Archive for July 31st, 2020

Obit watch: July 31, 2020.

Friday, July 31st, 2020

Alan Parker, director. (“Midnight Express”, “Mississippi Burning”, “Fame”, “Birdy”, “Angel Heart”).

For the record: Herman Cain.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

More things I did not know.

Friday, July 31st, 2020

1. Craig Thomas, the author of Firefox (full name David Craig Owen Thomas) died in 2011.

2. “Thomas wrote part-time, with his wife as editor, in two fields: philosophical thoughts in books of essays; and techno-thrillers, a genre whose invention is often attributed to the better-known Tom Clancy, though many fans feel that Thomas was its true originator.” (He was a teacher, but left teaching in 1977 after Wolfsbane was published.)

3. His last work before his death was a two-volume commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche.

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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#65 in a series)

Friday, July 31st, 2020

I missed this one until it was in this morning’s Linkswarm, and Mike the Musicologist messaged me about it.

Tennessee state senator Katrina Robinson has been making waves. And not the good kind. She was indicted yesterday Wednesday on 48 counts: 24 counts of wire fraud, and 24 counts of “theft and embezzlement from government programs”.

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court alleges Robinson used federal grant money issued to her for-profit nursing college to buy a vehicle for her daughter, expenses related to her wedding and honeymoon, and legal fees for her divorce. She is also accused of using the grant money to pay off credit cards and student loan payments, purchase beauty products and fund a campaign event.

Some high points:

During a press conference Wednesday evening, neither Robinson nor her attorney Janika White directly denied the accusations outlined in the criminal complaint. Robinson implied her political convictions played a role in the investigation.
“It is believed that if I were not in the position that I’m in, that if I did not champion the voices, the views and the faces that I represent, that I would not be in this moment right now,” she said.

…

White said her client had been cooperating with federal investigators and criticized the statute cited in the criminal complaint, saying it was “broad and overreaching and leads to what no one in this society wants, which is overcriminalization.”

…

White also asked for people to keep Robinson in their thoughts and prayers, adding that during the pandemic, Robinson — who is a nurse — traveled to New York and to Texas to assist in communities that had been hit hard by COVID-19.

Anybody got “bingo” on their card?

The investigation was opened after HHS received an anonymous complaint in December 2016 alleging Robinson used grant money to buy $550 Louis Vuitton handbag. HHS and the FBI jointly investigated the case.
Bank records for The Health Institute obtained by the FBI and HHS allegedly showed Robinson giving herself a $25,400 performance bonus in the 2017 fiscal year, transferring $54,000 into a brokerage account to set up an IRA for herself, and paying herself a base salary of almost $170,000 more than was approved by HHS during the period her business was receiving grant funding.
Among the personal purchases Robinson is accused of making with federal dollars are a 2016 Jeep Renegade, a more than $5,500 wrought-iron front door and expenses and equipment for Celebrity Body Studio, another business owned by Robinson, and a snow cone business operated by her children.
She also allegedly used more than $5,000 in grant funding on a trip to Jamaica and almost $9,000 on tickets to Grizzlies games, other events at FedExForum and a rental space for a concession stand.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 123

Friday, July 31st, 2020

Last Friday, we had the DC-10. Today: the L-1011 TriStar.

It was the third wide-body airliner to enter commercial operations, after the Boeing 747 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

We’ve already talked about the 747, of course.

From the early 1970s, “You Have To Get Up Pretty Damn Early To Beat The Tri-Star”, a vintage Lockheed promo film featuring Hank Dees, the L-1011 project pilot.

Frank Borman (who is still alive at 92) shows up as well. His Wikipedia entry is worth reading.

Bonus video #1: “Welcome Aboard”, another L-1011 promo, notable for references to Jules Verne, and for acknowledging that airline travel is cramped…in 1968. Sort of an antidote to all those other vintage videos showing people eating caviar off of fine china in the air…

Bonus video #2: “No Simple Thing”, another L-1011 promo, focusing mostly on the design of the aircraft.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed