Cuomo Sues Ezra Merkin for Fraud, calling him a glorified mailbox for Bernard Madoff

The 55 page complaint is here: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK By ANDREW M. CUOMO, Attorney General of the State of New York -against- Plaintiff J. EZRA MERKIN and GABRIEL CAPITAL CORPORATION, Defendants.

Update: The Times has 687 pages of the complaint posted with the exhibits as an adjunct to their article on the Cuomo filing. We call it "Tractate Prevarication."

In the complaint one victim calls J. Ezra Merkin a "glorified mailbox" for Bernard Madoff - because all Merkin did was "passover" investor funds to the Madoff Ponzi scheme (seasonal pun intended).

Until seeing this characterization of Merkin as a mailbox, we just could not figure out what kind of worker Ezra looked liked in the latest news photo of him. He did not look much like an investment guru or a hedge fund manager to us. He did not look  like a rabbi, priest or minister or a professor of English.

But now it is clear. In the picture Merkin looks like a mailman at best, or perhaps, at worst, more like a mob bag man or a numbers runner.

Video: A Serious Jon Stewart Lectures CNBC Straw Man Jim Cramer

The one person both Cramer and Stewart excluded from their criticism and agreed to praise by name was my friend and master documentary maker for CNBC, David Faber.

Now to the main event. The media world agrees 100% that Stewart bested Cramer and that it was not a funny 12 minutes. Jon Stewart has a stinging serious side that underlies the essence of his comedy. In fact, calling what Steward does four nights a week comedy is misleading. It is usually biting satire with a purpose and often hysterical in its presentation.

Just a footnote to the whole CNBC debate. True, in the financial firms that I am familiar with, overhead monitors broadcast CNBC to the firm throughout the day. But note well, the volume is muted. The main purpose CNBC serves in this context is to provide stock ticker information. In this model, the conversation among the correspondents is background chatter of little consequence.

Following this line of reasoning, it well may be that Jon Stewart has used CNBC and Kramer as straw men. And the real culprits lie elsewhere unscathed by this latest skirmish over financial wrongdoings.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

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Jim Cramer

Mark Seal in Vanity Fair: Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity, Crying and Whining along with the Mannerisms and Tics of Madoff and His Naive Dupes

I have sympathy for those who have lost money with Madoff. But this latest treatment is too much. Why? Because among all the chronicled criers and whiners (who have every right to express their grief and angst) there should have been a fair balance of quotes or clips of the sensible people who undoubtedly are out there. You know, the people who could say, Yes I had a million dollars and now it is gone. Stuff happens. We will take a deep breath and then we will move on.

I recall, when I was getting my marriage license in downtown New York in 1974 with my soon-to-be-wife at my side, we stopped in the post office to mail a letter. And I put down my very nice new camera for a minute to drop the envelope in the slot, and when I turned around the camera was gone. Some quick fingered goniff made off with it (ha, a pun). I got over that.

I recall, when I came out from studying for exams at the Rockefeller library at Brown University one day a year later in 1975, I found the very new 10 speed bike that I rode over to the library and had locked to a pole outside -- was gone. A goniff had cut the cable and made off with it (heh). I got over that too.

Stuff like that happens every day. Less dramatic, but by definition just as bad. A theft took place.

Anyway, you surely haven't had enough of Bernie Madoff and his legions of naive dupes (and one superficial rabbi) until you have seen the videos and read the text of Vanity Fair's sob-fest. If you are the type of person who likes to see people losing their lunch, this is the place to go: Madoff's World from Vanity Fair avec much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the online videos...

Is the Harvard University Medical School Corrupt?

Yes, according to the article in today's Times, the Harvard University Medical School is a corrupt entity.

The article, "Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary," tap dances around the issue in a variety of ways. For reasons that we cannot fathom, the writers and editors of the Times simply do not want to use the "c" word to describe behavior of the faculty of that med school. No doubt though, what the article chronicles is pure and simple corruption.

Faculty are paid handsomely by the drug companies and, in turn, the professors give to the snake oil salesmen the imprimatur of "Harvard" -- the world's leading education brand.

The example that kicks off the Times' story tells of students who instead of receiving unbiased medical training from their instructors, are now subjected to infomercials for drug companies masquerading as course lectures.

