Category: Weird

That New Speaker of the New York State Assembly?

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When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.

About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.

Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.

………

The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.

And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.

Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.

This really is kind of mind boggling.

I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.

I Cannot Believe That I am Not Saying This Ironically, but Donald Trump Just Seized the Moral High Ground in the Republican Presidential Sweepstakes

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He’s a nut. He’s a Joke. His hair is absurd.

But Donald Trump had the guts to support Social Security and Medicare in front of a Republican audience in New Hampshire:

Among the usual platitudes designed to garner applause in his Saturday afternoon New Hampshire Republican leadership summit speech, Donald Trump included a line railing against cutting Social Security and Medicare. There was no applause from the fiscally conservative crowd for that one. Go figure.

“You look at what is going with the various things that our country is doing and then you hear politicians, and all you hear is all talk, no action,” the mogul said in his speech before the state GOP’s “First in the Nation” summit.

“I am actually disappointed with a lot of the Republican politicians,” he continued, “I am a conservative Republican.” He then rattled off a series of policy ideas of which he either approves or disproves:

“Whether it is we are going to cut Social Security, because that’s what they are saying,” he continued. “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

No applause there. Know your audience, man.

This is not a mark of an outbreak of sanity, or morality, on the part of “The Donald”, though. 

It is a mark of what is, for lack of a better term, the depravity of the modern Republican Party.

Great Headline

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The story is pretty good too:

Stuffed bunnies were hopped up on meth, federal agents say

By Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com on March 24, 2015 at 1:15 PM, updated March 24, 2015 at 4:51 PM

Federal drug agents at JFK airport found a pair of plush toy bunnies stuffed with an unusual and illegal substance: a kilo of meth.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents at JFK recognized Lucas Dasilva, a suspected drug methamphetamine dealer wanted on drug charges in Florida, after he stepped off a flight to JFK from California on Friday, the New York Post reported.

Investigators said the 35-year-old was carrying a Brazilian passport with a fake name, plus luggage containing the two bunnies, according to the Post.

“A search revealed two stuffed rabbits which were unusually heavy and made a crunching noise when squeezed,” stated court papers quoted by the Post.

One of the bunnies was big and brown, while the other was small and white, the Daily News reported.

This is epic.

H/t Jim Romenesko.

Worst ……… Recipe ……… Ever!!!!

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Placenta Chocolate Truffles.

No, this is not The Onion, nor is it the Duffel Blog, nor The Daily Mash, nor The Daily Currant.

It is also not Fox News:

LONDON, UK — Yes, some people blend their placentas after birth and drink them in smoothies. Yes, some dehydrate the organ that connects a fetus to a mother’s uterus, grind it up into powder and consume it in everything from pills to cookies.

This is a thing. It is enough of a thing that it has its own word, placentophagy, which is the act of eating the placenta after birth.

Whether this should be a legal thing — or, more specifically, whether specialists should be allowed to prepare placenta-based foods for others, for a fee — is currently the subject of passionate debate here in the United Kingdom.

Last week, health officials in Swindon, England, served a woman named Kathryn Beale with a notice that her business preparing capsules of dried placenta for newly delivered mothers posed “serious risk to human health.”

Beale challenged the notice in court, and won the right to continue business while local health officials prepare a formal inspection.

The case comes months after the European Food Safety Authority ruled placenta-based products a “novel food,” meaning that vendors have to produce extensive and expensive documentation to sell them legally in the European Union.

Countries can individually exempt foods from the ruling. Placenta advocates have asked Britain to do this.

The businesses of Beale and dozens of other placenta specialists around the UK are in limbo while the country’s Food Standards Agency figures out where in the regulatory framework placenta products belong.

………

Babies emerge from their mothers’ bodies in a dramatic moment of tears and emotion. Placentas follow a few minutes later in a gloopy, unheralded mess.

In the old days, it was called “afterbirth”>

For a long time, placentas were just part of the bloody detritus of birth, with the vast majority sentenced to hospital incinerators. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, around the time of rising interest in the United States in midwife-led, medication-free childbirth, a group of US midwives began advocating the consumption of placenta as a defense against postpartum depression, iron deficiency and a host of other concerns for mothers.

People do a lot with placentas these days. The internet abounds with Pinterest-ready, do-it-yourself recipes for placenta prints, placenta tonics, placenta balms and placenta chocolate truffles.

(emphasis mine)

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Even in the context of British cuisine, this is f%$#ing extreme.

Damn! Out of Stock!

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Brilliant!

I’ve found the ultimate Passover Seder accessory, the 10 Plagues in all  their disturbing chocolate glory.

Clockwise from upper left:

  1. Blood
  2. Frogs
  3. Lice
  4. Wild Beasts
  5. Livestock Disease
  6. Boils (with a little white chocolate pustule for authenticity)
  7. Hail
  8. Locusts
  9. Darkness
  10. Death of the 1st born

All with a dark chocolate bar (it’s pareve) in the middle.

I just discovered it, and they are out of stock.

Damn!

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Headline of the Day

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DEA Warns of Stoned Rabbits if Utah Passes Medical Marijuana.

The dead enders in the drug prohibition industry have become increasingly shrill as the rest of the population realizes that prison works to fight drug use like gasoline puts out fires.

The story gets even weirder:

Utah is considering a bill that would allow patients with certain debilitating conditions to be treated with edible forms of marijuana. If the bill passes, the state’s wildlife may “cultivate a taste” for the plant, lose their fear of humans, and basically be high all the time. That’s according to testimony presented to a Utah Senate panel (time stamp 58:00) last week by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I deal in facts. I deal in science,” said special agent Matt Fairbanks, who’s been working in the state for a decade. He is member of the “marijuana eradication” team in Utah. Some of his colleagues in Georgia recently achieved notoriety by raiding a retiree’s garden and seizing a number of okra plants

.(emphasis original)

Illegal pot growing does constitute an environmental issue, frequently the farms contribute to erosion, and apply various agricultural chemicals to excess, but stoned bunny rabbits?

Seriously?

I think that this “Reefer Madness” bullsh%$ needs to be called out.

I will note that the Utah senate panel went with sanity, as opposed to the, “Think of the poor bunnies,” claptrap, and passed the bill along to the state senate.

Clearly not America

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An altercation in a hotel led to a sword fight in Dubai involving 4 people, with one of the participants being hospitalized with serious injuries:

Four people have reportedly been arrested after becoming involved in a fight with swords and knives at a Dubai hotel.

The fight between two Emiratis and two Saudis began following accidental physical contact outside a washroom at the hotel in the Al Rigga area, according to Khaleej Times.

All four were subsequently taken to hospital, with one of them said to be seriously injured.

Clearly, this would never happen in the United States.

In the US it would have involved firearms, at least two of the participants would be dead, and there would be injured innocent bystanders.

FSM bless America.

Despite the Dispute Over the Ukraine, Russia and the US can Find Common Ground

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Egypt’s worst military band covers the Russian national anthem


Carl Lewis will never medal in vocal skills


Rosanne Barr’s Infamous rendition, which I actually found hysterically funny

Specifically the pain of atrociously poor performance of our respective national anthems.

Unfortunately, I could find Robert Goulet’s infamous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the Ali-Liston fight.

Oh Well.

Give Me That Old Time Religion………

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In Iceland, the the first temple to Norse gods since Viking will be built in over 1000 years:

Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.

 Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.

 “I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” said Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods.

 “We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”

 Membership in Ásatrúarfélagið has tripled in Iceland in the last decade to 2,400 members last year, out of a total population of 330,000, data from Statistics Iceland showed.

 The temple will be circular and will be dug 4 metres (13ft) down into a hill overlooking the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, with a dome on top to let in the sunlight.

Good news though, they will not be returning to animal sacrifice.

Inside Baseball, but it is the Supreme Court

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Like many other courts, the Supreme Court can also mete out discipline against misbehaving lawyers who are/were before it.

The court has now decide to make the disciplinary docket public:

Beginning on February 1, the Supreme Court will publicly disclose documents on actions it is considering or taking to discipline lawyers who are members of its bar, a process long shielded in privacy, the Court announced on Tuesday. Currently, that file is treated as confidential, although final disciplinary actions are made public along with regular orders on pending cases. In the new arrangement, attorneys involved in a case may ask to keep their response confidential, in whole or in part.

