Varifrank: August 2007 Archives

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In Defense of Larry Craig

Here’s what I learned when I read the police report on Larry Craig

1. Whatever you do when you are on a layover between flights, don’t use public bathrooms before you get on the next flight. Clearly, that is a sign that you are looking for anonymous gay sex, because no one in his right mind would use a public bathroom for any other purpose.

2. If you enter the bathroom and all the stalls appear to be full, don’t stand outside and tap your foot. While in some cultures looking at your watch at tapping your foot is a way of showing that you are anxious and perhaps ready to explode your bowels all over the floor, in Minneapolis it means only one thing, you want anonymous gay sex.

3. If you really, really have to go, and you are not really sure that there is someone inside the stall or not, whatever you do, don’t investigate further by trying to look inside. Clearly, that can only be read as a sign that you want anonymous gay sex.

4. If you get inside a stall, and you have your roll-on flight bag with you, be sure to hold it over your head while you sit on the toilet because if you place your bag in front of you, that can only mean one thing, you want anonymous gay sex.

5. If you find yourself frustrated and angry that the geniuses in the janitorial staff has set the ultra mega large roll of toilet paper in such a way that despite the fact that the roll is the diameter of a watermelon, it still only dispenses one square of toilet paper at a time, whatever you do, don’t fumble around trying to get more toilet paper, because if your fingers manage to appear on the bottom of the wall, it clearly can mean only mean one thing to the person next to you; that you want anonymous gay sex.

6. If a man in the bathroom takes you by the arm and tells you to come with him and flashes what looks like a badge, it usually means he’s really a policeman, and not the kind in "The Village People". Do not react in a late middle age homophobic way and get all bothered because you think for just a second that someone might think “you’re gay too”(oh heaven forbid!), just stand up straight and answer the man’s questions. Seriously, you’re in your 60’s Mr. Craig, I can assure you that no one is hitting on you.

7. If you have a choice between missing a flight and getting a lawyer to help you address the charges against you, heres a helpful bit of advice, get the lawyer – miss the flight. Chances are Senator, the local police force is counting on you and many others doing exactly what you did, pay the fine, and then (you’ll excuse the pun) - blow out of town.

Is there such a thing as entrapment? Do policeman lie? Do they bend the truth? Do DA’s get overactive and push prosecution of cases when the politics of the matter fit their particular template? If you say no, then I got some phone numbers of a bunch of college students who went to a party one night in North Carolina and nearly went to prison over it. Their lawyers and their families can tell you stories about how an entire legal system fell around their heads one night and how the press tried and convicted these young men, despite the fact that there was never any evidence of any sort of crime.

But unlike you, they were smart enough to get lawyers. Imagine if they hadn’t, and trusted the police and the DA, like you did...

Senator, if I was on your jury, I don’t see enough in this case to convict you of much of anything, I don’t see you soliciting sex or anything else close to it. According to this paperwork you to me look like a befuddled airline traveler trying to do his business in a dignified way in an undignified place.

Unfortunately there’s never going to be a case because you decided to pay the fine and admit to something that is quite a bit more than what I see reflected on the paperwork in front of me. That of course, isn't stopping the press from making you out to be "The Idaho Caligula", but that's the press for you, they dont let facts get in the way of a good story.

I’m going to take a guess here and think that you got more than a bit flustered, you got yourself in front of a whole lotta policeman who said a whole lotta things that you considered very unseemly, and considering that you’ve spent the last year getting chased around by the worst sort of slander about your very personal sex life, for just a moment there you saw your life go before your eyes. While you sat there in that little room with the hidden camera going, you stared into the two way mirror for a second when one of the helpful policemen probably leaned across the table and offered you a way out. “Just plead to the lesser crime and no one would be the wiser,” he said quietly, grasping your arm and looking into your eyes. You leaped at it, you had to, after all of the scenarios of disaster running through your head, it sounded good and after all Senator, in your experience policeman are always fine people, the nice one that offered you the deal probably seemed like a real nice guy, unlike that effeminate little bug-eyed man who arrested you.

I could be wrong because after all, the evidence presented to me wasn’t in a court of law but from a website called ‘the smoking gun”. The policeman who filed the paperwork may be a lot more convincing in person than his notes appear to me to be. That doesn’t mean I think the Minneapolis Police are lying or that they have some hidden agenda here, because I dont.

I think that policemen are just people and people make mistakes. That's why we have courts and an adversarial legal system, Mr. Craig. Its just a shame you didn't use it for this case.