In the scenario, the professor blows off a student who asks about why cholesterol drugs cause a significant number of people to become sick. Turns out -- he's been paid by the cholesterol drug companies to deflect such questioning.

Whoops. That is the definition of corruption in any dictionary -- students who are paying for real training -- instead are given worthless infomercials.

Aren't there racketeering statutes that cover this kind of conspiracy?

Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary
By DUFF WILSON

BOSTON — In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.

Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.

“I felt really violated,” Mr. Zerden, now a fourth-year student, recently recalled. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”

Mr. Zerden’s minor stir four years ago has lately grown into a full-blown movement by more than 200 Harvard Medical School students and sympathetic faculty, intent on exposing and curtailing the industry influence in their classrooms and laboratories, as well as in Harvard’s 17 affiliated teaching hospitals and institutes.

They say they are concerned that the same money that helped build the school’s world-class status may in fact be hurting its reputation and affecting its teaching.

The students argue, for example, that Harvard should be embarrassed by the F grade it recently received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

Harvard Medical School’s peers received much higher grades, ranging from the A for the University of Pennsylvania, to B’s received by Stanford, Columbia and New York University, to the C for Yale... more racketeering news...

Bloomberg: Why Rich People are Nasty Rotten SOBs

We've posted quite a bit recently about several ultra-wealthy personalities who by-and-large have been described as having rude, nasty personalities.

A writer over at Bloomberg has given this general coincidence of wealth and rudeness some thought and come to the conclusion that it is not an accident.

Want to Be Rich? It’s About Being Rude to People: Matthew Lynn
...If you want to make a lot of money, just try being rude to people.

Hold on, that doesn’t make sense, you may say. Surely the way to get on in life is to be as polite as possible. A soft cloud of charm can carry even the lamest executive all the way to the boardroom. Tell everyone you meet they are fantastic, listen to their ridiculous suggestions, buy them a drink as they launch into a tedious anecdote, and they will think you are great. The way to the top is to be courteous, you say.

No less an authority than Dale Carnegie in his self-help classic book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” makes the point emphatically. Rule No. 1 for making people like you: Become genuinely interested in them. Rule No. 2: Smile.

Rich and Rude

New research has turned that wisdom upside down. The richer people are, the ruder they are, according to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Keltner and co-researcher Michael Kraus videotaped 100 undergraduate students who didn’t know each other, and studied their body language during one-minute gaps in conversation.

The results were clear: Students from a higher socio- economic background were more likely to be rude during the silence. They would doodle, fidget or start grooming themselves. Less-privileged students made far more effort to engage with the other person, making “I’m interested” signals such as laughing or raising eyebrows.

In short, the richer people were a lot ruder, while the poor were a lot more polite.

The psychologists viewed the results as basic animal behavior. The higher up the food chain you are, the fitter and stronger you are. The wealthier animals are signaling that they don’t need anyone. The poorer animals are ingratiating themselves because they need help.

No Reliance

“It is the experience of wealth that leads individuals to become disengaged,” Keltner says.

There is much truth to that. The richer you are, the less reliant you are on other people. It doesn’t matter much what others think of you, since you are unlikely to be asking them for a favor any time soon.

And yet while the rich may be rude because they are wealthy, it is just as likely to be the other way around. Just as plausibly, they are wealthy because they are rude.

Carnegie and other self-help writers have missed the point the last few decades. Getting ahead in life isn’t about making people like you. It is about getting them to serve your interests.

Success depends, more than anything, on an inner ruthlessness. As anyone who has spent much time with chief executives will know, they are mostly an unpleasant bunch.

They bully, cajole, threaten and fume. There are very few examples of them flattering or charming their way to the top. They are more likely to be shouting and raging at people, demanding the impossible, and casting old friends and colleagues aside the moment they become an inconvenience. The accumulation of wealth requires an ability to crush rivals, stamp on employees, and sweep aside all opposition. Charm doesn’t come into it.

As your bank or hedge fund slides toward insolvency, just carry on barking at your secretary, snubbing waitresses, and blanking old friends who nod at you in the elevator. Everyone will assume you are still loaded -- and will hold off pulling the plug on you for a few more days at least.

