New York City FBI Agent Robbed of M-4 Assault Weapon and His Auto (Again) - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

New York City FBI Agent Robbed of M-4 Assault Weapon and His Auto (Again) - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

The New York Post came up with a typically clever headline to lead off a story about an FBI agent who had his car and rifle stolen last night in Ozone Park, an upper middle-class neighborhood in the borough of Queens. Calling the weapon a "dolt-action rifle" was about right.

Is There an Un-subsidized Tesla Model S in Your Future? - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Is There an Un-subsidized Tesla Model S in Your Future? - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

My point is that there are many advantages to having a vehicle which helps the owner do things (often at less cost and damage to the environment) other than drive down Hollywood Boulevard feeling more pious than a Prius owner. You can fit more stuff in a pickup truck than you can any sedan and that means less trips to the vendor, less fuel burned, and less hiring of bigger trucks as delivery vehicles for products you might need to manage a household.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Teams with Tumblr CEO David Karp to Talk the Deal - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Teams with Tumblr CEO David Karp to Talk the Deal - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

High school dropout like Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp doesn't have such mundane concerns. According to the IT website smh.com, Karp once said he didn't want to be "gobbled up by big media company." In a Hollywood Reporter interview, Karp told users "we're not turning purple" and then he punctuated his statement with an F-Bomb.

Possible Political Murder Stirs National Elections in Pakistan - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Possible Political Murder Stirs National Elections in Pakistan - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

All told, 150 people have died in a Pakistani election that sometimes seemed to favor the bullet over the ballot.

The top man of the TPI, Imran Khan, is a nationally idolized soccer star whose reform party has surprised the nation by becoming its third largest. Khan has accused rival MQM (Muttahida Quami Movement) of sending two men to shoot PTI Party Vice-President Ms. Hussein to death just outside her home in the affluent Karachi Defence suburb.

Syracuse City Schools in Crisis - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Syracuse City Schools in Crisis - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Until educators, parents, politicians, and just plain folk can speak honestly about the problem, the best solution for parents will be to get their kids out of the ghetto as soon as possible. I know you're not supposed to say "ghetto" but it's the title of a particularly forlorn Akon song which really explains the deal about how it really is

What's Cooking in Boston? The Tsarnaev Saga

SCENE ONE.
TAM TSARNAEV’S small apartment in Boston.  There is a young woman dressed in a burkha attending to a cook stove in the kitchen.  Only her eyes are visible as she stirs food into a bowl.  There is a side door to the kitchen which suddenly bursts open.  A man enters, smiling and shadow-boxing,.  This is TAM TSARNAEV.

TAM TSARNAEV
(with a flourish, enjoying himself)
What’s cooking, Katherine?  It smells so good.

KATHERINE RUSSELL
I call it ‘IED delight.”  It’s an American dish.  Ha-ha!

TAM TSARNAEV
Ho-ho-ho!  You make joke, Katherine. 

KATHERINE RUSSELL
Yes, I make joke, Tam.

TAM TSARNAEV
Don’t make joke of me, Katherine.  I will slap you again.

KATHERINE RUSSELL
Where were you, Tam?

TAM TSARNAEV
I will slap you with left hook, maybe with uppercut.

(TAM TSARNAEV shadow-boxes around the kitchen, throwing jabs, left hooks, rights)

TAM TSARNAEV
Good Muslim woman does not ask husband questions.  How about some rice? I’m hungry.

KATHERINE RUSSELL
I cannot make rice.  I cannot find my pressure cooker.

TAM TSARNAEV
Don’t worry about the pressure cooker.  I will buy you a new pressure cooker.

KATHERINE RUSSELL
But this one is the 6th pressure cooker you’ve bought for me this month.  What happens to them?  Where are my pressure cookers going? 

(TUNE IN DAILY AS THE DRAMA CONTINUES.  LEARN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PRIVILEGED UPPER MIDDLE CLASS PHYSICIAN'S DAUGHTER DONS A BURKHA TO PLEASE HER VOLATILE HUSBAND--AND IN THE PROCESS LOSES HER PRESSURE COOKERS.)

Imperial Governor Cuomo Avoids “In-Kind” Tax, Demands Fealty, Free Rides from Taxpayers

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly wagged his finger at the scandal-ridden New York legislature, attempting to depict himself as the model of public integrity he is NOT.   What Cuomo does best is to make noble-sounding rules for other guys to follow, rules which don’t apply to Imperial Governors.  

