PLEASE GO OUT AND VOTE!
Jonathan Rosenblum's focus below is the Obama/Israel scenario, which I happen to agree with. I am duly concerned with Obama's "American agenda" for all Americans, that would turn this proud country into a nation of proud beggars - and totally be at the mercy of an all-powerful government that would punish the wealthy, and institute a really ugly version of "social justice".
Israel had sixty years to get their economic house in order --- instead they too are an economic basket-case, counting on the U.S.A. for their daily (military) bread. The leaders of Israel should understand now and forever that they have nobody to count on --- but themselves (maybe). They should have seen this coming - and just as they were able to construct industries based on foreign "investment" rather than hand-outs, they must realize that the Americans had enough of supporting foreign countries with grants and other financial aid, as this country slides into a very deep recession.
Regardless of who wins the election - and I pray that the Republicans do, the party is over, and should be over, for an Israeli populace who has lost their pride and turned themselves into a country of shnorrers! We never learn --- we are on our own --- sans a reprieve here and there.
Who Says Jews are Smart?
by Jonathan Rosenblum
YES, POGO, THE JEWS ARE THE STUPIDEST PEOPLE!
Arab-Americans overwhelmingly support Senator Barack Obama for president. So do Jewish-Americans. One of these two groups either does not care much about the Arab-Israeli conflict and/or is stupid. My money is on the Jews.
American Jews care less and less about Israel. Over 50% of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 say they would not view the destruction of the State of Israel as a personal tragedy. Israel is not a popular cause on college campuses. Many Jewish students struggle against being identified with Israel, lest it complicate their social lives. In the under 35 cohort, only 54% profess to be comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.
Other Jews who still find it uncomfortable to disavow concern with Israel have convinced nevertheless themselves that it is in Israel’s best interests to be forced back to the 1949 armistice lines. A talkback to a recent Jerusalem Post piece of mine nicely captures the mindset.
Nathan Berkowicz writes: “What do you expect us Jews to do, hold the Palestinians hostage forever? Get your head out of the sand and wake up to the fact that we are going to have to hammer out a peace deal, a real peace deal, if for no other reason but to show ourselves that we are willing to humanely and fairly deal with a problem we created for ourselves.”
Berkowicz places the exclusive onus on Israel for the creation of the Palestinian problem – either by virtue of its creation or for having the effrontery to win in 1967. In addition, he blames Israel for the failure to achieve a “real peace deal.” The infamous “three No’s” of the Arab League in response to the Israeli offer to withdraw from the West Bank after the Six Day War played no role; ditto Arafat’s decision to return to open warfare and reject Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of well over 90% of the West Bank at Camp David. Finally, Berkowicz wants the Jews of Israel to demonstrate their humanity. He never mentions ensuring their own survival as a desideratum. So goes the “pro-Israel” case for Obama.
THOSE WHO SEE ISRAEL’S SALVATION in its being pushed back to its 1967 borders have good reason to eagerly anticipate an Obama presidency. Obama has described the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a “sore, . . . infect[ing] all our foreign policy,” and placed return to the “peacemaking” of the Clinton years is at the top of his foreign policy agenda.
The express goal of that “peacemaking” will be an Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 “Auschwitz borders.” In a June interview with Jerusalem Post editor David Horowitz, Obama said he can understand Israel’s desire for “‘67 plus” in terms of security buffers, but Israel should consider whether it would be worth the cost in Palestinian antagonism.
The overwhelming majority of Israel’s Jews dread a return to the Oslo process, which claimed 1,471 Israeli lives in terrorist attacks, without bringing peace any closer. Oslo made a fetish of process over actual peace, as a pattern of concrete Israeli concessions in return for recycled Palestinian promises took shape. Obama offers more of the same: “Israel’s government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart,” he says.
On security grounds alone, the vast majority of Israelis oppose further territorial withdrawal from the West Bank at present. Earlier withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza resulted in the creation of heavily armed Iranian proxies on Israel’s southern and northern borders. Israeli intelligence predicts that Hamas would quickly take over the West Bank as well in the event of an Israeli withdrawal. The near elimination of successful terror attacks from the West Bank since 2002 demonstrates that only Israeli troops and on the ground intelligence gathering capabilities can deter terrorism.
Oslo taught that peace cannot be imposed from the outside and has nothing to do with signed agreements. Only a bottom-up transformation of a Palestine society would make peace possible, argues Natan Sharansky, and that transformation has never seemed so far away after the Hamas takeover of Gaza.
Even the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas recently declared a festive celebration in honor of the leader of the Coastal Road Massacre in which 37 Israelis were murdered. Demonization of Israel and Jews continues unabated in the official Palestinian media. No wonder three-quarters of Palestinians say that reconciliation with Israel is impossible in this generation, even after the signing of a peace agreement and creation of a Palestinian state.
The greatest threat to Israel’s existence is a nuclear Iran. By calling for direct American-Iranian negotiations, without offering anything new to the Europeans’ approach over the last five years of unconditional negotiations, Obama only grants Ahmadinejad more time and increased internal legitimacy. And by linking any sanctions to Chinese and Russian cooperation, he dooms those efforts from the start. Bottom line: an Obama presidency guarantees a nuclear Iran.
And all this leaves aside dozens of troubling Obama associations. For twenty years, he sat complacently in the church of a pastor – “my spiritual mentor” – who spewed contempt for whites, America, and Israel.
Virtually his whole public career has been closely intertwined with the unrepentant former Weatherman William Ayers.
Another member of Ayers’ Hyde Park circle was former PLO official and the current Edward Said Professor at Columbia University, Rashid Khalidi, whom Obama credits with opening his eyes to the plight of Palestinians. He has been heavily funded by the virulently anti-Israel George Soros.
Obama has numerous ties to the Nation of Islam, in particular through Tony Rezko, the convicted, Syrian-born racketeer, who partly paid for Obama’s home.
Obama’s foreign policy advisors have included: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and thirty-year critic of Israel; Samantha Powers, who has called for an end to aid to Israel and the introduction of American forces to protect the Palestinians; and Robert Malley, who has made a career of advancing, together with a former Arafat advisor, a revisionist account in which Israel was responsible for the breakdown of Camp David.
Even the Republicans touted for an Obama cabinet – Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar – have been among the handful of senators, sometimes the only ones, to consistently oppose sanctions against Iran, Syria, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Hagel laments the intimidation on Capitol Hill by the “Jewish lobby.”
No doubt the “pro-Israel” Obama supporters have good explanations of why none of these relationships are of concern. After all, why did G-d make Jews so smart if not to prove the emperor is fully-clothed.
WHAT PART OF H-A-T-E DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?
82 comments:
I called it first! McCain is the projected winner of this presidential race. Only because the Republicans have let this fart out of the bag in the last minute. Watch the ad in the link below. Priceless!!
http://www.vosizneias.com/21988/2008/11/02/pennsylvania-gop-highlight-wright-in-last-minute-ad/
To Barack Obama,
The New York Times carried a story on Saturday, October 4, 2008, that proved
you had a significantly closer relationship with Bill Ayers than what you
previously admitted. While the issue of your relationship is of concern, the
greater concern is that you lied to America about it.
The Chicago Sun reported on May 8, 2008, that FBI records showed that you
had a significantly closer relationship with Tony Rezko than what you
previously admitted. In the interview, you said that you only saw Mr. Rezko
a couple of times a year. The FBI files showed that you saw him weekly.
While the issue of your relationship is of concern, the greater concern is
that you lied to America about it.
Your speech in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, about "race" contradicted
your statement to Anderson Cooper on March 14 when you said that you never
heard Reverend Wright make his negative statements about white America.
While your attendance at TrinityChurch for 20 years is of concern, the
greater concern is that you lie d to America on March 14.
In your 1st debate with John McCain, you said that you never said that you
would meet with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea
without "preparations" at lower levels ... Joe Biden repeated your words in
his debate with Sarah Palin ... while the video tape from your debate last
February clearly shows that you answered "I would" to the question of
meeting with those leaders within 12 months without "any" preconditions.
While your judgment about meeting with enemies of the USA without
pre-conditions is of concern, the greater concern is that you lied to
America in the debate with McCain.
On July 14, 2008, you said that you always knew that the surge would work
while the video tapes of you from more than a year ago show that you stated
that the surge would not work. While your judgment about military strategy
as a potential commander-in-chief is of concern, the greater concern is that
you lied to America on July 14.
You now claim that your reason for voting against funding for the troops was
because the bill did not include a time line for withdrawal, while the video
tapes of you from more than a year ago show that you voted against
additional funding because you wanted our troops to be removed immediately
... not in 16 months after the 2008 election as you now claim. While your
judgment about removing our troops unilaterally in 2007 is of concern, the
greater concern is that you lied to America about your previous position.
You claim to have a record of working with Republicans while the record
shows that the only bill that you sponsored with a Republican was with Chuck
Lugar ... and it failed. The record shows that you vote 97% in concert with
the Democrat party and that you have the most liberal voting record in the
Senate. You joined Republicans only 13% of the time in your votes and those
13% were only after agreement from the Democrat party. While it is of
concern that you fail to include conservatives in your actions and that you
are such a liberal, the greater concern is that you distorted the truth.
In the primary debates of last February, 2008, you claimed to have talked
with a "Captain" of a platoon in Afghanistan "the other day" when in fact
you had a discussion in 2003 with a Lieutenant who had just been deployed to
Afghanistan. You lied in that debate.
In your debates last spring, you claimed to have been a "professor of
Constitutional law" when in fact you have never been a professor of
Constitutional law. In this last debate, you were careful to say that you
"taught a law class" and never mentioned being a "professor of
Constitutional law." You lied last spring.
You and Joe Biden both claimed that John McCain voted against additional
funding for our troops when the actual records show the opposite. You
distorted the truth.
You and Joe Biden claim that John McCain voted against funding for alternate
energy sources 20 times when the record shows that John McCain specifically
voted against funding for bio fuels, especially corn ... and he was right
.... corn is too expensive at producing ethanol, and using corn to make
ethanol increased the price of corn from $2 a bushel to $6 a bushel for
food. You distorted the truth.
You and Joe Biden claim that John McCain voted like both of you for a tax
increase on those making as little as $42,000 per year while the voting
record clearly shows that John McCain did not vote as you and Joe Biden. You
lied to America.
You and Joe Biden claim that John McCain voted with George W. Bush 90% of
the time when you know that Democrats also vote 90% of the time with the
President (including Joe Biden) because the vast majority of the votes are
procedural. You are one of the few who has not voted 90% of the time with
the president because you have been missing from the Senate since the day
you got elected. While your absence from your job in the Senate is of
concern, the greater concern is that you spin the facts.
You did not take an active role in the rescue plan. You claimed that the
Senate did not need you while the real reason that you abstained was because
of your close relationships with the executives of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,
Countrywide, and Acorn ... who all helped cause the financial problems of
today ... and they all made major contributions to your campaign. While your
relationship with these executives and your protection of them for your
brief 3 years in the Senate (along with Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, Maxine
Waters, and Chris Dodd) is of concern, the greater concern is that you are
being deceitful.
You forgot to mention that you personally represented Tony Rezko and Acorn.
Tony Rezko, an Arab and close friend to you, was convicted of fraud in
Chicago real estate transactions that bilked millions of tax dollars from
the Illinois government for renovation projects that you sponsored as a
state senator ... and Acorn has been convicted of voter fraud, real estate
sub prime loan intimidation, and illegal campaign contributions. Tony Rezko
has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to your political
campaigns. You personally used your political positions to steer money to
both Tony Rezko and Acorn and you used Acorn to register thousands of phony
voters for Democrats and you. While your relationships with Rezko and Acorn
are of concern, the greater concern is that you omitted important facts
about your relationships with them to America.
During your campaign, you said: "typical white person." "They cling to their
guns and religion." "They will say that I am black." You played the race
card. You tried to label any criticism about you as racist. You divide
America.
You claim that you will reduce taxes for 95% of America, but you forgot to
tell America that those reductions are after you remove the Bush tax
reductions. You have requested close to $1 billion in earmarks and several
million for Acorn. Your social programs will cost America $1 trillion per
year and you claim that a reduction in military spending ($100 billion for
Iraq) can pay for it. While your economic plan of adding 30% to the size of
our federal government is of concern, the greater concern is that you are
deceiving America.
The drain to America's economy by foreign supplied oil is $700 billion per
year (5% of GDP) while the war in Iraq is $100 billion (less than 1% of
GDP). You voted against any increases to oil exploration for the last 3
years and any expansion of nuclear facilities. Yet today, you say that you
have always been for more oil and more nuclear. You are lying to America.
Mr. Obama, you claimed that you "changed" your mind about public financing
for your campaign because of the money spent by Republican PACs in 2004. The
truth is that the Democrat PACs in 2004, 2006, and 2008 spent twice as much
as the Republican PACs (especially George Soros and MoveOn.org). You are
lying to America.
Mr. Obama, you have done nothing to stop the actions of the teachers union
and college professors in the USA. They eliminated religion from our
history. They teach pro gay agendas and discuss sex with students as young
as first grade. They bring their personal politics into the classrooms. They
disparage conservatives. They brainwash our children. They are in it for
themselves ..... not America. Are you reluctant to condemn their actions
because teachers/professors and the NEA contribute 25% of all money donated
to Democrats and none to Republicans? You are deceiving America.
Oh, Mr. Obama, Teddy Roosevelt said about a hundred years ago that we
Americans should first look at the character of our leaders before anything
else.
Your character looks horrible. While you make good speeches, motivating
speeches, your character does not match your rhetoric. You talk the talk,
but do not walk the walk.
1. You lied to America. You lied many times. You distorted facts. You parsed
your answers like a lawyer.
2. You distorted the record o f John McCain in your words and in your
advertisements.
3. You had associations with some very bad people for your personal
political gains and then lied about those associations.
4. You divide America about race and about class.
Now let me compare your record of lies, distortions, race baiting, and
associations to John McCain: War hero. Annapolis graduate with "Country
first." Operational leadership experience like all 43 previously elected
presidents of the USA as a Navy officer for 22 years. 26 years in the
Senate. Straight talk. Maverick. 54% of the time participated on bills with
Democrats. Never asked for an earmark. The only blemish on his record is his
part in the Keating 5 debacle about 25 years ago.
Mr. Obama, at Harvard Law School, you learned that the end does not justify
the means. You learned that perjury, false witness, dishonesty, distortion
of truth are never tolerated. Yet, your dishonesty is overwhelming. Your
dishonesty is tremendously greater than the dishonesty that caused the
impeachment and disbarment of Bill Clinton. Your dishonesty is tremendously
greater than the dishonesty of Scooter Libby. You should be ashamed.
Mr. Obama, it is time for us Americans to put aside our differences on
political issues and vote against you because of your dishonest character.
It is time for all of us Americans to put aside our political issues and
vote for America first. It is time for America to vote for honesty.
