Mobtown Shank

Healthy Holly Hide-N-Seek

by Benn Ray

 

At this point, everyone in Baltimore is on a city-wide scavenger hunt - looking for the thousands of copies of Mayor (for the time being) Catherine Pugh's children's books, the Healthy Holly series which University of Maryland Medical Systems/Kaiser Permanente and Associated Black Charities paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars for.  

 

Okay, first, writers don't get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a children's book unless maybe you're talking Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And even then, it doesn't come in the form of an advance that large. 

 

Next, publishers are only paying big money on mega-bestsellers where they can recoup their money. These Healthy Holly books are not real books. They are not being distributed to retail outlets which is why you can't find them in bookstores. The publisher isn't wholesaling them. They are not made available to book distributors. These are not, from the view of this bookseller, a real book. It is something else.  

 

Traditionally, this kind of something else is a vanity project. However, Pugh is getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for this book and vanity projects typically come out of the author/artists pocket. So that puts it in the realm of promotion.

 

This is the sort of book that is some kind of in-house charity publication or something being published by a thinktank where they buy copies back and give them away for free and try to get on the bestsellers list so they can claim some kind of ideological validation based on sales. Except, again, these books were never reported sold. And if they were a published and distributed as in-house charity, with the amount of money spent on these books, schools, churches, rec centers, etc. all over the city would be lousy with them. And instead, here we are, playing Baltimore City Scavenger Hunt looking for these books. Because without them, it just looks like corruption. Hell, even if copies turn up at this point, it still looks like corruption.

 

***ONE STARS!*** 

But even if these books aren't real, that doesn't stop them from accumulating One-Star Reviews on Amazon: 

 

"On March 13, 2019, the Baltimore Sun published an article exposing how Baltimore City Mayor, Catherine Pugh, a board member of the University of Maryland Medical System since 2001, has a contract with UMMS to buy this book. The article reports that Pugh cleared $100,000 profit in 2017 by selling 20,000 copies to the UMMS. Pugh reportedly said she has a deal where UMMS buys her books every two years." -Amazon Customer

"The mayor arranged for 100,000 of these books to be purchased by the University of Maryland Medical System to donate to the schools of Baltimore. Somehow most of these were not given out. There is now a mystery hunt for the remaining Healthy Holly books--nearly 9000 turned up in a city warehouse in East Baltimore. No need to buy one of these, about 60,000 are still unaccounted for and the Mayor and School Superintendent should be able to point to these and start distributing them to children and readers as originally intended!" -Greg From Baltimore

"Yep, that's Baltimore. Nice little scam. Publish a childrens book and use your position on the board to purchase it with nonprofit funds." -Don Julio

"Exercising is fun, but money laundering is funner. This series of books is now a hard-to-find collectors' item (especially the titles that don't exist), although still probably not worth $100,000." -Konstantine Simakis

"The mayor should try working at one of Bmore's health systems full time and taking home $500 a week, not $500,000. Not too easy to support a family on that as a single parent." -Andrea

"Huckster Holly - teaches kids how to steal $500,000 and get away with it." -Amy

"Can't wait for the bext in the series "Hollys healthy Democrat extortion" Holly grows up and runs for political office, does nothing for the city, and becones [sic] rich. Its a nail bitter. Released next month with 10% discount only $99,000 per hardback book. -C. Lane

"Turns out "Holly" is the nickname for Pugh's bank account. It's VERY healthy." -Vince Weaver

"She's an entrepreneur" -Vincent Delorenzo

"I can't wait for the next installment in the series - Healthy Holly: Defrauding the Citizens of Charm City. Coming soon to an otherwise empty warehouse near you." -E5150

"I got a tip from buddy at Kaiser that all you have to do is agree to buy a hundred thousand dollars of this terrible children's book and then Mayor Pugh would give my company $48 million in Baltimore city contracts. So I bought 10,000 copies for the local children! Not only did I not receive the books, I didn't get any city contracts! I'm sick to my stomach, I think I've got pneumonia!!! Baltimore used to be a place where the worst thing a mayor would do is steal tax payer funded gift cards from the poor or give hundreds of kids free range to riot. But this book mayor takes the cake!" -Tom Arasz

"Hey Pugh... [middle finger emoji]" - Lindsxo

"Not available on Kindle!" -Amazon Customer

It also got a 3 star review:
"As a 44 year old man, this is One of the best books I have read all year. Before reading this, I thought exercise was not fun. Now I know it IS fun. And selling exercise books is even more fun! Yeah!" -Amazon Customer

And a couple of 5 star reviews:
"I don't understand these haters and their mean reviews. Healthy Holly was totally worth the $500,000.00 I paid for it. The fact that I run a major healthcare conglomerate has nothing to do with it, either!" -Amazon Customer

"I bought 50 of these and finally my rooftop deck permit got approved. 10/10 would buy again" -R.C.

 

What is it about these petulant ONE-STARS that make me want to like the books? 

Republicans Give Exxon $6 Billion

Remember that Republican tax overhaul championed by President Donald Trump? One of the biggest winners is one of the richest corporations in the history of humankind.

Exxon said the federal tax law enacted by President Trump in December gave the company a non-cash earnings gain of $5.9 billion. That's because the corporate tax rate has been lowered from 35% to 21%. Like other companies, the reduced rate allowed Exxon to write down the amount of money it owed Uncle Sam in the future, known as deferred income taxes.

Source.

WTF: Republican Mistakes Allies And Enemies In Defense Of Trump

Question from MSNBC host asked earlier today: And to your point about saying 'one political campaign should not be able to use this kind of information against another political campaign,' should then in the spirit of that not a political campaign be prevented from reaching out to a foreign entity such as Russia to get information on another campaign.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH): It's interesting right now, people have said it's treasonous for someone to sit down and talk to a foreign national who's offering information on their opponent but apparently it's not treasonous for Hillary Clinton to hire a foreign national to dig up dirt on her opponent.

1. According to Turner, Republicans see no difference between a hostile foreign nation like Russia and its spy agency FSB and historical American allies like the United Kingdom and its spy agency MI6

2. It was a CONSERVATIVE organization that initially hired Fusion GPS (who hired former British spy Christopher Steele) to run opposition research on Donald Trump.

3. While Republicans hope this bogus memo proves, I guess, that Republicans in the FBI are somehow biased against other Republicans, it instead proves the Trump campaign did in fact collude with a hostile foreign nation.

George Papadopoulos, Trump campaign adviser, who has already plead guilty in the Mueller investigation was the catalyst for the Trump investigation. According to one of the last lines of the memo, "The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBA gaent Pete Strzok."

4. Precedent has been set. Republicans in the House, with the cooperation of a Republican President has released classified information, despite protestations from the intelligence community. Imagine the ridiculous volume of Republican outrage had a Democrat, say a President Hillary Clinton, with the cooperation of House Democrats, had done this.

5. But yes, Mike Turner, it is treasonous. The Republican Party is the party of treason.

WTF: NRA's Beet Lady Compares Gun Fines To Rape Shaming

NRA spokesperson and SuperBeets snake oil hawker Dana Loesch complained that fining gun owners for failing to properly secure their firearms is "like shaming a rape survivor – it’s the exact same logic.”

So, I'm just trying to follow the analogy here, that means responsible gun ownership, where one properly secures their weapons, would be like ... rape?

Source.

WTF: Salisbury MD Trump Supporter Attacks Reporter

Trump supporter and Salisbury, MD resident John Rayne Rivello tweeted a message with a strobe .gif to reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who suffers from epilepsy, with the message "You deserve a seizure for your post."

This, predictably, lead to Eichenwald having a seizure, which resulted in him being incapacitated, losing feeling in his hand and not being able to talk for several days.

Rivello later tweeted "Spammed this at [Eichenwald] let’s see if he dies."

Eichenwald has been targeted by Trump supporters who don't like his reporting.

Rivello has been arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which carries a hate-crime enhancement.

They should add terrorism to the list of charges, too.

#deplorables

Source.

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Amazon head and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is one of the first to bow before President-Elect Trump.

WTF: Hillary Clinton On "Super Predators"

Ugh... Hillary Clinton in 1996.

The full quote:

"But we also have to have an organized effort against gangs, just as in a previous generation we had an organized effort against the mob. We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels. They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called 'super-predators.' No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way but first we have to bring them to heel and the President has asked the FBI to launch a very concerted effort against gangs everywhere."

"these people"?

"super-predators"?

"bring them to heel"?

Even back in the '90s her comments bothered some of us.

Clinton bad-judgment or a Clinton concession to the right?

More about the Myth of the Super-Predator.

More.

WTF: Ben Carson Compares All Syrian Refugees To Dogs

by Benn Ray

The number two contender in the Republican Presidential primary, Ben Carson, used an analogy this week in which he called all Syrian refugees dogs:

"For instance, you know, if there is a rabid dog running around your  neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably gonna put your children out of the way. Doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination. By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly."

You'd think there would be a lucrative business opportunity as a Republican analogy screener given their difficulties making analogies that don't make them sound like inhuman dickwads.

Source.

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WTF: Marco Rubio Calls All Muslims Nazis

by Benn Ray

Senator Marco Rubio, one of the front runners in the Republican Presidential primary, meant to criticize Democratic Presidential front runner Hillary Clinton's refusal to refer to "extreme Islam" when discussing recent terrorist activity, but what he did was call members of the second largest global religion Nazis. On ABC's "This Week," Rubio said:

"That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves."

Yes. In this analogy, Rubio is comparing all Muslims to Nazis.

Source.

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WTF: Trump Wants Muslims To Register With Government

by Benn Ray

The leading Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, thinks the United States should start registering Muslims and keeping an active database of them.

On Thursday with Yahoo News, Trump told a reporter that he wouldn't rule out forcing Muslims to register with the federal government.

He went on to say:

“We’re going to have to—we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

Most of the rational people in the US thought that Trump couldn't possibly mean that he was in favor of forcing members of a specific religion to register with the government (what with such parallels to Nazi Germany and the Jews). Clearly, beltway pundits argued, there is some misunderstanding.

Later that evening, Trump would double-down on his registering Muslims comment, proving the often wrong beltway pundits wrong again.

He told NBC News, who was asking if he meant there should be a government program to track Muslims:

“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems.”

When asked how this would differ from Nazi Germany's registration of Jews, Trump responded:

“You tell me, you tell me. Why don’t you tell me.”

Now, some rational people may think that these comments, echoing a horrible policy associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (not to mention meaning increasing the size of government) would end Trump's presidential aspirations, but this is the same candidate saw his poll numbers increase after calling Mexicans murders and rapists and John McCain a loser for being captured in war.

I have a hard time believing that Republican voters, the same ones who are terrified of Syrian refugees right now, will have the same problems with what Trump is suggesting as rational people do.

But the real question is, if Trump's poll numbers go up as a result of these comments, what does this mean for the rest of the Republican field, already pushed into making ridiculous and offensive comments just to get a sliver of the attention that Trump gets? Will they also echo similar sentiments?

Source.

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