Why Just Her, by Montgomery Blair Sibley (review)

A s anyone can imagine, it’s difficult reviewing a book about an event that one was a part of, and especially one in which the main protagonist has died, but fellow participant and former counsel Montgomery Blair Sibley’s book offers a certain degree of closure in the matter of one Deborah Jeane Palfrey (dubbed the “DC Madam” by the mainstream press). Finding a coherent narrative in this tangled-mess was a difficult task, as I can attest to it myself. Palfrey was an enigmatic figure on the national stage from roughly late March 2007 until her untimely death by suicide on May 1, 2008, less than a month after she was found guilty of racketeering charges related to running a prostitution ring in the Washington D.C area from her Vallejo home. This isn’t to say that Sibley’s book is the final word (no book can be that) on the subject, but it’s a good start. There are questions to this story that will never be answered, and not merely because Jeane is no longer with us.

Sibley was very close indeed to the flames and brings us all (myself included) a viable and constructive narrative of what he witnessed and his interpretation of it as the longest serving counsel to Deborah Jeane Palfrey, now forever branded by a puritan media as the “DC Madam.” A great deal has been written about Montgomery Blair Sibley’s behavior inside and outside of the DC Madam scandal and the courts, and while I’ve only corresponded with him via email and spoken with him on the phone a few times, I’ve never felt truly misled by him outside of an attorney’s duties to a defendant or that his behavior or tone were bizarre.

I became a part of this narrative from the first week of June 2007 until very shortly before Palfrey’s death, and was brought into it by the main protagonist herself. Like many historical events, most participants involved only experienced a small-part of the story; but for a few, there was more than just a sliver and they bore witness to more of an event than any other single player. Sibley is the latter. The fact of the matter is: Montgomery Blair Sibley was there from almost the very beginning from October 2006, shortly after Palfrey’s home was raided by USPS inspectors and investigators from the Treasury Department, until very close to the bitter end. To be sure, Palfrey was guilty-as-charged, and whether anyone likes it or not, Mr. Sibley has seized the narrative de facto by being the first to document it in book form. Only time will tell us how solid his version of events is, as with any historical accounting.

Many of Sibley’s detractors in the press and the legal profession are in for a bit of a surprise (outside of their own prejudices, possibly earned by Sibley and his late client for various reasons). Yet, by all appearances, this is a solid primary historical document containing what Sibley feels he experienced representing Palfrey; what the information in his possession means; and what the case itself means within our general and political culture. If he’s wrong anywhere in his version of the narrative, it’s likely that any mistakes or omissions were accidental or simply beyond Sibley’s control and were unintentional. It should be noted here that many materials related to the legal proceedings are still under seal, if not classified under national security statutes. Also worth noting is that this isn’t just about Palfrey, but about the author himself.

To be sure, there is an advantage that comes out of proximity, and the Sibley’s self-deprecation is both refreshing and forthcoming in ways that go well beyond most “what happened” books of this type.

From the point-of-view of this participant, he seems to “get” the hypocrisy of the charges leveled against Palfrey within a very large judicial context, and I applaud him for it. The DC Madam’s former legal counselor notes ably how little justice is to be had for just about any criminal defendant at the federal level and places Palfrey appropriately within that very context in fairly graphic detail. As he accurately states in the text, over 90% of federal criminal defendants plea out, which should tell you something about the prospects for victory for nearly anyone accused of violating federal statutes.

But Sibley had bigger problems than simply taking on the District of Columbia’s prosecution team under the Bush/Gonzalez interim-appointed U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey A. Taylor, an eleventh hour appointment at that. The “lawyer with a good name” had a client who was part of that 10% that would never, under any circumstances, capitulate to a plea deal.

Palfrey told this writer in our first telephone conversation in early June 2007 of two very good plea deals (reported in much less detail by ABC in their May 20/20 special featuring Palfrey for scant few minutes):

…I would not take their offers. …The best offer I think we had was about a year total of jail time—about maybe half of that in a halfway house, about half of that in a prison…maybe four months in a halfway house, maybe four months in a prison. They would take 2/3d’s of my—uh—life savings. That was the best offer possible. I basically told them to go screw themselves….to go to hell. Now, when that last offer came down, that’s when they indicted me. [i]

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you (even Sibley, though we might disagree on this and several other points) that those were extremely generous plea deals, better than the average. What was she thinking? What else? She was thinking about the money—her overall assets--and the fact that she was going back to jail, and that’s about it.

This writer can attest to Palfrey having a tendency towards making irrational demands of others (I rejected my share of them) and acting in ways that could only have hurt her. In other words, it’s my humble opinion that she was disturbed and that it was a long-term condition of some sort that was exacerbated by her legal ordeal. When it began, I cannot say, but it appears to have been present as early as 1991-1992 in the aftermath of her first conviction and incarceration. There is little reason to think that either the Court or the prosecution were unaware of this fact at any stage in the proceedings. This begs-the-question as to why there was no intervention to assess whether the defendant was a threat to herself.