Any people who vote for you after understanding that you are dishonest
should be ashamed of themselves for making their personal political issues
more important than character. Would these same people vote for the
anti-Christ if the anti-Christ promised them riches? Would they make a
golden calf while Moses was up the mountain? Would they hire someone for a
job if that someone lied in an interview? Of course not. So why do some of
these people justify their votes for you even though they know you are
dishonest? Why do they excuse your dishonesty? Because some of these people
are frightened about the future, the economy, and their financial security
.... and you are preying on their fears with empty promises ... and because
some (especially our young people) are consumed by your wonderful style and
promises for "change" like the Germans who voted for Adolf Hitler in 1932.
The greed/envy by Germans in 1932 kept them from recognizing Hitler for who
he was. They loved his style. Greed and envy are keeping many Americans from
recognizing you ... your style has camouflaged your dishonesty .... but many
of us see you for who you really are ... and we will not stop exposing who
you are every day, forever if it is necessary.
Mr. Obama, you are dishonest. Anyone who votes for you is enabling
dishonesty.
Mr. Obama, America cannot trust that you will put America first in your
decisions about the future.
Mr. Obama, you are not the "change" that America deserves. We cannot trust
you.
Mr. Obama, You are not ready and not fit to be commander-in-chief.
Mr. Obama, John McCain does not have as much money as your campaign to
refute all of your false statements. And for whatever reasons, the
mainstream media will not give adequate coverage or research about your
lies, distortions, word parsing, bad associations, race baiting, lack of
operational leadership experience, and generally dishonest character. The
media is diverting our attention from your relationships and ignoring the
fact that you lied about those relationships. The fact that you lied is much
more important than the relationships themselves .... just like with Bill
Clinton and Richard Nixon ... Monica Lewinski and Watergate were not nearly
as bad as the fact that those men lied about the events ... false witness
... perjury ... your relationships and bad judgments are bad on their own
.... but your lies are even worse.
Therefore, by copy of this memo, all who read this memo are asked to send it
to everyone else in America before it is too late. We need to do the job
that the media will not do. We need to expose your dishonesty so that every
person in America understands who you really are before election day.
Mr. Obama, in a democracy, we get what we deserve. And God help America if
we deserve you.
Michael Master
McLean, Virginia
something in my heart tells me that Obama is going to be shocked.......
Just vote
Everyone take a friend with you and go vote.
Get your wife, your entire family, make that phone call, and go vote.
Remember Florida 2000, Bush won by 500 votes.
Go vote, and say some Tehilim.
Vote McCain Palin
http://www.telegram.com/article/20081030/NEWS/810300418
In the four years he has been doing undercover investigations for “Dateline NBC,” reporter Chris Hansen said he is amazed at how hard people will work to fool online victims.
Mr. Hansen, whose 12 segments of “To Catch a Predator” have become widely known for their snaring of would-be sexual predators who arrange meetings with children, has also done undercover investigations on counterfeit prescription drugs originating in China and identity theft. He told last night’s annual Torch Award meeting of the Better Business Bureau of Central New England Inc. that awareness must be raised in how to be careful while using the Internet.
When “Dateline NBC” embarked on the online predator series, Mr. Hansen recalled, he expected to have a few men show up at a designated house who expected to meet a willing minor for sex, but didn’t have high expectations for a long-running and infamous series of investigations.
“I thought we’d get a few, and they’d have tape of me taking a nap on the kitchen counter, sort of like the bored Maytag repair man,” he said. But by the end of the series, the undercover investigations netted 305 men, with 141 being convicted or pleading guilty to sexual enticement charges, he said.
Those included a rabbi, a New York City firefighter who billed himself as a 9-11 hero to undercover investigators posing as an underage girl, a Homeland Security agent, a physician, a teacher and a soldier, he said. One predator seemed pleased that Chris Hansen was the person who met him in the kitchen of one home.
“I didn’t even identify myself, and he said, ‘You’re Chris Hansen.’ He said he never missed an episode,” Mr. Hansen said.
One man who walked into a house naked and carrying a 12-pack of beer, expecting to meet a young boy, was confronted by Mr. Hansen. But the next day the same man was back on the Internet, trying to lure investigators posing as a 15-year-old boy, he said.
“Some of these guys are heavy hitters, and others think that if they had sex with a person who will be legal in a couple of years, it’s OK,” he said. “The most interesting, I think, are ones who normally wouldn’t do this, except they go into Internet porn sites and chat rooms, and the anonymity allows them to go further.”
Whether it is identity theft, fraud or tricking children to meet for sex, perpetrators will devise schemes to break down people’s defenses, he said.
“Predators will groom kids, break down the barriers,” he said. “We always tell kids to beware of strangers, but after a couple of weeks online, they won’t seem like a stranger. And they’re probably not another 14-year-old, but a fat guy in his 50s sitting there in his boxer shorts.
Report cites mistakes in L.A. Unified's handling of suspected child molester
No current employee is directly blamed. Administrators refuse to disclose what disciplinary action was taken in the case of Steve Thomas Rooney.
By Howard Blume
November 3, 2008
A confidential investigation into how a suspected child molester was assigned to a Los Angeles Unified School District middle school has concluded that no current employee was directly to blame, even though several made mistakes. The report itself has been criticized, as has the response of the district, which declined to disclose what, if any, disciplinary action resulted.
Steve Thomas Rooney became an assistant principal at Markham Middle School in Watts last year after police had warned the district that they suspected Rooney had had a sexual relationship with an underage former student.
Months later, police arrested Rooney on suspicion of molesting students at his new school.
Rooney, 40, faces charges involving four students -- two from Markham and two from Foshay Learning Center in South Los Angeles, where he had previously worked. He has denied wrongdoing.
After Rooney was arrested in March, the district hired a law firm, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, to review his path to Markham.The Times obtained the report through a Public Records Act request.
Among its findings:
* Local District Supt. Carol Truscott, who made the decision to move Rooney to Markham, violated district policy by not first initiating an internal probe to see whether he posed any threat or should be disciplined. She responded that she didn't know that district policy mandated such an inquiry.
* Scott Braxton, who worked for Truscott overseeing schools, violated the same policy and offered the same reason.
* Dan Isaacs, the district's former chief operations officer, failed to share sufficient details regarding allegations against Rooney.
* The district's Employee Relations Department tracked only a gun allegation against Rooney, and the separate Staff Relations Department didn't advise Truscott to launch an internal review. Representatives of both departments claimed to be unaware of the sex allegations.
* The Los Angeles Police Department failed to keep reminding district employees about the sex allegations.
Detectives quickly concluded that Rooney had a sexual relationship with the underage girl, whom he had taught at Foshay, according to police.
At the time, Rooney was an assistant principal at Fremont High in South Los Angeles. Over several days the police had multiple conversations with the district regarding the alleged sexual improprieties, the report said. Those briefed included Isaacs, two aides, school district Police Chief Lawrence E. Manion and two of his officers.
Isaacs called Truscott and sent a brief memo to the Board of Education, Supt. David L. Brewer and 11 other top officials but did not inform the Employee Relations Department, which monitors criminal investigations involving employees. (Isaacs told the law firm that he called that department.) The memo stated that, in addition to the gun charge, "LAPD is also investigating allegations that [Rooney] had an unlawful sexual relationship with a minor."
The report criticized Isaacs because the memo "failed to mention everything Isaacs knew."
In a statement in June, Brewer went further, singling out Isaacs for "the mishandling of the Rooney case."
District and law enforcement sources criticized the report's focus on Isaacs, who retired more than two months before Truscott approved sending Rooney to Markham. Isaacs declined to comment.
In an interview, Kathleen Collins, an attorney for L.A. Unified, defended the Employee Relations staff and criticized police: Staff members "are interfacing with law enforcement, but law enforcement wasn't telling them about the sex allegations," Collins said.
Economists predict recession to last through 2009
Monday November 3, 3:52 am ET
By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
A survey of top economists released Monday shows that the vast majority of them believe the economy has fallen into a recession that will continue throughout all of 2009.
According to the National Association of Business Economists, 90% of the 102 members responding were more pessimistic about the economy than they had been in July.
The economists indicated that a recession is likely to continue at least through the end of next year, with 79% saying the economy will grow less than 1% and 38% saying the economy will shrink next year.
"There has been a sharp decline in current and near-term expectations among economists," said Ken Simonson, a member of the NABE committee that conducted the survey. "This represents a big turnabout in attitude about the economy."
With the economy mired in a prolonged credit crisis, the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates several times, most recently cutting them by a half-percentage point, to 1%, on October 29.
But just 36% of respondents said the rate cuts and other initiatives by the Fed to unfreeze the credit markets were having a positive impact and 58% said the programs were having little impact. The survey was completed on Oct. 23, before the Fed's last rate cut.
"Economists have a very pessimistic view of the Fed's programs," said Simonson. "The inability to get funding has lowered their near-term expectations for the economy."
Low consumer sentiment and poor economic conditions have sharply reduced demand for goods and services. According to the survey, 35% reported falling demand while just 30% said demand was rising. It was the first time since 2001 in which more respondents reported declining demand than rising demand.
By way of comparison, 44% of respondents reported rising demand in July and only 19% reported falling demand. The NABE said every time since 1982 when economists reported more declines than increases in demand, the economy has later proven to be in a recession.
As demand slumped, respondents said their firms' profit margins sagged as well. Just 15% of economists surveyed said their companies' profit margins were rising, compared to 44% who said margins were falling.
Continued job cuts are also likely, as 23% of respondents said their firms or industries were cutting jobs, compared to 16% who reported that they were hiring.
"Over the next six months, far more firms expect to cut back on employment, which will likely make the recession deeper," Simonson said.
Venezuela(Reuters) -
Anti-U.S. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez predicted on Sunday the "black man" will win the U.S. presidential race and offered to hold talks with him to improve ties between the superpower and one its biggest oil suppliers.
Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee who would be the first black U.S. president if he wins Tuesday's election, said this year he would be open to dialogue with leaders like Chavez -- a remark that was seized on by Republicans as naive.
McCain, who trails Obama in polls, has labeled Chavez a dictator.
Chavez, a socialist who has mocked President George W. Bush and calls ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor, has said there is an inevitable clash between U.S. and Venezuelan interests, although he has at times offered to ease bilateral tensions.
"We are not asking him to be a revolutionary, to be a socialist -- no," Chavez said at a political rally. We just want the black man who is about to be the U.S. president to have enough stature for the times the world is living through.
"I send an overture to the black man, from us here, who are of Indigenous, black, Caribbean, South American race," he said.
"I am ready to sit down and talk ... I hope we can, and I hope we can enter a new stage," he said later at another rally.
Most Latin Americans would prefer Obama to win the White House over Republican rival John McCain, according to polls. They have felt largely neglected by the Bush administration as the region swung to the left.
Chavez, who expelled the U.S. ambassador in September, urged Obama to end the Cuban embargo, withdraw troops from Iraq and stop what he called U.S. threats against Iran and Venezuela.
A truly ominous sign of consumer spending! The "masses are asses", when Joe Six-Pack stops buying toys that they "need", like flat screens, new cell phones, ipods, and the latest gadgets - you know we're in trouble!
*
Circuit City closing 155 stores
Monday November 3, 8:43 am ET
By Michael Felberbaum, Associated Press Writer
Circuit City closing 155 underperforming stores by end of year
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Circuit City says it's closing about 20 percent of its U.S. stores in an effort to return the nation's second-largest consumer electronics retailer to profitability.
The Richmond, Va.-based company said Monday it will shutter 155 of its more than 700 stores in 12 markets by Dec. 31, laying off thousands of employees.
Circuit City has had only one profitable quarter in the past year, posting a wider second-quarter loss in September with a 13.3 percent decline in sales at stores open at least a year. Its results have weakened amid a deteriorating retail environment and heightened competition from rival Best Buy Co. and others.
The company is reviewing its operations while exploring strategic alternatives.
212-444-9555
The clip recorded at this number is a must listen and only 90 seconds.
The Orthodox Union (OU) has prepared eight resolutions for its biannual Convention in Jerusalem this autumn. These include calls to avoid slandering the Jews of Judea and Samaria, cautious support for cooperation with Evangelicals, and measures to ease the financial crisis.
The OU is the educational, outreach and social service organization which serves the North American Jewish Orthodox community.
Other resolutions deal with the centrality of Jerusalem, Jewish education, the stringent conditions under which a Palestinian government would be recognized, green initiatives, and Iran.
The resolutions are expected to be approved at the upcoming OU Convention in Jerusalem, scheduled for Nov. 26-30 of this year.
Civil Discourse
One resolution calls for "civil discourse" in the public debate over critical issues, and specifically states that the OU will "speak out against efforts to slander all the inhabitants of Yehuda (Judea) and Shomron (Samaria) because of the inappropriate language and actions of a small minority."
The resolution appears to be tailor-designed as a response to the words of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other government ministers following the destruction of the Federman/Tor family farm last week. After two incensed residents cursed the soldiers who perpetrated the middle-of-the-night destruction and eviction of the families, including small children, Olmert said, "We are sick of all this violence, verbal violence that brings to physical violence... I expect to hear from the Defense Minister and Justice Minister what is to be done against these people..."
Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann said, "I am disgusted by the incitement expressed by extremist elements in the territories against IDF soldiers and security forces. We will act firmly to uproot this phenomenon. I call on the Attorney General and Israel Police to use all necessary means to deal with this." Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, "I want to emphasize the gravity of the words and actions of the extreme right-wing in the territories. I am of the opinion that the punishments in this matter are too soft, and the law enforcment and legal bodies must [rectify thi."
Barak later said that measures such as administrative dention - arrest and detention without due process - should be used against Jews in Judea and Samaria more widely than has been done until now.
Jerusalem - Center of Jewish People
The OU also had something to say about Jerusalem, in light of the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority: "Yerushalayim must forever remain the spiritual, cultural and political center of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and the OU is mandated to undertake all efforts that are necessary to secure and maintain Yerushalayim as the eternal and undivided capital of the State of Israel. The OU is further mandated to oppose any proposal or plan to relinquish any part of Yerushalayim to any foreign authority."
Evangelicals: Respect and Suspect Them
Regarding the 60 million Evangelical Christians in the United States, the OU's message was complex. It "gratefully acknowledges the relationship we have forged with many Evangelical Christian leaders, institutions and people in support of many values and interests we share... [any leading Evangelical Christians and their communities have vigorously supported religious liberty and rights of conscience for people of many varied faiths, and have joined us in promoting a proper understanding of the First Amendment which insists upon neutrality toward religion in government programs... [e appreciate the Evangelical community’s support of the State of Israel with a united undivided Jerusalem as its capital..."
On the other hand, "The Orthodox Union is acutely aware of the desire of Evangelical Christians to spread their religion to Jews as a matter of faith. We remain vigilant to the dangers this presents to Jewish continuity and will be forthright in sharing our concerns in this area with other groups when this issue arises."
PA and Ecology
The OU conditions U.S. and Israel financial support or diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian government on the following: The PA must explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, renounce violence, agree to honor all past agreements with Israel, and concretely demonstrate its capacity to dismantle terrorist infrastructures and eliminate educational programs which incite hostility to Israelis and Jews.
