And yet, the cries for gun control continue.
In other news: gee, I really miss Frank Zappa.
Going to Montana soon…
October 25th, 2012Just guessing here…
October 24th, 2012I’m thinking it is the kind with big sharp nasty teeth, myself.
Yo! Omar’s covering up!
October 24th, 2012Remember James Kwon, “Maritime Director” of the Port of Oakland? Mister “Spent $4,500 on strippers at Treasures”?
New developments: Mr. Kwon has a boss, “Executive Director” Omar Benjamin.
Would you like to guess what Mr. Kwon is saying? Yes: not only was his boss at Treasures, but Mr. Benjamin actually authorized him to pick up the tab. Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Kwon are both on paid suspensions from their positions.
Also, the receipt in question “listed a half dozen directors and vice presidents from BNSF Railway as being in attendance”. This is interesting, because the port claims they followed “‘a standard protocol of redacting the names of all persons that appeared on the reports’ – except the person named in a media public-records request” in explaining why Mr. Benjamin’s name was redacted from the receipt. So if they redacted all the names, how were the BNSF directors listed?
Setting that aside, though, BNSF says that they’ve checked travel records and spoken to their people, and there’s “no evidence its executives were at the party, or even in Houston at the time”. (If they were in Houston, it could have been perfectly legit, as there was a conference going on.)
The way the press is treating this story also strikes me as odd. Both the SFChron and the HouChron seem to be treating this as more of a gossip column item (the HouChron even reprinting, word for word, the SF paper’s story) instead of a story about political corruption, while the Oakland paper seems to be totally silent about the entire issue.
Is it the strippers? Do the papers just not take stories that feature strippers seriously? Remember: it was a stripper that brought down Wilbur Mills.
Random fun: October 24, 2012.
October 24th, 2012Remember our old friend Randy Adams, former police chief of the California city of Bell, who was seeking a $510,000 a year pension based on his contract with the city?
Ask not who the fail whale tolls for: it tolls for Randy Adams.
Adams still has the option to appeal the ruling. In the meantime, instead of collecting $510,000 a year, his pension will be a mere $240,000 a year.
Glen Berger is writing a book. “Who?” Glen Berger, one of the writers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”. Mr. Berger’s book currently bears the title “Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History”.
And in other news, the NYT would like for you to shed some tears over the death of poor pitiful Dan Fredenberg.
What did Mr. Fredenberg do?
Harper shot and killed Fredenberg. The DA declined to prosecute, stating that the shooting was justified under Montana’s “Castle Doctrine”. This greatly upsets the NYT, and many of the morons who read the paper and leave comments.
But there are some inconvenient facts.
- Mr. Fredenberg was drunk at the time he was shot.
- Mr. Fredenberg entered Harper’s home; he wasn’t standing in the driveway or out on the sidewalk.
- Mr. Fredenberg and his spouse had a history of mutual spousal abuse (physical and verbal), according to the local DA.
- Mr. Fredenberg’s spouse was having a relationship of some sort with Harper. She denies it was sexual, but states that they were “intimate”.
- Mr. Fredenberg and Mr. Harper had “once clashed at Fatt Boys Bar & Grille in Kalispell”.
- Ms. Fredenberg and Mr. Harper were driving around the block that evening shortly before the incident; they were pursued by Mr. Fredenberg, which led to the shooting.
Was Mr. Harper supposed to wait until he was attacked by a drunk man who he’d previously had an altercation with, in the privacy of his own home? Apparently, the NYT thinks the answer to this question is “yes”.
Castle Doctrine didn’t kill Mr. Fredenberg: poor judgement killed him.
Finished with my manager…
October 24th, 2012They haven’t even started playing the World Series yet, and Ozzie Guillen is out as the Florida Marlins manager.
In his one season with the team, it went 69-93, finished last in the NL East, and Ozzie managed to tick off the local Cubans (and get himself suspended for five games).
How about a little musical tribute to Mr. Guillen on a Wednesday morning?
The Quick and the dead.
October 23rd, 2012This was on FARK, but it touches on so many things covered here, and is such a fascinating story, that I wanted to make note of it.
Thomas Quick was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in Scandinavia. During the 1990s, he confessed to over 30 murders, and was convicted of killing eight people.
Except his name wasn’t Thomas Quick. It was Sture Bergwall.
And he was being fed diazepam while he was confessing to the murders.
And he probably never killed anybody. There is a total lack of physical evidence linking him to the crimes. In several cases, he was convicted based only on his confessions, and in spite of the fact that there was physical evidence directly contradicting those confessions. (For example, in one case, recovered DNA didn’t match Quick/Bergwell’s DNA.)
And he was probably being fed information – information he used to build his false confessions – by the cops. (Henry Lee Lucas, call your office, please.)
There’s a book on the case that, as far as I can tell, does not have a US publisher. I’m hoping it finds one, as this is a heck of a story. (There’s also a good story behind the book; the author was a prominent documentary filmmaker/”investigative journalist” who started looking into Quick’s case, discovered the inconsistencies and other issues, and ended up having Quick/Bergwall tell all to him. As I understand it, this was the author’s first book. He died of cancer three days after finishing the manuscript.)
