What Are Sex Addicts Doing Now? Is Promiscuous Sex Still A Thing During The Pandemic?

Mike Huckabee's 10,000 square feet $6 million McMansion looks out over Walton County's Gulf Coast. Mother Jones reported that he's been complaining about people walking on his beach-- and says he once "saw a young couple strip naked and have sex on a YOLO board there at two in the afternoon. But now that the county has finally closed the beach and kicked out all the spring breakers as part of its pandemic response, Huckabee has sued the county because he can’t go out there either. I wonder if Huckabee wants to have sex on a YOLO board. Are people still having promiscuous sex with strangers? Dan Savage says NO-- No, No, No! "We're not supposed to come within six feet of anyone we don't live with, NR, which means you can't invite this guy over to play cribbage and/or fuck you senseless. If you wanted to invite this guy over to stay, you could shack up and wait out the lockdown together. But you can't invite him over just to play."

Brothels and prostitution are basically legal in Europe-- but not during the pandemic. Sex workers in countries like Holland and Germany-- most of them foreign-- are now unemployed and many also now homeless-- and unable to get home through closed borders. There were between 100,000 and 200,000 prostitutes-- 80% of them foreign, mainly from Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine-- working in Germany before the brothels were shut down in March along with other non-essential businesses like restaurants and nightclubs. Some of these sex workers are now are soliciting for clients on the streets to survive meet until brothels reopen.

Nevada has a similar story-- legal prostitution and, as of March 19, closed down brothels and strip clubs. Nevada's brothel industry brought in between $35 million and $50 million that year, and served about 400,000 clients. But there are sex workers everywhere across America. Are some of them disregarding social distancing and working now? Are some of their regular clients been driven by whatever drives them under non-pandemic circumstances?

On Tuesday, L.A.'s David Kordansky Gallery opens a month-long Tom of Finland exhibition-- online. They represent the Tom of Finland-- Touko Laaksonen-- estate and emphasize that the artist "has long been recognized as one of the 20th century’s great visual innovators. As he confronted the stigmas and stereotypes that long burdened homosexual desire, his depictions of empowered gay men fully enjoying their sexuality proved liberating on social and aesthetic levels alike. The sheer range of his influence on the culture at large is immeasurable. His work assumes a key role in the art historical discourse (Tom’s drawings are in the collections of institutions like The Museum of Modern Art, New York and regularly appear in museum shows throughout the world), while also occupying a place in every corner of the popular imagination."

Can an online exhibition of his erotic work serve as a substitute for sex? Or a provocation to go out and look for the real thing? I don't know. I asked the gallery's publicist. She didn't know either. I also asked a young friend of mine who is sexually active with strangers-- or was. He no longer uses Grindr and is strict about social distancing. But... he knows of underground parties in L.A. "Some people wear masks and gloves," he said.

Writing last week for the New Yorker Masha Gessen asked about lessons from the AIDS crisis that can be helpful today. Gessen-- who prefers the pronoun "they"-- wrote that "Over the past month, those of us who lived through the aids epidemic have searched for ways in which that experience can inform the covid-19 crisis. Do we know something that can be useful now? Can this knowledge help us survive?

Even in the middle of a nearly nationwide lockdown, at no level do we think of the pandemic as our problem. That allows the Supreme Court to rule that Wisconsin cannot extend its deadline for absentee ballots, deciding, in effect, that it’s the voters’ problem if they would not risk their health to go to the polls and the state didn’t have enough ballots for them. This is a problem not only on the right of the political spectrum-- back in March, Joe Biden’s campaign was encouraging voters to go to the polls, when he should have been imploring them to self-isolate.

Before it’s over, the pandemic will get much worse, and so will we. Then it will end. And, unless we start the work of noticing and remembering now, we will forget how low we went. We will assimilate the ways in which the virus has changed our perceptions. We will romanticize the heroism and ingenuity of people who were betrayed by their government, rather than confront the people responsible for the betrayal.

Is Trump Afraid Of Axl Rose? Will Kirsten Gillibrand Attack Before Trump Does?

I'm guessing Axl Rose hasn't taught AC/DC how to do this one yet... but maybe he should. It was the final song on Chinese Democracy (2008), although Axl had been working it for nearly a decade. Axl wrote it with Robin and Paul. So it's not he doesn't know anything about prostitutes. He knows one when he sees one, that's for sure. And he just reminded his 1.22 million Twitter followers that Trump met his future wife when she was still a high-priced call girl. Axl was considerably blister than Mary Johnson at the Washington Post who wrote on Friday that "In 2000, Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model dating Donald Trump, began petitioning the government for the right to permanently reside in the United States under a program reserved for people with 'extraordinary ability.' Knauss’s credentials included runway shows in Europe, a Camel cigarette billboard ad in Times Square and-- in her biggest job at the time-- a spot in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, which featured her on the beach in a string bikini, hugging a six-foot inflatable whale."

In March 2001, she was granted a green card in the elite EB-1 program, which was designed for renowned academic researchers, multinational business executives or those in other fields, such as Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors, who demonstrated “sustained national and international acclaim.”

“We called it the Einstein visa,” said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman and chairman of the House subcommittee that wrote the Immigration Act of 1990 defining EB-1.

The year that Knauss-- now first lady Melania Trump-- got her legal residency, only five people from Slovenia received green cards under the EB-1 program, according to the State Department.

In all, of the more than 1 million green cards issued in 2001, just 3,376-- or a fraction of 1 percent-- were issued to immigrants with “extraordinary ability,” according to government statistics.

Melania Trump’s ability to secure her green card not only set her on the path to U.S. citizenship, but put her in the position to sponsor the legal residency of her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs [what Señor Trumpanzee refers to as "chain migration"]. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the couple are now close to obtaining their own citizenship.

...Michael Wildes, an attorney for Melania Trump and her family, declined to comment on whether she sponsored her parents for green cards. He said he was not surprised that so few immigrants from Slovenia obtained EB-1 immigrant visas in 2001 because the requirements are stringent.

“Mrs. Trump was more than amply qualified and solidly eligible,” he said. But he declined to discuss the qualifications that the first lady cited in her petition for permanent residency.

Really? Anal? Oral? Some kind of fancy positions she learned over the years while she was plying her trade internationally? Unfortunately Wildes won't spill the beans. "There is no reason to adjudicate her petition publicly when her privacy is so important to her." OK... Axl had something to say about that:

To obtain an EB-1 under the extraordinary ability category, an immigrant has to provide evidence of a major award or meet at least three out of 10 criteria. Among them: evidence of commercial successes in the performing arts, evidence of work displayed at artistic exhibitions and evidence of original contributions to a field.