The OU also speaks out ecologically, encouraging "responsible environmental behavior while being mindful of limited communal financial resources," such as recycling and paper reduction. The OU also resolves to "encourage and support appropriate government efforts to decrease our dependence on foreign oil."
Money Crisis
Addressing the worldwide financial crisis, the OU resolves to "support governmental and private initiatives to address this crisis," and will "provide available resources to aid our communal institutions and ensure that our constituents remain viable." Reinforcing the cardinal Jewish principle of giving charity, the OU "will facilitate and encourage all individuals to contribute financially as well as volunteer their time and resources to assist those less fortunate."
Finally, the OU will "ensure that measures taken to address the crisis preserve opportunities for home ownership for Americans of modest incomes. Homeownership is central to family and community stability, and family and community are central to Jewish values and the Jewish (and American) way of life."
Thanks, David.
*
Hypocrisy, Lies and Videotape at the L.A. Times
by David B. Phillips
The L.A. Times is in possession of a videotape of a 2003 event – variously characterized as a "banquet," as a farewell party, as a tribute, and by the Times itself as a "celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics" – all in honor of a friend and frequent dinner companion of Barack Obama, Palestinian scholar, Rashid Khalidi, who was leaving Chicago for a job in New York.
About this tape only one thing is certain: Its release will not help Barack Obama get elected on Tuesday. As a matter of fact, it could hurt him in critical states.
The L.A. Times admits it is in possession of this tape but refuses to release it, despite demands that it do so by John McCain, Sarah Palin and others. Simplified, the arguments boil down to this: Those demanding its release accuse the Times of throwing away the public's right to know in order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed, while the Times says they are ethically bound to abide by a promise to a confidential source not to share the video.
In an article in the Times dated October 30, 2008, James Rainey, an L.A. Times staff writer, quotes several journalism professors, authorities on journalistic values and ethics, all of whom side with the Times in their decision, some of which say that it is not a good idea to enter into such agreements [to begin with].
Besides noting the obnoxious habit of the media – and its obvious hypocrisy - of picking and choosing between values in conflict as it suits them, it is worthwhile to consider – and I admit, in the absence of knowing who the mysterious confidential source is, speculate – as to the motive of the source and exactly what the agreement between the source and the media is.
Let's examine the timing of the release of the video. It appears that the confidential source notified the Times of, or provided the Times with, the video sometime in the end of March or beginning of April of this year. The original article, by Peter Wallsten, a staff writer at the Times, was dated April 10, 2008.
In early February, Hillary Clinton had won the California primary and over the course of the next two months the race for the Democratic nomination looked very close. Hillary made her claims to be the nominee of the party, as did Barack Obama. Let's try to figure out what the politics of this confidential source could possibly be.
The source clearly cannot be a McCain supporter or they would have provided the video to the McCain campaign. It clearly could not be an Obama supporter, because if that were so, why release the tape at all? The only logical conclusion is that the tape was provided to the L.A. Times by someone who believed that Hillary should be the Democratic nominee. And in that likelihood rests the logic behind the demand that the tape would not be released by the Times to the public. The intention of the tape was to "wound" Obama, but not "kill" him. It was intended to give Hillary an edge in the Democratic nomination but the source was very clever in hedging his or her bets: If Hillary should lose the nomination, he or she didn't want this incident to be used by the Republicans to defeat Obama in the general election.
In this sense, the Times was used, possibly duped. It allowed its journalistic pages, its reporters, to be used for a very partisan purpose – to try to help Hillary get the Democratic nomination.
What exactly was the agreement between the Times and the source? How much detail could the reporter write about what they saw on the tape and how much could be quoted? Who reached this agreement with the source? Was it the reporter alone or was this reviewed by editors and publishers? In other words, what was agreed to – and by whom? We just don't know. None of this has thus far been detailed by the Times – and don't hold your breath waiting for an explanation.
A review of the original article shows that not a lot of detail was included. For example, we don't know who sponsored or paid for this event. Was it a private function or was it (semi-)public? Were there 50 people in attendance or 500? Was the tape made surreptitiously or did all the speakers – including then state Senator Barack Obama – know it was being recorded? Who was it being recorded by and for? Were multiple copies disseminated? How did this source come by his or her copy of the video?
Wallsten wrote in his April article that Palestinian American leaders believe "that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say," and that this belief stems from "his [Obama's] presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed."
Yet he cites but one example and only two quotes from the entire event: "At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace.' One speaker likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology'."
Wallsten then writes, "Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground."
Is that all that was said negative about Israel and American policy towards the Middle East? Does the agreement between the newspaper and the confidential source preclude the release of a full-transcript of the event and greater details about the number in attendance – and the guest list?
Admittedly, this entire incident is more than a little bit embarrassing for the Times. First of all, they had endorsed Obama for the California primary in February which, as was already noted, Hillary won. But despite that endorsement, they allowed themselves to be used to hurt Obama while he still was contending with Hillary for the nomination.
The Times, of course, would counter-argue that the publication of this article only shows how their news reporters are unbiased and independent of their editorial stance and that their reporters report the news both positive and negative about candidates they endorse. That may be true. However, it doesn't take away from the likelihood that (1) their reporters were taken advantage of by the source, and (2) that their editorial board is now protecting Obama from further hurt by cloaking themselves in cherry-picked ethics.
In law there is the concept of "the fruit of the poisonous tree," that all information and evidence derived from an originally illegal method (i.e., a search conducted without a proper warrant) is tainted and is not admissible at trial.
Similarly, the agreement entered into between the L.A. Times and the confidential source - the terms of which remain unknown, as do the names of those who negotiated it on both sides - was itself highly unethical. To now claim the ethics of upholding an unethical agreement as the reason to avoid the tape's release– if such an agreement even exists – is in itself unethical, immoral, hypocritical and an untenable position, given the counterweight of the public's right to know and to decide for itself the value of the tape.
--------------
David B. Phillips is an attorney and forensic accountant based in New York
'Twas the night before elections
And all through the town
Tempers were flaring
Emotions all up and down!
I, in my bathrobe
With a cat in my lap
Had cut off the TV
Tired of political crap.
When all of a sudden
There arose such a noise
I peered out of my window
Saw Obama and his boys
They had come for my wallet
They wanted my pay
To give to the others
Who had not worked a day!
He snatched up my money
And quick as a wink
Jumped back on his bandwagon
As I gagged from the stink
He then rallied his henchmen
Who were pulling his cart
I could tell they were out
To tear my country apart!
'On Fannie, on Freddie,
On Biden and Ayers!
On Acorn, On Pelosi'
He screamed at the pairs!
They took off for his cause
And as he flew out of sight
I heard him laugh at the nation
Who wouldn't stand up and fight!
So I leave you to think
On this one final note-
IF YOU DONT WANT SOCIALISM
GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!
I'm UOJ and I approve this message!
*
Minneapolis – Speaking in Seattle to campaign contributors behind closed doors earlier this month, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden all but endorsed John McCain for president.
"Mark my words," Senator Biden warned the assembled supporters. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden continued, citing the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you – not financially to help him – we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."
Recalling that Senator Obama selected Biden as his running mate because of his purported foreign-policy expertise, one might think that more attention would be paid to the obvious import of Biden's words.
Not surprisingly, Biden made no mention of the world testing the mettle of Senator McCain if he were to take office (although he did later, lamely seeking to dismiss the meaning of his words). And for good reason. McCain's mettle has already been tested – proved under conditions beyond the imagining of most Americans. If it is possible to give something beyond the last full measure of devotion to our country, McCain has.
We think that the country would be best served by calling on McCain for one last mission – as president.
The financial crisis in which we now find ourselves poses an economic challenge to American well-being unlike any we have faced since the Great Depression. Before it materialized, Obama supported substantial tax increases through the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the highest income-earners (of shifting definition). Now that America faces a recession, Obama still supports counterproductive tax increases – on capital gains, the most productive workers, and successful small businesses – that are guaranteed to throw additional sand into the wheels of the economy.
When Obama explained to Joe the Plumber that he believed in "spread[ing] the wealth around," he meant it. He doesn't seem to have much respect for the income and wealth of those who have earned it. He seems to believe it the job of government to redistribute to those trailing "behind" Joe.
If he wins, Obama will take the oath of office, in which he'll swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Yet the record shows that Obama isn't particularly fond of the Constitution. In a 2001 interview on Chicago public radio, Obama noted that the Warren Court had "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society," and "to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical." Obama asserted that the Constitution "reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day."
He also noted that the Court "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted." Obama seemed to think the Constitution deficient, because it provided only a guarantee of negative liberties – what the government can't do to citizens – rather than a positive right to welfare. The Founding Fathers would be shocked by Obama's attitude toward this cornerstone of American principles.
McCain is a more traditional figure. He advocates lower taxes on earned income and shared prosperity through economic growth rather than the redistribution of wealth. He supports the mutual economic advantage to be found in free trade, particularly with friends and allies such as Canada and Colombia, as well as the preservation of the secret ballot in union elections, a strong defense, and victory in war.
In short, Biden suggests that Obama would invite the kind of crises JFK faced when Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev tested him in the Cuban missile crisis, in Berlin, and in Vietnam. And he should know.
McCain, however, also harks back to JFK – the JFK who represented a generation "tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."
John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson are Minneapolis attorneys and contributors to the blog Power Line.
http://www.backgroundnow.com/blog/background-check/dina-wein-reis-suzanne-carrico-sarah-golden-chaya-cooper-sheryl-raport-and-steve-manenti-indicted-in-consumer-product-manufacturers-fraud/
Dina Wein Reis, Suzanne Carrico, Sarah Golden, Chaya Cooper, Sheryl Raport, And Steve Manenti Indicted In Consumer Product Manufacturers Fraud
Oct 29th, 2008
Six individuals have been charged with conspiracy and wire fraud arising from their scheme to defraud consumer product manufacturers, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Matthew Friedrich and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana Timothy Morrison announced today.
“The Fraud Indictment Of Dina Wein Reis, Suzanne Carrico, Sarah Golden, Chaya Cooper, Et. Al.” has been published and will be available on Amazon.com this week. It is a compilation of case files For Federal Court Case #1:08-cr-00165-DFH-KPF-1, and includes:
THE CASE DOCKET REPORT
INDICTMENT as to DINA WEIN REIS
NOTIFICATION of Assigned Judge, Automatic Not Guilty Plea, Trial Date, Discovery Order and Other Matters as to DINA WEIN REIS, SHERYL RAPORT, SUZANNE CARRICO, SARAH GOLDEN, CHAYA COOPER, STEVE MANENTI. Jury Trial set for 12/15/2008 at 09:00 AM in room #344 before Judge David Frank Hamilton. Signed by Judge David Frank Hamilton on 10/22/2008. c/m.
MOTION for Order to Preserve Property for Forfeiture by USA as to DINA WEIN REIS.
ORDER enjoining sale or disposal of property subject to forfeiture and authorizing United States to enter upon and take actions necessary to preserve real property as to DINA WEIN REIS.
MOTION to Unseal Case by USA as to DINA WEIN REIS, SHERYL RAPORT, SUZANNE CARRICO, SARAH GOLDEN, CHAYA COOPER, STEVE MANENTI.
ORDER granting 29 Motion to Unseal Case as to DINA WEIN REIS (1), SHERYL RAPORT (2), SUZANNE CARRICO (3), SARAH GOLDEN (4), CHAYA COOPER (5), STEVE MANENTI (6).
The seven-count indictment, unsealed today, was returned by a federal grand jury in Indianapolis on Oct. 22, 2008. New York residents Dina Wein Reis, 44, Suzanne Carrico, 34, Sarah Golden, 36, and Chaya Cooper, 39, and New Jersey resident Sheryl Raport, 41, were arrested today and are scheduled to make their initial appearance today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Steve Manenti, 72, a resident of Chicago, surrendered to authorities and will make his initial appearance today in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois.
The indictment alleges that between January 2000 and October 2008, the defendants obtained consumer goods at discounted prices from manufacturers and distributors of consumer products by falsely informing them that the defendants would donate those products to non-profit organizations for promotional purposes. In fact, the defendants intended to, and did, sell those goods at substantial profit to wholesalers, retail stores and others. According to the indictment, manufacturers of consumer products often set aside a portion of their product to be sold to charitable organizations, to various programs that market and promote the manufacturers’ product and to authorized retailers outside of the United States for substantially discounted prices. Manufacturers often do so to aid humanitarian organizations, to engender goodwill for their product and to increase sales for their product by promoting it to a new sector of the market.
The indictment specifically alleges that the defendants contacted the businesses and claimed that Reis controlled valuable business ventures that could distribute and promote their products to hundreds or thousands of retail outlets to which Reis had exclusive access, such as pharmacies, grocery stores, salons or hardware stores. The defendants allegedly told the businesses that to take advantage of placing their company’s product in Reis’ supposed retail outlets, their companies would have to sell the defendants, at extremely discounted prices, a large quantity of product, which defendants falsely stated would be distributed as free samples to non-profit organizations such as senior living communities, schools and American Indian reservations. The defendants are alleged to have falsely told the businesses that if the samples of their product were favorably received by these potential consumers, demand for their product would increase, and the companies’ products in the future could be promoted, distributed and widely sold through Reis’ purported network of retail stores, which would lead to significant growth in sales and profits for the corporations. Once the defendants received the products they allegedly sold them to wholesalers, retailers and distributors at a substantial profit for themselves rather than provide samples through their purported non-profit program as they claimed.
If the defendants are convicted, the conspiracy charge carries a maximum 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The charge of wire fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Matthew Klecka of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Winfield D. Ong of the Southern District of Indiana. The investigation is being conducted by the FBI.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10312008/news/regionalnews/inside_rich_gals_life_of_glitz__scammer_136173.htm
Hey, if ya steal it, flaunt it.
Until getting tossed in jail, the alleged mastermind of a massive, multistate scheme that bilked millions from Fortune 500 companies lived fabulously in an art-packed corner mansion on West 75th Street.
Rabbi's wife, Whitney Museum benefactor and erstwhile theater producer Dina Wein-Reis, 44, enjoyed the multimillion-dollar town house, which sits off Riverside Drive, when she wasn't staying at her vacation home in Westhampton, or her Florida condo, property records reveal.
Wein-Reis and husband David Reis also have a West 83rd Street apartment, a Victorian home in Passaic, NJ, a 24-foot Chaparral pleasure boat, Lexuses, about eight family trust funds and at least nine bank accounts, records show.
Neighbors were stunned yesterday to learn that the "very trendy" gal down the street and five alleged accomplices have been federally charged with duping about a half-dozen giant firms, and that they may have swindled more than 40 more.
Ring members allegedly tricked the companies into selling them bulk quantities of consumer goods - like pens, contact lenses, razors, snacks and diabetes-testing equipment - winning their marks' confidence by treating them to fancy dinners and Broadway shows. They then allegedly clinched the deals by promising the goods would be used for promotional giveaways.
