funjumper101

Me too. I hear the sounds of credulous sheep bleating, as expected. Sending more money to a "non-profit" organization that has millions of excess revenue in the bank would be something that only easily led dullards would do. Idiots are free to waste their money on whatever shiny thing they are sold. Jump tickets would have been a better expenditure of resources.

Whether or not you have to pay it is up to a judge. But if the fine is $135,000 for a trivial offense, then you should stand on principal and challenge it, even if you're a billionaire. Trivial offense? I take it that you have minimal comprehension of the facts of the case. 55 years ago you and your kind defended the rights of white businessmen to discriminate against Negros solely on the basis of their skin color. History documents the fact that those that supported this bigotry used the bible and " religious beliefs" to try to justify such bigotry. It is not possible for conservatives to lead us to a more just, free, and open society. They drag down the whole world. Nothing positive for society or the world ever came about due to conservative philosophy and politics. Quite the opposite occurs when they fool the nitwits into putting them in power.

Nicely written factual information. I expect the 2nd amendment fanboys to pull a TLDR and post stupid responses. Have at it! Begin quoted text>>> The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut almost three years ago did nothing to restrict access to guns, as the students of Umpqua Community College in Oregon learned to their cost yesterday. But it did a huge amount for the National Rifle Association. As the rest of America mourns yet another murderous gun spree on campus, a review of financial filings shows just how far the mammoth gun organization has been able to cash in, big time, on the fallout that followed Sandy Hook in December 2012. Membership dues jumped as supporters rallied to the cause. So did profits. And executive pay ran into the millions. Not bad for a charity that is exempt from taxes. Yesterday’s college slaughter in Oregon, which left at least 10 dead, was the 142nd shooting incident in a school or college since Sandy Hook. As there have been only over 1,000 days during that period, this means there’s been a shooting in an American school or college about once a week. In most of those, at least one person was injured, and in about one incident a month, at least one person was killed. So can we all stop claiming we’re “shocked” when it happens yet again? A murderous rampage on an American school or college campus happens about as often as you get a bill from your mortgage lender. The debate about gun control has produced no concrete action. But it has shaken up gun supporters, who have rushed out to buy more weapons and sent more money to the NRA. In total, about 10,000 Americans are murdered with guns each year, or more than three times the number of people killed on 9/11. It’s equivalent to lining up and shooting three baseball teams each day. That doesn’t include suicides. It’s not especially remarkable. Almost nothing makes it as easy for a crazy person to kill a lot of people as a gun. Especially a semi-automatic handgun. Yet, apparently, we have become resigned to the situation. There was a brief flurry of interest in gun control in late 2012 and early 2013, after Adam Lanza had shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. A few politicians even pretended in public that they wanted to do something. Stocks in gun manufacturers briefly tumbled on Wall Street. The debate about gun control produced no concrete action. But it did shake up gun supporters, who rushed out to buy more weapons and sent more money to the NRA. They were already in a panic after President Obama got re-elected. Gun makers such as Sturm, Ruger and Smith & Wesson saw a surge in sales. NRA Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre proved a master of the situation. He ignored any calls for compromise or common sense. Instead he made a speech demanding armed guards in every school in the country, a speech that was effectively a joke told with a straight face. The most fanatical gun supporters saw the incident as a call to arms — literally. NRA membership dues skyrocketed by a staggering 62% in the year after Sandy Hook, from $108 million to $176 million. Total revenue in 2013 hit a third of a billion dollars. As a result, the massive organization saw profits — excuse me, “surpluses” — rocket 2,750% to $57 million. Of course, that’s before taxes. But, then, it didn’t pay any taxes, for it is a nonprofit charity. The NRA estimates it was also helped by 150,000 volunteers. How many corporations could boast as much? The NRA top executives shared that year in a treasure chest of more than $8 million in salary, bonuses, nontaxable benefits, deferred pay and other compensation — a nice payout for an organization that enjoys charitable exemption from U.S. taxes. LaPierre alone made a million bucks a year, which is, ironically, equal to about $100 for every man, woman and child murdered with a gun in America.

Funny how the Reich Wing Conservatives totally support intentional and willful violations of the law by hateful bigots. One must have a complete lack of ethical and moral consistency to be a conservative. Nothing positive for society ever came about through the practical application of conservative philosophy. Very much damage to individual and collective freedom occurs when conservative philosophy is successfully implemented. The voter suppression laws enacted in many states are an excellent example of how conservatives have damaged the country in a deliberate and heinous way. The disgusting infringement on women's rights to control their own health care decisions is another stellar example of the evil of conservatives.

Cooler toys - http://www.turbinemarine.com/projects.html As long as someone else pays for the jetA, the slip rental, and the maintenance, I am good to go. This one is my choice. Anyone got a credit card I can borrow? - http://www.turbinemarine.com/project_sc_ms2.html

Doesn't that show up in the US budget as "foreign aid"?

http://www.goldeagle.com/brands/sta-bil-faqs Read the FAQs.

