Does The Pope Refuse To Live In The Papal Apartments Because He Knows The Curia Will Try To Kill Him?

When the College of Cardinals elects the new Pope, they don't have a magic wand to give him-- and he's stuck with an entrenched, conservative Curia. And like all conservatives-- very corrupt. There's been a lot in the news lately about Pope Francis remarking on the "gay lobby" (or, more accurately, a gay subculture) in the Vatican. That's not really the story though. This week NPR interviewed Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the British Catholic weekly The Tablet, who reminded them that "many of these people in the Vatican that are gay, and even acting out, are extremely conservative. I mean these are not people that want to change the church's teaching on homosexuality-- not at all." Sounds like the U.S. Congress, which is filled with self-loathing closet cases like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), etc.

Mickens claims that "the big game is blackmail. It's a mutual recrimination system. That's what is really twisted about the whole thing. I know he is doing this, he knows I'm doing that, checkmate-- and that is how the game works. It's a bad, bad system." Also interviewed for the NPR report, Vatican analyst Marco Politi gets straight to the point: conservatives are corrupt.

The three hot issues in the Vatican Curia are issues about career, about personal ambitions; are issues about money-- which means corruption-- and are issues about sex... There was money laundering through the Vatican bank, money of the mafia. And in same time, in the '90s, there were big amounts of money for bribes for Italian political parties.

...Ezio Mauro, editor-in-chief of the daily La Repubblica, says that by speaking openly of these issues, the pope is trying to counteract mounting opposition within the Curia itself.

Ezio Mauro: The pope is keenly aware this power structure has entrenched itself underneath the legitimate government of the church. He is probably isolated but he intends to change things.

NPR: Francis has already made big changes from all previous popes. He has appointed a commission of eight cardinals from all over the world to help him govern and reform the church. And he has decided not to live in the papal apartments, preferring to stay in the Santa Marta residence on Vatican grounds. There, he has breakfast and meals with other guests, visiting prelates and even low-level Vatican employees. And he frequently puts his own coins in the automatic espresso dispenser in the corridor.

Francis is surrounded by corruption and evil

Pope Francis says the reason he moved into the modest Casa Santa Marta instead of the regal Papal Apartments was so he could "feel like part of the family." Many think its so he can better avoid the corrupt conservative Curia which will not hesitate to murder a pope bent on reform that could cost them their power and wealth. “I’m visible to people and I lead a normal life-- a public Mass in the morning, I eat in the refectory with everyone else, et cetera," he explained. "All this is good for me and prevents me from being isolated. I’m trying to stay the same and to act as I did in Buenos Aires because if you change at my age you just look ridiculous.”

The NY Times speculates that Francis wants to root out the corruption among the Curia but that "changing the style of the papacy is far easier than changing the Vatican-- an ancient monarchy in which the pope is treated like a king, branches of the hierarchy are run like medieval fiefs and supplicants vie for access and influence. For decades popes have tried, and often failed, to change the Vatican. How Francis fares could define his papacy-- and determine whether the church can better serve its more than one billion faithful around the globe."

While the power of the pope is absolute, the vested institutional interests and vast bureaucracy of the Vatican are powerful, too. The waning days of Benedict’s troubled papacy were marked by complaints from ordinary Catholics as well as from powerful cardinals that the Curia had become too concerned with accumulating power and unresponsive to the needs of its followers.

For Francis to change that, he must contend with power centers within the Vatican that revolve around things like money, real estate and the distribution of resources, but also foreign policy, ideology and church doctrine. Beneath the pope, a handful of powerful cardinals preside over nine congregations, including ones that manage religious orders, global missionary work, the liturgy and the naming of bishops, as well as 12 pontifical councils. A single department oversees the process of selecting new saints.

The most powerful administrator, after the pope, is his secretary of state, who plays a critical role in guiding church affairs, setting the foreign policy agenda and controlling access to the pope.

Benedict selected Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a canon lawyer, who wielded tremendous power as the main gatekeeper, alienated many inside the Vatican and was widely seen as more interested in Italian politics than in global affairs.

The intense dissatisfaction with his management worsened long-simmering turf wars.

“For some time in various parts of the church, including among people extremely faithful to it, critical voices have been raised about the lack of coordination and confusion which reigns at its center,” Cardinal Paolo Sardi of Italy said to the pope in February 2009, in one of the letters published last May in the tell-all book, Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI.

Those leaks raised the stakes by embarrassing even the pope. They showed the deluge of personal requests made of Benedict, but also included complaints of corruption by a senior Vatican official who was transferred after trying to rein in cost overruns.

...“The cardinals are accustomed to being treated like nobility,” said Jason Berry, author of Render Unto Rome,” a book examining the finances of the church. “The cardinals have de facto immunity. Under canon law, they are never punished. The other problem is that popes are very, very reluctant to shake up the political culture that elected them.”

Critics of the Curia say these traditions have nurtured a hierarchy of promotions and positions based on personal favoritism and connections. That structure is at once unwieldy and uncoordinated, they say, while being overly centralized, stirring resentment for the nontransparent and nondemocratic ways in which it renders judgments.

Last year, the powerful department known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith-- the same office that convicted Galileo of heresy and ran the Inquisition-- ordered a controversial reprimand of American nuns for challenging church teachings on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood.

Yet when a committee representing the leaders of different religious orders sought a meeting to clarify the nun issue, the Vatican response was murky at best, with no single department accepting responsibility for the investigation.

“There seems to be a kind of culture of secrecy in the Curia,” said the former superior general of a religious order who, like many others interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified in order to speak frankly. “Occasionally, they would send out a questionnaire for consultation on some issue. But basically, the Curia is a self-contained system that functions by itself.”

Even insiders complain that communication among various departments is slow and fractured. When the Vatican announced a plan to enable traditionalist Anglicans to find a home within the Catholic Church, it surprised even Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official overseeing the church’s relations with Anglicans. The announcement occurred while the cardinal was out of town.

...Pope Francis seems intent on changing this culture. He wore a simple white cassock when he was introduced as pope and later made reference to his “brother cardinals,” rather than addressing them as the customary “your lordships.” Last Saturday, the Vatican said Francis would provisionally reinstate all existing department heads, as is customary. But Vatican watchers say the very fact that he issued the statement, rather than staying silent, indicates he may install his own team relatively quickly.

