Is she related to Dumbo?

By ETHAN SMITH And JOHN R. EMSHWILLER WSJ May 27, 2010

Federal authorities alleged Wednesday that a Walt Disney Co. executive assistant and her boyfriend engaged in a ham-handed plot to sell Wall Street traders inside information, first offered in a chirpy missive sent to dozens of investment companies.

"Hi, I have access to Disney's (DIS) quarterly earnings report before its release on 05/03/10," the March 5 letter began. "I am willing to share this information for a fee that we can determine later."
The alleged plan went awry. Instead of taking the bait, "multiple hedge funds reported the illicit scheme," the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a press release.

More

• Document: SEC Complaint
• Deal Journal: She Did It for the Shoes

In a pair of complaints filed Wednesday, federal authorities said the letter and subsequent emails were sent by Yonni Sebbag, whose girlfriend Bonnie Hoxie was an assistant to Disney's head of corporate communications.

Disney said in a statement Wednesday that it "has been fully cooperating with this investigation." Ms. Hoxie was at work as recently as Tuesday, according to people at the company.
A federal judge ordered Mr. Sebbag held as a potential flight risk and released Ms. Hoxie on a $50,000 bond Wednesday. Neither responded to the charges in a bail hearing Wednesday.

The March 5 form letter was sent to 33 investment companies, according to a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan federal court charging the two with conspiracy and wire fraud. Undercover agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation began corresponding with Mr. Sebbag, who used the pseudonym "Jonathan Cyrus" in the email exchanges, according to the complaint.


As the earnings release approached, Mr. Sebbag, 29 years old, and Ms. Hoxie, 33, engaged in an awkward exchange of their own as they waited with growing frustration for the quarterly earnings data to materialize, according to transcripts in both complaints. The exchange at points took on the tone of any couple bickering over mundane issues like bill paying.

"Get things moving with all the powers you have," Mr. Sebbag urged his girlfriend at one point.
"Thanks for the flattery," Ms. Hoxie replied. "I wish you could come to work every day with me."
On the day of the earnings release, Ms. Hoxie sent Mr. Sebbag an email stating "here is the bag that you are going to get for me," the SEC said in a companion civil complaint filed in New York federal court. It said the email included a link to "a picture of an expensive Stella McCartney designer handbag available for $700 at Neiman Marcus."

It's never Obama's fault!

Published May 26, 2010 | FOXNews.com

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been keeping pesky reporters at bay as the Obama administration faces mounting pressure over controversies ranging from the BP oil spill to the allegation that the White House offered a congressman a job to drop out of a race against a key ally. 

As some media outlets and pundits typically allied with the Obama administration seem to take a tougher tone toward the White House, Gibbs is telegraphing the message that on certain issues, they shouldn't ask and on others, he won't tell. 

The tension may be reaching new heights. CBS correspondent Chip Reid revealed on air Friday that White House officials called reporters into the West Wing on Friday to scold them for asking too many questions about the Gulf of Mexico spill. One report identified Gibbs as the one doing the scolding. 

The dressing-down came after the press secretary faced a barrage of questions about why the administration wasn't doing more to ensure the leak is plugged and mitigate the environmental damage to the coastline. The White House for weeks has battled the narrative that it has not responded forcefully enough to the spill, entrusting too much to the expertise of BP, and at Friday's briefing Gibbs repeatedly swiped at reporters who pressed that button. 

The press secretary also shut down questions a day earlier about Rep. Joe Sestak's claim that the Obama administration offered him a job in exchange for dropping out of the Senate Democratic primary race against Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. Sestak, who did not take the alleged offer, won that race last week but has not been willing to elaborate on his allegation in media interviews. 

Gibbs and other officials haven't shed any light on the subject either. 

"I don't have anything to add to what I said in March," Gibbs said Thursday when the topic was broached. 

When it was pointed out that Gibbs did not provide any substantive information in March - other than to say the issue was "not problematic" - Gibbs again said he didn't "have anything to add."

The press secretary repeated that line five more times before cutting off reporters.

Another Korean War Brewing?

By EVAN RAMSTAD

• WSJ MAY 25, 2010, 5:15 P.M. ET

 

SEOUL—North Korea said it will "totally freeze" its relations with South Korea and pull out of a nonaggression pact between the two countries, heightening tensions and widening the rift between the Koreas to its greatest point in two decades.

In its announcement, made late Tuesday local time, the North pulled further back from inter-Korean cooperation than the South had a day earlier when it penalized Pyongyang for allegedly torpedoing and sinking a South Korean warship.

North Korea pulls further back from inter-Korean cooperation than South Korea had a day earlier when it penalized Pyongyang for allegedly torpedoing and sinking a South Korean warship. WSJ's John Bussey joins the News Hub to discuss the U.S. endgame for North Korea.

The statement said the North "formally declares that from now on it will put into force the resolute measures to totally freeze the inter-Korean relations, totally abrogate the agreement on nonaggression between the north and the south and completely halt the inter-Korean cooperation."

The two Koreas have forged several nonaggression pacts since the 1970s; the North's statement didn't specify which agreement it meant.

The decision appears to break a pattern that has characterized North Korea's interaction with the outside world for about 20 years, in which Pyongyang creates a crisis, then seeks monetary and security concessions for ending it. It essentially sets inter-Korean relations back to where they were in the early 1990s.

Like we didn't already know!

By Kent Garber

Posted May 25, 2010

 

"Cozy relationship" is one of those phrases Washington loves. During the financial crisis, there were allegations of cozy relationships between bankers and the government regulators who were supposed to be policing them in the public interest. It's a similar story with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "For too long, for a decade or more," President Obama said recently, "there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill."

Obama was referring specifically to the Minerals Management Service, which is part of the Interior Department. It has long been a problem child. In 2008, an inspector general's report found that MMS workers weren't just cozy with the industry but were, in fact, holding sex and drug parties with industry representatives. And that was just the most visible problem for an agency with the conflicting roles of oil-revenue producer and safety enforcer.

It was no shock, then, that Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar last week announced that he wants to split the agency into three parts: one to award drilling permits, one to collect the royalties that energy companies pay to the government (an average of $13 billion a year), and one to carry out safety inspections and enforce environmental rules, unhindered by real or imagined revenue considerations. Nor was it a shock today when Interior's current inspector general, Mary Kendall, released her own scathing report on MMS, noting that at least through 2008 the agency had fostered "a culture where the acceptance of gifts from oil and gas companies were widespread."

Al Qaeda running out of funds?

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: May 25, 2010

BAGHDAD — A large group of gunmen, armed with rifles, grenades and bombs, staged an audacious midday robbery of a strip of jewelry stores within sight of police and army checkpoints in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, according to officials and a witness.

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.

Go to the Blog »

Even as a search for the robbers continued, with the entire neighborhood locked down, Iraqi commanders blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq, saying its fighters were desperate to replenish their coffers after a wave of arrests and the killing of the group’s leaders
.
The robbery occurred on the main commercial thoroughfare in the Baya neighborhood — Street No. 20 — just before noon, prompting a firefight with Iraqi police officers and soldiers that the gunmen evidently won. At least four police officers were wounded, one gravely.

Jamaica's Most Wanted!

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Thousands of police and soldiers stormed the Jamaican ghettos where reggae was born Tuesday in search of a reputed drug kingpin wanted by the United States, intensifying a third day of street battles that have killed at least 30 people.

The masked gunmen fighting for underworld boss Christopher "Dudus" Coke say he provides services and protection — all funded by a criminal empire that seemed untouchable until the U.S. demanded his extradition.

Coke has built a loyal following in Tivoli Gardens, the poor West Kingston slum that is his stronghold. U.S. authorities say he has been trafficking cocaine to the streets of New York City since the mid-1990s, allegedly hiring island women to hide the drugs on themselves on flights to the United States.

Called "president" and "shortman" by his supporters, Coke does not wear flashy clothes or hold court at Kingston nightclubs like other powerful gang bosses. The few published photographs of the 5-foot-4-inch Jamaican the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the world's most dangerous drug lords show an unassuming man with a pot belly.

Watch out Mexico, Here we come!

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama will deploy up to 1,200 more National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico, an administration official said Tuesday.

In addition, Obama will request $500 million to supplement current spending for enhanced border protection and law enforcement activities, the official said.

