Eideard

Showing off jewelry from fraudulent purchases – Facebook

In what Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart described as a “sophisticated identity-theft ring,” a janitor stole data from as many as 250 patient files at a Northwestern University physicians’ group and, with the help of her two sisters and friends, used the personal information to charge more than $300,000 in jewelry, furniture, appliances and electronics. They sold the goods to friends and relatives, pocketing the profits.

Seven suspects have been arrested, while three others, including janitor Tijuana Leonard, are wanted on felony warrants, according to the sheriff’s office…

While working the night shift for Millard Cleaning Service, Leonard, 33, of Chicago, stole personal information from patient files in the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation’s offices and passed it along to others, Dart said.

In some cases they would use the personal information to open credit accounts at retailers either online or in the store, Dart said. In other cases they added their names to victims’ accounts. They then often went on an immediate shopping spree — sometimes charging in excess of $5,000 at a time, according to the sheriff.

Dart was critical that the stores weren’t more suspicious when the ring members opened credit accounts and then quickly bought as many as four plasma TVs at a time…

Do you think?

Investigators began noticing that many the victims saw doctors on floors 19-21 of the medical facility and narrowed the search down to Leonard, the janitor assigned to those floors…

The Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation has set up a hot line for patients to call.

Well, the Medical group is really on top of things, aren’t they?

About the only item I see on a more regular basis – selling into stupid fads based more on hype than substance – is “No Fat Half-and-half”.

How the frack can they call these things “Saltines” if there’s no salt on them?

David Frum is a Republican, a former speechwriter for George Bush best known for crafting the phrase “axis of evil.” But he thinks for himself, and he doesn’t always like what he sees on the Republican side of the aisle.

When he disagrees with Republicans, he criticizes them. On his blog last Sunday, he issued a harsh critique of the GOP’s strategy of refusing to negotiate on the health care bill:

“Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. . .A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves…

“Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

“Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views?…Too late now. They are all the law.”

For that, apparently, he has just been kicked out of his job at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

From the WaPo:

“Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday…

“Frum made clear, in a letter to AEI President Arthur C. Brooks, that his departure after seven years as a resident fellow at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. “I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute,” he wrote, “and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.”

“If conservatives can’t tolerate dissent, they’re likely to be wandering in the political wilderness for a long time.”

I’ll second that emotion.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Times and the Sunday Times are to start charging for content online in June. Users will be charged £1 for a day’s access and £2 for a week’s subscription for access to both papers’ websites.

The News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, implied in a statement that its other titles, the Sun and the News of the World, would follow…

The Times and the Sunday Times are the first UK papers to fully charge for digital content. While a daily payment will give users access to both sites, the weekly subscription will also include an e-paper and new applications. Access to the digital services will be included in the seven-day subscriptions of print customers to the Times and the Sunday Times…

In August 2009, Rupert Murdoch announced that he would introduce charges for all his newspapers, saying that News Corp wanted to prevent readers moving to free sites by making its content better and differentiated from other publishers.

He obviously feels he can milk a useful amount of money from online readers who prefer his flavor of conservative balderdash over more traditional flavors. Maybe Flash and sports is enough?

Har.

Jewish groups in Montreal are denouncing a curiosity shop where a bar of soap allegedly made from Holocaust victims’ fat is for sale.

The beige bar of soap, in a store on Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal, is inscribed with a swastika and displayed in a glass case with a card that says “Poland 1940.”

The store owner – who is Jewish – claims the soap was “made out of people … the fat of people,” but he wouldn’t grant an interview about his stock, explaining he thought it was important to display and sell such items to remember the Holocaust.

Fake or real, the soap is outrageous, and “this individual, and others like him, are not preserving history in any way,” said Alice Herscovitch, director of Montreal’s Holocaust Centre. “The sale of objects which glorify Nazism and hatred, to me, do nothing. They certainly don’t help us remember…”

Most Jewish historians and Holocaust experts say stories about mass-produced soap using human remains are untrue, even though there is evidence Nazis experimented with saponification during the Second World War in European concentration camps.

The purchase or sale of items with swastikas is not illegal under Canadian law, but selling soap made with human remains is, explained B’nai Brith Canada’s chief legal counsel, Anita Bromberg.

