It’s Monday, October 30th, 2017…but before we begin, submitted for your perusal, an interesting factoid regarding the man who might single-handedly have changed American history, as recorded at Wikipedia:
“[John Frederick] Parker was born May 19, 1830, in Winchester, Virginia. He moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked as a carpenter. He became one of Washington’s original police officers when the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia was created in 1861.
During his time as an officer, he was charged with dereliction of duty and conduct unbecoming an officer several times for being drunk on duty, sleeping on streetcars while at work, and visiting a brothel (Parker claimed the madam had sent for him). Parker was typically reprimanded for these acts but never fired…“
Thus Parker was permitted to continue his misservice to the country by abandoning his post at the entrance to the President’s box at Ford’s Theater the night of April 14, 1865 to frequent a nearby tavern.
“…Parker was charged with neglect of duty and tried on May 3, 1865, but no transcripts of the case were kept.The complaint wasdismissed on June 2, 1865. In spite of leaving his post the night Lincoln was shot, Parker was still assigned to work security at the White House…”
By contrast, for his dereliction of duty during The Battle of Crater, Brigadier General James H. Ledlie, who lay drunk in a bombproof as his untrained troops were slaughtered in the massive pit, was drummed out of the service. And IX Corps commander Ambrose E. Burnside, under whom Ledlie served, was placed on the inactive list, never to be returned to active service.
So there you have it: the good things in life…in this case complete and utter unaccountability…never change…
…provided you’re on the civilian side of the federal government! And so the modern federal bureaucracy was born.
To borrow a phrase from Staff Sergeant Barnes…
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, speaking of government fraud, waste and abuse, as FOX News reports…
“…Fusion has doggedly refused to divulge the names of its clients for months now, despite extraordinary pressure. So why did the firm suddenly insist that middleman law firm Perkins Coie release Fusion from confidentiality agreements, and spill the beans on who hired it?
Because there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records.The release of the client names was a last-ditch effort to appease the House Intelligence Committee, which issued subpoenas to Fusion’s bank and was close to obtaining records until Fusion filed suit last week. The release was also likely aimed at currying favor with the court, given Fusion’s otherwise weak legal case. The judge could rule as early as Friday morning.
…There’s plenty yet to come with regard to the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Every senior Democrat is disclaiming knowledge of the dossier deal, leaving Perkins Coie holding the bag. But while it is not unusual for law firms to hire opposition-research outfits for political clients, it is highly unusual for a law firm to pay bills without a client’s approval. Somewhere, Perkins Coie has documents showing who signed off on those bills, and they aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.
Those names will matter, since someone at the DNC and at the Clinton campaign will need to explain how they somehow both forgot to list Fusion as a vendor in their campaign-finance filings.Some Justice Department lawyer is presumably already looking into whether this was a willful evasion (Or, given Jeff Sessions disinclination to pursue any Clinton crimes to date, possibly not!) , which can carry criminal penalties. It’s one thing to forget to list that local hot-dog supplier for the campaign picnic. It’s a little fishier when two entities both fail to list the firm that supplied them the most explosive hit job in a generation.
And there are still bombshells with regard to unmasking of Americans in surveilled communications. If the Steele dossier reports (which appear to date back to June 2016) were making their way into the hands of senior DNC and Clinton political operatives, you can bet they were making their way to the Obama White House. This may explain why Obama political appointees began monitoring the Trump campaign and abusing unmasking. They were looking for a “gotcha,” something to disqualify a Trump presidency. Of course, they were doing so on the basis of “salacious and unverified” accusations made by anonymous Russians, but never mind.
No, this probe of the Democratic Party’s Russian dalliance has a long, long way to go. And, let us hope, with revelations too big for even the media to ignore.“
Not to mention Congress, the Department of Justice and the White House.
“Remember that infamous Russian “dossier,” the unverified document that BuzzFeed unceremoniously dumped into the public square earlier this year? You might recall it as making a series of incredibly salacious and completely unproven accusations against the sitting president of the United States. Well, it turns out that it was a piece of partisan opposition research, bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, both of which then denied having anything to do with it after the fact.