The National Guard troops will help with drug enforcement efforts and intelligence efforts until Customs and Border Protection can recruit and train additional officers and agents to serve on the border, the official said.
The news followed Obama's lunch meeting with Senate Republicans, where Sen. John McCain of Arizona raised the issue of increased border security. McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, as well as Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, have called for Obama to send more troops to the border region.

Only I can give to my buddies!

President Obama wants more control over the country's budget, and plans to ask Congress for it this week.
Obama will be requesting an alternative to the line-item veto known as rescission, which would give him -- and future presidents -- the power to submit a package of changes to spending bills that Congress would be required to vote on, up or down.
The Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act of 2010 would be the latest attempt by a president for more spending control since the line item veto was struck down as unconstitutional in 1998. Since then, presidents have urged Congress to give them what most governors have.
But members of Congress in both parties are reticent to give away what they see as one of their most prized responsibilities -- control over the spending. That makes the Obama proposal a tough climb on Capitol Hill.
The president's budget director, Peter Orszag, will explain the proposal in a conference call Monday morning, and his deputy will head up to Capitol Hill tomorrow.

By by Michael D. Shear  |  May 24, 2010; 10:29 AM ET

Great Wall of China

By B. J. Lee | Newsweek Web Exclusive

May 21, 2010

 

For South Koreans, it's official: North Koreans sank their warship Cheonan on March 26, killing 46 Southern sailors onboard. The evidence leaves little doubt. And with this clarity comes the realization that, after 10 years of engagement and aid, North Korea remains a dangerously irrational and belligerent country, willing to gamble that it can disrupt peace on the Korean peninsula at no cost. Problem is, there's nothing South Koreans can do about it—even they've faced the facts—because China is standing in the way.

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What South Korea wants is to ostracize the North, elicit a reprimand from the United Nations, and possibly even enact international sanctions. (They have not talked openly about military retribution.) But while China is the South's biggest trading partner, largest investment destination, and a close ally, its government is hearing none of it. In fact, China will always favor the North and turn a blind eye to its antics. After all, they are socialist allies who fought alongside each other during the Korean War.
The willingness to indulge the North was evident right away. First, Beijing refused to criticize Pyongyang after the attack, and now authorities continue to bite their tongues even after the joint probe produced seemingly incontrovertible evidence linking the Stalinist regime with the sinking. The investigation recovered parts of a torpedo at the sinking site that had North Korean writing. Its structure was identical to a blueprint shown on a brochure the North put out to export its torpedoes. Immediately after the announcement, the U.S. and Japan issued sharp criticism of the North, but China called on all parties to "stay calm and exercise restraint."
Beijing also flummoxed Seoul early this month with its warm reception of Kim Jong Il, during the dictator's visit to China just five weeks after the Cheonan sinking, when all of South Korea was mourning the deaths. Furious, the South Korean government summoned China's ambassador to a minister's office and chewed him out. Southern authorities were particularly upset that the Chinese didn't even bother to tell President Lee Myung-bak of Kim's upcoming visit when the South Korean leader visited China three days before his northern counterpart.

Who would have guessed?

By Jan Larimer

Posted May 21, 2010

Jan Larimer is the co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

In the 222 years since our Constitution was ratified, the trajectory of American ingenuity has always been on the rise. It was Americans who through their sweat and toil drove innovation in agriculture and powered the industrial revolution. It was Americans who through their entrepreneurial spirit sparked the technological revolution that gave rise to the internet and the digital era.

Nancy Pelosi made it clear last week that she would bring all of that to an end. Does she think America is not a place for men and women to rise through the virtue of hard work? In Nancy Pelosi's America, work is not much more than an unnecessary distraction. In her view of the American experiment, the primary function of government is to provide welfare benefits—not to serve as a protector of rights endowed by our Creator.
[See which industries donated the most to Pelosi.]
Nancy Pelosi's world view became clear last week as she spoke at an Asian American and Pacific Islander summit about the recently enacted health care legislation. While speaking to the group, she said: "We see (the health care bill) as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care. You won't have to be job locked."
One wonders if Pelosi understands the nature of work and the history of America at all. Generations of Americans before us did not grow our nation into a superpower by ignoring their talents, their skills and their passions so that they could toil away in jobs in which they were locked. The great leaps forward that built America came about precisely because inspired Americans pursued their dreams within a system that rewarded innovation. Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb because he felt locked in his job. He found his passion, focused his talent and applied his skills toward work that would reward him.
The same could be said of the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, or Henry Ford. In America, people have the freedom to apply their labor toward work that is personally as well as financially rewarding. That is a powerful combination.

