Archive for October, 2017

TMQ Watch: October 31, 2017.

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

TMQ doesn’t have anything really spooky going on this week. If we had thought of it a little more in advance, we might have tried to dig up something new and amusing to use as a header.

So before we jump in, we’ll toss out a couple of kind of spooky things we casually ran across in our morning browsing:

Carl Tanzler. We’re aware this was the subject of a recent episode of “The Dollup”, but we’ve tried listening to that podcast and can’t. The Wikipedia entry should be spooky enough for you, and most of us read faster than we can listen to a podcast anyway.

Lawrence’s annual link to the FARK Scary Stories threads.

Wikipedia “Deaths by poisoning”. The “Victims of radiological poisoning” is kind of interesting: Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin are probably well known to Los Alamos buffs, but we’d never heard of the Cecil Kelley incident.

Okay, enough spooky. After the jump, this week’s pretty much non-spooky TMQ

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Quick followup.

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

Those two NYPD cops who claimed they had “consensual sex” with a woman who they arrested?

They’ve been indicted.

Typically, when officers are charged with crimes, their colleagues come to court in a sea of blue uniforms to support them. But on Monday, not one officer appeared in court with Detectives Martins and Hall.

I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

Cox Media Group announced plans today to put up the Austin American-Statesman for sale.

I’ll bid $5.

(Subject line hattip.)

Your loser update: week 8, 2017.

Sunday, October 29th, 2017

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland
San Francisco

NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:

None.

Bonus firings content:

Jim McElwain out at Florida, in what appears to be a “mutually agreed” departure. Terms are supposedly still being negotiated.

Early last week, McElwain claimed that his family and players were receiving death threats. Reports are that the university spent the week looking into those claims and was unable to substantiate them: it was widely reported yesterday that the school was looking to fire McElwain “for cause” over this.

Tony Perez and Andre Dawson have also left the Miami Marlins. Much like Jeff “Mr. Marlin” Conine, this appears to be the new ownership cleaning house.

Perez and Dawson met with Jeter a little more than a week ago, when he told them of plans for their decreased responsibilities and an expected decrease in pay — though apparently Jeter didn’t say how decreased in the meeting. After word came back that their salaries were now to be $25,000, which under different circumstances might qualify someone for food stamps, Perez and Dawson questioned how badly they were wanted. There was some discussion about what they’d be allowed to do now, and while they still would be allowed to walk through the clubhouse, apparently they were no longer to dress in there.

Art, damn it, art! watch (#54 in a series)

Saturday, October 28th, 2017

The National Park Service is denying a permit to a group wanting to place a 45-foot statue of a naked woman on the Mall near the Washington Monument.

The massive artwork would have been the main attraction at the annual “Catharsis on the Mall” in November – a festival in the nation’s capital dubbed a “Burning Man” in Washington. Burning Man, the annual desert festival outside Reno, Nev., is known for building a hippie-like community that promotes art, self-expression, inclusiveness and civic engagement.
The festival will run Nov. 10-12, the third year for the event in Washington. Each year, the event has revolved around a different theme, with the first two years focusing on healing from the drug war and recovering from trauma. This year’s theme is “nurturing the heart” and equal rights.

More firings, noted for the record.

Friday, October 27th, 2017

The Cubs fired a bunch of lower-level coaches.

Now that Derek Jeter is a part owner of the Miami Marlins, he’s cleaning house:

Jeff Conine, who served as a special assistant to former team president David Samson, said he turned down an offer from new ownership to remain with the organization in what would have been a sharply diminished role at lower pay.

Conine is a South Florida baseball icon, an original Marlin and member of both World Series teams.

Quickies: October 26, 2017.

Thursday, October 26th, 2017

NYT coverage of the Suffolk County prosecutor indictments, mentioned yesterday.

This is a bit weirder than I expected at first glance. A heroin addict was breaking into cars. One of the cars he broke into was the police chief’s.

From the vehicle, Mr. Loeb stole a duffel bag that contained cigars, pornographic DVDs and sex toys.

Now, perhaps this is victim blaming, but I really can’t see why you’d leave your porno DVDs and sex toys in the car unattended. But I digress. The chief found the heroin addict and beat the crap out of him.

Four years later, after an investigation by federal agents, Mr. Burke [the chief – DB] pleaded guilty to having beaten Mr. Loeb after he was arrested and shackled to the floor of a police station. Last year Mr. Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assaulting Mr. Loeb and for trying to orchestrate a cover-up of what had happened.

