Democrat health care debate video highlights and the Pelosi Sausage Factory

Dirty deals, open threats, broken promises and disregard for democracy.... it’s a democrat thing. but Pelosi may have awoken the sleeping giant with a terrible wrath.....I know I'm awake.

Never before has the average American been treated to such a live-action view of the sordid politics necessary to push a deeply flawed bill to completion. It was dirty deals, open threats, broken promises and disregard for democracy that pulled ObamaCare to this point, and yesterday the same machinations pushed it across the finish line. Read the WSJ about how this bill became a law in "The Pelosi Sausage Factory"

What is different than in previous times is that all of these underhanded deals and outright bribes will quickly become publicly known at a time when the approval of Congress is already at 20% or less. The majority of the American people opposed this bill and their Democrat members of the House simply ignored the wishes of their constituents and think that bringing home some local "goodies" will make it right with the voters.

A few airports, more water to some farmers and other "deals" will seem very hollow when this and other travesties created by the Congress cause the US economy to collapse. The American people are starting to see that the US Congress and the Obama administration have made thug style Chicago politics national.

Anybody remember seeing "How a Bill becomes a Law" in grade school civics class?....Well, since the power grab of the Health Care bill that just passed, they will have to rewrite that.....another job created by Captain Bullshit.

Welcome to beautiful Charleroi, the worlds ugliest city

No wonder Ryanair calls it Brussels South

Marooned in a sea of slagheaps, derelict factories and litter-strewn wasteland, the Belgian city of Charleroi is one of Europe's most unlikely tourist destinations.
The grim former coal-mining community is best known in Belgium for having the highest suicide and unemployment rates in the country.

The southern blackspot is even warning it will become more run-down in the current global financial crisis – having never really recovered from the previous two recessions.

But now, following a poll voting it the world's ugliest city, it is suddenly teeming with visitors willing to pay to see for themselves how relentlessly bleak Charleroi really is. Several businesses have sprung up since the survey, carried out in neighbouring Holland, offering "urban safaris" around some of the city's drabbest "attractions".

Tourists on the guided tours can climb a slagheap, inspect acres of post-industrial wasteland and visit the now demolished home of notorious child killer Marc Dutroux.
They can also see the apartment block of one of Charleroi's other notorious former residents – the world's first white female suicide bomber Muriel Degauque, who blew herself up in Baghdad in 2005, after marrying an Islamic radical.

One tour operator, Nicolas Buissart bragged that trips around the town – whose airport is a hub for low-cost airline Ryanair – were fully booked for the next two months. He said: "Visitors are genuinely appalled at the true hideousness of our town. Even as they fly in, they are shocked at the landscape of filth, slagheaps and wasteland.

"It looks like the very worst of the Russian communist era. It is a truly grim spectacle to behold."We take people around in a fairly decrepit old coach, visiting all the ugliest places – but the choice is actually endless because so little of the town has anything to offer. "Hopefully it makes visitors leaving feeling lucky about where they live themselves."Even locals complain socialist-run Charleroi, with a population of 200,000, is "a complete dump".

Shopkeeper Stephan Reignier said: "It is a monstrosity. The whole place should be bulldozed and rebuilt from scratch." In an attempt at positive spin smacking of desperation, the regional tourism website could only say of the city: "Charleroi has fun and does not take itself seriously."

Since Mr Buissart began tours of his home town, other rival firms have now set up and tourism had tripled in the past three months, Charleroi's town hall said.
A spokesman added: "It is not really anything to boast about, but in the short term a huge boost in tourist revenue could help fund some very badly needed regeneration of our town."

Where Have All the Graveyards Gone?

Decades ago, Detroit started experiencing white flight. Then blacks started fleeing too. Now, the Detroit News reports, Departed-Americans are departing......which is to say, their remains no longer remain.

From 2002 through 2007, the remains of about 1,000 people have been disinterred and moved out of the city, according to permits stored in metal filing cabinets in the city's department of health. Looked at in another way, for about every 30 living human beings who leave Detroit, one dead human being follows.

The paper adds, "Although there is little information or statistical evidence regarding the phenomenon across the country, it is quite likely that Detroit and its surrounding communities lead the way, as it does in population loss among the living."

Of course, some places make it more complicated for the dead to leave. For instance, in Chicago, they have to register to vote at their new address.

Belgium football games fixed?

There are strong indications that the betting mafia have once again pounced upon Belgian football. The football match in the first division between Anderlecht and Sint-Truiden on 26 April could possibly have involved bribery.

According to the magazine Sport/Voetbal a bet of almost 800,000 euro was placed in China on the Anderlecht STVV match, with a strong backing for an Anderlecht victory of three goals. Anderlecht eventually won the game 4-1. Three of the four Anderlecht goals were disputable from a referee’s position.

This season no more than 250,000 euro were put on a match with Belgian competitors in Asia. This is why Asian bookmakers immediately notified Karl Dhont, an expert in a diverse field of betting activities. According to Dhont something is definitely up, with an influx of money similar to the betting scandal involving the Chinese Zheyun Ye between 2004 and 2006. At the time various trainers, goalies and players were threatened by the betting mafia and bribed to ensure certain results on the scoreboard.

Mafia blamed for 70 million litres of tainted Italian wine

Don Corleone would've never tainted wine! Evidently you could have dropped a load in this stuff, and not tasted the difference.

Italy produced and sold at least 70 million litres of cheap wine containing acid, manure and fertiliser, Italian weekly L'Espresso said on Friday, largely blaming organised crime in the south.
It said bottles sold at less than two euros (around three dollars) a litre contained very little wine, and a potentially deadly concoction of water and chemical substances, including hydrochloric acid. STORY

Anybody able to coach Football?

In Bulgaria almost any prominent job can get you killed. Writing books on the Bulgarian mafia (Georgi Stoev – shot dead on Monday in a busy part of Sofia, the capital). Running a company that repairs Bulgarian nuclear power plants (Borislav Georgiev – shot dead on Sunday in front of his home in Sofia). Running a football club (15 club presidents killed in the past 13 years, including three within two years from a single club).

What is the European Union supposed to do with Bulgaria?

It may be flights to Charleroi are getting too cheap

Eastern European Gangs Fly to Belgium to Rob Shops

In a secret report by the National Detective Information Service (DNRI) of the Dutch police, it is noted that Polish gangs are regularly flown into Charleroi Airport in Belgium.

There they are given instructions, by SMS, navigation apparatus and even signs on shops, on where they should carry out robberies in the Netherlands. The annual theft amounts to about 220 million Euro. One center of these gangs is the Polish town of Wroclaw; others come from elsewhere in Poland and Lithuania. The gangs often consist of 10 or more people.

The Mafia in Belgium

Belgian Police: Albanian Mafia Dominates Western Europe
In its latest March 19 issue, Brussels weekly TeleMoustique offers an exclusive dossier about the mafia in Belgium where, according to the Belgian police department specialized for Albanian organized crime, Albanian mafia clans dominate, leading in the illegal trade, including human trafficking and the sale of cocaine and heroin.
The Albanian gangs are spread throughout the Europe, the report says, adding that Albanian brutality and networks of prostitution rings have made them notorious and dominant in the human trafficking in the West.
Belgium is regarded as the most important country in the Albanian human trafficking, being the last port before the entry to Great Britain, considered the "El Dorado of the illegal immigration".

It is estimated that up to 100,000 illegal immigrants have been transfered to Belgium by the Albanians, while some observers warn that this number represents the illegal immigrants in Brussels alone, the city with some 1M residents, the report claims.
Albanian Clans Use Kosovo Province to Launder the Prostitution/Drugs Cash
Apart from human trafficking, Albanian clans are most involved in the drug trafficking—mainly cocaine and heroin—and thefts.

According to the TeleMoustique report, one of Albanian 'specialties' remains banditry, ranging from the cigarette theft on the gas stations, store thefts to the robberies of the trucks transporting goods, Belgian police commissar assigned to the department of Albanian organized crime said.
In the field of prostitution, Albanian clans have advanced to a new stage, becoming the ones who are now renting out the bars and buildings to Bulgarians for prostitution brothels.
The same inspector revealed that they are now witnessing massive laundering of the moneys Albanians are making through the organized crime in the Western Europe. Belgian police has found the Albanian mafia is most often sending this money by other expats to Albania and Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, to be "invested" in the building of houses and gas pumps.

Interviewing for an Assassin

After all of the background checks, interviews, and testing were done there were three finalists for the CIA assasin position — two men and one woman.
For the final test, the CIA agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun.
“We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room you will find your wife sitting in a chair. You have to kill her.”
The first man said. “You can’t be serious. I could never shoot my wife.”
The agent replies, “Then you’re not the right man for this job.”

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room.
All was quiet for about five minutes. Then the agent came out with tears in his eyes. “I tried, but I can’t kill my wife.”
The agent replies “You don’t have what it takes. Take your wife and go home.”
Finally, it was the woman’s turn. Only she was told to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room.
Shots were heard, one shot after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls.
After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman.

She wiped the sweat from her brow and said, “You guys didn’t tell me the gun was loaded with blanks. So I had to beat him to death with the chair.”

Mafia is Italy's biggest commercial business

The Mafia is now the biggest business in Italy, with organised crime netting Mob bosses more than £63bn a year, or 7 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, from drugs, extortion and prostitution.

Tano Grasso, the head of Italy's anti-racketeering commission, said the Mafia made £21bn from extortion last year, with 160,000 businesses, mostly in southern Italy, paying up. As a result, only one in 10 foreign investors set up companies in the south, he said. READ ON

Belgian Banks can now accept "Black Money"

Belgian banks will be able to accept small amounts of funds that have been kept from the taxman.
Until now bank clerks risked a conviction, if they handled illicit earnings - what Belgians generally refer to as "black money" - but a modification of the definition of fencing in Belgian criminal law means they now no longer need to fear a court appearance.

Leo Van Hove, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, made a monetary study of the underground economy of Belgium as part of his 1997 doctoral thesis.
“Black work” costs every single Belgian EUR 1,500 per year in additional taxes, says Siebens. A family of four pays a staggering EUR 6,000 extra in taxes every year in order to make up the amount of taxes that would have been paid had everyone reported their income. “Only the richest people are profiting from this situation,” he says.

Antwerp launches a brothel guide

Tourist officials in Belgium are supporting a visitor map that encourages trips to brothels in Antwerp.
The map, which is backed by the Flemish Government, the city of Antwerp and Tourism Flanders, recommends visits to a “mega-brothel with 51 sex suites where 102 prostitutes alternately work around the clock” in the red light district.
On the “by night” section of the map, which is entitled “Antwerp for young people”, there are directions to the brothel under the heading: “The oldest trade in the world.”

READ ON