threedonia.com » Floyd

Dirty Waters

Floyd — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:00:55 +0000

California Congresswoman Maxine Water is going to be charged with violations by the House Ethics Committee.

Both Waters and Rangel are prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Dual ethics trials would be a major political liability for Democrats, forcing them to defend their party’s ethical conduct while trying to hold on to their House majority.

While Rangel is a former chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Waters is a prominent member of the Financial Services Committee.

Waters came under scrutiny after former Treasury Department officials said she helped arrange a meeting between regulators and executives at Boston-based OneUnited Bank without mentioning her husband’s financial ties to the institution.

Her husband, Sidney Williams, held at least $250,000 in the bank’s stock and previously had served on its board. Waters’ spokesman has said Williams was no longer on the board when the meeting was arranged.

Waters has said the National Bankers Association, a trade group, requested the meeting. She defended her role in assisting minority-owned banks in the midst of the nation’s financial meltdown and dismissed suggestions she used her influence to steer government aid to the bank.

Besides being a ginormous asshole. Maxine Waters is crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Continued kudos to the House Ethics Committee and the Democrats on that panel. Rangel and Waters are two very powerful and igh profile folks. The Dems must be soiling themselves for the Fall. Also a nice very late Friday dump.

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A Gentle Answer Turns Away Wrath…

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:32:16 +0000

This is awesome… not the way I’d train my employee, but these things don’t always work according to corporate’s plan.

And I like the way the story is presented straight up — no editorializing that I noticed.

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And Now We’ll Wait For the Lawsuit (I’m Not Holding My Breath)

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:02:23 +0000

Andrew Breitbart has given an interiew to Newsweek. I think it sounds about right.

Can you understand how this has been difficult for her to get caught up in that?
As difficult as it probably was for her, it’s been difficult for me as well, especially to hear her hurl an accusation of racism at me, when my motivation is absolutely pure and is driven by a desire for this country to move beyond its horrid racist past.

But do you agree that the edited video took things out of context?
Well, yes. But I put up what I had. It granted a great portion of her redemptive tale, but not all of it. If I could do it all over again, I should have waited for the full video to get to me.

So why not apologize for that?
I’d first like to speak to her in private and outside of the media circus.

Do you regret how this all went down?
Look, there’s a lot of blame to go around on this story, and it’s very convenient to try to place it all on me when the Obama administration and the NAACP were also involved. I don’t think anybody looks particularly good in this thing.

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The Shat!

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:36:59 +0000

No one exceeds Threedonia in their estimation of the many talents that make up the awesomeness that is The Shat — William Shatner. Well now… Shatner has gone and upped the ante on awesomeness… now he’s a news breaker — and not just entertainment. He’s made a bit of a splash in a new interview show he has on
the Bio Channel by interviewing Lee Boyd Malvo the D.C. Sniper (the teenage half of the serial killing team). From AOL News:

Speaking with Shatner via telephone from Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, Malvo, now 25, spoke candidly about the shooting spree and revealed new details that had never before been made public, including the revelation that he and his partner were involved in a total of 42 shootings and not 13 as originally reported.

“He would send me to do a crime, and then he would watch the crime,” Malvo said. “[He would then] evaluate me after we finished … what was wrong, what I needed to change … [and] my tactics.”

Perhaps most shocking of all, Malvo shared details about two co-conspirators he said were involved in the shooting spree.

“There were two other people who were supposed to be involved, but in the end, they ended up backing out,” Malvo said.

“What was supposed to happen was that there was supposed to be three to four snipers with silenced weapons, silenced rifles, and in this way, you could do a lot more damage along the entire Eastern Seaboard. … In the end, there was only Muhammad and myself,” Malvo continued.

Shatner also interviewed survivors and family members of victims, law enforcement officials and Malvo’s forensic psychiatrist.

The Washington Post also has the story:

“I think Malvo’s full of crap,” said Lt. Bruce Guth, the Fairfax County homicide detective who headed the task force that helped convict Malvo of capital murder in 2003 for his role in the 10 local slayings. “He’s changed his story at least five or six different times.”