Instead, the feds charge, the crew used a maze of bogus shell companies to sell the stuff to major retailers like Walgreens, turning massive profits.
Wein-Reis, husband Reis, 46, and their kids "kept to themselves" but also had a constant flow of activity at their house, a neighbor said.
"I've seen chairs being taken in and out," one said, recalling guests arriving by the busload.
In February, the Reises, who are associated with the New York branch of the Shalom Center, a Jerusalem-based academic research institute, held a conference on Iraq that packed the house with 50 guests.
Wein-Reis was a member of the Whitney Museum of Art chairman's council and claimed to have her own personal art manager - presumably to manage the more than 60 pieces of art that are now being eyed by the feds for possible seizure.
Her collection includes three works with a combined worth of $25 million. There's also an Andy Warhol portrait of Truman Capote.
More than 50 companies were swindled, feds charge - including Balance Bar, Bausch & Lomb, Campbell's, Bic, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Kraft, Nestlé, Sara Lee and Unilever.
The alleged accomplices include Suzanne Carrico, a Manhattan cabaret singer. The feds say Carrico, 34, made phone calls to the companies and trained employees on how to hit up potential marks.
Carrico - who recently performed a show called "The Art of the Cahn," featuring the music of Sammy Cahn - is a regular on the Manhattan cabaret circuit.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11012008/news/regionalnews/ritzy_con_gal_a_boss_from_hell_136325.htm
RITZY 'CON' GAL A BOSS FROM HELL
'NASTY' TREATMENT & SPY CAMS: EX-STAFFER
November 1, 2008
The Upper West Side woman who allegedly bilked Fortune 500 companies out of millions to finance a life of opulence was a hellacious boss who repeatedly lost employees and used elaborate security measures to spy on her staff, a former worker said yesterday.
"She had some very high-tech security," said an employee who spent a great deal of time in Dina Wein-Reis' mansion on West 75th Street. "She'd be in Israel and could watch via camera what was going on in the house."
The employee, who worked for Wein-Reis for two years, said her boss was brutal to her staff of personal chefs, hairdressers and makeup artists and many left after just a few months.
"She treated people like crap, so she ended up going through staff very quickly," the employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "She was very nasty to people and slow to pay."
The 44-year-old beauty is charged with scamming companies out of discounted goods purportedly to be used for charity but which she sold for profit.
"She was a good businesswoman, but she really just used her good looks to swindle people," the employee said. "She was very shrewd."
Federal prosecutors have asked that Wein-Reis' mansion be seized, along with 60 valuable works of art - including paintings by Warhol and Modigliani - and that 177 bank accounts be frozen.
She is being held without bail, pending extradition to Indiana, where the case was filed.
"We are going to try our best to expedite the extradition hearing and get her over to Indiana, where we can renew our application for bail," said her lawyer, Benjamin Brafman.
Her husband, David Reis, who neighbors said was a rabbi, came from a much more modest background in Colombia, where he was born David Ruiz. He has not been charged in the scam.
"He is a good son. I don't know what happened. I don't believe it," said his father, Hector Ruiz, 75, who lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Ruiz said he did not know why his son changed his name or how he made a living.
Reis' aunt, however, said that her nephew worked in a "commercial-type business," and that he was not born Jewish.
When approached for comment, Reis told The Post, "You have no right to bother my family."
Shucks, I thought these neighbors of mine on the Upper West Side would let me use their snazzy pad for a parlor meeting.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11022008/news/regionalnews/wretched_excess_through_the_roof_136488.htm
November 2, 2008
Here's just a taste of what an alleged multimillion-dollar scam can get you.
Dina Wein-Reis spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build this regal rooftop retreat atop her Upper West Side mansion, all while allegedly fleecing several Fortune 500 companies in an elaborate scam.
Complete with a Jacuzzi and a cabana and layered with Italian tile, this is where Wein-Reis could relax in her off hours when she wasn't running the alleged swindle.
Meanwhile, one of Wein-Reis' co-defendants said yesterday that the case has left her devastated.
"I have lost my job. I have lost everything. I have nothing," said cabaret singer Suzanne Carrico as she broke down in tears on a street in Queens.
"No one asked my side," the songbird continued as she made her way to a subway station, luggage in tow. "I can't talk. My lawyer said I can't."
Her lawyer, Gary Becker, did not return a call for comment.
Carrico, 34, is one of five of Wein-Reis' employees charged in a federal indictment alleging that they duped top-tier companies to sell discounted products - purportedly to be used for charitable causes - which the scammers then sold for a profit.
According to the indictment, filed in Indiana, Carrico allegedly sized up target companies via phone conversations and helped train other employees how to best select victims.
Wein-Reis, 44, allegedly used the profits to finance an opulent lifestyle - living in the art-filled mansion on West 75th Street.
She has been held without bail pending extradition to Indiana.
http://vmu.vh1.com/movies/movie/163891/moviemain.jhtml
Dina Wein-Reis produces my movies.
Never mind Agudah parlor meetings. I was hoping that multi-million dollar rooftop terrace could be my new hiding place.
Shea, is this the reason you were too busy to meet with Elliot Pasik? There was some kind of scam involving boxes sent home with school kids.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10302008/news/regionalnews/the_art_of_the_steal_135986.htm
A crew of swindlers led by an art-loving Upper West Side woman bilked millions from Fortune 500 companies, buying goods at massive discounts, then reselling them to major retailers, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
Scores of paintings were seized this week from the West 75th Street townhouse of Dina Wein, 44, the alleged ringleader of the multistate con game.
According to the indictment, filed in Indiana, Wein and five others approached six companies between 2003 and 2008, asking to buy products at bargain-basement prices for use in promotional giveaways.
But instead, the crew allegedly sold the items to major retailers such as Walgreen's, turning a massive profit.
Court papers list more than 60 paintings marked for seizure from Wein's home, including an Andy Warhol portrait of Truman Capote - as well as more than 150 different bank accounts.
The federal charges cover scams taking place over the past five years. Federal lawsuits, filed in several states, allege similar schemes stretching back to 1995.
Also arrested were Suzanne Carrico, 34, Sarah Golden, 36, and Chaya Cooper, 39, who all live in the city, as well as New Jerseyan Sheryl Raport, 41, and Chicago man Steve Manenti, 71.
According to the suits, Wein approached some 400 companies, sealing fraudulent deals with 54, including Balance Bar, Bausch & Lomb, Campbell's, Bic, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Kraft, Nestlé, Sara Lee and Unilever.
Wein and her crew allegedly wined and dined corporate executives, pretending to be interested in hiring them while the offers were pending.
According to a suit by Roche Diagnostic Corp., of Indianapolis, the crew pretended to woo the company's North American vice president for diabetes care, Donald Dumoulin, flying him and his wife to New York twice in 2006.
On one occasion, the wife was treated to an all-day spa treatment, after which the couple was taken to dinner and a performance of "Rent."
According to the suit, during a March 2006 visit, Dumoulin was introduced to a woman who was supposedly both the curator of the Whitney Museum and Wein's personal art manager.
The woman told Dumoulin that three paintings in the home were worth a collective $25 million.
The suit alleged that although Dumoulin turned down the job, he eventually signed off on a sale of $11.7 million in diabetes testing equipment at the price of just $1.7 million - believing the items were destined for a promotion that would generate more sales.
Instead, Wein and her cohorts allegedly sold the items to Walgreen's.
In another suit, filed by Unilever, Wein allegedly bought $2.2 million dollars worth of laundry detergent - Wisk and All - for just under $500,000.
Unilever claimed it was told the items were destined for giveaway boxes handed out to parents of schoolchildren.
Both the Unilever and the Roche suits were settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/10/this_is_the_house_that_promoti.html
This Is the House That Promotional Pens Built
10/31/08
Some crimes are just so ballsy you can't help but be impressed, even after the people are caught and vilified. This year we had Raffaello Follieri, cocksure seducer of billionaires and movie stars, and that guy who pretended to be a Rockefeller. And then there's Dina Wein-Reis and her husband, David Reis, two members of a ring of scam artists who built a castle of lies on the Upper East Side — and on West 83rd Street, and in Westhampton, and in Passaic, New Jersey — with a con that was so simple it can really only be commended as brilliant: Basically, they pretended to be publicists.
Ring members allegedly tricked the companies into selling them bulk quantities of consumer goods — like pens, contact lenses, razors, snacks and diabetes-testing equipment — winning their marks' confidence by treating them to fancy dinners and Broadway shows. They then allegedly clinched the deals by promising the goods would be used for promotional giveaways.
What does offloading a bunch of promotional pens get you, other than real estate? Multiple Lexuses, according to the Post (Shouldn't it be Lexii?), about eight family trust funds, at least nine bank accounts, and an art collection worth $25 million. Oh, also charges of conspiracy and wire fraud, because the companies feel they were ripped off. But they really shouldn't — usually the goods from promotional giveaways just end up in landfills and under people's beds. At least someone finally did something useful with them.
Howard Davidowitz: Bankruptcy most likely next step for Circuit City
Circuit City is shutting down 155 stores. And Howard Davidowitz calls the move one of "desperation." Although there's a "small chance of success" he says the most-likely next step will be "a formal bankruptcy." Although that would leave Best Buy as the remaining stand-alone electronics chain, Davidowitz tells Larry Kofsky it will remain under competitive pressure from the 8,000-pound gorilla - Wal-Mart.
UOJ,
I went to public school and when I learned about the US Federal government (yes, we are a Federal Republic, not a democracy)I learned that the Executive Branch of government executed the laws, the legislative brance made the laws and the judicial branch interpreted the laws and made sure that new laws were in accordance with the constitution. When Bill Clinton had his Democratic majority, Bill was not a demogogue - couldn't get much done and was impeached and almost convicted (the only thing having a Democratic majority in the Senate did for him was keep him out of jail). Jimm'eh Carter did do any better. The President does set the direction and expectation for the nation in the State of the Union address; but, and it's a big but, the Legislature is not required to be the President's lap dog.
What is of greater concern to all is the representation of the U.S. to the world in the form of the Head of State (the President) and our relations with other nations. Jimm'eh was regarded as a joke amongst the other world powers. Bill held no high moral ground. W is not highly regarded either due to his lack of success in Afghanistan and Iraq. The sad reality is that neither McCain or Obama is of the Presidential timbre that will have our friends and foes take notice. We have bogged ourselves down with NIMBY interests and self-serving platitudes that our choices, our self-selected choices, couldn't get jobs in local school boards under a reality check.
I'm voting tomorrow; I'm voting because I've got the privilege to vote and the responsibility to protect that privilege. I have already decided which lever I will pull. Not because of the media driven issues, not because of race, not because of conviction; because I remember when the President was the Head of Government and the Head of State and not a sound bite.
Hashem bless America and let it decide correctly for its own sake its best course.
http://jta.org/news/article/2008/11/03/1000717/bronfman-backs-obama
Bronfman backs Obama
November 3, 2008
The former head of the World Jewish Congress endorsed Barack Obama.
Longtime Jewish philanthropist Edgar Bronfman wrote in an article posted on the Huffington Post Web site that he’s backing Obama because of his admiration for the Democratic nominee and his running mate, Joe Biden, and his "disdain" for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket.
McCain "cannot provide what Israel needs most -- a respected, credible, morally strong America," Bronfman wrote. "Barack Obama is the candidate who can restore America’s moral authority in the world and position our government to help negotiate peace."
Bronfman, a supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primaries, added that Obama "can inspire much-needed support for Israel among this next generation of American Jews. He reflects their idealism and speaks in the language of hope they understand."
http://jta.org/news/article/2008/11/03/1000707/fred-baron-edwards-fund-raiser-dies
November 3, 2008
Fred Baron, a top Jewish fund-raiser for John Edwards, has died.
Baron, a Texan who was known as the "King of Torts" for his 30 years as a plaintiffs’ attorney representing clients injured by toxic substances, died Oct. 30 of cancer. He was 61.
CHICAGO (AFP) --
General Motors said Monday its October sales tumbled 45 percent from a year ago, saying the industry was on track for its worst month in 25 years ... a stunning decline attributed to "uncertainty over the deepening credit crisis" and weak consumer confidence.
GM truck sales of 97,119 were down 51 percent and car sales of 73,466 were off 34 percent.
FOX News/Rasmussen Reports Poll: McCain Narrows Gap in Battleground States.
Toronto - The Canada Revenue Agency has revoked the charitable status of the Choson Kallah Fund of Toronto, saying it has become little more than a method of beating the tax man.
The agency says the group's original charitable aim of helping poor families became secondary to offering a tax shelter. It says the group issued $177 million in tax receipts.
The agency says the charity lent its name to a program which abused the charitable donation sections of the Income Tax Act.
After expenses, the fund collected only 0.05 per cent of the value of the receipts issued.
The agency announced last December that it was looking at the fund with the aim of removing its charitable status because of the tax-receipt issue.
"In our view, the charity's original purpose, which is to provide funding for relief of poverty to impoverished individuals, has been sidetracked by its participation in this arrangement and has, in effect, become a secondary purpose," the agency said.
"It is our view that the charity has operated for the non-charitable purpose of promoting and participating in a tax shelter arrangement and, accordingly, cannot be considered to be a charitable organization all the resources of which are devoted to charitable activities.
jews in this country who don't vote for McCain are destined to allow history repeat itself. Obama hates the jews and is pro -arab.. Why would any jew in their right mind vote Obama. My fellow jews, even if you don't believe in all of McCain's policies he is our best bet as jews and as hope for Israel
F*** THESE BEGGERS LOWLIFES
Gedolim Call For Yom Tefillah For Philanthropists
November 3, 2008
At a meeting early this week with the heads of the most prominent and largest religious seminaries (Kollels) in Israel, under the auspices of the ultra-Orthodox leaders Maran Hagon Rav Elyashiv and Maran Rav Shteinman Shlita, a decision was made to institute a Yom Tefillah (day of prayer) and learning at all the Kollels in Eretz Yisroel next week. Thursday, November 13th will be a united effort to storm the gates of Heaven and plead for the financial health of Jewish philanthropists, so that they can continue to support Torah institutions in Israel.
Several fundraisers recently returned from appeals in the United States practically empty-handed, due to the collapse of the worldwide economy. The impact this has in Israel is more than just financial, and means more than just the loss of Torah study. When a Torah scholar is forced to leave his studies because his yeshiva cannot pay him, it endangers his entire family. The psychological impact affects his wife and children, in addition to their lack of food, electricity, clothing, and other basic needs, and as the husband heads into despair, whole families can fall apart.
With the increasing economic challenges and the massive withdrawal of support for the Kollels in Israel, over 6,000 families are left without income from their Torah study, leaving thousands of wives and children without the strength of Torah, without food on the table, and facing a crisis situation that impacts their family, community and the broader Jewish world.
“A philanthropist who gives money can be blessed and earn more. But a family that has been torn apart takes a lot more than a little money to put back together,” explains Yaakov Segal, who is the Assistant National Director of a chain of nursery schools in Israel and has volunteered to help manage the new Emergency Fund.
