Free Republic

Steven Bing, Peter Benjamin Lewis, George Soros It is late in the day, but there is still time to ask the Kerry-Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee about their financing sources. Equally important to ask is just what do these ridiculously rich and strange people expect to get for their millions of dollars. Let's look at three of Kerry's friends, probably responsible for at least $30 million in donations. Steven Bing: Our Victorian ancestors had the right words to describe Bing. He would have been known as "a cad and a bounder," while today he is dismissed as a...

On “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump is the guy who fires people. In real life, it’s a different story. For 16 years, Anthony “Tony” P. Senecal was Trump’s personal butler at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and club in Palm Beach, Fla. Few people know Trump as well as Senecal. During the first interview Senecal has given since retiring last year, he told Newsmax what it was like to work for him.

<p>The CEO, president, and "part-owner" of the Shangri-La, a "chic hotel in Santa Monica," one Tehmina Adaya, a Muslim, now claims to have, "condemned anti-Semitism and declared her support for Israel." Hmmm... That's strange. In July 2010, she belched out, "Get the [expletive] Jews out of the hotel." The expletive was the word "fucking." Back then, her vulgar, hateful words were aimed at a group of pro-Israel young people, many of them Jews, members of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) -- surprise, surprise. Why now Adaya's sudden admiration for Jews and Israel?</p>

Lesson of the day, even if you have diplomatic immunity it would probably be best if you paid your hotel bill before trying to skip out in the middle of the night, especially when that bill is $7.5 million and you can’t exactly “sneak” away with a 60 person entourage. That was exactly what happened in December at a luxury hotel in Paris when Saudi Princess Maha al-Sudani (ex to Crown Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz) tried to leave the Shangri-La without paying her massively huge bill. The Saudi princess racked up her bill after taking over a 41-room floor...

Fast forward into troubleFour years ago, Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences. Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report from a country crash-landing in the 21st century Saturday June 14, 2003The GuardianApril 2002 was a turbulent month for the people of Bhutan. One of the remotest nations in the world, perched high in the snowlines of the Himalayas, suffered a crime wave. The 700,000 inhabitants of...

Did Russian explorers discover Khyunglung Nulkhar? Russian explorers announced this week to have discovered mid-September of the ruins of Khyunglung Nulkhar (Tibet), mythical capital of the State de Shangshung disappeared in VIIIe century, but the authenticity of this discovery is questioned by a travel agency which affirms y to have organized a trekking last June. "We are the first Europeans to have put the foot" at Khyunglung Nulkhar (money Palate of Garuda), declared Iouri Zakharov, the head of forwarding, at the time of the press conference in Moscow. This member of the Russian Academy of the natural science estimates...

B O S T O N, July 28, 2004 — As Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards arrived in Boston today for the Democratic National Convention, so did the California man who is their single biggest contributor. He is Stephen Bing, a wealthy film producer who, with little fanfare, has managed to steer a total of more than $16 million of his money to Democratic candidates and the supposedly independent groups that support them. "To most of the people who track money and politics, they're like, who the hell is Steve Bing?" said Chuck Lewis, founder of the Center for...