Waterboarding IS torture. Ronny Raygun and his administration took action against those that committed that crime. When will the current DOJ hold accountable those that have committed these crimes since 2001? Begin quoted text >>> Reagan's DOJ Prosecuted Texas Sheriff... For Waterboarding Prisoners Written by Jason Leopold April 21, 2009 George W. Bush’s Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near-drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn’t even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions. Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case – which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later – was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week. The failure to cite the earlier waterboarding case and a half-dozen other precedents that dealt with torture is reportedly one of the critical findings of a Justice Department watchdog report that legal sources say faults former Bush administration lawyers – Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury – for violating “professional standards.” Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury also shocked many who have read their memos in the last week by their use of clinical and legalistic jargon that sometimes took on an otherworldly or Orwellian quality. Bybee’s Aug. 1, 2002, legal memo – drafted by Yoo – argued that waterboarding could not be torture because it does not “inflict physical pain.” During the procedure, a subject is strapped down to a bench with his head lower than his feet and his face covered by a cloth that is then saturated with water, cutting off his breathing and inducing the panic reflex that a person feels while drowning.“You have informed us that this procedure does not inflict actual physical harm,” Bybee wrote. “Thus, although the subject may experience the fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. ... The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.” Bush administration officials approved CIA waterboarding for three “high-value” detainees, including Abu Zubaydah (believed to be an al-Qaeda logistics operative) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (known as KSM, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks). Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times and KSM at least 183 times, according to one Justice Department memo. Bybee, whose memo gave legal cover for the initial use of waterboarding and nine other brutal interrogation methods, said his opinion – as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, which advises Presidents on the limits of their legal powers – represented “our best reading of the law.” He cited scant history for the Convention Against Torture, which took effect in 1987. “However, you should be aware that there are no cases construing this statute, just as there have been no prosecutions brought under it,” Bybee wrote. The Convention Against Torture makes it a crime for any “person acting under the color of law” to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.” Texas Case That law was not in existence when the Texas sheriff, James Parker, and his deputies were prosecuted and sentenced in the 1980s. But Bybee, Bradbury and Yoo had a duty to their legal profession to cite the case as it would have changed the substance of their legal opinions, said Scott Horton, a human rights attorney and constitutional expert. “Any competent legal adviser would, among other things, have looked at the techniques themselves and checked to see how they have been treated in prior cases,” Horton said in an e-mail. “Obviously the Anti-Torture Statute itself is a very recent invention and it has no enforcement history, so saying that and then suggesting on this basis that the situation is tabula rasa is highly disingenuous.” Horton suspects that Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury were well aware of the case law but simply chose to ignore it in order to give the Bush administration what it had asked for. “To take one example, there was a court-martial addressing the practice of waterboarding from 1903, a state court case from the Twenties, a series of prosecutions at the [post-World War II] Tokyo Tribunal (in many of which the death penalty was sought) and another court-martial in 1968,” Horton said. “These precedents could have been revealed in just a few minutes of computerized research using the right search engines. It's hard to imagine that Yoo and Bybee didn't know them. “So why are none of these precedents mentioned? Obviously because each of them contradicts the memo's conclusions and would have to be distinguished away. Professional rules would have required that these precedents be cited, failing to do so reflects incompetent analysis.” In fact, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility investigated whether the three lawyers purposely twisted their legal advice to satisfy the White House and knowingly avoided citing existing case law in order to reach conclusions the White House wanted. It’s unknown what OPR has concluded about that point in its report, which is now being revised. Beyond ignoring the case law on torture, Yoo, as a deputy assistant attorney general, pushed the theory that President Bush could not be bound by laws outlawing torture because of his constitutional authority to use military force at a time of war. "As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy," said Yoo in another memo dated Aug. 1, 2002, and entitled “Standards of Conduct for Interrogation.” In that opinion, Yoo failed to cite the key precedent relating to a President’s war powers, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a 1952 Supreme Court case that addressed President Harry Truman’s order to seize steel mills that had been shut down in a labor dispute during the Korean War. Truman said the strike threatened national defense and thus justified his actions under his Article II powers in the Constitution. But the Supreme Court overturned Truman’s order, saying, “the President's power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.” Since Congress hadn’t delegated such authority to Truman, the Supreme Court ruled that Truman’s actions were unconstitutional, with an influential concurring opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson. Yoo’s Explanation In his 2006 book, War by Other Means, Yoo offered up a defense of his failure to cite Youngstown. “We didn’t cite Jackson’s individual views in Youngstown because earlier [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions, reaching across several administrations, had concluded that it had no application to the President’s conduct of foreign affairs and national security.” Yoo added, “Youngstown reached the outcome it did because the Constitution clearly gives Congress, not the President, the exclusive power to make law concerning labor disputes. It does not address the scope of Commander-in-Chief power involving military strategy or intelligence tactics in war. … “Detention and interrogation policy are at the heart of the President’s Commander-in-Chief power to wage war, and long constitutional history supports the President’s leading role on such matters.” But Horton disagrees. “The Youngstown case is considered the lodestar precedent addressing the President's invocation of Commander-in-Chief powers away from a battlefield,” Horton told me via e-mail. “Justice Jackson's opinion is the most persuasive of the opinions justifying the decision,” Horton said. “If you examine any treatise on national security law, you'll find them at the core. Moreover, the Supreme Court itself in subsequent opinions has highlighted their importance. “It's obvious that Yoo failed to cite them not because he believed they were off point (as he rather lamely suggests), but because they strongly contradicted the premise he was articulating. “But a lawyer crafting an opinion has a duty of candor that requires that he identify and distinguish adverse precedent that a court might consider controlling. In essence, Yoo was free to articulate whatever cockeyed theories he wanted. He was not free to suppress the existence of Supreme Court authority that went in the opposite direction. But that's exactly what he did.” The four legal opinions released last week attempt to make the case that the “enhanced interrogations” of suspected terrorists needed to be done in order to save American lives and foil other plans to attack the United States. In defending the Bush administration’s torture program, Republicans have likened the “high-value” detainees to mass murderers who don’t deserve to be treated humanely. Texas Trial At the trial of the Texas sheriff, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Woodward said the prisoners who were subjected to waterboarding were not “model citizens” but they were still “victims” of torture. “We make no bones about it. The victims of these crimes are criminals,” Woodward said, according to a copy of the trial transcript. One of the “victims” was Vernell Harkless, who was convicted of burglary in 1977. Gregg Magee, a deputy sheriff who testified against Sheriff Parker and three of the deputies said he witnessed Harkless being handcuffed to a chair by Parker and then getting “the water treatment.” “A towel was draped over his head,” Magee said, according to court documents. “He was pulled back in the chair and water was poured over the towel.” Harkless said he thought he was “going to be strangled to death,” adding: “I couldn't breathe.” One of the defendants, Deputy Floyd Allen Baker, said during the trial that he thought torture to be an immoral act but he was unaware that it was illegal. His attorneys cited the “Nuremberg defense,” that Baker was acting on orders from his superiors when he subjected prisoners to waterboarding. That line of defense has come up in the current debate about whether CIA interrogators should be prosecuted for their roles in the torture of detainees. President Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Attorney General Eric Holder have ruled out prosecuting CIA interrogators who acted on Justice Department legal advice. Some other legal analysts have suggested that the ambiguity of the Bush administration’s decision process – in which CIA interrogators suggested the harsh tactics, national security officials, including Condoleezza Rice, concurred, and Justice Department lawyers gave their approval – would make getting 12 jurors to agree on a conviction difficult.But the jury in the Baker’s case didn’t buy the “didn’t know it was illegal” defense, convicting the deputy on three counts of civil rights and constitutional violations related to the waterboarding. Bybee is now a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Yoo is a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor at Chapman University in Orange, California. Bradbury, who was acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel for most of Bush’s second term, reportedly has been looking for a job since Bush left office on Jan. 20, 2009