Did he lie? Don’t know. Did you lie? Don’t know. But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, Senator. Its my opinion, before you go tromping over a mans life, the evidence needs to be a little bit more than what I see presented here.

Oh, and Senator, I don’t care if you’re gay or not. It's 2007, who isn't gay? If that bugs you, that's your problem. What this whole adventure does convince me of, is that you most certainly are a complete blithering idiot of the first order and that’s what should matter the most to the people of Idaho and not your sex life one way or the other.

Don't run for re-election. Take your retirement, and get some therapy, ok?

Posted @ August 28, 2007 10:18 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (13)

A Headline my grandfather would not understand

poverty –noun

1. the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence.
2. deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc.: poverty of the soil.
3. scantiness; insufficiency:

obesity - noun.
The condition of being obese; increased body weight caused by excessive accumulation of fat.

I don't want to be judgemental but perhaps they would have more money if they just didn't eat so much?

Posted @ August 28, 2007 02:22 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)

Worlds Ugliest Cars

Business week has a slide show on the 11 ugliest cars of the 1970's.

What's sad is, I owned 3 of them.

1. The Chevrolet Corvair.
Air cooled 6 cylinder engine, 100 fanbelts and a two speed automatic transmission, what's not to love? Don't all cars leak oil at the rate of a quart per day?

Yes the 1968 corvair monza convertible was a nice car. I didnt have that one. I had the 1963 4 door hardtop model. It was old the day it rolled out the factory door.

2. The Chevrolet Chevette.

My first car out of college. To be honest, I never had a problem with it. It was the last car I ever owned without air condtioning. It was also the last car I ever had with "wind wings".

3. The Ford Pinto.

This car was the "family wagon" from 1975 till 1982. It taught all 3 of my sisters to drive. One sister backed it out of the garage with the doors wide open and yes, it did eactly what you think it did. The doors peeled off the frame like a banana peel and fell to the ground. At no point in the 9 foot long maneuver did my sister slow down or stop, she just kept going as the doors were loudly ripped from their mounts, all the while she sat oblivious to the metal carnage going on around her as she kept dutifully looking backwards down the driveway, so as "to avoid getting into an accident" as she would try to explain later.

The old man got home from work that day and just stood in the driveway and looked his daughter, and then at the debris pile leading to the car and shook his head from side to side, took his hammer and mallets in hand and simply "convinced" the doors to go back on the car. It was as if he wasnt the slightest bit surprised or disappointed. It was his daugther, her 'Modus Operandi' was well known and it was after all a "Pinto", it could be rebuilt with a minimum of effort.

The poor pinto, with its newly mangled doors would go on for another 4 years of use and abuse at the hands of my sisters. It never failed or faltered, but it burned oil like a two-stroke motorcyle.

My wife owned a Gremlin. It not only didnt have an air conditioner, it had a heater that always worked, which if we lived in anchorage would have been a feature but since we lived in the central valley of california where August is the season where lead melts in your driveway, it was a hellish experience to drive. Literally.

It was later sold to one of my other sisters(not the 'door peeler', but another sister) who proceded to get into an accident a week later. She and the Gremlin were unharmed however, the truck that hit her, was totalled. Ugly? yes. Built with soviet tank robustness?, you betcha. (And yes, I'm talking about the gremlin, not my sister)

Posted @ August 28, 2007 11:48 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)

caught in passing

William Shawcross, of the recent article on the accuracy of the Presidents assessment of Vietnam...

Well, his father was Lord Shawcross, and was the Chief British prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. He makes an appearance at the end of the "World At War".

Funny old world, aint it?

Which tells you what I've been watching as of late. ( I found the turtlenecked, longhaired 1970's version of historian Stephen Ambrose to be a particularly disturbing image.)

Posted @ August 27, 2007 06:27 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

my new favorite French phrase.

President Sarkozy, in the original French:

"une bombe iranienne, ou le bombardement de l'Iran"

I love it. It's "Crisp".

( my old favorite French phrase was "Les cimetières sont pleins d'hommes indispensables" - De Gaulle.)

Posted @ August 27, 2007 03:38 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

The Making of "The World At War"

You can get anything on the internet, if you look hard enough.

I've mentioned it before, but the 1970s Documentary 'The World at War" remains as one of the finest works in this history of the medium.

If you've never seen it, you need to get it, sit down and watch it.

Now.

If you have seen it, you need to see it again. And you already know why.

Now, thanks to YouTube, There is a 5 minute view that shows the producer discussing the making of this fine documentary.

