A.M. Links: Trump and Putin to Discuss Syria, Charlie Rose Suspended Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Justice Department Seeks to Block AT&T Acquisition of Time Warner
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Gage Skidmore / Flickr.com "Russian President Vladimir Putin said he'll hold phone talks with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday as the Kremlin mounts a diplomatic push to resolve the war in Syria following a surprise visit by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad."
- Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS News after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.
- Another woman has accused Al Franken of sexual misconduct.
- The Justice Department has filed suit to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner.
- Robert Mugabe is facing impeachment in Zimbabwe.
- Air China, the state-owned airline, has suspended flights between Beijing and North Korea.
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Air China, the state-owned airline, has suspended flights between Beijing and North Korea.
Popular route, was it?
Hello.
I'm guessing those aircraft had been converted to 95% cargo.
Swiss cheese for Little Rocket Man.
The Free Market at work!
Robert Mugabe is facing impeachment in Zimbabwe.
We can be sure what replaces him will be comparable.
The Who pretty much nailed it.
The kids are alright?
That joyful ode to Pan-Africanism, Behind Blue Eyes.
A quick one while he's away?
Sympathy for the Devil?
Eminence Front?
Squeeze Box?
Pinball Wizard?
Armenia is a City in the Sky?
Another woman has accused Al Franken of sexual misconduct.
I really thought this would start burning itself out before it reached senior Democrats.
You'll know it's a new world when Bernie goes down over that essay he wrote about how women want to be gang-raped.
Buttplug loves that essay.
Franken is expendable. Assuming the gov isn't a moron who appoints his wife or something, Franken's replacement will be another democrat who heads into the next election with benefits of being an incumbent.
Whereas if Moore quits the race then a safe republican seat may likely get a Democrat in it, for six long years.
I imagine the purge has a few more weeks in it at least.
I don't see any slow down. A lot of them really seem to think that this is a winning strategy that will lead to President Herself or something.
I don't think there's strategy involved at all. It's just the blind, unplanned, perfect storm that inevitably results when the personal is political, the political is identitarian, it's noble to be a victim, and everybody has a voice (via the democratization of media, i.e. the Internet). There's nobody driving this shit ouroboros.
You're probably right but I'm hearing an awful lot about how we have to put women in charge of everything, how we need New Soviet Man, etc.
There may well be opportunists seeking to exploit all the turmoil for personal gain, but if there was ever a conscious plot to unseat various powerful dudes by airing their dirtiest, molestiest laundry, it has long since escaped the control of the plotters.
More or less this. It started as a political attack doctrine but, unfortunately, once enough of the populace got on board that train it became apolitical since the true believers aren't likely to stop just because the person being devoured is 'on their side'. At least not at the grassroots.
Those in power will attempt to control how this plays out, but as we've seen once you take it as a given that you should believe the woman making accusations regardless of the merits you've already admitted that you're going to be taken down by your own monster.
The fact of the matter is there's a financial incentive to make allegations, and there isn't any particular downside to making them if they are false (good luck proving an accusation is false, after all!). It's essentially reputation blackmail that successfully cheapens accusations that might actually have merit.
It's the inevitable consequence of criminal and civil law with it's basis in he-said-she-said.
Who are "them"? If you're referring to journalists, I think they see it as a winning strategy to get clicks and awards.
Mainly the #resist crowd
I'm not sure what power they have over the stories that get reported. And plenty of them have been defending Franken, in the ugly and conspiratorial way that they would otherwise describe as right-wing.
The Moore story really put them in a bind. I imagine some of the more prominent Dem voices would be more supportive of Franken if it didn't come a week after Moore. But, as the Onion put it, they now have to put up a "convincing amount of condemnation."
Oh yeah, Franken and now Rose are throwing a wrinkle into the plot - to be sure.
Yeah, I had thought that once Franken was named there would be a "everyone cool your jets" moment. But apparently not. Speaking of senior Democrats and such allegations... Did anyone else see the news about Representative John Conyers (D-MI).
The Justice Department has filed suit to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner.
Need to stop the twin behemoths of Ma Bell and Pop Warner from uniting.
Won't you think of the children?
Robert Mugabe is facing impeachment in Zimbabwe.
Who did HE sexually harass?
He's been dictator for almost 40 years - probably half the country's females.
