Archive for February 18th, 2020

Flaming hyenas updates.

Tuesday, February 18th, 2020

A couple of quick things from the weekend that I’m just now getting around to:

Catherine Pugh’s sentencing hearing in the “Healthy Holly” scandal was last week. The government is asking for five years. Her lawyers are asking for a year and a day.

The statement of facts accompanying Pugh’s plea in November described how Pugh defrauded businesses and nonprofit organizations out of nearly $800,000.
Prosecutors said Thursday that Pugh’s “personal inventory” of Healthy Holly books never exceeded 8,216 copies. But through a “three-dimensional” scheme, they say, she was able to resell 132,116 copies for a total of $859,960. She gave another 34,846 copies away.
“Corporate book purchasers with an interest in obtaining or maintaining a government contract represented 93.6% of all Healthy Holly books or $805,000,” prosecutors said.

Also, this would kind of amuse me, if it wasn’t so sad:

Included in the sentencing memorandum is a scene from an April raid on Pugh’s home. FBI agents came to seize, among other items, her personal cellphone. Prosecutors say Pugh handed over a red, city-issued iPhone, but investigators said they wanted her personal phone, a Samsung. She told them she had left it with her sister in Philadelphia.
An agent then called the Samsung phone.
“Almost immediately, the agents heard a vibrating noise emanating from her bed. Pugh became emotional, went to the bed and began frantically searching through the blankets at the head of the bed. As she did so, agents [started] yelling for her to stop and show her hands,” prosecutors wrote.
Pugh had grabbed the phone from underneath her pillow, and the agents took it from her.

In other news, remember Mohammed Nuru, indicted San Francisco Director of Public Works? This broke over the weekend: the current mayor says she used to date him, “20 years ago”.

I wouldn’t consider that “bad” or “newsworthy” by itself, but this is: she also took “a gift” from him.

The mayor said her 18-year-old car broke down and Nuru took it to a private mechanic who fixed it up. Nuru also helped her get a rental car. Breed said the value of those favors was about $5,600.

But she claims this isn’t “a gift that she had to report under the city’s ethics laws”, even though accepting gifts from your underlings is questionable in any environment, and possibly illegal under ethics laws.

Also, and I say this without snark, having been in this position myself recently: Mayor Breed, if your 18 year old car is going to cost $5,000 to fix, maybe you need to be looking at another car instead.

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

Charity.

Tuesday, February 18th, 2020

I saw the GoFundMe for Clay Martin cross the Twitter feeds I follow.

I didn’t post about it here because my resources are limited: I can’t give money to everyone I think is worthy. I wish I could, but I generally try to limit my donations to people I know personally. I’ve never met Mr. Martin, and know nothing about him other than what I’ve read on Twitter.

But then I read on Twitter last night that there are apparently a group of vets who don’t like Mr. Martin’s opinions, and are metaphorically crapping all over his GoFundMe.

I’m trying to avoid strongly worded language these days (for reasons). And saying “f–k those guys” doesn’t do anything positive.

This does. I’m kicking in a few bucks, because nobody deserves to be crapped on when they are hurting (or trying to help someone who is hurting).

Posted in Endorsements | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Tuesday, February 18th, 2020

Ron Jans out as head coach of FC Cincinnati. This is being presented as a “resignation”, but it is a resignation that comes after he was accused of using “racial slurs”.

“As Major League Soccer’s investigation unfolded and some themes emerged, Ron offered his resignation and we agreed that it was the best course of action for everyone involved with FC Cincinnati,” club President Jeff Berding said in a team news release.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 18, 2020.

Tuesday, February 18th, 2020

Charles Portis, author (True Grit, Norwood, The Dog of the South).

A lot of people I know (especially in the SF community) praise Portis. He’s on my list, but so far I’ve only read parts of True Grit. I need to go back and read the whole thing: the use of voice in this novel is fascinating.

The narrative voice of “True Grit” is that of a self-assured old woman, Mattie Ross, as she recalls an adventure she had in Arkansas’s Indian Territory when she was 14, on a quest to track down her father’s killer with Cogburn’s help.
Mr. Portis wanted her to sound determined to “get the story right,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2012. The book has virtually no contractions, and the language is insistently old-fashioned.

I think more to the point that this is a book written from the point of view of a determined older woman, recounting a formative experience of her youth, and Portis manages to capture both the teen and the adult.

Mr. Portis shrank from the attention his more celebrated novels attracted. He steadfastly refused to be interviewed, although he made himself available to talk about his life for this obituary. When drawn into public gatherings, he dodged photographers. But he didn’t like to be called a recluse or compared to the likes of J.D. Salinger. He pointed out that his name was in the Little Rock phone book.

…

Mr. Portis’s reluctance to talk to the news media may have been traceable to his days as a reporter, when intruding on people’s lives was part of the job description. Mattie, his narrator in “True Grit,” may be voicing Mr. Portis’s own feelings when she speaks of the reporters who had sought her out to tell them her story of Rooster Cogburn.
“I do not fool around with newspapers,” Mattie says. “The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown. Another game they have is to send reporters out to talk to you and get your stories free. I know the young reporters are not paid well and I would not mind helping those boys out with their ‘scoops’ if they could ever get anything right.”

(Interestingly, this is another NYT obit where the subject outlived the obit writer.)

It may be kind of a cliche, but this section is quoted in the NYT obit. I’m also a sucker for John Wayne, and this is one of my favorite Wayne moments.

(“Fill your hand, you son-of-a-bitch!” Such a useful phrase.)

Kellye Nakahara Wallett. As Kellye Nakahara, she was perhaps best known as “Lt. Kellye Yamato” on M*A*S*H, a character who was mostly a bit player (though the character was featured in one episode near the end of the run). M*A*S*H Wiki entry.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »