Secret Service agents on Friday arrested a man in Mississippi who wrote a series of entries in an Internet chat room saying he intended to kill President-elect Barack Obama, the Justice Department said. The man, Steven J. Christopher, who is from Wisconsin, was arrested in Brookhaven, Miss., for making threatening entries on Jan. 11, 15 and 16, said Dunn Lampton, the United States attorney in Jackson.
The entries, which included racial and anti-Semitic remarks, were on a Web site that features information and articles about extraterrestrials, government conspiracies and unexplained physical phenomenon. The Juice, ETs, and the Gummint. That just about covers it.
There are hundreds like this loon out there for every President.
In one Jan. 11 entry, according to the Justice Department, Mr. Christopher wrote: "Yes, I have decided I will assassinate Barack Obama. It's really nothing personal about the man." The Secret Service does not care if it's personal.
Mr. Christopher added that he had no way to travel from Mississippi to Washington and said, "I don't own a gun, so maybe someone can give me one." Must be a newbie in the conspiraloon culture: Homicidal nutburgers are expected to provde their own guns. They get extra points if they make the guns themselves. Steven here won't be needing one for quite a while though.
Mr. Lampton said, "Threats against the president-elect will be taken very seriously." Good thing our mind-control satellites and lip-reading squirrels have zeroed in on these kooks. Maybe Dennis Kucinich will show a little bi-partisan (Hiter-Stalin) spirit and help with his defense.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2009 15:36 Comments ||
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#2
And why exactly is this a problem for the Feds?
She's over 18.
If she wants to catch an interesting and permanent STD accept money for a date, what business is it of the Feds? Where exactly in the Constitution does it say the Feds are supposed to police promiscuity stupidity?
Hope she enjoys the notoriety when she starts applying for jobs.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/17/2009 17:17 Comments ||
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#3
$3.7 million offer
Barbara - somehow I don't think she is too worried about applying for jobs....
Raoul Gustav Wallenberg (born August 4, 1912, exact date of death is disputed) was a Swedish diplomat and a member of the influential Wallenberg family. In the later stages of World War II, he worked tirelessly and at great personal risk to save many thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. He was later arrested by the Soviets who suspected him of being a spy; the circumstances of his death while in their custody are still a matter of great controversy.
According to the Israeli organization Yad Vashem, Wallenberg is credited with personally saving the lives of many thousands of Hungarian Jews. Using nothing much more than a typewriter and a lot of nerve.
One story credits him with either threatening or persuading a German general to ignore orders from Adolf Hitler to destroy the ghettos and kill the remaining inhabitants in the last desperate days before Budapest's liberation. If true, the number of people saved by Wallenberg's actions would rise to about 100,000. When the Russians finally took over, they found 97,000 Jews living in Budapest's two ghettos. In total, roughly 204,000 of the pre-war population of about 800,000 Hungarian Jews survived.
Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet Red Army on January 17, 1945 as they entered Budapest, probably on suspicion of being a spy for the United States. To this day, the U.S. government refuses to either confirm or deny this. He was taken to the Lubyanka in Moscow with his driver Langfelder. Wallenberg was then transferred to Lefortovo prison in another part of Moscow for two more years.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/17/2009 12:12 ||
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#1
Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet Red Army on January 17, 1945 as they entered Budapest, probably on suspicion of being a spy for the United States. To this day, the U.S. government refuses to either confirm or deny this. He was taken to the Lubyanka in Moscow with his driver Langfelder. Wallenberg was then transferred to Lefortovo prison in another part of Moscow for two more years.
That is at a time were USA was (on American sixde) a ally of Soviet Union and less than a year after Patton' carreer was neraly wrecked for
nasty remarks about Soviet Union.
#2
JFM, the US and the Soviet Union were allies only in the sense of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The USSR never considered us their friend, only that we were useful in supplying goods and men to their war effort.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/17/2009 16:46 Comments ||
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"Aw, shucks. We was just havin' a little fun, yer honor!"
Singer Boy George was sentenced to 15 months in jail on Friday after being convicted of falsely imprisoning a male escort by handcuffing him to a wall in a London apartment.
British Judge David Radford said the 47-year-old former Culture Club frontman, whose real name is George O'Dowd, was guilty of "gratuitous violence." O'Dowd's lawyer said his client and the escort had both behaved like "drug-crazed idiots" and that O'Dowd's substance abuse problems were a contributing factor.
Really?