Why Just Her is generally silent on this issue for what we can assume are very serious legal reasons of procedure, and likely more.

The origins for Palfrey’s irrational behavior have been widely speculated on. Taking the overall picture that Sibley paints of the DC Madam’s state of mind during the legal proceedings for what they are and were, it’s hard not to conclude that the defendant Deborah Jeane Palfrey was not merely unhinged by the charges against her, but that she had ongoing mental problems that were probably with her for the entirety of her short life. This jibes perfectly with my contact with her, which was generally through a few telephone calls and a very long correspondence via-email. Sibley reveals some of this mental state to us through some rather extraordinary emails between others (including myself) and Palfrey, court filings, transcripts, anecdotes, and so on. He astutely notes from Palfrey’s autopsy report that she had high levels of Zolpidem in her bloodstream and corroborates this himself that he believes she was abusing it during her legal battle.

From the toxicological report done for the Pinellas County Forensic Laboratory:

2483B Zolpidem, Blood…

Analysis by Gas Chromatography (GC)

Zolpidem

Synonym(s): Ambien®

Peak plasma concentration following single oral 5 and 10 mg doses: 29 – 113 ng/mL (mean = 59 ng/mL) and 58 – 272 ng/mL (mean 121 ng/mL), respectively occurring at a mean time of 1.6 hours [before death]. [ii]

Sibley accurately states in his account that Palfrey took an overdose of generic Ambien roughly two hours before her death, so he’s not shaping the facts and his reading of this and other specific public documents appear to be on solid ground.

As a layman, I cannot comment to his interpretation of the laws and statutes invoked in Palfrey’s case. That’s what attorneys and judges are for. All that being said, I don’t think he was able to discuss the theme of suicide very expansively in Why Just Her because of court procedures regarding sealed documents as well as the Palfrey Estate’s invoking of attorney-client privilege over the last year. Some of these issues will probably be resolved before the end of 2009 (or not), but Sibley does drop a few bombshells:

Blanche subsequently told me that after writing the three notes on April 25, 2008, and taking an unknown quantity of [Z]olpidem, Jeane was unconscious for 30 hours. Upon waking up, she drove her [Jeane] to Blanche’s mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. …Though conspiracy theories quickly populated the internet, the hard evidence was simply too overwhelming to permit any conclusion other than Jeane had taken her own life. [iii]

As evinced by the number of attorney firings (not including the then-recent U.S. Attorney firing scandal that brought Jeffrey A. Taylor into the equation) by Palfrey over the course of events, Montgomery Blair Sibley and the rest of her representation had their hands full. I don’t expect that either A.J. Kramer or Preston Burton will be writing their accounts anytime soon--if ever--and their reasons probably run-the-gamut. I can relate. They all had a nightmare client on their hands, possibly the worst kind one could represent in a criminal/civil case, and Sibley has represented some real “doosie” clients like Obama accuser Larry Sinclair in the aftermath, so it’s saying something. Sinclair was probably like a vacation compared to Jeane.

Palfrey was that impossible client who lied most of the time and kept her cards close-to-the-vest, as this book documents throughout, and therefore, there can never truly be a full portrait of who she was and what she did running Pamela Martin & Associates, generally unmolested for thirteen years within the greater Washington D.C. area. In many ways, she will remain an enigma. Such are the obstacles to all historical portraits, even when they’re coming from those who had a lot of contact with the subject, but Sibley does an exceptional job in reconstructing the timeline as well as his and Palfrey’s general state of mind over the course of her prolonged legal proceedings. People accused of criminal acts have their secrets and their reasons for harboring them, and Palfrey was no exception to this tendency.

Like everyone in this life, Palfrey took some of her secrets to the grave. But there are a few glaring mysteries including how much money she actually made over the years which contradict her and the government’s assertions, and there is smoke. For example, Sibley notes a very serious problem in the cross-examination by AUSA for the prosecution, Daniel Butler, at trial regarding the testimony of IRS agent Troy Burrus. Statements were made that pulled-back the veil, and the only explanation this writer can find is incredible incompetence. In short, they accidentally charged Palfrey with under-reporting her income at trial rather than beforehand. This is a major procedural error in any criminal trial.

But no worries, the presiding judge had their back in the end. A reasonable outcome would have been a mistrial, but Judge Robertson was no Judge Kessler (who was replaced in a predawn raid without explanation), and anything but reasonable. This exchange occurred during Palfrey’s trial on April 9, 2008:

…22 Q. Does Ms. Palfrey's return show gross receipts or net

23 receipts?

24 A. It shows gross receipts.

25 Q. And where does it show that?

450

1 A. On line one, under part one for the income, it shows the

2 gross receipts.

3 Q. And what is gross receipts, just to make sure?

4 A. Gross receipts in this instance would be all the income that

5 was received by the business during that year.

6 Q. So that would include Ms. Palfrey as well as her employees.

7 Is that correct?

8 A. Actually, it should include the monies that she actually

9 received, that was sent to her.