“What did she submit?” asked David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There are a lot of questions about how she procured entry into the United States.”

The process of deciding who meets the “extraordinary ability” standard is subjective, said Sarah Pierce, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. But it is generally thought that only the top 2 percent of people in their field would qualify, she said, adding that the “quintessential award you want to put on the application is Nobel Prize.”

...Initially, she was not widely known in the highly competitive New York fashion world, according to people in the industry.

“She was never a supermodel; she was a working model-- like so many others in New York,” said one person who knew her in the 1990s and requested anonymity to discuss the first lady’s early years in the United States.

In 1998, at age 28, she began dating Trump after meeting him at a party, an association that raised her modeling profile. She started appearing on Page Six of the New York Post and in other celebrity columns on the arm of the real estate developer.

When I did a post about Melania having once been a prostitute, her lawyer sent me a threatening letter and wrote that if I didn't take it down I would be in court defending myself. What about all the American hookers who she was stealing business from? Not part of Make America Great Again?

Former CIA chief John Brennan warns that Trump is "unstable, inept, inexperienced, and also unethical... When I hear what Vladimir Putin was saying just yesterday about the nuclear capabilities he has, the president of the United States is tweeting about Alec Baldwin this morning, I mean, where is your sense of priorities?"

Will Trump Be Running Brothels In China? Maybe Not Until He Leaves The White House

There have always been well-sourced rumors in New York-- apart from how Trump met Melania and how their sketchy relationship actually began-- that Trump Model Management was, at least in part, a front for an escort service, supplying attractive but desperate Eastern European women to wealthy desperate men. Trump owns 85% of Trump Model Management, which still has a shady reputation on every level. (Read about it at the link just above.) Yesterday, though, Erika Kinetz, reporting for the Associated Press, seemed to indicate that the Trump Organization will be running call girls in China. Yeah, you read that right. And why not? Sheldon Adelson does it, so why not Señor Trumpanzee?

China has granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, paving the way for President Donald Trump and his family to develop a host of branded businesses from hotels to insurance to bodyguard and escort services, public documents show.

Trump's lawyers in China applied for the marks in April 2016, as Trump railed against China at campaign rallies, accusing it of currency manipulation and stealing US jobs. Critics maintain that Trump's swelling portfolio of China trademarks raises serious conflict-of-interest questions.

China's Trademark Office published the provisional approvals on February 27 and Monday.

If no one objects, they will be formally registered after 90 days. All but three are in the president's own name. China already registered one trademark to the president, for Trump-branded construction services, on February 14.

If Trump receives any special treatment in securing trademark rights, it would violate the US Constitution, which bans public servants from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless approved by Congress, ethics lawyers from across the political spectrum say. Concerns about potential conflicts of interest are particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party.

Dan Plane, a director at Simone IP Services, a Hong Kong intellectual-property consultancy, said he had never seen so many applications approved so quickly. "For all these marks to sail through so quickly and cleanly, with no similar marks, no identical marks, no issues with specifications-- boy, it's weird," he said.

Trump will be able to build and operate hotels spas, golf clubs, restaurants, retail shops, run insurance, finance and real-estate companies, a body guard service, massage parlors and escort services. Trump ally and financier Sheldon Adelson is the don of the multibillion dollar Macao gambling empire and he is also infamous for providing prostitutes in China. In late June, 2012, we looked into one of the myriad lawsuits against Adelson and saw how his former chief executive of the Macao casinos revealed that Adelson "personally approved of prostitution and knew of other improper activity at his company's properties in the Chinese enclave."

In the lawsuit, he accuses the company and Adelson of breach of contract and of pushing him into illegal activity in Macau, a former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong where Sands has established a strong business presence. The company owns the Venetian Macao and Sands Macao casino resorts, the Plaza Macao hotel, restaurant and shopping complex and the newly opened Sands Cotai Central resort with three hotels and two casinos.

In documents revealed Thursday-- including a sworn seven-page declaration that Jacobs submitted along with a summary from his attorneys of problems obtaining documents from Sands-- Jacobs describes an effort he launched after arriving in Macau in May 2009 to rid the casino floor of "loan sharks and prostitution."

"This project was met with concern as (company) senior executives informed me that the prior prostitution strategy had been personally approved by Adelson," Jacobs said in the documents.

In his court filing, Jacobs alleges other documents that haven't been turned over include records of misuse of "blue card' work permits and the hiring of illegal workers in Macau; emails and records of Adelson controlling a "Chairman's Club" allowing favored members, including known or suspected organized crime figures, exclusive access to Sands China's most luxurious accommodations; and email requests from Adelson to a Macau lawmaker who Jacobs said was hired as outside counsel after Jacobs was fired.

...Jacobs' lawsuit has drawn interest from U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigator for possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to a filing with the SEC. The law bars American companies from paying foreign officials to "affect or influence any act or decision" for commercial benefit. No charges have been filed.

Does anyone breathing think this kind of filth isn't right up Trump's alley?

Wall Street Banksters Don't Want Eliot Spitzer Up Their Asses Again

Eliot Spitzer is feared and loathed by America's worst enemies

Monday evening, Ken took a long, insightful look at Eliot Spitzer's bid to become the third-ranking elected official in NYC. One of Ken's conclusions was that "Contrary to Speaker Quinn's impression, we may be dealing here with one of our more dangerously un-selfish public servants -- one who actually believes in public service. He did it in his first officeholding career, showing himself as NYS attorney general to have some strong beliefs about the public good, including holding powerful people to account for their misdeeds. It's the message he's trying to convey into all those microphones thrust in his face."

Personally, I like Spitzer a lot and would like to see him back in elected office. Ken reminds us that Spitzer "is not wildly popular among NYC Democratic officeholders or party functionaries" and that "Eliot's never really been a 'party guy.' Too independent... His short tenure [as governor] has been largely obscured by its spectacular crash-and-burn, but some of us remember how much ill will he created among people he needed to work with, like the leaders of the state legislature, who not only didn't like taking orders from the new governor but frequently had good reason to question his judgment, something the governor himself seemed seriously disinclined to do, ever."

