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LKLK (0)
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| 05-20-22 02:13pm - 947 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Rabbits Review (sister site of Porn Users) is showing a free 30-day membership to Lets Doe It. Lets Doe It is a European network. The network has a couple of very fine glamcore sites, and around 15 more sites covering different niches. A free offer that seems like a no-brainer, to see what the network has to offer. https://www.rabbitsreviews.com/tag/affordable-30-day-deals | |
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| 05-15-22 04:17pm - 952 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx_7uZhKL84 A video on YouTube illustrating what can happen if different species are put together. YouTube now allows X-rated videos. Only watch if you have parental permission. | |
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| 05-15-22 05:42am - 952 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Variety May 12, 2022 10:48am PT Christopher Walken Joins ‘Dune Part Two’ as Emperor Shaddam IV The House Corrino has its ruler. Christopher Walken will join Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya in director Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune Part Two,” as Shaddam IV, the Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe. Walken’s casting fills out the major characters for the second half of Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal science-fiction novel. He joins Florence Pugh (“Black Widow”) as the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Irulan; and Austin Butler (star of the upcoming “Elvis”) as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the presumptive heir to the Harkonnen dynasty. Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts are returning as screenwriters for the sequel, which will be produced by Villeneuve, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter and Tanya Lapointe, and executive produced by Josh Grode, David Valdes, Herbert W. Gains, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert, Thomas Tull, Spaihts, Richard P. Rubinstein and John Harrison. Although the Emperor does not appear in “Dune Part One,” he is the catalyst for the story, ordering the House Atreides on a doomed mission to take over dominion of the Spice mining planet Arrakis, also known as Dune. Jealous of the Atreides’ power and respect in the universe, the Emperor colludes with Dune’s previous overseers, House Harkonnen, to wipe out the Atreides family forever. That plan ultimately fails when Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) escape into the desert, and set Paul on his destiny to become the messianic figure known as the Kwisatz Haderach — which will culminate in the events of “Dune Part Two.” Villeneuve’s first “Dune” film was a gamble by Legendary and Warner Bros. — the filmmaker insisted on splitting the novel in two in order to do it proper justice, but the studios only bankrolled the first half on the hope that it would prove popular enough to warrant making the second film. It was: Released day-and-date by Warner Bros. in theaters and on HBO Max, “Dune” ultimately grossed $400.6 million worldwide. The film went on to be nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture, and it won six, for sound, visual effects, production design, original score, editing and cinematography. Production on “Dune Part Two” is expected to start later this year, for an Oct. 20, 2023, release date. Walken, who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for 1978’s “The Dear Hunter,” most recently appeared in the Apple TV+ series “Severence” and the Amazon Prime Video series “Outlaws.” He is represented by ICM Partners. | |
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| 05-14-22 12:23pm - 953 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Maybe it's time the US toughened up and sent hit squads into Russia to eliminate Putin. If he's crazy enough to threaten the world, maybe the world is better off with Putin dead. ------- ------- Russia's media propaganda turns to 'spine-chilling rhetoric' to intimidate the West NBC Universal Yuliya Talmazan May 14, 2022, 1:30 AM How many seconds does it take for a ballistic missile to reach London, Paris or Berlin? That’s the question pundits on Russian state TV were pondering as the war in Ukraine entered its third month. The eerie estimates were accompanied by a graphic showing the trajectories that Moscow’s intercontinental ballistic missiles would take to reach the capitals of European nations that supply Kyiv with the most military aid. All the while, pro-Kremlin host Olga Skabeyeva and the experts on her “60 Minutes” show on the Russia-1 TV channel were nonchalantly joking about how the West should tune in. Rossiya 1 show discussed Russian nuclear strikes on European countries late last month. (via Russia-1) Rossiya 1 show discussed Russian nuclear strikes on European countries late last month. (via Russia-1) Just months ago, the graphic, the rhetoric and the seeming casualness of such conversations would have been shocking, even by the standards of Russian propaganda. But with Russia’s military struggling, its rivals emboldened and the neighbor it invaded responding with defiance, NBC News watched dozens of hours of state media coverage to find the Kremlin and its mouthpieces increasingly reaching for new and more outlandish claims to justify the Ukraine invasion. “The Kremlin has relatively few instruments to try and influence the West, and therefore it’s resorting to all this spine-chilling rhetoric as a means of attempted intimidation,” said Mark Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank based in London. That leaves “the dark power of looking crazy and dangerous” as one of the very few tools at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s disposal, he said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s false suggestion that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood” like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and that some of the “biggest antisemites were, as a rule, Jewish” drew widepsread condemnation and ridicule. Russian state media has also peddled narratives about “black magic” supposedly practiced by Ukrainian troops and hinted at baseless allegations of drug use by Zelenskyy. The country’s tightly-controlled media space means that Russian audiences have been seeing a strikingly different version of events in Ukraine on their TV screens than people in the West — one that bears little resemblance to evidence of what’s happening on the ground. Newscasts and daily political shows have spent countless hours of airtime telling their viewers that the war in Ukraine is not, in fact, a war, but instead a “special military operation” designed to spare civilians. The Russian forces are portrayed as liberators, fighting against what the propaganda calls the “neo-Nazis” who are said to overrun Ukraine under the influence of the United States and it allies and are allegedly committing “genocide” against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The atrocities documented in Bucha and other Ukrainian towns are staged by Kyiv, Russia claims. Moscow says it went into Ukraine as a pre-emptive strike against NATO, as Ukraine was seeking nuclear weapons. The public is told that tough sanctions are simply further proof of the West’s pathological hate for Russia that drove the conflict in the first place. Above all, the state media would have Russians believe that the military operation in Ukraine is going to plan and that Russian forces are winning. A recent poll by Russia’s Levada Center, which is not a state-run group, found that public support for “the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine” remains high at 74 percent, although experts have raised doubts about whether such polls can be accurate. But a lot of that support is for the war as it’s being portrayed on state television, rather than support for what’s actually going on in Ukraine, Galeotti said. “It’s support for a limited operation, conducted surgically to avoid civilian casualties in order to prevent a neo-Nazi regime from getting nukes and committing genocide,” he said. “If that’s what you’re presented with, well, I’m not surprised that a lot of people will say — yes, that sounds like a perfectly appropriate war. It’s more about what happens once reality starts to confront them as more people start coming back from the battlefield.” Moscow’s war has been beset by uneven offensives and heavy personnel losses as Kyiv’s allies ramp up military aid. That has seen the rhetoric on Russian state TV ramp up further to a point where talking about missile strikes on European capitals and the possibility of nuclear war are simply par for the course, said Stephen Hutchings, professor of Russian studies at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. “There is an unprecedented and seemingly almost concerted effort to bandy around and play fast and loose with this rhetoric of World War III and nuclear strikes,” he said. It’s a reflection of a war that’s not going according to plan, and in which people are becoming frustrated and angry, he added. One of the most egregious examples, he said, came from pro-Kremlin journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, who used an episode of a weekly current affairs show in early May to illustrate how Moscow could swiftly turn Britain into a “nuclear wasteland” if it was moved to do so. The U.K. could be attacked with Russia’s unstoppable Poseidon underwater drone, he said, generating a giant tsunami that would annihilate the nation. “A lot of this rhetoric is essentially to ram home this notion that this is not actually just a war in Ukraine, but rather a proxy war with the