N'awlins levees holding?

[War Wagon]

Looks like they got lucky this time with the eye passing well to the west. Still, some pretty awesome pictures and video coming out of there. Rack Geraldo and his intrepid cameraman for going right up to what I think was the Industrial Canal flood wall and briefly peering over. Say what you will about him, but he's got some serious sack.

Pretty amazing that almost 95% of the city evacuated, or so they estimate. Can't say as I blame them. Having drove thru there nearly a year after Katrina, it still looked like some 3rd world shithole, not a major American city.

[War Wagon]

I don't disagree with that opinion Roach, just sayin' he tends to get right in the middle of the shit. I was sorta' hoping that wall would burst right when he was next to it, but didn't want to see his cameradude go down with him.

It still boggles that they built a big portion of this city at or below sea level and are spending bazillions trying to Katrina proof those levees. Hullo? I don't care how much you spend, sooner or later mother nature is going to come along and take back what is hers.

On a side note... Listening to all the talking heads on the TV today, from reporters to government officials, I have to say that LA governor Bobby Jindall is one sharp motherfucker. Kinda' incongruous though, hearing that southern drawl coming out of the mouth of a guy who looks like he was born in Bombay. I can certainly see why he was elected. Wouldn't surprise me to one day see him on the national stage.

[Diogenes]

Palin/Jindal '12.

I can see it...

[smackaholic]

jerry is a balsy fukker and a grandstanding bitch. I suspect some day it ill bite him in the arse.

nawlins was more or less a 3rd world shithole before katrina flushed it.

jindall is a sharp fukk, but, his rather ethnic look could might hold him back. WTF is thAt look, btw? Inbred cajun coonass?

[War Wagon]

jindall is a sharp fukk, but, his rather ethnic look could might hold him back. WTF is thAt look, btw? Inbred cajun coonass?

Apu from The Simpsons is the first that comes to mind.

[Diogenes]

Punjabi. His parents were both immigrants from India.

[Bobby42]

Nagin, it's all yours. I'm outta here.

sin

[LTS TRN 2]

Well of course they're holding, it's only a category 1. Certainly the GOP desperately wants SOME reason to avoid holding a convention. Imagine if they had to sit around and actual confront the astonishing list of sheer criminality, perversion and incompetence that has comlpetely defined the behavior and effects of the GOP members--merely in the past eight years.



For example:
ZIOCON/GOP = another name for MAFIA MONEY; Abramoff scandal ties to 9-11 Atta drugrunning!

Abramoff, born in mob capital, Atlantic City, NJ... His father, close to Reagan. --- investigated by three grand juries: Washington, D.C., in Abramoff-Reed Indian Gambling Scandal; by grand jury in Guam over (probabaly not so) separate matter; & indicted on August 11, 2005, by third grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, FL, for bank fraud likely arising out of the overall Abramoff operation if you read this. Abramoff appears to be a likely COMPTROLLER for multiple mafia money launderings (Israeli, Colombian, Siclian, more?) into the neocon/Zionist/GOP election cycle. --- Indictments of Abramoff have significant importance because of connections with leading ziocons/neocons including Bush, DeLay, & others. --- DeLay, ex-Majority Leader of U.S. House (indicted for similar money launding operation, in Texas election fraud) calls Abramoff one of his "closest and dearest friends." Eventually, where did DeLay's money come from, perchance? Abramoff? --- Another level is that Abramoff is Sr.Dir. of Gov't Affairs for GREENBERG TRAURIG law & lobbying firm, so close to corrupt money trail, 9-11 hushmoney, Israel, Brown Brothers Harriman, & strategically placed as both Dem & Repub party financial positions; Greenberg Traurig members are personal lawyers and legal front men for the whole Bush family operations & much more --- WHAT ABRAMOFF SCANDAL IS ABOUT CAN BE SIMPLY STATED AS: Vegas without rules. What politicians are arguing over is the biggest unregulated slush fund in the history of the world. Democrats, run equally by Abramoff/Greenberg Traurig connections, don't want to eliminate it. They just want in on it. AND HEROIN is coaxed to flow straight from Bush regime's heroin nacroregime in Afghanistan INTO THESE ABRAMOFF-ATTA-WALLY HILLIARD-JEB BUSH NETWORKS,