And then there's Wall Street. The Elders of Wall Street hate his guts-- with a passion. Many people are aware it was Wall Street that made Spitzer's indiscretions public and got their worst enemy knocked off the playing field. They don't want him back. Yesterday, Michael Barbaro and David Chen of the NY Times put it a little differently: Spitzer Quickly Hits Establishment Headwind. "From corporate boardrooms to the headquarters of the city’s Democratic political campaigns," their article began, "phone lines lighted up and strategy sessions were organized on Monday with a single mission in mind: stopping Eliot Spitzer." His shrewd, last minute sneak attack took them by complete surprise and they are deathly afraid to see the TV-savvy and self-financed Spitzer handed a new megaphone.

Behind the scenes, they began to lay out a blueprint for undermining Mr. Spitzer’s bid for comptroller, the city’s third-highest elected office, and for propping up his lesser-known Democratic rival, Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president.

They quickly zeroed in on what they claimed were Mr. Spitzer’s vulnerabilities: an out-of-control ego; his lawbreaking patronization of prostitutes, which led to his resignation as governor in 2008; and his combative, go-it-alone style.

Strikingly, Democratic leaders drew parallels between Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Weiner, trying to lump them together as two wayward men obsessed with reclaiming power and unworthy of redemption, in a direct appeal to women voters who may decide the races.

“For me the question with both Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer is what have they been doing to earn this second chance?” asked Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a Democratic candidate for mayor. She said she had seen little that would “redeem themselves from their selfish behavior.”

Business leaders leapt into the ruckus, finding common cause with organized labor as they described Mr. Spitzer as ill-suited to the job of managing the city’s multibillion-dollar pension system and policing city spending.

Such a post, said Kathryn S. Wylde, the head of the New York City Partnership, made up mainly of real estate, Wall Street and insurance firms, requires intense collaboration and diplomacy with the mayor’s office, the business community and municipal labor unions.

“The tone of the Spitzer announcement and history suggest that’s not the way he would approach the job,” she said in an interview.

In the corridors of finance, executives made little secret of their dismay at the thought of Mr. Spitzer, an often zealous adversary of Wall Street, assuming a job with some authority over the industry. Robert T. Zito, the founder of a brand consulting firm and a former executive at the New York Stock Exchange, which was a relentless target of Mr. Spitzer’s ire over executive pay, put it bluntly: “I would love to see his opponent win.”

Those involved in and briefed about the strategy discussions raised the possibility of organizing a super PAC to counter Mr. Spitzer’s self-financed campaign.

Eyes turned to Mr. Spitzer’s most fervent critics on Wall Street, like the billionaire Kenneth G. Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot and a former director of the New York Stock Exchange, who had relished the governor’s downfall.

According to a person told of his plans, Mr. Langone was mulling independent campaign expenditures against Mr. Spitzer. Mr. Langone was traveling in Europe and an aide said he was unavailable to talk.

Mr. Spitzer, in an interview, appeared to have anticipated the attacks, especially from Wall Street, and sought to turn them to his advantage, by portraying himself as a warrior for regular people.

“When I was attorney general, I made some powerful enemies,” he said. “But I also made a lot of friends,” which he described as the “real people” he had fought for.

The fierce debate about how to deny Mr. Spitzer a place in city government unfolded as he hit the campaign trail for the first time in five years, displaying the kind of studied discipline that characterized his previous runs for office.

...It appeared that the muscle for the anti-Spitzer operation might emerge from the city’s labor unions, which view Mr. Stringer as a reliable ally, and are wary of the less predictable Mr. Spitzer, who has not hesitated to confront them in the past.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said all options-- including tapping its own campaign funds for television ads-- were under consideration. “We’re going to make sure that we do everything in our power to make sure Scott is the next comptroller,” he said. “Weiner has kind of been given a free pass.”

Even as they grudgingly acknowledged Mr. Spitzer’s technical credentials for the job of comptroller, the union leaders cast doubt on his motivation for seeking a return to public life.

“He is running to clear his name, to build a public persona again,” said Héctor J. Figueroa, president of 32BJ, the city union of janitors and doormen, which has endorsed Mr. Stringer. He called the comptroller’s office “the wrong position” for Mr. Spitzer.

I think it's exactly the right position and I'd love to see Spitzer win, do a great job and get back into position where he can once again do battle with the enemies of ordinary working families. If Wall Street criminal banksters and corrupt, grubby municipal union bosses agree he's terrible, he must be the greatest candidate to come on the scene ever! The corporately controlled media, of course, will do their worst.


It's so wonderful having Michael Smerconish hosting Hardball instead of that pathetic hack Chris Matthews. Last night Smerconish was advocating for legalizing prostitution. Interesting perspective-- and it's part of this post for a reason.

Republican Whoremonger Outpolls Romney

Lance Gilman is a happy camper. He was just elected County Commissioner in Storey County, Nevada-- and elected by a wide margin. It's a tiny county-- population 4,010, horseshoed between Washoe (Reno) and Carson. Storey was the only county in the state to vote to legalize marijuana in the 2006 referendum. Earlier this month, President Obama got 920 votes there (40%) and Romney got 1,321 votes (57%). Of Nevada's 17 counties, Storey was the 5th best-performing for the president. Gilman, a grandfather, did better than Romney, winning 62% of the vote.

Prostitution is legal there-- and it isn't legal in Reno. That means big business. And that's Lance Gilman's business; he owns the Mustang Ranch brothel 10 miles east of Reno down the I-80. Gilman employs between 30 and 80 prostitutes there, depending on the season. The brothel was seized by the Feds from the original owner, Joe Conforte, as much a tax evader as Mitt Romney but now a fugitive in Brazil, and Gilman bought it from the government and added it to his small but thriving prostitution empire. He also owns two restaurants and a Harley-Davidson dealership.

Gilman has been a generous donor to the GOP, especially to Dean Heller, one of the state's two senators but he used to give money to Heller's predecessor, John Ensign and to another Republican senator who was certainly never a client, outed closet case Larry Craig of Idaho. Gilman describes himself as a "dye-in-the-wool Republican who loves American values." He sees prostitution as a libertarian value and he's damn proud that his girls are regularly checked by doctors. Republicans, especially the dye-in-the-wool ones, are the damnedest critters.

Paul Ryan Ready For Real People? Probably Not... But Tampa Should Be Fine

After having banned most Republican stars from the Tampa convention stage-- from Palin, Bachmann, New and Santorum to Ron Paul, who's retiring and practically begged Romney twice for a chance to say good-bye-- the Romney campaign announced yesterday that Chris Christie will give the keynote and that Marco Rubio will introduce Mitt. A Koch brother is a delegate and will mingle with his subjects. This is shaping up to be a real snoozefest-- although Tampa health officials are bracing for a possible outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases.