You know how it works.  Keep your State Police security guard close, and free, independent minded citizens at a distance.  Unless they’re already shown to be solidly in your camp (meaning “submissive”), they can’t be trusted, Cuomo believes.

Cuomo routinely uses the instruments of state power to pummel political enemies and allies alike.  When he was Attorney General, he went after disgraced former Gov. Elliot Spitzer (and fellow Democrat) for using state planes, automobiles, and helicopters for personal use.   

According to reports, Spitzer would fly down to Hooker Haven in D.C.  to meet with high-priced call girls.  He paid for the women out of his own pocket (and his wife’s pockets, too) but the travel arrangements were courtesy of the state taxpayers.

As Imperial Governor now, Gov. Andy also feels entitled to spend hard earned taxpayer money on his personal self-indulgences.   Instead of living in Gracie Mansion, provided to him by the taxpayers, he uses state aircraft to fly down to West Chester to visit his live-in billionaire BFF girlfriend Sandra Lee. 

According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, Cuomo’s daughters live with the BFF GF, too.  All the benefits of marriage—without marriage. Is that to give the affair the air of respectability?   

A better air of respectability would be for the governor to marry Sandra Lee.   That may be his personal business, of course, but when you’re governor of a state, you forfeit the privacy a private individual might expect.   

It comes with the turf. If you don’t want your personal beliefs analyzed, then stay home with your GF, wherever that is.  Otherwise, everything you do sends a political message.  

The message New York is getting is that of an Imperial Governor who flaunts the rules he touts in public.

Cuomo abolished the previous ethics committee and established a new one with people who worked for him, people he knew would look the other way as he misused state resources, and retaliated against critics.

Lest these concerns be seen as the steaming detritus of a gossip column, let’s be clear on two things:

Governor Cuomo has not paid IRS federal taxes on these purloined “in-kind” gifts by New York taxpayers.  When common ordinary taxpayers are paid “in-kind” (meaning you get a car, a free hotel stay in Vacationland, or a Rolex watch instead of cash money), it counts as income under IRS rules and is taxable.

Governor Cuomo has not reimbursed the taxpayers for these “gifts” of taxpayer largesse.  Doing so would eliminate the tax problem posed by undeclared “in-kind” income, and would be in keeping with New York State law.

Of course, New York State law and a submissive voter base has never been anything an Imperial Governor had to worry about.

 

 

 

Short Hops In Basketball

I started to watch basketball...that's how things are going.  In college rock, I watched the entire Syracuse loss, that was novel for me.  As an outsider, it was an exciting game, played largely by the hand of God. Michigan could miss from the 3-point line in the first half.  In the second half, they couldn't hit and Syracuse had a chance, albeit a small one.

I can dig it that the Carter-Williams kid is leaving for the NBA.  It's not 1960 any more where the only place you can get an education is in college.  These days knowledge floods in from everywhere.   Whereas it's a chance for Carter-Williams, a nice chance to get up and over.

He's  nice giant.  I hope he gets over.

Accused Child Rapist/ Murder David J. Renz Perfect Fit for Death Row

You read the news.  You may know this.  If you live in Central New York, you may have heard about David J. Renz.  David J. Renz had been arrested in late 2012 as the result of a federal investigation into child pornography.  He had four computers and tons of ugly files involving bestial acts with children.   Imagine the worst—no, don’t. 

There’s a town near Syracuse named Clay, NY. It was there, in the parking lot of the Northern Mall, that David J. Renz accosted librarian Lori Bresnahan and her 10 year old daughter as they were leaving the child’s gymnastics class.

Renz, who should have been in jail, was released on bail with the approval of Obama appointee and U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian.   If you read the indictment charging child pornography etc, it would have been clear that Renz posed a danger to children at the very least.  

If it wasn’t clear then, it is clear now.  Renz removed his electronic monitoring bracelet, kidnapped Bresnahan and her daughter, forced them to a remote part of the giant parking lot, tied them up and raped the child.  After raping the child, he drove them to an abandoned road where he stabbed the woman to death as she fought to save the child.  The child, though bound with plastic ties, escaped and ran into the roadway where she was rescued by two passing motorists. 

Renz fled but was captured by police, still wearing the bloody clothes when he attacked Lori.  Just yesterday, Renz had the nerve to plead innocent, probably looking for some kind of deal.  The Onondaga District Attorney, Fitzpatrick, seems willing to oblige, as the death penalty is in liberal suspension in the state of New York.  Nor will Fitzpatrick even deign to mention the federal death penalty, which applies in this case.

