His eyes are dead:

“No one has bought me, No. 1,” Menendez said last spring. “No one, ever. In the 20 years I’ve been in Congress, never has it been suggested that that could even be possible. Never in 40 years of public life. So I’m not going to reach this moment in my life to make that a possibility.”
JewishVoiceNY
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Castillo called the allegations part of a “diabolical plot” orchestrated to discredit Melgen, who owns a company with a lucrative contract with the Dominican government to provide X-ray machines at ports. The machines would be used to scan shipping containers to look for contraband and illegal drugs.
Miami Herald
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“He treated me well,” she said. “He had money. He was very generous.”
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Carl Hiaasen(Miami Herald) on Menendez/Melgen
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Prominent Dominican lawyer Vinicio Castillo on Monday said allegations that linked U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez to sex parties with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic were part of a “dirty campaign” aimed at discrediting his cousin, a Florida eye doctor who has a stalled multimillion-dollar contract for security at Dominican ports.
                                                               ***
The contract was originally signed with the Dominican government a decade ago. Two years ago, Melgen bought out the company that had signed the contract.
That contract has raised controversy due to its cost — an estimated $500 million to $1 billion over 20 years. And the machines have not been installed.
Menendez, who has received healthy campaign contributions from the doctor, in a July Senate hearing peppered Obama officials about what they were doing to help U.S. business interests in the Dominican Republic. He specifically mentioned the contract for X-ray equipment at the ports.
Castillo’s father, Vinicio “Vincho” Castillo, the government’s drug czar and Melgen’s uncle, has also spoken about the need for the machines.
Fieser/Miami Herald
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They all started to come to light Tuesday and Wednesday when the FBI raided the South Florida offices of Menendez’s friend and donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen, accused in the emails of flying the New Jersey Democrat to the Dominican Republic for the trysts.
Menendez called the claims “fallacious allegations.”
Caputo/Miami Herald
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Menendez trove at the Daily Caller

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Okay. A brief defense of hater sites and wingnut web presence.
The mindset of counter-MSM journalism, essentially the left/liberal channel on the net, is so timid and knee-jerk partisan you can get most of the two "sides" to any serious issue from scanning FOXNews and the Daily Kos.
The polarized scornful dismissal of non-liberal non-progressive but non-mainsream whatever, means that any info not acceptable to either the MSM or the counterMSM has no validity. It's not going to show up in acceptable channels.
Partisan news is just team playing, and there's always only two teams.
If you want to get at what's really happening you'll have to dig through a lot of shit, and you'll need inspired guidance. There's a lot of shit out there.
But the truth is out there as well.
The Daily Caller has no standing with Gawker. Xymphora's on the ADL's hatewatch menu.
My stance, such as it is, is that I'll read anything by anybody. And make my own mind up.
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So, the biggest bankers in Ecuador rip off the little Ecuadoran checking and savings folks and flee to the US, while the little Ecuadoran folks lose their money in the failure of Filanbanco, biggest bank in Ecuador - money which the Isaias bros now have for their very own, to live largely upon.
Menendez has their backs. Seriously has their backs.
Melgen the Opthalmologist's uncle is the drug czar of the Dominican Republic.
Melgen the Opthalmologist buys a company lined up to run X-ray scanners at major shipping ports in Dominican Republic. Playing a central role in whether or not illegal drugs are moving through D.R.
Menendez godfathers Melgen's business interest in Dominican homeland security through the various USgovernment avenues necessary.
Melgen takes Menendez to D.R., more than twice, for what an anonymous tipster says is sex vacation party fun, with underage hookers.
Neighbors in D.C. say Menendez is an at-home sex-party fool.
The math is pretty easy.
Menendez is a sex addict, vulnerable to all kinds of blackmail pressure and entrapment/enticement because of that.
Corruption is the place this thing breeds and reproduces itself.
Sex and drugs are used to corrupt individuals, money is used to corrupt individuals and the system.
Miami.
Menendez is Cuban.
What makes it hang together is the Lansky connection to pre-revolution Cuba, and Lansky's spiritual grandchildren in the "Kosher Nostra". An invisible organization which dominates international illegal drug trafficking. Most Americans think the int'l drug biz is run by the producers of the drugs themselves, which is absurd.
The control of US foreign policy by Jews - Senator "We Own You Bob" Menendez is Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee - accounts for, among other seriously bad-for-US policy decisions, the otherwise senseless continued presence of US military in Afghanistan. The world's biggest source of pre-heroin opium, Afghanistan. Which has just produced its largest opium crop ever, during an occupation by the most powerful military force in the world.
But you have to have that initial hypothesis working, that the international illegal drug industry's being run by Jewish gangsters.
And without solid evidence for that, the allegation just means you're anti-Semitic, willing to believe anything that makes Jews look bad.
Of course if you did have solid evidence for that, the depth and breadth of it are so global, and the ruthlessness of the main players so implacably vicious, your life wouldn't be worth a dime bag of street-cut skag.
And it would be pretty hard to find a safe place to hide out in long enough to get that info to anyone who could do something with it. And who would that be anyway?
Probably not the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Dear neighbor…

Icelanders aren’t accustomed to unemployment

the opposite of terrorism:

The number of Monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico has plunged to its lowest level since studies began in 1993. A report released on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014 by the World Wildlife Fund, Mexico’s Environment Department and the Natural Protected Areas Commission blames the dramatic decline on the insect's loss of habitat due to illegal logging in Mexico’s mountaintop forests and the massive displacement of its food source, the milkweed plant.

SFGate

Jewish girls are magic:

Beyond getting controversial with the abortion issue, the Jesus in Silverman's routine says the unspeakable “F-word” as well.
some website
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O’Reilly called the video “very offensive” before playing the “people are people” excerpt.
Then, as soon as it was over, he said, “Boy, I’d like to hit her with a pie. …Bang!”
“Oh, yeah, that’d be good,” Ingraham replied.
newshounds

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Jesus: "People who believe fertilized eggs are people are people too."
Actual quote from actual Sarah Silverman video

“To understand the universe at the deepest level, we have to understand why is there something rather than nothing. I believe the answer to all of these things is M-theory.”

Stephen Hawking

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Thank you, Stephen
Love, M

doves are not peaceful birds to begin with:

Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture have been attacked by other birds.

As tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace.

One dove lost some feathers as it broke free from the gull. But the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove.

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Despite their photogenic qualities, and pleasant burbly sound, doves are like pit bulls with feathers. Perfectly understandable products of their evolution, but not at all "peaceful".
Anymore than crows and ravens, in this case seagulls as well, are mean and nasty.
Doves look peaceful.
But looks aren't everything.

As we approach Burns Night worth remembering while it is legal to buy an assault gun in the US it is illegal to import or sell haggis.
— mark perkins (@normanmonkey) January 24, 2013

This is important

Neil Young is getting heat for things that aren't central to what he's saying.
So that the controversy slides into being about how much fuel he uses, and whether or not there's beauty in Ft McMurray. And of course there is. I could get some photographers together and we could go anywhere on this planet, anywhere, Somalia, the scene of a cartel massacre in Mexico, the strip malls outside USmilitary bases on Okinawa, sewer-dwellings of the homeless in NYC, any place the default reaction of normal decent folks is "That's ugly!" There's beauty everywhere.
His Hiroshima comment was specifically about the industrial presence of tar-sands extraction in treaty-protected Alberta. All the lovely nature that's viewable around that ruinous landscape doesn't change a thing. It actually makes his point.
The snark about consumption - "Al Gore has 3000 light bulbs! And they're always on!" - isn't heartfelt. It's adolescent bitterness. The immune system of the power that's causing the havoc.
Someone steps up, in the midst of a lemming-rush toward oblivion, and if they aren't Jesus or Ghandi, they're crucified for hypocrisy.
But no one else is capable of figure-heading an opposition. You have to be a figurehead to do that. You can't be a figurehead in the modern world without having an exceptional lifestyle.
No profile for the saints. A little cave in the desert, the hermit fed by birds and selfless nuns. No voice though, because no media presence.
So any figurehead who isn't a champion of raw greedy selfishness is a hypocrite, because any normal life will not be saintly, but normal, even the abnormal lifestyle of someone like Young is normal that way.
Long time ago conversation about petrochemical/gasoline consumption:
If you don't use it you won't be able to vocally oppose it, unless you huddle in some urban hive.
But that will mean a collective urban lifestyle.
So anarchy and anonymous and OWC and yeah.
But that won't work for northern Alberta.
It's either Neil Young talking about it, giving a voice where voice has been denied for a long time, or some media event, usually destructive, and the consequent reactive war against destructive actions and actors.
He's the nice part of the resistance, peace-loving, relatively sane, with a sensible presentation. And his main point is the illegal dishonoring of legal treaties with the First Nations people.
If you want hypocrisy in this matter, look to the p.r. campaign of "energy independence" by greedy little shitheads who intend to sell that oil to China. Or anyone else with the big $$ to spend.

“no greater ally on earth.”

Thing is, it's true. If "ally" is limited to states and nations, who else? Canada? UK? South Korea?

You're the picture of innocence:

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, said that about an hour into a 19:45 EST showing of ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,’ a man who flashed an official-looking badge “yank[ed] the Google Glass” off his face, asking him to exit the theater. The man was attending the film with his wife at the AMC theater at Easton Town Center.
Two officers then ordered him to hand over his wallet and both his work and personal cell phones, according to tech site The Gadgeteer. The man said he was questioned for 20 or 30 minutes on why he was attempting to record the film. Because he had recently added prescription lenses to his Google Glass, the 35-year-old man wore them into the movie. The device has a voice-activated computer and does have an attached camera.
“I said, ‘Want me to prove I’m not recording the movie? It’s very easy,’”

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No no, look, can't you see?
We're not enabling,willingly and actively co-operating with the Panopticon!
The Panopticon is picking on us, because it thinks we're pirates.

they're doing this just for me:

For the first time, astronomers were able to see a string of hot gas known as a filament that is thought to be part of the mysterious underlying structure that dictates the layout of all the stars and galaxies in our universe.

