Saturday, August 18

:
FL BRIEFS (2#) -

# Rep Bob Allen's attorney, Greg Eisenmenger, filed motions to dismiss yesterday. A hearing is set for Friday in Titusville. Allen's attorney wants charges tossed.

# PIPE LINE: The Florida Commission on Ethics is investigating Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti's alleged acceptance of $2,500 from a plumbers union.

...

Friday, August 17

:
IT'S A WRAP! -

Cellophane was only one of the bizarre
harassment methods used by a "depraved"
EMS outfit on Long Island, according to a
lawsuit filed by three former associates.

And that department's
M*Space page has been removed.

See: "RESCUE RAUNCH"

:: By Selim Algar ::

...
:
HARD HEADS -

"Okay, OKAY, it’s not so easy to walk that fine line and come up with a decent headline for a crime story. I once had the privilege of working a brief stint as a copy editor for the Lapeer County Press in my home state of Michigan, and headlines are not easy to write, let me
tell you."

--from: The Lost Art of
Writing Crime Headlines

:: By Laura James perma ::

...

Thursday, August 16

:
THAT ELUSIVE $20 -

Some thoughts on
the Bob Allen Story . . .

I feel that at this point, I need to pause and say something serious about the way the Mainstream News Media in general has been covering this story.

Allen contended that he did not have $20 in his pockets or with him, and I have no reason to disbelieve him, so far. Unless the police play "dropsy" by dropping a $20 into his personal effects which they confiscated or doctor the evidence record post facto: there is no $20 and never was.

The trouble is that most of the MSM organizations are covering this story as Entertainment and not as News. Every time they recap the story they include the $20 as if it is a real fact - but without any substantiation of it.

By persistently repeating the $20, the Media is trying to reinforce the idea that a fictional or hypothetical $20 existed. That would be like offering a theoretical pot plant
in evidence.

The dog days of August tend to be slow for the kind of news which is usually targeted at their desired demographic, so they're making the most of this incident, I suppose.

Typical of the most popular narrative for this story, is the story arc which posits that Allen campaigned against public lewdness and that's why he's been "caught" at it. Simple cause and effect! Allen was opposed to public lewdness and therefore his opposition to public lewdness is what is destroying him. No, it doesn't make much sense.

And, so far, there was no public lewdness here. Just a conversational interchange between two adult men within a wheelchair-accommodating toilet stall designated for the disabled. No one else was there and no little kids would walk into this rather large toilet stall with a graphic symbol on its door of a wheelchair.

So, why should we care what these two men spoke about? Because $20 was being transferred. But if the $20 didn't exist, it couldn't have been transferred.

Indeed, the very existence of that $20 is just one of the troublesome problems with this story - unless you've lost the plot. And there are a lot of other problems, as well.

I am sharing these musings with you in order to raise your awareness of how this story is being manipulated by the Press. They are covering this story as Entertainment and not as News, and you should keep that in mind as you
follow it.

The next development in
this story is scheduled for August 23rd.

...

Wednesday, August 15

:
VIDEOTAPE BLUES (3#) -

A Bob Allen Update . . .

# FL House Speaker Marco Rubio removed Rep Bob Allen from two committees this morning even though Allen has not been convicted of anything.

It appears that Mr Rubio actually believes that the police have videotape of this strange encounter in disabilities.

# Meanwhile, how's Police Officer Kavanaugh doing? He's become a boytoy pinup hit with one of America's more prominent female erotic bloggers who features a SNAPSHOT of him on her [Adult Material] Blog with the remark:

"The cop, btw, is drop-dead handsome."

...
:
CYBER MAPPING FOR TERRORISM -

U.S. law enforcement officials say they have identified more than two dozen "clusters" in the Northeast United States that could lead to homegrown terror...

Reports identify: prisons, websites, universities and religious/cultural institutions as places where "radicalization appears to occur"...

Also identified are: mosques, bookstores, cafes, prisons and flop houses as "radicalization incubators" that provide "extremist fodder or fuel for radicalization."

:: WABC: The Blotter ::

...
:
MUSINGS OF A FL HOUSEGUEST -

"We're in Palm Beach at the moment, where Cricket's dad has a fantastic house... I'll be hugely disappointed if I don't witness at least one cocaine baron cigarette boat-based firefight from the sunbathing platform this week."

Guest Blogger brought an armful of books with him... and compares Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd with Dashiel Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

...

Tuesday, August 14

:
Bookish: SEPARATED AT BIRTH (3#) -

# On the sixtieth anniversary of independence via partition for India and Pakistan, C Max Magee puts together a little reading list to mark the occasion.

# "Why is it that, while the world fell in love with Indian novelists, Pakistani novelists failed to achieve the same high profile? And is the situation changing?" Another side of the story by Kamila Shamsie. [guard]

# Blogger Clayton Moore interviews Mohsin Hamid whose latest novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a contender for a major literary prize. Bang!

...

Monday, August 13

:
NOT LIVING UNDER A BRIDGE (2#) -

They're kicking up a fuss Across the Pond with reports that American dotcom tycoon Marc Collins Rector is "swanning around Britain" in a chauffeur-driven black BMW limo and taking youths to lunch at fancy restaurants in London.

Journalists allege that he gained an entry visa
to the UK by failing to disclose his rap sheet.

:: The First Post :: and :: The Sun ::

...

Sunday, August 12

:
THE USF 2: update -

FBI agents executed a search over
the weekend of a Tampa-area home
connected to the Goose Creek Incident.

Seized items included a computer.

...
:
VIDEO AT 11 -

But don't hold your breath . . .

The weekend wouldn't be complete without a Bob Allen News Update, and columnist Howard Troxler in St Pete does not disappoint, but maybe runs out of "maybe" ideas too quickly:

"You never know. Maybe the cop misheard him. Maybe some guy next to Allen actually said that stuff. Maybe the representative will look a jury in the eye and the jury will have reasonable doubt."

I thought the police chief promised us "complete videotape" of this strange encounter. Well, we're still waiting for it. Where's the part of the videotape showing Kavanaugh displaying his naughty bits? I mean, uh, shifting his equipment around. They're holding out on us. Hey,
bring it on!

...