Prostitution in the Tampa Bay area is expected to increase during the Republican National Convention. But will that lead to the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases?

We asked that question of a county health official, a high-end escort, and an academic expert. The answer is complicated.

..."Mary" isn't taking any chances. The high-end escort from Tampa has a plan.
Before she even meets her clients, she has a good idea of who they are.

"I want to talk to these people. I want to know who I'm seeing, why I'm seeing them," she says.

But what a simple screening doesn't reveal is whether they have a sexually transmitted disease-- a risk factor that is not lost on Mary. 

"There is no safe sex, there's safer sex, I mean you can get sick from drinking after someone, let alone kissing them!”

It's a job hazard that has her taking steps to keep herself safe. 

"I get tested. And a lot of my girlfriends do too," she says.

But long before it even gets to that point, she protects herself. 

"Condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, female condoms, male condoms, dental dams, condoms…what else? Condoms," she says.

Back to that question-- do political conventions lead to the spread of STDs?

Researcher Scott Cunningham, a professor at Baylor University, says the risk seems to depend on the type of prostitute sought and who is seeking them.

"It would be like saying there is such thing as a car, and you treat the car market as if there is just one thing," he says.

First of all, clients at the RNC may be different than at an event like the Super Bowl.

"That's where the public health question becomes a little bit more complicated,” he says, “if you are bringing in a lot of young men who are drinking a lot to a sports event, I think you have more reason to think they might be transmitters of STDs.”

He says that’s because these men are more likely to contact higher risk prostitutes-- women who may take on more clients and be less likely to use protection.

Through his research, Cunningham has found that the clients at political conventions tend to be older men who are more likely to hire high-end escorts.

And Tampa's 50 strip clubs are expecting a bonanza from Republican delegates, who, the club owners say, drop three times more cash on hookers and booze, etc than Democrats do.

“The average was $150 for Republicans and $50 for Democrats.”

As further evidence of the clubs’ nonpartisan appeal, Don Kleinhans, the owner of the 2001 Odyssey, said when the Promise Keepers, a male evangelical group, came to town years ago, business was rollicking.

“We had phenomenal numbers all weekend, and they walked in wearing badges and name tags and weren’t shy at all,” he said.

There's even a Sarah Palin impersonator, Lisa Ann (from the popular porn flic, Who's Nailin' Paylin?), appearing at a top strip club, Thee Dollhouse on August 24 and 25. And the gigantic Republican closet case contingent-- from relatively open gays like Lindsay Graham, David Dreier and Aaron Schock, to deeply closeted freaks like Patrick McHenry and Trent Franks. Words of wisdom from Republican pedophile and former Florida Congressman Mark Foley:



But political junkies are much more interested in knowing what went on behind the scenes in Romney's terrible running-mate choice than what goes under between the sheets between hypocritical Family Values Republicans. For example, the NY Post reported that keynoter Christie could have had the VP nomination... if he was only willing to resign as governor. That doesn't ring true but Joe Hallett 's analysis/Op Ed in Sunday's Columbus Dispatch about how Portman lost the nomination does. Hallett, the dean of Ohio political writers, thinks Romney may have blown the election by passing over Portman for the more controversial Ryan.

[I]n bypassing Portman for Ryan, the Republican presidential candidate made a big mistake. Paul Ryan doesn’t get Mitt Romney anything he already won’t get.

Portman, after all, made so much more sense as the GOP veep candidate. He could have been announced during Romney’s bus tour through Ohio this week.

It appears, though, that Romney kowtowed to his party’s far-right flank, selecting Ryan to appease the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the ultra-right-but-rarely-right William Kristol of the Weekly Standard. They pulled hammies last week doing cheerleading jumps for Ryan.

Romney, they opined, needs an uncompromising advocate for conservative principles such as Ryan to consolidate the GOP’s base and present an economic vision totally different from President Barack Obama’s. Never mind, they argued, that Obama would use Ryan’s draconian budget proposal to scare seniors-- he would do that whether or not Ryan was on the ticket.

Rest assured now that Obama will tie Romney to the budget Ryan proposed as House Budget Committee chairman, including unpopular cuts to Medicare, and try to demagogue his way to a second term.

Memo to Journal editors and Kristol: Romney doesn’t need a far-right running mate to consolidate the base. The base is consolidated. It is fired up. Obama does that for Romney. Get out of NYC and D.C., come to Ohio, and see for yourselves.

...Portman is not Mr. Excitement, but he exudes a warmness and competence that would have allured presidential-election voters. After evaluating his congressional experience and White House service under both Presidents Bush, voters would have felt comforted knowing that Portman is a No. 2 ready to be No. 1. Ryan doesn’t inspire that confidence.

The last time Ohio had a vice presidential candidate was in 1944. Republican Gov. John W. Bricker helped Thomas Dewey carry the state against Franklin D. Roosevelt by a 0.37 percentage point. Romney just might become president if Portman were to do that for him. Instead, Romney might have blown his best chance to win the most crucial state in the election.

Romney just made becoming president harder for himself.

Ever Wonder What Happened To GOP Boy Wonder Tom Reynolds?

At one time he and Pataki pretty much ran the Republican Party in New York State. And in the 2006 election cycle he certainly ran the NRCC, the Republican version of the DCCC and was a big deal member of the Republican House leadership. In fact, in 2000, no less personages than Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay went to the New York state legislature and pressured them to give Reynolds a district so ridiculously safe that he could "vote like a Southern conservative" without ever having to fear being seriously challenged by a moderate-- from either party. It worked-- and he did.

But then the Mark Foley scandal broke and Reynolds' "Democratic" opponent, Jack Davis (a very rich right-wing Republican with a grudge who the Democrats allowed to run on their pretty worthless line), made sure everyone from Buffalo to Rochester was aware that Reynolds not only participated in the coverup-- while Foley was still actively raping texting young boys-- but that when Foley begged the House leadership let him retire before something disastrous happened, it was Reynolds who literally forced Foley to buck up and run again. And then something disastrous happened.

It was disastrous for Reynolds too. He was on the defensive from the day the scandal broke and not only never left his district to campaign for other Republicans-- part of his job as NRCC chair-- but he syphoned a couple of million dollars from money meant to protect marginal GOP seats to his own super-safe (vote like a Southern conservative) district. The Republicans lost dozens of those marginal seats and Reynolds... well he lost his sheen. And almost lost his seat. An early snowstorm saved him but Cheney and DeLay didn't help create the district they did so Reynolds could spend millions of dollars and nearly lose anyway.

