Post Scripts

By Jessica Van Sack

Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows.

Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.

“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”

From Debka Weekly –

This report is almost 1 year old and now the information can be made to the public. This is how a massive smuggling operation kept the fighting going in Iraq and made a lot of Syrians rich

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There were no giveaways, balloons or barbecues, but business was booming this month at a “bizarre” Syrian bazaar – a used tank lot at al-Qamishli, located at the point where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey meet. On sale: Russian T-72 tanks.

No, not in mint condition, hardly top-of-the-line merchandise, the tank on sale was a Soviet product purchased by the Syrian army in the 1980s, well enough maintained and offered at a rock bottom price of $3,000 apiece.

This arms market has sprung up, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive intelligence and counter-terrorism sources have discovered, in back of the large train station at al-Qamishli, a forward point whence freight trains laden with oil and other products picked up at Syria’s Mediterranean ports once set off for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One dark night in January, our sources sighted a tank transporter, its lights extinguished, pulling into the railway station, loading up a number of tanks and heading toward the Iraqi border. The buyer’s identity is unknown, and US military intelligence is working on the problem on the premise that an Iraqi guerrilla or Baath party group has little use for medium-sized tanks. The most likely proposition examined by intelligence officials is that the buyers are US-allied Kurds who are engaged in establishing an autonomous border police force in northern Iraq.

Iraqi guerrilla forces may not be in the market for tanks but, in the second week of January, their agents purchased US-made 106 mm recoilless cannons in another Syrian city, Dayr az Zawr on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River. The cannon, mounted on jeeps, sell for about $900 to $1,000 apiece.

How did these American tools of war end up in Syria?

The long arms of Middle Eastern arms merchants stretch from the Middle East to Pakistan in the north, the Persian Gulf in the east and Jordan in the west, a country whose border is only a hop and a skip from Dayr az Zawr. The arsenals of all the countries in the region are packed with masses of recoilless guns made in the USA. Any emergency store might overlook 200 to 300 missing weapons filched for the Syrian black market.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, the purchases on behalf of the Iraqi insurgents are made by agents of Iraqi mafia groups and “imported” into Iraq by several multi-forked routes.

Some of the guns and ammunition are floated down the Euphrates River aboard rafts under cover of dark. At dawn, the rafts are hidden in the tall reeds growing on the banks. Smugglers jump in the water and tow them with heavy ropes to hideouts out of sight of reconnaissance aircraft, drones and satellites. A second route for the recoilless guns is overland from Dayr Az Zawr south to the al-Qaim region, where they are disassembled and piled on pickup trucks for their next destination, the Iraqi cities of Anal and Al Hadithah.

The route splits again here, heading east toward Tikrit and Samarra or south to Ramadi, Falluja, Habaniyah and Baghdad.

According to our sources, the weapons emanating from al-Qamishli, mainly tanks, are smuggled along two routes into Iraq – directly into Mosul and via the Iraqi towns of Sinjar and Tall Afar.

Continue reading “Smuggling Arms Into Iraq – Surplus Tanks for $3000 – AK47’s $10” »

by Tina Grazier

Go ahead, hate the big bankers if you like! Refuse to do business with them and don’t hold their stock. Tell all your friends and neighbors what jerks they are but at the same time, don’t let that seething hatred keep you from realizing that there is something very sinister going on in the Obama administration:

“Obama to Announce Bank Fees to Recoup TARP Losses,” by Karen Tavers and Sunlen Miller – ABC News

A senior administration official said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday night that President Obama feels strongly that he “must honor both his personal commitment and the legal commitment of the TARP to ensure that all of the costs are borne by the financial industry and not by the American taxpayer.” ** When asked how the administration will make sure that fees are not passed on to customers, the senior administration official said that these financial institutions have a “competitive incentive” to not do that because it is not a fee on the entire financial industry. ** The senior administration official stressed that TARP was designed to help out the economy as a whole and not bailout specific institutions or their executives and said the fee is a “minimum” of what is owed back for the significant costs that taxpayers put out.

Hmmm…anything wrong with this picture? Well a couple of things come to mind. Some of these banks were “given” taxpayer money…in fact they were told they HAD to take the money. They have paid the money back with interest. Some banks targeted to pay these fees have NOT received TARP funds yet they will pay these fees for more than ten years.

Continue reading “Obama Targets Big Banks to Recoup TARP Losses” »

American televangelist Pat Robertson has blamed the devastating earthquake in Haiti on a pact between the impoverished nation’s founders and the devil. It is feared that up to 100,000 people may have lost their lives when the magnitude 7.0 earthquake flattened massive areas of the capital Port-au-Prince yesterday.

Speaking on his television program The 700 Club, Robertson said the pact happened “a long time ago in Haiti”.

“They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon III (sic) and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil,” he said. “They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘OK it’s a deal’. And they kicked the French out.”

Continue reading “Haiti Earthquake – A Curse?” »

If you have a comment regarding the Game Change article previously shown, you may post your comment here. We apologize for the buggy software, but we’re doing ouir best to work around it.

by One Vike

We are a week away from an historic day. A day that I believe Scott Brown will assume the senate seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy. Then just last week we heard that Chris Dodd decided not to run for re-election in Connecticut. Along with the other retiring members of the Democrat party it would seem that the Republicans could actually retake the Senate. Even ABC is reporting that the future of the Democrats control of the senate is shaky.

So now we have an interesting summer to look forward to as the many possibilities abound as to what will happen in November. Which brings me back to Chris Dodd and the seat that will be vacated by his retirement. One of the bright stars on the horizon that I have been hearing of lately is non other than the wife of Vince McMahon. Linda and Jim started and ran the operations of World Wrestling Entertainment since its establishment in 1980. Well, it would seem that Linda has been a donor to non other then Rahm Emanuel in 2006 when he came to the WWE’s Stamford headquarters and personally received a five figure donation from McMahon herself. Money she claims was not for political reasons. Yea right. Are we to believe that when Rahm Emanuel is donated money that his intentions are not politically motivated?

Well, if you are in from Connecticut then you may want to check out this video of Linda explaining her self in front of a voter forum in Connecticut when asked about the contributions. The way I see it, she is no different then any other Rino who will side with the Democrats if she gets elected. You people in Connecticut better find a bettor candidate to go to Washington as your Senator, or things will continue as they always have.

by OneVike

The pundits say it cannot happen, but they have been wrong before. Tuesday could prove them wrong again. This country needs Scott Brown to win. His election to the United States Senate as the successor to the late Ted Kennedy could very well set off a year that will see history made.

WASHINGTON–Comparing Wall Street titans to shady car salesmen, a committee investigating the financial crisis grilled the nation’s top bankers Wednesday in the latest example of Washington’s smoldering anger at an industry many there feel hasn’t atoned for its role in the slump.

“It sounds to me a little bit like selling a car with faulty brakes, and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars,” said former California state Treasurer Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, while questioning the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Bank CEOs did acknowledge their role in the crisis. “It has been clear how poor business judgments we have made have affected Main Street,” said Brian Moynihan, Bank of America Corp.’s CEO. But the executives as a group also hedged that position considerably by spreading the blame to policy makers and the economy as a whole.

From todays Wall Street Journal…A recent poll showed 52% of Nevadans with an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Reid. He is trailing three potential Republican opponents, according to the poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, garnering just 40% against each. On Tuesday, political analyst Stuart Rothenberg moved Mr. Reid’s Nevada Senate seat from the “toss-up” category to “lean takeover” in favor of the Republicans.