The Dirt on Donald:Coming soon to a bookstore near you

The New York Post reports:

THERE'S a new book about Donald Trump about to hit shelves which questions The Donald's billionaire status and his standing as a pop-culture business icon. And even before The Donald's read it and before it officially hits shelves, he is rattling his saber and threatening to sue for libel and slander.
"I haven't read it but someone who did told me it is an inaccurate pile of crap," said Trump of the book "Trump Nation" by veteran New York Times reporter Tim O'Brien, which is slated to hit next week.

Yesterday, Trump's attorney Jason Greenblatt fired off a letter to the New York Times threatening to add it to a lawsuit unless it supplied Trump's office with an advance copy of a planned excerpt, which it said is slated for the Times business section on Sunday. The book contains at least three major financial inaccuracies, the letter claims.

Times Business Editor Larry Ingrassia said, "We don't discuss with anyone what we are going to publish before we publish it."

O'Brien said he was surprised by the furious reaction from Trump. "I'll let the book's writing and research speak for themselves" O'Brien said. "He cooperated with the book extensively — often in a friendly way."

"He knows nothing about me," fumed Trump. "O'Brien is a terrible writer and his research is proven to be very poor."

Boy Treated With Tamiflu Survives

Reuters via Yahoo reports:

A Thai boy tested positive for bird flu on Friday, but doctors said there was no sign he caught the virus from his infected father who died earlier this week, suggesting the H5N1 strain had not mutated into a pandemic form.

Ronarit Benpad, 7, who was treated with anti-flu drug Tamiflu in the early stages of his infection, had recovered his appetite and his temperature had returned to normal, although he would remain under observation for two weeks, doctors said.

Nixon was right...

...Watergate was certainly only about a "third-rate burglary."
Especially when compared to Plamegate, what has been going on in the office of the vice-president, the lies that led to war, etc., etc.

But a third-rate burglary forced a president from office. What are the lies that sent a country to war going to do? Will the sheeple finally wake up on news of the Fitzgerald indictments?

I think the people watching right now who are voters better start paying attention to this issue. It's not just about whether somebody's name was leaked, it's about whether we went to war under false pretenses or not, whether people knew about that or not, and what they did when they were charged against that kind of offense against the United States.

It's serious business.--Chris Matthews

Before Fitzgerald is done, we'll see the warlords of Washington hauled before a court of the people. We'll hear the whole sordid story of how a band of exiles, at least two foreign intelligence agencies, and a cabal of neoconservatives inside the Pentagon and the vice president's office bamboozled Congress and the American people into going to war. As the indictments come down, so will the elaborate narrative so carefully constructed by the War Party in the run-up to war be exposed as a tissue of fabrication, forgery, and fraud. -Justin Raimondo

Chris Matthews: The inditcments "are going to blow this White House apart."

Chris Matthews with the best mainsteam summary of what is going on:

It's serious business.

It all begins with a big fight between the CIA and the White House, especially the vice president's office. Scooter Libby, his chief of staff, is also his WMD expert.

The vice president has made the case for war very effectively on programs like 'Meet the Press,' that we had to go to war with Saddam Hussein because he possessed the potential to make nuclear war against the United States - to somehow deliver a nuclear weapon to this country.

For a lot of people, that was the deal maker for the war. They had a lot of problems invading a third-world country, but they said 'Well, if he has a nuclear program over there that is threatening us, we have to act.'

Well, we got over there, and our troops took that country, and there was no WMD, no nuclear, no nothing, so there is a lot of concern about how we could have gotten into a war based on false pretenses.


• Matthews on possible indictments
Oct. 19: MSNBC's Chris Matthews discusses the rumors of indictments in the Valerie Plame case and how big this story could get.
MSNBC


All of the sudden, Joe Wilson comes up and starts leaking to the New York Times' Nick Kristoff, 'Wait a minute, they not only don't have any WMD to justify the war, they knew there wasn't going to be any WMD because they knew, based upon my trip over there, that there was no deal to buy uranium by Saddam Hussein in Africa.' That's the big picture here.

What happens (then) is that the president of the United States gets upset, apparently, and wants to know what happened with the WMD, why there isn't any -- the vice president's office had said there are going to be WMD, the CIA was going along with it, even.