(Is this, like, a thing in Scandinavian countries? Dying before your book is published?)
TMQ watch: October 23, 2012.
October 23rd, 2012Before we start in on this week’s TMQ, we want to note a story from today’s New York Times that bothers us. We think it is appropriate to talk about here, as it deals with things TMQ has been hammering on as well. After the jump, we’ll get started…
Weirdness.
October 23rd, 2012
This is a “chocolate pudding parfait” I purchased from our little lunch spot/snack bar downstairs at work.
It kind of looks like they had some issues with the topping.
Indeed, I might even go so far as to say that they were having…whipped cream difficulties.
(Thank you. I’ll be here all week.)
Formula 1 is slightly less heckish.
October 23rd, 2012I wrote previously about the proposals to close large swaths of downtown streets, including Congress Avenue, so people could party when Formula 1 came to town.
We have a deal. The Congress Avenue proposal (from an independent promoter) has been dropped, and that festival is merging with the official F1 “Fan Fest”.
Unfortunately, Congress Avenue is still going to be closed, but it looks like the closures will be for a shorter period than under the original “Experience Austin” proposal.
This sounds like a fine idea to me, assuming there is an F1 race here in 2013. I wouldn’t recommend counting that chicken until it hatches, though.
Speaking of things that make me want to go full Nelson…
October 22nd, 2012…in the “Ha ha!” sense:
Parking in New York City is also expensive. Especially near Yankee Stadium on game days.
Good news: there’s a train! And a subway!
Bad news for the people who own the parking lots: they didn’t plan on having a train stop near the stadium.
More:
I find myself wondering where “new revenue” is going to come from, unless BPDC blows up the train and subway tracks. Come to think of it, this is New York; they could probably find a couple of guys who’d do that for a price.
Interestingly, the city’s Industrial Development Agency issued the bonds for BPDC, but the city does not have to pay if BPDC defaults. I’m not clear on how that works. But, “the company owes the city $25.5 million in rent and payments in lieu of taxes accumulated since 2007.”
Also, just to be clear: BPDC is a separate company from Satan’s minions, the New York Yankees. The Yankees don’t own the parking and have no say over it. Which is a shame; at least the Yankees could manage a team into the playoffs, so why not let them have a shot at parking?
Banana republicans watch: October 22, 2012.
October 22nd, 2012Gas is expensive in California.
Gee, I wonder why that is?
You don’t say? Tell us more, Los Angeles Times.
But why doesn’t someone come into the California market and open new refineries? Or re-open some of the mothballed ones?
By the way:
Obit watch: October 22, 2012.
October 22nd, 2012Russell Means, controversial Indian activist, actor, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, and vice-presidential nominee during Larry Flynt’s attempt to get the Republican nomination in 1984, has died. (LAT. NYT.)
Noted:
How’s that working for you?
I thought I’d give the George McGovern obits a day, which is why I didn’t post them on Sunday. For the record: NYT. LAT. WP.
Also worthy of immortalization.
October 22nd, 2012Another exchange from the weekend:
Me at the gun show, looking at a Remington XP-100: When I was six years old, I thought that was the coolest gun in the world.
My nephew: Why?
Me: Because I was six years old.
My nephew: (nods sagely, as if this actually makes sense to him).
(I still want an XP-100 chambered in the original .221 Fireball caliber. The one we were looking at was rechambered to .223, which I will admit is a lot more practical. However, the asking price on it was $1,300, which is much more than I’m willing to pay.)
(I also want a S&W Model 53, even though .22 Jet is even more impractical than .221 Fireball. I keep meaning to sit down and do the math to determine if you could actually do a .221 Fireball conversion of a Smith; off the top of my head, I think the cartridge length would require an N-frame or X-frame sized cylinder, so it wouldn’t exactly be a compact field gun like the Jet…)
Art, damn it, art! watch (#32 in a series).
October 22nd, 2012Once upon a time, there was an art gallery in New York City called Knoedler & Company.
Knoedler & Company made more than a fair amount of money selling art. As a matter of fact, they made a lot of money selling art supplied by one dealer, Glafira Rosales.
But there are some problems. Ms. Rosales’s “collection of works attributed to Modernist masters has no documented provenance and is the subject of an F.B.I. investigation.” One of the works that passed through her hands, a Mark Rothko painting, was sold by Knoedler for $8.3 million dollars, and has now been declared a fake.
Knoedler stopped selling works from Rosales in 2009, and immediately started losing money. They closed in 2011.
Juxaposition.
October 22nd, 2012I’m glad folks are out there doing this: cancer sucks. However, the Statesman doesn’t discuss how this figure differed from last years: did they get about the same number of riders, more, or less?
Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong is no longer a Tour de France winner. I wish I had something profound and insightful to say about this, but I need time to think.