West,” Galeotti said. “They’re trying to amp up the sense of the scale of this confrontation just in case the decision is made about converting it from a special military operation into a full-scale war. If you want to avoid making that sound like a defeat, then you have to say it’s because this is no longer just about Ukraine, but rather about Russia against the whole West.” RUSSIA-HISTORY-WWII-ANNIVERSARY (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images) RUSSIA-HISTORY-WWII-ANNIVERSARY (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images) The Ukrainian government has blamed Russian state media for fueling the war, with Zelenskyy threatening retaliation against Moscow’s most prolific propagandists. Russia’s jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny has also called out his country’s state media for being “warmongers.” It all comes against the backdrop of a country with nearly no remaining independent media. Russia passed a law criminalizing any criticism of its armed forces early in the invasion, and the few remaining independent journalists have either left the country or have stopped working altogether. The internet, of course, is still there for those seeking out international war coverage — although several foreign news sites have been blocked — but for an average Russian consumer, state TV remains the main source of news about Ukraine. Feeding audiences an intensifying stream of propaganda, including the potential for nuclear war, may only achieve so much for the Kremlin, however, experts said. “It’s all very well threatening these kinds of things,” Galeotti said. “At what point do people start thinking — this is getting really scary?” | |
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| 05-14-22 05:46am - 953 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Why do actors often play characters that are supposed to be younger than the real age of the actors? Is this fair? Or does this teach people to lie, and cheat, and steal? Enquiring minds want to know: are all actors liars? ----- ----- Movies Interview Haley Lu Richardson: ‘I’ve retired from playing teenagers’ Adrian Horton The 27-year-old star of Edge of Seventeen, Columbus and Unpregnant is growing up with indie Montana Story and a role in the next season of The White Lotus ‘I’ve had this slow, steady burn that I’m kind of appreciative for, because I feel like it’s given me space to really make mistakes’ … Haley Lu Richardson Haley Lu Richardson: ‘I’ve had this slow, steady burn that I’m kind of appreciative for, because I feel like it’s given me space to really make mistakes.’ Photograph: Matt Baron/REX/Shutterstock Adrian Horton @adrian_horton Sat 14 May 2022 02.04 EDT Last modified on Sat 14 May 2022 02.40 EDT In the last half decade, Haley Lu Richardson has amassed an impressive variety of roles, from slapstick comedies and indie dramas, united in their striking naturalism. As the popular best friend to Hailee Steinfeld’s misanthrope in teen comedy Edge of Seventeen, a star-crossed lover with cystic fibrosis in Five Feet Apart and an architecture nerd who befriends a grieving older man in Kogonada’s critically acclaimed Columbus, the 27-year-old American actor’s warmth consistently elevates what could be flat or derivative characters into full-blooded people. She is remarkably good at the more casual, throwaway aspects of life that often translate poorly to screen – Googling Planned Parenthood in Unpregnant, shooting a glance in the memories of a techno-sapien robot in After Yang or, in the case of her new film Montana Story, calling an Uber to her father’s ranch in Big Sky country. Unpregnant review – road-trip abortion comedy is a fun if rocky ride Read more Montana Story, written and directed by the film-making duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel, marks a departure for Richardson, who has mostly played teenagers in complicated situations. Her character Erin is a full adult – 25 years old, reconnecting with her estranged brother, played by Owen Teague, after a stroke sends their mutually loathed father into a coma. “I’ve retired from playing teenagers,” she says with a laugh over Zoom earlier this week from Italy. The decision came after filming Unpregnant, in which she played a 17-year-old honor student reconnecting with her best friend over slushies and Kelly Clarkson while road-tripping across states for an abortion. “I remember thinking after that movie, ‘I think that was the last time I can connect to a teenager.’ Like, I just don’t think that I have it in me any more … that was 10 years ago!” The warmth she projects on-screen carries off it; there’s a disarming goofiness throughout our chat, as she interrupts herself to mention cat hair (her cat made it to Italy with her), sparkling water burps and an aside about how we both had first kisses to Kelly Clarkson songs, which would be fully vintage to her more recent teen characters. Clad in a hoodie, she’s zooming in from Sicily, where she’s deep into filming the second season of The White Lotus, HBO’s biting satire of privilege and leisure that became the breakout TV hit of summer 2021. Richardson plays Portia, a mid-20s woman traveling with her boss, and that’s about all we can know about her character so far. “It’s the same show, it’s just that the characters are different and the place is different, and the themes that intertwine through all the storylines are new themes that are equally as present in society and humanity now,” she says, searching for the right words. I supply: relevant, unsettling, disturbing. “Thought-provoking, fucked up,” she adds, and we both laugh. Also that. With The White Lotus and Montana Story, Richardson was drawn to inhabit a more mature, calcified era of emotional turmoil. Erin returns after a seven-year absence with a hard shell of bitterness – toward her father, who we learn was cruel and abusive. Toward her brother, for more mysterious reasons gradually unlocked through a pressure cooker of awkward car rides, logistical decisions, and an inevitable confrontation that rips off the scabs on past wounds. “The maturity of that is something I connected to more personally,” she says. “Obviously when I did Edge of Seventeen, I still love that movie and I connected to it then, but this is a different level of connection that I personally felt to what Erin was going through, and a lot of that has to do with where she’s at in her life, and what she’s able to face and deal with.” It’s been 11 years since Richardson and her mother moved to LA from her home town of Phoenix, where she had won a number of regional dance competitions. Unlike many of her cohort, she entered Hollywood with no industry connections – her mother works in marketing, her father designs golf courses. Asked if she got frustrated by nepotism barriers coming up, Richardson was sanguine. “I don’t try to fight, and I’m not mad at,” she says. “I mean, I see people kind of come up around me, or have these incredible opportunities around me, and a lot of them have been working really hard for a long time, and a lot of people have a certain kind of connection, or just get really lucky in a certain role at a certain time.” Haley Lu Richardson in Unpregnant Richardson in Unpregnant. Photograph: Ursula Coyote/AP “I’ve had this slow, steady burn that I’m kind of appreciative for, because I feel like it’s given me space to really make mistakes,” she adds, expressing wariness around rocketing careers, the kind that draw intense buzz all at once. “It’s like, where do you go from there, you know? How do you top that? And not just on a level of how others view you, and how you’re perceived, but also the fulfillment. I hope my whole career is just a steady build.” Montana Story’s Erin shares a common trait with most Richardson characters: stubborn independence. Her performances, whether breezy or bottled up, seem to originate from the same well of headstrong determination. With Montana Story and acclaimed turns in Columbus and After Yang – both directed by pseudonymous South Korean film-maker Kogonada, with whom she shares a mutually affectionate close friendship – Richardson has demonstrated an affinity for small, collaborative environments and an eye for female characters who can’t fade into the background. “I would rather, if I had to choose – which I do sometimes, because I don’t get those opportunities thrown at me left and right,” she says. “I’d rather be doing a smaller independent film with people that I really feel like I can collaborate with and I really trust, and playing a character that’s really full and interesting to me, than playing someone’s wife in a bigger movie.” Richardson was almost in a much bigger movie, albeit not as a sidelined wife, as one of the final candidates for Batgirl in the DC superhero film – a role that ultimately went to In The Heights breakout Leslie Grace. Was she nervous about potentially joining a massive franchise? “Yes,” she says. “The times that I’ve been up for – not just speaking about that experience with Batgirl – but the times I’ve been up for like really big or franchise things, superhero things or something, they happen so fast. You have to sign deals ahead of time. There’s never a script.” Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho in Columbus Richardson and John Cho in Columbus. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy She contrasts it to her creative sense – “the reason I do this” – over which she’s become increasingly protective. With franchises, “you become a puzzle piece and less like someone who’s helping to put together a puzzle,” she says, though she tipped her hat to Brie Larson, who fashioned her Captain Marvel in the 2019 MCU movie as a flinty superhero with a feminist sensibility. “I really do hope that if I ever do something like that, there’s room for [that].” One place where she does that find that room: Instagram, where she’s occasionally applied her acting talents to some cheeky homages of millennial culture. (See: an incredibly faithful rendition of Marissa’s pool chair-tossing freakout from The OC.) “I feel like Instagram is the one place that I have that I can really control how people that know about me as an actor see me as a person,” she says. “I like to keep just really … fun, I feel. I don’t put too much thought into it, honestly.” That sounds healthy, I note, as someone generally anxious about posting online. “I do feel like it’s not too unhealthy for me,” she responded. “I think where Instagram gets unhealthy is when I start looking” – the rabbitholes of online shopping, other people’s enviable profiles, or an explore page filled with an endless scroll of facetuned skin and injected lips. “That does get to you.” We end on a dour note, speaking just a week after a leaked supreme court draft opinion signaled the all but certain end of Roe v Wade, which would throw the US into a more chaotic and punitive hellscape of inaccessible reproductive healthcare than the one depicted in Unpregnant. “I just can’t believe – I am so sad that this is still a conversation,” she says. “I really think it’s just so sad and wrong that this is a conversation that anyone is having except for a woman in the situation talking personally with the people that she wants to talk about it with in her life.” We agree on a sentiment that’s true to many a Richardson character, candid and punchy: “I think it’s fucked.” | |
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| 05-12-22 08:49pm - 954 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
https://www.slashfilm.com/862070/dan-ste...-godzilla-vs-kong-2/ Dan Stevens was just announced as having joined the cast of "Godzilla vs. Kong 2," reuniting him with Adam Wingard who directed Stevens in the action-thriller "The Guest." Stevens' announcement is the first major casting news from "Godzilla vs. Kong 2," the highly-anticipated sequel to Wingard's 2021 ultimate kaiju battle flick Godzilla vs. Kong. Principal photography is due to start in Australia later this summer. No plot details have been made available. | |
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| 05-11-22 04:30am - 956 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
May 10, 2022 4:28pm PT Charlize Theron Posts First Look of Her Marvel Studios Debut in ‘Doctor Strange 2’ Welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Charlize Theron. Six days after the debut of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” Theron posted to Instagram the official first look of her as Clea, her character introduced in the mid-credits scene of the Marvel Studios film. Theron’s casting as Clea had been rumored for the last few weeks as word of the many surprises in “Multiverse of Madness” began to trickle through the internet. But Theron’s post marks the first time the Oscar-winning actor has acknowledged she’s playing the character. (Warning: The rest of this story contains some light spoilers for “Multiverse of Madness.”) In the film, Theron appears in full sorcerer regalia while Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is walking down the street. She tells him that his multiverse hopping actions from the film have caused an “incursion” between universes, which, as it sounds, not a good thing. After ripping the fabric of reality to reveal a portal to the Dark Dimension — i.e. Clea’s home — she asks Strange to join her to repair the damage, and he does. In the Marvel comics, Clea is a fellow sorcerer with a lineage that traces directly to Dormammu, the overlord of the Dark Dimension who faced off with Strange in the climax of 2016’s “Doctor Strange.” (In that film, Dormammu is represented by a semi-corporeal giant floating head also voiced by Cumberbatch, whereas Clea is, to recap, played by the flesh-and-blood Theron sporting smokey magenta eye shadow.) Eventually, Clea and Strange get married, but Clea must commute between the Dark Dimension and Strange’s reality, which, naturally, puts something of a strain on their relationship. At this point, it is unclear where Theron’s version of Clea will go within the MCU, but the post-credit scene strongly suggests that she and Cumberbatch will headline the next “Doctor Strange” movie. Given that Theron is one of the biggest established stars ever to join the Marvel Studios fold, it also seems likely that Clea could have a long and healthy future within the MCU. Theron is next set to appear in the Netflix film “The School for Good and Evil,” directed by Paul Feig and costarring Kerry Washington, Michelle Yeoh, Ben Kingsley, Rachel Bloom and Laurence Fishburne. She’s also set to reprise her role as the villain Cipher in “Fast X,” which recently paused production after director Justin Lin unexpectedly dropped out a week into filming; days later, Universal hired Louis Leterrier as a replacement. | |
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| 05-09-22 04:58am - 958 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
White House says 20 internet companies will provide effectively free internet to millions of Americans Yahoo Finance Ben Werschkul May 9, 2022, 2:48 AM The Biden administration announced Monday that 20 leading internet service providers have agreed to offer basic low cost plans that will be free for millions of Americans after a refund. The 20 companies, including AT&T (T), Comcast (CMCSA), and Verizon (VZ), cover more than 80% of the U.S. population. They will immediately provide at least one plan that costs no more than $30 a month and provides download speeds of at least 100 mbps. The White House says that 40% of the U.S. population, about 48 million households, will be eligible to sign up through an existing program called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program is aimed at lower income Americans and offers participants a discount of up to $30/month on their internet bill, meaning they’ll effectively get free service if they can get online with one of these participating companies. AT&T CEO John Stankey said his company's new plan “when combined with federal ACP benefits, provides up to 100 Mbps of free internet service." “Internet for all requires the partnership of business and government, and we are pleased to be working with the Administration, Congress and FCC to ensure everyone has accessible, affordable and sustainable broadband service,” he said. 'High speed internet at home is no longer a luxury' Monday's news come largely thanks to $65 billion set aside for high speed internet in the Bipartisan Infrastructure law. That money has helped fund the ACP and is also being directed towards parallel efforts to increase coverage areas and speeds. “High speed internet at home is no longer a luxury: it's a necessity for children to learn, workers to do their job, seniors and others to access health care through telemedicine, and for all of us to stay connected in this digital world,” a senior administration official told reporters in previewing the announcement. ‘A historic opportunity’ Families are eligible for the ACP mostly based on income level. Any household making less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Level — $55,500 for a family of four in the continental U.S. — is eligible. Households can also qualify if they participate in certain government programs like Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income. “The Affordable Connectivity Program is a historic opportunity to close the digital divide by empowering more Americans to get online and connect to our increasingly digital world, “ said David N. Watson, the CEO and president of Comcast. The full list of participating companies includes Allo Communications, AltaFiber, Altice USA, Astound, AT&T, Breezeline, Comcast, Comporium, Frontier, IdeaTek, Cox Communications, Jackson Energy Authority, MediaCom, MLGC, Spectrum, Verizon, Vermont Telephone Company, Vexus Fiber, and Wow! Internet, Cable, and TV. Verizon, as an example, will now offer its existing Fios service for $30/month to program participants. Other companies, like Spectrum, say they will increase the speeds of an existing $30/month plan to reach the 100 mbps standard set by the White House, where their infrastructure allows it. Pushing more companies to 'make the same commitments' Notably missing from Monday's announcement are many smaller and rural internet service providers that would have a challenge meeting the White House's pricing or speed requirements. “I think that there are roughly 1,300 participating internet providers in the ACP right now and we would obviously love for each and every one of them to make the same commitments that these 20 companies are doing,” said a senior administration official. WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 14: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on the Biden administration’s Affordable Connectivity Program at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on February 14, 2022 in Washington, DC. During the event Harris announced that 10 million households had enrolled in the program which helps families access high-speed, affordable internet. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Vice President Kamala Harris discusses the Affordable Connectivity Program in February. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) These companies cover 50% of the rural population. Those Americans are still eligible to sign up for the ACP, but they may continue to face slower speed or plans that aren't fully covered by the $30 refund. So far, 11.5 million households have signed up to receive ACP benefits. The program was first created as a relief measure in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden officials have moved to make it a permanent as a way to lessen the digital divide. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will speak at the White House Monday alongside internet company CEOs as the first part of a multi-pronged effort to drive signups. That effort includes a new website, GetInternet.gov, and direct outreach from federal agencies like the Social Security Administration as well as states. Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC. | |