So there's a huge problem for the vice president to justify his behavior. Why didn't he pay attention to this trip that had been made to Africa? Why didn't he see that there was no WMD before we went to war, no uranium deal?

That's the heat about this. What did the vice president and his people do, faced with the hot seat that they were sitting on, that they had somehow gotten accused of taking us into war under false pretenses.

That's the environment in which this whole thing may have been hatched. If there was law-breaking, it came out of the vice president and his people's determination to protect themselves against the charge that they led us into a corrupt war, a war based on false pretenses.

That's how hot this thing is.

If there are indictments, they're going to be probably in the vice president's office, they're probably going to come next week and they are going to blow this White House apart.

It's going to be unbelievable.

I think the people watching right now who are voters better start paying attention to this issue. It's not just about whether somebody's name was leaked, it's about whether we went to war under false pretenses or not, whether people knew about that or not, and what they did when they were charged against that kind of offense against the United States.

It's serious business.

Why you need to get your own supply of Tamiflu now

Tyler Cowen does a good job of explaining the shortage of Tamiflu and its repercussions, which when all is said and done is really the reason you need your own supply of Tamiflu now. Here are Tyler's comments:

Countries around the world are stockpiling Tamiflu, in anticipation of a possible avian flu pandemic. This is better than doing nothing, but Tamiflu is unlikely to protect most of us, should a pandemic arrive. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Tamiflu must be taken within the first two days of symptoms. Your chance of getting some Tamiflu that quickly, in a pandemic, will not be great (of course you could buy some on your own).

2. Tamiflu, if taken preventively, can prevent you from getting sick in the first place. But you would need two tablets each day. Only essential medical personnel, and select politicians, are likely to receive such treatments.

3. You show up at the emergency room with avian flu, and then they have to decide where you stand on the priority list. Will the hospital fear a lawsuit? How long will this take? Will it require federal or regulatory clearance?

4. Given the crush of the infected, will you be afraid to show up at the emergency room in the first place? Maybe you just have the common cold. See point #1.

5. Many Tamiflu supplies will be exhausted on false alarms, such as colds and other flus.

6. A Tamiflu stockpile is only good for a few years. If avian flu does not come soon, do you expect the stockpile to be replenished? Or would avian flu become the new "swine flu", never to be uttered by politicians again? The avian flu threat will likely be with us for at least ten years, in the form of a bird "flu reservoir" for possible mutation.

7. There is some chance that the virus will develop Tamiflu immunity over time, especially if Tamiflu is applied indiscriminately at the early stages of a pandemic.

8. Let's say the virus arrives first in California. Will Tamiflu supplies all be sent that way at first? Will they ever later be shipped back to Kansas? How much of the stockpile -- an inevitable political football -- will be available at any point in time?

Did I mention that the U.S. won't be getting any more new Tamiflu for at least two years? Right now we have only about 4.3 million courses. Yes we should buy more Tamiflu, but we must consider what else we should do as well.

Donald Trump Kicks a Woman When She Is Down

It's all Martha's fault, says Trump. From The Drudge Report:

Donald Trump says he knows why his version of "The Apprentice" is hurting in the ratings this year: Martha Stewart.

"I think there was confusion between Martha's 'Apprentice' and mine," Donald Trump told ABC News Radio yesterday, the NEW YORK POST reports.

"And mine continues to do well and, as you know, the other one has struggled very severely.

"But I think it probably hurt mine, and I sort of predicted that it would because there was a lot of confusion [with] people that wanted to watch 'The Apprentice.'

"And a lot of people were even upset that this was done. But I really feel that there was a certain amount of confusion which hurt the original 'Apprentice,' " Trump said in an interview with ABC's David Blaustein that airs today on its national radio network.

Fitzgerald Looking at 22 Files

Former CIA agent Larry C. Johnson reports:

Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at for potential indictment . These include Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin (there are others of course).

eBay Stops Sale of Tamiflu

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The perceived shortage of Tamiflu has spurred some unusual gambits. Online auctioneer eBay Inc., for instance, reported finding roughly 10 listings on its United Kingdom site in which sellers were offering to sell either Tamiflu or links to sites that offer the drug. EBay yanked the listings as soon as it became aware of them, in accordance with a company policy that prohibits offering prescription drugs or controlled substances on its sites, a spokesman said.

Coincidence or is somebody testing something?

