Archive for September 15th, 2017

…until morale improves.

Friday, September 15th, 2017

Two games into the season, the Cincinnati Bengals (currently 0-2) have fired Ken Zampese, their offensive coordinator.

Smells like desperation, doesn’t it?

Redemption.

Friday, September 15th, 2017

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about redemption. What does it mean to be redeemed? Who decides when you’ve redeemed yourself? Can some people never be redeemed?

I will tell you now, I’m not sure that I have any answers. So I’m going to put a jump here: if you don’t want to read my meandering, you’re welcome to skip over it and go read “TMQ Watch” or “Gratuitous Gun Porn” or even the flaming hyenas entries. I won’t hold it against you.

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Flaming hyenas watch.

Friday, September 15th, 2017

Sorry about the delay: this news broke last night while I was downtown at the cop shop and couldn’t blog.

The Travis County district attorney will not pursue, at least for now, the most serious charges against state Rep. Dawnna Dukes, saying prosecutors have renewed their investigation into the travel vouchers at the heart of the 13 felony counts the Austin Democrat is facing.

The DA is still prosecuting two misdemeanor charges “relating to allegations of her using legislative staffers for personal gain”. The charges the DA is not pursuing at this time are felonies related to misuse of travel vouchers.

I don’t quite know what to make of this.

District Attorney Margaret Moore confirmed to the American-Statesman on Thursday that prosecutors have obtained new information relating to the vouchers, which Dukes is accused of falsifying for financial gain. But Moore declined to elaborate on what the new information is.
“The district attorney’s office recently received new, unexpected information pertinent to that case and the new information has created a need for further investigation by this office and the Texas Rangers,” Moore said.

“New information”. Is it exculpatory? It seems to me that if there was exculpatory evidence, Ms. Dukes and her legal team would have offered it in her defense a long damn time ago, as well as spreading it to every media outlet they could find.

If it’s not exculpatory, is the DA playing hardball again, trying to get her to take a plea? “Look, we’ve got new leads. We’re turning the Rangers loose again. Take a plea now, resign, and we drop charges. Otherwise, we’re going to dig up even more dirt and you can spend the next 28 years experiencing the joy of busting rocks.”

I don’t have any idea, and I don’t think anyone outside of the highest levels of the DA’s office does either. Buy popcorn futures.

Obit watch: September 15, 2017.

Friday, September 15th, 2017

Gastone Moschin, Italian actor perhaps most famous in the United States as “Don Fanucci” in “The Godfather Part II”.

Oddly, I had never seen Part II until just a few weeks ago: I’d seen Part 1 a couple of times, but for various reasons had just never watched Part II. I think, as a movie, I liked Part I better: some of the early stuff with the young Don Corleone is kind of weak.

But maybe the conventional opinion is right, and the two movies should be thought of as a single film about the tragedy of Michael Corleone.