The Bernie Madoff Action Figure Devil Doll

Another chapter in the ponzi crime that keeps on giving. Reuters Blog, "Shop Talk: Retailers, consumers and prices" reports:

Modelworks, a company that makes models of anything from planes to action figures is expected to unveil its version of Madoff, an accused perpetrator of a $50 billion investment scam, at the 2009 Toy Fair in New York’s Jacob Javits Center, the Toy Industry Association said on its website.

Have a good laugh reading their hilarious blurb and order a mini-me Madoff Devil doll at Modelworks.

Times: Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges Point to a Way to Negotiate an End to the Arab Israeli Conflict

Wow. Talmudic analysis based on actual field work.

This op-ed article summarizes the results of simple but powerful research that recognizes that Western utilitarian assumptions may not drive cultural negotiations elsewhere in the world. Our way of thinking ("the marketplace or realpolitik") indeed may prevent us from seeing what impede our understanding of how to help resolve and negotiate the end to a conflict.

The authors simply asked the parties in the middle East which elements in a negotiation they prefer.

They gave them "deal sets" to evaluate.

Set one - both sides negotiate the pain that they need to suffer to make an agreement. The sadistic approach. Find out how much they want the enemy to suffer and then inflict the pain. Not generally our USA way of thinking.

Set two - both sides determine the gain they need to be paid to make an agreement. Americans get this kind of deal. Find out, How much do they want? Pay them off.

Set three - both sides decide what apologies and "symbolic sacred" assurances they need to make an agreement. Seems entirely impractical to us and hence we suspect whether the sides are sincere in what they say.

If you think about set three, it sort of makes sense in the context of the middle East conflict. The authors want us to look more closely at set three.

The authors don't say this in their article, but here is what I think.

This struggle has proven to be a "death match" where the combatants have vowed to stay in the ring until just one of them is left standing.

The survival of the fittest in a death match has nothing to do with pain (set one) of payoffs (set two) because the ultimate aim in the negotiation is the death of the other party.

I was trained in my Rutgers B-school course to ferret out what is the BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) for both parties in a negotiation? In this case, if one party cannot kill the other, what then would they settle for?

Apparently the answer this research has uncovered is that the stated BATNA for both sides is "sacred words" of apology and assurance.

Now with that data we can do one of two things. We can believe the research has uncovered some accurate but counter-intuitive facts about the conflict and pursue the avenue that they have mapped out, try to get the parties to agree to the BATNA. What do we have to lose if we try this?

On the other hand, we can argue that this BATNA avowed by both parties is not authentic, not sincere and not real. When both parties call for "sacred words" instead of elements from the other negotiation sets, they are telling us in fact that they have no BATNA. This is the mother of all "dirty tricks" of negotiations. Both do not expect, nor do they wish that the other party make "sacred" assurances - because both wish only to see the negotiation through to the "negotiated" end to the struggle. Tragically that would be the death of one of the parties.

I do not for a moment think that all Israelis or that all Palestinians believe that must be the end of the negotiation. Yet there is no doubt that the "death match" motif has framed the conflict for 60 years.

Urgently, we need to consider how to break out of the "death match" framework of the current conflict, how to re-frame the negotiations, how to get each side to set real goals and expectations, how to get the parties to speculate on what their BATNAs are, and thereby how to take all the "trick" elements of the "sacred" out of the mix.

Bottom line, this is indeed a wonderful and fertile report in the Times on research of great significance.

Op-Ed Contributors
How Words Could End a War
By SCOTT ATRAN and JEREMY GINGES

AS diplomats stitch together a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, the most depressing feature of the conflict is the sense that future fighting is inevitable. Rational calculation suggests that neither side can win these wars. The thousands of lives and billions of dollars sacrificed in fighting demonstrate the advantages of peace and coexistence; yet still both sides opt to fight.

This small territory is the world’s great symbolic knot. “Palestine is the mother of all problems” is a common refrain among people we have interviewed across the Muslim world: from Middle Eastern leaders to fighters in the remote island jungles of Indonesia; from Islamist senators in Pakistan to volunteers for martyrdom on the move from Morocco to Iraq.

