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Texas ranch owner recalls Antonin Scalia's last hours

Antonin Scalia
© Associated Press
A first-time guest to the Cibolo Creek Ranch, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was animated and engaged during dinner Friday night, as one of three dozen invitees to an event that had nothing to do with law or politics, according to the ranch owner.

Just hours later, he would be found dead of apparent natural causes, which media outlets were reporting Sunday was a heart attack. "He was seated near me and I had a chance to observe him. He was very entertaining. But about 9 p.m. he said, 'it's been a long day and a long week, I want to get some sleep," recalled Houston businessman John Poindexter, who owns the 30,000-acre luxury ranch.

When Poindexter tried to awaken Scalia about 8:30 the next morning, the judge's door was locked and he did not answer. Three hours later, Poindexter returned after an outing, with a friend of Scalia who had come from Washington with him.

"We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled," said Poindexter. "He was lying very restfully. It looked like he had not quite awakened from a nap," he said. Scalia, 79, did not have a pulse and his body was cold, and after consulting with a doctor at a hospital in Alpine, Poindexter concluded resuscitation would have been futile.

He then contacted federal authorities, at first encountering a series of answering services because he was calling on a weekend. "Ultimately they became available and handled it superbly. They flew in by helicopter. They told me to secure the ranch, which I did until this morning," he said.

Comment: It's strange that a Supreme Court justice's death was reported as 'apparent natural cause' before an autopsy was performed (that we know of). Other than heart trouble, reported after the fact, where is the evidence that he died naturally?

See also:


Bomb

Miss Australia's face blown up because police threw a flashbang grenade into her bed as she slept

miss australia
While sleeping in bed with her fiancé, a former Miss Australia awoke to a police flashbang grenade disfiguring her face and melting her hand. Although she required immediate medical attention, paramedics did not arrive at the scene until 40 minutes later.

Crowned Miss International Australia in 2013, Felicia Djamirze was asleep in bed with her fiancé, Dean O'Donnell last week, when a police flashbang grenade landed in their bedroom. Accused of drug trafficking, the former Miss Australia was placed under arrest as police waited 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. The cops refused to allow Djamirze to see her injuries even though she suffered third-degree burns to her face and right hand.

During a series of early morning drug raids, Queensland Police callously decided to toss a flashbang grenade into the bedroom of alleged Rebels biker associate Dean O'Donnell. Despite the fact that the police had been conducting surveillance on the house, the cops chose to throw the flashbang into the room while O'Donnell was asleep with his fiancée.

Attention

No answer for loud explosion reported across multiple counties in Georgia

North Georgia residents across multiple counties reported noise

Mystery boom
If you heard a strange noise Sunday night, you're not alone.

Residents across North Georgia are trying to figure out what happened around 6:30 p.m. Sunday that sounded like an explosion.

"In regards to an earlier post about a loud explosion last night, we will continue to attempt to locate the source of the noise," according to a post on the Banks County Sheriff's Office Facebook page. "No injuries or damage have been reported. People in Hall, Habersham, Jackson and Madison (counties) also have reported hearing the noise. We will provide the public with an answer, if we get one."

The Sheriff's Office asked anyone with information to contact the department at 706-677-2248.

Gainesville Police Sgt. Kevin Holbrook said people had posted to the department's social media accounts about the noise, but he didn't receive any information.

"We have had several inquiries about the same but received no calls into our 911 center," Hall County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Deputy Nicole Bailes wrote in an email.

Mitchell Mintz said he was at a residence a few miles from Lula when he thought a thunderstorm passed through.

"I was sitting in the bedroom watching TV and we heard this loud, thunder-like noise," he said. "It was really loud and echoed for maybe like five seconds and then it stopped."

Mintz checked for weather information, thinking it was a storm, saying the noise sounded like it was coming from the Gainesville area. He then posted it on Facebook to see if anyone else had heard it.

"I got like 40 comments with people saying about the same thing," Mintz said.

Eye 1

Modus operandi of COINTELPRO: Disinformation up close and personal

Trolls fighting
This is Part 3 of our three-part series on the techniques of trolls. The first two installments were concerned mostly with sabotage and disinformation on the Internet. They were posted anonymously some time ago. The first two appear to have been written by a professional troll for the "benefit" of less experienced trolls on how to prevent the sharing of inconvenient facts on political forums.

As we pointed out in Part 1, we would normally not publish such material because we cannot verify any of it. Yet, we feel we have actually witnessed these maneuvers on Internet forums.

Part 3 goes back in time to those days when activists unwittingly came face-to-face with infiltrators.

We cannot know for sure, but the anonymous author of Part 3 appears to have had first-hand experience with the FBI's Counterintelligence Program — also known as "COINTELPRO" — that tormented the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s

Comment: See parts one and two of this excellent series:


Mr. Potato

Shkreli, America's most 'hated' man, loses $15M in bitcoin with Kanye album scam

Martin Shkreli
© Joshua Roberts / ReutersMartin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC
Get out your tiny violins. Martin Shkreli, the man America loves to hate, appears to have lost $15 million in bitcoins after he tried to buy the rights to Kanye West's new album.

The now-ex-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who hiked the price of HIV medication by 5,000 percent, was trying to buy Kanye West's album from his record label so he could sell it on to his fans.


In an outcome that proves karma can be a b*tch sometimes, Shkreli got scammed into virtually handing over thousands of bitcoins to someone pretending to be "Kanye's boy".



On Sunday, Shkreli tweeted that he had sent the payment to someone called Daquan and didn't receive anything in return. Shreli proceeded to lose his s**t, throwing a Twitter tantrum.