This day of prayer and learning is intended to bring the cries of the Rabbis straight to the gates of Heaven and also across the ocean to those who fund Torah institutions, to show them that the Torah community depends on them for survival. To help encourage their goodwill and generosity, a new fund is being set up as a joint effort by 11 of the leading Kollels in Israel (listed below). Funds raised will be distributed directly to the crisis-stricken Kollel students equally – funds will not be dispersed to the Kollels themselves, nor will any staff be paid to manage the Emergency Fund.
The Emergency Fund’s fundraising goal is $14,000,000 – which the organizers believe is the minimal amount needed to help keep Kollel students and their families out of crisis. This is the first time that a joint effort has been made by all the leading Kollels, and the Rabbis believe that this will demonstrate their unity of purpose and the depth of the crisis now being experienced.
Segal explains that until now, it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement based on the traditional worker-learner model (known in Judaism as Yissachar – Zevulun arrangement). People supported Torah learning and Torah learning supported the community. But now, with key donors cutting back their donations in response to financial uncertainty, the damage that this will inflict on Torah study will lead to devastation in the world. “Repentance, prayer and charity can reverse a harsh decree,” he noted. “That is why we need to conduct a unified day of prayer and Torah study to remind philanthropists that not only do Kollel families need their support, but they themselves need the power of Torah study in their merit at this difficult time.”
While this is the first time that such a joint effort and a day of prayer is being instituted, for the past few weeks Torah leaders Rabbi Eliashiv and Rabbi Shteinman have been kept awake at night in despair over the plight of the Kollels. Rabbi Shteinman has set aside time every morning after his Tefilla to say special psalms and prayers for the financial situation.
Recently a story circulated quietly through the Torah world that gave inspiration and hope to the Kollels. An individual who had significant investments in Lehman Brothers was approached by a the head of a Kollel to lend money to the yeshiva. The donor pulled out $2 million of his investments and gave it as a “no strings attached” loan. A week later, when Lehman Brothers collapsed, all that was left of the donor’s investment was the $2 million that he had loaned.
The weekend of November 15th, representatives from this new Emergency Fund will travel to the US to make a serious appeal for the members of Kollels and their families in Israel. They hope to raise significant funds in this trip, to take the pressure off Kollel fundraisers whose overseas visits have not been producing results. The kollel directors Kollel who participated in the meeting and who will be a part of the new fund are well known in ultra-Orthodox circles and include:
HaRav Natan Einfeld, Kollel Chazon Ish
HaRav Shmuel Elyashiv, Shaarei Zion
HaRav Zvi Weisfish, Yeshivas Haran
HaRav Eliezer Kahanaman, Ponevezh
HaRav Yosef Mann, Beis Hillel
HaRav Shalom Be’er Sorotzkin, Ateres Shlomo
HaRav Avraham Pachter, Medrash Elyahu Elad
HaRav Aharon Dov Freund, Bais Abba
HaRav Rabbi Yaakov Kenig, Breslev
HaRav Avraham Rubinstein, Nachlas Moshe, Bnei Brak
The top executive at a midsize bank holding company is retiring with a more than $12 million payday, even as the company is applying for a government investment that could restrict such windfalls.
The South Financial Group (TSFG Quote - Cramer on TSFG - Stock Picks) on Tuesday said Chairman, President and CEO Mack Whittle had left his post, effective Monday. Whittle had earlier said he would leave by the end of the year, and during a conference call to discuss the company financial results last week he made no indication the timing had changed.
Swiss magistrate alleges priest abused boys
Philippe Clavel, Associated Press Writer –
Mon Nov 3, 3:57 pm
ETFRIBOURG, Switzerland – Swiss officials said Monday they have evidence that a Roman Catholic priest sexually abused two dozen boys in France and Switzerland over a 35-year period.
The priest has admitted committing some sex acts with children between the ages of 9 and 14, two of whom had disabilities, said investigating magistrate Yvonne Gendre.
However, the 68-year-old priest, who was not named because of privacy laws, has denied accusations that he molested two children who subsequently committed suicide, Gendre told reporters in the western city of Fribourg. The priest also denied accusations by some of the victims that he sodomized them, she added.
Swiss officials began investigating the priest after being informed of accusations against him by their French counterparts.
The legal time limit for prosecution has expired in all but one case, which occurred in the French city of Grenoble in 1995. Gendre said she will hand the investigation over to justice officials in Grenoble who will decide whether to press charges against the priest.
Gendre expressed horror that the man was able to carry out the alleged abuses for more than three decades. She said the priest, who belongs to the Capuchin order, an offshoot of the Franciscans, was transferred or dismissed from his post three times because of allegations against him, but continued to work for the church.
The Catholic Church has been plagued by a series of sex abuse cases against clergy that have come to light since 2002 and spread throughout the United States and beyond.
A spokesman for the diocese of Fribourg acknowledged that the case raised some questions.
"Obviously we are concerned," Marc Donze told The Associated Press. "But suspicion isn't the same as proof."
Gendre said another priest is under investigation for similar crimes.
Procedures have since been put in place to speed up the church's investigation of such allegations. According to the Swiss Society for the Protection of Children, 364 people in Switzerland were convicted of sexually abusing children in 2006, the last year for which official figures are available.
The group describes the figures as "the tip of the iceberg."
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3175739&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445805,00.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/israeli-hacker.html
Israeli hacker Ehud "The Analyzer" Tenenbaum was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on felony charges of conspiracy and fraud.
Between Feb. 2008 and May 2008 Tenenbaum and others engaged in a scheme to initiate transactions on account numbers belonging to other people, "to receive payment and other things" with an aggregate value of more than $1,000, the indictment charges (.pdf).
The U.S. attorney's office in New York did not immediately respond to a call for comment.
Tenenbaum (shown at right in an old photo) achieved worldwide notoriety as a teenager in 1998, when he was caught pulling off a series of recreational intrusions into Pentagon computers, in an investigation the Defense Department code named "Solar Sunrise."
As reported here earlier, in September Canadian authorities announced they had arrested the now-29-year-old Tenenbaum and three Canadian accomplices for allegedly hacking into computers belonging to Direct Cash Management in Calgary, Alberta, which sells prepaid debit and credit cards through various merchants, and increasing the cash limits on those cards.
Then he and others allegedly withdrew CN$1.8 million (about U.S. $1.7 million) on the cards through ATMs in Canada and other countries. The arrests followed a months-long investigation by Canadian police and the U.S. Secret Service.
Canadian Crown prosecutor Jane McClellan described for Threat Level at the time how the alleged scheme worked. A number of people purchased 37 prepaid debit cards with small cash limits on them — usually CN$15. Then tracking data encoded in the magnetic stripe on the back of the card was allegedly passed to Tenenbaum.
That tracking data contained the account number and the customer PIN that allows the cardholder to withdraw cash from the account. Tenenbaum, alone or with the help of others, then allegedly hacked into Direct Cash's server using a SQL injection attack and deleted the limits on some cards and increased the limit on other cards to a combined total of more than CN$3.5 million. The amount on one card account alone was increased to more than CN$1 million.
The card track data was then given or sold to others around the world who encoded blank cards with the data and used it to withdraw cash on the accounts. Within days CN$1.8 million had been stolen.
Direct Cash discovered the problem when it conducted a weekly audit and noticed that CN$1.4 million was missing. A subsequent forensic audit of its system revealed that someone had used a SQL injection attack to hack the company's server.
McClellan said that Tenenbaum and people associated with him were caught on ATM video cameras withdrawing some of the cash soon after the cash limits on the cards were changed.
Tenenbaum was facing six counts of fraudulent use of credit card data and one count of fraud over $5,000 in Canada. He initially remained in custody in Calgary without bail, even though the three other suspects — Priscilla Mastrangelo, 30 (whom Tenenbaum identified as his fiancee), Jean Francois Ralph, 28, and Sypros Xenoulis, 33 (Tenenbaum's partner in a computer security business) — were released on bond.
Then a court granted him $30,000 bail. But before Tenenbaum could leave the Calgary jail, U.S. authorities obtained a provisional warrant ordering Canadian authorities to retain him in custody, presumably while the grand jury in New York met to examine the evidence against him in the United States.
Tenenbaum was 19 when he was arrested in 1998 along with several other Israelis and two California teens in one of the first high-profile hacker cases that made international news. Tenenbaum and his fellow Israeli hackers referred to themselves at the time as the Israeli Internet Underground or the "Enforcers." According to Israeli court documents, their activities began when one of the Israelis asked Tenenbaum to help him hack the computer system of the Sde Boker Seminary to read the e-mail correspondence of a female.
Tenenbaum then used sniffer and Trojan-horse programs to break into computer systems belonging to two Israeli ISPs and obtain user names and passwords of customers. He used the hijacked customer accounts to breach other computer systems belonging to all of the universities in Israel, the websites for the Israeli parliament and Israel's president, and a system belonging to Hamas, a militant Palestinian organization. An attempt to breach the computer system of the Israel Defense Forces failed.
Tenenbaum, who referred to the California teens as his pupils, taught his accomplices how to hack into U.S. systems and gave them sniffer and Trojan programs to assist them. Although Tenenbaum's attacks were unsophisticated — they simply exploited a long-known vulnerability in the Solaris operating system that had been left unpatched — he and his cohorts were nonetheless able to breach systems belonging to the Department of Defense, the Air Force and Navy, NASA, MIT, and several U.S. Ivy League universities.
The attacks on the U.S. military systems came at a time of high alert in the Middle East when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was defying U.N. weapons inspections. U.S. authorities were so unsettled by the breach of military computers — which they called "the most organized and systematic attack" that had occurred to date — that a joint investigation was launched by several government and military agencies, dubbed Operation Solar Sunrise, to track down the source of the threats.
Tenenbaum was caught after the two California teens were arrested.
UPDATE: Bob Nardoza, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of New York, told Threat Level that Tenenbaum is still in custody in Canada and the U.S. will be starting extradition proceedings shortly. He doesn't know how long that will take.
As for the U.S. charges against Tenenbaum, he has no information other than what's already in the indictment.
"It's not a very extensive indictment," he said.
He would not say whether the office anticipated additional arrests in relation to Tenenbaum's case but said the investigation is ongoing.
Among others, characters like Simcha Klohr and Margo at YTT, have their yeshivos approved for Universal Pre-K, the NYC welfare handout where kids get free schooling.
Does anyone know if Margo is charging anything extra which is seemingly illegal?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1225199631250&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Some 1,500 policemen, prison employees and soldiers have been receiving NIS 2,000-NIS 4,000 per month more than they deserved because they falsely claimed they were rabbis, the state revealed on Sunday in an indictment filed in Jerusalem District Court.
Ten suspects were indicted, including Meir Rosenthal, a former student at Kollel Darkei Hora'a L'Rabanim and now head of the bureau of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Yitzhak Ohana, former head of the examination and rabbinical ordination department of the Chief Rabbinate and now bureau chief to Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Meir Lau.
Other suspects include the deputy chief rabbi of the police, Aharon Godsdiner, and the heads of rabbinical "colleges" in Beit She'an, Gan Ner, Haifa and Safed.
To qualify for the extra income, members of the security forces had to receive a certificate of higher Torah studies from the Chief Rabbinate. To be eligible for the certificate, they had to have studied in a higher yeshiva for at least 35 hours a week for five years.
The students in these colleges paid a tuition fee of NIS 10,000-20,000 and enlisted to study 10 hours a week in the evenings for two-and-a-half years.
According to the indictment, Rosenthal, with the connivance of Ohana, presented the Chief Rabbinate with documents declaring that the students had studied 35 hours a week and that in addition to the two-and-a-half years they studied at his college, they had already completed two-and-a-half years in another yeshiva. Many did not have any religious education at all.
During these years, the rabbinate issued certificates to 1,500 security officers who had studied at the yeshivas listed in the indictment. The state paid these alleged rabbis a total of NIS 250,000. According to a Justice Ministry spokeswoman, the state prosecution intends to bring criminal charges against 80 more policemen, prison security employees and soldiers, and press disciplinary charges against another 120 who participated in the scam.
The state has also informed many of the alleged rabbis that it intended to stop paying the unjustified increases. The policemen whose extra payments are to be stopped filed a petition with the Supreme Court against the move and asked for interim injunction to temporarily prevent the state from making the cuts. The court rejected the request for an interim injunction.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/484
"Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest," reported The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper and Internet site, on October 21.
The article continued:
Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation's first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.
Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors.
Similar articles have broached the issue and the Internet is rife with speculation about possible post-election violence.
One of the hints frequently pointed to is a statement by Democratic Party campaign strategist James Carville on CNN:
But you stop and contemplate this country if Obama goes in and he has a consistent five point lead and loses the election, it would be very, very, very dramatic out there.
Are ultra-radical elements planning nationwide riots in the event that Barack Obama loses the election? It certainly appears that the fires have been stoked and the dials pre-set for rage and violence if the "Messiah" does not win in this down-to-the-wire race in which most polls and media predictions have Obama beating McCain.
A McCain win, say many Obama supporters, would be intolerable not only because McCain is unacceptable but because it would be evidence of "another stolen election." It would be, they say, evidence of election fraud and disenfranchisement and intimidation of people of color. The official Obama campaign and its surrogates have been feeding this notion for months with angry accusations that Republican election officials have been targeting black and other minority voters to have them removed from the voter-registration rolls before election day. The Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, and the Obama campaign have charged election officials in Michigan, Ohio, and other states with trying to disenfranchise black voters.
To dramatize this alleged Republican conspiracy to disenfranchise ethnic minorities and steal the election from Obama, a coalition of far-left groups appealed to the United Nations on October 30 to intervene and send UN monitors to observe our November 4 elections.
More ominously, the same coalition, marching under the banner "No More Stolen Elections!," has issued a "Call to Action" calling for demonstrations on November 5. The "Call to Action" states:
The assault on American democracy in recent years has been so extreme and so consistent that, months before Election Day 2008, we already know what to expect.
Millions of Americans will be denied the right to vote.
Millions more will be prevented from voting for the candidate of their choice.
And with Black Americans [Barack Obama of the Democratic Party and Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party] leading two presidential tickets, the intentional suppression of voter turnout in communities of color will continue to be not just a threat but a virtual certainty as those who cannot win the Black vote seek to suppress it.
Recent experience and mounting evidence tell us beyond any reasonable doubt that powerful interests are prepared, at the very least, to attempt to steal another presidential election.
The "Call to Action" concludes by urging Americans to take the "Pledge of Action," which reads:
I remember Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, and I am willing to take action in 2008 if the election is stolen again. I support efforts to protect the right to vote leading up to and on Election Day, November 4th. I pledge to join nationwide pro-democracy protests starting on November 5th, either in my community, in key states where fraud occurred, or in Washington D.C. I pledge: No More Stolen Elections!
What is of particular concern in all of this is the heavy concentration in the coalition of activists who have long histories of turning demonstrations into riots. The list of signatories accompanying the "Call to Action" include:
• Tom Hayden — founder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 1960s riot organizer, collaborator with the Vietcong and North Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War, and continuing Marxist activist.
