Monday, June 1, 2015

And you thought Sidney Blumenthal was shady. Meet Cody Shearer, the Strangest Character in Hillary’s Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy



Few people have heard of Cody Shearer, the unsanctioned diplomat, private eye, and Clinton flunky whose name surfaced in connection with the so-called intelligence reports Sidney Blumenthal was channeling to Hillary Clinton during her time at the State Department. But this shadowy fixture of the Clinton machine was everywhere in the 1990s — including war-torn Bosnia, where he became the subject of a State Department investigation after he represented himself as an agent of the U.S. government and took cash from a genocidal warlord.

Now evidence suggests Shearer, working with his partner Blumenthal, was up to something similar during the 2011 revolution in Libya. And like in the 1990s, the Clintons were lurking on the margins. Much of the intelligence contained in memos fed to the Clinton State Department by Blumenthal was not just self-serving — it was provided by someone with a history of misleading foreign sources, misrepresenting himself as an agent of the U.S. government, and creating trouble for both himself and the United States abroad.

From traffic fines to property seizures, rights are trampled



Finally, California politicians are paying some attention. Gov. Jerry Brown proposes traffic fine amnesty.

The fine for that “infraction” is $250, but when you write a check to pay the ticket you will learn that the Legislature and other authorities have added a raft of surcharges for various purposes to all traffic offenses, from courthouse construction to DNA testing and emergency medical services.

The final tally is $1,104, one of the highest “bails” for the hundreds of traffic infractions, and much higher than many that could cause injury.

Proportionately, however, some are even higher. A $35 ticket for driving even 1 mph over the 65-mph highway speed limit, for example, expands to $237 with all the add-ons.

A middle-class motorist may grumble, write the check and keep on driving. But for the 9 million Californians who live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a $237 ticket is a real hardship, and if it’s ignored, the fines escalate, and a delinquent motorist often loses his or her driver’s license and very possibly a job.

It exemplifies two syndromes – the arbitrary, almost predatory nature of traffic fines, and the tendency toward punishments that violate bedrock notions of fairness.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Sunday Funnies:





Diary of A Mad Voter...

It’s not really a listening tour; it’s a say-nothing-and-nod-empathetically tour.

The Hillary Clinton Paradox: Is her victory inevitable or impossible? - Peggy Noonan/Wall St. Journal

On the matter of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy I find myself holding opposite and irreconcilable views: “That can’t possibly work,” and “She’s inevitable.”

Her candidacy can’t work because of the deep, daily cascade of scandals that would disqualify anyone else....

Here is why Mrs. Clinton is inevitable:

...Mrs. Clinton has 100% name ID, has one opponent in an old socialist to whom she can be publicly kind, and is connected to a former president whose presidency is looked back on with a sort of encrusted nostalgia—good economy, relative peace, colorful and singular messes. She has lasted long enough to go from wide-shouldered yuppie with angry blond hair to cooing grandmother. Soon they’ll be calling her “Mami.”

Clinton campaign nabs Ready for Hillary email list