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| 05-06-22 03:34am - 961 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Mothers Day is this coming Sunday, and porn sites are having sales to honor our mothers. Mommy MILFs, mommy anal, mommies bang teens, think of all the nice things we can do to make our mommys happy and satisfied. PU and Rabbits should have some listing of these sales soon. But if you look around, you might snag a sale on a site you've been looking at. I've seen some offers of $5 for the first month for some Metart sites, that are normally $15 to $30 per month. Plus other Metart sites for $10 for the first month. That's much cheaper than the discount Metart offers to its regular subscribers. | |
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| 05-05-22 12:26am - 962 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
After three weeks of testimony from Johnny Depp's side, including the actor's memorable four days on the stand, it's Amber Heard's turn to tell her story. The Aquaman star, 36, sat before a jury on Wednesday afternoon and accused her ex-husband of physical abuse and sexual assault. Throughout her three-hour testimony, Depp, 58, kept his head down and never looked at her on the witness stand. "I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote," Heard began. "I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is. This is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything ... this is the most painful and difficult think I have ever gone through." Heard is being sued for $50 million as Depp claims she defamed him in a 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post. The actor's legal team presented its case that he lost at least $40 million in earnings and that the article was "catastrophic" for his career. The Pirates of the Caribbean star testified that he "never" abused Heard, or any woman, and that she was the violent aggressor in their relationship. According to Heard, that's not the case. She testified that Depp was volatile after they started dating. "It started with throwing things, destroying the property and screaming at me," she claimed. It turned physical in 2013. "It's seemingly so stupid, so insignificant. I will never forget it. It changed my life," Heard told the jury about the first time she was hit. "I was sitting on the couch and we were talking, we were having like a normal conversation. There was no fighting, no argument, nothing. He was drinking and I didn't realize it at the time, but I think he was using cocaine. ... I asked him about the tattoo he has on his arm." Depp's tattoo read "Wino Forever," which he changed from "Winona Forever." (The actor previously dated Winona Ryder.) When Depp told Heard what it said, she laughed. "He slapped me across the face — and I laughed. I laughed because I didn't know what else to do. I thought this must be a joke. This must be a joke because I didn't know what was going on. I just stared at him kind of laughing still, thinking that he was going to start laughing too ... but he didn't," Heard declaraed. Depp purportedly yelled at her "You think you're funny, bitch?" "He slapped me again. It was clear it wasn't a joke anymore. I stopped laughing but I didn't know what else to do. ... He slapped me for no reason it seemed like," Heard continued, adding that Depp slapped her a third time "hard." She remembered how "dirty" the carpet was as she was laying there face down. Heard became emotional on the stand, claiming Depp told her he'd "done it before" and "thought I put the monster away." The actress left the house, but not the relationship. She said Depp later begged for forgiveness and told her, "I'll never lay a hand on you again." When Depp testified two weeks ago, he claimed this whole incident never happened. In fact, there's practically nothing the actors agree on except that when they kissed filming The Rum Diary in 2009, their chemistry was "remarkable." "It didn't feel like a normal scene anymore, it felt more real," Heard recalled. That's where the similarities end. Heard told the jury about how on movie sets, "you don't use your tongue" as to keep things professional. "Those lines were blurred. He grabbed my face and pulled me into him and really kissed me. But we were filming a scene," she said, confirming that Depp slipped her his tongue. Alluding to more unprofessional behavior, Heard claimed that one time when she was wearing a bathrobe on set "he kind of picked up the back of my robe with his boot." "I didn't know what to make of it at the time, I just kind of giggled and batted it away playfully," she explained. Depp testified that he and Heard kissed one time off-camera in his trailer, and that while she wanted to stay, he knew it was a bad idea as they were in other relationships. Heard had a different story. She said Depp "playfully" pushed her on a bed in his trailer in a "flirtatious" way. "I giggled, laughed it off and batted him away," she claimed. Heard and Depp didn't see each other for almost two years, although she says he sent her lavish gifts in the interim. When they reunited for the film's press tour in 2011 they were both single. Heard said Depp invited her up to his hotel room under the guise of having a drink with the director, but when she arrived, the director wasn't there. They drank wine and hung out for hours on the couch. "As I went to leave he grabbed both sides of my face, similar to what he did [during filming]," She said. "He kissed me and I kissed him back ... then we fell in love." By March 2013, according to Heard, violence was becoming routine in their relationship. She claimed in one instance, Depp hit her and "my lip went into my teeth and it got a little blood on the wall." Heard said she was attacked on another occasion that month: "He grabbed me by the arm and he kind of just held me on the floor screaming at me. I don't know how many times he hit me in the face, but I remember being on the floor of my apartment and I remember thinking, 'How could this happen to me again?'" Heard claims she wasn't just physically assaulted, but that she experienced sexual violence, too. (Depp testified he never sexually assaulted any woman.) The alleged incident happened in May 2013 when they were doing drugs with a group of friends in Joshua Tree, Calif. (It's been dubbed the "Hicksville" incident during trial.) In the trailer where they were staying, the actress testified that she was digitally penetrated by Depp when he was searching for cocaine. "He ripped my dress ... he's grabbing my breast, he's touching my thighs, he rips my underwear off and then he proceeds to do a cavity search," Heard emotionally recounted. "He said he was looking for his drugs, his cocaine." Heard told the jury she "didn't do cocaine and was against it." "Why would I hide his drugs from him?" she continued, claiming Depp "shoved his fingers inside me." Heard said she "just stood there staring at this stupid light." "I didn't know what to do. I just stood there while he did that. He twisted his fingers around. I didn't say stop or anything I just," Heard added, becoming emotional. "I froze." Heard still didn't leave Depp after the alleged incident calling him the "love of my life" at the time. "I had so much hope," she explained. The relationship didn't improve that summer as Heard testified about two more alleged abuse incidents. After a flight where they supposedly both took MDMA, and fed a pill to a flight attendant, he gave her a bloody nose. While in the Bahamas with his children, Heard claims Depp slammed "me up by my neck and holds me there for a second and tells me that he could f****** kill me and that I was an embarrassment." Heard's testimony has wrapped for the day. She will be back on the stand on Thursday. MORE: Johnny Depp's testimony concludes, says "The only person I've abused in my life is myself" | |
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| 05-04-22 02:04pm - 963 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Hayden Christensen returns as Darth Vader in new 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' trailer: 'I'm emotional' Yahoo Movies Ethan Alter May 4, 2022, 8:42 AM May the Darth be with you. To celebrate Star Wars Day, Lucasfilm dropped a teasing glimpse of Hayden Christensen's return as Jedi warrior-turned-Sith Lord in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series. Premiering May 27 on Disney+, the six-episode serial reunites Christensen's Anakin Skywalker with his former teacher, Ewan McGregror's General Kenobi, for the first time since their epic battle on Mustafar in the climax of 2005's Revenge of the Sith. And unlike their last encounter, Vader appears to have the high ground. (Watch the new trailer above.) Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) returns in Obi-Wan Kenobi (Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.) Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) returns in the Disney+ limited series, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.) The previously released first trailer for Obi-Wan Kenobi clearly laid out the stakes for the show: picking up a decade after the events of George Lucas's prequel trilogy, Obi-Wan is hiding out in the Tatooine desert, observing Anakin's son, Luke, from afar. But his whereabouts won't stay secret for long. The Jedi-hunter Inquisitor Reva (Moses Ingram) — who has a personal connection to Vader — is on his trail, and won't rest until she orchestrates a reunion between the former allies. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Christensen said it was "amazing" to step back into Vader's frosty armor. "It was mostly a lot of excitement because I had spent enough time with this character and felt like I knew him, and coming back to it felt very natural in a lot of ways. And I was just really excited to get to come in and play Darth Vader at this point in the timeline because it did feel like a natural continuation of your journey with the character. And that was very meaningful for me." Hayden Christensen crosses over to the Dark Side in Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (Photo: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection) Hayden Christensen crosses over to the Dark Side in Revenge of the Sith. (Photo:  20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection)Besides featuring our first look at Christensen in his Darth Vader get-up (at least the chest plate anyway), the latest teaser also provides a glimpse of Kumail Nanjiani's franchise debut and a dramatic encounter between Obi-Wan and Luke's uncle Owen Lars, played by returning prequel player, Joel Edgerton. "When the time comes, he must be trained," Kenobi insists to Lars. "Like you trained his father?" Owen shoots back. Ouch ... that burn will leave a mark. While Christensen's performance in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sithmay have made like sand and irritated moviegoers at the time, his absence from the galaxy has clearly made the heart grow fonder. The Star Wars Twitter timeline is filled with fans praising Lord Vader like they should. Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres May 27 on Disney+ | |
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| 05-03-22 05:30pm - 964 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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This is not right. Is The Rock black? Why couldn't they get a black man to play a black man? We need to hold a protest before movie is released, to show our support for Black Lives Matter. Dwayne Johnson's father was a Black Nova Scotian, with a small amount of Irish ancestry. His mother is Samoan. Support your local black actors, and have the Black Adam movie re-cast. | |
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| 05-02-22 03:58am - 965 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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But it is majestic. Its will be done. Never question the power and force of the law. ------ ------ The Tragic Case of the Wrong Thomas James Is Finally Righted After 32 years, a Florida man sentenced to life in prison for murder because he had the same name as another suspect is finally free. By Tristram Korten April 28, 2022 Thomas James walked into Miami’s Richard E. Gerstein Justice building shortly after 11 o'clock in the morning yesterday wearing a red inmate uniform, his head shaved smooth. Within the hour he was putting on street clothes for the first time in 32 years and walking out into the bright afternoon. Prosecutors had moved to vacate Thomas's 1991 murder conviction following a year-long review of his case. That review followed a GQ story I published last July that uncovered evidence showing James was the victim of mistaken identity. James’s journey to this point had been incredible. Even though police never talked to him, he was charged with murder in a 1990 apartment robbery in Miami, because, as he later found out, he had the same name as the suspect they were looking for. It was a simple and cruel error with devastating consequences. James was sentenced to life in prison, where he began to investigate his case, and then exhausted his appeals trying to point out the mistake that had landed him there. From behind bars, he improbably located the namesake suspect the police never found — an extraordinary discovery that helped set into motion the events that would culminate in his release. Yet the end to James’ confinement came abruptly and almost anti-climatically. After months and months of investigation, the State Attorney's Office suddenly notified James's lawyer, Natlie Figgers, on Tuesday that they would announce their decision in the case the next day. On Wednesday, after stating “we have determined that Thomas Raynard James is actually innocent,” Deputy Chief Assistant State Attorney Christine Zahralban asked Miami Dade Circuit Court Judge Miguel de la O to “vacate the judgment and allow him to be freed.” The judge talked a little about how “bittersweet” the moment was for both James, who lost so much of his life, and for the family of the victim, who now don't have justice. Then he granted the state’s motion. “Mr. James, at this time you have no further business in front of this court,” he said. It was over. James's long journey to prove his innocence, which would have broken lesser men, had ended. He was a free man. He stood up to start another journey into a world very different from the one he left. James would not be going back to prison to collect any of his belongings. Everything important to him he took to court that morning: pictures, notes on a book he wants to write, notes on businesses he wants to start, some legal documents. Three decades stuffed in a blue mesh bag. As he changed out of his jail clothes for the last time at the State Attorney's Office across the street from the courthouse, he was briefly and literally emerging naked into a new world. His family had brought new threads for him to wear. A gray sweatshirt, a t-shirt with “Versace” on it, dark slacks, new leather tennis shoes. It must have felt good. Back in the day, when James was awaiting trial in a Miami jail, families were allowed to drop off street clothes for inmates to wear. Sammy Wilson, who served time with James, remembers a young man who kept up appearances. James “always dressed fresh,” Wilson told me. “His pants, his shirt, his shoes always matched. He liked that Yankees blue. He was GQ.” Wilson, a gravel-voiced cynic, played an integral part in helping James, speaking to him regularly throughout his incarceration. He's the one who told me about the case and put me in touch with James, who had been reaching out to media for years with no luck. Wilson was in the courtroom Wednesday for the hearing. “Damndest thing,” he recalled. “When they announce he free, tears came out of my eyes. I didn't even cry when I went to prison. Man, I must be getting soft.” James didn't cry. After suffering for so long, he is careful not to let his emotions overwhelm him. I know because I've been talking to him for two years now as we shepherded his story into the light, then waited to see if anything would happen. I was not in Miami for the hearing, but I made him tell me in detail his movements that day. Some of that was cover. Given the magnitude of his injustice, the emotionally safe spot for both of us has always been digging for facts. Now was no different, except instead of witnesses, it was about the weather. James stepped from the State Attorney's Office into a bright, sunny Miami afternoon, with a cooling breeze. What were those first moments of freedom like? “It was myriad emotions all at one time,” he said. Was there an overriding one? “Joy, it gotta be joy. A sigh of relief,” he said. “Everything hasn't sunk in yet, it's been a long time.” It has. A very long time. The road to James’ unjust incarceration is complicated … and not. It boils down to a 1990 apartment robbery that left 57-year-old Francis McKinnon dead from a gunshot wound to the head. From there, a Metro-Dade Police detective named Kevin Conley heard from witnesses and the tip line that “Thomas James” was involved. So he went to the records department at headquarters and pulled up a mug shot of a Thomas James. (He later said he didn't remember if there were any other mug shots with the same name.) One witness, who had never met James before, identified him as the shooter. There was no other evidence against him, no fingerprints, footprints, DNA, or ballistics. He met his public defender about three times before trial. I started looking into the case in March of 2020 after speaking with Wilson, who had been a prior street source. I talked to James, who guided me through his version of events; to witnesses; and eventually to the neighborhood man he was confused with, the other Thomas “Tommy” James, who had a history of robbery. The other James admitted to me that he was the one police were actually looking for, even though he couldn't have committed the crime because he was in jail at the time, which I confirmed. (Another suspect, who is already in prison on unrelated charges, has been identified by the State’s Attorneys office.) I went over statements and depositions to identify all the moments in which it was clear witnesses were talking about a different Thomas James. All the moments police, prosecutors and even the defense attorney missed. All of those moments that conspired to put a poor black man represented by a harried public defender in prison for life after a trial that lasted two and a half days, with no evidence other than an eyewitness who didn't know Jay but picked him out of a police lineup. In March of 2021 I contacted prosecutors and alerted them to what was in the story. In June they opened their investigation. It was a long wait from there. Key to keeping attention on the case was Al Singleton, a retired homicide detective with the Miami-Dade Police Department who read my story. Singleton was in homicide when McKinnon was killed, but he didn't remember the case, let alone work it. A few years ago he had “reluctantly and recently come to the conclusion that we convict a lot more innocent people