The charges against the DA, Thomas J. Spota, and his “top anti-corruption prosecutor”, Christopher McPartland, stem from this cover-up:

Federal prosecutors accused them of holding a series of meetings and phone conversations with Mr. Burke and other police officers in which they agreed to conceal Mr. Burke’s role in the assault and to impede the federal investigation.

Everyone knows I’m not a baseball fan. Related to that: I don’t understand baseball. Maybe Borepatch or someone else who’s smart can explain this to me: Joe Girardi out as Yankees manager.

They were in the playoffs, for crying out loud. They almost went to the World Series. What more did they want out of Girardi, and why are people saying it was time for him to go? (See also: Boston.)

Remember the mayor of Lakeway, Joe “John Smart” Bain? (Previously on WCD.)
He was fined $500 by the Texas Ethics Commission and had to pick up the garbage.

The commission, which met Sept. 27 to consider the complaint, considered four posts written by “John Smart” and concluded there was credible evidence that Bain intended to “injure a candidate or influence the result of an election” while misrepresenting the source of the communications, a violation of the election code.
The mayor also did not mark the post containing explicit advocacy as political advertising, another code violation, the commission said. And finally, it said, evidence indicates Bain violated ethics code when he misrepresented his own identity in campaign communications or political advertising.

Random notes from the legal beat.

Wednesday, October 25th, 2017

Andrew M. Cuomo, the corrupt governor of the state of New York, has vetoed knife law reform. Again.

“In so doing, the Legislature has gone far beyond the innocent laborers carrying these knives for legitimate purposes and has grossly disregarded the concerns of law enforcement,” he wrote.

“the concerns of law enforcement”. Would this, by any chance, be the same law enforcement that says it is okay to have sex with an 18-year-old woman who is under arrest and in custody because “it was consensual”?

Speaking of having sex with teenage girls, a judge in Oakland dismissed conspiracy and bribery charges against a former Oakland PD officer.

Walterhouse faced two felony counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice after he was accused of tipping off a prostitute to an undercover FBI sting operation on International Boulevard on Oct. 13-14, 2016. The stings included finding suspects and victims of child sex-trafficking.

But Judge Murphy said the information Walterhouse offered was unsolicited advice and said it seemed like a “puppy love situation.” Walterhouse was infatuated with her, the judge said, and perhaps offered the information because he wanted to have sex with her.

Brad Heath, a reporter for USA Today, is tweeting that the DA for Suffolk County, NY, has been indicted for obstructing a federal civil rights investigation.

Obit watch take 2.

Wednesday, October 25th, 2017

Fats Domino.

At a news conference in Las Vegas in 1969, after resuming his performing career, Elvis Presley interrupted a reporter who had called him “the king.” He pointed to Mr. Domino, who was in the room, and said, “There’s the real king of rock ’n’ roll.”

TMQ Watch: October 24, 2017.

Wednesday, October 25th, 2017

“The Falcons are, in every way, the Epic Fails.”

Someone would like a word with Gregg Easterbrook. (Sorry, Infidel.)

All this and more in this week’s TMQ, after the jump…

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Obit watch: October 25, 2017.

Wednesday, October 25th, 2017

Robert Guillaume.

Man, what a career.

He landed his part in “Soap” in 1977 after a Tony-nominated run as Nathan Detroit in an all-black Broadway revival of “Guys and Dolls.”

I’d love to see that. I’m sure it exists…in an archive…somewhere in New York City…

Mr. Guillaume said Benson’s sharp tongue and dignified mien had allowed him to transcend his station while getting laughs. “What made the humor was that he didn’t care what people thought about him,” he said of the character in an interview for this obituary in 2011. “He wasn’t trying to be mean; he was just trying to be his own man.”

Fizzle.

Monday, October 23rd, 2017

Travis County prosecutors dropped all of the remaining charges against longtime state Rep. Dawnna Dukes on Monday, court filings show.

I expect longer, more detailed stories tomorrow morning. In the meantime, quoted without comment:

Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore pinned the prosecution’s collapse on conflicting statements given by a top official in the Texas House, who told prosecutors that travel to the Capitol was required to earn the per-diem payments but recanted that position in a statement to Dukes’s lawyers.