10 Q. And did you compare the tax returns to the bank records for

11 Ms. Palfrey?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. And what did that show?

14 A. The comparison of the bank records for this year, 2002, show

15 that there was a greater amount of gross receipts than was

16 reported on this line.

17 MR. BURTON: Can we approach, Your Honor?

18 THE COURT: Yes.

19 (BENCH CONFERENCE ON THE RECORD.)

20 MR. BURTON [Palfrey’s criminal counsel at trial]: I don't know where this is going.

21 MR. BUTLER: I'm not going to any tax discrepancy, or

22 anything to that effect.

23 THE COURT [Former FISA Judge James Robertson who resigned from the Court in December 2005 when the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program was exposed]: You just saddled her with basically what is

24 false reporting.

25 MR. BUTLER: Well, I don't think it's gone that far.

451

1 yet, Your Honor. I'm not going any further with this line of

2 inquiry.

3 THE COURT: Well, now you've put the defense in the

4 position where they have to respond to this. How are they going

5 to do that?

6 MR. BUTLER: Well, Your Honor, that was not the intent

7 of my question, but I appreciate what the Court is saying.

8 THE COURT: What was the intent of the question?

9 MR. BUTLER: My intent of the question, Your Honor, was

10 directed at the gross receipts that were deposited into this and

11 comparing it with the bank records that we have. It was a

12 poorly phrased question. That's all I can say about it. I

13 don't know anything more than that.

14 THE COURT: Well, where are you going next?

15 MR. BUTLER: Your Honor, I'm going next with -- can I

16 just have a moment, Your Honor?

17 Your Honor, there's another chart in terms of -- I just

18 need to grab it, just to answer the question more explicitly, if

19 I can have a moment.

20 THE COURT: How much more do you have with this guy?

21 MR. BUTLER: Not very much at all, Your Honor.

22 MS. CONNELLY: I think there's a bunch more documents.

23 MR. BUTLER: Well, there's other documents we need to

24 admit through him, yes.

25 THE COURT: Can he come back in the morning? [iv.]

Palfrey’s final criminal counsel merely went through the motions, and weakly called for a mistrial, which Robertson rejected immediately. Burton didn’t press the issue, which was typical of this defense strategy during the trial. It appears that his defense wasn’t especially zealous. Yet, critics of Sibley would be hard-pressed in saying he didn’t represent Palfrey zealously enough--if anything it might have bordered on the overzealous (whatever that means), and I believe he did his best to save her from herself, including attempts to bring her suicidal behavior to the attention of the Court, and possibly even that of the prosecution.

But, again, I believe that he and they are not legally able to discuss or write about such things for procedural reasons.

This is the first place to start for the average person in beginning to understand a very convoluted and chimerical scandal that was inherently political. It is an honest effort at understanding what happened from someone who was intimately involved in it and it offers about as sincere a perspective as you’re going to get from someone in such a position. The press’s coverage of this event was superficial, lacking in substance, and even went so far as to intentionally obscure very important issues, never mind the real ones at hand in it. In other words, they missed the real stories, the core issues. That’s not very hard to believe given the state of investigative journalism these days.

That the prosecution was engaged in gross misbehavior is a given. That the Court failed to administer reasonable due process at trial is open to interpretation, but why then was Judge Kessler so abruptly removed and replaced by former FISA court Judge James Robertson if there really were no national security issues to the case? They’re not telling, but Montgomery Blair Sibley is, and as much as he’s allowed to under the law. That speaks volumes, and resoundingly.

---

[i] Phone conversation with the author, June 10, 2007.

[ii] “Toxicology Report,” NMS Labs, Work order 08165556, Palfrey, Deborah Jeane, May 31, 2008.

[iii] Sibley, Montgomery Blair, Why Just Her. (Full Court Press, 2009) P.581.

[iv] United States v. Deborah Palfrey, “TRANSCRIPT OF TRIAL RECORD VOLUME 3,” “Criminal No. 07-0046,” April 9, 2008.

AP: "Jackson death was twittered, texted and Facebooked"

WWW/NYC--My, my, my...where to begin? I'm trying to understand why in this day and age it's necessary for everyone to tell each other what's going to come their way inevitably, especially by word-of-mouth. All your new-fashioned applications and flashing-lights are frightening to this American primitive, and lately, I've been seeing colored-dots without the usual chemical refreshments, causing anxieties over whether I'm epileptic or not.

In addition, we now seem to have three--count them, three--new verbs added to the English-lexicon, and nobody, I mean nobody, consulted Oxford University. The gall (Google it).

But it gets worse: Michael Jackson actually died many years ago and his brain was cryogenically-frozen and stored at a Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems complex so that future generations could listen to banal droning coming from a cybernetic being other than a Philip K. Dick Cheney or a Walt Disney. Hey, they needed something to blot-out the news coming out of the Middle East, and women with large, fake breasts weren't cutting it anymore...

Where were you when Kennedy died? Fuck that man--pfft!--Jacko died, and through the magic of technology we never asked for or needed, we could find out that it was so just moments after the LAPD's announcement--faster than microwaving a pizza, and just about as satisfying.

