Tuesday, October 22, 2019

October Team Analysis Training

October 29th 9am to 3pm, 

 October 31st, 12noon to 6pm EST 

9 comments:

Tania Cadogan said...

Off topic

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the lawsuit against actor Jussie Smollett will not be dismissed.

The suit asks that Smollett reimburse the police department the $130,000 spent on investigating his alleged attack, which he asked to be dismissed because he couldn't have known how much time and money was spent on the investigation.

In January, Smollett claimed that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago, but the Chicago Police Department is adamant that there is a mountain of evidence that shows Smollett staged the attack with two brothers he knew.

After nearly 1,900 hours of investigation, Smollett was charged with filing a false report. Those charges were dropped in March, despite claims from Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson that Smollett "took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career."

In August, Special Prosecutor Dan Webb was assigned to the case after the judge said it was riddled with "unprecedented irregularities."

Smollett previously starred as Jamal Lyon in Fox's "Empire," but was cut out of the musical drama's sixth season following the allegations. Series creator Lee Daniels said he was "beyond embarrassed" by the scandal.

With the appointment of the special prosecutor, there remains the possibility that Smollett -- who has maintained his innocence -- could be charged again with staging the attack.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/jussie-smollett-case-to-proceed-in-chicago-federal-judge

Anonymous said...

Off topic - Part 1

Fugitive Financier, on the Lam Since 1973, Has a Court Date Today in Denver

By James Brooke

Dec. 6, 1996

With charm and movie star good looks, George I. Norman Jr., a millionaire financier, played among the big names of Hollywood, keeping Rocky Mountain society agog in the era of bell-bottoms and turtlenecks.

Hopping over the highest mountains in the West with a leased Learjet, Mr. Norman played golf with Bob Hope, gambled in Las Vegas with Chuck Connors and played host to the likes of Lucille Ball at his $1 million mansion in Salt Lake City. Shaking up Mormon Utah, Mr. Norman, a Los Angeles transplant, founded a national network of health spas and pioneered Salt Lake's rock-and-roll format on one of his 20 radio stations in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

But the last time people saw George Norman around here, he had been convicted of siphoning $500,000 from a Denver bank to finance his lavish style of living. Minutes before he was to start a two-year prison term, he drove off in a borrowed orange Pontiac LeMans convertible, leaving stranded his startled, high-powered defense lawyer, a man named Orrin G. Hatch. ''It was embarrassing,'' said Mr. Hatch, now a senator from Utah and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Within hours, the smooth-talking fugitive had borrowed a Cadillac from another powerful friend, Edward C. Day, a Colorado Supreme Court judge. Mr. Day recalled this week: ''I sat up until 2 o'clock in the morning, and then I realized what had happened. That was the last I ever saw of him.''

The date was March 23, 1973.

On Friday morning, Mr. Norman, now 66, is to end a disappearing act that endured almost a quarter century, answering escape-related charges in Federal court here.

Federal Marshals say he evaded capture by relying on aliases, paying bills in cash and operating out of rented mailboxes and a mobile home. But he always lived the good life, they said. He was, after all, a creature of the boom-town Rockies. ''He was probably the dean of Utah's stock swindlers,'' Nick Morgan, a former Salt Lake County detective, told The Deseret News last week.

As prosecutors dig through archives for details on the nearly forgotten case, Denverites are being reminded of those fast-buck days, when penny stock schemes and dicey oil investments fueled many a dubious fortune.

Two weeks ago, following some leads, Federal marshals caught up with Mr. Norman in Knoxville, Tenn., where he had brought his luxury motor home, a $180,000 Monaco Dynasty, for repairs.

''He was wearing a solid gold Rolex and had a fistful of $100 bills,'' said Doug Wiggs, the United States marshal who arrested Mr. Norman as he emerged from his Comfort Suites motel room in Knoxville. He and his third wife, 36-year-old Donna Sorbo, had registered under their most recent aliases, Tom and Liz Dangelis, the names of her deceased maternal grandparents.

On the road, the Normans seemed to be a National Lampoon parody of the amiable retirees who wander the nation's highways in their recreational vehicles. Piloting their land yacht from Dallas, the pair towed a matching green, late model Lincoln Continental adorned with a disarming bumper sticker: ''Prayer Changes Things.''

Anonymous said...

Off topic - Part 2

''Based on companies that we have identified and stock we believe are his, he is worth millions,'' said Bobby Lloyd, the Federal marshal in Denver handling the case.

Mr. Norman had not only survived, but had also thrived by going underground and plying the private country club scene, with its tennis courts, swimming pools, card rooms and golf courses.

''For a period of time, we tracked him across the country through country clubs,'' Mr. Lloyd said.

Tanned and fit, the Normans made an attractive couple on the country club scene. He was an avid tennis player; she, a skilled golfer who won a number of club championships over the years.

Club members recalled that at the end of the day, he would relax over drinks and peddle penny stocks in his venture of the moment -- a software company in Portland, perhaps, or oil exploration in Pakistan. Mrs. Norman's success on the links -- she became the club's women's champion and then set the women's record for the course -- increased the couple's credibility.