Those who know the Vatican understand that changing it will not be easy.

If you can ignore, momentarily, the divisive, hot button issues like LGBT equality and women's Choice, Francis' papacy has started out as pretty hopeful for progressives, particularly when it comes to economic and social justice issues. His message has been very strongly against the kind of greed-is-good credo that conservatives adore and pattern their lives around. This pope has been speaking out against consumerism and against the Austerity Agenda that is pulverizing working families around the world. He's making a lot of powerful enemies along the way. Do you think Catholic conservatives like Paul Ryan and John Boehner are thrilled when the Pope says things like "I think about those who are unemployed often because of an economic conception of society that seeks egoistic profit regardless of social justice?" Marco Rubio who changes religion the way a normal person changes his underwear probably contemplates switching back to Mormonism or whatever cults he's been in when he hears the Pope saying "The Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them. The Pope appeals for disinterested solidarity and for a return to person-centred ethics in the world of finance and economics." It must send shudders of horrors down the backs of arch-reactionaries and acolytes of Greed and Selfishness in the Senate like Pat Toomey, David Vitter, Jim Risch and Joe Donnelly.

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Rob Ford, The Canadian Chris Christie

Rob Ford is certainly a "fat fuck," but-- much worse-- he's a disgusting bigot, a thug and a quintessential conservative. But what's interesting about the "fat fuck" episode (just before the 3 minute mark on the video above) is that the reporter didn't call Ford a "fat fuck." It was the goon bodyguard who came up with the accusation that the reporter called him a "fat fuck" to change the subject and rattle the reporter. He and Ford then went on the attack, like two vicious overtly threatening hoodlums, chasing the reporter out of the room and ending the embarrassing interview. Watch Ford in action. It was the pathological behavior shown on this clip, rather than his obesity, that has caused people to call him the Chris Christie of Canada.

Watching his loutish, thuggish behavior, makes it hard to believe Ford was born into great wealth and to a politician dad to boot. Daddy tried to buy him a spot on a football team-- and Ford did get on his college squad, where he warmed the bench for the whole time he was on the team... and then dropping out when he realized he would never play a game. He also never got a college degree. He's also never had a real job in his life, having "worked" for the family firm until he started running for office, as an American style right-wing extremist and overt racist, over a dozen years ago. When called out for an anti-Italian racist comment, Ford shrugged it off: "I'm a conservative and the majority of people are left-wing and cannot stand my politics."

Ford is, needless to say, a virulently anti-gay bigot-- so much so that one has to wonder why he's so obsessed with homosexuality... and when he might be caught trying to have sex with an underage boy.

He managed to slip into Toronto's mayoralty in 2010 because it was a three-way race. He won 47% of the vote. He's the most corrupt mayor in recorded history and was found guilty of conflicts of interest and enough related crap to have a judge declare the mayor's seat empty. He's appealing and is allowed to keep the seat while the appeal works its way through the courts. But that isn't why he turned to drugs. He's been a drug abuser (as well as a belligerent alcoholic) for many years and, in fact, was arrested for driving under the influence of drugs in Miami. The Florida police who pulled him over found marijuana and he was convicted of possession, something he denied while running for mayor. Being a conservative, lying comes very naturally to Ford, not just when there are court records of drug possession, but even when he denied being at a hockey game, getting drunk and abusing people and being kicked out of the stadium by the police-- with hundreds of witnesses. When he says something-- anything-- he's as likely to be lying as telling the truth. And almost no one believes his current denials about having smoked crack. Last March, when he groped Sarah Thomson, a former mayoral candidate and publisher of the Women's Post. Thomson said he was either on coke or something like it, describing him as "talking quickly, out of it, arrogant... he was definitely out of it.”

And then the biggest scandal broke-- Ford palling around with some Somali drug dealers and smoking crack... which wound up on a cellphone video.

It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches.

“I’m fucking right-wing,” Ford appears to mutter at one point. “Everyone expects me to be right-wing. I’m just supposed to be this great.…” and his voice trails off. At another point he is heard calling Trudeau a “fag.” Later in the 90-second video he is asked about the football team and he appears to say (though he is mumbling), “they are just fucking minorities.”

And now the cover-up, which seems to include the murder of one of the men trying to peddle the video-- has Ford's staffers resigning and running for their lives. All this promoted the national broadcasting company, the CBC, to publish a story yesterday about the outstanding questions in this case:

Where is the video?

For all the controversy that has been swirling, one crucial question remains: Where is the video?

The Star and Gawker have stood by their reports about the video. Ford has said it doesn't exist.

The Star's Doolittle has said she and Donovan were told there was more than one copy of the video. Gawker has said it has raised the $200,000 asking price, through crowd-sourcing, but has not been able to make contact with those who have the alleged video. It said Tuesday that it will give the sellers about a month to respond before it decides what else to do with the money; donating it to charities was the alternative.

According to published reports on May 28, someone on Ford's staff was told days ago about the potential location of the video, and passed that information along to police.

Has Rob Ford ever smoked crack cocaine?

Ford said on May 17 that he does not "use crack cocaine” and that he is not a crack cocaine addict. Questions remain as to whether he has used drugs in the past. Ford has yet to provide additional clarification.

What is the connection to Anthony Smith?

The people shopping the alleged Ford video would not provide a screen grab of what they had. But the alleged go-between did give the Toronto Star and Gawker a photo of the mayor with his arm around someone said to be Anthony Smith, a 21-year-old who was shot and killed outside a downtown nightclub in March.

CBC News has spoken to people who know the men in the picture, and confirmed they believe that the men in the photo are Smith and Muhammad Khattak, who was injured in that same shooting and whose face was pixellated in the original photo.

The mayor, who has a practice of coaching and working with young people, has simply said he gets his picture taken with many people.

The Toronto Star is now suggesting the cellphone with the alleged video may have belonged to Smith. Police haven't confirmed that is the case.

It's hard to imagine a nice city like Toronto could have ever elected a sociopath like Ford-- even if more people did vote against him than for him. The latest polling, though, shows him supremely unpopular and likely to be beaten by his old adversary Olivia Chow, currently clobbering him 56-36%. And that was even before this morning's new broke that he admits to knowing where the crack video is!

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford told senior aides not to worry about a video appearing to show him smoking crack cocaine because he knew where it was, sources told the Star.

Ford then blurted out the address of two 17th-floor units-- 1701 and 1703-- at a Dixon Rd. apartment complex, to the shock of staffers at a city hall meeting almost two weeks ago, the sources said.

The mayor cited “our contacts” as the source of his information, according to insiders familiar with the unusual May 17 session in his office.

Staffers were alarmed by the implication of hearing so precise a location, sources said.

Now, I hope no one misinterpreted what I said about conservatives to mean that all conservatives smoke crack. That's crazy! I just meant that all conservatives are liars and sociopaths and corrupt. That's all.

UPDATE: Has Ford's Whole Staff Walked Out On Him?

These crazy conservatives! Now the Star is reporting that two more staffers have resigned as of today-- so five so far this week. One was his executive assistant, Kia Nejatian, which probably means he might as well resign now and save Toronto any further agony over his mayoralty. Ford's brother, Doug, who has been an adjunct of his career, is now being shunned by Ontario Conservatives, who are hoping he disappears along with big brother asap. They used to call him a superstar... but that was almost a whole month ago. The Conservative leader in the provincial legislature, Jim Wilson, said that Doug Ford "is not our candidate. I don’t even know the guy... personally I’ve never even met him." Cold!

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Economist Umair Haque Uses Twitter To Dissect Conservatism

Most people who know who author and economist Umair Haque is, probably know him for his coverage of modern capitalism at the Harvard Business Review. But he's also a voracious twitter. This (partial) series of tweets yesterday is one of the best uses of Twitter I've ever seen:

It would be great to see Mike Lux put his book on the nature of American conservatism, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, into twitter form.

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Does Anyone Think The Republican Party Is The Same As A Garden Variety Fascist Party? Consider North Carolina

Just how the GOP, financed by wealthy fascist Art Pope, took over the entire North Carolina state government and immediately turned to subverting democracy and cementing their own power, is a well-known story, at least in circles where people care about such things. And barely a day passes without the Republican extremists in the legislature and the Republican extremist governor working their asses off-- on behalf of consolidating and retaining power. This week, for example, the House, largely along party-lines, passed a controversial voter ID law meant to disenfranchise African-Americans, poor people and students. Most North Carolina voters oppose it, but ALEC and Pope insist. In fact, ALEC and Pope insist on a lot of things-- and the North Carolina Republican Party is delivering for them:

With no remaining checks to Republican rule in North Carolina, the state has now become a haven for some of the most ideological-- and ill-considered-- tea party fantasies dressed up as legislation. Here are just a few of the bills being pushed in the house (and the senate) that Art Pope built:

• Voter Suppression : It’s a sad commentary on the state of American politics that once Republicans take over a state, they almost immediately begin enacting laws to make it harder for Democratic-leaning groups to cast a ballot. North Carolina Republicans, however, have embraced voter suppression with unusual enthusiasm. They’ve introduced voter ID, a common GOP method of reducing turnout among minorities, low-income voters and students. They’ve introduced Florida-like restrictions on early voting, cutting early voting hours and eliminating voting the Sunday before election day in order to thwart voting drives at African-American churches. And they want to punish parents whose children vote from their college addresses.

• Reverse Robin Hood: A GOP bill in the North Carolina Senate would eliminate all individual and corporate income taxes, and largely replace it with higher sales taxes. Sales taxes disproportionately burden lower-income taxpayers, because they spend a larger percentage of their income on basic needs. It is also far more difficult to create a progressive sales tax than to enact a progressive income tax code that places a lesser tax burden on those who can least afford it. As a result, a similar tax plan in Louisiana would raise taxes on 80 percent of residents, while giving Louisianans in the top 1 percent of income earners an average tax cut of $25,423.

• Shutting Down Abortion Clinics: Another bill in the state senate would add new restrictions to abortion clinics in an attempt to force them to close their doors. Among other things, the bill requires doctors to have admitting privileges in a hospital located within 30 miles of the clinic, an unnecessary restriction that serves little purpose other than to limit the pool of doctors available to clinics.

• Anti-Worker Constitutional Amendment: A so-called “right-to-work” law, which depresses worker wages by cutting back unions’ ability to collectively bargain for wages and benefits, is already the law in North Carolina, effectively cutting both union and non-union wages by $1,500 a year. Nevertheless, 34 Republican lawmakers (and one Democrat) sponsored a state constitutional amendment that would lock this anti-worker policy into the state Constitution. The same amendment would strip public sector workers of their right to collectively bargain, and lock in policies making it easier for companies to pressure their workers against unionizing to boot.

• Subsidizing Home Schooling: Eight Republican lawmakers sponsored a bill giving families a $1,250 per semester tax subsidy if they home school their children.

• Judges For Sale: A pair of bills in the state senate would eliminate the state’s successful public financing system for judicial elections. Prior to this system’s enactment in 2004, “73 percent of campaign funds for judicial candidates came from attorneys and special interest groups,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice’s Alicia Bannon. Now, it’s 14 percent. So public financing was successful in rolling back moneyed interest groups’ ability to buy and sell judges through campaign donations, and these GOP bills would throw judicial elections back to the old ways.

• State Sponsored Religion: Eleven Republicans, including the state’s House Majority Leader, backed a resolution proclaiming that the Constitution “does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional,” and then decreeing that North Carolina could establish its own state religion. On the bright side, state house Speaker Thom Tillis announced that he would not advance this resolution after it was widely panned.

Back to that polling for a moment, though:

• Only 6% of voters support allowing legislators to start receiving gifts from lobbyists again, while 88% are opposed. There's pretty strong bipartisan agreement that that's a bad idea with independents (4/93), Democrats (5/87), and Republicans (8/86) all firmly against it.

• Only 25% of voters support a proposal to forbid parents from claiming college students registered to vote away from home as dependents on their state taxes, compared to 57% who are opposed. This is another one where the Republican legislators supporting the measure are out of touch with actual Republican voters- only 26% support it with 56% opposed, not that different from the numbers among Democrats which are 22% supportive and 61% opposed.