But wait, it's not all bells-and-whistles, and quit annoying me, asshole:

"Once you knew the news, there wasn't so much more to know - the rest is all comment," said media critic Jeff Jarvis. So, he said, maybe you'd go to your friends instead of the news: "You might care more what your friends say than some analyst."

Jarvis himself tweeted the moment he heard of the death: He noted that Iran's spiritual leader should be grateful to Jackson because the story wiped Iran off the day's news agenda.

"That was re-tweeted a lot," Jarvis said.

("Jackson death was twittered, texted and Facebooked," AP, 06.27.2009)

Thanks Mr. Jarvis! Wow! Empathy is great, don't get me wrong, but we're making a generation of twittering "Otakus" ( おたく/オタク) which is Japanese for dorks who are a storehouse of worthless data and information (people who never, ever, get laid, like me).

Are there any Otakus out there who are political junkies? That seems impossible considering the qualifiers. Now spit.

Hollywood must die (soon come!): "Dahmer vs. Gacy (2010)

Hollywoodland--In our new economy, you just have to roll with the punches, kicks-to-the-genitals, and all the other body-blows that the consolidated mainstream media are going to ignore, therefore, making it go away.

But this was a new one on me: there is a movie in production with the aforementioned title, Dahmer vs. Gacy, no B.S.

In our new "Big Top communities" (tent cities--GOP elephants too!), we'll all be able to watch (speak for yourself) bootlegged DVDs of this movie that will surely make Ed Wood smile from his little nook in Hell.

At first I considered that this was one of the famous and most recent rulings (like her great ruling in Freddy vs. Jason several years ago, along with Alien vs. Predator) by Supreme Court nominee, Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, believe me when I write this. After all, our justice system is telling us that they can detect a crime before it happens when someone's Middle Eastern, but that didn't fit...or did it?

Calling Dr. Alex Jones! And so, as we move ahead into uncharted history, these rulings will be crucial in determining whether we should have Sotomayor as a Supreme Court Justice--well, that and whether she's menstruating or being human in another way and tripping and fracturing her ankle. I know, a bourgeois hoot!

"Radical Pirate Chic," a satire by an effete who wears ice cream colored suits (Matt Janovic)

“Queenie” was the first to saunter onto the aft deck, stepping insouciantly over the bodies of food and drink servers, piles of banned-in-the-USA flintlock AK-47s, broken unbreakable combs, and Bam-Bam’s toys. Her moves were getting the boys in the crew pretty hot, and they weren’t even over-hyped gangster rappers. The atmosphere was assuredly sultry, that was for sure. The armed Somalis running all over the place had boarded The Fountainhead several hundred miles off of the coast of Yemen, beating a flotilla of Babary Coast pirates to their quarry. Normally, it was “hands-up,” but something was amiss with the passengers of this particular vessel.

“Really, do any of you pirates have air-conditioning? I mean—really—it’s unacceptably balmy here in…where the hell are we? Who’s got a map? Not that I could find where we are on it, “exhaled the washed-up diva. Her face had seen better days, and so had her career, but she still had the gams and she was loaded in every sense. Perhaps this pirate fundraiser could get her more exposure in the mainstream media, she pondered. How that was going to happen off the coast of Somalia was anyone’s guess.

A teenage Somalia pirate angrily pointed his assault rifle at her and started yelling at the top of his lungs. Where were the canapés?! No, this GOP fundraiser wasn’t going as planned, let alone according to schedule, but at least the collapse of the voting base was still coming in on time (these were hard times for issue-baiters). If they couldn’t politically demonize these pirates, maybe they could bore them to death, or even join them. It seemed redundant. Who was responsible for this mess? Who did the booking? Who could they scapegoat when the usual victims were pointing guns at them without a nigger-beating cop or a gullible and bigoted public for thousands of miles?

Had Karl Rove planned it, or was it Bebe Rebozo? Nobody knew who Bebe Rebozo was, so it didn’t matter. A Republican junket had gone off-the-rails again (and again, and again…), and they were all looking like the ruthless, scurvy dogs they always were. At least they could glean their Vitamin C from some of the cocktails, but the food was rapidly running out, if not being looted or immediately consumed by the starving Somalis. But these good people were taking it in stride; they weren’t going to let anything ruffle their feathers, not even objective reality. Maybe a saber-or-two up against a throat might; or maybe a bullet in the arm, a leg, or the trunk, but not from a randy corsair or some buggery dog from the Spanish Main.

“Quick, quick,” many of them were thinking, “where is a copy of The Wealth of Nations for a Confucian-like consultation?” They couldn’t make a move without it--or a functioning nervous system--so it was going to be hard going for the foreseeable future. Were there ever Chinese pirates? Sure. But, after all, every fear hides a secret desire, and besides, the booze and grog were flowing, there were tons of Black teenagers (albeit training guns on them all), and the drugs were on the way. How was this different from a party at the Westin or Watergate? Right: the CIA wasn’t here.