In 2006, Boy George -- whose pop band's hits included "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" and "Karma Chameleon" -- did community service with New York City's Department of Sanitation after he called police with a false report of a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment and officers found cocaine there.
Friday's sentencing occurred at Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London, where O'Dowd had been warned by the judge to expect a jail sentence.
The singer had been convicted in December of handcuffing Norwegian escort Audun Carlsen to a wall hook at his East London apartment. During the trial, prosecutors said Carlsen was held by O'Dowd for under an hour.
The singer denied the charge, saying he had restrained Carlsen with handcuffs while trying to figure out if a computer had been tampered with. Carlsen, 29, said O'Dowd swung at him with a metal chain as he ran from the apartment after a naked photo shoot.
Photos of Carlsen's injuries -- which he said had been inflicted by O'Dowd -- were shown to the jury, but the singer denied he was responsible.
Speaking to Judge Radford on Friday, O'Dowd's lawyer, Adrian Waterman, said: "This defendant is a kind and generous man who is particularly mindful of others' needs. He is the antithesis of the haughty bullying star. He was not himself when addled by the habitual and relatively long-lasting using of illegal drugs."
During Culture Club's heyday in the 1980s, Boy George was famous for his flamboyant makeup and outfits.
Posted by: ed ||
01/17/2009 12:22 ||
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"to try to ease desperate cash shortages"
And a $100 trillion bill will do that how, exactly?
Ya' wanna ease something for yourselves, Zim? Off Bob.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/17/2009 12:42 Comments ||
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I am surprised that nobody has invented a car that burns paper money in Zimbabwe. You probably get more energy heat value out of the paper itself than out of the fuel the money would buy.
#3
The article says it could buy three newspapers.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
01/17/2009 14:40 Comments ||
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The greenback version may be coming to a bank, liquor store or fireplace near you sooner than you think. All they're trying to figure out is whose picture to put on it- Chris Dodd or Bawney Fwank?
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
01/17/2009 17:52 Comments ||
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#5
When the revolution comes you'll get pictures of them hanging together on the back of a $500 bill.
They should just switch to engineering notation before their currency starts to look more like scrolls.
Zimbabwe unveiled a 100 trillion dollar note Friday in the latest grim measure of its staggering economic collapse, heightening the urgency of a new round of unity talks set for next week. I'll bet those million-dollar notes are probably worth when sold as toilet paper.
Veteran leader Robert Mugabe and opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai are set to hold talks Monday with key regional leaders in a bid to salvage a four-month-old unity accord, which has yet to be implemented. The stalemate over disputed elections last year has only fuelled the economic and humanitarian crisis that has impoverished the country, leaving nearly half the population dependent on food aid as a cholera epidemic sweeps the country.
The Reserve Bank announced in the government mouthpiece Herald newspaper a series of trillion-dollar denominations to keep pace with hyperinflation that has left the once-dynamic economy in tatters.
The new 100,000,000,000,000 Zim-dollar bill would have been worth about 300 US dollars (225 euros) at Thursday's exchange rate on the informal market, where most currency trading now takes place, but the value of the local currency erodes dramatically every day. Two days later it's probably worth about US$200.
The move came just one week after the bank released a series of billion-dollar notes, which already are not worth enough for workers to withdraw their monthly salaries.
Inflation was last reported at 231 million percent in July, but the Washington think-tank Cato Institute has estimated it now at 89.7 sextillion percent -- a figure expressed with 21 zeroes. Is it OK to point and laugh now?
When Mugabe took power at independence from Britain in 1980, the Zimbabwe dollar was equivalent to the British pound. For years, the nation's farms, schools and health care were considered a model for Africa. Now 80 percent of the population is in poverty, 1.3 million are living with HIV, five million depend on food aid, and more than one million others have fled overseas. WTH HAPPENED? Really! Did they switch to Communism or something?
A breakdown in basic sanitation and water has spawned a cholera epidemic that has killed 2,100 people since August and shows no sign of slowing.
Despite the ever-worsening crisis, Zimbabwe is locked in a political limbo following elections last March, when Tsvangirai won a first-round presidential vote and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) seized a parliamentary majority for the first time. The MDC victory was greeted with a wave of political attacks that Amnesty International says left more than 180 people dead -- mostly opposition supporters.
Citing the violence, Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off election in June, allowing 84-year-old Mugabe to claim a one-sided victory condemend by western powers.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki brokered a power-sharing deal signed September 15, but the rivals have yet to agree on how to form a unity government, while attacks and arrests of MDC members have continued.
