… pin.
A Birmingham judge so hilariously corrupt, incompetent, and racist that she managed to get indefinite suspension even in one of our most corrupt states, continues to smile down from her official probate court page.
An extensive reading of her case yields the thought that she simply went mad with power, enjoying – it seems – the thought of suffering people waiting for her decisions before they could be released from mental institutions and other forms of hell. Walking her dogs routinely took precedence over appearing in court and doing her job, much of which involved sick and vindictive plots against people she didn’t like. Like white people.
UD’s loving the Spy Who Came in with the Gold – a real pot boiler, destined to become a classic of its type.
How did the mysterious self-fabricator David Rush gain entry to the CIA in the first place, much less be promoted to a senior agency position? How did he – like the pyramid-building Egyptians; like the Moia-mounting Easter Islanders – move thousands of gold bars into his suburban Virginia manse? An enigma for the ages.
Like David himself. Like the super well-endowed federal agency that fed him the bullion while he fed it the bull.
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And these are only the opening chapters. Where do we go from here? UD is panting to know. Certain incipient plot lines are obvious – his explanation that he had a debilitating gambling addiction, frinstance… Was he clever enough NOT to buy seven Aston Martins in order to avoid suspicion? We’ve heard not a peep about his car collection.
Did a Russki kleptocrat on orders from Putin set the whole thing up?
Is it good for the Jews?
He’s not quite comfortable looking straight at the mug shot camera, but then he’s used to cloak and dagger. His dark identity needs to be carefully protected, along with the reason why, as a high-ranking CIA officer, he stole forty million dollars worth of gold bars, courtesy of your federal taxes.
Oh – also oodles of foreign currency, and “three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes.”
He lied to the CIA about pretty much everything, including his extensive, totally made up, education. And was rewarded with a senior position that lasted decades. What gives? Is he a mole?
UD wonders if the current administration, faced with unbelievable negligence and stupidity at the highest level of American intelligence, will be able to blame it on an earlier administration.
A reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Ed offers a book-length interview with the curiouser and curiouser Dan Ariely – a Duke sociologist already outed as a likely research fraudster (sometimes with his buddy, the notorious F. Giro).
Ariely is now being … scrutinized because of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship he talks about with the same idiocy/evasion as his other buddy, none other than Prince Andrew himself!
Okay, merely an acquaintance. They had tea together in a palace. But read the whole Ariely interview to see what a slightly smarter, slicker, Andrew would have said.
I think that we are developing very much a fear culture. I feel that given that I was in the Epstein files, I feel that I’m lucky that I’m a social scientist. If I were a physicist, I would just get the negative consequences. As a social scientist, I get to also learn something new about humanity. So every time somebody calls to wonder or to cancel or something, I have a discussion with them. And I try to understand what is going on. And my sense is that we are getting to be more of a culture that is driven by fear.
Driven by fear, or by disgust that amoral elites don’t give a shit about – or in the case of Andrew even seem to share – the vile sexual ethics of some of the super-rich? Fun as it is to receive lectures from Ariely about what cowards we are because we’re afraid to plagiarize or make stuff up or hang around with sick motherfuckers, UD thinks it’s better to keep the focus on people who plagiarize and make stuff up and hang around with sick motherfuckers.
Wowsa. Should definitely be giving squatting seminars.
Wouldn’t be a Bama statement without a nod in the direction of career management specialist Jesus Christ; and, when she was hired, UA Birmingham baseball coach Taylor Smartt made sure to thank the big guy for opening what turned out to be some amazing doors for her.
[F]our current players [said] Smartt would threaten to loosen their buttholes with her fingers.
“She told me countless times she would take me to the bathroom and loosen my asshole for me,” one of the players said.
In the long – uh – annals of twisted coaching (UD’s seen it all), this is a new one on me. I’ve written here, to be sure, about coaches who plunge students’ heads in toilet bowls and lock them in dark offices with no food or water for extended periods or pummel them with heavy objects blah blah. Digital anal abuse I’ll admit I’d not yet met, and I’ll further admit that I wonder about a God who would open a door and lead a person there.
At least the larger community of Birmingham is God-fearing.
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UD thanks Andrew.
… but the source is Bloomberg, and it’s about a prominent member of the Sackler family having pled guilty to a felony she committed while addicted to the family brew. So it seems worth pursuing as other outlets pick it up… Cuz it casts a certain opiate spell…
As the Sackler family worked through a plan to pay $6.5 billion to resolve their liability over Purdue Pharma LP’s production of addictive opioids, the epidemic hit even closer to home.
Joss Sackler, the wife of former Purdue board member David Sackler, admitted deleting WhatsApp messages showing she was the intended recipient of a shipment of prescription drugs seized by US border agents in 2024. Sackler, who said she was addicted to opioids at the time, pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal grand jury investigation into the transaction.
“I am so truly sorry that when I was suffering from …”
If, as predicted, he suffers a crushing defeat, what will happen to all the state funds dedicated to keeping Hungarian women pregnant 24/7?
In 2012 and 2014, [HOA president Tara] Howie took plea deals in New Jersey for stealing $800,000 from wards in her care while working for a guardianship attorney. She was sentenced to a total of 9 years in prison.
Right now, she’s facing criminal charges in Orlando for stealing over $500 worth of merchandise from Target.
Plus she just stole all their homeowner fees! Shocker.
‘Hospice care is specifically for care in a person’s last weeks or months of life, sometimes six months or less. A tip off to investigators was finding patients who were enrolled in hospice care for multiple years, according to a DOJ spokesperson. The defendants allegedly transferred several patients between the three companies after six months to continually bill for services.’
Scathing Online Schoolmarm hastens to correct between, which should be among, since the writer is describing an action involving more than two people or things. But having done that, she will proceed to delectate the ghost hospice fraud story.
Spiritual Touch, ghost hospice — the language here is fantastic, as is the desperate problem of where to stash the pretend-dying to maintain payouts.
It’s like they’ve created a new mysterious Blue Zone, where, for reasons unknown, a group of 120 year olds keep on keepin on. Sardinia, Okinawa, Monterey Park Los Angeles County.
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It brings to mind Donne’s magnificent sonnet:
Death, Be Not Allowed
BY JOHN DONNE
Death, be not allowed, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, long as they can pay me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; yet from thee no bucks do flow,
And so our almost-dead with thee don’t go.
Transfer their old bones; then, check’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And bogus death, O Death, doth pay us well
With dollars better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One fake hospice transfer past, we’re paid eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
A Collierville Middle School girl’s basketball coach was arrested on gun and drug charges… [The Memphis Tenn. coach is accused of] being a convicted felon in possession of a handgun; possession of cocaine with intent to manufacture, sell, or deliver; possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture, deliver, or sell; and possession of a firearm during a dangerous felony… Now, many are asking if the district did a background check before he started coaching in Collierville.
No shit.
[In a] deposition, [a DOGE staffer] was asked to apply his understanding of DEI to specific projects from which his department had pulled funding. In one example, he was asked why a documentary focused on female Holocaust survivors was characterized as DEI.
“It’s the gender-based story; that’s inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group,” Fox stumbled. “It’s focusing on DEI principles, gender being one of them… specifically focused on Jewish cultures and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture.”
“It’s inherently related to DEI for those reasons,” he concluded.