That would be the very essence of a Reich Wing Conservative. They are extremely good at following the lead of their masters, using deliberate ignorance and "truthiness" to spread their ignorant bullshit lies to the gullible. Hey Marc, are you aware that the word "gullible" is not in the dictionary?

Waco is apparently run by whackos, in a major way. A pig currently employed by the Waco pig department is going to be the Grand Jury foreman? Random chance? What a crock of shit! http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/wild-card-waco-cop-pegged-for-grand-jury-foreman-in-waco-biker-case/ The semi-automatic and automatic weapons fire all came from the trigger happy pigs, according to witness accounts. They murdered nine people, and will likely get away with it. When does the DOJ investigation finish? It may be possible to get the truth, in spite of Waco's attempts to conceal it.

It sure is funny how facts that prove their opinions to be WRONG drive the Reich Wingers into total silence. At least they had had the opportunity to change their opinions via education. Unfortunately the habit of willful, deliberate ignorance is a tough one to overcome.

Germany and France haven't got much moral standing to be bitching about Greek Debt and how it should be handled. Thomas Piketty Explains Why the Germans Are Being Massive Hypocrites About Greece’s Debt - The English translation linked is down right now. The Slate summary will have to do for now - http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/07/06/thomas_piketty_on_the_greek_crises_the_star_economist_explains_why_germany.html

Do you even fucking have any clue whatsoever about anything that you type on here? Seriously, when the fuck was RAPE ever classified as anything BUT a sexual of fence? Go study something and let us know when you gain some specific knowledge, reich now. You also need to relax your black and white view of things. I know at least two guys that have to register for being a sex offender, because they had a few drinks and needed to relieve themselves in an alley. Yep, register for taking a piss. Now go crawl back under your extremist lefty rock, you embarrass the rest of the humans on the planet. Face palm. I know exactly what I post here. Factual information that makes the ill informed Reich Wingers pissy because the facts do not support their BELIEFS. The "sex offender" registries have done zero to increase public safety. The broad scope of "sex offenses", IE, public urination being a "sex offense" is totally ridiculous. It is a FACT that there are ZERO restrictions anywhere in the USA for the location of residences of convicted murderers, rapists, and violent felons. The only residency restrictions that have been put into place are for "sex offenders". It cracks me up when I read "Letters to the Editor" in the local new publications and their online offerings, from numbskulls that write how they couldn't STAND the thought of living next door to a murderer, a rapist, or a violent felon. The writer is blissfully unaware that there are NO RESTRICTIONS on where those criminals can live, which makes their letter utterly ridiculous.

Back to socialized medical care paid for by US taxpayers for Ron. The stench of hypocrisy is foul in the north Georgia hills, and is especially strong at Ron's house. Ron, the "Christian", who in his writings is a dedicated opponent of "socialism" and all of its evils, when it helps other people, but when it benefits HIM, socialized medical care and Social Security are benefits he magically "earned" somehow. Ron, you are aware that the Republicans would do away with the VA medical system and force veterans to seek services from private, for profit medical facilities, are you not? These are the politicians that you support. They would take away VA care, cut your Social Security benefits, and kill off Medicare, if they could muster the political power to do so. Why would you vote for people who, if successful, would really screw up your life and finances? Is the marketing of their message so unclear to you that you would vote to cut your own throat?

So, in other words, Reich Wing Conservatives have no issue or concern with Shrub family crooked business dealings. If Shrub family business dealings are no problem, why are the Clinton family business dealings a problem? Shady deals are all good, if done by Rs, and totally evil if done by Ds. Do I have that version of RWC reality correct? Total hypocrites, as usual. It is the code of Conservatism as it is now practiced.

"Religious Freedom" laws are a means to allow people to discriminate against those people that the so called "religious" believers find offensive. These laws are open to interpretation and abuse as they are poorly written and have serious unintended consequences. The blowback of unintended consequences begins. http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/us/article/Sex-offenders-cite-religious-objections-law-in-6363038.php It is totally moronic that there are restrictions on where convicted sex offenders may reside, while there are no restrictions of the residences of convicted rapists, murderers, or those convicted of violent assault. Once again the Reich Wing way of thinking shows its total absurdity.