Some analysts see this as a testament to the essentially religious nature of the conflict. But research we recently undertook suggests a way to go beyond that. For there is a moral logic to seemingly intractable religious and cultural disputes. These conflicts cannot be reduced to secular calculations of interest but must be dealt with on their own terms, a logic very different from the marketplace or realpolitik.

Across the world, people believe that devotion to sacred or core values that incorporate moral beliefs — like the welfare of family and country, or commitment to religion and honor — are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Our studies, carried out with the support of the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, suggest that people will reject material compensation for dropping their commitment to sacred values and will defend those values regardless of the costs.

In our research, we surveyed nearly 4,000 Palestinians and Israelis from 2004 to 2008, questioning citizens across the political spectrum including refugees, supporters of Hamas and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. We asked them to react to hypothetical but realistic compromises in which their side would be required to give away something it valued in return for a lasting peace.

All those surveyed responded to the same set of deals. First they would be given a straight-up offer in which each side would make difficult concessions in exchange for peace; next they were given a scenario in which their side was granted an additional material incentive; and last came a proposal in which the other side agreed to a symbolic sacrifice of one of its sacred values.

For example, a typical set of trade-offs offered to a Palestinian might begin with this premise: Suppose the United Nations organized a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians under which Palestinians would be required to give up their right to return to their homes in Israel and there would be two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Second, we would sweeten the pot: in return, Western nations would give the Palestinian state $10 billion a year for 100 years. Then the symbolic concession: For its part, Israel would officially apologize for the displacement of civilians in the 1948 war

Indeed, across the political spectrum, almost everyone we surveyed rejected the initial solutions we offered — ideas that are accepted as common sense among most Westerners, like simply trading land for peace or accepting shared sovereignty over Jerusalem. Why the opposition to trade-offs for peace?

Many of the respondents insisted that the values involved were sacred to them. For example, nearly half the Israeli settlers we surveyed said they would not consider trading any land in the West Bank — territory they believe was granted them by God — in exchange for peace. More than half the Palestinians considered full sovereignty over Jerusalem in the same light, and more than four-fifths felt that the “right of return” was a sacred value, too.

As for sweetening the pot, in general the greater the monetary incentive involved in the deal, the greater the disgust from respondents. Israelis and Palestinians alike often reacted as though we had asked them to sell their children. This strongly implies that using the standard approaches of “business-like negotiations” favored by Western diplomats will only backfire.

Many Westerners seem to ignore these clearly expressed “irrational” preferences, because in a sensible world they ought not to exist. Diplomats hope that peace and concrete progress on material and quality-of-life matters (electricity, water, agriculture, the economy and so on) will eventually make people forget the more heartfelt issues. But this is only a recipe for another Hundred Years’ War — progress on everyday material matters will simply heighten attention on value-laden issues of “who we are and want to be.”

Fortunately, our work also offers hints of another, more optimistic course.

Absolutists who violently rejected offers of money or peace for sacred land were considerably more inclined to accept deals that involved their enemies making symbolic but difficult gestures. For example, Palestinian hard-liners were more willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist if the Israelis simply offered an official apology for Palestinian suffering in the 1948 war. Similarly, Israeli respondents said they could live with a partition of Jerusalem and borders very close to those that existed before the 1967 war if Hamas and the other major Palestinian groups explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Remarkably, our survey results were mirrored by our discussions with political leaders from both sides. For example, Mousa Abu Marzook (the deputy chairman of Hamas) said no when we proposed a trade-off for peace without granting a right of return. He became angry when we added in the idea of substantial American aid for rebuilding: “No, we do not sell ourselves for any amount.”

But when we mentioned a potential Israeli apology for 1948, he brightened: “Yes, an apology is important, as a beginning. It’s not enough because our houses and land were taken away from us and something has to be done about that.” His response suggested that progress on sacred values might open the way for negotiations on material issues, rather than the reverse.

We got a similar reaction from Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard-line former Israeli prime minister. We asked him whether he would seriously consider accepting a two-state solution following the 1967 borders if all major Palestinian factions, including Hamas, were to recognize the right of the Jewish people to an independent state in the region. He answered, “O.K., but the Palestinians would have to show that they sincerely mean it, change their textbooks and anti-Semitic characterizations.”