“Those Somali pirates were just teenagers, and our Black Muslim president MURDERED them, that dirty racist mulatto—that tragic mulatto. I know, I know, it’s not as though I’ve ever shown much empathy for those Negroes—publicly--but I do have a yen for them black teenagers!” said a shaking, sweating Rush Limbaugh.

Withdrawal and the rhythm method weren’t part of the Republican lexicon, but the monkey on his back was getting vicious, barbaric, and it had to go. Rush called it “Joe,” but its real name was “Sam.” Hey, don’t ask me--I don’t write ‘em, ask the fat man. In a moment’s notice, the well-muscled simian sprang across the foredeck, gingerly and lovingly ripping the faces off of every suburbanite that motioned to pet him. Just as suddenly, he grabbed for a vegetable tray, but was violently rebuffed by violence. The chimp didn’t look very amused by this unacceptable state of affairs, and began effortlessly throwing pirates overboard. The “hosts” didn’t seem too amused either, pointing their flintlock AKs in Limbaugh’s undulating, porcine face, forming an aesthetically pleasing semi-circle that would’ve looked natural in a Fritz Lang film. One of the young pirates dropped his saber and started to dance in a delightful pirouette. This Republican Party wasn’t amounting to very much, but at least it had some camp value.

Limbaugh began shaking, pulled a microphone from nowhere, and spat out: “Look, look, we can do business…I’ve contributed greatly to your people in the Caribbean, I understand you people—as crazy as that sounds—I understand you. Wait exactly one minute and thirty-three seconds, and I’ll say something crazier.” The Somali pirates were not amused, and began rifling through his pockets, finding pornography depicting young black men in various states of undress, several bottles of Viagra™, Oxycontin™, and a key of heroin and some Havana cigars in a diplomatic attaché case affixed with the Seal of the Department of State. That was when the real party began. It was time to get fucked-up, and that’s exactly what the skeletal Somalis did (wouldn’t you?).

With superhuman swiftness, they began whipping-out their grubby shooting works, grabbing cafeteria trays and any flat, reflective surface that they could get their mitts on. Now the Republicans finally saw their quarry, and an opening; they knew how to play this game. The old divide-and-conquer routine was coming, and they all knew it. It was at that point that a doddering old country doctor from Dallas came forward, brandishing a flaming (Christopher) cross, speaking utter nonsense (the nomenclature of American politicians, Libertarians and businessmen). Everyone was seriously fuuuuuccccckkkkkkeeeddddd uuuuuuuuuuuuup--even Ted Nugent, who appeared to have become a switch hitter.

Ron Paul misspoke: “Ya’ll need to hire some more pirates to deal with these here pirates, it’s worked before! I’m a Medical Doctor, and as we all know, we’re experts in foreign policy,” he droned on. The Somalis began nodding-off, and it wasn’t from the heroin. “…But there’ll be MONEY in it.” At those words, the young, Black, and gifted Somali pirates began gathering around the doddering redneck from the failed and theocratic Republic of Texas, now occupied by federal troops after a failed insurrection. The Doc was right for once in his miserable life: the pirates began rifling through his pockets, and when they were done, he was unceremoniously thrown overboard with a volley of RPG and Kalashnikov rounds following him.

“You’ll never take me alive!” he said, frantically clutching and wrapping himself in an American flag as he took several dozen rounds in the trunk. Absolutely everyone on the ship applauded for ten-minutes-straight.

“He was right!” chuckled one of the bilingual pirates, and I don’t mean “bi” in that other respect.

The rest of the pirates thrust the RPGs and flintlock AK-47s into the air in a defiant cheer. It was time for MORE sailor’s pay, and there were plenty more passengers to loot and…you know. They all spread-out across the main deck and filtered down to every level of the luxury cruiser, it was a spectacle that Michael Bay or any number of kiss-ass Hollywood producers would have drooled over, and it didn’t require any set up or union guidelines. Had there been video cameras, it would have been a reality TV show. Once the press arrived, it would be, and the surviving passengers could snap-up the distribution rights in-perpetuity.

But Harvey Weinstein was all ears, and had been hiding in the engine room eating blintzes and snorting coke off of a starlet’s taint. He motioned from his new hiding place in a lifeboat from beneath the tarp-coverlet to one of the Somali sentries running past: “Hey—you—fuck nut! Get over here! Gonna make you a star, asshole [SNUFFLE!].” The sentry was interested, though mainly in the peculiarly positioned starlet and the cocaine.

Meanwhile, on the foredeck, Limbaugh and others were finding escape in watching one of the few operating television sets that had been left unplundered by those scurvy dogs. “Socialists!” yelled the pathetic gaggle still gathered around the sweating, porcine reincarnation of National Socialist Gauleiter, Herman Göring. George W. Bush was onscreen at that moment. In the end, anyone who tried to escape reality by watching television was shot by the pirates.

“Are there any real socialists left?” queried Chuck Norris. He didn’t have that dumb animal look most rednecks have, so his rank was higher, but not much.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Chuck?!” chortled Limbaugh.

