Showing posts with label Score. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Score. Show all posts

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Ohio auto-dealers score victory in Tesla battle

Telsa Model S
Tesla Model S


It’s never been about Tesla.

Tesla Motors Inc. struck a deal Wednesday with Ohio auto dealers that could allow the electric-car maker to ease a battle over its direct-to-consumer retailing model, at least for the near term.

Under the agreement, Tesla would be allowed to keep operating two company-owned retail stores in the state, and open just one more. The deal requires approval from the Ohio state legislature. The proposed bill would bar all other auto makers from bypassing franchised dealers to retail cars.



As I recently wrote, the auto dealers don’t care about Tesla. It’s currently a niche high-end product.

What they’re really worried about is the idea of Tesla’s business model—selling direct to consumers. This Ohio deal, if approved by the legislature, confirms that. If Tesla sells direct to consumers? They don’t care. If Ford or GM do, then they’re history.


But why shouldn’t manufacturers be allowed to sell to whoever they want? Why does the auto industry have a government-enforced middle-man costing consumers more money and leaving those car brands’ images in the hand of sleazy dealers?


More below the fold.




Daily Kos



Ohio auto-dealers score victory in Tesla battle

Friday, September 27, 2013

Hear a Song from the New Breaking Bad Original Score


Past Tracks


Sunday’s series finale of Breaking Bad marks the conclusion of television’s favorite anti-hero saga, but it also means the end of its tense, moody score, which has been a fitting soundtrack to White’s descent into crime over the past five seasons. Dave Porter, the series’ composer, has scored all 62 episodes of the acclaimed AMC series, and his work is now getting an official release for the second time


Breaking Bad: Original Score From The Television Series Volume 2, available now, features music from the show that wasn’t included on the first original score, released last summer. Viewers first heard the above track, “White House Visit,” from a flash-forward in season five’s “Blood Money” episode, which Porter said was one of the hardest scenes in the series to score.


new track button.png




    








Master Feed : The Atlantic



Hear a Song from the New Breaking Bad Original Score

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Keeping the Score, Fat Cats vs. Whistleblowers


Boiling Frogs – by Sibel Edmonds


For the last several years former CIA officer Philip Giraldi has been fearlessly reporting and writing on two no-no topics for the US government and its extension- the US media: Espionage and Illegal Arms Trafficking by Israel and Turkey, facilitated by a group of treasonous US officials. Despite Giraldi’s credentials as a former CIA operative, his extensive first-hand knowledge and experience, and no matter the amount of documentation and numerous well-established cases he presents, these alarming facts and trends always go ignored or intentionally blacked-out by the mainstream and pseudo alternative media alike.  


On August 1, 2013, Giraldi published another damning article in his long-running series involving espionage and arms trafficking by the two major US allies, facilitated by their extensions within the US government:



Ten years ago, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds revealed that the defense ministries of several major recipients of United States military hardware were being scrutinized because they had been falsifying end-user certificates, claiming that the equipment was intended for their own use while at the same time arranging to sell it to other militaries that were blocked from receiving the sensitive technology. In May 2006, I described in a Deep Background column for TAC how the two countries most heavily engaged in the practice—Israel and Turkey—also benefited from their connections with leading neoconservatives in Washington. Richard Perle and Doug Feith in particular benefited financially from their ties to defense industries in Israel while also serving as richly rewarded “consultants” for Turkish interests. Feith’s International Advisors Inc., a registered agent for Turkey in 1989-1994, was paid $ 600,000 a year by Turkish sources, while Richard Perle received $ 48,000 annually as a consultant. Feith has also long been associated with Northrop Grumman sales in the Middle East. While at the Pentagon in 1983, Perle was criticized for endorsing the U.S. Army’s purchase of an armaments system from an Israeli company that had paid him $ 50,000 in consulting fees one year before.


…



Here is an excerpt from Giraldi’s 2006 article mentioned above:



Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain.


…



That’s right: “Someone” has to be in the middle and facilitate these criminal activities. Someone(s) with access, power, and influence. Someone(s) in a position as a US government official-whether appointed or elected.


Giraldi specifically mentions the following names directly connected to the high-level US players involved in these nefarious foreign lobbies and their related espionage and illegal arms trafficking: Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Marc Grossman, Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz, and Stephen Solarz.