Making these sorts of wholly intangible “symbolic” concessions, like an apology or recognition of a right to exist, simply doesn’t compute on any utilitarian calculus. And yet the science says they may be the best way to start cutting the knot.

Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, John Jay College and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is the author of the forthcoming “Talking to the Enemy.” Jeremy Ginges is a professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research.

Bergen Record: Teaneck Council Runs Amok

People who live in towns like ours don't like "surprise decisions."

You need a manager in place to run a town with a $61 million budget. Yet Teaneck just fired its manager without good cause ("her management style") and will hire consultants to find a new one BY JULY 1 - SIX MONTHS FROM NOW!. But wait, maybe they first should hire consulting consultants to find the right consultants.

Consultants? Is that one of the council's "new Ideas"?

Ever heard of classified ads? Craigs' List?

Teaneck fires township manager
BY JOSEPH AX

TEANECK — The town will begin its budget process tonight, less than 48 hours after a split council voted to fire Township Manager Helene Fall in a surprise decision.

Mayor Kevie Feit said the council will be able to handle the budget without its architect, Fall, and would work hard to reduce its size. Fall's proposed $61.9 million budget includes a 6.2 percent increase in spending.

Meanwhile, Feit said he hopes to select a new manager no later than July 1. Officials may hire an outside consultant to help conduct a search for qualified candidates.

Fall was dismissed late on Tuesday night after a lengthy closed-door discussion...

The resolution to fire Fall focused on her management style, calling her "unwilling" to try new ideas.

She will be suspended with pay for 30 days until her official date of dismissal and then paid three months of her $170,976 salary...

The lawsuits were part of Tuesday's talks, Feit acknowledged...

"What I've been most impressed with is her level of integrity and knowledge that the town will be hard-pressed to replace," Gussen said Tuesday...

JPost OpEd: Beware the Trickiness of the Anti-Barack Jews

Those tricky anti-Barack Jews use fallacious arguments to disparage a strong pro-Israel candidate. NB: citation of the famous "masses are asses" argument used prominently by Karl Rove, now a disgraced ex-adviser in contempt of Congress.

The irrationality of Obama's critics
Ira N. Forman , THE JERUSALEM POST

In the past few weeks The Jerusalem Post has run two hysterically anti-Barack Obama op-eds - Morris J. Amitay's "McCain for America - and Israel" and Jennifer Rubin's "Why more Jews won't be voting Democrat this year." At first glance these two pieces appear to take two very different approaches to the task of tearing down Obama among Jewish readers, but a closer reading highlights their similar deceptive tactics.

What is most striking in these two op-eds, as well as many other opinion pieces of this genre, is their willingness to bemoan the "ignorance" of the vast majority of American Jews who continue to vote Democratic - even in 2008. This line of argument, which bewails voter ignorance, is very common in American history. Elites who find themselves in a minority often are dumbfounded at the stupidity of the electorate and revert to what is called "the masses are asses" explanation of their minority status.

Both Rubin and Amitay come up with unorthodox and somewhat bizarre "proofs" of Obama's scariness. For more than 40 years the pro-Israel community has relied on objective measures of a presidential candidate's pro-Israel credentials - first the candidate's voting record and second (particularly if the voting record does not exist) his public statements. In their pieces, both Rubin and Amitay abandon this time-tested method of assessment and resort to various forms of reading animal entrails to establish a candidate's pro-Israel bona fides.

Rubin spends much of her time harking back to 1973 to argue that president Richard Nixon's steadfast and unwavering support for resupply of Israel during the Yom Kippur War is the gold standard for presidential behavior. As best as I can determine her logic, she argues that because Obama did not support the Kyl-Lieberman amendment we could never trust that he would react in a Nixonian manner if Israel was again in desperate peril.

Unfortunately, Rubin's historical memory is faulty. The Nixon Administration's behavior in 1973 was not so simplistically heroic. For example, we know that prime minister Golda Meir avoided strikes against Egypt and Syria in October because of pressure from Nixon. In fact, Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, has said that if Israel had acted preemptively they would not have received "so much as a nail."