He soldiered on-- for a while. And then the shit really hit the fan... except no one outside of Buffalo political junkies ever heard about this part. Ever hear of Judge Ronald H. Tills? Of course not-- but he was Reynolds' mentor. In fact Reynolds gave ole Judge Tills quite the greatest-man-since-Jesus-walked-the-eath encomium in the Congressional Record at the very end of 2005. The occasion was Tills' retirement from the bench and Reynolds went beyond just calling him "a valued mentor." He brought up how crucial to Tills were the Masons and the Shriners and a much lesser known organization that flows out of being high up in both those secret societies, the Royal Order of Jesters.

One of his great loves is the largest and oldest fraternal organization in the world. As a Mason, Ron Tills has held numerous responsibilities within the Masons and the organizations within it, including Proctor of the Grand Lodge of the State of New York, Potentate of the Ismalia Shrine Temple, Director and President of the Shrine Oasis and Director of the Buffalo Court 22 of Jesters.

Never heard of the Jesters? I hadn't either. They're not the kind of group Members of Congress should be talking about too loudly. A month before Judge Tills was arrested-- he went to prison-- and a month before Reynolds suddenly announced his retirement from that super-safe seat DeLay and Cheney helped create for him (not a coincidence, as you'll soon see), the Dallas Morning News ran a story about "death threats, drug use, cutthroat competition and middle-age Americans paying 13-year-old Brazilian villagers for sex." The Jesters weren't clowning around when it came to sex tourism.

The Jesters, an offshoot of the Shriners and the Masons, is a fraternal organization devoted to having fun. Their slogan is "Mirth is King."

With chapters nationwide, the group is headquartered in Indiana but registered as a not-for-profit corporation in Texas.

Poking through federal court filings, Marsteller learned that in September 2008, a New York state judge who was also a Jester agreed to plead guilty to procuring prostitutes for Jesters' parties in Kentucky.

Nothing in the records made any connection between the New York case and the alleged activities in Brazil. However, the judge's lawyer said in a pre-sentence memorandum that partying with prostitutes "was pervasive throughout the organization" and "was reported to have occurred at Jester meetings across the country."

The lawyer added: "The group's practice of inviting women, called 'Jester girls,' to meetings for sexual activities was ... a long-standing tradition."

Garcia da Silva, in his deposition for the slander suit, said Wet-A-Line clients from "the mason group" had been involved in orgies on their trips to Brazil.

Alex Rogers, business administrator at the Jesters national office, told The News that the New York case was not indicative of normal Jester behavior. "This organization doesn't partake of any of that activity," Rogers said.

And that brings us back to Reynolds' mentor, Judge Tills, the Jester. Tills plea agreement-- they let him off easy-- was a doozy: "The defendant agrees to waive indictment and to plead guilty to 1 count Information charging a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2421 (transportation of an individual in interstate commerce with intent that the individual engage in prostitution), for which the maximum possible sentence is a term of imprisonment of 10 years, a fine of $250,000..." Tills was procuring prostitutes and bringing them for Jester parties in Kentucky-- over state lines. He wasn't just Reynolds' mentor; they owned property together as well.

This story got covered up with a story about how hundreds of thousands of dollars were embezzled from the NRCC while Reynolds was in charge. That looked like something the GOP could handle more easily than the Jesters' and Tills' human trafficking and prostitution scandal coming right on top of Reynolds' connection to Foley and his boy pages. Within 2 weeks of Tills' arrest, Reynolds hoisted the white flag and said it was time to take up new challenges. He's a K Street lobbyist, one of the slimiest out there.

This is about the retired Erie County Deputy Sheriff who recently pleaded guilty to knowing about the felony of transporting prostitutes from the Buffalo International Airport to a national Royal Order of Jesters (ROJ) national convention in Ontario, Canada and hiding the crimes by not reporting them.

This is part of the case involving three Jesters who got caught in an FBI human trafficking sting out of Buffalo, NY. These include a retired police captain, a former New York State Supreme Court judge and his law clerk. All three pleaded guilty to violating the Mann Act after confessing to driving an illegal alien prostitute from Buffalo to a weekend Jester party in Ashland, Kentucky.

The ROJ is a secret sub-group of the Shriners, best known for operating a network of 22 hospitals that used to provide free care to burned and crippled children but now takes insurance. One must first be a Master Mason before joining groups like the Scottish Rite, the Knights Templar and the Shriners... Ronald Tills is the former New York State Supreme Court Judge who was caught w/his law clerk, Michael Stebick and retired police captain John Trowbridge in an FBI human trafficking sting last October, 2007.

...“The Royal Order of Jesters (ROJ) is a world wide fraternal organization whose membership is limited to individuals invited to join by other members. The motto of the ROJ is ‘mirth is king.’ The ROJ has local chapters or ‘courts.’ On occasion, a local court or group of local courts in the same geographical location sponsor social gatherings known as ‘books of the play’ or ‘books.' The sponsoring courts organize the ‘books’ and arrange for food, lodging, and entertainment at the ‘book.’ Jesters from all over the country may attend the local ‘books.’ The ROJ also sponsors a yearly national ‘book,’ the equivalent of a national convention. In April, 2005, the Jester's national ‘book’ was held in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. As set forth below, a typical feature of a ‘book of the play’ is the presence of prostitutes (‘Jester Girls’) who engage in commercial sex acts with members of the ROJ. Arrangements for the prostitutes are generally made by the organizer of the ‘books,’ or the region hosting the national ‘book.’ On occasion, individual Jesters may make arrangements to transport prostitutes to ‘books.’”

...Tills was in charge of getting the prostitutes to the Jesters’ national “book” across the border in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. According to his plea agreement, Tills admitted to coordinating the prostitutes’ travel with national Jester officers, in or about spring, 2006.

Trowbridge then stated that Tills asked Michael Lesinski, a deputy sheriff with the Erie County Sheriff’s Department, to take care of it. Trowbridge then disclosed that Lesinski rented a limousine to transport about a dozen prostitutes from Buffalo to Canada.
The complaint then includes co-conspirator Michael Stebick’s description of how Jester “books” are typically held in hotel hospitality rooms where members can pick from a list of Jester Girls.