:cry:
GREENBERG TRAURIG's Abramoff, top "Ziocon" GOP Lobbyist, close to DeLay, Bush..
Indicted Abramoff's
Indicted Abramoff's "SunCruz Casinos," false front of many ethnic mafia monies..
...that Mohammad Atta & other false flag drug dealers of 911 repeatedly visited
...that Mohammad Atta & other false flag drug dealers of 911 repeatedly visited
--- Who owns Florida's gambling boats? No one knows: no state or federal oversight. No one licenses operators. No one ensures games aren't rigged. No one ensures boats aren't used to launder money. No one investigates organized crime that seems to run it & use it to money launder (via Abramoff's connections) to buy U.S. elections. This same mafia money likely circles back into DeLay's "separate" money laundering and election fraud indictments in Texas. --- Florida's cruises-to-nowhere represent "the largest unregulated gambling industry in the United States," said Bill Thompson, a professor of gambling at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and nationally recognized expert on the industry. They gross at least $170 million a year. That's just a number they report voluntarily. No one knows the true 'take.' Everyone assumes there's a 'skim.' "A casino is a cash business. You could have money laundering and skimming," Keith Copher, chief of enforcement for Nevada Gaming Control Board. "When you obtain money illegally through drug sales and other methods, you need to find a way to launder it, to make it look like a legal source. Regulation is needed to prevent this." While "Florida authorities" piously oppose gambling, their inaction speaks for itself, and now shows itself to have connections to the "9.11 drugrunner false flagger network" that frequented these SunCruz Casino Bush-connected Abramoff's boats...for what purpose? Another interesting link between 9-11 and Abramoff is the Wally Hillard issue, below.

--- "Boulis was murdered in the exact same way as Don Aronow, Bush's other partner,..."Something is really going down bad here," Tiller stated. "Don Aronow. Gus Boulis. Jim Shore... All tied in to Bush."

--- In 1995 supposed Jewish Zionist Abramoff....worked for the Global Council of Islamic Banks, whose chairman, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, was under investigation for alleged funding of terrorism, including Osama Bin Laden....

--- The breathtaking scope of "Cruisegate" could make it the biggest American political scandal since Iran Contra. Should its tawdry details fully come to light, it might eclipse even the Watergate Scandal.

Already, the dramatis personae includes a familiar name from previous scandals: Barry Seal, called "the ghost haunting the Whitewater investigation" by the Wall Street Journal, who was himself murdered on orders, according to his own lawyer's testimony, of then-Vice President George Bush. 20 years ago Seal helped set in motion, as we'll see shortly, the chain of events leading inexorably towards today's scandal, which we're dubbing "Cruisegate," illustrating the ongoing and even generational nature of what sociologists call "state-sponsored crime."


A SECOND Mob Link In Neocon/GOP Bush-insider Abramoff Scandal

1. Abramoff/Kidan ---> Kidan pays Gambino family organized crime hitmen to 'off' the previous owner of SunCruz Casinos--something Abramoff wanted to buy that "wasn't for sale" Abramoff made himself a VP, made Kidan the President of SunCruz, though only after Jeb Bush's State of Florida pressured previous owner to sell to Abramoff; Abramoff appointed his #2, Kidan, as President, Sun Cruz Casinos). Next, previous owner turns up dead in professional hit. Turns out that Kidan has paid the hitmen.