THEN THERE is the question of Kyl-Lieberman. Rubin is convinced that this is proof positive of Obama's fecklessness when it comes to Israel. Yet AIPAC, which declares (based on voting records) that both John McCain and Obama are pro-Israel, does not consider Kyl-Lieberman demonstrative of a senator's pro-Israel credentials, as it does not list Kyl-Lieberman on its voting records. Moreover, despite Rubin's overheated rhetoric, Obama has been willing (pre and post Kyl-Lieberman) to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Another way both of these op-eds attempt to predict Obama's future behavior is to employ the tool of "guilt by association." In a modern campaign, thousands of citizens associate themselves with the candidates , and thousands more have some kind of a non-endorsement "association." It has become an art form among partisans to find "dirt" on one or another of these "supporters" and then to declare that their opinions must reflect the views of the candidates. To this end, Rubin and Amitay trot out boogiemen like Louis Farrakhan and Michael Moore.


For a moment let us apply the same standard to their candidate - McCain. McCain has declared he would appoint the former secretary of state James Baker as his Middle East envoy. McCain has, in the past, declared he would use Zbigniew Brzezinski as one of his foreign policy advisors. McCain's national finance co-chair, Fred Malek, is the operative Nixon tasked with seeking out the Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics so they could be fired. Not to mention the "guilt by association" implications of the numerous McCain campaign personalities who have Iranian business and lobbying connections.

These associations do not make McCain an enemy of Israel and the Jews. And of course similar charges do not indict Obama.

Finally, Amitay and Rubin assiduously chastize American Jews for considering any issue other than Israel - even given both candidates's pro-Israel records. Yet nearly everyone would agree that the security of both American Jews and Israel is most enhanced when the United States is strong at home as well as abroad. Can anyone still make the argument that Bush made America stronger in seven and a half years?

Polls indicate that a sizeable majority of American Jews care deeply about Israel, and show that once a candidate meets the pro-Israel threshold, Jewish voters will examine other issues. Is it wrong for Jewish Americans to vote for a pro-Israel candidate who also cares about a women's reproductive freedom? Is it wrong for them to vote for a pro-Israel candidate who does not say that America is a "Christian nation" and should not teach intelligent design in public schools?

Thirty years ago, as a young lobbyist for AIPAC, my boss, the executive director, taught me that the way to assess a candidate for higher political office is to "go to the pro-Israel voting record." My boss was Morris Amitay.

The writer is executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

OIL PRICE KEPT HIGH BY US GAS CARTEL TO JUSTIFY JULY 4th HOLIDAY PRICE GOUGING

The press does not seem to make the obvious connections THAT US ORDINARY PEOPLE CAN MAKE.

The correct headline is:

OIL PRICE KEPT HIGH BY US GAS CARTEL TO JUSTIFY JULY 4th HOLIDAY PRICE GOUGING

The wrong headline is:

Oil drops sharply as supply worries subside
By ADAM SCHRECK

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices tumbled nearly $4 a barrel Monday, erasing many of last week's record gains in a single session as concerns about potential supply disruptions eased...

Whose concerns? What disruptions? Cmon Gas Companies. Quit the bizarre doubletalk and just admit it. Just say, We ripped you off over the busy holiday weekend! Ha ha ha.

LA Times Blog: Hillary Supporter Set Up Wright Press Event

Gee. I am so surprised by this accusation of what amounts to a sophisticated dirty trick.

...It was the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, a former editorial board member of USA Today who teaches at the Howard University School of Divinity. An ordained minister, as New York Daily News writer Errol Louis points out in today's column, she was introduced at the press club event as the person "who organized" it.

But guess what? She's also an ardent longtime booster of Obama's sole remaining competitor for the Democratic nomination, none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York... [Picture: The Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the head table of the National Press Club event Monday which Reynolds helped arrange.]

How Bad is Arab Hatred of Israel? This Bad.

How Bad is Arab Hatred of Israel? This Bad.

Here is what the Arab News (The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily) says for instance in one article about (1) Merkel's visit to Israel and (2) the murder of Yeshiva students:

Palestine Peace a Matter of Global Resolve
Samar Fatany

Angela Merkel publicly announced her shame over the Jewish Holocaust at a time when a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place — also with German sympathy and blind support. The same kind of acquiescence that led to the first Holocaust is allowing this new Holocaust to continue unabated.