I highly recommend this documentary.

Posted @ August 25, 2007 04:12 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)

mortgage fraud- money laundering - offshore shipment scam continues (now going worldwide!)

...and again, something in this story jumps right out at me:

snip...

"...A former Philadelphia resident who spent some of his time in a federal prison in Georgia concocting a scheme to defraud Cendant Mortgage Corp. of $2 million was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Camden.
Reginald Greene, 47, known as "Amin," was indicted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. Also indicted on money laundering charges was Michael Umali, 38, known as "Khadafi," a resident of Oxen Hills, Md.

The pair had met in the federal prison system and worked with a Cendant employee, not named in the indictment, to arrange the wire transfers of cash to cover 15 purchases of residential properties, according to the indictment. Closings of the properties were all scheduled for Sunbelt Title Company in Miami, Fla.

end snip...

More details here.

I cant quite put my finger on it, but something in that story just sort of jumps right out at me...

Oh, and its not like were alone in the US with a sudden outbreak of 'mortgage fraud'. Like all things truly modern, its a "global phenomenon":

snip...

More ambitious fraudsters appear to have taken out multiple mortgages and walked away with the cash, and the scam has been mimicked here.

Persimmon sold apartments in one of its Thamesmead developments to a property developer, Atrex, at a deep discount. Atrex is then believed to have created false identities to borrow from lenders at inflated prices, and then pocketed the difference.

In other cases, it is believed to have used “mortgage mules” ? genuine people, but who had no connection with the properties in question. A&L has since ordered its surveyors to make more stringent checks amid fears that genuine buyers in new-build developments could be left stranded in negative equity with loans worth more than their properties because they have been forced to pay inflated prices for flats.
snip...

“The investigation has established that between May and November last year, a company bought 84 off-plan new-build flats in Thamesmead. The company then resold the flats at greatly inflated prices using mortgage brokers and chartered accountants to fraudulently provide inaccurate mortgage applications for the genuine buyers. In most cases the buyers would not otherwise have qualified for a mortgage.

“The fraud came to light following reports from banks and building societies when either the properties came to be sold or repossessed and the true property value was realised by the lender. The full loss to the lenders cannot be ascertained but the benefit to the conspirators is estimated in the region of £3m-£4m. The investigation is ongoing and arrests have been made.”

A spokesman for Persimmon admitted selling to Atrex, but said it had made the necessary checks.

“We have developments across the region that attract interest from both private and buy-to-let investors and at the Pinnacles in Thamesmead we sold approximately 40% of the apartments to a single property company, Atrex Property Company Limited,” the spokesman said.

“It is not our policy to discriminate against any purchaser wishing to buy the property within an expected time-scale from the date of the reservation. The formal procedure that we require is a money-laundering identity check.

“We meet our legal requirements but are always reviewing our procedures to ensure they are as effective as they possibly can be.”

end snippage...

One of the things about globalization that we didnt think of is how a scam, once perpetrated, can travel half way around the globe before the local market has any idea that its underway.

UPDATE: Welcome Pajame-hedeen! The story has been going on for awhile, and was first noticed by this blog as the great "pot house" story of 2006. This story, and its trail seems to be just the start of what has become known as the great sub-prime mortgage collapse.

The news updates on the radio every 15 minutes are telling you that your neighbors are foreclosing on their homes at a huge increasing rate. What's really going on is that people( in my opinion, organized crime and yes, even Jihadists) have been scamming banks on a gobal basis, taking advantage of what can only be called crappy unethical banking practices that are none too interested in looking closely at the paperwork on these deals and their partners in shady real estate practices across the western world.

"mortgage mules"? Just remember, you heard the term used here first...

Posted @ August 22, 2007 08:02 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

ALERT: Have you seen these two men?

From KOMO.tv in seattle

SEATTLE -- The FBI is asking for the public's help identifying two men who they say have been exhibiting unusual behavior on Washington state ferries.

FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said the men have been reported by by passengers on several ferry runs and, while the behavior may have been innocuous, investigators would like to talk to the men.

Burroughs said the men appeared to be taking an unusual interest in the workings of the boat, but she would not elaborate.

Passengers and crew members on different runs on separate dates reported the men to authorities.

Investigators would not disclose on which ferry runs the men were seen.

Anyone with information about the men is asked to call the FBI's Seattle office at 206-622-0460.

(Additional note: If you ARE these two men, get thee to an FBI office immediately.)