To be specific, I’m citing an article on Yahoo which mentions the federal criminal codes which apply: 

“U.S.C. 1201 applies to murder during a kidnapping) and 18 U.S.C. 2551 applies to cases of "murder related to sexual exploitation of children."

 

The situation is clear in a county which doesn’t allow women like Bresnahan to obtain concealed carry permits, and yet can’t protect them and their children in public parking lots in quiet middle-class suburban towns.  There is now in the local newspapers a great deal of liberal prating about the wrongheadedness of the death penalty, but no hand-wringing among this group regarding the death penalty of Lori Bresnahan (not to mention the absolute terror & horror & torture of her murder) nor the rape of the child. 

Surely, these people do care about the victims, but the manner of their caring makes it certain to happen again and again and again.  Just as in the Petit case in Connecticut, this murderer, when proved in court, deserves the same sentence as those murderer/rapists.

Need more evidence of hypocrisy?  These very same liberals cheered for the execution of mass killer Timothy McVeigh. Not a peep out of them.  Nor should there have been.

 

 

http://goo.gl/naUEt

 

Economy Flatline: The Cure has Been as Bad as the Disease - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Economy Flatline: The Cure has Been as Bad as the Disease - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

COMMENTARY | In 2012, people had a chance to choose an economic way forward. They chose President Obama's way.
The Obama way was to stimulate the economy through "stimulus" government spending and monetary policy that kept interest rates near zero. Accelerating the money supply pumped up the financial markets.

Wall Street was quiet, a silent partner in the financial fraud. Voters were quiet because they were promised something for nothing.

It helped, too, that Eurozone economies were falling apart so fast that the Federal Reserve's Ben Bernanke couldn't weaken the dollar fast enough to keep up, a relationship explained in Daily FX. Compared to the sickly Euro, the dollar and the American economy was safe harbor
.
But today's plunging employment figures stunned Wall Street and sent stocks tumbling. There was an increase of only 88,000 non-farm jobs, compared to analyst projections of 200,000 jobs, according to Reuters.

Installers of Latest Samsung Push App Experience the Rapture - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Installers of Latest Samsung Push App Experience the Rapture - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

I immediately thought of people being pushed to their deaths from New York subway platforms. You could attribute the conjuring of that dismal image to generational dysfunction. If I were a savvy post-collegiate twenty-something, I would have immediately known that these persistent, annoying incursions into my private Idaho could propel me to new heights of self-awareness, to raptures heretofore inconceivable

New York Politicians Need to Clean the People’s House - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

New York Politicians Need to Clean the People’s House - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

COMMENTARY | The criminal complaint filed Friday by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara against six prominent New York political officials has spread like a radioactive cloud, leaving politicians scurrying for their hazmat suits.

If you haven't heard, the scandal involves a Democratic New York state senator named Malcolm Smith, accused of paying Republican New York City councilman Daniel Halloran to assist him in bribing two other Republican political officials.

Tammany Hall Deja Vu in New York City Bribery Bust - Yahoo! News

Tammany Hall Deja Vu in New York City Bribery Bust - Yahoo! News


People are finally learning how to pronounce the name of Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Among other duties, Bharara's mission is to fight corruption in state and local government. Few New York histories fail to mention the Tammany Hall government which set the tone of New York City politics in the 19th century. The biggest problem with such histories is that the clandestine political corruption of political bosses is depicted as the detritus of a bygone era. Not so. Bharara just filed a criminal complaint against several New York political operatives he accused of conspiring to bribe political officials in return for favors, according to the New York Daily News.

What are the charges in the criminal complaint?

The complaint is long, amounting to 28 pages, and was filed at the end of March. But the basis of the complaint is that New York state Sen. Malcom Smith, a Democrat, along with his consorts, allegedly bribed Republican Party officials to enter the Republican primary race for mayor of New York City.

Stop and Frisk Will Win in New York City Court - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Stop and Frisk Will Win in New York City Court - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Imagine that you were a New York City cop, obliged to follow the New York City Police Department's updated stop and frisk policy. The Gothamist explains the additional documentation a New York City cop has to provide when conducting a "stop and frisk," discovered only because the memo turned up in court yesterday.

Along with a check sheet, the cop now has to provide a CYA narrative, reports Gothamist.
If it were me, I couldn't do it. I would soon find myself in the same tough spot as that of Officer Pedro Serrano of the 40th District of the South Bronx. According to the New York Post, Serrano appears to be rebelling against a policy that puts cops between a rock and a hard place.