2. Another mafia link, this time Sicilian mafia: Abramoff/Kidan ---> Kidan/Spadaro who do business together in Dutch Antilles largest hotel ---> Kidan partner Spadro recently arrested and called part of the Sicilian Mafia/weapons trafficking operations; Kidan and Spadaro in the Dutch Anntilles major hotel, run mostly by Spadaro, with Kidan as "chief counsel". Spadaro now arrested in Italy for weapons trafficking.

3. Abramoff/"Sun Cruz Casinos" unregulated gambling offshore in Florida ---> money laundering for organized crime ---> GOP money to organized crime into Republican elections.

4. If this is a Greenberg Traurig operation more widely, then the Democratic Party Financier, Rosen (equally Greenberg Traurig like Abramoff) would likely be a source of the money laundered funds into the Democratic election cycle.

5. Abramoff/Kidan ---> Kidan as President of "Sun Cruz Lines" and Abramoff as VP ---> playing host to Mohammad Atta and company; Atta and crew were frequent visitors on only "SunCruz" lines. Atta and company are the false flagger drugdealer network that went around laying the false flagger trail for the traitorous neocons, concerning 9-11. Atta and crew even used their real names! What cha bet that Abramoff's Sun Cruz Lines was where they loaded up on their drugs (or dropped lots of money there to be money laundered from it--see below, they did), because it's totally unregulated and patrols just off the Florida coast in international waters? Good for a money drop or a drug pick up.

And by the way Bush Senior was responsible for giving the "drug smugging intradiction" contracts in Florida waters to....Aranow and the Jewish Mafia--who in turn saw fit to give the U.S. Customs Service malfunctioning boats intentionally so they would be unlikely to be able to chase after themselves when they were smuggling drugs into Florida. See below.

details are:

-- Abramoff's "gambling criuse lines" [a Sicilian mafia money laundering operation, run by Abramoff's #2, Kidan (the guy who paid the Gambino hitmen)]

-- Direct link to Abramoff having access to Siclilian mafia illegal weapons/drug trade money which Abramoff could pump into GOP campaigns, i.e., the mob buying Republican elections

-- Abramoff's "gambling cruise line" and Mohammad Atta--with Atta's known penchant for running drugs, having multiple passports, going to nude bars, snorting coke, dropping $700-800 a hand on Abramoff's Sun Cruz Casino Lines (to money launder proceeds?) and being a drug dealer. Atta and friends liked to visit Abramoff's "gambling cruise lines", and even did so right before 9-11. They visited Vegas as well. Atta and other false flagger "hijackers" (not on the planes on 9-11, though it's important for the false media story to pretend so)


summary:
-----

the current scandal starring the GOP's top lobbyist [Abramoff]:

Last week's indictment of three men with Mob ties in professional hit/murder of gambling ship magnate Gus Boulis--during Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's take-over of the [his] gambling cruise ship line--revealed deep Mob connections at the highest levels of the Republican Party.

[PAY THE GAMBINOS...] **Kidan, Abramoff's second-in-command at the SunCruz casino line, is reportedly soon to be indicted [as well as the three above] for the murder of Gus Boulis*** on the relatively safe grounds that Abramoff's #2, Kidan, wrote checks totaling a quarter million dollars to the Gambino hit man recently charged with the crime. Based on emails from Kidan to Abramoff days before Kidan's paid professional hit, suspicion is growing that Abramoff may also be involved in what police called the "highly professional hit."

Now ... more Mob ties to the [Abramoff] case, via Kidan. One of the ***principals in the scandal, Adam Kidan, an Abramoff partner and a former Republican "fund-raiser,"*** was co-owner and general counsel of a Caribbean island hotel-casino with Rosario Spadaro. Spadaro was recently arrested and he is called "a member of the Sicilian Mafia" (AP story). Spadaro was recently arrested immediately upon airline flight touchdown in Italy regarding international weapons trafficking.

[DABBLE IN PORN] Kidan's step-father, Sami Shemtov, an Israeli national, has extensive "interests" in pornography business in South Florida.

