gamer173's Blog

Whatever that is = he does not have the proper experience to run this country

LAUREL, Miss. - Federal immigration agents said they uncovered 350 suspected undocumented workers in a raid on a Mississippi electrical equipment plant Monday, hours after sealing all entrances amid reports their sweep had idled normal operations.

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Barbara Gonzalez, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, confirmed the raid and said it targeted Howard Industries Inc. of Laurel.

The company produces dozens of products ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to the company's Web site.

"This is a targeted enforcement operation that is part of an ongoing ICE investigation that has revealed that illegal aliens are employed at Howard Industries," Gonzalez said, adding late Monday that agents were still interviewing plant workers.

She declined to say how many federal agents were involved, but said they acted on a tip provided by a union worker.

Another agency spokesman, Brandon Montgomery, told The Associated Press outside the plant Monday afternoon that agents were talking with everyone who worked at the sprawling plant to determine their residency status.

All plant entrances were blocked, with tents set up at some ICE checkpoints to keep agents out of a steady rain. Motorists traveling on roads behind the plant were stopped by officers in unmarked vehicles and told to leave.

Suspected illegal workers were loaded later Monday into white vans with shaded windows and driven away as ICE agents guarded the plant entrances. Gonzalez wouldn't say where they were headed other than to say they were being taken to a holding facility.

People leaving the plant told The Hattiesburg American newspaper that so many workers were stopped that operations were shut down. It wasn't clear how many workers the plant employed.

A recording at Howard Industries plant on Monday said the telephone switchboard was closed.

Billy Howard, the company's chief executive officer, did not immediately respond to a message left by The AP. A man who answered a phone call at the company's security station said reporters would have to call back Tuesday.

Howard Industries was founded in the 1960s. In 2002, state lawmakers approved a $31.5 million, taxpayer-backed incentive plan aimed at helping to expand its operations.

The raid is one of several nationwide in recent years.

On May 12, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant's human resources department, court records showed.

___

LAUREL, Miss. - Federal immigration agents said they uncovered 350 suspected undocumented workers in a raid on a Mississippi electrical equipment plant Monday, hours after sealing all entrances amid reports their sweep had idled normal operations.

ADVERTISEMENT

Barbara Gonzalez, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, confirmed the raid and said it targeted Howard Industries Inc. of Laurel.

The company produces dozens of products ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to the company's Web site.

"This is a targeted enforcement operation that is part of an ongoing ICE investigation that has revealed that illegal aliens are employed at Howard Industries," Gonzalez said, adding late Monday that agents were still interviewing plant workers.

She declined to say how many federal agents were involved, but said they acted on a tip provided by a union worker.

Another agency spokesman, Brandon Montgomery, told The Associated Press outside the plant Monday afternoon that agents were talking with everyone who worked at the sprawling plant to determine their residency status.

All plant entrances were blocked, with tents set up at some ICE checkpoints to keep agents out of a steady rain. Motorists traveling on roads behind the plant were stopped by officers in unmarked vehicles and told to leave.

Suspected illegal workers were loaded later Monday into white vans with shaded windows and driven away as ICE agents guarded the plant entrances. Gonzalez wouldn't say where they were headed other than to say they were being taken to a holding facility.

People leaving the plant told The Hattiesburg American newspaper that so many workers were stopped that operations were shut down. It wasn't clear how many workers the plant employed.

A recording at Howard Industries plant on Monday said the telephone switchboard was closed.

Billy Howard, the company's chief executive officer, did not immediately respond to a message left by The AP. A man who answered a phone call at the company's security station said reporters would have to call back Tuesday.

Howard Industries was founded in the 1960s. In 2002, state lawmakers approved a $31.5 million, taxpayer-backed incentive plan aimed at helping to expand its operations.

The raid is one of several nationwide in recent years.

On May 12, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant's human resources department, court records showed.

___

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much?  Read this: 

    Boy am I confused.  I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us.

    I now find that to be RIDICULOUS. 

    I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them.  I have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.