And claiming it is – if it isn’t – is also illegal because it is fraud, she added.

I can’t describe in a few words the disgust and contempt I feel for a creep like this. Whatever the rationale overlaid to aid defenders of this slimy business – feeding a morbid interest in the era of Naziism is despicable.

Italian-built Falaj2 Stealth patrol boats on order for Emirates Navy

The United Arab Emirates navy is thought to have opened fire on a small patrol vessel from Saudi Arabia after a dispute over water boundaries. According to one report, two Saudi sailors were injured in the alleged bombardment.

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week.

The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits…

The seabed is rich with oil deposits, while the Dolphin pipeline project to carry natural gas direct from Qatar to Abu Dhabi has provoked irritation in the Saudi authorities. Nevertheless, direct conflict between the two countries’ armed forces is highly unusual.

The Gulf is one of the most heavily armed regions in the world. The Saudi government has been building up its army and air force for years in response to what it sees as a regional threat from Iran…

But now the UAE, despite its small size, is the fourth largest purchaser of weaponry on the international market in the world.

Western governments are exasperated that the two countries are unable to co-operate because of a series of long-running border disputes, largely influenced by oil reserves…

Is there anything to do with oil profits and the greedy bastards controlling most of it – that doesn’t provoke militarism and war?

Scott Brown sent out a fantastical email to his supporters…claiming that “the Massachusetts political machine,” a homogeneous entity, is recruiting Rachel Maddow to run against him.

According to The Daily Beast, Brown’s “evidence appears to rest on a message sent out by Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh on Twitter the same day a Facebook page supporting a Maddow bid went live. ‘Some are talking about you running vs. Scott Brown in ‘12,’ Walsh tweeted, and the Boston blog Universal Hub suggested the message could have been meant for Maddow.”

It was this Tweet that engendered Brown’s ill-timed money-grubbing phantasmagoria. “Some like Rachel Maddow. I’m sure she’s a nice person—I just don’t think America can afford her liberal politics,” he wrote in the offending email.

Except, of course, Rachel Maddow has no plans to replace Scott Brown as replacement Ted Kennedy.

The Scott Brown fundraising letter is at the bottom of this article.

I admit I can’t wait to see how much money Brown’s gullible supporters kick-in for a non-campaign.

They leave the bridge open for boats to pass through. Har,

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Mexican drug gangs have expanded their activities in the US with heroin production doubling in 2008, the US justice department says in a report. Despite US funding for the war on drugs, trade in marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine also grew, the National Drug Threat Assessment said.

The report found that Mexican groups were active in every region of the US.

Gangs were moving an estimated $40 billion in cash back into Mexico across the border each year, it added.

Mexico has long been the main conduit for illicit drugs smuggled into the US but this report suggests that the efforts to halt the flow on both sides of the border have had only a limited impact.

In 2007 the US pledged $1.4 billion over three years to fight the drugs cartels but the following year heroin production in Mexico rose from 17 to 38 metric tonnes. This, the report says, led to lower heroin prices and more overdose deaths in the US…

The assessment says that Mexican drug suppliers have increased their co-operation with American street and prison gangs to expand their distribution networks.

Decriminalizing drugs – even hard drugs – permits regulation of everything from purity to price, diminishes overdoses and related crime.

Way too sensible – even for reactionaries confused by new tax revenue sources.

National Lottery operator Camelot has been sold to a Canadian teachers’ pension fund for £389m.

The company, currently owned by a consortium that includes Cadbury, has been running the UK’s National Lottery since it began in 1994. The sale will be looked at by the regulator, the National Lottery Commission. One of the factors in its decision will be whether or not the national interest will be served by the sale.

Camelot’s proposed buyer, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan – known simply as Teachers’ – runs the pension fund for more than a quarter of a million Canadian teachers.

It already has a wide range of investments in the UK, including Birmingham and Bristol airports and a 27% stake in Northumbrian Water.

The National Lottery Commission’s chief executive, Mark Harris, said: “We will scrutinise the proposal to ensure that the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is fit and proper to take over the running of the National Lottery and that the commitments we secured for the National Lottery, players and good causes during the licence competition are safeguarded.”

Could have been worse. What if they bought Portsmouth FC?