[AND MONEY LAUNDER FOR THE SICLIAN MAFIA..] News of Kidan's Sicilian Mafia partner in St Maarten, learned while investigating details of Jack Abramoff's involvement with "Sun Cruz Casinos," adds to the unsavory portrait emerging of Republican operatives involved in the various Abramoff scandals. What is known so far [about the cruise line] may be nothing more than a cover story, we suspected, a false front, or 'Potemkin village,' defined as "an impressive facade or display that hides an undesirable fact or state." For example, at the time of the "purchase" of SunCruz Casinos (Boulis never got his money) news accounts of the new owners failed to mention that Kidan was a disbarred attorney, and that his "Dial-a-Mattress" franchise had recently gone bankrupt, all of which might have given rise to speculation about where he was getting the reported $147 million to buy the line [thus, Sicilian mafia funds through Kidan to buy it, and Kidan/Spadaro direct Siclian mafia connection as well in St. Maarten.]. Kidan was described as part of a team of seasoned casino and entertainment executives, as well as "an owner and general counsel to the [Spadaro] St. Maarten Hotel Beach Club and Casino," according to The St. Petersburg Times, and other news accounts.

[Additionally,]...[Ambramoff partner] Adam Kidan's newly-uncovered link to a Sicilian Mafia figure [and Sicilian mafia money, laundered into the Abramoff cruise line, and then into GOP elections] sheds light on the activities of secretive Naples, FL financier Wally Hilliard, owner of 9.11 terror flight school attended by Mohamed Atta.

"Some of the same names in the Abramoff scandal also surface in connection with Mohamed Atta's," we reported, in a June 21, 2005 story...

...

[And on Abramoff's SunCruz line...] It was widely reported that Atta and several other ["official story"] 'hijackers' [who really couldn't fly planes and besides who don't appear on 9-11 airline rosters], these people made a still-unexplained visit onboard one of Abramoff's casino boats less than a week before the 9.11 attack," we reported on June 21 2005. We have learned they may have been aboard as many as three different Abramoff boats.

----



1.

**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit The MadCowMorningNews**
by Daniel Hopsicker


Last week's indictment of three men with Mob ties in the gangland-style murder of gambling ship magnate Gus Boulis--during Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's take-over of the [his] gambling cruise ship line--revealed deep Mob connections at the highest levels of the Republican Party.

Now The MadCowMorningNews has learned exclusively of more Mob ties to the case. One of the ***principals in the scandal, Adam Kidan, an Abramoff partner and a former Republican "fund-raiser,"*** was the co-owner and general counsel of a Caribbean island hotel-casino with Rosario Spadaro, called "a member of the Sicilian Mafia" in an Associated Press story reporting his recent arrest in Italy in a major investigation into international arms trafficking.

"St. Maarten hotel owner arrested, linked to Mafia" read the headline.

"Italian police have arrested St. Maarten's most prominent hotel owner, Rosario Spadaro, accusing him of laundering money for the Sicilian Mafia, Italian police said Thursday," read the AP report in the May 20, 2005 Orlando Sentinel.

"Spadora was arrested May 9 in Rome's Fiumicino airport, as soon as he landed in Italy on a flight from Caracas, Venezuela, the Messina anti-Mafia police said."


Just how stupid do you think I am?

Kidan, Abramoff's second-in-command at the SunCruz casino line, is reportedly soon to be indicted for the murder of Gus Boulis' murder, on the relatively safe grounds that he wrote checks totaling a quarter million dollars for no easily discernible reason to the Gambino hit man recently charged with the crime.

His defense will probably be that he paid the goombah with a check. He will asks the jury, "Do I look stupid to you?"

We think they will almost certainly answer "yes."

And based on emails from Kidan to Abramoff in the days before the murder, suspicion is growing that Abramoff may also be involved in what police called the "highly professional hit."

In e-mails to Abramoff, Kidan made a cryptic reference to an ally who had sent "protection" to Kidan in Florida. Abramoff would have known that such an individual brought his own bat with him when he traveled.