 Under the new disclosure policy, the Court’s announcement made clear, public availability of that docket will be the general rule. It will apply to documents filed after February 1. But if there are reasons to keep an attorney’s response confidential, that will be considered on a case-by-case basis, if sought by the lawyer involved. Typically, a lawyer is notified that potential disciplinary action is being considered by way of a “show cause” order, to which the lawyer then has a chance to respond and to argue against a disciplinary order.

 One of the Court’s most noteworthy disciplinary cases now unfolding involves a “show cause” order issued on December 8, involving a Washington, D.C., attorney, Howard Neil Shipley. The order told him to respond within forty days on why he should not be sanctioned for his handling of a specific petition for review. There was no explanation of why that document may have involved a breach of either the Court’s rules or ethical rules. The petition at issue was rambling and, at several points, nearly incoherent. There was an indication that a non-lawyer may have had a central role in its drafting.

The reason that this is significant is that it is highly likely that this change in policy will work it way down to lower courts, and the law “profession” is sorely in need of sunlight on issues of ethics, which is typically handled ways that serve members of the state bars more than the interest of their clients.

The filing in question was in Sigram Schindler Beteiligungsgesellschaft MBH v. Lee, (copy and paste is your friend) a patent case, and it appears that the filing was basically gibberish.

Someone on/around SCOTUS has decided that there is a significant possibility that much of the brief was written by the holder of one of the patents at issue, and that Mr. Shipley simply put his name on it without any meaningful review.

Still, it’s kind of weird.

I’m Wondering who has Call-Sign Rainbow Dash………

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To quote the great Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know.”

It appears that the USAF has a Brony squadron:

Earlier this month, word hit the Internet that an Air Force unit training to fly America’s most advanced military aircraft are wearing a patch inspired by the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Now the Air Force has confirmed it: bronies are flying jets.

“We train world-class pilots who will go on to defend our great nation,” 1st Lt. Tom Barger, a public affairs officer at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, tells War is Boring. “Fostering camaraderie, morale and unity on a regular basis and through small means — like a tastefully humorous patch — enhances our ability to complete the mission when working as a team is essential.”

The pink and purple patch — first spotted by My Little Pony fan site Equestria Daily  — and worn by 24 flight students from Joint Undergraduate Specialized Pilot Class 14-05, references the cable cartoon show about a team of magical ponies. Although criticized by some as a cynical bid to get children to purchase plastic pony products (it’s a reboot from the 1980s), the show — which airs weekday afternoons on the Hub Network — became a cult phenomenon that’s now spread to the armed forces.

My son is a Brony, and he was stoked about this.

I still do not get the whole “Brony” thing.

H/t ECop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

We Have a New Definition of Chutzpah

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Obviously, the classic definition, the story of a boy who killed his parents, and then asked for mercy as an orphan remains the front runner, but the fact that Freedom Industries is asking for prosecutors to recuse themselves because they were among the 300,000 people whose water they poisoned:

A federal judge will take up whether the U.S. Attorney’s office can prosecute cases against former Freedom Industries executives or if a conflict of interest exists.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston is scheduled to hear disqualification requests from former Freedom President Gary Southern and former company executive Dennis Farrell in a 1:30 p.m. hearing today.

Both Southern and Farrell have asked the federal judge to disqualify U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin’s office from the case, saying there is a conflict of interest because the prosecutor’s employees were affected by last January’s chemical leak, which affected 300,000 people in nine counties.

Farrell’s motion only took issue with Goodwin’s office but Southern’s motion also sought to disqualify “agents and investigators” working with the office.

“The conflict of interest is real: the U.S. Attorney, his assistants, investigators and office staff were actual victims of the crimes charged against Mr. Farrell,” Farrell’s motion said. “Of equal or perhaps greater gravity, husbands, wives and children of the prosecutors and staff of the (U.S. Attorney’s office) also were, and allegedly may continue to be, actual victims of the crimes charged.”