        1.  $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
            Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

        2.  $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. 
            Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html 


        3.  $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
            Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html 


        4.  $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
            Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.h
tml

        5.  $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
            Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.
html

        6.  $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
            Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.
html 

        7.  30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
            Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.
html 

        8.  $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
            Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html<
/a> 

        9.  $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
            Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.
html         10.  The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens.  In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
            Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01h
tml 

        11  During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries.  Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
            Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

        12.  The National Policy Institute, 'estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.'
            Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation
.pdf
        13.  In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. 
            Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

        14.  'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.'
            Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml 

    The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.  Are we THAT stupid?

Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
 
(A Political Fable) The seven dwarfs always left to go work in the mine early each morning.
As always, Snow White stayed home doing her domestic chores.As lunchtime approached, she would prepare their lunch and carry it to the mine. One day as she arrived at the mine with the lunch,
she saw that there had been a terrible cave-in.
Tearfully, and fearing the worst, Snow White began
calling out, hoping against hope that the dwarfs had somehow survived.'Hello!...Hello!' she shouted. 'Can anyone hear me? Hello!'For a long while, there was no answer.
Losing hope, Snow White again shouted,
'Hello! Is anyone down there?'Just as she was about to give up all hope,
she heard a faint voice from deep within the mine, singing . . ...
 
'Vote for Barack Obama! - Vote for Barack Obama!'
 
Snow White fell to her knees, crossed herself and prayed,
'Oh, thank you, God! At least Dopey is still alive...
 

   This is Pastor Wrights house (Obama's preacher) now I can see why he says god dam america poor guy living in poverty.  I can see the white man is keeping him down.

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 107th Congress - 2nd Session

 

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

 

Vote Summary

 

Question: On the Joint Resolution (H.J.Res. 114 ) Vote Number: 237 Vote Date: October 11, 2002, 12:50 AM Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Joint Resolution Passed Measure Number: H.J.Res. 114 Measure Title: A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. Vote Counts: YEAs 77 NAYs 23 Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State

 

Alphabetical by Senator Name Akaka (D-HI), Nay
Allard (R-CO), Yea
Allen (R-VA), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Bennett (R-UT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Nay
Bond (R-MO), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Nay
Breaux (D-LA), Yea
Brownback (R-KS), Yea
Bunning (R-KY), Yea
Burns (R-MT), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Nay
Campbell (R-CO), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Carnahan (D-MO), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Chafee (R-RI), Nay
Cleland (D-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Nay
Corzine (D-NJ), Nay
Craig (R-ID), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Yea
Daschle (D-SD), Yea
Dayton (D-MN), Nay
DeWine (R-OH), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Domenici (R-NM), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Nay
Edwards (D-NC), Yea
Ensign (R-NV), Yea
Enzi (R-WY), Yea
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Fitzgerald (R-IL), Yea
Frist (R-TN), Yea
Graham (D-FL), Nay
Gramm (R-TX), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Gregg (R-NH), Yea
Hagel (R-NE), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Helms (R-NC), Yea
Hollings (D-SC), Yea
Hutchinson (R-AR), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Inouye (D-HI), Nay
Jeffords (I-VT), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kennedy (D-MA), Nay
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Nay
Lieberman (D-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Lott (R-MS), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Nay
Miller (D-GA), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Nickles (R-OK), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Nay
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Santorum (R-PA), Yea
Sarbanes (D-MD), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Yea
Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Smith (R-NH), Yea
Smith (R-OR), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Thomas (R-WY), Yea
Thompson (R-TN), Yea
Thurmond (R-SC), Yea
Torricelli (D-NJ), Yea
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (R-VA), Yea
Wellstone (D-MN), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Nay
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State

22-year-old Human Smuggler Arrested for 15th Time Last Edited: Tuesday, 19 Feb 2008, 1:58 PM EST Created: Tuesday, 19 Feb 2008, 1:58 PM EST Human smugglers Israel Robles-Gaytan and Silvestre Bermudez were arrested in Colorado on Monday. (MyFoxColorado) or just enabling jstl so that we can just write ${bean.property} and jsp takes care of the new lines. -->MyFoxColorado Reports

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. -- Two illegal immigrants were arrested for human smuggling in Eagle on Monday. One of the men has been deported 14 times for human smuggling prior to today's arrest. He is 22 years old.