"My friend in NY is acting out of concern for my safety," Kidan wrote to Abramoff. "I was the victim of family violence before. Let's use that in our favor (my mother wouldn't mind) to show how we can't tolerate violence and the like of criminals."

Abramoff's reply, even though he knows they are in default on their agreement to pay Boulis, is: "I agree with this completely. Gus needs to move on out of the company."

Kidan's reference to his mother refers to her [his mother's] well-publicized murder by Mafia goons from the Bonanno family, including Madonna's former boyfriend Chris Paciello.

That's been reported. What hasn't is that Kidan's step-father, Sami Shemtov, an Israeli national, has extensive "interests" in pornography business in South Florida. The Bonanno crew thought he was ripe for a take-down.


A Potemkin village, A wizard behind the curtain

News of Kidan's Sicilian Mafia partner in St Maarten, learned while investigating details of Jack Abramoff's involvement with Sun Cruz Casinos, adds to the unsavory portrait emerging of Republican operatives involved in the various Abramoff scandals.

What is known so far may be nothing more than a cover story, we suspected, a false front, or 'Potemkin village,' defined as "an impressive facade or display that hides an undesirable fact or state."

For example, at the time of the "purchase" of SunCruz Casinos (Boulis never got his money) news accounts of the news owners failed to mention that Kidan was a disbarred attorney, and that his "Dial-a-Mattress" franchise had recently gone bankrupt, all of which might have given rise to speculation about where he was getting the reported $147 million to buy the line.

Kidan was described as part of a team of seasoned casino and entertainment executives, as well as "an owner and general counsel to the St. Maarten Hotel Beach Club and Casino," according to The St. Petersburg Times, and other news accounts.

Adam Kidan's newly-uncovered link to a Sicilian Mafia figure sheds light on the activities of secretive Naples, FL financier Wally Hilliard, owner of 9.11 terror flight school attended by Mohamed Atta.

"Some of the same names in the Abramoff scandal also surface in connection with Mohamed Atta's," we reported, in a June 21, 2005 story headlined "THE SECRET WORLD OF 9.11."

Apparently we didn't know the half of it...


Waiting for Fidel to slip on the big banana peel

From a story in the Miami Herald on May 17, 1999 headlined "MAFIA HAS EYES ON CUBA:"

Sicilian mobsters are planning to set up shop in Cuba once President Fidel Castro is gone from the scene, GQ magazine reports in its May issue.

Mafia families want to use hotel, casino and public works projects to launder money and profiteer, GQ said in an article headlined Big Trouble in Havana, quoting U.S. and Italian law-enforcement officials.

GQ names St. Martin, in the Dutch Antilles, as a key organized-crime staging area for Cuba, and Rosario Spadaro, an Italian businessman with two hotels and two casinos there, as a financier with Mafia ties who is likely to be a key figure in future organized-crime ventures in Cuba.



At the same time the Miami Herald says the Sicilian Mafia was seeking to re-enter Cuba, Wally Hilliard was also engaged in an "opening to Cuba."

As we've reported before, photographs of Hilliard from his trips to Havana shows him strapping a Rolex with the must-have diamond beveled-face onto the presumably grateful wrist of one of Fidel Castro's top aides, Guillermo Garcia Frias, known in Cuba as "the Commandante of the Revolution."

Aviation executives and former employees of Hilliard's, like his former Director of Operations Bill Bersch, had told us of their puzzlement at Wally's Cuban adventure.

"I used to look at Wally and Rudi and wonder what made them think they could start an airline," he told us. "I mean, I was on the executive team, trying to start an airline, and from August 2000 to the present we had all of four business meetings. Even when you could get a meeting scheduled, somebody would tell you that it had been canceled... because Wally is in Havana."


