Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

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Obit watch: September 26, 2023.

Tuesday, September 26th, 2023

David McCallum. THR. Tributes from Deadline.

I was a little young for “UNCLE” first-run (and I don’t recall it being in re-runs on any of the Houston stations) and I’ve never been a big fan of “NCIS”. But I did kind of like Mr. McCallum. I have no idea what his politics were, which I think is worthy of praise in the current era.

And this kind of made me choke up a bit:

“After returning from the hospital to their apartment, I asked my mother if she was OK before she went to sleep. Her answer was simply, ‘Yes. But I do wish we had had a chance to grow old together.’ She is 79, and dad just turned 90. The honesty in that emotion shows how vibrant their beautiful relationship and daily lives were, and that somehow, even at 90, Daddy never grew old.”

So did this:

Donations can be made to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.

Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.

(Mr. McCallum served in the British military. But his second wife’s father was a Marine who fought at Iwo Jima.)

Other credits include “The Master”, “Babylon 5”, “Hell Drivers” (which I have to admit sounds interesting: check out that cast), “A Night to Remember”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women and War”.

Dick Clark, one-term Democratic Senator from Iowa. He was famous for walking 1300 miles during his 1972 campaign.

Matteo Messina Denaro, Italian Mafia boss.

In 2020, Mr. Messina Denaro was convicted in absentia for his role in the high-profile murders of two of Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992, and for deadly bombings the next year in Milan, Rome and Florence that prosecutors believe were part of a Cosa Nostra strategy against the state.
He also received a life sentence for his involvement in the kidnapping and death of the 12-year-old son of a Mafia turncoat after the boy was strangled and his body was dissolved in acid, and in the death of a police officer.

He’d been “underground” since 1993, but was still running the “family business”. The authorities tracked him down because he was being treated for cancer:

Since he was not treated under his real name, they used national health service records to identify patients with similar conditions and narrow it down.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#109 in a series)

Friday, September 22nd, 2023

I had to go to the eye doctor this morning, and the Robert Menendez story broke while I was there. My eyes are still a little messed up, and I’m kind of behind on this story – at this point, everyone and his brother is on it like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation – so some short random observations.

I’m impressed he was taking payoffs in gold as well as in cash, though I wouldn’t have left so much cash lying around the house. I absolutely believe you should diversify what you accept for bribes: cash, negotiable securities, precious and/or strategic metals, etc. I’m not yet sold on cryptocurrency as a bribery mechanism, though.

Sen. Menendez is actually a repeat hyena: I noted his indictment back in 2015, though I missed that the jury in that case hung and he wasn’t retried for reasons.

Speaking of the previous charges, the tabloid of record has an amusing run-down of those, complete with photos of “Bob’s Babes”.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 15, 2023.

Friday, September 15th, 2023

Éva Fahidi, Holocaust survivor.

Ms. Fahidi, part of a Hungarian Jewish family that had converted to Catholicism, was rounded up in 1944 along with the rest of her family and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination complex in occupied Poland. She was 18.
She was apparently saved from the gas chamber by being of an age and fitness level to qualify for a forced-labor camp. Her other family members were sent to their deaths. Josef Mengele, the Nazi death camp doctor, presided over the selection process.

…

After the war ended in 1945, Ms. Fahidi (who was also known as Éva Fahidi-Pusztai from an early marriage) kept her experiences largely to herself for more than a half-century. Then, in 2003, on the anniversary of that day on the ramp when she last saw her family members, she visited the Birkenau site and was disappointed to find it more like a tourist attraction than like anything she remembered.
She committed herself to telling her story and to helping younger generations understand what had gone on at the camp and in the Holocaust in general. Over the next 20 years she spoke to countless schoolchildren and worked with young volunteers who collected Holocaust remembrances from survivors. She appeared at anniversary observances marking the liberation of Auschwitz and other occasions and spoke to legislative bodies. And she bore witness, including attending the 2015 war crimes trial in Germany of Oskar Gröning, who at 93 was accused of having been one of the guards working that ramp at Auschwitz and was one of the last complicit Germans to face trial.

Lauch Faircloth, former Senator from North Carolina.

But it was as a member and later as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on the District of Columbia that Mr. Faircloth made national headlines on a collision course with Mr. Barry, a former leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who had been a popular elected official in Washington, in various capacities, since the establishment of limited home rule in the capital in 1973.