At 8:21am a deputy pulled over a silver Chevy Venture van in the eastbound lane of I-70 for a license plate violation. The deputy discovered 13 illegal immigrants inside the vehicle.

The driver said he planned on delivering the twelve adult males in various locations that included Denver, Iowa, and Georgia.

Omar Alaverez-Mecedo, age 22, was arrested and charged with Human Smuggling, a class three felony, and operating a vehicle without a valid driver's license, a class two misdemeanor.

In the course of the investigation it was discovered that "Omar Alaverez-Mecedo's" real name is Israel Robles-Gaytan. According to ICE, Robles-Gaytan had already been caught and deported fourteen times; he gave law enforcement officials a different name each time.

Robles-Gaytan will be charged with Criminal Impersonation and 2nd degree Forgery in addition to the charges of Human Smuggling and operating a vehicle without a valid driver's license.

Silvestre Bermudez, age 37, was arrested and charged with Possession of a Forged Instrument and Second Degree Forgery.

Both men were in the country illegally.Alaverez-Mecedo admitted to previously being deported three times prior.

Alaverez-Mecedo and Bermudez are currently being held at the Eagle County Detention Facility with an Immigration Customs Enforcement holds and bond amounts of $15,000 and $2,000 respectively.

The eleven other occupants of the vehicle have been placed in ICE's custody pending deportation.

A procedure recently adopted in Eagle County allowed the Eagle County deputy to take immediate action regarding immigration enforcement.

Elderly not getting the care they needNorway's fabled "cradle to grave" security seems to be disappearing, with a new study showing that only the most acute needs will qualify a patient for a spot in a nursing home.

Only a small percentage of the elderly in Norway get the nursing home rooms they need.

PHOTO: SCANPIX ARCHIVE

Norwegians have complained for years over the long waiting lists they face for care at local hospitals. Now a new report shows that care for the elderly is far from sufficient in what's widely billed as one of the world's wealthiest countries.

A survey of 80,000 elderly persons living in 162 Norwegian townships indicated that only those with the most serious medical ailments and disabilities received a room in a nursing home.

Half of those who need help with everyday routines were still living at home, reported Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Friday.

"This is worse than I thought," Magne Roland, a former hospital director who had criticized state officials for lacking an overview of the problem before last fall's elections.

Roland, who has worked with the elderly for 40 years, is now chairman of the Grefsen nursing home in Oslo. He urged state and township officials in charge of local nursing homes and their funding to find a solution to the problem.

Limited alternatives
Most elderly who are turned away from nursing homes are offered some form of help at home, but it can be erratic and far from adequate.

Private solutions for the elderly are limited in Norway, where the vast majority of nursing homes are run by the public sector or public foundations. Independent- and assisted-living facilities so common in the US, for example, haven't taken root in Norway, where most citizens expect to receive mostly state-funded care after a long life of paying high taxes.

Patients living in a public nursing home are usually charged 80 percent of their current income, but their estates are left intact. Living in a nursing home thus isn't "free" in Norway, but it won't threaten to deplete a patient's estate, either.

The problem is that there now seems to be an acute shortage of nursing homes in Norway, and demand is only growing as the population in general ages.

State Secretary Rigmor Aasrud of the Labour Party admitted she was worried by the differences between care offered by the various townships, and that many elderly aren't receiving enough care. "We need to find the reason for this," she said.

Most townships will retort that they're not getting enough funding from the state. There have been widely publicized cases of neglect in recent years, including one recently where an Oslo hospital simply sent home a sick and frail 94-year-old woman to the apartment where she lived alone

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.

My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.

Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli faces the media in Montreal in June 2005, after he got Canada's Supreme Court to strike down a Quebec law banning private insurance for services covered under Medicare — a decision the rocked the country's universal health care system.