Have a cigar. We're waiting for Don Corleone to start

Hilliard had been looking to cut a deal with Castro, said Rob Tiller, who provided the photograph, to buy a 10,000 acre cattle ranch on the island for the Mormon Church in Utah, reportedly in anticipation of the resumption of normal diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.

The explanation never made sense. Now, we are led to wonder: Were Hilliard's visits to Havana part of Sicilian Mafia efforts to regain a foothold in Cuba?

The man who owned the Florida flight school which so many suspected terrorists called home remains seemingly immune to official questioning.

It was widely reported that Atta and several other hijackers made a still-unexplained visit onboard one of Abramoff's casino boats less than a week before the 9.11 attack," we reported on June 21 2005.

We have learned they may have been aboard three.

"Two or three men linked to the hijackings may have been customers on the SunCruz ship that is based at John's Pass," the St. Petersburg Times reported September 27, 2001.

"SunCruz Casinos has turned over security videotapes and documents to FBI investigators. The cruise line also is giving the FBI a videotape from a Port Canaveral ship of a former customer that a casino manager thinks resembles one of the terrorists."

Two days later the paper reported, "The Pasco County Sheriff's Office has notified the FBI that a local man thinks he might have seen two of the terrorist hijackers last month on a 'Paradise of Port Richey' gambling boat, a sheriff's spokesman said. Stephen Babus, 46, of New Port Richey reported to deputies that he saw two Middle Eastern men betting $700 to $800 a hand on roulette aboard the Paradise ship, which docks in Port Richey."

In their last word on the matter, the paper reported that the FBI was 'investigating." We don't imagine anyone was holding their breath waiting.

It's an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody some good, and the current scandal starring the GOP's top lobbyist may yet prove a boon to the party's efforts to display a common touch.

Abramoff, for example, will someday be able to talk about current trends in license plate manufacture, and proudly display his prison 'tats' on Meet the Press.

We all need something to look forward to.

[Diogenes]

Check your meds, Nicky.






Hey, how you like my sig?

[LTS TRN 2]

How do you like brood mare right about now? Casino Greeter MAD!

(Stop using Voltaire and Yeats quotes, you don't speak French and you're not irish)

btw, care to dispute the extent of the corruption detailed above? 'Course not.

[Diogenes]

(Stop using Voltaire and Yeats quotes, you don't speak French and you're not irish)

I'll get right on that.

Did you get your shrink to adjust your meds yet?

[PL]

you could almost hear the dissapointment in the TV achors voices as they could only report that nothing happened.

[LTS TRN 2]

"Nothing happened"? You mean McBush hasn't dropped the bitch yet? :wink:

[Diogenes]

Good luck and take care of yourself.

[War Wagon]

We don't have the population of New Orleans so it probably hasn't made the news, but that storm hit us hard in Baton Rouge, supposedly the worst storm ever here. I can believe it, everything is closed, the place looks like a war zone now, so much destruction and debris everywhere, huge trees snapped like toothpicks, trees on top of houses all in my neighborhood. The entire city is without electricity, they're saying it will be 2 to 3 weeks before the electricity is back. Phone lines are out, cell phones working only at times, almost out of ice and batteries. Curfew at night, it is completely dark then, no lights except for candles and camping laterns, I'll be on my porch with wine and a shotgun. Hope y'all are having a nice evening, we're going to make the best of it.

That's rough JSC, but how is it that you're able to get on AlGores intrawebs?

Sorry to hear about Baton Rouge in that shape. When I drove thru the shithole that was New Orleans in 2006, I didn't stop for anything (even though I had to piss, needed gas, and desperately wanted another cup of coffee) and hauled ass up I-10 for BR as fast as possible. Pretty nice town. Beautiful old architecture. Stopped at a local casino and won about a hundy on some slot machine, so I have fond memories.

Hope you make a speedy recovery. 2-3 weeks w/o electricity is brutal, especially in that humidity right next to the Mississippi river.

[smackaholic]

Look on the bright side JSC.

You're not AP.