Office-Tower Mogul Funded DemocratsWalter Shorenstein led San Francisco's pre-eminent commercial real estate firm and became a top Democratic counselor and money man. Read Article    

  Welcome to the Soprano state Money laundering is nothing new in New Jersey – or indeed the US. But the latest scandal could be Jon Corzine's downfall     Robert Hennelly guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 July 2009 Article history Any other year in the Soprano state, the round-up last week of local New Jersey public officials on corruption charges would be like a harvest story in a farm state. But this year the arrest of so many local Democratic officials is making what was already an uphill climb for re-election for governor Jon Corzine even steeper.Corzine faces a Republican challenger, former US attorney Chris Christie. Over the last eight years, Christie, a George Bush appointee and major campaign donor, made his public reputation on convicting well over 100 public officials on corruption charges.Corzine was already running behind in the polls before the high-profile round-up of dozens of his Democratic colleagues. And that is bad news for the Obama White House, because this November Corzine is the only Democratic incumbent governor facing voters anywhere in the Country. Already Barack Obama and Joe Biden have come to the Garden State on Corzine's behalf, and it is not even Labour Day, the traditional start for state races. They know all too well that the Sunday after the November election, if Corzine looses, the cable talking heads will use it as Exhibit A to make their case that the president is politically weakened.On the other hand, a Corzine win, even after the pol perp walk of a generation, will no doubt help calm the nerves of Democrats in Congress who will face voters in 2010. Can we be surprised then that money is pouring in from around the country to pay for ads aimed to sway Jersey voters?Sadly for taxpayers and voters, what will be lost in the partisan battle that is shaping up will be the serious consideration of the issues raised about the sorry state of our political economy detailed in the criminal complaints in the cases of the "44". While the officials that got the headlines were the elected politicians, there were dozens of the unelected officials who came up the hidden ranks of the so-called public authorities that have cropped up across the nation.No, the local "parking authority" and the "housing authority" are not just Jersey creations. The US, land of "give me liberty or give me death", is being strangled and ripped off by this shadow governance that voters have no idea even exists. Consider that in the 1950s there were just 12,000 of these local and regional authorities. By 2007, the US Census knew of 37,000.And the second track of the federal case exposes other cracks in the national foundation that help tax cheats, dictators and corrupt politicians avoid detection. If proven in court, the federal cases will expose a world…

  From The Times of London September 30, 2009   Three pressure points to make Iran crumble  The Tehran regime is taking a beating at home and abroad. President Obama should ditch his conciliatory tone Rosemary Righter 32 Comments Tomorrow in Geneva, a moderately senior American diplomat will sit down with the other four permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, for the first direct talks between the US and Iran in seven years — the first since their quietly productive encounters after 9/ll and the invasion of Afghanistan. The elaborate pretence underlying tomorrow’s confrontation — which is what everyone knows it will be — is that this is an “opportunity” for Iran, in Hillary Clinton’s words, to come clean about its nuclear programme and renounce nuclear weapons. This, she said, not the three sets of missile tests that Iran conducted at the weekend, is the “test that counts”. If Iran obliges, President Obama has promised the Islamic republic “a clear path” away from pariah status, and repeated that “that offer stands”. This emphasis on conciliation is, to put it mildly, odd given that it came at a press conference expressly called to read the riot act to a regime that had been caught for the third time illicitly constructing a nuclear facility that Mr Obama baldly defined as “inconsistent with a peaceful programme”. It was left to President Sarkozy to tell it like it is: that confidence in Iran’s rulers is zero; that the menace they pose is global; and that “we cannot let the Iranian leaders play for time while the centrifuges are spinning”. But after years of playing Europe like a harp, Iran is not listening to Paris; the regime has ears only for the Great Satan. And the GS, Obama version, is approaching Iran as tentatively as if the Islamic republic held all the thunderbolts.
BACKGROUND Iran's missiles are ‘ready to destroy Israel’ Comment: Even Russia agrees on Iran sanctions Trouble on the horizon for America’s President Iran tests missiles before nuclear showdown
This would be bad psychology at any juncture and is inexplicable when Iran’s dreadful duo, the Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his protégé, President Ahmadinejad, are on the back foot and, for all their ferocious retribution against the swelling multitude of their critics, perceptibly wobbling. The regime’s prestige at home and abroad has been taking a terrible beating. Its agents no longer look like kingmakers in Iraq — although if the Obama Administration fails to nurture the successes made possible by the surge there, that country could yet fall under the sway of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The kudos that Tehran gained in much of the Arab world for its “triumphant” backing of Hezbollah’s war against Israel has been dissipated by its strenuous, but at present thwarted, efforts to undermine Lebanese democracy. Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes…

 Police: Ohio man saying 'kill all the Jews' taken off Detroit-bound flight in Fla., arrested This image provided by the Miami Dade Police Department shows a booking photo of Mansor Mohammad Asad after he was arrested. Police say Asad proclaimed, "I want to kill all the Jews" before officers forced him off a Detroit-bound plane. (Miami Dade Police Department / Associated Pres / January 7, 2010)Read Article

  For Chinese, Web Is the Way to Entertainment Read Article