than we ever imagined,” and he started talking to prosecutors at the State’s Attorney’s Office, only to find they knew nothing about the case or the story. His outrage grew as he began contacting county officials, police and prosecutors, and found no sense of urgency. His masterstroke of disruption was contacting Melba Pearson, a civil rights attorney and prosecutor who ran (and lost) on a justice reform platform in the last State’s Attorney election. She was as alarmed as he was and contacted James's attorney about organizing a press conference to put pressure on the prosecutors (Figgers withdrew support for it at the last minute). Pearson rolled on, holding a symposium on the case at Florida International University, generating coverage and a “day of action,” and eventually cooperating with Figgers’ on a streetside rally for James. The State Attorney's Office seemed to take offense that civil rights advocates might not trust their institution, and pushed back against the perception they were dragging things out. Prosecutors released their report the day of James's hearing. But to their credit, they did a thorough job. They confirmed the suspect's death, and interviewed the other Thomas “Tommy” James, leading to identification of the last suspect. (Tommy told me he didn't know who the shooter was, but I suspected differently). There currently is not enough evidence to charge that man in McKinnon's death. The final piece of the puzzle came when the main witness recanted her testimony. She no longer believed it was Thomas James she saw in the apartment that night. In the end, Pearson and Singleton believe their pressure campaign worked, while State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle maintains her office held its ground against outside pressure, and took the time needed to do a thorough investigation. At this point, it's hard to argue with the results. James is free. Justice of sorts is served. And although this is beyond bittersweet for James, a terrible wrong has been made right. On that sunny afternoon of freedom, James's family, his mother Doris, his cousins Santay, Charles and Sankavia, and his legal team whisked him over the causeway straddling Biscayne Bay to the Miami Beach restaurant Yardbird. There, surrounded by those who have stayed with him through a terrible journey, he ordered his first meal as a free man – country fried chicken with mashed potatoes and sweet corn. | |
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| 05-01-22 12:08am - 966 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
A deputy has gone missing after not returning with a murder suspect. The female deputy did not have permission to leave the jail with the suspect. The reason for leaving the jail was for a fake court appointment. So the cops are looking for the deputy and the suspect. Not sure if they deputy helped the suspect escape, or if she was taken against her will. Except the deputy was not following procedure by escorting a murder suspect by herself. To escort a murder suspect, the rules state the deputy is supposed to be escorted by two other deputies. Also, the deputy told a fib before leaving the jail. She told the cops she was going to a doctor after dropping off the suspect. But apparently she didn't have a doctor's appointment. It's not clear from the article exactly what happened before and while the suspect/inmate went missing with the deputy. But not to worry: Cops are trained to deal with emergencies: That's why they carry guns. The deputy was armed with a 9mm handgun. At least she was supposed to be. It's now possible the suspect has the 9mm handgun. ----- ----- Deputy, murder suspect missing after leaving jail against protocol: Authorities ABC News April 30, 2022, 10:11 AM An Alabama corrections deputy and suspect charged with capital murder have been missing since Friday morning after leaving the jail for a court appointment that did not exist, said authorities, who warned the suspect should be considered armed and "extremely dangerous." Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office employee Vicky White was last seen escorting inmate Casey White to the local courthouse on Friday around 9:40 a.m. for an "alleged mental health evaluation," Sheriff Rick Singleton told reporters. "We have confirmed that there was no mental health evaluation scheduled," Singleton said. Vicky White was also alone with the inmate, which is a "strict violation of policy," he said, noting that Casey White should have been escorted by two deputies given his charges. The two are not related, the sheriff said. As the assistant director of corrections, Vicky White is in charge of coordinating transportation between the detention center and the court, and the breach of protocol wasn't flagged by her employees, the sheriff said. Vicky White told a booking officer that she was going to the doctor after dropping off the inmate, but she never made that appointment either, authorities said. The sheriff's office did not realize the two were missing until 3:30 p.m. Friday, when the booking officer reported he was unable to get ahold of Vicky White and her phone was going to voicemail. They then realized that the inmate was not back at the detention center, either, Singleton said. The patrol vehicle the two took from the detention center was located in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center, authorities said. The car was spotted in the parking lot as early as 11 a.m. Friday, authorities said. PHOTO: The Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama. (WAAY) PHOTO: The Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama. (WAAY) Investigators are searching for any footage that can shed light on what happened, going off the inmate's phone logs to determine if his escape was premeditated and looking into the previous interactions between the deputy and inmate. Authorities are considering all angles, Singleton said. "Did she assist him in escaping? That's obviously a possibility," Singleton said. "We're assuming at this point that she was taken against her will unless we can absolutely prove otherwise." Vicky White has been an employee of the sheriff's office for 25 years. The office is "shocked" that she is missing, Singleton said, describing her as an "exemplary employee." The deputy was armed with a 9 mm pistol, authorities said. "Casey White should be considered armed and extremely dangerous," Singleton said. "Right now we hope and pray we get him before somebody gets hurt." The FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and Alabama Law Enforcement Agency are assisting in the search, according to Huntsville ABC affiliate WAAY. MORE: 4 Florida correctional officers charged with murder in alleged beating of inmate The state has issued a "blue alert," which is activated when an Alabama officer has been killed or seriously injured and the perpetrator is at large. Casey White, 38, is described by authorities as 6 feet, 6 inches tall and 252 pounds, with salt and pepper hair, hazel eyes and tattoos on both arms. Vicky White, 56, is described as 5 foot, 5 inches tall and 160 pounds, with blonde hair and brown eyes. "Casey White is believed to be a serious threat to the corrections officer and the public," the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said in its alert. The suspect was arrested in 2020 and charged with two counts of capital murder in a nearly 5-year-old cold case that authorities said was a murder for hire, AL.com reported at the time. He was in the Lauderdale County jail awaiting trial, set to begin on June 13, according to WAAY. | |
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| 04-25-22 07:04am - 972 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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‘American Gigolo’ Showrunner David Hollander Fired After Misconduct Investigation Showtime and Paramount Television Studios have reportedly cut ties with "Ray Donovan" showrunner Hollander following allegations of misconduct. Samantha Bergeson 18 mins ago Executive producer David Hollander arrives at Showtime's "Ray Donovan" Season 4 FYC Event held at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles CA on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. (Photo By Sthanlee B. Mirador) *** Please Use Credit from Credit Field ***(Sipa via AP Images) Longtime Showtime showrunner David Hollander has officially been let go from his new series “American Gigolo” following allegations of misconduct. Deadline reported that the developer, director, executive producer, and showrunner parted ways with the “American Gigolo” TV adaptation for Showtime, which is produced by Paramount Television Studios. “David Hollander is no longer on the drama series ‘American Gigolo’ and Paramount Television Studios no longer has a producing relationship with him,” a spokesperson told Deadline in a statement. The outlet also stated that multiple sources close to production claimed Hollander’s firing was after an investigation into allegations of misconduct that allegedly were not related to sexual harassment. It is believed that co-executive producer David Bar Katz, who also worked with Hollander on Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” will take over as “American Gigolo” showrunner. “American Gigolo” stars Jon Bernthal as Julian Kaye, a male escort who was arrested for murder. Set 15 years after Kaye’s trial and subsequent prison sentence, the series finds its lead struggling to solve what really happened and why he was set up. Kaye also tries to reconnect with his former flame Michelle, played by Gretchen Mol. The series is based on Paul Schrader’s 1980 film starring Richard Gere. Rosie O’Donnell, Lizzie Brocheré, Wayne Brady, and Leland Orser also star. Hollander wrote and directed the pilot for the new series, which is produced by Paramount TV Studios with Jerry Bruckheimer Television. The 10-episode series has filmed seven episodes thus far before Hollander was let go. Hollander most notably executive produced and served as showrunner for long-running Showtime drama “Ray Donovan,” during which Hollander earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing and landed a WGA Award for Best New Series. He also co-wrote and directed the “Ray Donovan” movie after the series’ cancellation last year. Hollander’s previous TV shows include “Heartland” and “The Guardian,” which he both executive produced and directed multiple episodes of. “American Gigolo” star Bernthal recently told GQ that he was surprised to be cast in the lead role for the upcoming series. “I do not believe that I possess any kind of natural sex appeal,” Bernthal said. “I’ve always looked at myself as this weird-looking guy.” The “We Own This City” star continued, “It’s crazy to me, but it scares me — and that’s why I’m gonna see it through.” | |