• Just 33% of voters support cutting the early voting period by a week, while 59% are opposed. Republicans do narrowly support this idea (51/42), but Democrats (22/70) and independents (28/62) are heavily opposed to it.

• Only 22% of voters support eliminating the state's renewable energy standards, while 39% are against that idea. Republican voters (29/25) only narrowly support eliminating the standard while Democrats (13/47) and independents (28/41) are pretty firmly against it.

• Only 28% of voters support a proposal to make it a crime for law enforcement officers to enforce federal gun laws on North Carolina manufactured fire arms, while 42% are opposed. Democrats (33/41), Republicans (24/41), and independents (26/46) all think that one's a bad idea.

• The only high profile Republican initiative we polled that has much traction with voters is the one to make Christianity the official state religion. 42% support that to 45% who are opposed and while much of that support is because a majority of Republicans favor it (53/33) it actually has 41% support from Democrats too, much more appeal across party lines than any of these other proposals. Despite the decent level of support for Christianity as the state religion, only 16% of voters agree with the state legislator who labeled a prayer to Allah as an act of terrorism last week, although that does go up to 25% among Republicans.

The GOP is becoming increasingly unpopular as a governing party in the state. The Democratic Party is in complete turmoil, riven with dissension, and nearly moribund as a functional organization-- which allows McCrory to keep goin' for the gold. Friday evening, just as the State Board of Elections was investigating how he and other Republicans were able to subvert democracy to seize power last year, he announced he had fired the whole Board and his replacements-- 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats-- would take over this week.

The move puts the progress of the board’s investigation into campaign contributions from an indicted sweepstakes software company owner in question.

Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, last week asked the board to investigate more than 60 campaign contributions totaling more than $230,000. Some of the contributions went to McCrory, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate leader Phil Berger.

A majority of sitting board members said they were interested in investigating, according to an Associated Press story. But on Friday night, Chairman Larry Leake said it would be inappropriate for members on their last day in office to talk about the investigation or give staff any direction. The board has a meeting scheduled for Tuesday.

“It might be presumptuous for us to attempt to do anything with a new board coming on May 1,” Leake said. “It makes no sense for our board to attempt to direct the conduct of our office when we are in fact exiting out the door.”

...Two of the governor’s GOP appointees said they didn’t know how the board would proceed with the sweepstakes inquiry.

...Charles Winfree, a Republican who has served on the board for 12 years, said he would encourage the new members to pursue the investigation. “Based on what I’ve been told by the staff, it appears to me that there is enough to warrant an investigation,” he said. “Certainly the practice of the contributors needs to be examined.”

Hall said he was “nervous” about the 100 percent turnover on the elections board, but hoped the new members would approach the questions objectively.

“I think there were veterans, both Republicans and Democrats, on the Board of Elections that have been objective in reviewing complaints against both parties and I’ve admired their ability to get the facts even when they don’t agree with my personal opinions,” he said. “I hope the new group will also be very professional and fulfill the responsibilities to be above partisan biases and search for the truth.”

Hall asked the board to investigate three issues related to contributions from Chase Burns, the Oklahoma-based owner of International Internet Technologies, as well as other donations connected to the sweepstakes industry. Burns’ company supplies the software that Internet sweepstakes cafes use to run their games.

Checks for Burns’ contributions were written from a trust account that Florida investigators said received millions in illegal proceeds from Burns’ business customers. Hall wants to know whether Burns used a business account or an account that was part of an illegal business operation to make campaign contributions.

Campaign disclosure reports erroneously list Burns as an attorney with Moore & Van Allen, according to Hall’s complaint. Moore & Van Allen is a legal and lobbying firm that represented Burns’ company and also employed McCrory until days before he took office.

The five-member State Board of Elections, which for years has had three Democrats and two Republicans, has been aggressive in recent years in investigating campaign finance law violations. It investigated former House Speaker Jim Black, and former state Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps, among others. Both were Democrats who ended up sentenced to federal prison. But Republicans were critical of the board for limiting the inquiry into Perdue’s undisclosed campaign flights.

The North Carolina Pope

SUNDAY CLASSICS SCHEDULE NOTE FROM KEN

Today's post, "My dark history with the rollicking opening of Act II of Donizetti's Elixir of Love," follows at 5pm ET/2pm PT.

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Conspiracy Theory Lunatics Are Now Part of The Republican Party's Shrinking Tent

Wednesday evening Rachel Maddow introduced her listeners to the false flag mania that has swept first late night radio, then the extreme right and has now seeped into the Republican mainstream. The seepage, of course, is inevitable because so many freaks and nuts from the fringes are now in the heart of the Republican Party power structure. Rachel starts with Glenn Beck admirer/New Hampshire state Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Rockingham). Even New Hampshire Republicans are worried that Tremblay, who has been publicly claiming the U.S. government staged the Boston marathon bombings as part of a false flag operation, is making the party look weirder than it already looks.

"It is hard to believe that just days after the cowardly acts of terror took place in our backyard that Rep. Tremblay would thoroughly discredit herself with her bizarre, embarrassing and unfounded comments," said Matthew Slater, executive director, N.H. Republican State Committee. "New Hampshire Republicans strongly reject her outlandish views and believe that anybody who holds such bizarre beliefs should not be taken seriously."

New Hampshire Democratic Party Communications Director Harrell Kirstein quickly pounced on Rep. Tremblay's post as the latest in a string of Republican outrages.

"How long will it take Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Senate Republican Leader Jeb Bradley, and House Republican Leader Gene Chandler to condemn Representative Tremblay's vile and chilling comments?" he asked.

"Tremblay's post is further proof of what can only be called an epidemic of disgusting and shockingly inappropriate behavior by members of the N.H. Republican Party. Yet even for the N.H. Republican Party, which has become synonymous with the Tea Party and radical extremism, Representative Tremblay's claims are a new low. She is an embarrassment to the N.H. House of Representatives, to her constituents, and to the entire state of New Hampshire."

Chandler said Tremblay's comments are so offensive that he was "at a loss for words." They in no way reflect the House leadership or the Republican caucus, he said.

Despite the condemnation, Tremblay was unapologetic. People should question things, she asserted.

"There are too many things going on in this country and nobody questions it," she said.

Tremblay said when the bombings first happened, a Saudi Arabian national, who was wounded in the incident, was named a "person of interest" by the FBI. Investigators obtained a search warrant for his residence and, she said, reporters gathered at a Boston courthouse because they believed the man was going to be arraigned on charges.

But then, she said, the man was released and deported. Tremblay maintains that happened after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama met with high-placed Saudi officials.

"We are supposed to boldly question what our government does," she said.

And, Tremblay pointed out, everyone has freedom of speech.

"We can say whatever we want, am I correct in this premise or not?" she asked.

Tremblay also made news in March when at a legislative committee hearing she said she believes President Woodrow Wilson agreed with Adolf Hitler's view on race.

"This stuff," Rachel explained, "is also sloshing into the U.S. Congress." Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, the wealthiest Member of Congress (married into Clear Channel money) is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee... and he's batshitinsane. He wouldn't even be in Congress except that Tom DeLay created a district for him by dividing up Austin in three to dilute Democratic votes there. He and three of his colleagues want to investigate groundless and absurd charges made by Alex Jones and Glenn Beck-- pulled out of their asses to bring them attention and cash. Rachel:

The right has always had this to contend with... the Alex Joneses of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world have always been out there on the fringe right, eager to decode anything that seems complex or upsetting in the world to make it very simple for you. To make it very simple so that every story in the world has the same implication, which is that all of your suspicions and prejudices are true; that the world is in fact a very simple place; that people really are out to get you; and that you do understand all of it. And that you can trust no other sources of information about the world other than these gentlemen, who would please like you to send another $19.95 for another month's subscription, since they are the only people who will tell you the real truth."

I'm sure the New Hampshire Republican Party and the voters in the Granite State will figure out how to deal with a deranged Tea Party freak like Stella Tremblay. There isn't much harm she can do anyway-- unless she has some black gunpowder and a bomb-making manual. But what about highly placed nutcases like Mike McCaul in the U.S. Congress? Boehner appointed him chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He actually has real power. And he's either as crazy as Stella, on his way to being as crazy as Stella, or faking it for the teabaggers back home. And McCaul is considered vaguely mainstream among Texas Republicans especially when you compare him to colleagues like Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman, both of whom are even more out of their minds than Stella in New Hampshire!

Yesterday former GOP operative, David Frum, sent out this tweet about the fringe right-wing party in Britain, the UKIP, something like a combination of the Tea Party, the KKK and some crackpot neo-Nazis:

A UKIP candidate has sparked outrage by reportedly claiming that Jews deliberately murdered each other in the Holocaust as part of a masterplan to create Israel.

The extreme racist views were posted in Mrs Anna-Marie Crampton’s name on a conspiracy theory website called 'Secrets of The Fed.'

Crampton, 57, is allegedly quoted as saying: “Holocaust means a sacrifice by fire. Only the Zionists could sacrifice their own in the gas chambers.

“The Second World Wide War was engineered by the Zionist jews and financed by the banksters to make the general public all over the world to feel so guilty and outraged by the Holocaust that a treaty would be signed to create the State of Israel as we know it today.”

Mrs Crampton posed with UKIP leader Nigel Farrage at a rally in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, two weeks ago-- and proudly posted a photo on her Facebook page.

A further outrageous comment, posted two months ago, added: “The Rothschilds are Zionists..there is a difference between Jews and Zionists. These Psychopaths hide behind and use the Jews.

“It was thanks to them that 6 million Jews were murdered in the War (along with 26 million Russians!).”

Another comment says: “I am anti Zionist, not antisemit (sic). I love the true Israel and the Jews.”

Mrs Crampton is standing for UKIP in next week’s county council elections in the traditionally Conservative ward of Crowborough in East Sussex.

Even the UKIP, essentially a neo-Nazi outfit, is on the verge on expelling Crampton. The Republican Party takes psychopaths like her and push them up the ladder. They're on the verge on giving Senate nominations to two congressional crackpots just as bigoted and insane-- if not more so-- than she is, Steve King of Iowa and Paul Broun of Georgia. And, don't forget, John Boehner put Michele Bachmann on the House Intelligence Committee and filled the House Science Committee Climate Change deniers and conspiracy theory lunatics like McCaul and Broun as well as equally crazy and uninformed fringe loons in need of mental health treatment like Stockman, Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Randy Weber (R-TX), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Steve Palazzo (R-MS), Bill Posey (R-FL), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), David Schweikert (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND). America has some real problems... and the GOP deals with them by screaming about Benghazi, another crackpot conspiracy theory woven into the warp and woof of the Republican Party mindset. I was in Germany once and heard this band play this song and I signed them to Reprise. The band is BiGod 20 and the song is called America:

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You Might Be A Republican If... You Think First Graders Should Scrub Toilets If They Wants To Eat Lunch

My friend-- and favorite chef-- Michael Voltaggio, got his start cooking at the elegant, world-famous Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Though both Huntington, which sits in the middle of Appalachia, where Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia meet on the other side of the state, and White Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier County are in Nick Rahall's 3rd congressional district, the area is by no means progressive or Democratic, although it certainly used to be. Greenbrier County is now represented in the West Virginia House of Delegates by a reactionary Republican, Ray Canterbury, who astounded even other Republicans this week. And all he did was make a speech completely consistent with the most basic and fundamental Republican/conservative philosophy, namely that the rich earned their money and they shouldn't have to pay for the well-being of poor people and their children.

Like the U.S., India has passed laws to prevent children working in coal mines. But in India tens of thousands of children, in the 12-15 age group, still do, often in atrociously unsafe conditions. Delegate Canterbury wasn't advocating-- at least not in that speech-- to repeal child labor laws... but then again, he was advocating making first graders clean toilets if they don't want to starve. It all started with a bill to combat childhood hunger in West Virginia.

Some Republican lawmakers said the free-meals-in-schools program would send a bad message to kids about personal responsibility, while Democrats argued there's a moral imperative to feed hungry students.

Delegate Canterbury hasn't missed many meals

Delegate Ray Canterbury, R-Greenbrier, predicted the program could set up children for failure, "destroying their work ethic" and "showing them there's an easy way." Canterbury suggested that students "work for their lunches" by mowing lawns and taking out trash at schools.

Delegate Meshea Poore, D-Kanawha, said Republicans were trying to mislead people about the bill.

"I'm offended anybody in this body would dare say a child has to work for their meals," Poore said. "I can't believe someone would say a first-grader, a second-grader... a fifth-grader has to labor before they eat. This isn't an entitlement bill."

...The bill would make free breakfasts and lunches available to every student in public schools, pre-kindergarten through the 12th-grade. West Virginia would become the first state in the nation to enact such a program... The bill would establish nonprofit foundations that would raise money to help pay for the free meals. Now, only low-income children get free and discounted lunches and breakfasts at school.

"Kids can't learn if they're hungry," said House Majority Leader Brent Boggs, D-Braxton.

...Delegate Michael Folk, R-Berkeley, said churches and food pantries already have programs that feed poor people, and schools already provide free meals to students.

"There's already a safety net on the government level: It's called free and reduced lunch," Folk said. "It's not whether we think we should feed children; it's about whether we think the government should be the sole provider of food."

The bill passed 89-9. So only 9 Republicans had the courage of their reactionary, Darwinish/Dickensian convictions. I wonder why Republicans didn't ask that the first graders from poor families work for their textbooks too. Canterbury: "I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it. If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they may not learn to diagram a sentence, but they'll learn a more important lesson." I guess he had been inspired by Newt Gingrich's remarks about how poor children should clean school toilets and work as janitors if they want to be educated. I wonder how all this fits in with that Republican rebranding thing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is supposed to be working on.

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Whose Fault Was The Gun Control Vote In The Senate?

I don't know anything about Andrew Kaczynski or his politics. He writes for a website called BuzzFeed and he tweeted the above just after every Republican but 3 voted against a moderate, bipartisan background check amendment and after every Democrat except 4 voted for it... some of those Democrats voting against it being very much red state Dems, including Red state Dems facing difficult reelection battles. Many observers were shocked that Arizona freshman Jeff Flake voted NO and some say that had he or Portman signaled they would be YES votes, the 4 Democratic cowards would have steeled themselves to vote YES as well.

The fact remains, though, that depending on what polling data you look at, between 86 and 91% of Americans favored that bill 45% of senators, all but 4 of them Republicans voted down. And, as Jesse LaGreca responded to Kaczynski's tweet, even if every single Democrat voted yes, along with the 3 Republican cross-aisle voters, it would have still failed to get through the Republican Party filibuster, announced in advance and organized by Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Miss McConnell (R-KY).

But even with all that evidence, I want to go beyond just blaming the Republican Party. The real culprits were not the red state Democrats or the GOP. The real culprits in this-- as in everything that has always been wrong throughout American history (we'll leave the world for another discussion)-- are conservatives. The nature of conservatism is where the problem lies. Keep in mind, by it's evolution and ideology, it is patently impossible to separate conservatism and corruption and that comes into play as well, but let's take a look at the history of the role of conservatism in this country-- right from the beginning.

Guess who was aghast at the idea of breaking away from the British monarchy and declaring independence. Guess who fought on the side of the British during the American War of Independence. Hint: it wasn't liberals or progressives. I wish every DWT visitor would read Mike Lux's classic American history book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. Here's a little summary by Mike:

The two parties which divide the state, the party of conservatism and that of innovation are very old, and have disputed the world ever since it was made. Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the contention of this book that American history consists of one long battle between the forces of reaction and the defense of wealth and power, on the one hand, and the forces of progressivism and community, on the other.

If you look at our country’s long history, from the days of the first stirrings of our revolutionary impulses against Britain to today, progressive leaders and progressive movements have moved this country forward in the face of bitter-- and frequently violent-- opposition from reactionaries and defenders of the status quo. Consider the major advances in American history:

• The American Revolution
• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy
• Universal white male suffrage
• Public education
• The emancipation of the slaves
• The national park system
• Food safety
• The breakup of monopolies
• The Homestead Act
• Land grant universities
• Rural electrification
• Women’s suffrage
• The abolition of child labor
• The eight hour workday
• The minimum wage
• Social Security
• Civil rights for minorities and women
• Voting rights for minorities and the poor
• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites
• Consumer product safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

Every single one of those reforms, which are literally the reforms that made this country what it is today, was accomplished by the progressive movement standing up to the fierce opposition of conservative reactionaries who were trying to preserve their own power. American history is one long argument between progressivism and conservatism.

The striking thing about this long debate is how much the arguments that have occurred are repetitive over time, in terms of their rhetoric, constituencies, philosophy, and the values they represent. From generation to generation, the conservatives who oppose reform and progress have used the same kinds of arguments over and over again. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described the division as one between “public purpose and private interest.”

...The arguments by conservatives all too frequently invoke fear-- of change, of one another, of foreigners and foreign enemies, or of certain people. They proclaim a loud and fervent patriotism and a love of traditional values, quite often quoting the Bible to justify their point of view, while ignoring those patriots and Bible quotes that don’t fit their agenda.

Progressives, on the other hand, have called for hope, rather than fear, and for changing things for the better, rather than just leaving things the way they have always been. We have been for more power for regular folks and less power for elites. And we have been for a stronger sense of community, rather than the sense that each of us is on his or her own.

The central theme of this book is to show how these political arguments have been repeated over time and time again since the American Revolution, how the same alternative visions of America keep being argued over and over, and how when progressives have won the day politically, the country has moved forward.

The good news is that a more progressive vision of what America can aspire to has prevailed enough times over the years to make us a far better country. While it is certainly true that the United States is more conservative by many measures than the industrialized countries in Europe, and that progress has been uneven and painfully slow, we are also the country that invented the modern notions of democracy and equality, and that legacy has echoed down through the generations and inspired new movements to make their claims on the American dream.

American history has always been a mixed bag, with vision and courage and progress mixed together with slavery, the brutal killing of many millions of American Indians, wars shouldn’t have fought, and altogether too much greed. There have been plenty of times when the progressive movement was too weak and small to stop bad things from happening, or when it settled for compromises on fundamental issues, such as slavery and women’s suffrage.

