You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#134 in a series)

December 6th, 2024

Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested this morning.

Fernandes Anderson, 45, was indicted on five counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting theft concerning a program receiving federal funds, according to court records and a publicly available indictment.

One of the charges against her is that she gave a staff member a $13,000 bonus payment…most of which was then kicked back to Ms. Fernandes Anderson.

“At defendant Fernandes Anderson’s instructions, Fernandes Anderson and Staff Member A arranged to meet at a bathroom at City Hall where Staff Member A would hand approximately $7,000 in cash to Fernandes Anderson,” court documents said.
The two exchanged texts ahead of the meeting and “shortly following these texts, Staff Member A handed Fernandes Anderson Approximately $7,000 in cash at a bathroom in City Hall,” court documents said.

Ms. Fernandes Anderson makes $115,000 a year as a city councilor. That’s decent money, in my opinion, but the cost of living in Boston is probably much higher than it is in Austin. And Ms. Fernandes Anderson has money problems, per the report.

Those money problems include $5,000 she owes “campaign finance regulators”, as she also has a problem with hiring relatives (her son and daughter) for her staff. “Staff Member A” is also a relative (“but was not an immediate family member”), but Ms. Fernandes Anderson denied that when “A” was hired.

Boston Globe (archived). The Globe mentions her party affiliation in paragraph 7, while the Herald doesn’t mention it at all.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 6, 2024.

December 6th, 2024

I’m going to put a jump here, because both of these obits have a macabre element to them. I’d prefer not to disturb anyone’s sensibilities (and I’m leaving some details out), but I do think they are significant enough to note.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Obits | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

December 5th, 2024

Luke Richardson out as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks. 57-118-15 over three seasons, according to ESPN. The Blackhawks are 8-16-2 so far this season, which is the worst record in the NHL.

Eric Bieniemy out as offensive coordinator at UCLA, though this is still “sources say” and there’s at least one report claiming it was a “mutual decision”.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#124).

December 5th, 2024

Shot:

Chi-Chi’s is returning after closing 20 years ago.
The Mexican chain once had more than 200 locations before the last restaurant’s doors shut in 2004.
Now, the founder’s son is spearheading the comeback with a plan to reopen Chi-Chi’s locations in 2025.

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle, Food | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 2, 2024.

December 2nd, 2024

Hal Lindsey, of The Late Great Planet Earth fame. He was 95.

Mr. Lindsey took the book world by storm with “The Late Great Planet Earth,” released in 1970 by Zondervan, a small religious publisher in Grand Rapids, Mich. Written with C.C. Carlson (some Lindsey followers said it was ghostwritten by her), the book is a breezy blend of history and apocalyptic predictions based on biblical interpretations and actual events of the time.
An editor at Bantam Books thought the book, Mr. Lindsey’s first, had sales potential, so she acquired the mass-market paperback rights. “The Late Great Planet Earth” became the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s. By some estimates, it sold about 35 million copies by 1999, and was translated into about 50 languages.

…

The Middle East, and Israel in particular, were central to Mr. Lindsey’s predictions. “The Late Great Planet Earth” was published just three years after Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Mr. Lindsey was on safe ground in predicting that Israel’s victory would not bring peace, but he envisioned events far worse than the violence and tensions that plague the region.
The book forecast a war that would end all wars, with a huge Russian army invading Israel by land and sea. The Russians were in turn expected to battle a horde of soldiers, led by the Chinese. Naturally, a conflict of this magnitude could not be contained.
World leaders would send armies to the Middle East to fight under the command of a Rome-based Antichrist against “the kings of the east.”
“Western Europe, the United States, Canada, South America and Australia will undoubtedly be represented,” Mr. Lindsey predicted, and the conflict would not be confined to the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people would perish in the ashes of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and other metropolises. Then, finally, the return of Jesus Christ would bring everlasting joy to the faithful and eternal dismay to those who refused to be saved, Mr. Lindsey wrote.
Melani McAlister, a professor of American studies at George Washington University who followed Mr. Lindsey’s career, said in an interview that she found Mr. Lindsey’s tone “weirdly gleeful” considering its central notion, “that there are going to be rivers of blood everywhere.”