In a previous filing, Goodwin said no one in his office has a personal or financial stake in the outcome of this case. He said no one on the prosecution team is an “actual victim” because the general public is the victim in Clean Water Act violations. He also said no one on his staff is a claimant in the class action lawsuits or in the Freedom bankruptcy case.

Seriously?

Because they are arguing that because they contaminated the water for half the f%$#ing state of West Virginia, no one should be allowed to prosecute them?

Seriously?

I guess that it is proof of the old adage, “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”

Ho ……… Ho ……… Ho ………

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Red and white as camouflage

You may have heard about the SantaCon, a costumed pubcrawl that has, since its founding in (where else?) San Francisco.

Increasingly, it has been the accompanied by drunkenness, violence, public urination, and general mischief.

Well, a criminal mastermind, in what is certain to be a movie or a cable release in the next 18 months, robbed a bank disguised as Santa and then vanished in the crimson clad crowd:

Roughly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, at the peak of SantaCon debauchery, a 40-something white man in a Santa suit walked into a San Francisco bank and handed the teller a note demanding money. The teller handed him an undisclosed amount of cash, and then—like in the St. Patrick’s Day scene from “The Fugitive”—the man walked outside and disappeared into the crowd of Santas.

So far, the police have made no arrests, and it seems very likely the man might actually get away. It was a perfect heist—a festive, vomit-soaked “Ocean’s 11.”

My only question is whether this was a run of the mill criminal who had a bright idea, or a really smart guy.

If it’s the former, he’ll do something stupid now that he has the money.

If it’s the latter, this guy will be calling a literary agent when the statute of limitations runs out.

Your Daily Update on Police Impunity

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Even Jon Stewart cannot handle this. No joke here.

The New York Daily News, a paper not generally considered a friend of the minority community, nor an adversary of the police department, is livid over the refusal of a Staten Island grand jury to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner:

The grand jury’s vote to exonerate the police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner on Staten Island has glaring earmarks of a gross miscarriage of justice.

 The ruling is painfully far harder to understand than the Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict for the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

 To a large degree, the evidence against Officer Daniel Pantaleo was widely scrutinized by the public in the form of a on-scene video posted to the Internet by the Daily News. The image of Pantaleo wrestling Garner to the ground with his arm around Garner’s neck was horrifying.

 Even granting that a cop has wide latitude in using force to make an arrest, Pantaleo’s sudden aggressiveness was unnecessary. The fact that it entailed a chokehold only reinforced the excessive quality of his actions.

 After the medical examiner found that a chokehold and chest compression led to Garner’s death, the connection between cause and effect seemed enough to many people not only to indict but to convict Pantaleo.

 Deep, intense skepticism about the grand jury’s ruling is fully warranted — while recognizing that no one other than the panel and Staten Island prosecutors have reviewed all the evidence and matched the facts against the law.

And then we have news on the shooting of 12-year old Tamir Rice.

It appears that, before he was hired as an officer by the Cleveland PD, Tim Loehmann was fired by the Independence, Ohio police department because he was mentally unfit:

Tim Loehmann, the Cleveland police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death last month, resigned from a smaller Ohio police force in 2012 after being found unfit for duty. Among other obviously disqualifying behavior, Loehmann was “distracted” and “weepy” during his firearm qualification session, according to just-released records from his brief tenure with the Independence police department.

“He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,” Independence Deputy Chief Jim Polak wrote in a letter on November 29, 2012, according to records obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group. “For these reasons, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”

Polak also wrote that he believed there would certain situations during which Loehmann would “not react in the way instructed.”

………

The problems at Independence erupted on Nov. 28, 2012, the records say. Loehmann showed up “sleepy and upset” for a 6 a.m. state gun qualification session.

Tinnierello wrote that Loehmann “was distracted and was not following simple instructions” at the shooting range.

At one point, he went to the back of the range to reload his magazine and could not return to the line where he was supposed to shoot from, Tinnierello wrote. Loehmann appeared to be crying and was emotionally upset so Tinnierello said they would stop the exercise for the day.

Seriously?

This guy got hired by the Cleveland PD?

I would not hire him as a pastry chef!

Repeat after me:  Police cannot police themselves.

Allowing them to do so is an invitation to corruption and incompetence.