I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic — with a three-year wait list; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment.

These problems are not unique to Canada — they characterize all government-run health care systems.

Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren't available. And so on.

Single-payer systems — confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment — are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries — but to markets.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli is at the center of this changing health care scene. In the 1990s, he organized a private Quebec practice — patients called him, he made house calls and then he directly billed his patients. The local health board cried foul and began fining him. The legal status of private practice in Canada remained murky, but billing patients, rather than the government, was certainly illegal, and so was private insurance.

Eventually, Chaoulli took on the government in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Representing an elderly Montrealer who had waited almost a year for a hip replacement, Chaoulli maintained that the patient should have the right to pay for private health insurance and get treatment sooner. A majority of the court agreed that Quebec's charter did implicitly recognize such a right.

The monumental ruling, which shocked the government, opened the way to more private medicine in Quebec. Though the prohibition against private insurance holds in the rest of Canada for now, at least two people outside Quebec, armed with Chaoulli's case as precedent, are taking their demand for private insurance to court.

Consider, too, Rick Baker. He isn't a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He's a medical broker — one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the inadequacies of Canada's government care. Canadians pay him to set up surgical procedures, diagnostic tests and specialist consultations, privately and quickly.

Baker describes a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion — he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren't usually seen in the disorder — he requested an MRI.

The government told him that the wait would be 4 1/2 months. So he went to Baker, who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours — and who, after the test revealed a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks. Some services that Baker brokers almost certainly contravene Canadian law, but governments are loath to stop him.

Other private-sector health options are blossoming across Canada, and the government is increasingly turning a blind eye to them, too, despite their often uncertain legal status. Private clinics are opening at a rate of about one a week.

Canadian doctors, long silent on the health care system's problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. Day has become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center and challenging the government to shut him down.

And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80% of government-funded diagnostic testing.

This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain's Labour Party — which originally created the National Health Service — now openly favors privatization. Sweden's government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of its total health services.

Since the fall of communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany.

Yet even as Stockholm and Saskatoon are percolating with the ideas of Adam Smith, a growing number of prominent Americans are arguing that socialized health care still provides better results for less money.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton are on board; Michael Moore's new documentary, "Sicko," celebrates the virtues of Canada's socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee; and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health insurance.

One often-heard argument, voiced by the New York Times' Paul Krugman and others, is that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health.

Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall or a car accident. Such factors aren't academic — homicide rates in the U.S. are much higher than in other countries.

In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don't die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country.

And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation.

Like many critics of American health care, though, Krugman argues that the costs are just too high: health care spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of what Americans pay. Again, the picture isn't quite as clear as he suggests. Because the U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn't unreasonable for it to spend more on health care. Take America's high spending on research and development. M.D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.

That said, American health care is expensive. And Americans aren't always getting a good deal. In the coming years, with health expenses spiraling up, it will be easy for some to give in to the temptation of socialized medicine. In Washington, there are plenty of old pieces of legislation that like-minded politicians could take off the shelf, dust off and promote: expanding Medicare to Americans 55 and older, say, or covering all children in Medicaid.

But such initiatives would push the U.S. further down the path to a government-run system and make things much, much worse. True, government bureaucrats would be able to cut costs — but only by shrinking access to health care, as in Canada, and engendering a Canadian-style nightmare of overflowing emergency rooms and yearlong waits for treatment.

America is right to seek a model for delivering good health care at good prices, but we should be looking not to Canada, but close to home — in the other four-fifths or so of our economy. From telecommunications to retail, deregulation and market competition have driven prices down and quality and productivity up. Health care is long overdue for the same prescription.

 

MINNEAPOLIS -- Jailed quarterback Michael Vick can keep all but $3.75 million of the nearly $20 million in bonus money he received from the Atlanta Falcons following a ruling Monday by a federal judge.

The Falcons sought to recover the bonuses after Vick pleaded guilty to federal charges in a dogfighting operation. The bonuses were paid from 2004-07.

