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David Germain, The Associated Press, May 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES – Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary “Sicko,” The Associated Press has learned.

The investigation provides another contentious lead-in for a provocative film by Moore, a fierce critic of President Bush. In the past, Moore’s adversaries have fanned publicity that helped the filmmaker create a new brand of opinionated blockbuster documentary.

“Sicko” promises to take the health-care industry to task the way Moore confronted America’s passion for guns in “Bowling for Columbine” and skewered Bush over his handling of Sept. 11 in “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.

“This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba,” Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore.

In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of “Sicko.” The person requested anonymity because Moore’s attorneys had not yet determined how to respond.

Moore, who scolded Bush over the Iraq war during the 2003 Oscar telecast, received the letter Monday, the person said. “Sicko” premieres May 19 at the Cannes Film Festival and debuts in U.S. theaters June 29.

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Unlike the democrats, and George W. Bush, conservatives want smaller government.

Why?

If your federal government can house the homeless, feed the hungry, Medicare the elderly, and now entirely take over health care and fix it, why on earth would anyone want to reduce its size and responsibility? Why not have Hillary care: a single payer socialist medical system here in the United States? Wouldn’t that be an improvement? Obviously what we have now is increasing in cost far more rapidly than inflation would indicate it should. Millions can’t afford health care and are forced to sit for hours in emergency rooms, with the illegal aliens, in order to see a doctor. And notice that among its many sins, the medical profession has carefully failed to cure cancer even though they’ve had research money flowing into their coffers for decades. So why not? Why not try Hillary care? Furthermore, why not have the government expand until it takes care of its people from cradle to grave?

Why are conservatives so against this and all other government expansion?

Because the federal government is the most dishonest, wasteful way to get anything done.

In the 1990’s, Bill Clinton’s people said “Oh, the reason government works so poorly is the wrong people are running things.” Well, the Clinton democrats had eight years and nothing changed in the workings of government. And under Big Spender George W Bush, who is not, I repeat not a conservative, things are earmark-pork barrel business as usual, just as it has been for the last 50 or so years.

Our federal government has steadily become increasingly dishonest and inefficient until today the result is just sickening to any reasonable person. This is why conservatives want smaller government – because of its abysmal track record. Smaller government is obviously the direction the country should go in. To demonstrate this, I’ll close with one of many examples:

Manipulating Data to Encourage Spending
The Army Corps of Engineers spends $5 billion annually constructing dams and other water projects. Yet, in a massive conflict of interest, it is also charged with evaluating the science and eco­nomics of each proposed water project. The Corps’ “strategic vision” calls on managers to increase their budgets as rapidly as possible, which requires approving as many proposed projects as possible. Consequently, the Corps has repeatedly been accused of deliberately manipulating its economic studies to justify unworthy projects.
Investigations by the GAO, The Washington Post, and several private organizations have found that Corps studies routinely contain dozens of basic arithmetic errors, computer errors, and ridiculous economic assumptions that artificially inflate the benefits of water projects by as much as 300 per­cent. In one case, a study’s authors inflated a project’s benefits by using a 2.5 percent interest rate that dated back to 1954. In many cases in which the Corps calculated that a project would be a net benefit, arithmetic corrections revealed that the costs would be many times greater than the bene­fits. By that point, of course, the unnecessary and wasteful project is often underway and cannot be stopped.
These errors appear to reflect more deception than sloppiness. A Washington Post investigation uncovered managers ordering analysts to “get cre­ative,” to “look for ways to get to yes as fast as pos­sible,” and “not to take no for an answer.” After a public outcry, in 2002, the Corps suspended work on 150 projects to review the economics used to justify them. However, given the combination of Congress’s thirst for pork-barrel projects and the Corps’ built-in incentives to approve projects that will increase its budget, real reforms seem unlikely.
 

Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, May 8, 2007

So you can feast on your stories but it won’t stop the bleeding
When the truth is found the houses surely fall down
There’s blood on their mouths of all lies and liars
The bloody red eyes of the rodeo clown

–John Mellencamp, “Rodeo Clown”

The bad news last week was that Glenn Beck, the right-wing radio talker and self-described “rodeo clown” who broadcasts nightly on CNN Headline News, hosted a world-is-flat special about the “myths” surrounding global warming. In it, Beck rounded up the usual ban of discredited, oil industry-friendly “experts” who announced that the looming atmospheric crisis is overblown, and that far from being a consensus, serious scientists still disagree on the matter.