“Well…I don’t know. We just keep calling everyone who isn’t an actual socialist a socialist. I mean, how times have any us referred to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as one? He actually is one, y’know? Don’t you think red-baiting is over? If only I had the martial arts abilities that I do in my movies, we’d be out of this mess in no more than seven edits or wipe-dissolves!” Like the still-decaying Queen Victoria, Limbaugh was not amused.

“I decide who’s what—either a Republican or a socialist!” exploded Limbaugh. Food was flowing out of his mouth as he said it, and his pupils were dilated, as always. Finally, belatedly, he too was thrown overboard with the same treatment Ron Paul got from the angry Somalis. More were to follow, with the end result being the entire decimation of the original passengers and crew. In short order, the Somali pirates had commandeered the ship and set the navigation computers for New York City. A midshipman was perplexed and asked their ostensible leader, “Why New York City?”

“That’s easy,” said the pirate captain, “We’re all going to work on Wall Street with the phony credentials we’ve gotten off of these dead assholes. Soon, we’ll all be embedded permanently in several key lending-firms, with little-or-no accountability. That’s where the money is….”

The End

?

Portions of suppressed detainee photos may have been online since February 15, 2006

Sydney, Australia--A section of the detainee abuse photos that President Obama is fighting the release of in federal court might have been posted as early as February 15th, 2006 on the Sydney Morning Herald's site by-way of an anonymous whistle-blower of unknown nationality. Some of these photos are as bad if not worse than the ones previously released in 2004 to a horrified world.

The president has stated that keeping the photographs from disclosure is to protect American troops and to limit any more damage to the reputation of the United States throughout the world, especially in Muslim nations. The security situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan have also been invoked.

All the president is pointing-out is that torture doesn't work and that he would prefer we don't know about...just like the last president. They honeymoon's over, believe it. It's even money that Rahm Emanuel weighed-in on this one in a very big way, but that's Dutch Schultz for ya'.

Below are a few photos I captured from the Australian site, just in case they're "yanked" (pun intended).

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/photos-us-doesnt-want-seen/2006/02/14/1139890737099.html

2012, redacted

I finally understand the connection between 2012, the war in Iraq, and Aztec religion:
the world will be plunged into eternal darkness if Quetzalcoatl isn't fed warrior-victims.
It all makes sense now.
Gee.

Songs from the Site Meter: The Return of the Return of the Return of the DOJ over Montgomery Blair Sibley

Ed.--They're baaaaaaaccckkkk. Sibley's new book must be making some waves, which I approve of. Same as the old boss? Probably.

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Fictional Newsflash: Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems" execs belatedly found in DC Madam's phone records, questions rage on

Grover's Mill, New Jersey--According to new findings from Blah-blah-blog--a watchdog website--a Mr. "John Bigbootay," "John Ya-Ya," and several other individuals curiously named "John," have been identified, tagged, and bagged by Blue Blazer regulars, Pinkie Carothers, and Buckaroo Banzai himself. CBN (Chemical-Biological-Nuclear) methodologies have been observed throughout the entire process without incident.

The Republican Party was evasive about the raid whose genesis came from small-time internet researchers, then forwarded to the federal government who tapped Team Banzai for the raid. The phone numbers were previously overlooked and disguised through unknown technological or biotechnological methods.

The Obama administration's Robert Gibbs has also offered no explanations in the matter, and it's unknown if the new president personally tapped Team Banzai as private contractors in the extraction operation, ostensibly within the purview of the INS. Sources close to the case affirm that President Obama was in direct contact with the president during the entire operation, and at every stage.

In recent years, there has been controversy surrounding the use of private contractors by the federal government in military and law enforcement operations, but constitutional experts are at a loss currently regarding jurisdiction. The illegal aliens will be housed at Guantanamo Bay until further scientific tests and a torture regimen have been conducted. Journalists have been unable to get a comment from President Obama on the matter.

Team Banzai is referring all questions about the raid of Yoyodyne's facilities to the Justice Department for further review by Attorney General Eric Holder. Red Lectroids are known to engage in torture, an act which is illegal under international and intergalactic law, as well as covered by the once secret interplanetary treaty at Trieste in 1949.

Yoyodyne has been the subject of numerous congressional committee and subcommittee investigations over the years covering anti-trust law, corruption, falsifying contract information, and allegations of treason and the ferrying of illegal aliens from one planet system to another without proper documentation.

Songs from the Site Meter: The Return of the Pentagon over Montgomery Blair Sibley...

Ed.--With the release of former DC Madam counsel Montgomery Blair Sibley's books, I figured these guys would be back around. No, they didn't read long, but that's because they have better toys than the rest of us, and they've been here before. If only they'd grab a Zagnut for me on the way back around these parts...

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What was I thinking: "This is not a failure of capitalism."

Ed.--Incredibly desperate conservatives and arch-conservatives are right: this economic crisis isn't a failure of American-style capitalism. It's clearly a failure of Soviet-style communism, thanks for the clarification, I was so lost.