More information on Jeb's "business" dealings. The first part deals with the Nigerian criminal deals. Information about other dubious "business" deals follows - In early 1989, seven weeks after his father moved into the White House, Jeb Bush took a trip to Nigeria. Nearly 100,000 Nigerians turned out to see him over four days as he accompanied the executives of a Florida company called Moving Water Industries, which had just retained Bush to market the firm’s pumps. Escorted by the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, Bush met with the nation’s political and religious leaders as part of an MWI effort to land a deal that would be worth $80 million. “My father is the president of the United States, duly elected by people that have an interest in improving ties everywhere,” he told a group of dignitaries in a private meeting, according to a video documenting the visit. “The fact that you have done this today is something I will report back to him very quickly when I get back to the United States.” Just days after Jeb Bush returned home, President George H.W. Bush sent a note to Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida, thanking him for hosting his son. “We are grateful to you,” President Bush wrote on White House stationery. MWI eventually got the deals it was seeking. Former employees said Bush’s participation was crucial. “There’s no question about it: ‘Here is the son of the president of the United States.’ It was a big deal,” Cornelius Lang, MWI’s former controller, told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “He could open doors we couldn’t.” Today, as he works toward his run at the White House, Bush touts his business experience as a strength that gives him the skills and savvy to serve as the nation’s chief executive. He has said he “worked my tail off” to succeed. As an announced candidate, Bush soon will be making financial disclosures that will reveal recent business successes and show a substantial increase in his wealth since he left office as Florida governor in 2007, individuals close to the candidate told The Post. But records, lawsuits, interviews and newspaper accounts stretching back more than three decades present a picture of a man who, before he was elected Florida governor in 1998, often benefited from his family connections and repeatedly put himself in situations that raised questions about his judgment and exposed him to reputational risk. Years after Bush’s visit to Nigeria, MWI was found to have made dozens of false claims to the U.S. government about its dealings in Nigeria, according to a civil jury verdict in a case brought by the Justice Department. MWI has denied the allegations and appealed the verdict. Bush was not a party to the lawsuit. Five of his business associates have been convicted of crimes; one remains an international fugitive on fraud charges. In each case, Bush said he had no knowledge of any wrongdoing and said some of the people he met as a businessman in Florida took advantage of his naiveté. Bush, now 62, has said that he has learned to be more careful about vetting his associates, telling the Miami Herald during his first, failed run for Florida governor in 1994 that getting “burned a couple of times” made him “better at deciphering people’s motives.” He has been involved in myriad business ventures dating back to the early 1980s, taking time out to run for governor three times, winning the first of two terms in 1998. He has brokered real estate deals in Florida, arranged bank loans in Venezuela, marketed industrial pumps in Thailand, wholesaled shoes in Panama, promoted a building-materials company to Mexican interests and advised transnational financial services firms. He sat on more than a half dozen corporate boards. Since leaving office in 2007, Bush’s income has soared from speeches, service on corporate boards, consulting and managing investments for others. “Jeb Bush had a successful career in commercial real estate and business before serving as Florida’s governor,” said Kristy Campbell, a Bush spokeswoman. “He has always operated with the highest level of integrity throughout his business career.” Before he became governor in 1999, he was comfortable but not rich. He did not earn the kind of fortunes that his dad and brother George did as young men. In his late 20s, George H.W. Bush started a successful oil company in Texas. In his 40s, George W. Bush made an investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team that eventually earned him nearly $15 million. At first glance, Jeb Bush’s dual biography as a businessman-politician can be hard to reconcile. Bush the politician presents the image of a man who is appealing, well-disciplined, intelligent and moderate. Bush the businessman has sometimes lent his name and credibility to money-making ventures that involved dubious characters. He and his friends have explained this seeming incongruity by saying that he has been the victim of people who took advantage of his good nature. “The only documented allegations come down to the fact that he did business with people that later turned out to be deadbeats and crooks,” said Tom Feeney, who was on the ticket as lieutenant governor during Bush’s 1994 campaign. Bush’s business activities and missteps have been widely covered over the years, by the Miami Herald, the St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay) Times, the Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones magazine and other publications, along with books by political scientists and journalists. Bush declined to be interviewed for this article. Campbell suggested that reporters contact Armando Codina, a real estate developer in Miami and a Bush family friend who helped launch his career. “I have a very high regard for Jeb and consider him a very insightful and intelligent businessman,” Codina said. “He is a workaholic and in my opinion he was a great governor, and would make a great president.” One morning in March, Bush framed himself as a businessman for a Chamber of Commerce audience in Greenville, S.C. “I’ve signed the front side of a paycheck,” Bush said. “I’m proud that I’ve been in business and know how it works.” During a speech in New Hampshire in April, he underscored his business philosophy. “Anybody in business knows that it’s not all the way the progressives decide it for us — kind of the top-down, driven approach where we are all supposed to get in line and it’s just going to happen because it’s all planned out,” he said. “America at its best is an America that is dynamic, that embraces the unforeseen, that takes risks; that when there’s a failure, you dust yourself off and go at it again, and again and again. And the interaction of all of us together creates more prosperity, more potential, more innovation, more creativity than any government program ever created.” It is the free-market credo that serves as Bush’s guiding light: No reward without risk. Family style John Ellis Bush, the third of six children, has always followed a prescription for success passed on by his father: Make enough money to take care of your family before going into public service. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1974, in less than three years, with honors and a degree in Latin American studies. Married at 21, he took a job as a loan officer at a bank in Houston founded by the family of James A. Baker III, who later managed George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign and served as his chief of staff. Bush left banking in 1979, later professing boredom with the work, and moved his young family to Miami, a melting pot of intrigue and economic activity. Soon after he arrived, he began volunteering on his father’s presidential campaign in the state and met Codina, a Cuban exile who had become a wealthy real estate developer and now managed the Bush campaign in Dade County. After Ronald Reagan won the election and George H.W. Bush became vice president, Codina offered the 27-year-old Jeb a remarkable opportunity: to partner in a real estate brokerage firm. Bush would receive 40 percent of the fees from what became the Codina Bush Group. Bush would consider his work with Codina to be the defining experience of his business career. “I formed a business with my friend Armando Codina in Miami,” he said in his recent New Hampshire appearance. “It started with three people . . . and we built it into the largest full-service commercial real estate company in South Florida.” One of his endeavors involved a high-rise office building that Codina was developing on Flagler Street in Miami, called Museum Tower. Starting in 1984, Bush negotiated leases and recruited tenants for the building. He eventually received about $340,000 in bonuses for his work. “Jeb played an important role in the success of Museum Tower,” Codina recently told The Post. One of Bush’s real estate associates described him as an impatient, driven man who sometimes put in 16-hour days — and then got up to run before dawn. “Jeb Bush is a gazelle,” Hank Klein told the St. Petersburg Times. “He’s running through life.” As he came of age in the hothouse Miami real estate market, Bush associated with some people who later ran afoul of the law. One of them was a tenant in Museum Tower, a high-rolling young Colombian named Alberto Duque, who had somehow secured $124 million in loans to finance a small bank and a coffee company. Duque drove around town in a Rolls-Royce and hosted Bush and other Miami luminaries at a lavish dinner. He once flew Bush to Costa Rica on his private jet to attend the presidential inauguration. In 1986, Duque was convicted on 60 counts of bank fraud involving up to $100 million in loans. After serving seven of 15 years in prison, he fled from a halfway house and remains a fugitive. Duque put Bush in an uncomfortable spot. Reporters covering his first campaign for governor in 1994 asked why someone as prominent as Bush would associate with such a person. Bush said Duque had simply fooled him. “It just goes to show that the hallmark of a great confidence man is effortless deception,” Bush told the Herald. From 1984 to 1986, as he pursued his career, Bush also served as chairman of the Dade County Republican Party, where he met people who would become business associates. Among them was Miguel Recarey Jr., a wealthy health-care entrepreneur who had once served time for tax evasion and boasted that he knew Santo Trafficante Jr., a Florida mobster. Recarey owned International Medical Centers, or IMC, a health-maintenance organization in Miami that grew rapidly in the 1980s through hundreds of millions of dollars in payments from the Medicare system. In 1985, he retained Bush to find office space for IMC, eventually paying him $75,000, though a lease was never signed. Recarey needed approval from the Department of Health and Human Services to continue to receive new business from Medicare patients. He asked Bush if he would intercede on his behalf with regulators in Washington, according to congressional testimony. At the time, his father was vice president. C. McClain Haddow, then chief of staff to the HHS secretary, told The Post recently that Bush’s intervention “certainly altered the trajectory of the decision” in Recarey’s favor. In 1987, IMC was shut down as regulators searched for $200 million in missing federal funds. Recarey fled the country. He remains a fugitive in Spain. Bush said he was unaware of wrongdoing at IMC and said he was not paid by Recarey to lobby HHS on his behalf. He said he was only doing a favor for a fellow Florida businessman. “At the time, I didn’t feel I was doing business with a crook,” he later told The Herald. “Unfortunately, I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought.” Campbell recently told The Post, “As Governor Bush has said multiple times, he only recollects making a call to HHS and simply asking for a fair shake for Mr. Recarey as other Florida leaders did as well. It is unfortunate that he turned out to be a bad actor.” Matthew Corrigan, a political science professor at the University of North Florida and the author of “Conservative Hurricane: How Jeb Bush Remade Florida,” described Bush’s attitude in these years as “a little bit of damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” “His judgment on who to associate with is lacking,” Corrigan said. Bush provided another favor that later raised questions, this time for Camilo Padreda, a Cuban immigrant and real estate developer who was the Republican Party’s finance chairman in Dade County. In 1985, Padreda had landed on the front pages of Miami newspapers for allegedly having a role in a scheme to bribe a city zoning official, but he was never charged. In 1986, Bush accepted $75,000 from Padreda to work as the leasing agent on an office building Padreda had financed with help from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Padreda asked to reach out to regulators at HUD on behalf of a friend who wanted HUD to provide loan insurance on an apartment building south of Miami. The friend, Hiram Martinez Jr., obtained the loan but later defaulted. Both Martinez and Padreda were eventually convicted of fraud for inflating the value of the property. The cavalcade of Florida crooks would be a recurrent irritant as Bush pursued his political career. But in a statement to The Post, Codina said Bush’s “record for having only a few clients who ultimately turned out to be less than truthful is remarkable, and that record would compare favorably with any firm in this business, either in Miami or another city.” Using his influence Bush’s relationship with MWI, the Florida pump-maker, offers insight into his approach to business at the time. Weeks after George H.W. Bush moved into the White House in early 1989, Jeb Bush teamed up with a Republican donor named J. David Eller to promote the worldwide sale of industrial water pumps. Bush and Eller, the owner of Moving Water Industries of Deerfield Beach, Fla., registered a consulting firm called Bush-El Corp. to promote MWI’s products and split commissions on sales. In March, Eller, Bush and their wives, along with MWI employees, traveled to Nigeria for the opening of a small factory that MWI was building in the country’s northeast corner. Eller hoped to convince the Nigerians to take on loans from the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which would be used to buy MWI’s pumps and agricultural equipment. The Ex-Im Bank, which provided financing to promote U.S. manufacturing sales overseas, had earlier granted loans to Nigeria for that purpose. The president’s son made for an ideal company representative, according to multiple former MWI employees. “It always was about the influence of Jeb Bush being the son of the president,” Mike Carcamo, a former MWI sales executive, said in a recent interview with The Post. “Jeb was getting paid for influence, just to be Jeb.” Three years later, the Ex-Im Bank approved loans worth $74.3 million for Nigeria. When news accounts about the trip first appeared that year in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, MWI played down Bush’s role and Bush declined to comment. But the White House weighed in on his behalf. “The president’s children should not be deprived of career opportunities just because they are members of the first family,” White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said at the time. In 1994, when Jeb Bush prepared for his first run for Florida governor, he sold his share of Bush-El to Eller and reported earning $648,000. Four years later, as Bush made his second gubernatorial bid, a former MWI employee alleged in a civil whistleblower lawsuit that MWI had falsified paperwork and paid “irregular” commissions for the Nigeria deals. Bush said that he was unaware of any wrongdoing. He and the company said he was not paid for making the trip to Nigeria and did not receive any commissions from the deal. Bush said he took precautions to stay out of deals that involved U.S. government agencies, such as the Ex-Im Bank. “You either trust me or you don’t,” he told reporters in 1998 during his second run for governor. “I’m not involved.” Bush won the race, but the questions about Nigeria did not stop. The allegations triggered an FBI investigation that included at least 47 interviews over more than two years. The FBI focused on MWI’s payment of more than $25 million in commissions to its agent in Nigeria and sought to determine whether that money was used to bribe Ni­ger­ian officials, according to FBI interview reports obtained by The Post. Bush was not questioned by the FBI. “We do not now have evidence that Bush had any involvement in the contracts at issue . . . though this remains a possibility,” said a confidential Justice Department memo from January 2002 cited by the Naples Daily News in a story on the Nigeria trip in February. His brother, George W. Bush, was president at the time of the investigation. The Justice Department ultimately decided not to pursue a criminal fraud case. Instead, it filed a civil suit against MWI alleging that the company made false claims in certifications to the Ex-Im Bank about the commissions paid to its Ni­ger­ian agent. The case dragged on for years. Justice sought Bush’s testimony, but a judge ruled that it was not relevant. In November 2013, a jury in Washington found that the company made 58 false claims in the certifications, at a cost of $7.5 million in damages to the government. A federal judge ruled last year that the firm should pay $580,000 in civil penalties. The company is appealing. Eller did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement to The Post, William E. Bucknam, general counsel for MWI, said that the allegations against MWI were generated by a disgruntled employee and are baseless. Changing perspective In 1998, shortly before he was elected governor, Bush said that he recognized the need to be more discerning in his dealings. That year, he was named in an investors lawsuit involving Ideon, a credit card services firm that was losing millions. Bush had secured a seat on the board of Ideon through a political ally, Thomas Petway III. As a board member, Bush made $50,000 a year, plus expenses. “I’m 45 years old,” he told the St. Petersburg Times. “I have to have better radar.” For the next eight years, Bush presided for two terms over an administration devoted to conservative market-oriented policies. When he entered office, his net worth stood at about $2 million, according to his financial disclosure statements. Eight years later, it dropped to $1.3 million. In 2007, he leapt back into the private sector, displaying the same energy he had during his real estate days in Florida. Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said Bush showed a new zeal for making money. “He was just grabbing at things,” she said. “He is just driven by the free market.” Weeks out of office, Bush launched Jeb Bush & Associates in a suite at the plush Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Fla. Those offices would serve as the base of an expanding and more sophisticated constellation of money-making ventures. For a time, Bush also sat simultaneously on the boards of six corporations, including health industry giant Tenet Healthcare, earning as much as $3 million in fees and grants of stock, according to a Post analysis of financial documents. He also made more than 100 speeches at $50,000 or more per appearance, according to a New York Times report. In June 2007, Bush signed on as an adviser to Lehman Brothers, the financial services giant. When Lehman was on the verge of collapse during the mortgage-meltdown crisis the next year, Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman’s beleaguered chief executive, asked Bush to use his cachet and reach out to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, then the second-richest man in the world. That effort failed. When the London-based Barclays bank bought Lehman’s North American operations, Bush moved to that firm as a senior financial consultant. He reportedly made $1 million a year. Bush was being more careful in his business dealings now, but he still ran into trouble when yet another high-rolling Miami businessman, Claudio Osorio, asked him to join a start-up firm called InnoVida. The firm made prefabricated building panels for emergency housing in disaster areas. Before committing, Bush visited factories in Miami and Dubai. He also commissioned a background check on Osorio. When the check came up clean, Bush said, he became an InnoVida consultant, receiving $15,000 a month and stock options for his part-time advice. In 2008, Bush was made a member of the company’s board. The next year, the head of U.S. operations resigned after telling a board member the company was being mismanaged. Bush remained on the board until September 2010. By then, another board member, Christopher Korge, became concerned about the company’s unaudited financial reports and inconsistent statements by Osorio. He went to other board members. “I have to tell you I was impressed with Jeb’s response,” ­Korge, a prominent Miami Democrat, said. “When I informed him of what I had found and that I thought the CEO was perpetrating a fraud, Jeb Bush became immediately engaged and worked with me to try to stop the continuation of this fraud.” Bush resigned from the board and returned his most recent $15,000 monthly fee. In 2011, after the company declared bankruptcy, Bush returned $270,000 of the $469,000 he had received in fees. A Bush adviser told The Post that he refunded more than half of his fees to help compensate other creditors. Osorio eventually was charged with taking $40 million from investors and $10 million from a federal loan program intended to finance construction of homes in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. He was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay $24 million in restitution. Craig Toll, InnoVida’s chief financial officer, got a four-year sentence. “It is now obvious that Mr. Osorio deliberately misled a board of prominent business leaders about his company’s dealings and that is why he is now in jail,” Campbell wrote in a statement. In 2008, Bush entered into perhaps his most lucrative venture yet. He and a former Lehman banker, Amar Bajpai, formed Britton Hill Partners LLC to make investments for wealthy clients. Five years later, they launched Britton Hill Holdings to make a wider array of investments. Last year, when the value of investments under Britton Hill Holdings reached more than $100 million, the firm had to disclose limited details under Securities and Exchange Commission rules. It revealed that it had three funds devoted to oil and gas exploration using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking; shipping of liquefied natural gas; and aviation services. A leading investor in each of the three Britton Hill Holdings funds is HNA Corp., a private Chinese holding company. Among other businesses, HNA owns Hainan Airlines — one of China’s largest. In March, Britton Hill announced that Bush was stepping away from all company business as he considered a run at the White House. “I have enjoyed the experience,” Bush said in a statement, “of starting and building a business with my talented partners.”