Last night the Washington Post reported that the Clinton campaign and the DNC used a lawyer named Marc Elias to retain the oppo-research firm Fusion GPS to conduct research on the Trump campaign (the firm had previously worked on behalf of a still-unidentified Republican to investigate Trump). Fusion GPS then hired a former intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, who conducted an investigation and authored the dossier. According to the Post, the Clinton campaign and the DNC used the law firm to pay Fusion GPS right until the end of October 2016.
As my colleague Andrew McCarthy notes, it’s a clever arrangement.The use of the law firm adds a layer of deniability, and when controversy arises, Fusion GPS is able to appeal to attorney-client privilege to shield itself from scrutiny.
It would be easy, at this point, to start to wander down the rabbit hole, to wonder how much of the so-called “Russia controversy” is based on the Clinton campaign’s opposition research, but let’s not speculate. The truth will emerge. Instead, let’s do something else: Let’s consider how the Russian-dossier story has thus far represented a perfect storm of classic Clintonism, media irresponsibility, and Democratic moral blindness…”
FYI, McCarthy’s piece is well-worth reviewing, particularly as it highlights…
“…an intriguing coincidence.
In its capacity as attorney for the DNC, Perkins Coie – through another of its partners, Michael Sussman – is also the law firm that retained CrowdStrike, the cyber security outfit, upon learning in April 2016 that the DNC’s servers had been hacked.
Interesting: Despite the patent importance of the physical server system to the FBI and Intelligence-Community investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Bureau never examined the DNC servers.Evidently, the DNC declined to cooperate to that degree, and the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue a subpoena to demand that the servers be turned over (just like the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue subpoenas to demand the surrender of critical physical evidence in the Clinton e-mails investigation).
Instead, the conclusion that Russia is responsible for the invasion of the DNC servers rests on the forensic analysis conducted by CrowdStrike.Rather than do its own investigation, the FBI relied on a contractor retained by the DNC’s lawyers…”
Nothing to see here, folks…please move along…before we loose Antifa upon you!
In all seriousness, you can’t…
…make this sh* t up!
For more on the topic of moral blindness, we now turn to an eye-opening article from Esquire courtesy of Balls Cotton:
“…A common malapropism led to further advantage for Purdue. “Some people would call it oxy-codeine” instead of oxycodone, recalled Lacouture. “Codeine is very weak.” When Purdue eventually pleaded guilty to felony charges in 2007 for criminally “misbranding” OxyContin, it acknowledged exploiting doctors’ misconceptions about oxycodone’s strength.In court documents, the company said it was “well aware of the incorrect view held by many physicians that oxycodone was weaker than morphine” and “did not want to do anything ‘to make physicians think that oxycodone was stronger or equal to morphine’ or to ‘take any steps . . . that would affect the unique position that OxyContin’ ” held among physicians.
Purdue did not merely neglect to clear up confusion about the strength of OxyContin. As the company later admitted, it misleadingly promoted OxyContin as less addictive than older opioids on the market. In this deception, Purdue had a big assist from the FDA, which allowed the company to include an astonishing labeling claim in OxyContin’s package insert: “Delayed absorption, as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug.”...”
“An Arizona billionaire was arrested Thursday and charged with leading a conspiracy to profit from an opioid narcotic.John Kapoor, 74, the founder of opioid pharmaceutical producer Insys Therapeutics (INSY) and the sixth richest man in Arizona with a net worth of $2.1 billion, was charged with the illegal distribution of a fentanyl spray and with violating anti-kickback laws, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston.
Kapoor’s scheme allegedly included bribing doctors into over-prescribing a painkiller intended only for cancer patients. Most of the patients who were prescribed the fentanyl-based painkiller called Subsys – intended only for cancer patients – did not have cancer, authorities said.
The drug is reportedly 80 times stronger than morphine…”
This represents the intersection between the downside of capitalism and the nadir of good government. It’s an old adage in real estate development that pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And frankly, were we to tie a several hogs like Kapoor and the Sacklers onto posts next to Hillary, Huma and Lois…
…we’d be willing to bet the level of such crony capitalist corruption would be dramatically reduced.