Posted @ August 20, 2007 06:35 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

once again we play our little game

If there is such a thing as the 'healing power of prayer' then there must also be the ability to wish someone dead. If that is true, then Fidel Castro must have the hateful thoughts of 6 million cubans sitting heavy on his coal black soul.

The Great Babalu has picked up signals that say, once again Castro is dead.

Perez Hilton is catching the same wave.

Here's how we play this game:

- Wishes alone dont make it so, but sudden movement of diplomatic staff is a pretty damn good indicator that something is up. Watch the venezuelan and spanish embassies.

- Denials will fly, until everyone is in their assembled places in Cuba. Watch for movement of South American leadership to Cuba to come out of the blue.

- Watch for sudden alerts by the US Coast Guard for 7th District.

- We will know for sure within 12 hours.

I've scheduled myself for a very large hangover for the 24 hours following the first available photo of 'el jefe' in a casket.

Yes Virginia, its quite ok to wish someone ill. Commandants of concentration camps like Cuba deserve no special dispensation under the normal protection of common humanity.

I hope he's dead, and I hope he died in pain after a long illness.

Posted @ August 17, 2007 09:47 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2) | TrackBack (2)

Research Bleg: Investment Title Documentation

Can anyone offer any help as to what this is?

And why is it posted to the internet?

It pertains to our case of "I&R Inestment Properties" in Stockton, but I dont understand enough about real estate to know what it is I'm looking at....

Thanks.

(jasper lamarr crabb, jasper lamarr crabb...)

Posted @ August 17, 2007 08:41 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

something about this story jumps right up at me...

Mortgage Fraud Bust Linked to Stockton Homes

- The FBI says Iftikhar Ahmad, 36, made millions by buying and selling more than 100 houses over the past eleven years.

- According to a complaint and supporting affidavit filed in federal court, many of the transactions involved a quick turnaround with a dramatic price increase.

- Many of the mortgages came from subprime lenders and in some cases the buyers used stolen identities, according to the FBI.

- In many of the real estate transactions, the buyers defaulted within a year.

- The FBI believes Ahmad sent at least $484,000 of the money to his native Pakistan.

- Investigators say Robert Ortiz Alfaro bought two homes from Ahmad with a combined purchase price of $520,000. Both homes went into foreclosure. Manpreet Singh, 24, also bought two houses from Ahmad worth a total of $695,000, according to the FBI. One of them went into default within months of the transaction. Ahmad, Alfaro and Singh face charges of mail fraud. Ahmad also faces money laundering charges.

So, you have lots of "ill gotten" cash that you need to get into banks without raising suspicion. You find a willing accomplice who can act as a real estate agent and you buy homes using a set of false or stolen identities and you use the cash in less than 10,000 dollar increments to "salt" the bank accounts of the stolen identities, so as to provide the basic requirements necessary to secure a loan. You then get subprime mortgages to buy the property using the stolen identity( Im guessing that there were lots of people at George Costanzas "Vandelay industries" who were taking out sub-prime loans), the money for the purchase of the house goes to your escrow account from the sub-prime lender and is then deposited in your confederates banks.

...and three months later, you and your false identity are nowhere to be found, the 'salted account" is emptied, and the house sits vacant, only to be foreclosed by the subprime lender, who now has a house worth 50% of the value loaned. This is how you rob a bank, without using a gun.

Identity theft. Mortgage fraud. Money Laundering. Pakistan.

How much you want to bet that this isn't an isolated case?

A friend in the real estate business once told me " The real money isnt in selling drugs, its in selling the real estate that the drugs buy..."

More here at the Mortgage Fruad Blog

Posted @ August 17, 2007 08:30 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (4)

Walsh - Duffy get up here, I got a job for you...

Research question of the day:
The collapse of the recent housing bubble -

Is it related to the grown number of "grow house" busts in the last 6 months, which is itself related to the growing number of money laundering operations that have been closed down?

I know that the Sacramento housing market was badly hit when over 300 homes were discovered to be purchased solely to work as places to grow pot and when those homes were closed they sat on the market, and that sudden large amount of distressed inventory caused the market to look weak.

If this is happening in this market, there is no reason to believe that its isolated here. If its happening on the same scale across the country...

Gray area offshore banks need to launder money, give loans to other banks, who move the money with high risk real estate loans, which are used in part to buy homes to grow pot, and all goes well until the pot houses are discovered, which also uncovers the real estate offices and mortgage companies that are funding the traffic, which when closed gives the reaction to the market that "houses arent selling..." which is symptom of the actual disease and not the disease itself.