The good news was that Beck’s special, “Exposed: Climate of Fear,” was a commercial flop, finishing dead last in total viewers among CNN, Headline News, Fox News, and MSNBC programs that night. The weak showing simply highlighted Beck’s recent, albeit little-discussed, ratings woes. Just months after being hyped as the fastest-growing prime-time program in cable news, Glenn Beck has become arguably the most stagnant prime-time program in cable news.

For CNN, the repercussions of the backslide are immense and go far beyond the advertising dollars and cents involved.

That’s because whereas CNN last year traded away its good name in exchange for debuting Beck’s factually challenged and hateful brand of broadcasting, at least CNN execs were getting a ratings boost out of the Faustian bargain. Today, Beck’s still making a mockery out of CNN’s reputation on a daily basis, as he disparages liberals, gays, Democrats, blacks, immigrants, and Muslims at will. But in return, CNN’s now stuck with a Beck program that’s trapped in neutral and shows signs of sliding into reverse.

Well played, CNN.

“I’m a rodeo clown who happens to have a radio and TV show,” Beck recently announced. Beck uses the rodeo clown shtick relentlessly (it’s listed under “occupation” on his MySpace page), as he works overtime to assure viewers he’s an undereducated, unsung hero with no journalism background. He’s just an Average Joe who, by the way, produces 60-minute, prime-time news specials for CNN.

In truth, rodeo clowns are distracters. They bring attention to themselves by causing loud, outlandish scenes so that dismounted bull riders can reach safety. So in that regard, yes, Beck is a rodeo clown; a professional distracter.

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Alexander Bolton, The Hill, May 09, 2007

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Asshole-Texas) is calling on the Justice Department either to drop its investigation of his wife and former political associates or else to bring charges quickly.

DeLay said he has given the FBI documents exonerating his wife, but an associate of the former lawmaker said that agents have followed up with a fresh round of subpoenas.

The inquiry appears to be focused on determining whether DeLay’s wife, Christine, earned her pay from two organizations controlled by Ed Buckham, a lobbyist once closely affiliated with the former Republican leader, according to sources interviewed by federal investigators. Several former employees of the groups have received subpoenas for documents, some in the past few weeks.

DeLay told The Hill that he gave the FBI documents and computer records proving his wife was a legitimate employee of ARMPAC, a fundraising committee, and Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying firm once controlled by Buckham.

The Justice Department’s persistence shows it has run amok, DeLay says, echoing a charge leveled last week by Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) in response to reports that he is under federal investigation.

“They’re not going after me,”DeLay said of the FBI. “They’re going after other people and they’re questioning the other people about whether they know anything I may have done. And we’ve given them all the records and that’s the problem they’re having.”

DeLay said the evidence shows that his wife did not accept improper payments: “She did her work and she was underpaid for the work she did and they can’t make the case. It’s a Justice Department that is running amok. Fish or cut bait. Do something.”

Speaking after a meeting with former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) on Capitol Hill, DeLay said, “We have cooperated with everything. We’ve given them everything, including computers; they’ve taken computers that I had here. They’ve gotten everything that’s got anything to do with my life.”

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Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, May 9, 2007

Paris – Beauty has been chased off by the Beast.

Now France waits to see just how feral and domineering Nicolas Sarkozy will be.

The lovely Ségolène Royal — more phenomenon than politician — ran a maternal, Manichaean campaign painting her intense, Napoleon-sized opponent as an immoral political animal and a brute whose election would spark riots and “a sort of civil war.”

The luminous Sego did not even deign to address the “dark” Sarko by name, either in the debate or in her concession speech Sunday night.

Cartoonists have depicted the tough guy — who bullies rivals, betrays mentors and calls young troublemakers in low-income housing in the Paris suburbs “scum” — as a gargoyle, Dracula, an evil sorcerer and a devil.

The imagery of the presidential duel tapped into mythic Gothic tales of France, like “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

With Hungarian, Greek and Jewish roots, with a father who deserted and belittled him, with his jittery ambition and pugnacious talk, Sarko is jolting the inbred, insular and introspective world of elite French politics. The far right has called him “a foreigner with an unhappy marriage,” and a Sego adviser scorned him as “an American neocon with a French passport.”

“He’s an arriviste,” said Bruno Ract-Madoux, the owner of a vintage shop in Paris. “From the beginning, he was someone who would sell his mother as fast as possible to get ahead.”

Or as an elegant Parisian woman who voted for Sego warned guests at a postelection dinner party, “He’s like a little Donald Trump.”

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Think Progress, May 6, 2007

This morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich advised fellow conservatives not to talk about President Bush’s record. “President Bush is not the future. He’s not a solution. He doesn’t solve Social Security. He doesn’t solve Medicare. He doesn’t solve the economy. He doesn’t solve the environment. He doesn’t solve education. He’s a current fact,” Gingrich said.

It’s also a “current fact” that the conservative agenda has failed to “solve” these important issues over the past six years.

Gingrich went on to say that conservatives “have to say, this is not what we want to debate. It’s not in Baghdad, it’s not in Katrina, it’s not at Walter Reed, it’s not with the U.S. attorneys, but I have a better plan for a better solution that fits your values.” When Host Bob Schieffer suggested that Gingrich seemed to advocating steering clear of President Bush, Gingrich responded, “Well, I think that’s clear.”

Gingrich’s “hush-hush” list will only grow as the American public learns more about the fallout from policies that the administration has pursued. And as the Congress continues to provide the type of aggressive oversight that uncovers these administration failures, it becomes more obvious that conservatives have served as silent enablers, refusing to correct course when they had the opportunity to do so.

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Have you ever noticed the way Big Dawg Bill Clinton and His Ultimate Greatness Rush Limbaugh automatically hunch forward, deep in thought, and scowl at their feet? This is a sign of great debility; though I didn’t recognize the symptoms until, one day, I happened by a shop just before opening time. A group of nervous men was impatiently pacing back and forth waiting to be let in and they noticeably hunched over, scowling with all their might, exhibiting the same affliction as Bill and Rush.

Then it dawned on me. This was a Don Sherwood golf shop. These people were hopelessly addicted to golf!

My compassionate conservative instincts immediately roared to the surface. There had to be some way to come to the rescue of Rush Limbaugh.

But what could be done? This ailment had the exact components of a video game and you know how difficult that is to overcome. I appealed to several friends, and after considerable brainstorming we came up with an idea. All went home and dug through garages for the stuff that would be required for an experiment that hopefully would lift this horrible curse from His Greatness.

Very early on a Saturday morning, we gathered at the Impossibly Exclusive Isles Golf Course, paid a healthy sum to the owner, and set out for the largest lake, sweetly nestled among the greens. There we lovingly set out a dozen old but usable fishing poles, and lots of bait, hooks, weights and bobbers. Charley, who has Department of Fish and Game connections, backed up the borrowed truck and dumped a large load of sparkling rainbow trout into the lake. So with fish in the lake, and fishing paraphernalia strategically placed, we hid behind some perfectly manicured trees and watched.

Soon several men strode up, looking rich and important, their caddies leaning against the weight of golf clubs. One of them spotted the fishing gear. Word spread and they all stood, staring silently. Then, whispering to each other, the group approached warily, keeping close together, feeling confidence in numbers. Finally, one of the younger members of the golfing clutch became bold, reached out, and gently picked up a fishing pole. Immediately conversation broke out:

“George, you know how to use one of those things?”

“Yes, but there aren’t any fish in this lake.”

One of the caddies piped up, “Show us how you cast, George!”

He baited up and cast the long thin fishing line out over the lake. It gleamed in the early morning sun and gently dropped toward the surface. But before it touched, a large hungry fish exploded out of the water and snatched the bait in mid-air. The whole company, with one voice, yelled “Wow!” and grabbed poles to try their luck. Other golfers ambled up and were excitedly told the news – fish in the Impossibly Exclusive Isles Golf Course pond! It wasn’t long before golf clubs were scattered about everywhere, utterly abandoned, and everyone was trying his luck, casting out across the water, swapping lies, and generally behaving like fisherman.

Success! We’d seem to have found the cure for golf – fishing.

We then submitted our results across the fishing world for peer review. Only in France was there a problem – the French golfers were afraid to pick up the fishing poles and try casting. But that was discountable; these were the same people, after all, who stupidly refused to visit the new Disneyland France when it was first built in that country.