We need drones!

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Unbowed by a raft of boycotts over her immigration policy, Arizona Gov. Janice Brewer has requested helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles from the White House to patrol the border region with Mexico.
Brewer, in a letter to President Obama, asked that the National Guard reallocate reconnaissance helicopters and robotic surveillance craft to the "border states" from other parts of the country.

The governor specifically asked for OH-58 Kiowa helicopters, used by the military for reconnaissance, noting that Arizona currently has only four of them "available for border missions."
"These helicopters are extremely valuable assets in supporting law enforcement efforts on the ground," she wrote. "The number available, though, is inadequate to provide the kind of support needed on the Arizona border."
The governor said that a fleet of eight to 10 Kiowa helicopters "would enable us to double our border coverage to 2,000 hours per year. To be effective, these additional aircraft must be equipped for day and night operations."
Her letter included a map showing the state-by-state allocation of Kiowa helicopters, as well as newer Lakota helicopters.
The governor also requested "wider deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) along our nation's southern border." UAVs are flying, remote-controlled robot drones that are widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are several different military models that fall under that description, including the Hunter, Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk, but the governor didn't request a particular type.
"I am aware of how effective these assets have become in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and it seems UAV operations would be ideal for border security and counter-drug missions," said the governor.

Update on Jamica

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Masked men defending a reputed drug lord sought by the United States torched a police station and traded gunfire with security forces in a patchwork of barricaded slums in Jamaica's capital Sunday.
The government declared a state of emergency as sporadic gunshots rang out in gritty West Kingston, stronghold of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, a Jamaican "don" charged in the U.S. with drug and arms trafficking. His defiant supporters turned his Tivoli Gardens neighborhood and other areas into a virtual fortress with trashed cars and barbed wire.
Four police stations came under heavy fire from gangsters roaming the streets with high-powered guns. In barricaded Hannah Town, close to Tivoli Gardens, black smoke spiraled into the sky from one that was set aflame by molotov cocktails.
Officers fled the burning station in impoverished West Kingston, where a 2001 standoff between gunmen and security forces killed 25 civilians as well as a soldier and a constable.
Authorities said two security officers had been wounded by Sunday night.

Police said the attacks were unprovoked. It called for all "decent and law-abiding citizens" in the troubled areas to immediately evacuate their homes and said security forces would ferry them out safely.
Police Commissioner Owen Ellington said "scores of criminals" from gangs across the Caribbean island had traveled to West Kingston to join the fight. "It is now clear that criminal elements are determined to launch coordinated attacks on the security forces," he said.

For you Larry...

This is what Larry wrote about my bio...

From Thurstonblog, May 24, 2010 @ 12:08 AM

First a math lesson for the wannabe CPA - you're 40 and you spent 4 years in the military, and 10 years working at your manufacturing job. That leaves 26. So who did you mooch off from 18 to 26? Mommy and Daddy? I worked 34 hours a week while I attended college, as did 22 other guys that worked along side me. Some were Viet Nam vets, but they had families to raise so they worked while the GI bill paid their tuition.

You're getting a college education because FDR signed a bill. You bitch about the Stimulus Bill, but basically, without government funding, you'd be up the creek without a paddle.

The Conservatives reward companies that outsource jobs overseas (like what happened to you).

You are one more in a collection of ass-backwards people that vote against your own best interest. Luckily, you can be a 40 year old schoolboy. The rest of us work and pay taxes so that you can have GI benefits.


There's Lesson #1. They'll get tougher as it goes along. Since you like to start shit, let's see how you handle this.
Posted by Larry 



From 18 to 21, I lived with my mom and worked as a busboy. When I was 21, I joined the Navy and got an honorable discharge at the age of 25. At the age of 26, I found a job working in a manufacturing plant. I got married at 28 and had a beautiful daughter, too. I lost my job at the age of 36. I cashed out my 401K and have been living off of it. My wife has a good paying job. I realized at the age of 37 that most manufacturing jobs in this area are gone. At the age of 38, I went back to college because nowadays, you need a degree to get a job. I will be getting my ATA in Accounting next year. Oh, I almost forgot, I can not collect on the GI Bill because it expires after ten years. I would have been 35 then. I am paying for college myself though my 401K money.

