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Libertarian transgender precipitates one day government shutdown

20 Nov
A different, less snarky, version of this was published yesterday at Breitbart.

If Julia Roberts wants to play a transsexual in the middle of a conspiracy theorist’s dream I have a treatment ready for her.

Monday someone who was first reported as suicidal woman, and then rumored to be a man with a rifle, shut down a huge section of downtown DC.  Police refuse to comment on any questions and the mainstream media refused to mention that the culprit, Sophia Dalke, 31, was transgender, which was also left out of the police report.

The result is that people are free to speculate.

Initially I was as much of a mind to indulge in very black humor.  I came up with two jokes:

1) 2015 is the year transgender people became the new face of conservative politics.  First Caitlyn Jenner declared herself to be a Christian, constitutionalist, Republican, and now Sophia Dalke has engineered a one (transgender) woman government shut down.

And

2) Aerosmith releases a new single, “Trannies got a gun.

But investigating further, finding coincidences, and having the police refuse to answer simple questions makes one speculate about all kinds of things.

At 6:42 am Monday  the D.C. Police department tweeted out a picture of nine blocks of downtown Washington, D.C.. announcing they were under lockdown Monday morning.   From the World Bank at 18th and I Streets NW, near the White House, to the Social Security Administration at 21st and M Streets NW, two blocks from Senator Harry Reid’s Ritz Carlton condominium on 23rd Street, much of the K street lobbying corridor was closed to buses, cars, and pedestrians.


Monday there was almost no coverage of just what was involved, other than that it was a mentally ill woman, as both cars and pedestrians were denied the ability to enter the K street lobbying area.  Later in the day rumors were that it was a man with a rifle.

On Tuesday DC’s main gay newspaper, the Washington Blade, reported that nine city blocks were closed for 10 hours for a suicidal male to female transgender with a gun – so both stories, that it was a woman and that it was a man, were  correct.  Prior to that, Monday evening, when Dalke was arrested The Washington Post and other mainstream media – and the D.C. Police report – omitted the fact that the culprit was a transexual.  Local news radio station WTOP headlined its blog post “10-hour D.C. Standoff ends with woman’s arrest.” 

The PC prudery of the mainstream media is odd.  Ms. Dalke’s Google+ profile reads “I am a pansexual transgender woman who is obsessed with history, politics, booze, and erotica with no shame about any of it.”  I first became aware of this when two different conservative Republican lesbian friends told me I should write something on the coverup of the fact that Dalke was a transexual.

I now think there could be more interesting omissions in the story.


  Dalke’s latest social media post:  “Sorry everybody, I’m dead tonight.”


None of this explained why 9 blocks would be closed, making the conspiracy minded wonder if it was something more, in the wake of recent tragedies.  Especially since police and bomb sniffing dogs were reported on local radio to be out in full force Tuesday, on D.C.’s problem ridden subway system, Metro.

Dalke had barricaded herself at 1999 K Street, a new environmentally certified modern glass office building near the Peace Corp, law firms, and the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.  1999 K houses the Federal Agricultural Mortgage agency, which makes real estate loans to farmers and agribusiness, and the law offices of Mayer-Brown, where Richard Ben-Veniste, a Watergate special prosecuter, who also defended the Clinton’s in Whitewater, and who was also appointed to the 9/11 commission, is a partner. (Ben-Veniste’s examination of Condi Rice revealed that the government had conducted studies considering the possibility of a 9/11 style attack before it occurred).  I called the main switchboard at Mayer Brown and asked for Sophia Dalke, and instead of telling me off the nice British accented switchboard operator looked through her directory and told me Dalke worked for one of their sub tenants and gave me that phone number, whose voice mail answers “Tina Brown.”  Of course, the fact that Dalke works in a building with such unusually well connected people is probably merely a coincidence.

I contacted the public information office of the D.C. Police department Tuesday evening and asked four questions: 1) Is it standard operating procedure to shut down several blocks of downtown for one person barricaded in a building? 2) Were these extreme measures because of concerns about terrorism and the events in Paris?  3) Did Dalke work at 1999 K Street where she was apprehended, for a tenant of the Mayer Brown law firm?  And 4) Was there a reason Dalke’s being transgender was omitted from the police report.  The officer replied to each question with a firm “We have no comment on that at this time.”


I am currently contacting Dalke’s friends, who were on social media urging her to meet them or seek help after her last post, to see what information about her work at 1999 K Street they can supply.