“Dear boss: I was late for work this morning because rivers of blood were blocking my driveway.”

We had the book, but I never saw the movie. In double checking the dates on IMDB, I find that Norman Borlaug appears in it as himself. You know what that means, right?

Actually, the Oracle of Bacon claims “Norman Borlaug cannot be linked to Kevin Bacon using only feature films.” I think this is wrong, assuming you count “Earth” as a feature film. (I do.) “Orson Welles has a Bacon number of 2” and, since Welles was in “Earth” with Norman Borlaug, that would make his Bacon number 3, at the most. Right?

Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen collaborator.

Peter Westbrook, Olympic fencer.

A saber fencer with a graceful and agile style in an event reliant on ballistic thrusting and slashing maneuvers, Westbrook won 13 United States championships and qualified for every U.S. Olympic team from 1976 through 1996.
His Olympic medal, a bronze one, came in the individual saber competition at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. He also served as flag-bearer for the American team at the closing ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and was inducted into the national fencing Hall of Fame in 1996.

NYT obit for Earl Holliman (archived).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Knives, Movies, Obits, Religion, Swords, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

December 2nd, 2024

Neal Brown was fired yesterday as head coach at West Virginia. Of course, this was announced after I posted yesterday’s firing watch.

They were 6-6 this season, and lost on Saturday to Texas Tech, 52-15. At least Mr. Brown was able to make some people in my family happy.

37-35 in six seasons. 25-28 in conference.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Purdon’t.

December 1st, 2024

Ryan Walters out as football coach of Purdue.

Two seasons, 5-19.

The Boilermakers went 1-11 in 2024 and finished the season with 11 consecutive losses, including going winless in the Big Ten. Purdue’s season ended with a 66-0 loss at Indiana on Saturday.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Silly food blogging.

December 1st, 2024

Regular readers of this blog know of my fascination with things that sit at the weird intersection of food and popular culture.

The holidays are here! “Elf on the Shelf” cereal is at the H-E-B! Two flavors, even!

I didn’t buy any. I don’t eat cereal for breakfast, the last box I bought disappeared, and I don’t want to get yelled at for bringing food into the house that nobody’s going to eat.

However, I think it is more likely we will use these:

“Yellowstone” branded spice mixes. In “Cattleman Steak”, “Skillet Butter & Herb”, and “Cowboy BBQ”.

“Life on the Dutton Ranch requires a fistful of grit and the spirit of a cowboy! After a hard day of taking people to the train station, nothing hits the spot like a good steak seasoned with our Cattleman Steak seasoning!”

(No, I don’t watch “Yellowstone”, due to my “won’t pay for TV” policy. But I have picked up a few things about the series…)

Posted in Christmas, Food, TV | Comments Closed

The logjam breaks…

November 29th, 2024

I’ve been in kind of a dry spell for vintage gun books. But that broke this week: I have four on the way from Callahan and Company (and I ordered them before Thanksgiving, so I can get away with this), and will be blogging those when they arrive.

In the meantime, though, I’m not working on Black Friday. I did swing by Half-Price Books and picked up two more Gun Digests I didn’t have: 1969, with an article by James E. Serven about “Captain Samuel H. Walker”, and 2022, with an article by Terry Wieland about “The Colt Walker”. I’ll tie this back at the end.

Let us get started…

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Posted in 1911, Books, Cops, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Kindleing, Law, Texas Rangers, Winchester | 1 Comment »

da Bears.

November 29th, 2024

I’m trying to get out of the house to do some shopping, but stuff keeps coming up.

The Chicago Bears fired Matt Eberflus this morning. Tribune. ESPN.

This was not entirely unexpected. The Bears have lost six straight games, and are 4-8 this season. The big reason for pulling the trigger seems to be yesterday’s Lions game. It wasn’t just that they lost to Detroit, it was that the Bears completely botched the end of the game.

Instead of calling his final timeout, Eberflus watched as rookie quarterback Caleb Williams threw a long pass out of the reach of Rome Odunze as time expired.

(I don’t know why ESPN keeps referring to this as “Sunday’s game”. It was Thursday, right? My internal clock isn’t that messed up, is it?)

I didn’t see the game (we were busy eating Thanksgiving dinner out with our people) but from what I hear and read, Eberflus completely botched things. For crying out loud, the game ended with an unused timeout by da Bears!

“Bears fire Matt Eberflus shortly after making him meet with media” from Awful Announcing. Yes, he had a press conference this morning, in which he said “I’m confident I’ll be working to San Francisco and coaching that game.”…and then they fired him about two hours later.

The likeliest explanation, however, is merely that this is an organization where dysfunction has often been the default setting, and much like Eberflus on Thursday, the Bears were caught flat-footed. So while Eberflus’ firing may have been justified, there’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that Chicago’s problems extend well beyond whoever’s not calling timeouts from its sideline.

Eberflus was 14-32 in “three years”.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Relevant to my interests…

November 29th, 2024

…and possibly other people’s as well.

I follow the Jack Carr podcast, but I don’t listen to every episode. I generally only listen to the ones where he has a guest I’m interested in, such as Clint Smith or Steven Pressfield.

In this case, I’m recommending an episode, not because of the guest, but because of the subject matter:

“Inside The Biggest US Navy Security Breach: The Rise of Fat Leonard” with Dr. Matthew Levitt Craig Whitlock.

Kind of thing you could listen to in the car driving back home, if you’re interested in the Fat Leonard saga (which both Lawrence and I have covered).

Edited to add: Well, this is embarrassing, but I don’t think it is my fault. Even though the episode title is “Fat Leonard” etc., the feed appears to be carrying a repeat of the previous episode which was about Hezbollah. I’m guessing this will be fixed in a day or two.

Edited to add 2: Looks like they fixed the feed now.

I wonder how many people were being paid with US taxpayer dollars to review scripts for NCIS, which bear almost no resemblance to the actual NCIS.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 28, 2024.

November 28th, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Yes, I know it’s weird to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving in an obit watch, but it is a weird Thanksgiving. I’m actually rooting for Detroit to win this year. (And the odds look good: they’re playing da Bears.)

Rev. Robert W. Dixon Sr. (United States Army – ret.) passed away on November 15th. He was 103 years old, and was the last surviving “Buffalo Soldier”.

Created after the Civil War, the Army’s all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native Americans who encountered them in the nation’s Western expansion in the post-Civil War 19th century. The name may have been a reference to the soldiers’ curly black hair or to the fierceness that buffalo show in fighting. In either case, the soldiers embraced the name.
The troops could serve only west of the Mississippi River because most white Southerners would not tolerate armed Black soldiers in their communities. They fought in the Indian Wars and protected settlers moving West. During the Spanish-American War, the experienced horsemen of the 10th Cavalry led the way for Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s novice Roughriders in fighting in Cuba.
In the 20th century, official racism by the Army diminished the role that Buffalo Soldier regiments played in major engagements during both world wars, although some troops saw action in World War II during the invasion of Italy and in the Pacific theater.

…

Mr. Dixon, who grew up in New York City, enlisted in the Army in 1941 and remained at West Point through the war.
His wife, whom he married in 1977, said she did not know where he learned to ride or what he did at West Point; he was a disciplined, modest man and a Baptist pastor, who never spoke of his wartime service, preferring to focus on the future.

…

The Buffalo Soldiers unit at West Point was disbanded in 1946, when the Army became fully mechanized. Two years later, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the military. In 2005, Mark Mathews, who was then the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at 111 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

…

Mr. Dixon returned to West Point at 101 to visit a monument to Buffalo Soldiers erected in 2021 on the open grasslands where they had trained future officers; the area is now named Buffalo Soldier Field.
At a celebration of Mr. Dixon’s life this week, Aundrea Matthews, the granddaughter of a Buffalo Soldier who serves as president of the Buffalo Soldiers Association of West Point, recalled that Mr. Dixon declined the help offered by cadets during his visit.
“When the soldiers went to grab Rev. Dixon to bring him up, he shook them off,” she said. “At 101, he walked by himself, and he saluted the Buffalo Soldier monument.”

For the historical record, archived NYT obits for Jim Abrahams and Helen Gallagher, which were posted after I put up yesterday’s obit watch.

Edited to add: 11-1! Go Lions!

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

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