Little Billy is pulling a dead frog on a rope as he walks into a brothel. He walks up to the madam and says loudly and proudly, "I want to have sex with Monica." The madam says, "but you're just a boy, you can't be here." Billy pulls out $3000 dollars and says, "I am a paying customer, and I want to have sex with Monica." The madam looks at the cash and thinks that they could use it. "Okay, little boy. But why do you want to have sex with Monica? There are a lot of women here?" Billy replies, "I heard she has chlamydia." The madam starts laughing and says, "why in the world would you want to knowingly have sex with someone who has chlamydia?" Billy takes a couple steps closer, he says "well you see, my parents are going out to dinner tonight and I'm going to have sex with my babysitter. I know that when my daddy takes her home, he's going to have sex with the babysitter. Then tomorrow, he'll have sex with my mom, and then the next day, my mom will have sex with the mailman, and he's the son of a bitch who ran over my frog!"

Bob, a 70-year-old, extremely wealthy widower shows up at the Country Club with a breathtakingly beautiful 25 year-old blonde who knocks everyone's socks off with her youthful looks and charm. She hangs onto Bob's arm and listens intently to his every word. His buddies at the club are all aghast. At the very first chance, they corner him and ask, "Bob, how did you get the trophy girlfriend?" Bob replies, "Girlfriend? She's my wife!" They're amazed, but continue to ask. "So, how did you persuade her to marry you?" "I lied about my age", Bob replies. "What, did you tell her you were only 50?" Bob smiles and says, "No, I told her I was 90."