Even leaders who pushed for progressive policy in some areas failed us in others... [T]his is especially true in terms of the way otherwise progressive leaders, such as Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, and FDR, have failed us on racial justice issues. But it applies to other leaders as well. For example, Teddy Roosevelt created the national park system, partially broke apart the big trusts, and brought us some measure of food safety, but he had no use for unions or women’s suffrage, allowed some of the worst lynchings in the nation’s history to occur in the south, and was a military adventurer. Woodrow Wilson brought us the single most important economic reform in the country’s history-- a progressive income tax-- and his ideas set the stage for many New Deal-era reforms and the United Nation, but he got us into a stupid, wasteful war that we had no business being in. Kennedy and Johnson helped push through civil rights laws, Medicare, and Medicaid, but got us into the Vietnam War.

Yet even with all of the disappointments that are part of America’s history, we also know that the progressive arguments and movements have prevailed again and again and have created democracy where progress is always possible. Movement leaders such as Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rachel Carson have always been ahead of the politicians and have pushed our country to become better. Our history is full of progressive leaders fighting the good fight, and winning much of the time, to create a better nation. The battle between conservatism and progress will continue to be fought as long as there is a United States of America.

Wednesday the conservatives won a battle. Ultimately, of course, they will lose the war. Because, by their nature, they are losers and always lose. I might add, the Senate candidates on this page all support strong gun control measures. If you give money to the DSCC-- which is chaired by cowardly NRA shill Michael Bennet who himself voted against Feinstein's assault weapons ban Wednesday-- much of it will wind up going to elect conservatives. Money invested on this page, only goes to progressives-- and you pick the ones yourself you want it to go to.

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Did You Vote For Obama (Or Romney)? Yes?-- Well Eat Your Dog And Cat Meat Burger And Shut Up

Liberty-- though not for Fido, obviously

Michael Brenner wrote a powerful piece for AlterNet a few days ago, America Is Ruled By Billionaires, And They Are Coming After The Last Shred Of Our Democracy. Like most Americans-- I'd like to say 99% of Americans but I know that would be wishful thinking-- Brenner is instinctually repulsed by plutocracy. He defines it succinctly in opening his essay and points out that aside from owning everything, the plutocrats have had their political handmaidens take significant actions that "directly favor the moneyed interests."

The latter include the dismantling of the apparatus to regulate financial activities specifically and big business generally. Runaway exploitation of the system by predatory banks was made possible by the Clinton “reforms” of the 1990s and the lax application of those rules that still prevailed. Attorney General Eric Holder just a few weeks ago went so far as to admit that the Department of Justice’s decisions on when to bring criminal charges against the biggest financial institutions will depend not on the question of legal violations alone but would include the hypothetical effects on economic stability of their prosecution. Earlier, Holder had extended blanket immunity to Bank of America and other mortgage lenders for their apparent criminality in forging, robo-signing, foreclosure documents on millions of home owners. In brief, equal protection and application of the law has been suspended. That is plutocracy.

...There are myriad other examples of complicity between legislators or regulators, on the one hand, and special business interests on the other. EPA judgments that are reversed under the combined pressure of the commercial interests affected and beholden politicians is one. The government’s decision not to seek the power to bargain with pharmaceutical companies over the price of drugs paid for with public funds is another. Tolerance for the concealment of offshore profits in the tens of billions is a third. Relaxed interpretations of the tax laws by the IRS to the advantage of high income persons can be added to the list. So, too, can the give-away to sole source contractors of the tens of billions squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of such direct assists to big business and the wealthy is endless. The point is that government, at all levels, serves particular selfish interests no matter who holds high positions. While there is some difference between Republicans and Democrats on this score, it has narrowed on most major items to the point that the fundamental properties of the biased system are so entrenched as to be impervious to electoral outcomes. The most revealing experience that we have of that harsh reality is the Obama administration’s strategic decision to allow Wall Street to determine how and by whom the financial crisis would be handled.

...Systemic biases are the most crucial factor is creating and maintaining plutocratic orientations of government. They are confirmed, and reinforced, by the identities and identifications of the persons who actually hold high elected office. Our leaders are nearly all rich by any reasonable standard. Most are very rich. Those who weren’t have aspired to become so and have succeeded. The Clintons are the striking case in point. That aspiration is evinced in how they conduct themselves in office. Congress, for its part, is composed of two rich men/women’s clubs. In many cases, personal wealth helped win them their offices. In many others, they knit ties with lobbies that provided the necessary funds. Whether they are “bought off” in some sense or other, they surely are often coopted. The most insidious aspect of cooptation is to see the world from the vantage point of the advantaged and special economic interests.

The devolution of the Democratic Party from being the representative of ordinary people to being just “another bunch of guys” is a telling commentary on how American politics has degenerated into a plutocracy. The party’s rolling over to accommodate the interests of the wealthy has been a theme of the past four years. From the Obama White House to the halls of Congress, party leaders (and most followers) have conceded the dominance of conservative ideas about macro-economic strategy (the austerity dogma), about retaining largely untouched the for-profit health care “non-system,” about bailing out the big financial players as the expense of everyone else and the economy’s stability, about degrading Social Security and Medicare. The last item is the most egregious-- and revealing-- of our plutocratic ways and means. For it entails a combination of intellectual deceit, blatant massaging of the numbers, and disregard for the human consequences in a time of growing distress for tens of millions. In other words, there is no way to conceal or spin the trade-offs made, who was being hurt and who would continue to enjoy the advantages of skewed fiscal policies.

The American version of plutocracy is noteworthy for its crassness. Subtlety, discretion and restraint are foreign to it. It has a buccaneering quality. That style has roots in the country’s history and culture. Much of the behavior is impulsive, grasping. Individuals are greedy for vivid displays that they are top dog, of what they can get away with, as well as the riches themselves. There is little interest in building anything that might endure-- no ‘new order,’ no new party, no new institutions. Not even physical monuments to themselves. Why bother when the existing set-up works so well to your advantage, to that of your like-minded and like-interested associates-- when you can turn ideas, policies and money in your direction with ease. And while the public is blind to how they are being deluded and abused. After all, the more things appear to stay the same, the more they can change in a country whose civic ideology imbues everyone with the firm belief that its principles and institutions embody a unique virtue. To challenge any of that would be to run the risk of raising consciousness-- which is the last thing that the plutocrats want.