Our experiment now enthusiastically confirmed, this information has quickly spread: fishing kills the golfing urge.

I immediately e-mailed Rush Limbaugh with the great news.

Would one of you liberals please do the same for Bill Clinton?

Thanks, Grimgold

Perry Bacon, Jr. The Washington Post, May 6, 2007

VIRGINIA BEACH, May 5 — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) did not discuss his Mormon faith as he continued his outreach Saturday to conservative Christians in a graduation speech at Regent University, the school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.

Instead, Romney, who is intensely courting this key segment of the Republican base in hopes of winning the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, expounded on conservative themes such as the importance of child-rearing and marriage and the presence of evil in the world.

“There is no work more important to America’s future than the work that is done within the four walls of the American home,” Romney said. He also criticized people who choose not to get married because they enjoy the single life.

“It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking,” Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. “In France, for instance, I’m told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past.”

And he twice referred to the Virginia Tech shootings on April 16 in which a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself.

“We’re shocked by the evil of the Virginia Tech shooting,” Romney said. “I opened my Bible shortly after I heard of the tragedy. Only a few verses, it seems, after the Fall, we read that Adam and Eve’s oldest son killed his younger brother. From the beginning, there has been evil in the world.”

He added: “Pornography and violence poison our music and movies and TV and video games. The Virginia Tech shooter, like the Columbine shooters before him, had drunk from this cesspool.”

Robertson, who has not endorsed any of the 2008 presidential candidates, called Romney an “outstanding American.”

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Frank Rich, The New York Times, May 6, 2007

If, as J.F.K. had it, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, the defeat in Iraq is the most pitiful orphan imaginable. Its parents have not only tossed it to the wolves but are also trying to pin its mutant DNA on any patsy they can find.

George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game, which began more than three years ago when his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Tommy Franks told Bob Woodward that Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s intelligence bozo, was the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” (that’s the expurgated version). Last fall, Kenneth Adelman, the neocon cheerleader who foresaw a “cakewalk” in Iraq, told Vanity Fair that Mr. Tenet, General Franks and Paul Bremer were “three of the most incompetent people who’ve ever served in such key spots.” Richard Perle chimed in that the “huge mistakes” were “not made by neoconservatives” and instead took a shot at President Bush. Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons’ former darling, told Dexter Filkins of The Times “the real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz.”

And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.

This would be a Three Stooges routine were there only three stooges. The good news is that Mr. Tenet’s book rollout may be the last gasp of this farcical round robin of recrimination. Republicans and Democrats have at last found some common ground by condemning his effort to position himself as the war’s innocent scapegoat. Some former C.I.A. colleagues are rougher still. Michael Scheuer, who ran the agency’s bin Laden unit, has accused Mr. Tenet of lacking “the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss.” Even after Mr. Tenet did leave office, he maintained a Robert McNamara silence until he cashed in.

Satisfying though it is to watch a circular firing squad of the war’s enablers, unfinished business awaits. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is not in the past: the war escalates even as all this finger-pointing continues. Very little has changed between the fourth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished” this year and the last. Back then, President Bush cheered an Iraqi “turning point” precipitated by “the emergence of a unity government.” Since then, what’s emerged is more Iraqi disunity and a major leap in the death toll. That’s why Americans voted in November to get out.

The only White House figure to take any responsibility for the fiasco is the former Bush-Cheney pollster Matthew Dowd, who in March expressed remorse for furthering a war he now deems a mistake. For his belated act of conscience, he was promptly patronized as an incipient basket case by an administration flack, who attributed Mr. Dowd’s defection to “personal turmoil.” If that is what this vicious gang would do to a pollster, imagine what would befall Colin Powell if he spoke out. Nonetheless, Mr. Powell should summon the guts to do so. Until there is accountability for the major architects and perpetrators of the Iraq war, the quagmire will deepen. A tragedy of this scale demands a full accounting, not to mention a catharsis.

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This week’s Ye Olde stands alone; like the just as fictional Lee Harvey Oswald did from that window. It is not meant as threat or a suggestion. Anyone actually doing this would be beyond an IDIOT. Mere satire, parody? Perhaps. But no extra features this week: just a totally fictional musing called…

THE ASSASSIN

Early 2008.