Guth noted Thursday that in Malvo’s first interrogation, with Fairfax detectives after his arrest in October 2002, Malvo took credit for doing most of the D.C. area shootings. “Then, when his attorneys and psychiatrists got to him, Muhammad was doing the shootings,” Guth said.

Guth said producers of the show told him that Malvo had admitted for the first time to doing a shooting along Route 1 in Northern Virginia. Police in Fairfax and Alexandria both scoured their files for any unsolved shootings along the highway prior to Malvo’s arrest, and couldn’t find one, Guth said.

Malvo, now 25, also made differing claims, both to Shatner and forensic psychiatrist Neil Blumberg, that he and Muhammad had co-conspirators. But the co-conspirators either backed out, were shot and killed by Malvo, or shot and killed by Muhammad, according to the versions Malvo offered Shatner and Blumberg, according to a news release about the show from A&E.

Here’s a link to an ABC story on Shatner’s new show including an interview with Shatner himself.

And here’s the link to his show Aftermath With William Shatner
He’s also going to interview Bernard Goetz, Jessica Lynch, the Unabomber’s brother, and Randy Weaver’s daughter.

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Distant Early Warning

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:06:47 +0000

If this is true we have nearly two centuries of government and media fueled hysteria ahead of us. I think the Armageddon scenario is just the thing. Though we could raise the battleships Yamato and Bismark — turn them into spaceships and fight this thing.

Maria Eugenia Sansaturio and scientists from the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain have used mathematical models to calculate the risk of the asteroid hitting the Earth anytime between now and the year 2200.

And they were shocked to discover that there are two potential opportunities for the asteroid to hit Earth in the year 2182.

‘The total impact probability of asteroid ‘(101955) 1999 RQ36′ can be estimated in 0.00092 –approximately one-in-a-thousand chance-, but what is most surprising is that over half of this chance (0.00054) corresponds to 2182,’ Sansaturio said.

The asteroid is now behind the Sun and will next be observable only in the spring of 2011.

Scientists have estimated and monitored the potential impacts for this asteroid between now and 2200 using two different mathematical models.

Between now and 2060, the chances of Earth impacts from 1999 RQ36 are remote.

But the researchers discovered that the odds increase fourfold by 2080 as the asteroid’s orbit brings it swinging back towards Earth.

The odds then drop before rising again in 2162 and 2182.

Asteroid 1999 RQ36 is part of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) group, which all have the possibility of hitting the Earth due to their orbits and are all considered likely to cause damage.

Even though the asteroid’s orbit is well-known thanks to 290 different observations by telescopes and 13 radar measurements there is uncertainty about its path because of the so-called Yarkovsky effect.

All of which raises the question… what did we do to this asteroid to deserve this? Why does it hate us?

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Classic Pick O’ the Day: July 31

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:21:08 +0000

David Copperfield (1935)
Charles Dickens’ classic tale of an orphaned boy’s fight for happiness and the colorful characters who help and hinder him.
Cast: W. C. Fields, Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O’Sullivan, Madge Evans Dir: George Cukor BW-130 mins, TV-G. 6:00 AM EDT. TCM.

This is one of Fields’ best though he’s not one of my favorites. On later in the day is prior Pick and one of my top 5 The Searchers at 5:45 PM.

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Frank Miller and “The Fixer”

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:28:50 +0000

I had heard that Frank Miller had wanted to do a Batman graphic novel in which the Caped Crusader opens up a can of whoop-ass on al-Qaeda. Given the PC nature of corporate comics today (DC in this case) it appears that such a Batman comic was not meant to be, though Miller says it was his decision to forego Batman. Instead Miller has or is about to complete a graphic novel called “Holy Terror” in which a new character called The Fixer takes on al-Qaeda in a city called Empire City. From the Los Angeles Times Entertainment Blog:

The book’s title will be shortened to “Holy Terror.” And what of the protagonist?

“The character is called The Fixer and he’s very much an adventurer who’s been essentially searching for a mission,” Miller said. “He’s been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He’s been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it — he does it to keep in shape. He’s very different than Batman in that he’s not a tortured soul. He’s a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story.”

In the 1980s, Miller was permitted to take the iconic Batman character through an unprecedented reinvention with “The Dark Knight Returns,” which showed the embittered hero in his twilight years when Gotham has collapsed into near-anarchy and the Caped Crusader finds himself being hunted down by Superman and engaging the Joker in a battle to the death. “The Dark Knight Returns” became a publishing sensation and, along with “Watchmen,” ushered in a new era of ambition in the comic book medium that led directly to the contemporary boom in superhero cinema.

Despite that history, DC executives were reportedly leery of Miller’s plan to drop their globally recognized property inside an Al Qaeda vendetta fantasy. Miller, though, says he is the one who decided to leave the familiar hero in the Batcave for this particular mission.

Sounds interesting.

h/t: Big Hollywood

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The Dad Abides

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:15:11 +0000

I’m sure this somehow fits into the meme of people, wimmins especially, not expecting much of men or whatever, but there are upsides to low expectations I guess. My wife is a photographer and she’s out photographing a wedding up in Santa Barbara this weekend so I’ve got out our three kids by myself for the next two days. A friend of ours is her second shooter and her baby sitter fell through so I’m watching her two kids until her husband picks them up this afternoon after he gets off work. OK… so I’ve got 5 kids by myself. From my wife’s Facebook page comments from all her friends you’d think I was the bravest man since Charles Martel. I’m nice and a great husband and just about this close to walking on water.

What’s the big deal? The kids entertain themselves (they’re all 4 and over) and I get to watch old movies, read, and blog all day. When did the standards for men fall so low?

Don’t get me wrong though… I’m not stupid. I’ll milk this sucker for all it’s worth

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Maybe We Should Call It the Government Oil Spill

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:56:28 +0000

A new report by the Center for Public Integrity, if true, seems to indicate the federal government caused the oil spill. From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air — who links to the full report:

The Coast Guard has gathered evidence it failed to follow its own firefighting policy during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and is investigating whether the chaotic spraying of tons of salt water by private boats contributed to sinking the ill-fated oil rig, according to interviews and documents.

Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the service’s own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the half-dozen private boats that answered the Deepwater Horizon’s distress call to fight the blaze.

An official maritime investigation led by Coast Guard Capt. Hung M. Nguyen in New Orleans is examining whether the salt water that was sprayed across the burning platform overran the ballast system that kept the rig upright, changing its weight distribution, and causing it to list.

Here is the CPI report.

Here’s another quote from the CPI report:

Kevin Robb, a civilian Coast Guard search and rescue specialist who acted as the first watch commander the night of the accident, testified that there was no attempt by the Coast Guard Command Center in New Orleans to designate a fire marshal to take charge.

“Did you, sir, make any efforts on that first night when you responded to the Command Center to identify a certified fire marshal to oversee the firefighting efforts?” Robb was asked at the hearing on May 11, according to a transcript reviewed by the Center.

“No, sir, I did not,” he answered.

“Are you aware of anyone else at the Coast Guard Command Center that made such an effort?

“No, sir, not to my knowledge.”

“Do you know, if at any point, over the next several days there was ever any designation of an authority, a governmental authority to oversee or coordinate the firefighting effort for this rig?” Robb was asked.

“No, sir, I don’t,” replied Robb.

Morrissey also links to a Washington Examiner story talking about huge budget cuts to the US Coast Guard by the Obama Administration. Looks like someone has some e’splainin’ to do. Mayb BP was shaken down and Joe Barton was right after all. Yet another shoe dropping just in time for mid term elections.

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A Threedonia Programming Note…

Floyd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:26:58 +0000

Our very own Eric Porvaznik, along with Yes, But, However’s John Romano & David Stein, will be a guest of the very gracious Jack Marino, 8-9 PM PDT tonight on his Warrior Filmmaker online radio show. He and David will be discussing our experience outside last week’s Rage Against the Machine show benefiting their Boycott Arizona initiative, the return of Radio Free Threedonia, and who knows what else?

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