Brenner's essay gets better and better. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. I'm heading off in a slightly different, though related, direction. Recall how early on Brenner alluded to plutocracy's infatuation with a kind of fake "liberty," much ballyhooed by brain-dead teabaggers and well-paid media and political shills as deregulation. Liberty to a rightist isn't just about owning popguns you can use to kill each other with but also making sure the government can't intervene on behalf of society against plutocratic financial interests-- whether causing toxic tar sands oil spills in Arkansas or feeding unsuspecting people-- moronic teabaggers more likely than anyone else, of course-- dog and cat meat gussied up to look like beef.

Dutch officials said they suspect dog meat was used in meatballs produced in Spain and sold in Amsterdam.

The investigation began 18 months ago when the owner of an animal shelter reported to authorities she suspected a company that disposes of animal remains was instead using the carcasses for meat.

Think Spain said the woman, Olga Costa, of Ponteverda, Spain, said she heard from a woman whose pet was put to sleep that she went to the company's headquarters in an attempt to say a final goodbye to her pet and found workers deboning dog carcasses.

Dutch officials said the investigation traced the dog meat to a distributor in Amsterdam. The suspected tainted meat has been sent for DNA samples to confirm its origin.

Oh, please... don't just single out the Dutch. Wherever Austerity has allowed conservatives to cut back on the "evils of government spending" (shorthand, among other things to do with the good of society in general, for regulatory activities). Like Conservative-ruled England, where it's an open secret that dog and cat meat is served "secretly" to the proles all the time.

An unnamed Indian takeaway has been found serving wrongly labelled meat by BBC researchers. Food experts working for a BBC3 programme had ordered an Indian lamb curry from the London restaurant but found that the meat in the curry had no trace of lamb.

Further DNA tests concluded that the meat chunks were not beef, chicken, pork, goat, horse or even human flesh, leading to speculation that the "lamb" curry contained dog or cat meat.

...Nutritionist Surinder Phull said: "It's absolutely terrifying because if it isn't any of the meats we know, what is it? Where has it come from? Where was it slaughtered? Was it hygienic? Was it covered in bacteria?"

...The restaurant in the programme was not the only one found to be serving suspicious meat. The young diners also had doubts about food they obtained from Chinese takeaways and fast food outlets in the capital.

The beef in Chinese black bean sauce consisted largely of chicken blood and contained only tiny amounts of beef.

And a beefburger bought from a local fast food shop was analyzed in the laboratory to reveal that it consisted of bovine blood, chicken scraps and a high level of chicken blood.

The only takeaway restaurant to serve authentic meat was a doner kebab shop. The lamb kebab purchased by the research team contained no trace of any other meat mixed with it.

Since the horsemeat scandal broke, the Food Standards Agency has ordered more than 5,000 tests and returned 44 positive results showing equine contents in meals.

Some might say the Dutch deserve to have to worry if the meatballs they've been eating were made of Fido and Tiger. It was after all, a greedy Dutch criminal job creator who was buying the Romanian horsemeat and selling it to the French as beef earlier this year, actually something he's been doing-- and getting away with because of lax regulations and enforcement-- for some time. Go, Austerity! He had already been sentenced in January 2012 for deliberately marketing South American horsemeat as halal-slaughtered Dutch beef and falsifying documents. Some of this found its way into British lasagna.

The scandal has focused attention on the murky pan-European supply chain for meat products, which stretches from abattoirs to supermarkets via mysterious offshore companies.

An investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed yesterday that that Draap Trading Ltd was registered in 2008 in Limassol, Cyprus. Its sole shareholder is Hermes Guardian Ltd, an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. A Draap representative, Andreas Mercruri, refused to disclose the beneficial ownership of the company.

Speaking from Cyprus, he told OCCRP: "I'm sorry but with everything that is going on at the moment we are not able to comment on anything at this time." Mercruri answered from the offices of Trident Trust, a Cyprus firm that provides company formation and incorporation services on the island. Trident Trust mentions on its website that beneficial ownership information of the companies it incorporates is not disclosed to any regulatory authority.

The same Hermes Guardian company is a shareholder in at least a dozen other Cyprus, Panamanian and Russian based companies.

Cyprus company records indicate a Trident Trust company as a secretary of Draap Trading while its director is another Cyprus company by the name of Guardstand Limited. The latter's paperwork points to a link with Russian business.

Authorities in Romania have suggested that international criminal networks may be involved in the opaque meat trading business. Sorin Minea, head of Romalimenta, the Romanian food industry federation, described France's consumer affairs minister, Benoît Hamon, as an "idiot" after he suggested Romanians may have been responsible for "a case of fraud."

Minea told the Guardian: "There is an international mafia ring behind this problem. I don't know who they may be, or whether any Romanians are involved. But if you think about it, there were five intermediaries so I'm sure that an international network is involved."

This is disgusting. We must stop talking about it at once. Besides, it's all so far away. (I asked my very practical Dutch friend Nicky what he knows about this and he said the Dutch, who have now been looking for horse meat in their butcher shops, agree that "we eat what we have enough of but dog is a step too far. It is one of the only things differing us from the North Koreans.") 

So my friend R gets a distressed call from his friend F the other day. F is a male nurse who had already negligently murdered one of his elderly patients by giving him the wrong medicine and now... damn, it happened again. He was worried he'd wind up in prison so he was going back to his home country. He asked R to come over and pick through his things and see if he wanted anything. [R wound up getting me a brand new jacket.] Anyway, the day before F was flying off to his native land, everything calmed down. He would have to pay back the money he had misappropriated from murder victim #2 and he was fired by the private, high-end nursing firm, of course, but no charges would be pressed. After all, who wanted that kind of publicity? I didn't even have to give back the jacket-- although R didn't get to keep the Mercedes SLS-class roadster convertible. Because F already has a new agency and a new job being the nurse for a rich old white guy... who probably won't live much longer. I would have thought private nursing firms would be regulated. But... liberty.

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