''The country club was his office,'' said William Woy, a member of Las Colinas Country Club near Dallas, which the Normans joined around 1990. ''He was pushing this penny stock, an oil company operating in Pakistan. It went from 60 cents to seven bucks, then it collapsed. Some members got stuck.''

Last spring, when the Normans relinquished their lease on a town house overlooking the golf course, the owner discovered an odd decorating change: Many of the cabinets, drawers and closets had been fitted with double locks.

At the Tennessee motel where Mr. Norman was arrested, Ellen Lewis, a desk clerk said this week that the couple always paid in cash, took out their own garbage and largely dispensed with maid service.

In court here on Friday, Federal Magistrate Richard Borchers is to hear arguments over whether Mr. Norman is still liable for flight-related charges, including forfeiture of bond and transporting a stolen motor vehicle across state lines.

Federal marshals say Mr. Norman's arrest record, which dates to the 1950's, includes auto theft, blackmail, conspiracy to commit fraud, forgery, robbery and assault and battery. He has apparently been in jail before, but not for long. The law-enforcement authorities say that more recently, he defrauded scores of people of millions of dollars. Just before he disappeared, he bounced a $405,125 check written to the Internal Revenue Service, an initial payment of a nearly $1 million tax bill.

Mrs. Norman is staying with her parents in Florida and could not be reached for comment; prosecutors may charge her with harboring a fugitive. Federal marshals say she knew what she was getting into when she married Mr. Norman a little over a decade ago. In 1984, marshals learned that Mr. Norman, using the alias Dr. James Hill, was living with the Sorbo family near Tampa.

''While the marshals were in the house interviewing Sorbo and her parents, Norman drove down the street,'' said Mr. Lloyd, the Denver-based marshal. ''He saw a police vehicle in front of the house. He did a 180, and was gone.''

Anonymous said...

Off topic - Part 3

They later picked up his trail near San Diego; he had been playing tennis at La Costa Country Club. Over the years, the trail crossed a dozen more states. When Mr. Norman was arrested, his Lincoln Continental carried Ohio plates and his motor home carried Oregon plates.

The break came six months ago when Social Security employees noticed that new activity on two numbers that belonged to a couple who had died years earlier -- Mrs. Norman's grandparents.

On the evening of Nov. 21, a few hours before the Normans were to leave Knoxville, Mr. Wiggs, the Federal marshal, pulled into the motel parking lot, bearing a handful of out-of-date photographs of the Normans.

''The blond-haired woman standing by the Lincoln looked like Donna,'' Mr. Wiggs said in an interview. It was harder to identify Mr. Norman, whose face was gaunt from the onset of prostate cancer and who wore his now gray hair in a ponytail.

These days, Stefan D. Stein, one of Mr. Norman's Denver lawyers, sorts through book offers from literary agents. Mr. Norman's old friends and acquaintances mull over his ability to tweak the common convention that Big Brother knows all in late-20th-century America.

''I thought he was dead,'' said Mr. Day, now 88, retired from the bench and still angry about the Cadillac incident. ''I didn't believe that anyone could live on the lam in this country for 23 years, with the F.B.I. on his tail.''

James Morrato, the lawyer who had loaned Mr. Norman the orange LeMans, said in wonderment: ''After all this time, George is caught. The other shoe finally dropped.''

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/06/us/fugitive-financier-on-the-lam-since-1973-has-a-court-date-today-in-denver.html

Nadine Lumley said...

This intractable morass, Blumenthal argues, led directly to the demonization of Russia

Trump’s anti-interventionist rhetoric, however disingenuous, triggered what Blumenthal calls “a wild hysteria” among the foreign policy elites

Trump calls the invasion of Iraq a mistake. He questions the arming of Syrian jihadists and deployment of U.S. forces in Syria. He is critical of NATO. At the same time, he has called for better relations with Russia.


Https://www.truthdig.com/articles/reckoning-with-failure-in-the-war-on-terror

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Nadine Lumley said...

When the federal government guaranteed Ms. Johnson’s mortgage, it became implicated in the shoddy business practices of private sector agents bent on profiting from the desperation of low-income urbanresidents. A legacy of the failure of the program is that it contributed to the conditions that eventually allowed for the widespread use of subprime loans. Indiscriminate F.H.A. lending that resulted in mass foreclosures in the 1970s helped cement the perception of black neighborhoods as dilapidated and deteriorating — which became the basis for declaring a place, or even a person, subprime.


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Nadine Lumley said...

Interesting article

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/opinion/sunday/blacks-hud-real-estate.html

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Anonymous said...

OT on George Norman

What sentence did he recieve?

Cannot find info after NYT article.

Anonymous said...

Trump let's them out of prison just like the Dems.

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2019/10/08/gang-leader-released-by-first-step-act-wanted-murder/


https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/25/data-80-percent-illegals-freed-sanctuary-cities-commit-more-crimes/