According to Lou Chibarro, the Washington Blade reporter, a perusal of her Dalke’s FaceBook account showed that she opposed D.C. gun control, and thought transgender women experiencing violence on the streets should be armed.  I did not find that entry, but I did see that books she read included libertarian philosopher Rpbert Nozick and novelist Ayn Rand, and Dalke described her politics as “Well… I’d say I was secretly Republican… except that even beyond their onerous and animadversive religious/moralist bullshit where I’m philosophically aligned with smaller government and deregulation, Republicans are shitbag hypocrites who don’t walk the talk in office. So I’m openly Libertarian. Friendly to LGBT, business, and individuals, the best of all worlds.”  On Google+ one of the friends concerned about her is a staffer at the free market R Street Institute.  (I am often thought of us as one of the most connected D.C. libertarians, and I have never heard of Dalke until researching this story.)

According to Chibarro, with whom I compared notes tonight, Dalke has now disappeared from the court system, and has not been presented to a judge (I have not confirmed this yet.). It is possible she is in the system under a different (her original male) name.

For those interested in her legal defense a GoFundMe has been established.


Dowd on the Clinton’s: Money, Money, Money, Money, MONEY!

19 Aug

Joao Silva/The New York Times
Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, who is now shaping the future of the family’s financially troubled charitable foundation.

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WASHINGTON — CLINTON nostalgia is being replaced by Clinton neuralgia.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

Why is it that America’s roil family always seems better in abstract than in concrete? The closer it gets to running the world once more, the more you are reminded of all the things that bugged you the last time around.
The Clintons’ neediness, their sense of what they are owed in material terms for their public service, their assumption that they’re entitled to everyone’s money.
Are we about to put the “For Rent” sign back on the Lincoln Bedroom?
If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger concern than the Clintons, who are cosseted in a world where rich people endlessly scratch the backs of rich people.
They have a Wile E. Coyote problem; something is always blowing up. Just when the Clintons are supposed to be floating above it all, on a dignified cloud of do-gooding leading into 2016, pop-pop-pop, little explosions go off everywhere, reminding us of the troubling connections and values they drag around.
There’s the continuing grotesque spectacle of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin. And there’s the sketchy involvement of the Clintons’ most prolific fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, and Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham in a venture, GreenTech Automotive; it’s under federal investigation and causing fireworks in Virginia, where McAuliffe is running for governor.
Many Israelis were disgusted to learn that Bill Clinton was originally scheduled to scarf up $500,000 to speak at the Israeli president Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday festivities in June. I guess being good friends with Peres and brokering the accord that won Peres the Nobel Peace Prize were not reasons enough for Bill to celebrate. The Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund had agreed to donate half a mil to the Clinton foundation. Isn’t the J.N.F. “supposed to plant trees with donor cash?” Haaretz chided before the fund pulled back. “I guess money does grow on trees.”
I never thought I’d have to read the words Ira Magaziner again. But the man who helped Hillary torpedo her own health care plan is back.
In a Times article last week headlined “Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions,” Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick offered a compelling chronicle about an internal review of the rechristened Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation that illuminated the fungible finances and tensions between Clinton loyalists and the foundation architects Magaziner and Doug Band, former bag carrier for President Clinton.
You never hear about problems with Jimmy Carter’s foundation; he just quietly goes around the world eradicating Guinea worm disease. But Magaziner continues to be a Gyro Gearloose, the inept inventor of Donald Duck’s Duckburg.
“On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground,” Confessore and Chozick said.
We are supposed to believe that every dollar given to a Clinton is a dollar that improves the world. But is it? Clintonworld is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday.
“Efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future,” Confessore and Chozick wrote.
The most egregious nest of conflicts was a firm founded by Doug Band called Teneo, a scammy blend of corporate consulting, public relations and merchant banking. Band, a surrogate son to Bill, put Huma, a surrogate daughter to Hillary, on the payroll. Even Big Daddy Bill was a paid adviser.
As The Times reported, Teneo worked on retainer, charging monthly fees up to $250,000 and recruiting clients from among Clinton Foundation donors, while encouraging others to become foundation donors. The Clintons distanced themselves from Teneo when they got scorched with bad publicity after the collapse of its client MF Global, the international brokerage firm led by the former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine.
And Chelsea is now shaping the foundation’s future, and her political future. So there may not be as much oxygen for her troublesome surrogate siblings.
As George Packer wrote in The New Yorker, Bill Clinton earned $17 million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos company for $700,000. Hillary gets $200,000 a speech.
Until Harry Truman wrote his memoirs, the ex-president struggled on an Army pension of $112.56 a month. “I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable,” he said, “that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”
So quaint, Packer wrote, observing, “The top of American life has become a very cozy and lucrative place, where the social capital of who you are and who you know brings unimaginable returns.”
The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl.