Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 31, 2011 - 47 comments

In 1973 CIA director James Schlesinger asked "employees to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency’s charter." You know, illegal stuff, black ops, the works. The resulting top secret documents are called the "Family Jewels." Today they were released. Press release with link to documents.
posted by MarshallPoe on Jun 26, 2007 - 34 comments

[Mugshot filter] The Hammer is tanned, rested, and ready... to kick some partisan-hack a**! But seriously folks, has Tom DeLay ever looked better in his life? Book 'im, Danno -- and don't muss that fabulous hair!
posted by digaman on Oct 20, 2005 - 61 comments

Kirk von Ackermann mysteriously dissappears on October 9, 2003. He was working for a contracting company in iraq and had called for assistance after getting a flat tire. When help arrived, he was gone without a trace leaving behind a laptop, his satellite phone and a briefcase with $40,000 destined for Iraqi subcontractors in the back seat of his truck.

Rick Manelick, a colleague of his, had told army investigators investigating the appearance that large sums of money were being paid to an army officer in exchange for granting contracts to Ultra Services, the company they both worked for. Two months after the disappearance he was killed in a drive-by shooting a day after telling a SF Chronicle reporter "I'm in fear of my life, you know. It's not Iraqis I'm worried about, either, it's people from my own country." (Found via SojoMail, see also Topeka DIY and Time.
posted by nTeleKy on Feb 21, 2005 - 13 comments