It continues that in April, 2008, Trowbridge provided investigators with contact information for the 13 prostitutes as he’d spoken with each of them as they gathered at the Buffalo airport though there were other prostitutes he’d not spoken with.
In June 2008 Tills told investigators that there were about 30 women at the national book and “described a network of members who had the ability to supply such women.” It was then that he identified Lesinski’s renting of two limousines that took the prostitutes to Canada.

Tills got off very light-- 18 months in prison. And his lovely encomium by Reynolds still stands in the Congressional Record. Anyway, that's why-- unless you're a DC insider (or a fracker) who engages Nixon Peabody LLP for their lobbying activities-- you never hear about former up-and-comer Thomas Reynolds any longer.

Sex Tourism-- Philippines... And Jamaica: Unrestrained Capitalism Taken To The Extreme

Not the Philippines, not Jamaica-- snow, cold... Sweden

One of my friends has taken to fantasizing out loud about "Swedish girls." He should just go get a dvd; I'm sure there are scores of them on the topic. Instead he keeps asking me about planning a trip with him to Sweden. I should probably tell him that since 1999 it's been illegal to hire a prostitute in Sweden-- and that 10 years later Norway adopted the same approach. It's not illegal for the prostitutes to offer their services... it's illegal for the johns to buy them though (the Kvinnofrid law... try the Google). Brothels are also illegal. I suggested he take his fantasies to Bangkok. I don't know if they have Swedish girls in the brothels-- Roland tells me there are foreign girls working there these days-- but I suspect that if you have enough money to spend, you can get whatever you'd like there... kind of a Randian Republican dream market. Alas, he's programmed against Asian women. Plenty of Caucasians aren't. Asian sex tourism is rampant.

The other day the U.S. Ambassador to the Phillipines, Harry Thomas, was forced to apologize to the whole nation after claiming that 40% of male tourists to that country are there for the sex. He sent a cellphone text Friday to Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who was on a visit to Vietnam, expressing regret for his comments.

"I should not have used the 40% statistic without the ability to back it up. I regret any harm that I may have caused," Thomas said in the text message, which was released to journalists.

The US embassy spokeswoman Tina Malone said Thomas "offered his deep regret" for his comment made during a conference last month.

The US would continue to be a "strong and dedicated partner of the Filipino people in combating the global scourges of human trafficking and sexual tourism," she added.

Thomas also told the conference on human trafficking in the Philippines last month that the sex tourists included Americans and that it was "something I'm not proud of." He urged Philippine authorities to prosecute all foreign sex tourists, including Americans.

The Philippines is trying to revive its tourism industry and erase its reputation as a sex tourism hotspot.

Wikileaks had posted several U.S. diplomatic cables about the rampant sex trade industry-- including the exploitation of children-- in the Philippines. "Sex tourists reportedly came from Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia to engage in sexual activity with minors," said a leaked embassy cable dated February 17, 2010... "In 2009, the Bureau of Immigration deported two foreign sex offenders and pedophiles, and in a joint program with the Australian Federal Police denied entry to 19 Australian sex offenders upon their arrival in the Philippines. The government also cooperated with the US in prosecuting American nationals under the terms of the U.S. PROTECT Act of 2003, which criminalized the commission of child abuse by American nationals overseas, including child pornography and other sexual offenses against a minor." Another leaked cable named Sabang Beach in Puerto Galeraand the province of Mindoro Oriental as well known destinations for sex tourism.

Trafficking of Philippine women and children for sex is an international business. And according to Rene Ofreneo, a former Philippine labor undersecretary and an expert on the sex trade, "the number of prostituted persons in the Philippines is about the size of the country's manufacturing workforce." That same report cites a recent study that showed there are about 75,000 children, who were forced into prostitution due to poverty. The Washington Times reported that "Teen-age girls are being forced into prostitution due to the Asian economic crisis. In Davao City, the Philippines, there are more than 1,000 prostituted teen-age girls; customers pay as little as from 50 cents to $2.50. This rise in prostitution increases the spread of AIDS, especially as contraceptive costs have gone up with the currency collapse and bankrupt government cuts in distribution programs." Most of the customers are Filipinos but the country is one of the top destinations for pedophile sex tourism, much of it financed with Japanese capital.

A Philippine Adventure Tour costs $1,645, including round trip airfare, hotel accommodations and guided tours to the bars where men purchase sex from prostitutes for as little as US $24. Tour owner and operator Allan Gaynor promises that customers "never sleep alone on this tour" and recommends that the customer have sex with a different girl every day "two if you can handle it."

...13,000 Australians, second in number to Americans, a year visit Angeles City, a center of prostitution surrounding the former Clark U.S. Air Force base in the Philippines... Men from Australia and Great Britain are primary suspects as perpetrators of child prostitution in the Philippines. Two of the three-pedophilia cases recently decided by Philippine courts involved British nationals, although there are reportedly more Australian suspects.

Maybe this is where Ambassador Thomas got his statistics:



Maybe while hubby's away exploiting child prostitutes in southeast Asia, his wife is off on a little sex tourism of her own though:

Have Louisiana Voters Forgotten David Vitter's Hypocrisy?

Yesterday another oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, although, thankfully-- at least of right now-- there have been no reports of injuries to the rescued workers, though there is uncertainty about how big the oil spill is. Thank God for the safety of the workers, but not the Senate-- whose members continue to take massive legalistic bribes from Big Oil in return for defeating proposals to effectively regulate the industry the way other industrialized nations do. The half dozen sitting senators who have been most steeped in Big Oil corruption? No surprises here:

John McCain (R-AZ)- $2,698,674
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)- $2,138,225
John Cornyn (R-TX)- $1,665,350
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)- $1,231,523
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $863,011
David Vitter (R-LA)- $845,035

And this year Big Oil have put their biggest bets on two of their most loyal shills, who will always fight for their interests even if it's deadly for their own constituents:

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)- $404,150
David Vitter (R-LA)- $303,800

Both Vitter and his pals at Houston-based Mariner Energy have been shrieking-- as late as Wednesday-- that Obama is trying to break us by imposing a moratorium on deep-water drilling while safety concerns and lax industry standards are being addressed. Vitter has been the mouthpiece for Big Oil in the Senate since he was first elected. Typical: "As I stated, there is no one more environmentally devastated by this oil disaster than the people of the Gulf Coast. It’s our coast, our marshes, and our way of life that is being impacted. However, despite the ongoing oil spill disaster, the great majority of Gulf Coast citizens feel strongly that the administration’s deep-water moratorium is a major mistake. Simply put, it will cost us more jobs and economic devastation than the oil spill itself." Also untrue:

[T]he worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years.