All you need to know about the state of the world today is in this sentence:

Madonna is spending some time with her loved ones following her controversial use of the N-word.

.

turtles all the way:

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

ScienceDaily 16.Jan.14

A giant sponge making the ocean fall and rise

yonder stands your orphan, with his gun:

Greenwald is now calling for the release from prison of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina and he is appearing on the Israeli media to make his case...

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crying like a fire in the sun:

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first published documents leaked by Edward Snowden that revealed the scope of U.S. spying worldwide, said the documents contain additional information about U.S. surveillance of Israel that has not yet been published.

He also said the continued imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard attests to the hypocrisy of the U.S. administration.
...
It’s proper to raise Pollard’s case in the context of U.S. spying on its Israeli ally, he continued, because that underscores the hypocrisy of what the U.S. itself is doing. The U.S. government, Greenwald charged, does exactly what it accuses its enemies of doing, and no country has the right to say other countries shouldn’t do something while it is secretly violating that very same taboo.

ha'aretz  07.Jan.14
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The depth of absurdity in this now becomes so compelling it creates its own gravity, you can feel it pulling at your legs, shoes slippery with whatever darkness that is that's staining the sloping floor, everything tilted just enough you can still stand, still walk, but all the real power's headed one way, the natural flow is down toward that sucking maw of the unthinkable, and like gravity, it's completely invisible except by its effects.
Manning, Chelsea Manning. If you can't bring yourself to participate in the changeover, you can say "the former Bradley Manning". You can talk about Assange. Hammond.
Sarah Harrison's waking to a cold room now.
And instead, Greenwald's advocating for Pollard.
Jesus bloody Christ.

Updated:Greenwald evidently was played into what was not even closely a statement but an inferred, implied, you know, where it's "Wait I didn't say that!" and then that truthish bit-bite was delivered as the full meal.
And I bought it because of knee-jerk 'noias about all things contemporary involving the usual players. Which is a disservice to everyone trying real hard to nail what's really happening, including me.
So no, it was a set-up, a milking operation, and Greenwald's dubious stature as truth-bringing Prometheus of Secret Data was used by cynical users to brand their p.r. for Pollard as coming from the same health-seeking area as Snowden's still-veiled "revelations".
Possibly similar knee-jerking response to this:
Kerry responds forcefully to Israeli insults.
We'll see. I'm on my best toes.

raw materials of I told you so:

DEA as thug enforcement agency
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vision of "tomorrow" as longevity-toward-immortality

drug poop scoop digby

Neil Young’s Honor the Treaties Tour

“How would I know if a guy sent me a picture where he had Photoshopped himself standing next to him?”

The native band’s battle with industry’s expansion in its traditional territory struck a chord with the Canadian-born icon, who lashed out at environmental degradation in the oilsands during a news conference the following week in Washington. Likening the landscape in northern Alberta to Hiroshima, Young made splashy headlines across the country...
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“The fact is, Fort McMurray looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. The fuels all over – the fumes everywhere – you can smell it when you get to town. The closest place to Fort McMurray that is doing the tar sands work is 25 or 30 miles out of town and you can taste it when you get to Fort McMurray. People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All the First Nations people up there are threatened by this.”

Go here, and at the end where it says "Comments on this entry are closed." put this:

Just to be clear, the Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea
Yeah sure it did. And, just to be even more clear, North Korea and South Korea came into their unique separate geographical existences on the back of a giant red-crowned heron around 17,000 years ago.
Alternatively - the division of Korea, a distinct unified geo-political entity, with a single language and culture, invaded by Japan pre-WW2, then invaded in turn by the victorious insert-epithet-here Allies post WW2, was accomplished entirely from outside Korea, a devastated nation thus easily broken into two tidy controllable pieces, by people who didn't give a damn about Korea or Koreans, but were heavily invested in the poisonous football game that became the Cold War.
It is an egregious bit of prevaricating nonsense to elide how freshly-minted the line between the two "countries" was.
Short, easy, clear, simple version:
North Korea invaded nothing. Korea invaded itself. Because the North/South division was a Western fiction, imposed by victorious thugs who had just defeated, and replaced, the previous (20th c.) invaders of Korea, the Japanese.

The thing is, that that was written while the comments were still open.
They closed out when I went to publish or "submit".
No big deal. Happens.
Sure it does. And back in the previous decade the number of times web sites crashed right after I put up a comment? You have an accurate count on that?
No you do not.
The owners not so concerned with who'd last written something, but just the fact of the crash itself, which on at least two occasions took my comment and everything else right on out. For keeps.
Once the doors of cowardice are opened, the stairs go straight down to the Satanic throne.
And us little pilgrims with our sandals and our cheap road sandwiches, we get to burn up lots of energy trying to figure out if it's pigs, or coincidence, or coincidence plus pigs.