And here is my infamous State Secrets Gallery released in 2005-2006 depicting the high-level US officials involved in my State Secrets Privilege case: Click Here . Do you recognize the pictures and names from Giraldi’s exposés?


You can read the entire article by Giraldi here. It has been over 10 years since these revelations – by me, Philip Giraldi, Sunday Times series, Vanity Fair exposé …, and yet the involved criminal fat cats are still in operation-one way or another, and have been getting fatter and fatter. Let me give you a few more examples from my States Secrets Gallery:


Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is now officially a Registered Foreign Agent with Turkey:



Former Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Plano, is now lobbying for the Republic of Turkey, according to papers filed last week with the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act unit.


…


Mr. Hastert and others at Dickstein Shapiro share a $ 35,000-per-month subcontract with the Gephardt Group, led by former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., Turkey’s principal lobbyist since last year, according to The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based publication that first reported Mr. Hastert’s involvement.


…



So what if he was exposed by the Vanity Fair article?! The magazine’s readers in the millions were busy reading the parallel article on Jennifer Aniston. They couldn’t give a hoot about the scandals involving the United States Speaker of the House.


In 2005 Marc Grossman, the former third highest level person at the State Department- Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, joined Turkey’s Imam Fethullah Gulen related Ihlas Holding, a large and alleged shady Turkish company, which is also active in several Central Asian countries. Grossman is reported to receive $ 100,000 per month for his advisory position with Ihlas. You can read more on this here.


So who cares if he was exposed to millions by the Sunday Times’ Series in 2006-2007? Apparently no one.


How about another figure from the treason circle: Richard Armitage? Do you know where he is since he left his position only to indirectly continue his operations? Well, check it out:



Now it is official. Former U.S. Secretary of State Richard Armitage is on his way to take over the Chairmanship of the American Turkish Council from Brent Scowcroft.


…



Not only that. As with the Perle and Feith marriage, other high-level criminal players also get together and form illicit marriages:



In May 2010, DLA Piper, one of the world’s largest international lobby-law firms, hired Marc Grossman as their front man for their Turkish operations. The man in charge of one of DLA Piper major accounts-Turkey is none other than our good ole Dennis Hastert. That makes two former FBI criminal targets for one firm.


…



Last month Washington Post’s Style section ran an article on a few well-known government whistleblowers-profiling where they are today – years after blowing the whistle, court and congressional battles, persecution and prosecutions. Basically, the gist of the piece was “Where are they today?”


The media must similarly investigate and publish similar articles and profiles on those government criminals who were exposed and reported by government whistleblowers. They should. They must. Otherwise the picture will never be complete. Because the complete picture, the real story in-full, would clearly show  that the exposed US government criminals, whether NSA heads engaged in illegal wiretapping of all Americans and blackmailing US politicians, whether those responsible for torture and renditions, whether those operating as foreign spies or in illegal weapons or drug trafficking, always end up keeping their positions or actually getting promoted to higher levels, or, they operate from the outside – influencing those inside while filling their pockets with millions of illicit dollars channeled to them through intentional loopholes.


That is right. We have US public officials engaged in treason, espionage, torture, blackmail, kidnapping and rendition, illegal weapons trafficking and intelligence dealings-those who choose to betray the people and prostitute the people’s trust and their public positions. And, they stay in power and keep getting fatter and fatter.


Then of course we have the prosecution of Bradley Manning, the hunt for Edward Snowden, the imprisonment of John Kiriakou and … Those who chose to expose rather than betray- They chose integrity over treason. And, they are being made to pay.


So what is all this? Good O’l American government, politics and Justice? Systemic American ignorance and apathy? A morally and intellectually corrupt nation descending rapidly? What say you? What do all these realities and facts tell us? What kind of nation are we? What does all this make us, the people of the United States?


# # # #



Sibel Edmonds is the Publisher & Editor of Boiling Frogs Post and the author of the Memoir Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story. She is the recipient of the 2006 PEN Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy” Ms. Edmonds has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.


- See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/08/04/keeping-the-score-fat-cats-vs-whistleblowers/#sthash.ZCdTh0aC.L08oX7YD.dpuf






Keeping the Score, Fat Cats vs. Whistleblowers