More to follow...

Posted @ August 15, 2007 08:57 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

Finally...

( an image that matches my emotions right now...)

I havent been blogging much for awhile because I have been working on a very large work related project, And today it went live,so I'm elated.

Theres some low intensity, "post golive", clean up work to do, some reviews to do, and then its off on real vacation for a couple of weeks.

I will be attending "Blog Fest West" on August 18, 2007.

Elated, exhausted and damn happy to be here. Thats me all over...

Posted @ August 10, 2007 11:08 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)

The Great Artiste

From wikipedia:

"...On the mission to bomb Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, it was to have been the aircraft carrying the bomb, but the mission schedule had been moved forward two days because of weather considerations and the instrumentation had not yet been removed from the aircraft. To avoid delaying the mission, Sweeney traded airplanes with the crew of Bockscar to carry the Fat Man atomic bomb to Nagasaki. The crew of Captain Frederick C. Bock flew The Great Artiste to Nagasaki on its instrument support mission, and landed with it on Okinawa at the conclusion of the mission.

In addition to its use on the nuclear bomb missions, The Great Artiste was flown by five different crews on 12 training and practise missions, and by Albury and crew C-15 on two combat missions, one of which was aborted and the other in which it used a Pumpkin bomb to attack the railroad yards at Kobe. Capt. Bob Lewis and crew B-9 flew it to drop a pumpkin bomb on an industrial target in Tokushima.

In November 1945 it returned with the 509th to Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. On September 3, 1948, on a polar navigation training mission, it developed an engine problem after takeoff from Goose Bay Air Base, Labrador, and ran off the end of the runway when attempting to land. Heavily damaged, it never flew again and was eventually scrapped at Goose Bay in September 1949, despite its historical significance.

The Greate Artiste makes a very brief appearance in the take off scene from Tinian in the movie Above and Beyond as an observation plane for the Hiroshima mission. At this point in time, however, it did not have the nose art visible in the movie. It had its nose art painted after the Nagasaki mission, and the name purportedly referred to undisclosed talents of the bombardier, Capt. Beahan.
"

August 9th was the day that Nagasaki was bombed. August 9th was also, for Capt. Kermit K. Beahan, bombadier of the Nagasaki Mission, the man also known as "The Great Artiste"; his 27th birthday.

[back row (L-R)] Captain Beahan, Captain Van Pelt, Jr., First Lt. Albury, Second Lt. Olivi, Major Sweeney

Staff Sgt. Buckley, Master Sgt. Kuharek, Sgt. Gallagher, Staff Sgt. DeHart, Sgt. Spitzer

Here is a TIME Magazine article from August 20,1945.

Here is Kermit Beahans obituary. After the war, he worked as a technical writer until 1985 for Brown and Root. Thats right, the subsidiary of Halliburton!

In 1989, He still has the twinkle in his eye and the rakish moustache of "The Great Artiste". Today not just the commemoration of the Nagasaki bombing but today is also the birthday of Kermit Beahan, a man who hoped that he would be the last man in history to use an atomic weapon in warfare.

Posted @ August 09, 2007 07:14 AM | Aviation | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

It's all about the boat

Based on the reaction to the last post, by popular demand I present...

The Chesapeake 18, from CLC Boats. This is a "stitch and glue" lightweight kayak that is sold in kit form and you construct on your own. Its made of mohogany wood structure with fiberglass and resin overlays. This particular boat can carry a large person like yours truly with 300 lbs of gear for Sea Kayak camping. It took about 60 hours to complete, with the bulk of the hard labor spent on the cockpit ring and its compound curves and angles.

If you are looking for a fun project thats easy to build and you have the space, I highly recommend this manufacturer. Their support was fantastic and the materials and supplies were of very high quality.

I am by no means a highly skilled woodworker, do not get the idea that you need to be a master carpenter for this to work. Its very simple to construct this boat and requires no more skills than are needed to follow instructions that are no more complicated than making a cake or making a cabinet that you bought at IKEA.

I got this boat because I wanted a Sea Kayak, but I simply could not justify the expense of a hobby that could cost thousands of dollars even for a used kayak. Chesapeake Light Craft offered an outstanding design that looks beautiful ( and handles excellently!) for less than most sit-on-top plastic kayaks cost.

Posted @ August 06, 2007 10:38 PM | Current Events | Comments (6)

The Endless Summer: Part XII

Father and Son, afloat in the endless summer of 2007...

Posted @ August 06, 2007 04:17 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)