A special master ruled in October the Falcons were entitled to recover the bonuses. The Falcons argued Vick used proceeds from a contract he signed in 2004 to finance his illicit activities.

But U.S. District Judge David Doty of Minneapolis ruled that recovery of most of the bonus money by the Falcons would violate the NFL collective bargaining agreement. The agreement does not allow roster bonus money to be forfeited once it's been earned, the judge wrote.

Do Not Forget Our Innocent

He was on the 12 most wanted list and had a $200,000 bounty on him. He was taken out by a Predator which is an unmanned aircraft developed by the CIA. I guess lucky number 13 gets to take his place. 

CHICAGO — Antoin Rezko, an entrepreneur of considerable charm who found riches in fast food and real estate, is known around Chicago as a collector of politicians.

Antoin Rezko was indicted last fall on federal charges of business fraud and influence peddling involving the Illinois governor’s administration.

Back in the 1990s, Mr. Rezko’s office was adorned with framed photos of candidates he viewed as up-and-comers. Among them was Barack Obama, a state legislator whose first campaign donations included $2,000 from Mr. Rezko’s companies. As Mr. Obama built a career that carried him to the Senate in 2004, Mr. Rezko was there with him, holding fund-raisers and rallying support.

Now, as Mr. Obama runs for president, the once-beneficial relationship with his old friend and patron has become problematic.

Last fall, Mr. Rezko was indicted on federal charges of business fraud and influence peddling involving the administration of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, whose picture was also on Mr. Rezko’s wall. Since then, Mr. Obama, a Democrat, has had to answer questions about a land deal with Mr. Rezko’s wife, Rita, and about other ties to him.

Since early June, Mr. Obama has given to charity more than $21,000 in donations that his Senate campaign had received from Rezko associates now linked to the federal inquiries. He gave away $11,500 from Mr. Rezko himself last fall.

Mr. Obama says he never did any favors for Mr. Rezko, who raised about $150,000 for his campaigns over the years and was once one of the most powerful men in Illinois. There is no sign that Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, did anything improper.

Mr. Obama has portrayed Mr. Rezko as a one-time fund-raiser whom he had occasionally seen socially. But interviews with more than a dozen political and business associates suggest that the two men were closer than the senator has indicated.

Mr. Obama turned to Mr. Rezko for help at several important junctures. Records show that when Mr. Obama needed cash in the waning days of his losing 2000 Congressional campaign, Mr. Rezko rounded up thousands of dollars from business contacts. In 2003, Mr. Rezko helped Mr. Obama expand his fund-raising for the Senate primary by being host of a dinner at his Mediterranean-style home for 150 people, including some whose names have since come up in the influence scandal.

And when Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, bought a house in 2005, Mr. Rezko stepped in again. Even though his finances were deteriorating, Mr. Rezko arranged for his wife to buy an adjacent lot, and she later sold the Obamas a 10-foot-wide strip of land that expanded their yard.

The land sale occurred after it had been reported that Mr. Rezko was under federal investigation. That awkward fact prompted Mr. Obama, who has cast himself as largely free from the normal influences of politics, to express regret over what he called his own bad judgment.

“Senator Obama is a very intelligent man, and everyone by then was very familiar with who Tony Rezko was,” said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan research group. “So it was a little stunning that so late in the game Senator Obama would still have such close involvement with Rezko.”

While it is not clear what Mr. Rezko got from the relationship, he liked to display his alliances with politicians, including Mr. Obama.

In one instance, when he was running for the Senate, Mr. Obama stopped by to shake hands while Mr. Rezko, an immigrant from Syria, was entertaining Middle Eastern bankers considering an investment in one of his projects.

[Years earlier, as a state legislator, Mr. Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting efforts by Mr. Rezko and a partner to build apartments for the elderly with $14 million in government money, The Chicago Sun-Times reported in its June 13 editions. The developers received $855,000 in fees.]

         21   million illegal aliens are depending on you! 
 
 
                                            Muchas gracias