Does fucking over an entire country count as sexually harassment?
So, what happens if he gets convicted?
He just needs to slip the prosecutor a couple trillion Z dollars...
So, like, $5 American?
Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS News after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.
Suspended in one of those sex chairs?
Dude......did not need that imagery with my morning coffee.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he'll hold phone talks with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday
Listen for the silences between the words, it's a morse code for meddling.
morse code for meddling
Nice album name.
Thanks, this ain't ya daddy's bluegrass, I'll tell ya that much.
Another nice album name is Meddling With The Hoarse Code.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he'll hold phone talks with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday...
Normal phone or secret, give-me-my-orders-comrade phone?
Robert Mugabe is facing impeachment in Zimbabwe.
If it was over a mistress scandal, the headlines could read: Muga-bae
Air China, the state-owned airline, has suspended flights between Beijing and North Korea.
Sheesh, even flights between Beijing and North Korea have been accused of sexual misconduct!
Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS News after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.
Gone are the halcyon days when that you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing that Seal song.
If You Don't Know Me By Now?
France to stop Muslims praying in the street, interior minister says
As worshippers chanted "Allahhu akbar", or "God is great", the protesters ? some holding crucifixes aloft ? sang the French national anthem.
"COEXIST"
Nice to hear that chant in the street without someone blowing up for a change.
Today, it is COSEXIST.
Yeah, I don't see a lot of ladies in that snapshot.
Bill Cosby moved to France?
So this kneeling during the anthem thing is going global now?
I often see (other) people elsewhere on the interwebs point to France as a failed example of multiculturalism, but France isn't an example of multiculturalism at all.
France is an example of forced integration--and it's a total failure.
The U.S. is an example of multiculturalism.
Using the coercive power of government to try to force people to abandon their culture is about the dumbest thing you can do. It's one of the reasons ISIS failed to hold their territory, and it's one of the reasons why France is such a failure at assimilation.
I'm not sure the French can resist the urge to force their culture on others within their borders. There may not be another society in the West that is more convinced of its own cultural superiority. They're even worse about that than the British. We're not using the government to shove French culture down your throat--we're using it to bring you the French dream. Here, try not to choke on it!
Though not without its hiccups, their efforts in this space have been a roaring success over the last 1300 years. Just ask the Huguenots.
I didn't think they were going for expulsion of the Muslims like they did with the Huguenots. If they're going for straight out expulsion, they probably need to go much harder than that--like Algerian War only in Paris this time.
If they want to see assimilation, they should probably go with something other than what they did to the Huguenots. Things got better assimilation-wise for the Huguenots after the Edict of Nantes. It's when the Edict of Nantes went out the window that things really got ugly.
Agreed, but remember that It took a century for the Edict of Nantes to be revoked. I wouldn't be surprised if some future French government decides that the portion of the Muslim minority which constantly refuses to conform deserves similar treatment.
My point is that they've been at this for a long time, and that whatever costs in stability in the short-term are minor compared to the long-run benefits of protecting and furthering the Frenchness of the populace.
The Trump administration is going after Harvard's affirmative action program because it's racist.
"The Department of Justice is probing Harvard University's admissions process regarding race and says the Ivy League school is not cooperating, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal reported that the DOJ is investigating similar allegations to a 2014 civil lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions, which said the university admissions practices were in violation of U.S. civil rights law and discriminated against Asian Americans.
The department wrote in a Nov. 17 letter that the school was being probed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 due to allegations that the school was using race as a deciding factor in its admissions decisions, according to the Journal.
The department said the school had failed to meet a Nov. 3 deadline to show documents related to the university's admission procedures and policies.
----The Hill
"DOJ investigating Harvard's admission policies: report"
http://thehill.com/homenews/ad.....ies-report
Ah, that Schadens my freude!
It damages your joy?
Incorrect on both! Your German sucks!
I'm still of the opinion that if you don't like their racist policies, don't go there, don't hire people from there. Pull federal/State funding and all it day. Bye Felicia.
All well and good except every school does this and every school is infested with federal money. I'm certainly down with pulling federal money from every school but it doesn't seem realistic at this point.
"Putin said he'll hold phone talks with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday as the Kremlin mounts a diplomatic push"
"Hold"? "Mounts"? "Push"? Sounds more like phone *sex*!
More like sexual harassment. SUSPEND PUTIN
How many women must come forward before this happens?
You know he gets topless for all such calls with Trump and makes sure he mentions it.
"Is cold in Moscow this morning, Comrade Donald. Nipples are erect as glorious Ss-20 missile of Motherland's Army. You want I send you pictures?"
"Da, strain in voice is from flexink pecs. You could bounce kopeck from my chest, Donald. Vould you like try ?"
"Another woman has accused Al Franken of sexual misconduct."
What we're not doing the counting thing anymore where we sum up all the allegations including the most minor stuff so we can make it look extra bad?
Well so far both Franken and Moore have had three accusers apiece but the allegations against Franken are much more recent, he admitted to the substance of one of the accusations and was dumb enough to take a picture of it. Also Franken has been part of the angry mob and is still pandering to them so if we ever want this hysteria before it starts to affect normal people like the Title IX abuses, it should be he and the other enablers who pay the price.
"I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings"
Hopeless romantic.
http://www.washingtonexaminer......le/2641207
The FBI never verified the veracity of the Trump Dossier. That is what they used to get the FISA warrant. Since they never verified it, it is not a valid basis for a warrant and they likely mislead the court when they got the FISA warrant. That makes the FISA warrant invalid. If the FISA warrant is invalid, then pretty much all the evidence against Manfort, what little there is, is inadmissible unless the government can show they would have inevitably discovered it without the FISA warrant, something they are very unlikely to do.
I would be very surprised if Manfort ever goes to trial on that indictment. I can't see that FISA warrant withstanding a motion to suppress and without that and the evidence from it, there is no case against Manfort.
Mueller isn't about to find that his protege did anything wrong at the FBI. The facts of his findings will be whatever he says they are.
We shouldn't expect anything like the truth to come from Mueller.
Mueller is the FBI investigating itself. The FBI will be exonerated.
He got the indictment to win the news cycle and play the small chance Manfort would roll over. I do not think he thought it would ever stick. I wouldn't shock me if he did. You would be surprised how many of these "Top Men" have no idea what they are doing. So, he might not understand the law well enough to realize this. But I doubt it. He filed the indictment figuring it would take months for the defense to file and win a motion to suppress and then more months for him to appeal the ruling all the while keeping Manfort under a cloud of indictment. The fact that the indictment is totally invalid means nothing. It is not like these people have any ethics or will ever be held to even the most basic ethical standards as lawyers or prosecutors.
My wife made a good point that I hadn't thought of about all of these sexual harassment scandals in the media. If you go back and listen to the infamous Trump pussy grabbing video, Trump never says he did it. He implies he did and that is why it was a big deal but he never said he did. What he said was "you can do it" meaning it is acceptable and no one is going to care. In all the furor over Trump no one bothered to notice what he was actually saying or question just how exactly it is that you can do that sort of thing in Hollywood or the media. The last few months have shown that apparently, Trump wasn't lying when he said that.
Re: John,
Indeed, in the recording, he never said he grabbed p...y.
The WOMEN he groped say he grabbed p...y.
The time has come to decide if you're going to trust the women, one of which, a reporter for a news magazine, told her co-workers right away what had happened, in 2005; or you're still going to fall on your sword for the p...y grabber.
"The time has come to decide if you're going to trust the women"
Nope.
No? So you believe they're all lying? All of them?
I think that was more of a general statement.
So there is no difference in your world between all, some, a few and none
Sounds like Old Mexican was just trying to draw more information from the guys "No".
Trump's words are what they are. He said, "just grab it". Amazingly enough, this post wasn't about Trump. If you were not such a half-wit obsessed with him, you would understand that. The point is that Trump was saying "go ahead and do it if you like because this is what people do here". The point is that what he was saying about the culture of the media and Hollywood was totally lost in the uproar over the tape. And we are now finding out that Trump wasn't really exaggerating.
I had never thought about that and it puts the unfolding scandals in a bit different light. That is why I found it interesting. But I am not a fucking moron who can't see past my politics. You apparently are and of course can't understand what I am saying and think it is some kind of claim that Trump never actually did it.
Do me a favor and stick to responding to posts that are simple enough for you to understand. Having to explain shit to you gets old, especially since you are totally untrainable and the election caused you to lose what little mind you had to begin with.