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| 04-17-22 07:58am - 980 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Buried beneath a mass of corruption and lies, a dirty secret is exposed: Donald J. Trump is Hitler's secret love child. That is why Trump is such a magnet to all Neo-Nazi party loyalists. Trump is the hidden icon of Nazi Germany. And the right-hand man of Vlad Putin in America. Who else could have risen from obscurity and become the fightenest, most bravest, most heroic President of the Untied States of Trumperland? God's annointed messenger on Earth? Who will make America great again? Vote for Trump!!! He will make us whole, and bring down Joe Biden and other scummy Democrats who are trying to destroy our White America!!! | |
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| 04-16-22 12:33pm - 981 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Easter is here, and porn sites are offering discounts. Rabbits reviews (sister site of PU) has some deals listed. https://www.rabbitsreviews.com/easter-po...ly-Theme-Description And there are plenty of other deals, if you look around. | |
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| 04-14-22 10:48am - 983 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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His PAC has given $500,000 to attack Georgia's Brian Kemp. Kemp did not support Trump's bid to overturn Joe Biden's election as president. So Trump wants someone else as governor of Georgia. Trump called Kemp a “turncoat,” a “coward” and “a complete and total disaster” at a rally in Commerce, Georgia, last month. Trump wants money. But he also wants power. To be seen as King of the Untied States of Trumperland. As the true King of the Untied States of Trumperland, think of how he could make America great again. And steal even more money, legally, to make him even richer. God bless Trump, the most courageous, bravest, richest President we've ever had. ----- ----- Trump PAC gives $500,000 to attack Georgia's Brian Kemp Associated Press JEFF AMY April 14, 2022, 6:41 AM ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee has given $500,000 to a group that is running attack ads in Georgia against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. The spending appears aimed at boosting former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, whom Trump has endorsed in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the ad never mentions Perdue by name. It’s the first major outlay from Trump’s Save America PAC, underlining Trump’s continuing obsession with beating Kemp. Trump views Kemp as disloyal for refusing to help overturn his defeat in the state’s 2020 presidential election. The ad criticizes Kemp for not doing enough to combat voter fraud, citing discredited claims that a Georgia law enforcement agency examined and dismissed. The Save America PAC entered the year with $120 million in cash. But until now, the former president has been reluctant to spend that money beyond small contributions to candidates and money spent on rallies he is now holding almost every week. Federal campaign records show the donation went to a group called Get Georgia Right PAC in March, as first reported by Politico. The ad began airing earlier this month, according to Kantar Media. The Associated Press also obtained a copy of a text message the group sent urging people to watch the ad. The spending comes at a time that Perdue is trailing in the polls and is being outspent by Kemp. Perdue, who's worth $50 million, has suggested he could kick in some of his own money. “We’re going to make sure this thing is well funded,” Perdue told reporters in March. “We’re going to get our message out.” Kemp remains dismissive of Trump, with spokesperson Cody Hall attacking Perdue about remarks the challenger made Tuesday criticizing Kemp's stewardship of the state police. “David Perdue is going to need a lot more than $500,000 to distract from his unhinged rant attacking the Georgia State Patrol," Hall said. A Perdue loss in Georgia in the state's May 24 primary could be particularly embarrassing for Trump, who recruited Perdue to challenge Kemp and pressed another Republican — Vernon Jones — to exit the governor's race and run for Congress instead. Trump has also endorsed an extensive slate of other Republicans in Georgia running for statewide and congressional offices. Trump called Kemp a “turncoat,” a “coward” and “a complete and total disaster” at a rally in Commerce, Georgia, last month. But the former president was noncommittal in an April 6 interview with conservative radio host John Fredericks about whether he would do an additional rally for Perdue. He told Fredericks that it's “not easy to beat a sitting governor, just remember that," adding that "it's a close race and we'll see what happens.” Perdue has parroted Trump's lies in his own attacks against Kemp, declaring at the Commerce rally that “our elections in 2020 were absolutely stolen.” | |
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| 04-11-22 05:30am - 986 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the staunchest defenders of Donald J. Trump, in spite of Trump's attacks on her father, the coward Dick Cheney, the man who gave up the Vice Presidency to run away from Washington DC, has admitted that there is enough evidence to charge Trump with crimes. Will Trump demand that Liz Cheney resign from the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, Nebraska, and the truest, bluest part of the Untitled States of Trumperland? Will God Himself come down from the heavens and serve as Trump's lawyer, to defend God's anointed ambassador on Earth? However, the Justice Department, the home of the famed FBI, the same FBI that whitewashed Brett Kavanaugh so Brett could become an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is standing firmly with Donald Trump. ------ ------ Jan. 6 panel has enough evidence to refer Trump for criminal charges, Cheney says NBC Universal Christina Zhao April 10, 2022, 10:24 AM The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has enough evidence to refer President Donald Trump for criminal charges, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Sunday. “It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing — what a number of people around him were doing — that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” Cheney, the vice chair and one of two Republicans on the committee, said on CNN's "State of the Union" when host Jake Tapper asked her whether the panel had enough evidence to make a criminal referral for Trump. Cheney said the panel has not made a decision about moving forward with the referral. The New York Times reported that the committee has concluded that it has enough evidence to make a criminal referral but that its leaders were divided over whether to do so. "I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election," Cheney said. The committee has "got a tremendous amount of testimony and documents that I think very, very clearly demonstrate the extent of the planning and the organization and the objective." She added: "The objective was absolutely to try to stop the kind of electoral votes, to try to interfere with that official proceeding. And it’s absolutely clear that they knew what they were doing was wrong." She referred to a ruling in a civil suit involving the committee last month, in which a federal judge found that based on evidence, Trump most likely "attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress" on the day of the attack, which would be a crime. “The illegality of the plan was obvious,” U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote of Trump and lawyer John Eastman’s plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence determine the results of the 2020 election. “Every American — and certainly the president of the United States — knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed. With a plan this ‘BOLD,’ President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle." The Jan. 6 panel made similar allegations in a court filing in the case last month, saying it had a "good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States." Trump, who has not been charged with a crime, has denied any wrongdoing. In recent months, the panel has ramped up its investigation ahead of public hearings expected next month. The House voted Wednesday to refer former Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino to the Justice Department for criminal contempt of Congress after they refused to comply with subpoenas from the panel to testify and turn over documents. The House previously voted to refer former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the investigation. He was indicted by a grand jury in November and could face a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 if he is convicted. The House in December also voted to refer former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to the Justice Department for a criminal contempt charge. The Justice Department has not acted on Meadows' referral. | |