And thanks for reading olympiabloggers, Larry!

P.S. This was the first and only time I will give you, your five minutes of fame on my site. Your name will not be mentioned by me again.

Taxing us to death!

New York (CNNMoney.com) - Congressional budget scorekeepers said that a grab-bag bill of spending and tax measures to be taken up this week would increase federal deficits by $134 billion over a decade.

The bill, which is likely to become a flash point in the debate over the federal debt, would raise $40 billion worth in additional revenue, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

But that's not enough to fully offset the $174 billion in additional federal outlays that would occur as a result under the bill. CBO released its cost estimate late Friday.

So they are going to spend 134 Billion to make 40 Billion? His financial adviser should be fired!

Political Revolution?

By Rick Newman

Posted: May 19, 2010

If you think this is a political revolution, just wait a couple of years.

Tea Partiers and status-quo destroyers are ecstatic at the spectacle of Washington bums—sorry, incumbents—being thrown from the parapets they've held for decades. Party swapper Arlen Specter will be heading home after 30 years in the Senate, bounced in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary by a relative newcomer, Joe Sestak. Republican stalwart Bob Bennett of Utah is departing from the Senate too, a victim of the insider status that used to count as an asset. In the Kentucky primary, Republican voters stiffed their party's anointed candidate and instead elected bomb thrower Rand Paul. "I have a message from the Tea Party," Paul roared. "We've come to take our government back."

Voter outrage in 2012 or 2014 could make the quarrels of 2010 seem like a Victorian debating society. It's a matter of simple math. Within the next few years, government leaders will be forced to make some of the most painful decisions in decades. The U.S. government now spends something like $1 trillion more per year than it takes in, borrowing the difference. With the national debt approaching dangerous proportions, this must end, or else the mighty United States will end up hamstrung like Greece, begging its creditors for forbearance. And there's no way to spare middle-class voters the pain this is going to cause.

Is this the heart of political correctness?

By Julian Sanchez | Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 21, 2010

Paul took pains to stress his personal revulsion for racism and his support for a ban on institutional, government-supported segregation. But in a scene from a campaign adviser's nightmare, he queasily stuck to the view that due respect for the rights of property—whether that property is a home or a business—means letting bigoted owners exclude whom they please. He would soon tell conservative talker Laura Ingraham what he conspicuously avoided saying during that long, uncomfortable Maddow interview: that he would in fact have voted for the '64 Civil Rights Act, and had no wish to change it now.

Changes in school textbooks...

by The Associated Press
May 22, 2010

Texas schoolchildren will be required to learn that the words "separation of church and state" aren't in the Constitution and evaluate whether the United Nations undermines U.S. sovereignty under new social studies curriculum.

In final votes late Friday, conservatives on the State Board of Education strengthened requirements on teaching the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers and required that the U.S. government be referred to as a "constitutional republic" rather than "democratic."

Capitalism or Socialism...

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: May 22, 2010


Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism.

Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union.

But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.

With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.

Do we really want to follow Europe's lead?

By Arthur C. Brooks
Sunday, May 23, 2010

This is not the culture war of the 1990s. It is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion. Those old battles have been eclipsed by a new struggle between two competing visions of the country's future. In one, America will continue to be an exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise -- limited government, a reliance on entrepreneurship and rewards determined by market forces. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income redistribution. These visions are not reconcilable. We must choose.

t is not at all clear which side will prevail. The forces of big government are entrenched and enjoy the full arsenal of the administration's money and influence. Our leaders in Washington, aided by the unprecedented economic crisis of recent years and the panic it induced, have seized the moment to introduce breathtaking expansions of state power in huge swaths of the economy, from the health-care takeover to the financial regulatory bill that the Senate approved Thursday. If these forces continue to prevail, America will cease to be a free enterprise nation.

Travel Warning to Jamica

CNN) -- The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Jamaica on Friday, citing unconfirmed reports of criminal gang members amassing in Kingston and the mobilization of Jamaican defense forces.

"American citizens should consider the risks associated with travel to and within the greater Kingston metropolitan area," the alert said. "U.S. citizens in Jamaica are advised to monitor local news reports and consider the level of security present when venturing outside their residence or hotel."