• Marcus Raskin — SDS theoretician and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the infamous Marxist activist center and think tank closely tied to the Cuban DGI and Soviet KGB.
• Leslie Cagan — Militant lesbian, Marxist, feminist, professional activist; currently national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, one of the nation's largest anti-war coalitions of far-left organizations; longtime member of the Communist Party USA and early member of the Venceremos Brigades that went to Cuba in the 1960s for communist training; left the CPUSA with other top communist leaders in 1991 to found a splinter group, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
• Jesse Jackson — Founder and president of Rainbow/PUSH.
• Michael Lerner — SDS leader and a founder of the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF), an ultra-left terrorist organization that committed acts of bombing and sabotage; later became famous as publisher of Tikkun magazine and Bill and Hillary Clinton's guru on "the politics of meaning"; now an ordained rabbi promoting the same Marxist nostrums with a religious veneer.
• Sharon Lungo — Organizer for the anarchist, violence-prone Ruckus Society.
• Maude Hurd — National president of ACORN.
• David Swanson — Washington Director of Democrats.com, board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and working-group member of Leslie Cagan's United for Peace and Justice.
On October 21, David Swanson posted this incendiary blog, adding kerosene to the "Call to Action":
A McCain "Win" Will Be Theft, Resistance Is Planned
If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed....
We will see McCain supporters on November 4th challenging people's right to vote, seeking to force people to vote on provisional ballots, and seeking to have provisional ballots discarded. And we will see electronic vote counts wildly out of step with the most recent polls, although not with exit polls - which we will be denied any access to unless they have been "adjusted" to match the official counts.
By TOM HAYS – 8 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A former UBS AG executive who hatched an insider-trading scheme that prosecutors said was one of the biggest on Wall Street since the 1980s was sentenced on Monday to 78 months in prison.
A lawyer for Mitchel Guttenberg had asked U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts to give his client only 36 months, calling him a "broken man" who lost his marriage and home since his arrest in 2007.
"The punishment in real-life terms ... has been severe," said attorney Sean O'Shay.
But Batts handed out the harsher sentence after citing evidence that Guttenberg was an instigator in a $14 million plot "to give inside information to others to use illegally."
The defendant pleaded guilty on the eve of his trial earlier this year to conspiracy and securities fraud.
Guttenberg had been an executive director and institutional client manager at UBS — a position that gave him access to stock recommendations by analysts before the information was made public.
During a meeting at Manhattan's famed Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal in 2001, Guttenberg offered to give a friend inside stock tips in exchange for forgiving a $25,000 debt and for a cut of the profits. Over the next six years, the friend made millions of dollars by trading stocks for himself and two hedge funds he managed.
Prosecutors said that over time, Guttenberg cut similar deals with others, including another hedge-fund manager. He routinely provided tips about ratings changes on stocks such as Amgen Corp., Whole Foods Market Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Union Pacific Corp., authorities said.
Guttenberg sought to cover his tracks by using coded text messages made from disposable cell phones, and by accepting his kickbacks only in cash, authorities said.
Chaya Cooper from the Upper West Side scam lives in the Westmount building at 730 Columbus Ave at 96th St. That building along with Key West across the street are so packed with frum Jews that they are known as dorm 1 and dorm 2. They are around the corner from OZ.
http://lohud.com/article/20081030/NEWS03/810300468/-1/newsfront
The Ramapo police officers who charged former Assemblyman Ryan Karben with drunken driving in January had probable cause to arrest him at the scene of an accident, a judge ruled yesterday.
Whether the officers were within their rights to detain Karben the night he crashed into a utility pole on Brick Church Road in Ramapo was the crux of a contentious argument between Karben's lawyer and prosecutor Kevin Gilleece.
Karben, 34, a former Rockland County legislator and state official, faces a misdemeanor count of driving while intoxicated.
His attorney, Kenneth Gribetz, argued at a pretrial hearing yesterday that police violated Karben's rights by failing to read him his Miranda rights before asking him to submit to several sobriety tests.
Gribetz asked Judge Thomas Mascola to consider suppressing certain statements Karben made to officers at the scene, including Karben's refusal to take a Breathalyzer test.
Mascola declined.
"He gave Mr. Karben four separate sobriety tests," the judge said of one arresting officer. "All of those field tests were failed by the defendant according to the officer."
Field tests Karben submitted to included a nine-step walk-and-turn test and a horizontal gaze test in which he was asked to follow a moving pen with his eyes. Officers said he failed all of them and that he refused to take a Breathalyzer test.
Yesterday also marked the first day of jury selection for Karben's upcoming trial.
On Jan. 30, police say, Karben was driving home from a bar mitzvah at the New York Country Club in Ramapo when he smashed into a pole at 10:45 p.m. Karben then drove for another two-tenths of a mile before being stopped by Michael Gannon, a responding Ramapo officer who noticed the car had front-end damage.
Karben told police he swerved off the road to avoid hitting a deer. He also told them he had two drinks at the party, officers testified earlier in the pretrial hearing.
One officer, Robert Collins, told the judge that Karben refused three times to take a chemical breath test, leading to a year's suspension of his license.
Gribetz tried to show that police didn't immediately arrest him for drunken driving.
The officers insist they were first investigating an accident and only after talking to Karben for several minutes did the issue of intoxication become a focus.
The case was moved to South Nyack when Ramapo justices recused themselves because of their relationships with Karben.
The penalty for a misdemeanor drunken driving charge can include up to year in jail, a fine, a license suspension and community service. Rarely does a person get jail time as a first-time offender.
Jury selection is expected to continue tomorrow.
To those who say "How do you ignore the plethora of evidence, including identity theft and the blank identity cards found in Rubashkin's offices? Stop living in denial and stop making silly excuses."
This reminds me, as it should you, of the old rabbinic story of two people who came to a rov for a din Torah and each was given a chance to meet with the rov first in private and discuss their claims. All the while the rebbetzin was in another room and she could hear the discussions. After the first man expressed his claims, the rov said: "you are right" and after the second man expressed his claims, the rov said to him "you are right" and after they left, the rebbetzin comes into the room and confronts her husband the rov and said "how could you tell both men that they are both right?", to which the rove said to the rebbetzin: "you are also right!" So Leah, you are also right!
Anyhow, one can look at the situation in many ways and noone would deny the obvious wrongs of which there are many and of different shades and levels. But not all the wrongs are equal and that is where you make a mistake by comparing different categories, as a logical fallacy.
Unfortunately business is not, by its very nature, a very "clean" and morally pure undertaking. It is a lot of rough and tumble and in the heat of the scramble with oders, negotions, communications, finances, plans, meetings, travels, shipments, payments, hirings and firings and much more it is not always possible to keep a clear headed objective view that can be afforded in hindsight.
The moral compass often needs time to point in the right direction and it takes time and effort to glance at it and apply its readings. That is why there is Yom Kippur, to atone for mistakes.
A business is almost never a mussar kloiz, and businessmen are not usually the most eidel and subtle people. They have to be rough and tough in the cut-throat environment, and yes, indeed, you are right, they do make many mistakes along the way and they do cross the line of what is right many times, but they are expected to be able to ultimately correct themselves and steer themselves right like captains guiding ships through rough seas and currents.
A captain who lets his ship crash on the rocks is both guilty and guiltless at the same time. On the one hand he is responsible for the fate of his ship and should never have allowed his ship to get near the rocks to get stranded on them, on the other hand if he is just the victim of a tsunami and storm and currenst that threw his ship against the shore, what is he to do and he cannot be blamed.
You know the Reichman brothers of Toronto also went through a huge storm when their billion dollar Olympia and York company crashed on the rocks and they were also guilty of much wrong so that the banks had to come in and took away most of the Reichman's real estate assets. Or what happened to Michael Milken a few years ago when his accounting schemes came undone and billions went down the tube and he was sentneced to jail time (by a Jewish lady judge who was later found to be having an affair. -- So she was no saint either.)
Crashes of all sorts happen in business all the time and it is dangerous to pass judgment on the main actors in the dramas, even though the goyish media loves to pillory its chosen victims. Just like the Reichamn were huge benfactors of the Haredi world and Milken was a benefactor of the Conservative Jews, likewise Rubashkin is a huge benefactor of the Lubavitch and Hasidic world.
Butif big businesses struggle or go under the world does not end and life goes on and one must hope that Jews who help other Jews with tens of millions of dollars will recover and be able to continue to do all the good that they became famous for.
So you can look at the glass of Rubashkin as being either half full or half empty.
You can, if you like focus on the "empty" part and be disgusted that it came to this, but at the same you can also focus on the "full" side and say that given all the good and merits of the Rubashkins, they should not be subjected to such horrendous hell-bent purges.
Do you know that for decades the Rubashkins feed thousands of hungry Jews for FREE in Brooklyn?
And that is just the tip of what they do. They are good people in a rough business. Being butchers is pretty messy stuff and most people would never go into that line of work even for big salaries. But they manged to create a great product line, lower prices and be reliable in kashrus and delivery. What more can one ask? That they be as pious as the Chofetz Chaim and the Baal Shem Tov? They are pious enough by today's standards, and then some.
Anyhow the Rubashkins are rich people and they will live on, but the thousands of men women and many children in families (some in some very far-flung places) who count on their chickens as the basic meat for meals during the week and Shabbos are going to now be hit with much higher prices by other companies, such as Empire chickens that costs about one dollar more per pound for the same chicken, and Rubashkins is fresher packed and better tasting. So in the end the consumer is going to lose from all the "good intentions" and "law abiding" actions of destructive do-gooders such as PETA and the corrupt unions that started the Inquisition against the Rubashkins in the first place.
Molester Airman Begins Life Sentence
November 03, 2008
Fayetteville Observer
A Pope Air Force Base, N.C., Airman is beginning a life sentence for molesting six children.
Staff Sgt. Nathan T. Wogan was convicted Oct. 23 at a general court-martial at Pope Air Force Base.
According to Pope officials, Wogan met the victims through his relationship with their parents.
Since enlisting, Wogan has been assigned to Pope, Lackland Air Force Base and North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base. Pope officials declined to say where the offenses occurred, citing the "privacy of the victims" and "the nature of the crimes."
The convictions included 22 charges and specifications of child molestation and four specifications of producing, distributing and possessing child pornography, said Master Sgt. Vicki L. Johnson, a Pope spokeswoman.
Wogan, was sentenced to reduction to airman basic, confinement for life and a dishonorable discharge, Johnson said.
He was initially arrested in August 2007 and held in Georgia on allegations of sexual battery of a minor. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations reviewed those allegations, which led to an expansion of the investigation concerning allegations involving five other children. In May 2008, Wogan was returned to Air Force custody and formal charges were preferred.
As part of a plea agreement, Wogan agreed to plead guilty to all charges and specifications and have his sentence determined by a military judge. In consideration of his guilty plea, he will serve no more than 60 years confinement.
Two military-appointed lawyers represented him, Johnson said.
"He was transferred to the Headquarters Air Force Security Forces Center, Corrections Division, at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, which manages all Air Force prisoners," said Johnson. "They will determine where he is housed."
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10865263
Accused molester blames 8-year-old girl
By Steve Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 10/31/2008 08:19:23 AM MDT
Midvale police arrested a 27-year-old man Thursday night, a month after he allegedly sexually abused his girlfriend's 8-year-old daughter -- and then blamed the incident on the child.
The man volunteered to put his girlfriend's daughter to bed. As he was doing so, he got into the bed with the girl and began to touch her in sexual ways, according to an affidavit filed with the Salt Lake County jail.
When interviewed about the crime, the man blamed the 8-year-old girl and said she had moved his hands onto her body.
The man was booked into jail on suspicion of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child - both first-degree felonies. He is being held without bail.
http://www.realitytvworld.com/news/report-gary-glitter-get-164000-for-hewlett-packard-commercial-1015539.php
Report: Gary Glitter to get $164,000 for Hewlett Packard commercial
UPI News Service, 10/29/2008
Singer and convicted British child molester Gary Glitter is expected to be paid about $164,000 in royalties for a song used in a commercial.
The 64-year-old performer returned to England in August after serving more than two years in a Vietnamese prison for sexually assaulting two little girls in 2006.
Although he has indicated he would like to live elsewhere, at least 19 countries have refused to allow him across their borders.
He is now on England's sex offenders registry and lives in hiding. His songs are never played on the radio in the United Kingdom, due to his criminal record, the Telegraph said.
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/judds%20husband%20jailed_1085195
Country star WYNONNA JUDD's shamed husband has confessed he's a sick child molester in a Tennessee courthouse.
Dan Roach, 51, has pleaded guilty to two felony counts of attempted aggravated sexual battery on a minor and is now heading to jail.
He was arrested for the sex crimes in March, 2007 - five days before his wife filed for a divorce.
Roach will serve an initial 90-day sentence behind bars and then he'll be released on probation. If he violates the conditions of his probation, he faces a 10-year prison sentence.
Judd's estranged ex, who was her former bodyguard, will also have to register as a sex offender
A popular US soap opera has apologised to the family of a six-year-old boy who was raped and murdered after his photograph was used mistakenly in an episode about a character’s abandoned son.
The producers of General Hospital: Night Shift say they have no idea how the photo of Christopher Barrios Junior ended up on air, US website TMZ reports.
Christopher was kidnapped by a convicted child molester in March last year before being raped, choked to death and then dumped in a garbage bin.
The soap opera used the same photo that was handed out to media outlets at the time of Christopher's disappearance.
SoapNET’s parent network ABC, which produces General Hospital, apologised to the family for the "terrible error".
"We offer our deepest condolences to the Barrios family for their loss and our sincerest apologies for any pain caused by our mistake," the network said in a statement.
ABC has vowed to run a series of public service announcements in Christopher's honour to raise awareness of missing children.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122576069909295517.html
NOVEMBER 4, 2008
Obama Aims to Maximize Black Turnout
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3617418,00.html
The Democrats have run a very, very expensive campaign, financed by million of dollars of foreign donations (which are illegal,) including money from Arabs in Gaza, to hide these facts. They have succeeded in convincing Jews to believe what they are told, not what they should be able to see with their own eyes. It is estimated 75% of Jews will vote for Obama. They will vote for him to feel that they are “enlightened,” overcoming any prejudice against a Muslim and a Black man. They will vote for him because they have been told he will be better for the economy (He won’t. He’ll destroy the US economy with new taxes.) They will vote for him because they have no G-d, don’t really care what is best for Israel, and because they want to feel like liberal Americans who read the New York Times, not ethnic outsiders.
People like me are harder to convince. I voted for John McCain, and so did every other American in Israel I know, Jew and gentile, religious and secular.
http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=49&a=369337
By John Curran
Associated Press
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Larkin Forney doesn't have the most conventional background: He's a convicted sex offender and drunken driver, a head injury victim and a marijuana legalization advocate.
But that hasn't stopped him running for state Senate.
Forney, 31, of Milton, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a minor and has three driving under the influence convictions, said he's running to bring public attention to flaws in the criminal justice system -- and to let the world know he's no pedophile.