Heart - Black

Israeli forces gun down 14 yr. old girl on Valentine's Day in Palestine

14 girl shot palestinian
Two horrendous videos emerged from Hebron over this past deadly weekend. In one, after a 14-year-old girl was gunned down in the street, an ambulance waits right next to her as she bleeds and writhe on the ground, but soldiers prevent her from being moved. In the other video, a soldier is recorded callously pushing over a disabled Palestinian man in a wheelchair.

Heart - Black

Dallas PD warns people against giving money to the homeless; tactic backfires tremendously

homeless
The Dallas Police Department recently issued a "warning" against the homeless that has many citizens in disbelief. The Facebook post, dated February 12, suggests that offering money to panhandlers from your car is a serious threat to your safety, and encourages people to call the police instead of giving them a dollar.

Instead of offering any actual cases where homeless panhandlers have stolen a vehicle or attacked someone, the Dallas PD talks about one homeless person with a criminal history and asks ominously, "Do you want this person in your car???"
"Giving to Panhandlers May Be More Risky Than You Think...
  • You've heard from the Dallas Police Department that Panhandling in the City of Dallas is illegal.
  • You've also heard the recommendations from your police officers to NOT give money to those who approach your vehicle while in traffic for your own SAFETY.
  • We recognize that the great citizens of Dallas care about those who are in need of assistance, but would you willingly invite a VIOLENT convicted felon into your vehicle??

Comment: It's nice to see that there is still some compassion for the homeless. Shame on you, Dallas PD.


House

A billionaire's Hawaii could displace longtime Lanai residents

Lanai resort
The Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay is one of two resort hotels on the island.
Larry Ellison plans a reboot for the island; families who've lived there for generations worry they can't afford to stay.

A punishing Hawaiian sun rises on the first day of the final week in which Lilinoe Bicoy, 33, and her family of seven will share the same simple, plantation-style cottage.

Friends and relatives file in and out of the sea-foam green garage, fists full of furniture legs and fishing poles to load onto truck beds. Whatever remains will go to the thrift store down the red-dusted road, one of the island of Lanai's three main strips of pavement.

"Everything's free, everything's got to go," Bicoy says. A pit bull named Bossy sits obediently at her tattooed feet, panting in the heat and dust.

Comment: The new robber barons: how taxpayers subsidize CEOs' multimillion salaries
Lanai, a tiny resort island in Hawaii, has 18 miles of secluded beaches, no traffic lights and a population of just over 3,000. This summer, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, a California-based software company, bought 98% of the island for a sum reported to exceed $500m.

The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington DC thinktank, says that a chunk of the money Ellison spent buying Lanai should have paid for elementary school teachers and clean energy jobs, instead of fulfilling the billionaire CEO's vacation fantasies. That's one conclusion of their new report, "The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket: How Our Tax Dollars Subsidize Exorbitant Executive Pay", which points out that Oracle took advantage of a 1993 loophole in tax law to designate $76m of Ellison's income as "performance-related pay", which allowed him to avoid paying any taxes on the money.

Dozens of US CEOs have cashed in on this major tax incentive at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of $9.7bn last year. Statistics provided by National Priorities Project suggest that the same amount of money could have paid for 142,625 elementary school teachers, or healthcare for 4.96 million low-income children.



Quenelle - Golden

Surprised? Only 3 out of 58 suspects arrested for Cologne sexual assaults are refugees

Cologne Germany
© Wolfgang Rattay / Reuters
Only three out of 58 men arrested in connection with New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Cologne are refugees or migrants, according to a public prosecutor. It comes after the reported attacks prompted a severe backlash toward Angela Merkel's open-door policy.

Refugees were blamed for more than 1,000 reports of sexual assault, rape, and theft which took place in the German city on December 31.

However, only three of those arrested for the crimes - two Syrians and an Iraqi - had recently arrived in the country, Cologne public prosecutor Ulrich Bremer told Die Welt newspaper.

Comment: The similarity with the Paris attacks makes us suspicious: immediately after the Paris attacks, refugees were blamed (despite 7 out of 9 of the suspects were French or Belgian), heightening the anti-Muslim sentiment in France and around the world. It looks like a similar dynamic played out in Cologne. These men should be tried and charged with crimes if guilty. They should not be used as an excuse for blind bigotry. We know where that leads.


Info

Kentucky lawmaker proposes law requiring men to have signed note from wife, swear on the Bible before buying Viagra

swear on viagra
In a mockery of the legal system, a Kentucky lawmaker has proposed an obnoxious piece of legislation that will require men to jump through several hoops prior to acquiring erectile dysfunction medication.

HB396 16RS Erectile Dysfunction Drug Bill, was proposed last week by Rep. Mary Lou Marzian of Louisville.

"I want to protect these men from themselves," Marzian, who is a nurse, told the Courier-Journal.

"This is about family values," she added.

The humiliating hoops proposed in the Bill, are nothing short of absurd. Prior to prescribing a man Viagra:

A health care practitioner shall:
(1) Require a man to have two (2) office visits on two (2) different calendar days before the health care practitioner prescribes a drug for erectile dysfunction to him;

(2) Prescribe a drug for erectile dysfunction only to a man who is currently married;

(3) Require a man to produce a signed and dated letter from the man's current spouse providing consent for a prescription for erectile dysfunction; and

(4) Require a man to make a sworn statement with his hand on a Bible that he will only use a prescription for a drug for erectile dysfunction when having sexual relations with his current spouse.