Apparently Smarmy Piers Morgan had an interview with Narcissist Donald Trump in Davos, Switzerland. I will definitely not watch it because I cannot take even 30 seconds of either person and seeing both at the same time would make me throw up. Ghastliness is bad enough, ghastliness2 is just too much.
While there have been several cases of high-profile people losing their perches because they sexually harassed and abused people over whom they had power, one cannot help but wonder if after some time has elapsed and they fade from the headlines, they will slowly creep back into positions of prominence. Sometimes, they move quickly into new positions where they still exercise power over people, thanks to the ‘good old boy’ network that protects its own.
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Hindu extremists in India are threatening violence if a new Bollywood film Padmavaat is released that they allege depicts a romance between queen Padmaavati and a 14th century Muslim ruler Alauddin Khilji. They have not seen the film and the filmmakers say the film does not show this and have offered an advance screening to allay their fears. But hell hath no fury like an enraged religious extremist and now that they have got worked up, they are not going to calm down easily.
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If you have hung around much at all with Christian evangelicals like I have done in the past, you will have noticed that they love redemption stories. The sentiment of “I once was lost and now am found”, as expressed in the hymn Amazing Grace is a surefire winner with that crowd, to the extent that they will even exaggerate the extent of their past sins in order to make their salvation sound even more dramatic. I know because I have heard the testimonies of people I knew well.
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The 16-year old Palestinian girl Ahed Tamimi has become a cause celebre across the world after she slapped an Israeli soldier who had entered her family compound. This was after “an Israeli soldier shot Ahed’s 15-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet during a demonstration against the ongoing military occupation”. In retaliation, the Israeli authorities arrested her and she remains in custody.
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Two stories in The Intercept illustrate well how skewed the justice system is in the US.
In the first case, Shaun King writes about a man, clearly inflamed and influenced by Donald Trump’s attacks on the media and in particular at CNN, who phoned in multiple deaths threats to that network.
EARLY TUESDAY MORNING, we learned that Brandon Griesemer, a 19-year-old grocery store clerk from Novi, Michigan, made at least 22 calls to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters where he not only threatened to shoot and kill employees, but used racial and ethnic slurs for both African-Americans and Jews. The calls were made two weeks ago, and Griesemer was charged last Friday.
This was not Griesemer’s first rodeo. On September 19, he was reported to have made similarly ugly calls to an Islamic center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Brandon Griesemer is a bigot.
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Ryan Grim and Lee Fang write that while the actions and words of Donald Trump and his Republican enablers have angered and energized progressives across the country to run for office, they are being blocked by Democratic party dead-enders in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and their allies like Emily’s List who are backing the same losing candidates and polices of the past, based on their ability to raise money rather than gain votes. The DSCC keeps pursuing the tired strategy of trying to win over Republican voters, which means backing more conservative candidates and policies, rather than attract those voters who have opted out of politics because they feel that the Democrats are just Republican-lite.
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After Donald Trump’s insulted Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa, Conan O’Brien thought that he should visit Haiti.
“I have no idea what the president has against the people of Haiti, but if the president doesn’t like them, they must be lovely people,” the TBS host added on his show last Monday. On Thursday, he landed in Port-au-Prince, where he spent the weekend taping his special, which aims to show the president and those like him how much Haitian immigrants have to offer the United States.
Now we have our first look at the hour-long show, which will air this coming Saturday night. “President Trump insulted Haiti, so I thought it was only fair to Haitians the chance to return the favor,” O’Brien says in the new clip.
Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow nails it.
If you follow US political news at all, you have undoubtedly heard of Gloria Allred, the attorney who has represented many female clients in high-profile gender-related cases and who is currently taking on Donald Trump on behalf of Summer Zervos who says that she was defamed by Donald Trump when he publicly called her a liar for saying that he sexually assaulted her in 2007. Allred has been portrayed negatively by her opponents as a publicity-seeker whose expertise mostly lies in getting attention for her press conferences with the victims of abuse.
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