He knows his background may scare off some voters, but he figures honesty might win him some votes in the race for one of six at-large seats representing Vermont's most populous county.
"All my skeletons are out in the open, while other people continue to deny theirs," he said.
Vermont law has no ban on people with criminal records running for office. If you live in the district you want to represent and you gather enough signatures from people -- in state Senate races, that's 100 -- you can get on the ballot.
Forney did.
His name appears with 13 others on Tuesday's ballot, under the "Justice for Vermonters" party label. In his campaign literature, he says diagnosed sexual predators and pedophiles should be sent to prison for life, marijuana should be legalized and U.S troops withdrawn from Iraq.
"We haven't had situations where anybody with that kind of record's been elected," said Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz. "We've had people with criminal records run for office, usually at the local level, for constable or lister. At the end of the day, the voters make a choice."
In any election, Forney probably would face an uphill battle. Running this year makes his candidacy especially unlikely.
The abduction, rape and murder of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett -- allegedly by her sex-offender uncle, Michael Jacques -- has badly shaken people in Vermont, and prompted a vigorous election-year debate over how best to prevent sex crimes and punish those responsible.
Electing a sex offender? It could happen, Forney says.
"I don't think I have that bad of a shot," he said. "The government can put the sex offender label on someone, but it doesn't make them a pedophile or a dangerous person."
Forney, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as an 8-year-old boy when he was hit by a car, blames the injury for some of his troubles, which include a suicide attempt in which he set himself on fire.
The sex charge stemmed from a 2002 incident in which he had sex with a 14-year-old girl. He says the sex was consensual, and that the girl lied about her age. Attempts to reach her for comment -- through the Chittenden County victim's advocate's office -- were unsuccessful.
Forney, who pleaded guilty to the charge in 2005, served 19 months in prison. He claims he was pressured into the plea.
http://townhall.com/blog/g/cf47766b-5a6d-44ab-95e7-ce60631bcadc
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
A Repeat of 2004 Philly Voter Chaos, Fraud
Posted by: Amanda Carpenter at 7:46 AM
EXCLUSIVE, DEVELOPING--
GOP Election Board members have been tossed out of polling stations in at least half a dozen polling stations in Philadelphia because of their party status.
A Pennsylvania judge previously ruled that court-appointed poll watchers could be NOT removed from their boards by an on-site election judge, but that is exactly what is happening.
It is the duty of election board workers to monitor and guard the integrity of the voting process.
Denying access to the minority (in this case Republican) poll watchers and inspectors is a violation of Pennsylvania state law. Those who violate the law can be punished with a misdemeanor and subjected to a fine of $1,000 and sent to prison between one month and two years.
Those on site as describing it as "pandemonium" and there may be video coming of the chaos.
Some of the precincts where Republicans have been removed are: the 44th Ward, 12th and 13th divisions; 6th Ward, 12th division; 32nd Ward, Division 28.
“Election board officials guard the legitimacy of the election process and the idea that Republicans are being intimidated and banned for partisan purposes does not allow for an honest and open election process,” said McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt in a statement to Townhall.
The City of Brotherly Love was roiled in controversy during the 2004 election because of rigged voting machines that showed nearly 2,000 votes for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry before the polls had opened. A man also used a gun to intimidate poll workers at Ward 30, division 11 in 2004.
http://www.patriotledger.com/homepage/x1022435470/Clergy-sex-abuse-victims-keep-tabs-on-fallen-priests
http://newsfromrussia.com/society/stories/29-10-2008/106640-pedophile_mcdonalds-0
Moscow police have recently arrested two pedophiles, one of whom was known as ‘Big Mac.’ The perverts would lure their victims into a trap with the help of McDonald’s sandwiches.
The two men were hunting for boys aged from 7 to 14, picking presumably those from unhealthy families.
“They would first invite boys for a walk and then go to eat at McDonald’s. Afterwards, they would invite them to their home to play a new computer game together. They would add alcohol into children’s drinks and rape them,” a police officer said. “The kids nicknamed one of the criminals as ‘Big Mac’ because he would always buy them this sandwich,” he officer added.
The rapists were nabbed for their habit of taking the victims to McDonald’s restaurants. “This eventually helped us track them down,” the police said.
Pedophiles often use food to attract children. A rapist was arrested in February in the republic of Tatarstan, who lured schoolgirls with potato chips and lemonade. The 29-year-old man attempted to jump out of the window when the police broke into his apartment.
The arrested man approached a 9-year-old girl, who was coming back home from school, on February 9 and offered her some chips and lemonade. The girl agreed and followed the man into an apartment building, where he raped her.
The pedophile was filmed on camera in the store, where he bought the chips and the drink, which helped the police identify him. His photo was aired on local TV channels, and the police received calls from people whose children also suffered from his criminal actions as well as from those who recognized the man as their neighbor.
In Malaysia, the police arrested a 53-year-old criminal in 2007, who managed to molest a ten-year-girl with apples six times.
Child molesters may also attract children’s attention and interest when they tell them that they have puppies or rabbits to show them nearby.
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/529897
Fund's charitable status revoked
Only $1 of every $100 from religious charity went to good works, federal regulator finds
November 04, 2008
Kevin Donovan
Staff Reporter
A Canadian religious charity caught up in a $300 million donation scheme to aid the poor in Israel, the United States and here at home has lost its charitable status because so few of those dollars went to good works.
Just $1 out of every $100 donated to the Choson Kallah Fund of Toronto in certain years went to relieve poverty, an audit by the federal charity regulator concluded. The majority of the donations went to a tax shelter called the Canadian Humanitarian Trust that promised investors huge tax breaks for relatively small donations.
"The charity has willingly lent its name and tax receipting privileges to the tax shelter in exchange for monetary compensation," federal auditors concluded. "In our view, the Charity has participated in a program designed to abuse the charitable gift incentive provisions of the Income Tax Act."
The Choson Kallah Fund is appealing the ruling, according to its president, Toronto rabbi Eli Gross.
"Right now, I don't think I will be able to continue our good works," said Gross. He had hoped that his agreement last year to break off ties with the tax shelter would have solved the problem.
This is the third high profile revocation of a tax-shelter connected charity in the past three months. The International Charity Association Network lost its status in August, and the Banyan Tree Foundation in October. A Star investigation into tax shelters and charities last year found that more than 100,000 Canadians are being audited over $1.4 billion in suspect donations.
The federal Charities Directorate is auditing all tax shelter-charity arrangements. In the Choson Kallah case, donors' money purchased pharmaceuticals offshore, which were then transferred – on paper – to another Canadian charity, then the drugs were donated to Vietnam, Afghanistan and other countries. The federal auditors say that only 1 per cent of the cash value of the donations went to the charity.
The Star's investigation shows that the pharmaceuticals (antibiotics, AIDS drugs, etc.) are often overvalued, and the federal auditors have confirmed that in this case.
"I don't know the mechanics of the tax fund, the legality of it or how it works," said Gross. His charity joins a growing line of groups that say they have been duped by tax-shelter promoters. For their involvement, Gross estimates the charity netted $500,000 per year in a three- to four-year period.
The Star attempted to contact the Mississauga-based tax shelter, which goes by several names, including Canadian Humanitarian Trust, CHT2008 and World Health Initiatives, but calls were not returned.
Gross said that his charity has been in operation for more than two decades and began as a small group that wanted to help people get married. Eventually it provided about $4 million a year in poverty relief funds, mostly to Israel.
When the charity hooked up with the tax shelter, their annual receipts zoomed from $4 million to $177 million in 2004-2005.
Federal auditors also take issue with the people the charity assists. Auditors found financial aid going to people who were not poor, but needed money for a wedding, fertility treatments or private debts.
Before it lost its status, the charity had vowed to make sure the money truly went to the poor.
I know this Conservative "rabbi" and his wife, who oddly seems to wear a shaytel. They are friends with a YU rabbi who was very close to Baruch Lanner.
They are always talking about the "safety net" aka Obama's plan to spread your wealth around to others too lazy to work.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/elections/article/jews_running_for_congress_old_faces_new_challengers_and_me_al_franken_20081/
Rabbi's run in N.J.
In a race with a potential first, Democrat Dennis Shulman -- aka "The Blind Rabbi" -- appears to be within striking distance in the contest to represent New Jersey's 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. A new poll has Shulman, who lost his sight as a teenager and was ordained as a Reform rabbi five years ago, trailing incumbent Republican Scott Garrett by just 7 percentage points. Also, the Democrat in recent days has picked up the endorsements of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, and The New York Times.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently moved the seat from its list of "emerging races" to the "Red to Blue" category, meaning the party is more optimistic about its chances in the district.
Shulman's bid picked up momentum in the last month, since he started attacking Garrett over a staffer's ties to a mortgage company connected to the economic crisis and charged the lawmaker with taking an improper tax break on his property. Shulman also has accused Garrett of being "too conservative" for his Bergen County-area district. Garrett has denied any wrongdoing and last week responded in kind, airing a negative advertisement accusing Shulman of wanting to negotiate with Hamas terrorists and calling him "too extreme for New Jersey."
(Shulman denies supporting talks with Hamas, saying he backs whatever diplomatic approach that Israel adopts on the issue.)
At a recent debate at a local synagogue, Garrett called on Shulman to "renounce" the endorsement he received from the left-leaning pro-Israel group J Street.
Shulman defended the endorsement, saying he backs the new group's desire to see the United States play a more active role in promoting Israel-Palestinian negotiations. Garrett has received the endorsement of the New Jersey-based pro-Israel political action committee NORPAC.
Obama Backs Dividing Jerusalem
Sen. Barack Obama told PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas this summer that he supports a PA state and Arab rights in eastern Jerusalem.
Isn't Eli Gross a rebbe in Yeshiva Yesodei Hatorah and/or a Reichmann relative?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1032853.html
Police fail to stop Ultra-Orthodox 'modesty patrols'
By Yair Ettinger
The young woman exudes strength and independence. But she bears the sign of a head fracture and scars on her face. One night, a few months ago, men broke into her apartment through the front door. They beat her up and humiliated her, knocking her head against the floor. They threatened to tear gas her if she tried to interfere with their rummaging through her possessions. And they left her bleeding on the floor.
To whom could she go for help? Her family turned its back on her when she chose to divorce her ultra-Orthodox husband; her children were taken away from her; and the neighbors in her building cold shoulder her. Now it transpires that the authorities can't help either. The investigation that began with a great deal of media fuss, has ended in failure. That, of course, took place far from the public eye.
Elhanan Buzaglo is currently being tried in a Jerusalem court. The state prosecution describes him as "a fist for hire" and he is charged with assaulting the complainant, Michal (whose full name is withheld) on June 1 of this year. The other attackers and those believed to have sent them were questioned and released. Details of the investigation that reached Haaretz reveal how it happened that Buzaglo alone faces indictment.
The basic premise
The police believe that an organization known as "the modesty patrols" is responsible for a series of violent attacks over several years, but the authorities have not been able to bring them to justice. This time seemed to be different. The opening of the indictment against Buzaglo states that "the accused acted on behalf of an organization that calls itself The Modesty Patrols and that operates in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Mea She'arim and Geula... Among other things, the organization, in order to achieve its goals, uses threats and violence and commits other violations of the law."
On June 1, Buzaglo and about six other men allegedly broke into the home of Michal, a formerly ultra-Orthodox woman. They brutally assaulted her and questioned her about supposed relationships with married men. The assailants stole two telephones from her home "to check the names of those who call her" and left after threatening to murder her if she did not leave the neighborhood within 72 hours. She now lives in Jerusalem's Ma'alot Dafna neighborhood.
Buzaglo, 29, grew up in an ultra-Orthodox environment. Over the years he has been convicted of a number of offenses. He was arrested in July after his fingerprints were found in Michal's apartment. At first, he refused to talk but later started speaking, but nothing he told his interrogators led to a breakthrough in the investigation.
The police had no difficulty connecting Buzaglo with Binyamin Meirowitz, a Gerrer Hasid who is known in Jerusalem to be connected unofficially with "the committee for the purity of our camp." This is a veteran ultra-Orthodox organization which, in addition to its overt activities on matters of modesty, is said to have been active over the years in "enforcing the law" against pedophiles in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and against ultra-Orthodox men involved in forbidden romantic affairs. Among his other activities, Meirowitz owns the Ne'eman printing press, where Buzaglo worked, posting public notices.
The breakthrough in the investigation came on August 5, when Buzaglo asked to go out into the yard, accompanied by investigator Ronen Mizrahi. He did not speak in the interrogation room for fear of being secretly recorded. He asked about a possible deal and asked to telephone Rabbi Shmuel Zafrani, the secretary of the former chief rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu, to check whether he would be considered as violating din moser (the religious prohibition against revealing information about a Jew to non-Jewish authorities) should he spill the beans.
The investigator noted in a memorandum that Zafrani explained the religious precept to Buzaglo and said that "it was permissible for him to talk about all the people who had carried out offenses of assault and other offenses against other people." After that, Buzaglo was shown photographs of the wounded Michal, and he said: "I did not beat her. It is possible that one of the others kicked her." Later he also mentioned the name of the person who employed him, Meirowitz, as having been present in the apartment, but the information provided was of limited value.
The investigator noted in the memorandum, "Because of a technical fault with the recording equipment, the contents of the investigation were not recorded."
The following day, Buzaglo continued to speak and this time, he specifically mentioned that Meirowitz had initiated the assault. He asked whether he could get the status of state witness in return for incriminating the members of the "patrols." In his memorandum, the investigator wrote that Buzaglo had spoken of "a great number of incidents, between 15 and 20 incidents, in which they had dealt with people. He had received $2,000 for every job. He said he would have to think it over very carefully whether he wanted to make such a deal and if he decided to go ahead with it, he would tell us about all the people and all the cases."
Buzaglo said that another five men were involved in the attack on Michal, including a youth called Cahane "about whom he does not know full details but he can show us the house where they live in Meah She'arim." He later said there were actions that he refused to take upon himself. "According to him, he was involved in dozens of incidents and also knows about other incidents that he was not involved in," the investigator noted, but this time, too, the memorandum ended with the remark that it had not been possible to record Buzaglo.
Nevertheless, in August the police arrested Meirowitz and also summoned Rabbi Yitzhak Safranovich, who heads the committee for the purity of our camp. At the same time, two other youths who the police believed were connected with the "patrols" were arrested.
Neighborhood demonstrations
The arrests and the investigation of the rabbi led to a wave of demonstrations in Mea She'arim and to demands that they be released. Those being held were released within days while tempers cooled, but the police claimed there was no significance to the move, and that the prosecution was planning to submit indictments against all of them. Only now, after the Haaretz investigation, does it transpire that no one other than Buzaglo is going to be indicted, for "lack of evidence."
"It is very strange," says a legal source connected to the case. "We all know what the modesty patrols are, but here they take a Moroccan and place all the blame on him. It is clear that Buzaglo is on the fringe of the fringe in this case."