The German Stuka dive-bombers and the Panzer tanks have been replaced by the helicopter gunship and the Israeli tank. The Jewish victims have been replaced with Palestinians, and the former oppressed has now become the oppressor.

In the last month, more than 100 Palestinian women and children have become the victims of a perverse, extremist sect within Israel that relishes blood and misery and uses its influence to ensure that peace will never come....

A Palestinian from East Jerusalem, enraged by the slaughter, slays eight students and wounds several others at the religious school of Zionist extremists Mercaz HaRav. The religious institution is the center of the extremist settlement movement, which openly calls on Israelis to rob Palestinians of their lands and incites hatred against all Palestinians in the occupied territories. An argument you might hear in the Middle East is that his targets are Israeli militias planning the genocide against Palestinians living in their own homeland.

Israel calls it a terrorist act, and the Western world refuses to acknowledge the real problem. No matter who gets elected or what happens, Israel always finds an excuse to avoid peace....

Here is how I read this:

(1) No fair that you have a Holocaust. We want a Holocaust too.

(2) No fair that you have Yeshivas training, "Militias planning the genocide against Palestinians living in their own homeland." We want to do things like that in our madrasas.

I don't want you to have a Holocaust. And I do wish you would stop doing those things in your religious schools.

A Dastardly Clinton Dirty Trick in Teaneck

This morning I had an Obama lawn sign on my front lawn in Teaneck.

This afternoon when I returned home, I had a Hillary lawn sign on my front lawn instead.

The Obama sign is gone.

Henry, if that is your Hillary sign, come by before Tuesday to get it back. It's out by my garbage.

And so the Clinton dirty tricks machine is working hard - even on holidays.

CNN: They Were Digging for Dirt for Dirty Tricks in Obama's Passport Files

Let's not put the best spin on it. Let's assume the worst. Enemies were looking for ammunition to smear Obama. Until disproven, that is the thesis that we should accept.

State Department: Someone snooped in Obama's passport file

* Story Highlights
* NEW: Three separate contractors looked at file three times since January
* Campaign spokesman: "This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy"
* Obama camp calls for complete investigation into the breach
* State Department says two contractors were fired; a third was disciplined

(CNN) -- On three occasions since January, Sen. Barack Obama's passport file was looked at by three different contract workers, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The contractors accessed information in the file in an unauthorized way, he said.

Two contractors were fired and one was disciplined by the contractor's company, McCormack said.

He said the contractors are not linked.

The State Department hires contractors to design, build and maintain their systems and help employees with searches. McCormack said two of the contractors in the Obama case were "low-level" personnel and the other was in a mid-level position with no management role.

The breach seems like "imprudent curiosity" among the contract workers, said McCormack, adding that senior management at the State Department was not aware of the incidents until Thursday afternoon. Breaches occurred January 9, February 21 and March 14.

Obama's campaign is asking for a complete investigation to find out who looked at Obama's passport file and why.

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton in a statement.

"Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."

The White House declined comment Thursday evening, just hours after the State Department upper management learned of the breach.

WP: Political Dirty Tricks Go Digital

Trust no email!

INTERNET INTRIGUE
Dirty Tricks, Version 2.0: E-Mail Sent to Friends
By Matthew Mosk

The last-minute chain e-mails arrived with unsolicited primary voting advice. One alerted recipients to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's "alarming" views about Israel, another challenged Republican Sen. John McCain's account of his Vietnam War service. Another alleged that Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton opposed the Civil Rights Act as a teenager, even though she did not.

Campaign dirty tricks found a new outlet before the Super Tuesday voting, as several misleading attacks on presidential candidates were spread via cautionary last-minute mass e-mails among friends. On Monday night, those messages started arriving in many inboxes with subject lines such as "FW: Something to consider before voting tomorrow."

In e-mails forwarded to The Washington Post, senders attacked Republican Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, and offered a misleading account of Obama's voting record in the Illinois Senate. Some were unsigned and impossible to trace.

"Clearly, the speed of delivery has enabled these last-minute attacks to become much more potent," said Peter Pasi, an executive of Emotive LLC, a firm specializing in online communication strategies...