Over the past few weeks there have been three separate incidents of power failures in the downtown Los Angeles area. Today there is no long distance telephone service through out parts of southern California. Coincidence, most likely. But I am a real suspicious guy and just take note of things going on around me.

For instance, the week before 9-11 I was at LAX airport. It was during the week before Labor Day. I was headed out of town for a very short trip, up to San Francisco and back. That day there were more police at LAX then I had ever seen before. My ID was checked at two different stops. I flew back that night and the extra police were gone. But that morning LAX had the heaviest police presence I had ever seen at LAX or any other airport pre-9-11 (In fact, the visible police presence that day was greater than any I have even seen post 9-11). I have never seen a report or explanation about this event but, given it was the week before the 9-11 attack, it still sticks in my mind. Was it a drill, were police acting on a tip? Why were they aggressively checking everyone's ID? And then 9-11 occurs.

Was supposed billionaire Marvin Davis actually busted?

From Forbes:

Six months after oil tycoon Marvin Davis died last fall, Davis' eldest daughter, Patricia Davis Raynes, met, she says, with a family financial adviser who made an astounding claim: The Davis family fortune, estimated by FORBES at $5.8 billion in 2004, had dwindled to almost nothing. Raynes' trust was so depleted that the $125,000 monthly payouts she received would have to end. They soon did...Davis stayed in the limelight with dozens of takeover bids for the likes of CBS, United Airlines and Vivendi Universal. The Raynes suit says Davis used money from her trust to fund such "phony" takeover attempts.

The suit claims this spending ultimately forced the Davises into a cash crunch, leading Barbara to sell their home for $46 million just five months after Marvin's death. She now lives in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills

Czech govt bans retail sale of Tamiflu

Forbes reports:

The Czech government has decided to impose controls on the country's stocks of Avian bird flu drug Tamiflu, manufactured by Roche Holding AG, banning its retail sale by local chemists, said Jiri Koskuba, deputy health minister.

'It will not be possible to market (the drug) anymore,' he said.

It's starting. Get your personal supply of Tamiflu now before retail sales are banned here or supplies run out.

Survival is for the creative.

State Department Ditches Incriminating Evidence on Colin Powell

In connection with Colin Powell's presntation before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Jonathan Schwartz reports on Powell's personal hokey translation of intercepted Iraqi conversations and the State Departments reaction:

Powell played an intercept of a conversation between Iraqi army officers about U.N. inspections. However, when he translated what they were saying, he knowingly embellished it, turning it from evidence Iraq was complying with U.N. resolutions to evidence Iraq was violating them. Here's the conversation as Powell provided it:

They're inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.
Yes.
For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.
Yes.
For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo.
Yes.
And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.

However, the incriminating phrases "clean all of the areas" and "Make sure there is nothing there" do not appear in the official State Department translation:

And we sent you a message to inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas.
(Imad Khadduri was kind enough to confirm for me that the State Department translation is correct.)

This is described in Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward:

[Powell] had decided to add his personal interpretation of the intercepts to rehearsed script, taking them substantially further and casting them in the most negative light...
Concerning the intercept about inspecting for the possibility of "forbidden ammo," Powell took the interpretation further: "Clean out all of the areas... Make sure there is nothing there." None of this was in the intercept. (p. 310)
Note that since the State Department was questioned about this by by journalist Gilbert Cranberg, the translation has disappeared from its site. It's now available only via the Wayback Machine.

Schwartz's complete analysis of Powell's speech is well worth reading. He concludes this way: "Colin Powell, American Liar."

The Foul-Mouthed, Out of Control President

Mainstream media seems to be a little slow on this story, but they are getting there.

Doug Thompson reports:

President George W. Bush’s temper tantrums are on the rise with White House insiders reporting increasing tongue-lashing of staffers, obscenity-filled outbursts and a leader driven to the edge by what he sees as party disloyalty and a country that no longer trusts him...

“He’s out of control,” one White House aide says privately. “There’s no other way to put it. His anger spills over in meetings. He berates anyone who brings him bad news but there's not a lot of good news we can bring the President right now. He calls other Republicans 'motherfucking traitors' and it is becoming more and more of a challenge to keep that anger from showing in public.”

A Bush White House that has always prided itself with an ability to shield the President’s weaknesses from the public faces a mounting list of embarrassing public incidents.

