And this is interesting. Apparently Ronan Farrow took his story first to NBC and they said no thanks. Why? Pressure.
Video: Smart of @Maddow to press @RonanFarrow about why NBC didn't greenlight/support him pushing his Weinstein investigation #TTT pic.twitter.com/JApEs07xoL
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 11, 2017
Harvey Weinstein as symbol of Hollywood sexism and misogyny.
It is the perverse, insistent, matter-of-factness of male sexual predation and assault — of men’s power over women — that haunts the revelations about Mr. Weinstein. This banality of abuse also haunts the American movie industry. Women helped build the industry, but it has long been a male-dominated enterprise that systematically treats women — as a class — as inferior to men. It is an industry with a history of sexually exploiting younger female performers and stamping expiration dates on older ones. It is an industry that consistently denies female directors employment and contemptuously treats the female audience as a niche, a problem, an afterthought.
Still. After all this time. Feminism … Read the rest
So now the narcissistic no theory of mind jackass is actually complaining that the news media are demeaning and denigrating him. He of all people!
The Fake News Is going all out in order to demean and denigrate! Such hatred!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017
“Such hatred!” Exclaims the biggest hater who has ever held that office – the shame of the nation – the meanest man I for one have ever encountered anywhere, let alone as president.
It’s so repellent, this bleating and whining from the Chief Bully.
To name only a few.
Action shot:
… Read the restThis morning I phoned my old friend, a Republican former member of Congress.
Me: So what’s up? Is Corker alone, or are others also ready to call it quits with Trump?
He: All I know is they’re simmering over there.
Me: Flake and McCain have come pretty close.
He: Yeah. Others are thinking about doing what Bob did. Sounding the alarm. They think Trump’s nuts. Unfit. Dangerous.
Me: Well, they already knew that, didn’t they?
He: But now it’s personal. It started with the Sessions stuff. Jeff was as loyal as they come. Trump’s crapping on him was like kicking your puppy. And then, you know, him beating up on Mitch for the Obamacare fiasco.
Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair says the wheels are coming off. It’s seemed that way all along, but at the same time it’s also been steadily getting worse.
He says Corker’s interview with the Times
… Read the restbrought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”
The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern…
In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to
Press conference, Oval Office. Justin Trudeau and the fucking moron answered questions. Trump said he thinks it’s frankly disgusting that the press gets to say whatever it wants to – you know, what the rest of us call freedom of the press, as spelled out in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
… Read the restQ: Do you want to increase the nuclear arsenal?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I never discussed increasing it. I want it in perfect shape. That was just fake news by NBC, which gives a lot of fake news, lately. No, I never discuss — I think somebody said I want ten times the nuclear weapons that we have right now. Right now, we have so many nuclear weapons.
Ah so that’s why Tillerson said Trump is a fucking moron – it’s because he was shown a graphic of the reduction in the US nuclear arsenal and he promptly said ew that’s no good we need MOAR. I guess he’s not aware of the nuclear arms reduction treaty we have with Russia. Seems pretty basic for a president, but whatever.
… Read the restPresident Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest-ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.
Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady
4. While we’re on the topic, let’s dispense of some other nonsense. Weinstein tried to imply that coming of age in the 60s and 70s meant his moral compass was pointed a few degrees off true. Well, that’s bullshit; I know lots of people who came of age in the 60s and 70s who know perfectly well sexual coercion and rape is immoral. Pretty much all of them, in fact.
Well, not quite, or yes but. There are also lots of people who came of age in the 60s and 70s (and 80s and 90s and 00s and teens) who think men are somehow entitled to access to women’s bodies and thus don’t see sexual … Read the rest
Garrison Keillor is a jackass.
I am off lingonberries for the time being and Volvos and flat white furniture from Ikea. No meatballs, thank you. Once again the humorless Swedes have chosen a writer of migraines for the Nobel Prize in literature, an author of twilight meditations on time and memory and mortality and cold toast by loners looking at bad wallpaper. It’s not a prize for literature, it’s a prize for nihilism. The Swedes said he’s like Jane Austen combined with Kafka with some of Proust, three other writers you’d never invite to a party.
Jesus, where to begin. I guess at the end. Hello? The point of writers isn’t whether you would invite them to … Read the rest
Question: How often does President Trump talk about IQ?
Answer: All the time.
When Mr Trump recently boasted that his IQ was higher than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s, it fit a pattern.
In 2013, he tweeted that his IQ was “much higher” than Barack Obama and George W Bush.
He has also claimed a higher IQ than comedian Jon Stewart and British star of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar.
Despite this, Mr Trump has never revealed his own IQ. So can we work it out?
Sure. We can work it out by watching him in action. We can compare him to other people in the same line of work. We can compare … Read the rest
Trump apparently thinks “IQ” is a straightforward synonym for “intelligence.” He also apparently thinks he has lots of both.
In an interview with Forbes magazine published Tuesday morning, President Trump talks about his high IQ to explain away reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to him as a “moron” over the summer.
Said Trump: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
That’s funny, because pretty much everyone else in the world can tell you otherwise.