Hoping to salvage the deal, South Africa's new President Kgalema Motlanthe plans to fly to Harare on Monday with Mbeki and Mozambican President Armando Emilio Guebuza to mediate new talks. "They will focus their discussions on the outstanding matters in the implementation of the global agreement," Motlanthe's spokesman Thabo Masebe told AFP in Johannesburg.
Tsvangirai told reporters Thursday that he remained committed to the unity accord. "All I lack is a willing partner," Tsvangirai said.
But he said he was not willing for talks to drag on indefinitely. "At some point we will have to decide whether it is worth going into this government or not," he said. I'm going to guess not.
The sister-in-law Badrun Nisa of prominent nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadir Kahn passed away on Friday here. She was wife of KhanÂ's younger brother Mian Rauf. Her funeral prayer would be offered tomorrow (Saturday) and will be laid to rest later. She left two sons and two daughters in bereft. No reports came confirming permission for Dr. Qadir to attend her funeral rites. It is pertinent to mention, a young cousin of AQ Kahn died some three months ago however government did not allow him to attend her funeral rituals.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2009 00:00 ||
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Radiation poisoning?
I THOUGHT she was hiding something under her burka.....
Arizona is better prepared to manage an influenza pandemic than the rest of the country, although its plan still has major gaps, a new report from the federal government suggests.
The assessment, released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, measures each state's ability to maintain operations and protect the public's health during a widespread flu crisis.
Arizona is the only state in the nation not to have been listed as "inadequately prepared" in any of the 28 key categories, which included everything from the ability to handle mass casualties to maintaining an adequate food supply.
"Arizona did show very strongly in many areas and generally better than the rest of the country," said William Raub, chairman of the committee that prepared the report. "This is a disease that can be almost everywhere at (once), so it's better to get prepared now," Raub added.
Arizona's strategy does need improvement, including its plans to handle basic services if thousands of people fall ill and can't work.
Most health experts believe the world is overdue for an influenza outbreak. There were three such pandemics in the 20th century; the most deadly occurred in 1918, killing 50 million worldwide.
The next major outbreak is likely to be H5N1 avian influenza, known as bird flu. It has infected more than 390 people since 2003, killing 88 percent of them, according to the World Health Organization. The newest case was confirmed just this week, in a toddler in Egypt. Cases have slowed since 2006.
"It's really not a question of if we're going to have a flu pandemic. It's a question of when and how severe," said Will Humble, deputy director of Arizona's Department of Health Services. "Our team has put a lot of effort into making sure we have an operational plan, a good plan.
Representatives from 12 Cabinet departments and two White House offices have spent months analyzing the disaster strategies submitted by each state for potential weaknesses. States were graded in 28 categories and could receive one of four ratings in each: no gaps, few major gaps, many major gaps, or inadequate preparedness.
Overall, they found that the nation has made great strides in preparing for a flu pandemic, but major flaws in readiness remain.
One key problem area: maintaining government services in the face of widespread absenteeism. A severe flu pandemic could result in as much as 25 to 33 percent of American workers being away from their jobs, either because they were ill or were caring for a sick loved one.
That could hinder a state's or city's ability to provide basic services. These could include cutting unemployment checks, maintaining bus routes or processing food-stamp applications.
Arizona was only one of two states not listed as "inadequately prepared" to handle the worker problem, although the federal government said Arizona's absenteeism plan did have major gaps.
Federal agencies recommend all states put more emphasis on cross-training, prioritizing essential services and improving flexibility so employees could do their jobs from home.
Other areas where Arizona needs to improve are coordination among 9-1-1 call takers, first-responders (typically fire departments) and hospital triage centers. Another is working with educators and day-care centers on widespread school closures.
Unlike many other states, Arizona doesn't have a centralized system in place for closing schools. The decision is typically left up to individual districts.
Humble said Friday that the state will continue to work on its readiness plans in light of the government's report.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The sister-in-law Badrun Nisa of prominent nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadir Kahn passed away on Friday here. She was wife of KhanÂ's younger brother Mian Rauf. Her funeral prayer would be offered tomorrow (Saturday) and will be laid to rest later. She left two sons and two daughters in bereft. No reports came confirming permission for Dr. Qadir to attend her funeral rites. It is pertinent to mention, a young cousin of AQ Kahn died some three months ago however government did not allow him to attend her funeral rituals.