The Jerusalem District police said in response that "following the assault, a number of suspects were interrogated. The investigation against them was exhausted but when insufficient evidence was found against them in order to bring them to trial, it was decided to submit an indictment against the main suspect." One of the reasons for the failure of the investigation, the police admit, was "a technical fault with the recording device."
Meanwhile Buzaglo has changed his story and found a new explanation for the fingerprint found in Michal's apartment. He says he was having an affair with her and he knows nothing about the assault. During one discussion over extending his remand, he asked that his wife leave the courtroom before admitting to the supposed affair. Police arranged a confrontation between him and Michal, and she claimed that she had never seen him before. When the investigator asked him whether he was prepared to lie by giving a bad name to a young woman he did not know, Buzaglo merely recited psalms in a monotonous voice. Since that moment, everything that he related about the modesty patrols has been forgotten.
Thus Michal was abandoned for a second time. Buzaglo's story now not only cleanses him of guilt but also supposedly backs the claim that the victim was having affairs with married men. Until a few days ago, Michal was not aware that the investigation was completed.
"From time to time, the police call me and tell me that the investigation is proceeding," she says. "That is annoying. People can do whatever is in their head, take the law into their hands, but the law itself is not put in motion. I can do nothing. I am just trying to survive."
New York…The on-line store Kosher-NY will go out of business at the end of the calendar year if partners Avi Olitzky and Paul Margulies do not find a suitor. Both are pursuing other interests. Olitzky and Margulies do not want to see their venture die, but see no other choice but to close down their business before the end of the calendar year, unless someone is willing to take over the company and run with it.
30 US states in recession, 19 at risk: Moody's
Thirty US states were mired in recession in September, …
(AFP) – Thirty US states were mired in recession in September, and 19 others are at risk of falling into recession in the coming months, a survey by ratings agency Moody's Investors Service said Tuesday.
Moody's defined recession for the study as a decline in a state's gross domestic product (GDP) on average over a six-month period, compared with the prior six-month period.
According to the March-September study, 27 states were already in recession in August.
States with shrunken GDPs were concentrated in the eastern half of the United States -- the Midwest, the southeast and the northeast -- and the West (California, the largest state economy; Oregon; and Hawaii).
At-risk states were located in the center of the country and in the northeast, including New York state.
Moody's said the only state that showed growth was Alaska, whose economy is dominated by the oil and gas industry.
While not one of the 50 states, Moody's survey included the US capital Washington, also called the District of Columbia, where the heavily government-dependent economy also grew during the period.
Highly interesting that the govt has a problem with Toronto's Chosson Kallah Fund giving money to people who aren't aniyim.
What about the Eretz Yisroeldikka shnorrers who want us to outright bankroll the purchase of homes for their children?
Does anyone know if this is nogeah to screaming obscenities at UOJ?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scotus5-2008nov05,0,4433666.story
U.S. Supreme Court hears case on broadcast indecency
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR2008110202150.html
Effectiveness of AIG's $143 Billion Rescue Questioned
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008; A18
A number of financial experts now fear that the federal government's $143 billion attempt to rescue troubled insurance giant American International Group may not work, and some argue that company shareholders and taxpayers would have been better served by a bankruptcy filing.
Florida -- 27 electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry 52 percent to 47 percent in a state known for the disputed result that decided the 2000 election. Florida is a classic swing state with many older voters who could favor McCain along with Jewish voters who are normally Democratic but have been wary of Obama. Two new polls on Tuesday had Obama in the lead by 1 and 3 points respectively, while another recent poll gave a 1-point edge to McCain.
Indiana -- 11 electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry by 20 points in 2004 in a state that last voted for a Democrat in 1964. But it borders Obama's home state of Illinois and he has poured resources into his Indiana campaign after finishing a strong second to Sen. Hillary Clinton in the May Democratic primary. The Reuters/Zogby poll on Tuesday showed McCain in the lead by 5 points, although earlier polls had showed the race as a dead heat.
Missouri -- 11 electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry 53 percent to 46 percent in 2004 in a classic battleground with a mix of cities and conservative rural areas. The race looks to be among the tightest in the country, with two new polls on Tuesday showing it a tie.
New Hampshire -- Four electoral votes. Kerry beat Bush by 1 point in 2004. McCain's history of big primary wins in New Hampshire in 2000 and this year gives him hope he can take the state in November.
New Mexico -- Five electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry by fewer than 6,000 votes in 2004. As the senator from neighboring Arizona, McCain is familiar to many New Mexico voters, but he will have to battle Obama for the growing bloc of Hispanics, who make up more than 40 percent of the state's population.
Nevada -- Five electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry by 20,000 votes in 2004 in a state won by Republicans in eight of the past 10 presidential elections. As in New Mexico, the burgeoning Hispanic population will be crucial -- it now makes up nearly a quarter of Nevada's residents.
North Carolina -- 15 electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry by 12 points in 2004, even though the Democratic vice presidential nominee, John Edwards, was from the state. More than one-fifth of the population is black and an influx of transplants to high-tech urban areas have given Obama a chance. The two most recent polls split, one showing McCain up by 1 point and the other giving a similar lead to Obama.
Ohio -- 20 electoral votes. Bush beat Kerry by about 120,000 votes in the state that ultimately decided the 2004 race. No Republican has won the White House without Ohio, and McCain will have a hard time piecing together a win without the state.
Pennsylvania -- 21 electoral votes. Kerry beat Bush 51 percent to 48 percent in 2004, but Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states won by Kerry where McCain's camp had seen a chance to reverse the result.
Virginia -- 13 electoral votes. Bush won fairly easily by 9 points in 2004 in a state that has not gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1964.
Margo filed a frivolous complaint this morning with Federal authorities that UOJ is trying to fraudulently influence the outcome of the election against Barack Osama.
Margo thinks he's going to get one of those $1000 "refund" (welfare) checks that Osama wants to give to non-taxpayers that would be deducted from UOJ's & Eli Greenwald's & everyone else's income.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/11/03/2008-11-03_bernard_kerik_pals_plan_bash_to_pay_his_.html
Monday, November 3rd 2008, 11:30 PM
Friends of disgraced former NYPD boss Bernard Kerik are throwing him a fund-raiser to help pay his legal bills.
The invite to the Dec. 1 soiree at The Brownstone banquet hall in Paterson, N.J., exhorts donors to "support an American hero" with a minimum donation of $75 per ticket.
The money will chip away at his ever-mounting lawyer fees from defending himself against federal charges of perjury, tax fraud and illegal payoff charges.
The fund-raising notice includes photos of Kerik standing next to President Bush in the days following Sept. 11, 2001, as well as Kerik in military gear and festooned with an NYPD medal.
I should have thrown my party earlier. Rubashkin fressers have bought up all the vodka & Mountain Dew inventory to celebrate the criminal doodoo that Sholom & Moishe are in.
Oib m'davent MCCAIN efsher oisPALIN az der aibeshter zol nisht BIDEN der president far A'BHAIMA !!!!
The gerus is obviously a farce if they started cuddling up while she was still a shiksa. Just like that Borat idiot in real life.
http://www.momlogic.com/2008/10/ivanka_trump_converting_for_lo.php
Gorgeous Ivanka Trump may be getting ready to walk down the aisle. Donald Trump's daughter is reportedly converting to Judaism so she can marry longtime love Jared Kushner. Kushner, from an orthodox Jewish family, is the publisher of the New York Observer and just as fabulous and filthy rich as his reported soon-to-be fiancé.
Now we all know how outspoken Donald Trump can be (um...remember the Rosie O'Donnell feud) but he's keeping quiet on this one. Our well-placed momlogic sources tell us that Donald and Ivanka have a very close relationship. In fact, Donald is so protective of his daughter, that out of respect for Ivanka, Donald has decided not to comment on his daughter's private life. As for Ivanka, she's keeping quiet and has chosen not to discuss her decision publicly. But a source tells the New York Post that Ivanka's conversion is going nicely. "She and Jared were in shul during the holidays and ate in the sukkah every night," The spy tells the Post.
Well, even though everyone is being tight-lipped about the conversion and what just might be the society wedding of the year, momlogic has a little inside information for you. We've spent some time with both Jared and Ivanka recently and here's what we can report. Besides being absolutely gorgeous and rich, they both share some other qualities as well. Both are hard working, dedicated and are more likely to be found toiling away at their desk than dancing on tables in nightclubs. Yes, both were born into fabulously wealthy families - but believe it or not, these are not spoiled, silver spoon-fed rich kids we're talking about. Both Ivanka and Jared have worked their way up the ranks - Jared in publishing and Ivanka in her father's real estate empire. In fact, friends say their no-nonsense attitudes and strong work ethic is one of the things that first attracted them to each other - well, that and the fact that they're both totally hot!
So while we haven't exactly received our invite to the wedding yet, let us be the first to say, "Mazel Tov" to the happy couple.
Schumer - "Fairness Doctrine coming"
Kenyans Pray for Obama Win
Pentagon to Brief New Administration Immediately
McCain: Drag Your Neighbors to Polls
Beware the Exit Polls, Experts Caution
Black Panthers Intimidating Voters, Reporters
Giuliani: McCain Must Sweep Traditional GOP States
Iraqi Views Mixed on U.S. Presidential Contest
Heritage Foundation: Audit Obama Campaign
Los Angeles Power Outages Disrupt Voting
U.N. Chief: I Can Work With Whoever Wins
Bill Richardson: 70 Percent of Hispanics for Obama
Last Battleground Polls Show Close Race
Obama Win Could Strain Ties with Israel
Virginia Poll Worker Chronicles Somber Mood
New Poll: McCain-Obama Race Too Close to Call
RNC Head Duncan Predicts Surprises
Bob Barr Wants to Hurt the GOP
Rahm Emanuel Eyeing Obama Staff
Chief Position
Report: Problems Seen at Many Polling Places
Police in Toledo Given Riot Gear, Gas Masks
Zuckerman: Economy Will Overwhelm Whoever Wins
Obama, Farrakhan, Ayers All Use Same Polling Place
GOP Monitors Tossed out of Polls In Philly
Dan Rather: Indiana, Virginia Are the Keys
NEW YORK -- A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst who pleaded guilty to criminal charges and cooperated with prosecutors in probing an insider-trading scheme that netted more than $6 million may have fled the country, according to a court filing.
In a letter filed late Monday, Scott Black, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer, said the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan has indicated that David Pajcin, a one-time analyst in Goldman's fixed-income division, is in violation of his probation and prosecutors and his criminal defense lawyer believe "he is no longer ...
Schumer Compares Talk Radio to 'Pornography'
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 1:27 PM
By: Jim Meyers
Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer defended the so-called Fairness Doctrine regarding talk radio, telling Fox News: “I think we should all be fair and balanced, don’t you?”
The Fairness Doctrine, repealed during the Ronald Reagan administration, would require radio stations to balance conservative talk hosts with liberal ones.
In a Fox interview Tuesday morning, the Senator from New York was asked if he supported telling radio station what their content should be.
“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air,” Schumer said.
“I am for that … But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”
In 2007, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a close ally of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, told The Hill newspaper: “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”
Conservatives fear that forcing stations to give liberal hosts equal time on the air would cut into profits so significantly that radio executives would scale back on conservative radio programming to avoid escalating costs and interference from the FCC, according to The Hill.
They also note that conservative radio shows have been far more successful than liberal ones.
A recent Zogby poll disclosed that those who said they would vote for Barack Obama support reinstating the Fairness Doctrine by a margin of 53 percent to 37 percent, with 10 percent not sure.
Newsmax
Wow! So my friend The Donald (Trump) is going to be a mechutan of that grubbe goniff Charles Kushner?
I spoke with the court about an hour ago to confirm Moshe Rubashkin's sentence. Here's what I was told:
1. The sentence could have been as long as 18 months or as short as 12 months. Moshe Rubashkin got 16 months.
2. He must surrender himself January 6, 2009, at 2 pm.
3. The court recommended he serve his sentence at Ottisville, NY.
"Bob Barr Wants to Hurt the GOP"
Hey Barr, you PUTZ! The Leftist minor party candidates will do a lot more damage to Osama than you will to McCain.
There's that Arab Ralph Nader and the shvartzer anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney for the Green Party and a bunch of even smaller fringe candidates.
I think Jared Kushner is immature along the lines of this jerk who used to publish Jewsweek:
http://www.myjesusyear.com/about/
They have some hang up they call "shiksa appeal" in which they disregard Jewish girls to chase shiksas. Jewsweek did nothing but publish silly articles that glorified it.
Kushner especially could get any girl he wanted from the Tribe but he had to chase Ivanka Trump.
We appreciate the goodwill gesture of prayer for the success of philanthropists. However, we feel that praying for the source of the funding cutbacks would have greater results. Institutions worldwide feel the 80% reduction in contributions from our charitable city.
We firmly believe all Jews are responsible for one another. A Jew in crisis anywhere, has a ripple affect on Jews worldwide. Yet, despite our best intentions and efforts to spread Hashem’s bountiful blessings to institutions in need, we neglected our own city. One member of our community has been under attack, and pursued relentlessly by one of the city’s founding kollel fellows. This is a kollel funded by the city, for the benefit of all the members of our city.
Witnessing the actions of this individual has tainted our worldview of support for Torah institutions. We are afraid that his character traits and vicious pursuit of others is encouraged and condoned by Torah institutions. Regretfully, at this time only local institutions and a handful of select institutions will receive any charitable contributions.
We regret the difficulties the affected institutions and families are experiencing with a growing deficit. We are heartsick the situation evolved and reached this point. All pain caused to the affected parties, lies squarely on the shoulders of this one kollel fellow. It is our greatest desire to start money flowing again.
We hereby join the day of prayer for the wellbeing of Torah true institutions and families. We pray that peace and abundant blessing should again reign in our city. We pray that the individual has remorse, and abandon his pursuit of an innocent man who has quietly helped so many in our community. Please join us, and raise our voices in prayer.
The Nazi rats are comin' out of their sewer sooner than I thought!
---------------------------
Nov. 4, 2008
Pat Buchanan:
...."The GOP needs to confront the truth: The failure of the Bush presidency lies not in a failed execution of policy but in the policies themselves and the neoconservative ideology that informed them." .....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton
Does anyone know if the Israel Prisons Authority let Mondrowitz vote today?
He's very worried that if Obama is not elected, the Republicans will never let him get weekend furloughs from Rikers Island.
Willie Horton, it's ok even with the Republicans. Uncle Milty has a special deal with Rikers. He's only banned from using his influence at Federal prisons, not State prisons.
Boog tells me that anything is possible at Rikers now that it's not "Giuliani Time" anymore.
Margo was thrown out of the polling place after he tried to sneak into a booth to vote twice.
Re: Kushner couple. Is it so difficult to understand why a young man would rebel against his religion, when he was born into a family like the Kushners? Whether Charlie considers himself Orthodox or not, all denominations know that he is one of the sleaziest operators in a profession known for sleaze. Everyone who has ever conducted business with the Kushners has been burnt beyond recognition, Jew and Gentile, frum or otherwise!
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