Imaginary Corporations, by Adam Baulderstone

Ed.--This is a letter sent to me by a friend. It's not meant to be scientific, only observational. But the observations are excellent ones...

That whole interlocking grid of TV shows was pretty impressive. I remember the end of St Elsewhere from back in the day, but I had no idea it was connected to Homicide. It really gets baffling when you work Newhart into it as that whole series turned out to be an extended dream sequence from The Bob Newhart Show, and Mork was a character from a dream of Richie Cunningham from Happy Days.

I thought it was funny that the Doctor Who / Hitchhiker's Guide crossover I just mentioned to you came up in there, too.

They were limiting themselves to just TV shows, but I noticed a few connections that lead into other media. They mention the Weyland-Yutani Corporation as client of Wolfram and Hart, a satanic law firm in Angel and as a weapons manufacturer in Firefly, but it's original appearance is as "The Company" in Alien. It is never mentioned aloud, but the name and logo can be seen around the Nostromo and on beer cans. The name was invented by Ron Cobb, the designer of the Nostromo. He originally wanted to call it Leyland-Toyota, imagining it as a merging of British and Japanese businesses, but for legal reasons changed the name. In 1979, we hadn't reached the point where real companies were so eager to have their names in movies they would agree, even if the movie was just trying to make the point that their product was designed for morons, like Gatorade in Idiocracy. Weyand-Yutani is mentioned by name in Aliens but the logo has been made significantly blander in accordance with James Cameron's artistic vision.

From Alien, there is the obvious leap to Predator 2. You could lead in to comics by way of DC's Batman vs. Predator or the execrable Aliens vs.Superman, possibly the worst-conceived crossover ever, but I'm going to go with Predator vs. Judge Dredd, not that it is much better, but Judge Dredd teamed up with a time traveling Johnny Alpha. And who doesn't want to see Strontium Dog as the distant future of Homicide.

Of course once you've entered comics almost everything bleeds into everything else, especially when you toss Top 10 and League of Extraordinary Gentleman into the mix, so this is all a little to easy. The real danger is if the Munch Meme breaks into the world of comics all that interconnection could allow it to expand exponentially in only a matter of issues. In no time at all racks will be overflowing with Munch: GCPD and Judge Munch comics.

That's as far as I want to go down the Weyland-Yutani path. There is another corporate client of Wolfram and Hart you might remember: Yoyodyne. They also identify it as the builder of the run down bus depot where The John Larroquette Show is set, as well as a contactor building starships for Starfleet in Star Trek: the Next Generation. But if you delve deeper, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems appears in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension, as a company infiltrated by the Red Lectroids, aliens that landed in 1939 at Grover's Mill in New Jersey (5 minutes from my sister's house right by an excellent Indian restaurant), using Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast as a diversion.

A sequel was written, Buckaroo Banzai against the World Crime League, in which the hero Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers are assisted by a trucker named Jack Burton. But, despite picking up a dedicated following amongst nerds, the movie tanked, being released in 1984 against Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters andStar Trek III (two Yoyodyne related movies in one summer!), and the sequel went unmade. W.D. Richter instead went to work writing Big Trouble In Little China.

But all this is just a detour from the true origin of Yoyodyne: Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, V., and Vineland in which it is a thinly-veiled version of the real-world Rocketdyne Corporation, a company formed in the wake of WWII to reverse-engineer Nazi rocket technology, specifically the V-2 rocket, whose parabolic path would give Gravity's Rainbow its title and primary theme.

Much like comics, once you've hit Pynchon you can tie pretty much anything in. For instance, William Gibson took one line from Gravity's Rainbow, a description of a mirrored wall, and used it word for word in Neuromancer. I'd quote it but I don't have a copy ofNeuromancer and it could take me a few days to find In Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon paid him back by taking a TV worshiping trailer park cult that Gibson created in Virtual Lightand used it in Vineland.

Vineland also contains Eddie Enrico and his Hong Kong Hotshots an obvious reference to Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers. To highlight the reference he also mentions Ramon Raquello on the same page. Raquello was the fictitious bandleader whose show was interrupted by Orson Welles to bring news of the landing at Grover's Mill.

There is some debate as to whether Yoyodyne was spread through nerd culture directly by Pynchon's work or through Buckaroo Banzai. In the case of Star Trek it seems someone there is a Pynchon fan as unlikely as it might seem. Episode 523(!) of Deep Space Nine involves various conspiracies swirling around the auction of an ancient baseball card of Willie Mays. Oddly both Pynchon and Mays were born on May 8, and in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon obliquely calls baseball, "A sport also well-spidered with suggestions of the sinister."

With all these new revelations about the Homicide Universe, it makes me wonder about Crosetti's "suicide." Just what did he find out about the Lincoln assassination?...

Former DC Madam Montgomery Blair Sibley's account "Why Just Her" now available through internet

WWW--As a participant in some of what happened, this is going to take some recalibration, but having perused through Mr. Sibley's book today, I have to say that first impressions are everything and that my own is a good one.