…

The mayor admitted that the city government was “unworkable” and asked Congress to take over some city functions. Instead, with Mr. Faircloth as point man, a new Republican congressional majority put some city operations into receivership and created a financial control board to take over day-to-day spending and financial planning, with the power to overrule the mayor.
Over the next two years, Mr. Faircloth granted the city some concessions: more money than requested for public schools and repairs to decaying buildings. But Mr. Barry and the control board battled constantly over policy and budgetary issues.
A settlement was reached in 1997, when the Clinton administration and Senator Faircloth agreed to rescue the city but stripped Mr. Barry of power over most city agencies, handing it to the control board. The mayor, who retained authority over parks and recreation, libraries and tourism, called the arrangement “a rape of democracy.”

…

He dismissed Mr. Barry’s criticism. “I’ve heard so many meaningless statements from Marion Barry that one more doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s airy persiflage.”

Lisa Lyon, bodybuilder and Robert Mapplethorpe photo subject.

Lawrence emailed an obit for Jean Boht, British actress, with the note that he wasn’t aware there was a British remake of “The Golden Girls”. I wasn’t either, but if we can remake British shows in the US, why can’t the Brits remake our stuff?

(I was aware that there was an attempt at a US “Fawlty Towers” remake. I wasn’t aware, until I went to look it up, that there were actually three attempts, including the Harvey Korman/Betty White one, and another with John Larroquette.)

IMDB.

Posted in History, Nazis, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 2 Comments »

Quick and dirty updates.

Wednesday, August 30th, 2023

The Elvis gun went for $199,750. I don’t know if that’s inclusive of the bidder’s premium. (Previously.)

I wrote a while back about the criminal charges against Thomas Moyer, Apple’s security head and the somewhat related (I think) case against former Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith.

I missed, however, that the case against Moyer was dismissed in 2021.

But: a California appellate court reinstated the charges last week.

Friday’s opinion, written by Justice Daniel Bromberg, joined by Justices Adrienne Grover and Cynthia Lie, claimed that the evidence presented to the grand jury was “sufficient to raise a reasonable suspicion of such bribery.”

Appellate decision here. Interesting quote:

During the relevant time frame, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office rarely issued CCW licenses. Indeed, the office’s practice was to not even process an application for a CCW license absent a special instruction to do so. Only Sheriff Laurie Smith and a small number of others in the Sheriff’s Office had the authority to give such instructions. One of those individuals was Rick Sung, who appears to have run Sheriff Smith’s 2018 re-election campaign and after the election became the undersheriff, second in command to the sheriff. Undersheriff Sung also had authority to place license applications on hold even after licenses were signed by the sheriff.

Posted in Apple, California Über Alles, Elvis, Guns, Law, Music, Politics, Smith and Wesson | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 29, 2023.

Tuesday, August 29th, 2023

Nicholas Hitchon.

He was one of the children profiled in the original “7 Up” movie and the followup films through “63 Up” in 2019. He worked at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Professor Hitchon pursued research on nuclear fusion, then switched to computational plasma physics. Once in a while, Mr. Apted would ask him about his work.
“When I try to explain,” Professor Hitchon told Physics Today in 2000, “his eyes glaze over.”
He published more than 100 journal articles and three books, the university’s posting said. He retired in 2022.

As best as I can tell, he was only the second member of the group to pass. (Lynn Johnson died in 2013.)

NYT obit for Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 28, 2023.

Monday, August 28th, 2023

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. He was 49. Pancreatic cancer got him.

Mr. Wurzelbacher was better known as “Joe the Plumber”.

Wurzelbacher, the owner of a plumbing business at the time, rose to national acclaim when he confronted Obama at a 2008 campaign event in Toledo, Ohio, accusing the Democratic presidential candidate’s tax plan of conflicting with the American dream.
Obama countered that the plan would help small businesses grow more quickly.

Posted in Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Quick hyena update.

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2023

Missed this previously, but Mike the Musicologist pinged it over to me.

Patrick Wojahn, the former mayor of College Park, Maryland, took a guilty plea.

Wojahn pleaded guilty to 60 counts of distribution of child pornography, 40 counts of possession of child pornography, and 40 counts of possession of child pornography with the intention to distribute…

Sentencing is scheduled for November 20th, per the article.

(Previously.)

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Brief police beat news.

Monday, August 21st, 2023

Austin Police chief Joseph Chacon is stepping down and retiring from APD after two years as chief.

I really don’t have anything much to say about this: Chief Chacon didn’t do anything in his time to really rise to my attention, either positively or negatively. There are things to be said about poor police response time, ongoing issues with the homeless, and other things going on within the department. But I feel like many of those issues are the results of poor decision making by our city government, and were out of Chief Chacon’s control.

I wish him well in his next endeavors, and I think a Fist Rockbone Brian Manley for mayor/Joseph Chacon for city council ticket would be a fantastic idea.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 18, 2023.