The most recent came when Bush fled Washington to avoid the largest anti-war rally since Vietnam, some reporters asked him if he was running away.

“No goddamn it,” he snapped back. “I’m going to keep track of Hurricane relief.” Then he flew out of town to a command center in Colorado to watch what was happening in New Orleans, something he could easily monitored from the situation room of The White House. Reporters present said Bush shoved his way past aides to get away from more questions...

The mainstreamers have long joked about Bush’s temper tantrums but have only recently started writing about them.

“There's a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique,” Molly Ivins writes. “These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny boo-boo, I'll show you.”

In Time Magazine this past weekend, Joe Klein asks “Turf wars, temper tantrums, mysterious leaks—has Bush lost control of his own government?”...

Warren Buffett Book Is Coming

The New York Post reports:

WARREN Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, usually has only to smile at a company to send its stock soaring.

Now the man regarded as the best stock picker in the world seems to be having the same impact on a book proposal that has his blessing.

Buffett has agreed to cooperate with one-time stock analyst Alice Schroeder on a financial advice book that has publishers panting.

Several sources said that bidding for the investment advice book was already in the $7 million range.

Competition for Alan Greenspan...

U.S. accuses North Korea of $100 bill counterfeiting

Tamiflu Sales Off The Charts

USA Today reports:

Market researcher Verispan, which collects prescription data from U.S. pharmacies, says U.S. prescriptions for Tamiflu hit 34,388 for the week ending Oct. 7, up 713% from the same period last year.

No. 1 online pharmacist Drugstore.com, says it has sold more Tamiflu in the past five weeks than in the last six months of last year. Demand "is off the charts," says spokesman Greg French.

How Paris Hilton's Cellphone Was Hacked

Kevin Mitnick explains:

She was attacked on her cell phone, and she was attacked two ways. One was because of a T-Mobile's Web site, and the other guy was able to compromise it by getting her phone number by going on T-Mobile's Web site, doing a password reset, which SMS-ed her new password because, presumably, only the owner would have the handset.

And then what they did was, they did a technique called caller ID spoofing, which allows a person to change the number they're calling from on their calling phone number display. So, they were posing as T-Mobile customer service, and they called her phone, and on the caller ID it showed as T-Mobile customer service, and then they told her, "There are some network difficulties. Have you been getting any SMS [messages] about a password reset, and what were the contents of the message?" and she freely gave it out, and that's how these guys were able to get to her T-Mobile Sidekick, and her e-mail, and whatnot.

I smelled this one out right away...

The New York City subway threat was a hoax. News services are now reporting:

The subway terrorist threat that gripped New York last weekend was a hoax stemming from false intelligence provided by a normally reliable informant, US law enforcement officials were quoted as saying.

According to newspaper and television reports, the unidentified officials said the informant -- believed to be from Pakistan -- had admitted leading investigators astray about a plot to bomb the New York subway system.

The threat, which was unusually specific as to time and place, was taken very seriously by city officials who issued a high alert and flooded the subway network with extra police and National Guard troops.

Of course, as I explained when the supposed attack was announced:

A Sunday Subway Attack?

This report of a potential subway attack in New York City on Sunday seems quite bogus to me.

Anyone who has spent anytime in NYC knows that Sunday is the day when subway traffic is extremely light. If terrorists want to attack and cause maximum harm, why would they attack on Sunday with virtually empty cars, versus on weekdays when passengers are packed in like sardines?

In truth, government officials always have their own agendas when leaking news or making announcements. The big political question here is who is leaking the information that the alert in NYC was bogus, and thus throwing egg all over NYC Mayor Bloomberg's face with elections coming up in November?

As for us common folk, this is just another example of government not having a clue and generally being full of shit, and a further lesson that you need to take care of yourself. Do you have your Tamiflu yet?

Why Talk of an H5N1 Flu Vaccine Before It Mutates Is Absurd

Reuters reports:

David Nabarro, U.N. coordinator for global readiness against an outbreak, said current stockpiling by governments around the world may prove useless since they are preparing for an unknown mutation of the virus.

He said "very high priority" efforts were underway to raise manufacturing capacity so that a vaccine could be produced more quickly once a virus with pandemic potential manifested itself.

"We do not know what the genetic makeup of the eventual mutant virus will be, therefore we cannot be sure that existing vaccines that have been stored up will be effective," he said.