If that truly was Trump commenting on a corrupted culture, I'd be very surprised if he were credited with perception and wisdom. He hasn't exactly earned faith and respect for those attributes.
He was inadvertently expressing the culture. Again, look at what he said. He said just do it. He was telling the guy, treat women however you want because that is how its done here. Indict Trump all you want for being a part of that culture. That issue has been talked to death. What people didn't notice is what his statement said about the culture of the media and Hollywood. Apparently, Trump didn't just make that up or think he was special. Apparently, that is really how things work for everyone, not just him.
I knew it. Nike has been promoting rape culture all this time!
That is funny. But what do you want to bet that you could write a think piece about how the Nike Slogan enables the rape culture and it would get published and taken seriously? I bet you could and it would.
He allegedly tried to "stick his tongue down my throat", but continued she the interview anyway? That's dedication to the profession right there.
P...y?
Oh, very well. P***y.
Parsley
BEST P*SSY EVAH!
God, thank you. Everyone else was too ignorant to know the correct statement
And also Rep. John Conyers.
Will the next to fall be the p...y grabber? Or will he continue to vacilate and obfuscate?
Yeah, I am sure there are tons of credibility stories about Trump that the media and Democrats withheld during the election out of kindness or that the people telling them didn't come forward because they had no idea Trump was still an important person.
You called it Mexican.
Ah, it's the Media's fault...
No. It is that if there were any other skeletons in Trump's closet we would have heard about them last year during the election. Maybe you missed it, but Trump ran for President last year. It was a big fucking deal. It was in all of the papers.
Did you fall on your head or something? You didn't used to be this stupid.
I think he's being sarcastic.
The problem with the Trump stories is they aren't news. They were all used as an october surprise in an obvious ploy to turn the election after Trump's supporters had no other alternative but Clinton. Nice job.
It is an interesting question whether the pussy grabbing tape would have kept Trump from getting the nomination. We will never know but my guess is that it would not have. I think Trump's supporters in the primary loathed his Republican opponents just as much or close to as much as they loathed Hillary. The tape would have pissed off the Republican voters who did not vote for him but I am not sure it would have caused many people who did to change their vote, though we will never know.
They had that tape from the start and decided to be cute and hold it as an October surprise. That was clearly a mistake. I think people have grown tired of that tactic and just dismiss anything that comes out right before the election as a partisan dirty trick.
The whole plan was kinda bjorked by the last-second email investigation announcement coming at almost exactly the same time.
I don't make predictions either, but I do think they would have maximized their chance of not getting worse-than-Hitler by releasing it early when his less fervent supporters had more options and the party hadn't yet done the whole "getting to know him" thing at the convention. Instead they tried to maximize their chances of a victory. Well at least it was a moral victory; then can spend 4-8 years calling republicans "pussy-grabbers".
I keep waiting for the counter-accusations: "No, *you* harassed *me*!"
Wasn't that Glenn Thrush's whole thing?
He would hit on interns and young journalists and when they turned him down would tell everyone they hit on him and he turned them down. Because some bald middle aged troll like Thrush is exactly what every hot 20 something woman is dreaming about. Nothing says sexy like a fedora and a beer gut.
Silly goose, only men are capable of harassment and abuse of power. This is known.
Whatever you do, do not Google "teacher student abuse". None of the resulting links are real.
The best comment I have heard about the Thrush thing was "the biggest surprise is that Glenn likes girls at all." That is funny and kind of true.
I thought the same about Franken.
So did my wife. She thought he was gay. She had no idea he had a wife and kids.
No doubt. Franken could have played that "Asexual Pat" skit with minimal time in the makeup chair.
I keep waiting for the counter-accusations: "No, *you* harassed *me*!"
You mean like a marriage?
I still recall when the IL GOP pulled the party out from under Jack Ryan (against a little-known community organizer) over allegations put forth by his wife in their divorce proceedings. When they dropped him for wanting to have sex with his wife (at a private club), I knew at least part of the party had gone completely off the rails, if it was ever on to begin with.
I had forgotten about that. Ryan's crime was asking his wife to have sex with him while people watched in a sex club. It was totally legal. And when she said no, he took no for an answer. So, what business is it of anyone but Ryan and his wife? None.
Worse than that, those records were sealed. A Democratic hack judge in Los Angeles ordered them released. It was a total invasion of Ryan's privacy. Both sides had agreed the records should be sealed. The divorce was six years old. The public had no interest or reason to see those records. And the fucking gutless GOP rolled over and walked away from Ryan. And got Obama as a Senator so they could feel righteous and good about themselves.
Are you such a pussy that you can't write pussy?
Is it your Voldemort?
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he'll hold phone talks with U.S. counterpart Puppet Donald Trump
This message brought to you by Hillary for America. ///ImStillWithHer
Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS News after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.
Part of me thinks all of this is stupid and it's stupid to be suspended or fired over accusations without evidence, but part of me is reveling in leftists eating their own.
I don't think you should. But 8 different women came forward about Rose and they all told pretty much the same MO independently and they all had friends and colleagues who confirmed that they had told them about it at the time. And Rose doesn't seem to be denying it.
If there is a reason to think Rose didn't do this stuff, I would like to hear it. The fact that he is a smug douche bag doesn't mean he should be slandered. But, I am having a hard time seeing how this stuff isn't true. And some of the women's stories are pretty disturbing. Stuff like a drunken Rose running his hand down a crying woman's pants. Rose inviting women he worked with over to his apartment and greeting them at the door naked. Just weird fucked up stuff. Not just the Al Franken I am a creepy obnoxious bastard who is doing to grab your ass kind of stuff.
Can you imagine the puddle of sweat Rose has been sitting in the past week of so?
Pretty large. If I were advising him, I would have told him to get ahead of it and come out and confess before the Post story came out. Put his spin on it and look repentant before people had a chance to read the stories.
If you are not going to go full Roy Moore and deny everything and start suing people, then you are better off getting ahead of it and going public before the media makes it public. If nothing else, you get the pleasure of depriving the reporter who is trying to destroy you of publishing a scoop. But, i don't see how doing nothing and waiting for the shoe to drop is ever the right thing to do.
If I were advising him, I would have told him to get ahead of it and come out and confess before the Post story came out.
That's exactly what Alec Baldwin did--"I've done some bad shit and treated women like crap but I was wrong and I'm doing my best to change that." He's probably hoping that will nerf any future accusations against him.
I'm starting to think that everyone on TV is just an amoral asshole.
Narcissists whose self-adoration gets continuously validated do seem prone to blossoming into full-on psychopathy.
I have a very good friend who worked as an intern with ABC News in New York when she was in law school. She is a tall beautiful blond, his smart as hell and absolutely could have made it as a TV reporter or personality. She did one summer with ABC news and never went back. The experience left her with the opinion that everyone on TV is an amoral asshole and being so is a requirement for getting on TV in the first place.
Another woman has accused Al Franken of sexual misconduct.
Hide ya kids, hide ya wife...
And god forbid Joe Biden's 2020 run for prez. Then again, it may be entertaining.
*Uncle Joe struts up behind Rebel Scum and caresses his neck*
"Hi sport, want to see how I got the VP nod"/ Joe
[shudders, cries]
Obligatory.
Whatever Lois Lerner said in her secret testimony about the IRS scandal, it's so inflammatory that she's afraid if people found out what she said, it might provoke a violent public reaction.
"Ms. Lerner and Holly Paz, her deputy at the IRS, filed documents in court Thursday saying tapes and transcripts of depositions they gave in a court case this year must remain sealed in perpetuity, or else they could spur an enraged public to retaliate."
----The Washington Times
https://tinyurl.com/ybswgquo
Whatever danger she is in, isn't going to get better by not releasing the testimony. My guess is that she is being a good leftist here and trying to keep it secret because her testimony makes it clear that the targeting scandal goes straight to the White House.
Whatever the testimony is, it needs to be released. It would be a travesty and do real damage to the country if the full truth about this is never made public, whatever the truth may be.
This would be a good time to revive "government of the people, by the people, for the people'.
Yeah right. Would that be Twitter "death threats"? Like Tony in his basement or something?
Hon, the jib is up. We all know Obama was in on it. You can come clean.
I like the cut of your jig.
No, it's "I like the eay your jib is carved."
I wonder how Cytotoxic is doing. He should be in high school by now.
They held him back because he was still arguing with his teachers at a 7th grade level
The worst part of that is he's homeschooled.
And the worst part of that was the Student Teacher sex scandal that came from it.
Damn you!
No, the worst part is he's homeschooled...and was caught having sex with the teacher.