Friday, August 18th, 2023

I haven’t done any obits for the past few days, for reasons I don’t want to go into here.

But a few people have sent me some, and it would be rude not to acknowledge them.

Sir Michael Parkinson, British talk show host. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Darren Kent, actor. IMDB. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Les Misérables” (the TV series), and “C.O.O.L.I.O Time Travel Gangster”. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Paul Brodeur, longtime New Yorker writer.

Mr. Brodeur also reported on the possible dangers of radiation from microwave ovens, computer terminals and electromagnetic power lines. But this reporting was not as widely accepted as his work on asbestos and CFCs.
In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences found little to no evidence of any risk from power-line radiation. Other studies have been far from conclusive. (Mr. Brodeur noted, however, that the World Health Organization classified microwave radiation from cellphones to be a possible carcinogen.)

James L. Buckley, former Senator from New York (and brother of William F. Buckley Jr.).

Posted in Media, Obits, Politics, TV | 3 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#108 in a series)

Friday, August 18th, 2023

One of last year’s big flaming hyena stories was about Harry Sidhu, the mayor of Anaheim, who resigned over land deals with the Los Angeles Angels (and his “illegal registration of a helicopter“).

I kind of lost track of this story because California newspapers. But thanks to the Field of Schemes blog, I found out: former mayor Sidhu is taking a guilty plea.

The charges against Sidhu in a plea agreement filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana include lying to FBI agents about not expecting to receive anything from the Angels when the transaction closed — secret recordings captured him saying he hoped to secure a $1-million campaign contribution — and destroying an email in which he provided confidential information about the city’s negotiations to a team consultant.

…

Sidhu, who pledged to “make Anaheim shine again” after being elected in 2018, resigned after the FBI’s sprawling public corruption investigation into Anaheim became public. At the time, he denied doing anything wrong. Now, he will plead guilty to obstruction of justice, wire fraud and two counts of making false statements.

…

When FBI agents interviewed Sidhu on May 12, 2022, the agreement said, he “falsely stated” that he expected “nothing” from the Angels after the stadium deal was completed, that he did not conduct city business from his personal email and that “he did not recall ever providing information about the Stadium sale to the Angels consultant during negotiations over that sale.”

Really, seriously, just shut the f**k up.

The plea agreement said Sidhu destroyed emails related to the stadium sale. They include one sent from his personal email account to the Angels consultant and the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce in July 2020 with an attached document that contained “confidential negotiation information related to the potential sale of the stadium, discussion of issues related to price and other terms of the sale.”

…

Two of the counts against Sidhu — false statements and wire fraud — are related to his purchase of a helicopter in October 2020. According to the plea agreement, Sidhu registered the helicopter at an Arizona address, despite residing in Anaheim, to avoid paying more than $15,000 in California sales tax.

…

[Todd] Ament [former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce President – DB] cooperated with authorities and pleaded guilty last year to multiple felonies, including wire fraud, making a false statement to a financial institution and subscribing to a false tax return. Melahat Rafiei, a former state Democratic Party official and campaign consultant, pleaded guilty in April to one count of attempted wire fraud. Neither has been sentenced.

Remember, my people: the coverup is almost always worse than the actual crime.

Posted in California Über Alles, Law, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 24, 2023.

Monday, July 24th, 2023

Richard Barancik has passed away at 98.

The Monuments Men and Women were composed of about 350 people — among them museum directors, curators, scholars, historians and artists — whose missions included steering Allied bombers away from cultural targets in Europe; overseeing repairs when damages occurred; and tracking down millions of objects plundered by the Nazis and returning them to the institutions, and the countries, they came from.

Mr. Barancik was the last surviving member of this group.

Mr. Barancik (pronounced ba-RAN-sick) was one of four members of what was formally called the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section to receive the Congressional Gold Medal in 2015 in Washington for their “heroic role in the preservation, protection, restitution of monuments, works of art and artifacts of cultural importance.”
On the day of the ceremony, Mr. Barancik told The Los Angeles Times: “The Americans cared about the cultural traditions of Europe. We did everything we could to salvage what the Nazis had done. It’s the best we could do.”

Mike Reynolds.

At first, the murder of Mr. Reynolds’s daughter, Kimber, seemed like just one more statistic. An 18-year-old college student home in Fresno on summer break, she was attacked one night in June 1992 by two men on motorcycles who tried to grab her purse.
When she resisted, one of the men, Joseph Michael Davis, shot her in the head, in front of dozens of witnesses. She was rushed to a hospital and died 26 hours later.

One of the murderers was killed in a shootout with police.

His accomplice, Douglas Walker, was arrested and reached a plea deal for a nine-year sentence with parole after four and a half, despite having a previous felony conviction. Mr. Reynolds decided that there should be a law to keep people like him locked up.