Amazon.com began exclusive sales yesterday, the first anniversary of Jeane's untimely death, and it's a wait-and-see what the public and critical responses are going to be. Having been "burned" (some of this remains to be seen) by Palfrey on several occasions, it's hard to say if any of the mainstream media or press are going to bite. At 598 pages, it's a hefty tome, but definitely a page-turner, and the public shouldn't be dissuaded that it's going to be a litany of legal citations, it is not.

From what I'm seeing in the text based on my own experiences, they should find a very intriguing story that would rival most pulp detective stories for their twists-and-turns.

Sibley writes:

Jeane became an internationally known, heroic figure for living her life without excuses and standing up to the Bush Administration’s misogynist, right-wing pandering, political agenda. The book identifies the external and internal demons that drove Jeane from an initially defiant woman willing to fight the government to a woman so despairing as to take her own life prior to sentencing upon her conviction for Prostitution Racketeering and Money Laundering. (Homepage, www.whyjusther.com, 05.01.2009)

I don't entirely agree or disagree with Mr. Sibley's contentions of the first sentence of the paragraph, but there is a core truth to it. She really was up against a culture of institutionalized misogyny--a culture that will go to great lengths to protect itself in the courts. To his credit, Sibley doesn't pander to the contention that Palfrey was somehow murdered by the federal government.

If anyone might feel compelled to, it would be him. Good show, and an honorable thing.

But truly, one lone woman actually did have to stand up to the questionable Bush II Justice Department, it's just the truth of the matter. In a way, she was an unwilling reformer. In a Hermetic reversal, Palfrey handily took down the State Department's Randall L. Tobias, just another dubious appointee of a totally corrupt administration; she exposed former Clinton adviser Dick Morris (this is frequently forgotten), and exposed a standing Republican senator as a hypocrite and a liar. Her case made it plain what the legal disparities are in prostitution cases in America between the prostitutes and their clients. Most of the time, the "johns" walk and the women go to jail. Palfrey's case could be the final underscoring of this fact. But the book--by its nature as an account--is also about former counsel Montgomery Blair Sibley.

In keeping with this, there was there was another related action on the very same day of the release of Sibley's book: the upholding of the three year suspension of his law license in D.C. . In just another curiously timed decision in what can only be called a bizarre saga, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that Sibley cannot practice law in the District of Columbia for three years, but with a hitch that might be missed by the layman.

Sibley's suspension is partially retroactive, but the actual suspension will be three years upon its completion, ostensibly in the spring of 2011:

We subsequently appointed amicus curiae to assist the court and heard argument at Sibley’s request. The issues before the court are whether the procedures [PAGE BREAK] employed by the Florida Supreme Court and the Referee appointed by that court were so lacking in notice or the opportunity to be heard as to constitute a deprivation of due process and whether the Florida Supreme Court issued a sanction with such infirmity of proof as to require further review. We find that Sibley has failed to demonstrate that there was a lack of notice or infirmity of proof and thus suspend Sibley from practicing before this court for three years, nunc pro tunc to May 12, 2008, on the same conditions as imposed by the Florida Supreme Court. (U.S. Court of Appeals Docket case "No. 08-7121, IN RE: MONTGOMERY BLAIR SIBLEY, RESPONDENT," uscourts.gov, 05.01.2009)

"Nunc pro tunc" is a legal term meaning that the suspension is retroactive to May 12, 2008. In other words, he's already "served" the first year already, simple.

A review of Why Just Her will be forthcoming at this location. Expect more of the unexpected.

"Court Suspends License of D.C. Madam's Lawyer," The Blog of Legal Times, 05.01.2009: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/05/dc-circuit-suspends-lawyer-for-three-years.html

U.S. Court of Appeals Docket case "No. 08-7121, IN RE: MONTGOMERY BLAIR SIBLEY, RESPONDENT ": http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200905/08-7121-1178624.pdf

The official site of Why Just Her:www.whyjusther.com

Mainstream Media: "Swine flu less dangerous than hoped"

MSM--It was true, the story was tanking. But then, so were all of America's once great newspapers, they were falling like flies. Polls showed that roughly 30% of America's population likes to panic for the hell of it--we know this--while another unknown percentage could be typed in the "Shelly Winters" bracket--they have to be slapped back into reason, thanking us for it later.

Then there's Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris, two men totally immune to any appeals to reason.

Swine flu is going to amount to nothing. The CDC and the Obama administration have been correct in not taking too many chances and trying to be ready. Vice President Joe Biden's comments about enclosed spaces was stupid.

The DHS is still irrelevant and burdensome, so it's not going away anytime soon. Neither are people who will panic at the drop of a hat. Some people get off on freaking out, running around yelling, "OH SHIT!!" The rest of us do not. Please try to listen to the rest of us some time.

The New Devil's Dictionary: Fortune Teller

Fortune Teller, n--Someone who tells a paying customer what they already know (see "Tarot cards").