Vitter, of course, will go to any lengths to get the public to think of anything other than his ethics and morals problems, which is exactly what we want to ask Louisiana voters to contemplate for a moment. And this should help:

Capital Crimes: The Banking and Corporate World Returns to Its Roots

Was Bernie Madoff just a sideshow distraction?

by Noah

I have a confession to make. I, Noah, have a family member, a cousin, who is in the banking business.

There, I’ve said it; full disclosure. He even looks a lot like me. It’s a tough thing to live down, but during my life I have saved up -- you might say banked -- more than my fair share of humility, if not greenbacks. Anyway, needless to say, we have had some interesting e-mail conversations lately. My cousin, being on the inside, tries mightily to convince me that not everyone in his chosen field is a sleazebag. Oh well, who am I to talk, after a lifetime in the music business?

Now, in the famous words of one of America’s bigger sleazebags, Richard M. Nixon, let me make one thing perfectly clear: My cousin is no sleazebag; just as I am no sleazebag (no matter how I might try, in an effort to get along). Still, with yesterday’s news about the arrest of six, count ‘em six, “former” executives from brokerage house Sky Capital, it’s beginning (well, actually, it began long ago) to look like, when it comes to Wall Street and the banking gang, not only can’t my cousin see the forest for the trees, but there may be hope that at least some of these dream-snatchers may get at least a tiny bit of what they deserve.

In the recent past -- OK, all of my life -- I have been called cynical. I prefer the term realistic. When it comes to Wall Street and banks, I have never bought into the “it’s just one, or a few, bad apples” misdirection play. They would like you to believe that old Bernie Madoffwithyourcash was just a lone gunman, an isolated case. To them, Bernie was a gift, a big fat attention magnet that served as a media-served distraction while they continued their mega-fleecing of the taxpayer. (That would be us.) The whole Bernie thing has always been a case of “Hey, look over there!”

This whole thing about the financial sector of our country is looking like the local scoutmaster that says there’s only one dead boy in his basement, and when the authorities show up with the backhoe and tear up the garden, lo and behold, he was telling the truth: There was only one in the basement; the rest were pushing up daisies in the back yard. The Sky Capital arrests are welcome, and you can bet many, many more are way overdue.

These worm-infested doggie turds have been accused of conspiracy and securities fraud having to do with the manipulation of shares in two Sky Capital companies. The alleged crimes took place mainly through their firm’s plush New York offices. The SEC alleges that the gang raised more than $61 million in a scheme that restricted their investors from selling their shares. When trading in their stocks was suspended in London, the investors were left with nothing but air. Call it a Ponzi scheme or a sting; the result is the same. I wonder where da money went.

I guess it’s just another one of those seemingly endless “isolated cases.” In my dream world, the feds would fill up the New York Mets' new Citi Field with all of these “isolated cases” in one big irony Irony Fest! Then, we can bring in my all-volunteer army of gladiators to dispatch them all to Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell.

************

And now a word about the next step in asset management: Last Friday, Reuters, a news organization that wipes the floor with most of its American counterparts, ran a story that was headlined: “Would You Pledge Your Soul As Loan Collateral?” Feel free to go back and read that headline again if it sort of stunned you into a state of WTF-ness.

It seems that Latvia, the EU nation that has been hit the hardest by the current economic crisis is home to a loan company named Kontora. This company even dares to have a public face, a straight one at that, named Viktor Mirosiichenko. I kid you not; clients have to sign a contract that states that the collateral for their loan is “my immortal soul." I checked the byline for the story. It wasn’t Rod Serling, although we have obviously entered a twilight zone.

Mirosiichenko promises no violence. “If they don’t give it back, what can you do? They won’t have a soul, that’s all,” he told Reuters. His office, in a basement, consists of a desk, a computer, and three chairs, and yes, the company name is on the door. I’m not sure how hot it might be in the basement. So far, though, Kontora has given out loans to 200 people.

Hey, at least, one company is giving out loans, stimulus money or no! What is your Soul Credit Score? What I have to wonder is: Is Kontora just a Latvian wing of some American company like Chase or Citibank? Is this all a test-market program to check out the viability of the idea before they bring it to America and start advertising it on TV? Will I be getting an offer in the mail from Chase soon? Is it just that financial folks have no souls left, so now they want yours or mine?

I have felt for a long time that the goal of the corporate masters was to herd us back into a medieval society of lords and serfs. This kind of soul-taking thing is just more evidence in support of my clairvoyance. It’s really old school. Can the debtors' prisons that Charles Dickens not only described in his iconic works but actually lived in as a 12-year-old be returning?

Think about it. What will they do once they have taken everything?

They will take away our jobs and our homes and our health. They will shatter our American dreams of upward mobility and a dignified retirement by stealing our 401(k)s. What will be left then other than selling our children like the Chinese, and then our very souls? The only way a guy can make a dollar will soon be to sell his blood to a blood bank and his sperm to a sperm bank, like homeless people and artists have for years. They won’t even wait until we're dead to remove the gold from our teeth. MAKE BIG CASH NOW! At least the old business model was fun for someone, and everybody got paid.



But wait, there’s more! And it’s not all bad. In the city of Amsterdam, Holland, there's something called Project 1012, being pushed by key business powers. It’s a plan to get previously denied banking and credit services for prostitutes who can’t get accounts from the usual mainstream institutions, even though in Holland, a more enlightened country than ours, prostitution is legal. So, if it’s legal (and really, even if it weren't), why not extend services to sex workers? They have a job that pays well, and they have talents that are always in demand.

To date, the world’s oldest profession has gotten the shaft from financial institutions just like the rest of us (hey, I couldn’t resist, and I coulda said it much more graphically), and I suspect that bankers have often been their customers. Clearly, financial institutions in other countries are looking for more ways to make money other than demanding cash from taxpayers as they do here. Maybe now they’ll actually start dressing like pimps.

************

A company called Worldwide Entertainment has now been charged with financing professional celebrity and exhibitionista Paris Hilton’s film Pledge This with a Ponzi scheme. It’s The Producers come to life! Most of us took The Producers to be a great movie and then a great play. Apparently others took it to be a “how to” instructional tool.

Is this the future for Hollywood? Corporate types like to throw around the word innovation. Can’t meet the quarterly numbers? Maybe a nice shiny Ponzi scheme is the solution for your company! IT’s NEW! IT’S EXCITING! IT WILL SAVE YOUR ASS! Right up until the day that it crumbles and you go to jail and meet your new love interest.