Federal Death Penalty and Clay N.Y. Murder, Child Rape Conviction a Perfect Fit - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Federal Death Penalty and Clay N.Y. Murder, Child Rape Conviction a Perfect Fit - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Any clear thinking person reading Renz' criminal complaint on federal child pornography charges would conclude he was a loaded gun pointed at society's head. Yet he was bailed out--with naive preconditions. The laxity of electronic monitoring meant that Renz could slip off his "bracelet" to kill and rape at 9:00 p.m. without authorities being informed until 11:30 p.m.

Like the infamous Petit murder-rape in Connecticut, a conviction for these crimes would argue for a death penalty New York does not have. The last person administered capital punishment in New York was executed in 1963.

New York SAFE Act Gets a Mental Health Assessment - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

New York SAFE Act Gets a Mental Health Assessment - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Lawmakers perhaps considered cases like that of Seung Hui Cho, who shot to death 32 people in a 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech. Cho had been judged mentally ill in a court procedure two years earlier, according to the Washington Post.

Yet Cho passed required background checks to obtain guns, according to CNN, because his mental health records were kept out of the gun check database. With the SAFE Act, New York state legislators made a half-hearted attempt to remedy that by obligating mental health professionals to report dangerously mentally ill patients to authorities.

Such persons would then be entered into a national gun database.
The defiant reaction of the mental health community was summed up in a Syracuse Post-Standard story quoting Dr. James Knoll, director of forensic psychiatry at New York's Upstate Medical University.

"We're being transformed into agents of the state and agents of government control," Knoll said.

Factbox: Man Who Allegedly Killed Librarian, Raped Child Was Released from Jail in January - Yahoo! News

Factbox: Man Who Allegedly Killed Librarian, Raped Child Was Released from Jail in January - Yahoo! News

On Thursday evening, Lori Bresnahan was heading toward the parking lot of the Great Northern Mall with a 10-year-old girl who had just finished a gymnastics class. The two never arrived home. Bresnahan was found stabbed to death in her car parked on isolated Verplank Road. The 10-year-old had been raped. The facts of the murder-rape have left Clay and nearby communities boiling with anger:

Questions Hang Like a Mist at Scene of New York Rampage Shooting - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Questions Hang Like a Mist at Scene of New York Rampage Shooting - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

It wasn't the kind of ending you wanted to see, but then again it wasn't the kind of beginning you wanted to see, either. Sixty-four-year-old Kurt R. Meyers shot to death four innocent people in two quiet towns along the Mohawk River in upstate New York.
From there on, you knew it was going to be ugly, and it was. Since the rampage shooting spree began yesterday at mid-morning, Meyers was holed up in a vacant building on North Main Street in the small town of Herkimer.

(CLICK ON THE HEADLINE TO READ MORE & TO COMMENT)  Could the police have apprehended Kurt Meyers?  Or did the scenario not fit Cuomo's SAFE Act. scenario?)  You decide!

Factbox: Four Dead in Mass Shootings in Quiet Upstate New York Towns of Herkimer, Mohawk - Yahoo! News

Factbox: Four Dead in Mass Shootings in Quiet Upstate New York Towns of Herkimer, Mohawk - Yahoo! News

A 64-year-old man is being sought in the slaying of four people and the wounding of two others in a normally somnolent upstate Herkimer County, N.Y. The shootings, believed to have been carried out with a long rifle, took place in the tiny villages of Herkimer and Mohawk, according to the Associated Press. The situation right now is fluid and developing, but police have cordoned off part of the town where the shooting suspect may be cornered. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a press conference scheduled for this afternoon but this has twice been delayed. The facts so far:

* The shootings began at mid-morning when a man armed with a long gun killed two people and injured two at John's Barber Shop in Mohawk then apparently drove to Gaffney's Fast Lube in nearby Herkimer where the second shootings and two deaths occurred.

(CLICK ON THE HEADLINE TO READ MORE)

Factbox: The Steubenville, Ohio, Rape Trial of Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond - Yahoo! News

Factbox: The Steubenville, Ohio, Rape Trial of Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond - Yahoo! News

Adults who work with volatile teens know how quickly events involving them can move from merely fast to wildly out of control. An ABC News story recounts events last week when a group of eight adolescents piled into a stolen vehicle, hurtled along a freeway, and launched themselves upside down into a pond. A tragedy of another type occurred in August in Steubenville, Ohio, when police arrested two teen members of the town's football team for the rape of an allegedly intoxicated 16-year-old girl.