Friday Free-For-All: Spotlight on Bob Menendez

Well, the excrement is hitting the fan for poor old, Bob Menendez,  chairman of the US Senate’s foreign relations committee.  The New York Times and ABC are now covering aspects of the story in addition to virtually everyone in the conservative blogosphere..

Ace sums it up: F * R * I * E * N * D * $ : Episode 1327, “The One Where Senator Bob Menendez Does Big Money Favors for His Big Money Donor ‘Friend'”:

The short version is that Melgen had bought a contract in the Dominican Republican giving him rights to deliver port-security services to that country; the contract was worth, it’s said, up to $500 million. (Actually at another point the figure $50 million per year for 20 years is cited, which, by my math, is a cool billion with a b, daddyo.)

The Dominican Republic didn’t want to honor the contract and Melgen dialed up his Very Good Friend Bob Menendez, who in turn called up some of his Friends at State, who in turn exerted their influence to make sure the contract was honored.

So all these Friends act together so that one of their Friends can cash a $500 million contract. (Or a billion.)

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Earlier today ABCNews (which had the Menendez tip about the prostitutes last May and apparently did nothing with it) broke this related story: Officials: Agents Raided Office of Menendez Friend After Document Shredding Truck Spotted

Federal agents raided the West Palm Beach eye clinic of a longtime friend and political supporter of Sen. Robert Menendez earlier this week after a document shredding truck was observed at the building, following attempts by FBI agents to question Dr. Salomon Melgen about his relationship with the New Jersey Democrat, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation.

The execution of the search warrant was carried out by a federal health care task force, with agents from both the FBI and the federal Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General’s office, which had been investigating suspected Medicare fraud by Melgen’s clinics for more than a year, the sources told ABC News.

It’s amazing how all of this is coming out now, safely after he was reelected, isn’t it?

Matthew Boyle, who broke the Menendez story at the Daily Caller, now writes for Breitbart: Menendez Prostitution Scandal: Donor Melgen’s Political Contributions Exploded After IRS Filed Tax Lien:

Ophthalmologist and Democratic political donor Dr. Salomon Melgen may have tried to buy cover from the IRS for the $11.1 million he owes in back taxes from 2006 to present, Breitbart News has learned. Melgen may have intended to court politicians with political donations and prostitutes with the hopes that they would help him wipe his IRS slate clean.

Melgen was a political donor from as far back as the early 1990s. According to Federal Election Commission records published on the Center for Responsive Politics website OpenSecrets.org, Melgen made his first political donation to a young first-term Democratic U.S. Congressman: Bob Menendez. After that $500 donation, Melgen’s friendship with Menendez developed further (the two were reportedly close before Menendez first took office)

Michelle Malkin asks Ladies Against Senator Sleaze-Bob: Where are you?:

Conservatives are always told they don’t do enough to reach across the aisle. We’re divisive, obstructionist and hostile to bipartisanship. So in the spirit of unity and comity, I’m announcing the formation of a new social justice group: Ladies Against Senator Sleaze-Bob.

Now all I need are some principled Democratic ladies and liberal media lionesses to step up to the plate with me to protest the vulgar, sexist behavior of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

Surely, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Cher, Sandra Fluke, Eva Longoria and I can all agree that when a powerful Washington politician abuses his power to victimize young women, we should join hands to demand justice. Right?

Surely, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Arianna Huffington, Rachel Maddow, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, Tina Fey and every card-carrying member of NOW across America are outraged by this Beltway playboy’s tawdry exploitation of underage prostitutes.

And surely, Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett, Stephanie Cutter and Michelle Obama are all sickened by this top Democrat’s profligate election-season jaunts to the Dominican Republic on a shady donor’s private plane.

Oh, wait. What? You haven’t heard about Menendez’s war on women from the left-wing War on Women brigade? Nary a progressive peep? Well, knock me over with a Code Pink feather boa. Not sure how the story could have slipped their news-savvy feminist minds.

Michelle! How dare you be so insulting and offensive! Don’t you know feminists hate to be called “ladies”? I believe the preferred term is womyn.

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Ted Cruz at Politico: Chuck Hagel’s confirmation-day conversion:

As a two-term senator and active participant in foreign policy discussions, Hagel repeatedly declined to support measures to crack down on state sponsors of terrorism, belittled the notion of using any means to prevent a nuclear Iran, advised U.S. leaders to engage in direct negotiations with rogue nations and hostile terrorist groups, and expressed remarkable antagonism towards the longstanding U.S. alliance with Israel. Since Hagel has been nominated to become Defense secretary, however, he’s disavowed each one of these positions.

It all amounts to quite the confirmation day conversion.

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GSL: Chicago: he true causes of Chicago’s insane orgy of violence:

Chicago’s already off to a rousing start this year, with forty-some homicides in the month of January, eclipsing last year’s orgy-of-violence numbers.

Meanwhile, leftist Democrat politicians in Chicago are decrying “guns” are the problem, distracting attention away from their miserable economic, social and cultural leadership of the city.