************

So what do we have here? What have we learned today? What questions remain?

Do we all become hookers or gigolos? I think that ship has sailed for me. Sell my blood? I don’t think so. A platoon of doctors has pumped so much crap into mine to keep me going in the last couple of years that I doubt that it has much resale value. I do have some nice gold inlays, though. But what of those who sell their immortal souls for a loan? What if someone has already sold their soul? Is it over for them?

And think of this: How long is it before the financial institutions that procure your soul take your soul and bundle it with other souls and use them as securitized collateral in a mortgage deal? It will be Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all over again, or worse, the alleged much bigger real culprit, Countrywide. (Is it derivatives or money from nothing but thin air?)

Foreclosures were up a staggering 844,389 during the first quarter of this year. That’s up 73 percent from the first quarter of a year ago. With banks and lenders about to get a second (!) welfare handout, er, stimulus check, paid out from our money, it would make sense to give money to borrowers, but then it would have made sense the first time too, and they just pocketed the cash. The operating phrase, of course, is: “it would make sense.” If the various lenders are concerned about defaults, why not give those who borrow more help in the first place? Ah, but if, at the end of the day, you really just want the real estate, or better yet the borrower’s soul… 

It looks, however, like banks will soon have more homes than they can possibly sell, because no more than a few people will have enough money to buy them. Termites everywhere will rejoice. Genius! By the way, Big Oil has been buying up watersheds in anticipation of the day when the oil fields run dry. They’ll just convert the gas pumps to water pumps. Can the air be far behind? Oh, that’s right. Gas stations already sell air.

Shylock! Scrooge! The moneychangers! These are apt role models for most of today’s bankers and lenders. Follow the money! In God We Trust! The very word credit comes from the Latin credo, which translates to "I believe." Kinda Tinkerbell-ish, isn’t it? Do you believe? Start clapping.

We’re going back to the past. Maybe the real question is: What will we do when they've taken everything? Ask the ghosts of the French aristocracy from circa 1790. An economic bubble burst then too, and the “Let them eat cake” set met their well-earned demise. The financial and corporate worlds are heading back to their roots from hundreds of years ago. It’s Shakespeare’s Shylock demanding a pound of flesh (and he really did mean ‘flesh’). The Merchant of Venice -- anyone notice the irony that the whole city of Venice is sinking?

Shakespeare’s Venice can now be seen as a metaphor. The roots of our banking system began there back in the 1300s. Glub. Glub. How about Dante’s depiction, in the great Divine Comedy, of a special portion of that Seventh Circle of Hell, which I mentioned earlier? In Dante’s work, in the inner ring of the Seventh Circle we find usurers, who sit for eternity (as Wikipedia puts it) "in a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes raining from the sky," with their necks weighed down by bulging purses.

Not bad, but I also like an idea from one of my favorite spaghetti Westerns, Death Rides A Horse. In it the bad guys have a penchant for burying the good guys in the sand in the desert. Before they ride away to their next bit of mayhem, one of the gang of ne’er-do-wells is chosen for the honor of “serving the salt” to the victim, thus hastening the victim’s thirst and agony. They even place a bowl of water, glistening in the hot sun, in front of the victim, just out of reach, of course.



It’s time to somehow turn the tables.

#

Holland And U.S. Are Both Bailing Out Prostitutes, Although Holland's Are The Honest Kind

This was quite the non-4th of July for me. The closest I came was a festive conflagration in a small village in the interior of Bali called Pejeng where there was a positively sparkling mass cremation ceremony. And then I got this reminder from HCAN that the 4th of July is, afterall, about something that goes quite beyond fireworks and barbeques: Revolution.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our countrymen declared their independence from the tyrannical British Empire.

Today, will you declare your independence from the tyrannical insurance industry and demand the choice of a public health insurance option?



Click here to sign the petition and declare your independence from the insurance industry!



All over the country today, thousands of Americans are holding these truths to be self-evident - we need health care reform that will provide:

• Coverage we can afford;
• Comprehensive benefits we can count on;
• Choice of a private or public health insurance plan; and
• Equal access to quality care

For too long, the insurance industry has held us in their monopolistic grip, so much so that there is no competition in 94% of our communities. We have no choice but to pay their absurd rates and receive their sub-standard care so they can pay their CEOs another bonus.

No more! With the choice of a public health insurance option, the industry will finally have a competitor strong enough to keep them honest. With this choice, we can restore stability to our lives, with no more unaffordable and low-quality coverage.

Happy Independence Day!

Indeed! But is it just a pack of avaricious Insurance Industry executives who are the cause of our misfortune? Of course not-- not even if you add in a pack of avaricious Big Pharma executives, and a pack of avaricious bankster-predators. It's much harder to come to grips with-- though today is certainly the day to do so-- that our very system of democracy is the root cause. Our political system is financed by those with the wealth and biggest interest in maintaining the status quo. And its quite bipartisan-- the entire GOP (100%) being in thrall to Big Business by ideology as well as human greed and enough Democrats-- from Lieberman, Specter, Baucus, Bayh, Landrieu, Nelson and our own slimy Blanche Lincoln making sure that this conservative coalition overrides anything and everything the people of this country may want. Time for another revolution? Did you think I was kidding the other day when I mentioned that misplaced, divisive eliminationism might be better directed away from racial minorities and towards the real authors of our woes? Mojo Nixon sure has had this one right all along!

Imagine if there were no greedy, dishonest politicians with their hands in the pockets of Big Business. Maybe we wouldn't have just spent uncounted hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out incompetent, crooked banksters. Maybe they'd be rotting in prisons now instead of dividing up our tax dollars among themselves in the form of bonuses. Maybe we'd be having a discussion like they are in Amsterdam about whether or not to bail out honest prostitutes instead of the shady kind we bailed out.

Amsterdam city council is turning its attention to a pressing problem for one of the city's key business sectors -- banking and credit for prostitutes who can't get accounts from mainstream institutions... "Up until now, it's been very difficult for people in the sex industry to get credit with the banks," a city council spokesman said on Friday.

"For them it is a hazard that they can not get regular credit or help or mortgages or anything from a regular bank."
The council is expected to come to some sort of conclusion within the next two months on what it might do to help the industry.

One of the country's most prominent right-wing politicians-- one who until a few weeks ago harbored presidential or vice-presidential delusions-- actually used tax payer money to pay his own prostitute down in Argentina. Is he in prison? On trial? No; he's a politician. They set the rules for themselves and the rules are mighty liberal... for themselves.