His efforts stalled out at first. Then Polly Klass was murdered.

Almost overnight, public outrage over Polly’s murder turned into support for Mr. Reynolds’s campaign. Calls came in to his Fresno headquarters in such volume that they overloaded the city’s 1-800 system. Within weeks, he had the signatures he needed.
The bill also found a new life in the Legislature, as state and national politicians, facing election in the fall of 1994, raced to appear tough on crime. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and her Republican opponent that year, Representative Michael Huffington, both endorsed the bill.
This time it sailed through both chambers of the Legislature, and Governor Wilson signed it into law in March. That fall, the accompanying ballot initiative passed with overwhelming support. In the years that followed, two dozen states, inspired by California, enacted their own three-strikes laws.

Tiny violin watch:

The law had, and continues to have, its detractors. Critics claimed it would overcrowd the prisons, drive up the cost of incarceration and clog the courts, as criminals facing life in prison would be less likely to reach a plea agreement.
It was also derided as unfair: Even a felony as minor as stealing a slice of pizza could result in a 25-year sentence, a situation that befell one man, Jerry Dewayne Williams. Though a judge later reduced Mr. Williams’s sentence, critics used his case as an example of the law’s unfairness.

More about Jerry DeWayne Williams.

An initiative to soften the three-strikes law failed in 2004, but a nearly identical initiative in 2012 succeeded. Both proposals mitigated the sentencing rules if the third felony was a nonviolent one. Mr. Reynolds strongly opposed them.

Posted in California Über Alles, History, Law, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 28, 2023.

Wednesday, June 28th, 2023

Lowell Weicker, former Connecticut governor and senator.

Bobby Osborne, of the Osborne Brothers.

Formed in 1953, the Osborne Brothers, perhaps best known for their 1967 recording of “Rocky Top,” habitually flouted bluegrass convention during their first two decades. They were the first bluegrass group of national renown to incorporate drums, electric bass, pedal steel guitar and even, on records, string sections. They were also the first to record with twin banjos, as well as the first to amplify their instruments with electric pickups.

…

To the surprise of some people, the Osbornes were vindicated over the next decade and a half for steadfastly breaking with tradition. Among other accomplishments, they were named vocal group of the year by the Country Music Association in 1971. They were also one of the few bluegrass bands to consistently place records on the country singles chart.
Along the way they built a bridge between first-generation bluegrass royalty like Bill Monroe and the duo of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and intrepid latter-day inheritors like New Grass Revival and Alison Krauss.
Foremost among the Osbornes’ 18 charting singles was “Rocky Top,” an unabashed celebration of mountain culture that reached the country Top 40. Written by the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who also wrote hits like “Tennessee Hound Dog” for the Osbornes — and even bigger hits for the Everly Brothers — “Rocky Top” was adopted as one of Tennessee’s official state songs and as the fight song of the University of Tennessee football team, the Volunteers.

I know I’ve posted this before, but I don’t think I’ve used the 4K remaster. And I still like the song.

Robert Black, bassist. He was part of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and also worked with Philip Glass, John Cage, and many other composers.

Frederic Forrest. IMDB. Other credits include “Lonesome Dove”, “Tucker: The Man and His Dream”, and “Mrs. Columbo” (though not “Columbo”).

Lawrence sent over an obit for John B. Goodenough, Nobel Prize winning battery innovator and professor at UT Austin.

Until the announcement of his selection as a Nobel laureate, Dr. Goodenough was relatively unknown beyond scientific and academic circles and the commercial titans who exploited his work. He achieved his laboratory breakthrough in 1980 at the University of Oxford, where he created a battery that has populated the planet with smartphones, laptop and tablet computers, lifesaving medical devices like cardiac defibrillators, and clean, quiet plug-in vehicles, including many Teslas, that can be driven on long trips, lessen the impact of climate change and might someday replace gasoline-powered cars and trucks.
Like most modern technological advances, the powerful, lightweight, rechargeable lithium-ion battery is a product of incremental insights by scientists, lab technicians and commercial interests over decades. But for those familiar with the battery’s story, Dr. Goodenough’s contribution is regarded as the crucial link in its development, a linchpin of chemistry, physics and engineering on a molecular scale.
In 2019, when he was 97 and still active in research at the University of Texas, Dr. Goodenough became the oldest Nobel Prize winner in history when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that he would share the $900,000 award with two others who made major contributions to the battery’s development: M. Stanley Whittingham, a professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and Akira Yoshino, an honorary fellow for the Asahi Kasei Corporation in Tokyo and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.

Posted in Geek, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

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