Guns aren’t the problem, folks.

Guns are merely the scapegoat.

Gangs are the primary problem, and they are prevalent and popular with the young men because of the urban dependency culture.  Uncle Sam is the absentee “father” and breadwinner for too many of these families in the inner cities and those young men have no role models aside from what they see on TV which is about as far from healthy and responsible as one could get.

Generations of families have been raised by single moms, often not even adults themselves when they have their first baby, which is seen as a right-of-passage into adulthood.

Have a baby, get your own place and get government benefits and then cry to the media when one or more of your ill-tempered, criminal children get killed in gang-related violence.

It’s even sadder when non-gang folks are brought into this violence, through happenstance or as victims of these hoodlums preying on innocents to subsidize their thug lifestyle.

Urban Grounds: Another Blacks-on-White Philadelphia Beat Down: When is a Hate Crime NOT a Hate Crime?

Here’s the video if you can bare to watch it:

You can tell that the Daily Mail in the UK has the same “do not mention the race of the attackers if they’re black” policy that most of the US media has:

An astonishing video has emerged of a vicious gang of teenage girls assaulting a female pedestrian as she walks outside a city hall in broad daylight.

The woman, who has not been named, was thrown to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked by the gang outside Philadelphia City Hall.

The four youngsters, who seemed to have absolutely no fear of arrest or reprisals, are seen sneaking up behind the woman before launching the brutal assault.

After the attack, during which nothing was taken, they are seen casually strolling away.

[Snip]

In recent years there have a spate of attacks in Philadelphia with teen mobs attacking members of the public for sport.

Since 2008  there have been at least 12 incidents in Philadelphia were groups of teens have attacked bystanders.

Emphasis mine. That line, if written in honesty and truth would read: In recent years there have [been] an avalanche of attack in Philadelphia with mobs of feral black thugs attacking white members of the public for sport.

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Twitchy: Anti-Semite MJ Rosenberg tweets ‘talked about Israel with Hagel, happily he’s lying today’:

MJ Rosenberg tweets: I spent a couple of hours with Hagel a few years ago. Talked about Israel. Happily, he is lying today & knows it. He’ll be a good SeDef.

Whoa. M.J Rosenberg, anti-Semite and former Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network, claims he spent some time with Chuck Hagel and discussed Israel. Then brags that “happily” Hagel is lying about his beliefs with regard to Israel today, during his Secretary of Defense hearing.

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Twitchy: RIP Ed Koch: Legendary NYC mayor dead at 88:

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch died this morning after being admitted to the hospital earlier this week. He was 88.

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John Hayward, The Conversation: Once upon an unemployment report dreary, which we ponder weak and weary:

The January unemployment report lands with a soft thud, showing a mild worsening of the permanently dreary job market.  Factor in all the adjustments to previous months, and you’ve got an unemployment flatline stretching back for months, which is consistent with an adjusted GDP that shows virtually no real private-sector growth.

To call any of this a “recovery” is risible, but we live in a risible nation now.  The January job report was covered with cobwebs the moment it rolled off the printer.

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David Limbaugh, RightWingNews: Doctored Videotapes Are Peanuts:

The liberal media long ago forfeited their respected role as watchdog over the government and have voluntary descended to the status of a public relations arm of the Democratic Party and various liberal causes.

It doesn’t do it justice to call them cheerleaders, for they are active participants, every bit as much involved in bringing about the events as the party with which they collude.

They no longer merely report the news. They deliberately influence it to advance the liberal political agenda. So while they engage in plenty of deceptions on the micro level, they daily engage in a category of sin that far exceeds the despicable doctoring of videos.

For what they’re about is grand deception on a macro scale. They aren’t watchdogs, and they aren’t just cheerleaders. Cheerleaders wear uniforms and are readily recognizable. These progressive media mavens are cloaked in a disguise of pseudo-neutrality and pseudo-objectivity, such that when they root for the political team that is assaulting America’s founding principles and driving us headfirst into national ruin, many in their unwitting audience have no earthly idea they’ve got skin in the game.

The liberal media’s fraud is so pervasive that by presenting the news through a distorted, progressive prism, they’ve created an alternate reality that bears little relationship to actual reality. What has emerged is a new normal, foisted on us by a cluster of malicious manipulators who long ago abandoned their honor and their professional calling.

This manufactured pseudo-universe is what allowed President Barack Obama to win re-election despite presiding over (and largely causing) the longest period of high unemployment since World War II and the worst recovery in 50 years. It’s what enables him to enjoy a 60 percent approval rating despite being conspicuously radical, hyper-partisan, consciously divisive and dogmatically uncompromising.

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Big Journalism: BuzzFeed Memory-Holes Journolist:

The great thing about this new media-era we’re currently living in (at least for the media), is that there’s no accountability. This means the media can do whatever it wants and manufacture whatever reality it would like to manufacture. For example: To protect Democrats and Obama, our struggling economy is manufactured into something roaring. But BuzzFeed Politics’ reminds that the media can also use this newfound freedom to protect one another.