… Read the restThis is hardly the first time that Trump has cited his reportedly sky-high IQ — and the relatively low IQs of
The Times has a new story to add more to the growing heap of Harvey Weinstein ordure.
Gwyneth Paltrow was one. Rosanna Arquette was one. Judith Godrèche, a leading French actress, has a story.
… Read the restSo does Angelina Jolie, who said that during the release of “Playing by Heart” in the late 1990s, he made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room, which she rejected.
“I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,” Ms. Jolie said in an email. “This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”
A New York Times investigation last week chronicled a hidden
In the New Yorker, a long piece by – of all people – Ronan Farrow on the sexual bullying of Harvey Weinstein.
This has been an open secret to many in Hollywood and beyond, but previous attempts by many publications, including The New Yorker, to investigate and publish the story over the years fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence. Too few people were willing to speak, much less allow a reporter to use their names, and Weinstein and his associates used nondisclosure agreements, monetary payoffs, and legal threats to suppress these myriad stories.
And they weren’t kidding – women who said no or complained were punished.
… Read the restIn the course of a ten-month investigation, I was told
Forbes suggests we need to get a grip and understand President Pinhead. He’s a “dealmaker”; he’s in it for maximum payoff for himself, and nothing else. At first glance that sounds to me like just Capitalism, but of course it’s not that simple.
… Read the restDonald Trump didn’t get rich building businesses, despite years of brand-burnishing via The Apprentice and millions of votes from people who craved exactly that experience. Instead, his forte lies in transactions–buying and selling and cutting deals that assure him a win regardless of the outcome for others. The nuance is essential. Entrepreneurs and businesspeople create and run entities that have any number of interested parties–shareholders and customers and employees and partners and hometowns–that in theory all share
Corker spelled out that nearly all the Republicans in Congress know Trump is unfit. James Fallows says ok so what are they going to do about it?
… Read the restSenator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee, deserves credit for saying in public this evening to The New York Times what most prominent Republicans have known and many have said (in careful privacy) over the past two years.
Namely: that Donald Trump is irrational, ill-informed, impulsive, unfit for command, and increasingly a danger to the country and the world. The man who has ultimate authority over the world’s most powerful military, including its nuclear weaponry, is recklessly issuing threats to North Korea and others that set the nation “on the path to World
Saturday the white supremacists came back to Charlottesville.
The prominent white supremacist Richard B. Spencer was a featured speaker at a rally on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., where demonstrators reprised their chant of “You will not replace us!” and asserted that the South would “rise again.”
The gathering, which occurred eight weeks after a “Unite the Right” rally resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman, was considerably smaller than the one in August, instead resembling a group of protesters who descended on the park in May.
The Charlottesville Police Department said in a statement that Saturday’s rally began around 7:40 p.m., included 40 to 50 people and lasted no more than 10 minutes.
Good that it was small, … Read the rest
Harvey Weinstein didn’t just sexually harass women, he also [cough ALLEGEDLY cough] called them fat pigs. Emma Thompson tore a strip off him.
One film industry source told The New York Post that Weistein called then 24-year-old British-American actress Hayley Atwell she was a “fat pig on screen” while cast and crew were taking a break from filming Brideshead Revisited. The Hollywood veteran then allegedly told Atwell she should watch what she ate.
The unnamed source then went on to reveal that Atwell’s co-star Emma Thompson was furious with what happened.
“Emma called Harvey out for being a misogynist and a bully and really gave him a hard time,” the source said.
Hayley Atwell in Brideshead Revisited.
Harvey … Read the rest
Trump told us over the weekend what fun he had in Puerto Rico. That’s nice. It’s always good to see the misery of millions provide a little entertainment for a head of state.
… Read the restOver the weekend, President Donald J. Trump praised his response to the devastation caused to the island of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria, which left dozens dead and thousands without power or potable water.
“I was having fun,” Trump said of his four-hour visit to San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, last Tuesday. That visit, most memorably, had him throwing paper towels to an audience gathered to see him inside a church. “They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels,” Trump said. He claimed that the
How much did Pence’s flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis in order to walk out of a football game cost us? CNN does the adding up.
… Read the restHere is an estimate of just the air costs (which does not include costs of advance personnel, Secret Service or support on the ground):
According to the Air Force, flying a C-32, the model of plane used for Air Force 2, for one hour costs about $30,000. Pence’s flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis Saturday took about three hours and 20 minutes, so it cost about $100,000
Pence then flew from Indianapolis to Los Angeles on Sunday, which took about four hours and 45 minutes, costing about $142,500.The grand total: about $242,500.
The Times has a Republican’s Guide to Presidential Etiquette that it has updated to take in recent incidents in correct behavior.
Republicans used to care a whole lot about how a president comported himself, and whether he acted at all times with the dignity his station demands.
“Is President Obama Disrespecting the Oval Office?” Fox News asked in 2010, with a link to images of Mr. Obama and his aides tossing a football, or eating apples just inches from the Resolute desk.
“Wear a suit coat and tie,” said Andrew Card Jr., President George W. Bush’s former chief of staff, in reaction to pictures of Mr. Obama in shirtsleeves in 2009.
I remember that shirtsleeves nonsense. I don’t think … Read the rest