Junior and Biggus Dickus stood, holding hands, on a platform with Fred Thompson… candidate for the presidency. Well, actually the phrase “marionette in training” might better describe his situation. No ReTHUGlican was going to win who couldn’t be controlled by, as the talented Bartcop calls evildoers, the BFEE. Perhaps “human android” would be even closer to the truth.

Wait! What about the STORY, Scribe?

Sorry, perhaps like Scrooge, YOS was distracted by a piece of undigested meat, or was it Maiden Millie? Hmmm, choices, choices. Either digressing while digesting, or by olde haggis?
DAMN! Maiden Millie just slapped Scribe.

He deserved it.

Junior’s thumb was gently caressing the hand he held… and NO, Scribe won’t finish explaining that. Some relationships are best left unexplained: like a human-size roach having relations with a human-size, bloated, tick.

As they held their hands high to celebrate the up and coming fixed election a shot rang out.

Why do shots “ring out?” Do they have little bells on them?

The bullet shattered its way…

For MORE Click HERE.

The Associated Press, May 4, 2007

WASHINGTON –The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms.

Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.

In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., “would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere ‘suspicions’ of a terrorist threat.”

“As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word ‘suspect’ has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties,” Cox wrote.

In a letter supporting the measure, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said the bill would not automatically prevent a gun sale to a suspected terrorist. In some cases, federal agents may want to let a sale go forward to avoid compromising an ongoing investigation.

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Why isn’t the drive-by media covering this? Where are the femanists? Where is the outrage?

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as “an abhorrent murder” and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.  

Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an “honour killing” by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.

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The teenager was dragged outside by 8 or 9 men and stoned for half an hour until she died. Her boyfriend is now in hiding in fear for his life

They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.

Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.

A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.

The stoning happened last month, but only came to light yesterday with the release of the Internet video.

It is feared her death has already triggered a retaliatory attack. Last week 23 Yezidi workmen were forced off a bus travelling from Mosulto Bashika by a group of Sunni gunmen and summarily shot dead.

An Amnesty International spokesman in London said they receive frequent reports of honour crimes from Iraq – particularly in the predominantly Kurdish north.

Most victims are women and girls who are considered by male relatives to have shamed their families by immoral behaviour.

Kurdish authorities have introduced reforms outlawing honour killings, but have failed to investigate them or prosecute suspects, added the Amnesty spokesman.

Kate Allen, the organisation’s UK director, said: “This young girl’s murder is truly abhorrent and her killers must be brought to justice.

“Unless the authorities respond vigorously to this and any other reports of crimes in the name of ‘honour’, we must fear for the future of women in Iraq.”

Larry Zilliox, Talk to Action, May 03, 2007

As followers of Rev. Sun Myung Moon pray for a presidential pardon for their aging Messiah’s felony tax-fraud conviction in the 1980s, the latest tax filing of the Washington Times Foundation has become available. The return covers the months from April 2005 through March 2006 and shows a $100,000 contribution from the foundation to the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

The Washington Times was founded by Moon and has been subsidized by Moon-controlled interests.

The only larger donation made by the foundation in that year was to another entity closely associated with Moon, the American Family Coalition, Inc. which received $219,000.

Funding for the Washington Times Foundation comes primarily from the mysterious International Peace Foundation (IPF). The source of the funds IPF donated to the Washington Times Foundation are not known and most likely are untraceable because IPF does not appear to be a legally incorporated entity. The IPF address listed in the Washington Times Foundation tax return is the Unification Movement-owned building at 7777 Leesburg Pike in Falls Church Virginia. A check of the Internal Revenue Service online directory of organizations recognized as exempt failed to find a listing for IPF. A check of GuideStar database of non-profit organizations also found no listing.

IPF was originally incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1988. A check of the District of Columbia online corporate registrations web page shows the status of IPF as “Revoked.” District of Columbia corporate records identify Moon’s long time right-hand man Bo Hi Pak as an original officer of the organization. Pak has a history of leading many Moon connected businesses and non-profit organizations in the Washington, DC area. One of the oldest organizations with which Pak is associated is the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation. Pak, serving as Chairman, mismanaged the organization so badly it fell victim to one of the largest Nigerian Fraud Scams in US history. In 2001 and 2002 the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation reported in it’s IRS Form 990 tax return that it had lost nearly $3,000,000 to scammers.

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