Turning now to the Sports Section, Yahoo Sports details how…
“Few people involved in the NFL’s ongoing national anthem debate are as qualified to discuss the subject as former Pittsburgh Steelers halfback Rocky Bleier. Bleier, 71, served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. He lost part of his right foot due to a combat injury and had to fight his way back into the NFL after returning from the battlefield.
For Bleier, a four-time Super Bowl champion, the situation is very much cut and dry, and he sees a “simple” solution to the issue that has plagued the NFL for the past 14 months. “It’s very simply this: This is a workplace, you are at the stadium, you are working that day, this is not a platform for protest,” Bleier told Yahoo Sports. “The American people, they can’t go to their workplace and start to protest about whatever may be happening in their life.That wouldn’t be allowed and that shouldn’t be allowed in the NFL. It’s not a violation of the First Amendment at all. You have off days, you can do it outside of the stadium or on other platforms, but not the gameday platform. It’s a very simple question and people are making it more complex than it really is.”
…“The was a lack of leadership there on the owners’ side as well as the Players Association long before to nip whatever was coming down the road after the Colin Kaepernick situation a year ago, in the bud,” Bleier said. “It should never have gotten to this point, nobody has stepped up to say ‘No, this is not what we do on gameday.’”…”
As for us, the NFL has had its day; and we now have Monday night, Thursday night and Sunday afternoon free to spend our time on other things, rather than watching overpaid athletes imitate circus monkeys every time they make a tackle, intercept a pass or score a touchdown.
And in a follow-up to Friday’s item regarding the idiot who falsely claimed he and his companions of color were denied service in an Alabama restaurant because (a) he was recognized by the waiter as the first major leaguer to take a knee, or (b) racism…(or (c): both (a) & (b)…just because!), it appears the self-described “very respectful, very educated” Oakland catcher may not understand the first rule of gun safety:
As Maxwell was arrested in Scottsdale, AZ, we can only assume racism is alive and well, not only in Alabama,but the greater Phoenix area as well.
Which brings to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these apt comparisons of Liberalism with Conservatism:
Finally, we’ll call it a month with two titillating tales torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter: first, this just in from FOX News via our old friend and Naval Academy classmate George Lawlor:
“Police in Suffolk County, N.Y., said Thursday that a local man with a history of animal abuse had been arrested on charges of having “sexual contact with horses on two separate occasions.” Steven Errante, 30, of Dix Hills, faces two counts of sexual misconduct with an animal and failure to register for the county’s Animal Abuse Offender Registry, according to News 12 Long Island.
Errante had been ordered to register as an animal abuser after he beat his family’s dog with a baseball bat in 2013, but apparently never did so. Investigators conducted a check on Errante Wednesday and discovered the encounters with the horses, which allegedly took place on Aug. 25 and Sept. 4 at a local stable.
It was not immediately clear how investigators discovered the alleged incidents, but Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini told News 12 that authorities had “certainly sufficient evidence to charge him with those sex acts.”…”
John Koskinen must have had similarly sufficient evidence on any number of prominent politicians to have made it through his five year term of office.
Then there’s this example of criminal cunning by an opportunistic Cheesehead:
“…Police in the town of Marshfield say Jeremy Van Ert, 38, walked into the local Kwik Trip convenience store Tuesday night to buy some beer. However, Van Ert became trapped in the store’s walk-in cooler at midnight, when its lock automatically engaged.
Marshfield police Chief Rick Gramza told WAOW that Van Ert “knew that Kwik Trip would not sell him any beer, so he decided to remain in the beer cooler.” Van Ert remained in the cooler until 6 a.m. Wednesday, when a customer noticed him and alerted employees. Van Ert fled the store after he was let out.
According to the police report, Van Ert drank an 18-oz. bottle of Icehouse beer and three cans of Four Loko. He also fell over a stack of Busch Light 30-pack cases, breaking three of them open…”
Midnight to 0600…six hours…and Van Ert only drank four beers? He’s an insult to Cheeseheads!
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