposes and policies of the Fair Housing Act” as per the Federal Register.
HUD notes that the Fair Housing Act directs program participants to take steps to “foster inclusive communities for all.”
That sounds peachy until it dawns on one that what it means is not the breaking down of historic racial barriers but the breaking down of the barriers that discourage people who don’t play nice from living next to people who do.
It should further be noted that this inclusive fostering is not going to occur in the gated communities favored by many GS 15 bureaucrats and the political moneybags who fund their masters.
The rule is scheduled to be finalized in December. Apparently Obama and his team of incompetent wannabe feudalists are afraid of having it an issue in this November’s election.
Pedo Lawsuit Mentions Clinton — A story not being reported by the government media concerns the Palm Beach court battle between billionaire Democrat-donor Jeffrey Epstein, and lawyer Bradley Edwards along with disbarred convicted Ponzi-schemer Scott Rothstein.
All artillery has been unleashed at convicted sex-offender Epstein, who served a soft 25-month sentence ending in June 2010 relating to using a minor girl for sex. The sentenced featured 12 months of house (mansion) arrest and 13 months in a county prison where he was allowed daily field trips.
Prosecutors were convinced the crime was just the tip of the iceberg and Epstein deserved decades in the pen.
But he was connected and the money and the friendship of people like Bill Clinton came through for him.
Which gets us to the court battle. Testimony has been taken from women who were participants in orgies held at Epstein’s private island of Little Saint James, and, yes, our 42nd President was among the guests.
At least one of the woman — identified as Jane Doe 102 (note the number) — was there unwillingly according to the lawsuit.
And these are the people guiding our society. These are the people supported by the self-proclaimed protectors of women’s rights.
Today’s (Feb. 17) Philadelphia Inquirer carried on its front page a story about someone making a U.S. skier cry, Jimmy Fallon and John Kerry warning about “climate change.”
Not a peep about the oppression and tragedy going on in Venezuela.
The video below explains what is going on.
Hat tip John Sexton at Breitbart.com
Bloomberg Businessweek has an article about where the richest — and poorest — live in the America’s six largest cities and their environs.
For Philadelphia the poorest live where you’d expect – North Philadelphia; Camden, N.J.; South Philadelphia; and University City.
The richest live in Dresher; Mount Laurel, N.J.; Sewell, N.J.; and Media. Frankly, we are surprised that Media beats out Chadds Ford or Wayne.
It should be noted that 4 out of 5, 6 out of 10, and 10 out of 15 of nation’s richest counties are suburbs of Washington D.C. Just chalk it up to the bounty of neo-feudalism.
So what are China’s new billionaires doing with their loot? Apparently hiding it in the Caribbean and other offshore money-safe paradises according to Zerohedge.com.
Zerohedge reports that up to $4 trillion in “untraced assets” may have left the People’s Republic since 2000.
The shelters were set up by Western firms including PricewaterhouseCoopers and involve at 15 of China’s richest including members of the People’s Congress and executives from state-owned companies. Names are named at the link above.
A remarkable column by Richard Fernandez at PJMedia.com compares the establishment American media to an establishment Reformation-era church, noting that both were mere tools of state interest and protectors of the ruling class.
The relationship is perfectly illustrated in the below jpg.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so
express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so
far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe
his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared
himself for the commission of every other crime.
Thomas Paine
When
you see a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may
depend on it, that he keeps a very small stock of it within.
C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon
Six months ago, I stepped out from the shadows of the United States Government’s National Security Agency to stand in front of a journalist’s camera.
I shared with the world evidence proving some governments are building a world-wide surveillance system to secretly track how we live, who we talk to, and what we say.
I went in front of that camera with open eyes, knowing that the decision would cost me family and my home, and would risk my life. I was motivated by a belief that the citizens of the world deserve to understand the system in which they live.
My greatest fear was that no one would listen to my warning. Never have I been so glad to have been so wrong. The reaction in certain countries has been particularly inspiring to me, and Brazil is certainly one of those.
At the NSA, I witnessed with growing alarm the surveillance of whole populations without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and it threatens to become the greatest human rights challenge of our time.
The NSA and other spying agencies tell us that for our own “safety” –for Dilma’s “safety,” for Petrobras’ “safety”– they have revoked our right to privacy and broken into our lives. And they did it without asking the public in any country, even their own.
Today, if you carry a cell phone in Sao Paolo, the NSA can and does keep track of your location: they do this 5 billion times a day to people around the world.
When someone in Florianopolis visits a website, the NSA keeps a record of when it happened and what you did there. If a mother in Porto Alegre calls her son to wish him luck on his university exam, NSA can keep that call log for five years or more.
They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target’s reputation.
American Senators tell us that Brazil should not worry, because this is not “surveillance,” it’s “data collection.” They say it is done to keep you safe. They’re wrong.
There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement –where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion – and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever.
These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.
Many Brazilian senators agree, and have asked for my assistance with their investigations of suspected crimes against Brazilian citizens.
I have expressed my willingness to assist wherever appropriate and lawful, but unfortunately the United States government has worked very hard to limit my ability to do so –going so far as to force down the Presidential Plane of Evo Morales to prevent me from traveling to Latin America!
Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the US government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak.
Six months ago, I revealed that the NSA wanted to listen to the whole world. Now, the whole world is listening back, and speaking out, too. And the NSA doesn’t like what it’s hearing.
The culture of indiscriminate worldwide surveillance, exposed to public debates and real investigations on every continent, is collapsing.
Only three weeks ago, Brazil led the United Nations Human Rights Committee to recognize for the first time in history that privacy does not stop where the digital network starts, and that the mass surveillance of innocents is a violation of human rights.
The tide has turned, and we can finally see a future where we can enjoy security without sacrificing our privacy. Our rights cannot be limited by a secret organization, and American officials should never decide the freedoms of Brazilian citizens.
Even the defenders of mass surveillance, those who may not be persuaded that our surveillance technologies have dangerously outpaced democratic controls, now agree that in democracies, surveillance of the public must be debated by the public.
My act of conscience began with a statement: “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.
That’s not something I’m willing to support, it’s not something I’m willing to build, and it’s not something I’m willing to live under.”
Days later, I was told my government had made me stateless and wanted to imprison me. The price for my speech was my passport, but I would pay it again: I will not be the one to ignore criminality for the sake of political comfort. I would rather be without a state than without a voice.
If Brazil hears only one thing from me, let it be this: when all of us band together against injustices and in defense of privacy and basic human rights, we can defend ourselves from even the most powerful systems.
Eric Snowden Open Letter
There’s both good news and bad.
The bad: Phoenixville Area School District has a need to expand, but has had trouble finding space it likes.
But fear not. There is good news that might solve the problem.
Eminent domain could be used to seize the houses of all the district’s school board members, thereby meeting the necessary classroom space requirements.
That may seem unfair, but hey, the rights of the individual are trumped by what’s deemed by the elite to be in the public’s (or their own) best interest. And it would be perfectly legal, since the government can take private property in order to develop both public and other private property, pretty much any way it sees fit.
Seem far-fetched? Too intrusive in a free country?
Think again.
The tragic reality is that the Phoenixville School District already has found a solution. Jettisoning the possibility of developing any of the 95 other tracts of land it considered, the District decided to instead seize the Meadow Brook Golf Club in order to build a new school, one that can be located near the high school so that a “learning village” can be created. Whatever that means.
In doing so, the district is seizing an 80-year old business — albeit one that might have been on the market anyway — and kicking property owners off land that had been in their family since 1896. And don’t hold your breath that there will be just compensation, since the district is willing to pay substantially less than what the owners had requested. The family was asking $8 million for the site and wouldn’t budge from that number, despite a recent district assessment of $3.725 million. The district offered $5 million.
Here’s the worst part: On Nov. 14, the school district voted to invoke eminent domain without even informing the property owners beforehand — who only discovered what had happened by reading it in the local newspaper. Pending a successful appeal (the prospect of which seems extremely bleak), the property changes hands on Dec. 15.
So because of Big Brother’s ever-increasing reach, over a century’s worth of memories, not to mention numerous jobs, will be obliterated in the span of just 30 days.
If that’s not the definition of classless, what is?
The truly disturbing part is that, while immoral and wrong, this is legal. But even more frightening is that no one is safe from eminent domain’s reach. In the past, government would seize property only for public works projects, but in 2005, the ball game changed — big time.
In a ruling that many consider one of the worst U.S. Supreme Court decisions in history, five mind-numbingly obtuse justices decided that citizens’ land could be taken by the government for private economic development, even if those properties were not in areas of blight or decay.
The criteria? When local or state officials think the public would benefit That’s enough leeway to dock a battleship.
Forget the original intent of eminent domain, which actually had the public’s best interest in mind when considering public projects, such as utilities, railroads and highways.
It seems those things, while necessary, just aren’t sexy enough for some of today’s pols.
Where’s the fun in just building a road when you can construct a mall with all the perks that come with being mayor or councilman in that location?
And when houses are bulldozed to make way for a plush resort — with wealthy land developers lining the campaign pockets of politicians who decide such matters — is that in the public’s interest?
As then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in her dissent to the eminent domain decision, the “specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”
In other words, the rich and powerful get what they want, the politicians make out, and small property owners — 99.9% of Americans — get squashed.
Somehow, it’s doubtful the Founding Fathers had this in mind.
Most home and business owners are neither wealthy nor influential, so their options are extremely limited.
Fighting City Hall means huge legal fees with no guarantee of success. Loans are still difficult to obtain, so those victimized by misguided eminent domain judgments often are forced to tap into their retirement accounts to survive. And those on fixed incomes, many of whom previously only worried about property taxes, face the prospect of writing a mortgage or rent check for the rest of their lives, because self-interested politicians want their pet projects to come to life.
The use of eminent domain in America was supposed to be a last resort. When it had to be employed, landowners were to be given fair compensation, and, in most cases, the greater public good was easily recognized. The Blue Route (I-476) is a prime example. After years of court battles, the project was finally given the green light, and the highway remains one of the most important infrastructure improvements in Pennsylvania history.
But it is unfathomable that in today’s “Amerika,” eminent domain has evolved into the weapon of choice for greedy, corrupt or simply misguided politicians and school boards.
It’s time for the newly comprised high court to revisit this contentious issue. In doing so, it would have the historic opportunity to right a huge wrong, and put the “c” back in “America.”
Chief Justice Roberts, the floor is yours.
The home of Audrey Hudson, a reporter for The Washington Times, was raided the pre-dawn of Aug. 6 by Maryland State Police and the Department of Homeland Security’s Coast Guard Investigative Service. They apparently were looking for a “potato gun” belonging to her husband, Paul Flanagan, who was a Coast Guard employee.
Flanagan has yet to be charged with anything although raiders did take notes pertaining to Ms. Hudson regarding stories she had written exposing problems in the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Air Marshals Service, and questioned her as to whether she was the Audrey Hudson who was writing those nasty stories.
The raid occurred at 4:30 a.m. and the raiders were wearing full body armor.
Have you read about this in the establishment mouthpiece papers? Silly question.