Yet Romania is already giving out flu shots to "protect" against H5N1!!

Firms Claim Medication Blocks H5N1 Flu Virus

PRB Pharmaceuticals
and Lee's Pharmaceuticals
announced today the discovery that v38 AMF-1 inhibits H5N1 infection by blocking the ability of the virus to attach to cells. Three fractions of v38 AMF-1 were tested against H5N1, the virus responsible for causing avian influenza (bird flu), and all showed excellent potency and selectivity at inhibiting H5N1 uptake and viral infections.

The results come from the U.S. arm of an ongoing, multi-national, anti-
viral project jointly sponsored by PRB Pharmaceuticals and Lee's
Pharmaceuticals. In the first arm of the project, researchers led by Dr. John
Tam at the Chinese University of Hong Kong found v38 AMF-1 to be effective
against a variety of pathogens, including SARS CoV, the virus responsible for
causing severe acute respiratory syndrome. It was subsequently shown that v38
AMF-1 inhibits the 3C-like protease (3CLpro), a crucial part of the SARS virus
life cycle.

In the second arm of the project, v38 AMF-1 was shown to inhibit H5N1 in
chicken embryos. 100% of chicken embryos inoculated with H5N1 and treated with
v38 AMF-1 survived while all of those not receiving v38 AMF-1 died within
hours.

"The finding that v38 AMF-1 blocks H5N1 virus attachment is extremely
important as it demonstrates v38 AMF-1 works much differently than the
neuraminidase inhibitors Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir)," said
Dr. Charles Hensley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PRB
Pharmaceuticals. "Tamiflu can only work once the virus has already entered and
multiplied inside the cells. This drug's mode of action is less than ideal
which may explain why Tamiflu is only marginally effective as a treatment for
influenza in humans. v38 AMF-1 keeps the virus out of the cells in the first
place."

v38 AMF-1 is one component of VIRA 38, PRB Pharmaceuticals' influenza
medicine. VIRA 38 is a comprehensive medicine that attacks the virus at
multiple points of its life cycle such as viral attachment, uncoating,
replication and release. This new paradigm for antiviral medicines generates
therapies with greater efficacy and lower incidence of drug resistance.

"When it comes to most viruses, the traditional single molecule - single
target approach simply does not work," added Hensley. "Viruses such as H5N1
are not static and they are constantly mutating and changing therapeutic
targets. These mutations lead to drug resistance commonly seen with most of
the antiviral drugs currently in use. The recent issues with Tamiflu and
amantidine resistance illustrates this point."

Is there a quid pro quo between Bill Clinton and the Bushes?

Kitty Kelley, in the New York Times, wants to know:

SECRECY has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly effective, making Richard Nixon look almost transparent.

But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.

Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.

Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. (Although Mr. Reagan's term ended more than 12 years before the executive order, the Bush administration had filed paperwork in early 2001 to stop the clock, and thus his papers fall under it.)

Bill Clinton publicly objected to the executive order, saying he wanted all his papers open. Yet the Bush administration has nonetheless denied access to documents surrounding the 177 pardons President Clinton granted in the last days of his presidency. Coming without explanation, this action raised questions and fueled conspiracy theories: Is there something to hide? Is there more to know about the controversial pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich? Is there a quid pro quo between Bill Clinton and the Bushes? Is the current president laying a secrecy precedent for pardons he intends to grant?

And just what vaccine is this?

Interesting goings on in Romania. According to AFP:

BUCHAREST (AFP) - Romania began to administer anti-flu vaccines to thousands of people amid fears that the avian flu detected the day before may be the deadly strain that has killed over 60 in southeast Asia...More than 700 residents of the delta were given general anti-flu vaccines on Saturday and some 3,000 people will have received the jabs by Sunday, he said...." Health Minister Eugen Nicolaescu said that no human cases had been detected so far in Romania...In all we need nearly 1.5 million doses. So we will be making an international appeal for donations in the next few days," Nicolaescu said

Since there is no vaccine at present for the H5N1 Avian flu, this is a most interesting stance. Hey give the people a "general" anti-flu vaccine... and don't forget to send those donations...Watch the U.S. gov eventually try a more sophisticated version of this stunt. Get Tamiflu why you still can. It is the only real solution.