The origin of yodeling - Many years ago a man was traveling through the mountains of Switzerland. Nightfall was rapidly approaching and he had nowhere to sleep. He went up to a farmhouse and asked the farmer if he could spend the night. The farmer told him that he could sleep in the barn. As the story goes, the farmer's daughter asked her father, "Who is that man going into the barn?" "That fellow traveling through," said the farmer. "Needs a place to stay for the night, so, I told him he could sleep in the barn." The daughter said, "Perhaps he is hungry." So she prepared him a plate of food for him and then took it out to the barn About an hour later, the daughter returned. Her clothing disheveled and straw in her hair. Straight up to bed she went. The farmer's wife was very observant. She then suggested that perhaps the man was thirsty. So she fetched a bottle of wine, took it out to the barn. And she too did not return for an hour. Her clothing was askew, her blouse buttoned incorrectly. She also headed straight to bed. The next morning at sunrise the man in the barn got up and continued on his journey, waving to the farmer as he left. When the daughter awoke and learned that the visitor was gone, she broke into tears. "How could he leave without even saying goodbye," she cried. "We made such passionate love last night!" "What?" shouted the father as he angrily ran out of the house looking for the man, who by now was halfway up the mountain. The farmer screamed up at him, "I'm going to get you! You had sex with my daughter!" The man looked back down from the mountainside, cupped his hand next to his mouth, and yelled out.... "LAIDTHEOLADEETOO...."

Willful ignorance is something that takes time and effort to achieve these days. With the Internet, it is possible to get accurate information about current and historical events. With a capable intellect, one can learn about subjects that interest one's curiosity. Try it some time. Some states allowed interracial marriage back in the 1960s. Some did not. The SCOTUS decision in the case of Loving vs Virginia overturned that bigoted law. That is why the sexual predator Clarence Thomas can be married to the douchebag Virginia and not be arrested when he goes to Virginia. The law that applies in the case of Loving vs Virginia and Obergefell vs Hodges would be the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This informations has been readily available in the news. It is really hard to miss, even showing up on Faux Spews. How did you manage it? Reading is fundamental. Reading comprehension is fundamental. If this is a challenge, there are adult education programs available in many states. If one puts in some time and effort and it will be possible to brush up on basic civics. Once an understanding of how the government operates is achieved, the paralyzingly fear of government may subside. One of the great ideals in the Constitution is that the majority cannot vote into place laws that restrict the rights of the minority. This sometimes takes a while to come to pass. It is an imperfect system, but better than the alternatives.

Where was all this “five unelected judges” chatter when they handed down Citizens United? Stare Decisis? 100% the opposite for the CU decision. SCOTUS completely ignored all of the precedents established for campaign financing and overturned EVERYTHING. Corporations are not people. They cannot be imprisoned. They can not be drafted into military service. They do not have belly buttons. By no normal reasoning is a corporation a "person". It takes a sick and twisted mind to come to such a conclusion. Scalia didn't say jack shit about "unelected judges" for CU. How about Scalia's favorite murderer on death row? You know, the guy that was factually innocent and has since been exonerated? Scalia was all set to kill the innocent man. What a worthless piece of shit Scalia is. All of this just proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

No one is to lecture her on her life choices, she says. Too bad that this useless person has no qualms about lecturing others on their life choices - http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/06/26/bristol_palin_doesn_t_want_your_lectures_she_does_enjoy_giving_lectures.html Her claim to fame is her quitter mother. The female who never finished her single term as Alaska's governor. The female that the feeble idiot McCain picked at a VPOTUS candidate in the 2008 election without vetting her properly. The female that quits or gets fired from every job she has had since 2008. Pathetic, isn't it?

Why no indictment? The answer to that question is really obvious. Jeb is the son of a former POTUS, Brother of another, and a member of the Bush family crime syndicate. Their connections and influence easily prevented it. Reich wingers really don't get just how corrupt the U.S. System of law enforcement is. Not a single executive from the banks that caused the economic collapse were ever indicted. The System has two tracks. One for the extremely wealthy that can afford the best lawyers and expert witnesses, and another for the not so well off. Those with money and influence get far different results than the not so well off. Steal millions via fraud and get a suspended sentence. Steal hundreds with a firearm and get 20 years.

Go ahead and post the "proof" that the Clinton family has a history of business dealings with the Third Reich. If you and your comrades have "proof" that the Clinton family engaged in business dealings with countries and residents of countries that have attacked and invaded US allies, go ahead and post it. If you have issues with business dealings over the last few decades, have at it. Don't forget to post links the the sites with the purported factual information Reich wing echo chamber bullshit where lies are posted on one site, and then repeated on other Erich wing sites don't pass the factual information standards.