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| 04-09-22 07:51am - 988 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Greene passionately (or maybe with fervor) believes in her right of free speech. She advocated the death of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who were standing in the way of Trump's remaining in the White House for a second term. Of course, she is a member of Congress. As a politician, she believes she has the right to speak her mind. Can she say whatever she wants, without any consequences? ---- ---- Marjorie Taylor Greene seeks to quash effort to block her from running for reelection Yahoo News Jon Ward April 8, 2022, 2:23 PM Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., in a hearing in federal court on Friday, sought to quash a legal challenge that would bar her from running for another term in Congress. Federal Judge Amy Totenberg heard arguments from lawyers for Greene, a first-term member of Congress from northwest Georgia, and from voters in her district who want to block her from running for reelection. The lawsuit against Greene seeks to prevent her from appearing on future ballots because it alleges she violated the Constitution by encouraging and “facilitating” the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. The challenge to Greene’s candidacy is being brought by residents of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which she represents. The legal effort is being spearheaded by a nonpartisan legal advocacy group, Free Speech for People, and a progressive political action group, Our Revolution. Marjorie Taylor Greene Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Greene sought Friday to prevent the state of Georgia from hearing the challenge in the first place. Judge Totenberg, the sister of National Public Radio legal correspondent Nina Totenberg, is expected to issue a ruling Monday on whether the challenge can move forward. If Totenberg allows the case to proceed, arguments will be heard next week by administrative law judge Charles Beaudrot Jr. The groups bringing the challenge against Greene’s candidacy describe it as “a national campaign to ensure that election officials across the country follow the mandate of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment and bar elected officials who engaged in the insurrection, including former President Donald Trump, from appearing on any future ballot.” The legal effort is targeting numerous Republican members of Congress who, like Greene, spread falsehoods about the 2020 election and incited Republican voters against the government in the days leading up to Jan. 6. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 to reckon with the fallout from the Civil War. The clause states that “no Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress ... who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The legal complaint against Greene argues that the Jan. 6 riot fits the legal and historical definition of an insurrection as constituting “actions against the United States with the intent to overthrow the government of the United States or obstruct an essential constitutional function.” Trump supporters clash with police and security forces Trump supporters clashing with police and security personnel on Jan. 6, 2021. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images) Greene, the complaint reads, “encouraged and was otherwise involved in efforts to intimidate Congress and the Vice President into rejecting valid electoral votes and subvert the essential constitutional function of an orderly and peaceful transition of power.” “She was involved in either planning the attack on January 6, or alternatively the planning of the pre-attack demonstration and/or march on the Capitol with knowledge that it was substantially likely to lead to the attack, and otherwise voluntarily aided the insurrection,” it says. Greene, the complaint says, “has a long history of advocating for violence against her political opponents and endorsing wildly false claims against them.” “On January 7, 2019, she advocated for exactly what would happen two years later: ‘If we have a sea of people shut down the streets ... flood the Capitol building, flood all of the government buildings, go inside these are public buildings we own them,’” the suit says. According to the suit,in a video that she later deleted, Greene said, “You can’t allow it to just transfer power ‘peacefully’ like Joe Biden wants and allow him to become our president because he did not win this election. He’s guilty of treason. It’s a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason.” Free Speech for People and Our Revolution have also brought complaints against three Arizona Republican lawmakers — Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Andy Biggs and state Rep. Mark Finchem — who also promoted Trump’s election lies about a stolen election, and promoted or attended the Jan. 6 rally before the assault on the Capitol. The rioters got within two doors of Vice President Mike Pence's office. See how in this 3D explainer from Yahoo Immersive. | |
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| 04-08-22 11:09am - 989 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Mads Mikkelsen doesn't believe in method acting. "It's bullshit," he says. But to prepare for his role as serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the TV series, Mads revealed that he spent 2 years as an undercover serial killer. "I wanted to make art," Mads confesses. When questioned about how many people he killed, Mads plays coy. "I can't reveal the exact details of what I did. It would only detract from the performance I gave as one of the deadliest men alive. But I have to admit that my performance was superb." Unfortunately, his performance did not lead to an Oscar, since it was a TV series. But Mads has no regrets: either for his serial undercover killings, or for his performance on TV. -------- -------- Mads Mikkelsen Doesn’t Believe in Method Acting: ‘It’s Bullsh*t’ The "Fantastic Beasts" star doesn't believe method acting makes a significant difference, and blames the media for over-glamorizing it. Whether it’s Benedict Cumberbatch giving himself nicotine poisoning to prepare for “The Power of the Dog,” Lady Gaga hiring an on-set psychiatrist for “House of Gucci,” or Jared Leto taking 45-minute bathroom breaks in character as Morbius, method acting is huge right now. Actors love to detail their intense preparation for roles as a way to generate buzz and ticket sales, and awards voters often reward the work that goes into those performances. One person who’s not impressed? Mads Mikkelsen, who stars as Grindelwald in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” taking over the role that Johnny Depp was forced to vacate. In an interview with GQ UK to promote the film, Mikkelsen says he does not use method acting and does not understand the hype. His response? “It’s bullshit.” “You can take [the preparation] into insanity,” Mikkelsen said. “What if it’s a shit film — what do you think you achieved? Am I impressed that you didn’t drop character? You should have dropped it from the beginning! How do you prepare for a serial killer? You gonna spend two years checking it out?” The actor, who will next be seen in next summer’s “Indiana Jones 5,” went on to mock actors who attempt to stay in character for period pieces, despite the fact that they inevitably run into anachronisms. “‘I’m having a cigarette? This is from 2020, it’s not from 1870 — can you live with it?’” he joked. “It’s just pretentious.” While Mikkelsen personally does not practice method acting, that doesn’t mean he can’t respect the work of famous method actors. He simply credits their performances to their talent and direction, rather than staying in character. “Daniel Day-Lewis is a great actor,” he said. “But it’s got nothing to do with this.” “I would have the time of my life, just breaking down the character constantly,” Mikkelsen said of the chance to work alongside someone as method-oriented as Daniel Day-Lewis, who rarely leaves character during a production. Mikkelsen also does not blame method actors as much as he blames the media for giving them so much attention, creating an incentive structure for more people to try it. “The media goes, ‘Oh my god, he took it so seriously, therefore he must be fantastic; let’s give him an award.'” he said. “Then that’s the talk, and everybody knows about it, and it becomes a thing.” “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” opens in the U.S. on April 15. | |
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| 04-07-22 06:46am - 990 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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I've just found a new sensation that's better than porn. Extreme pogo. This is a sport for people with tiny brains and a complete disregard for injury. You can easily shatter bones and end up in a wheelchair or in your favorite burial site (in your grave, to be more explicit). ----- ----- MEL Magazine Sports Andrew Fiouzi 1 day ago The Gravity-Defying Ups and Downs of Extreme Pogo A merry band of pogo tricksters are proving that their burgeoning sport is anything but child’s play Twenty-five-year-old Dalton Smith was 10 when he first hopped on a tiny spring pogo stick and bounced off the ground. “It matched perfectly with my tiny spring body and brain,” he says. And so, he kept jumping. “I was a spastic kid who needed an outlet to radiate this electric charge,” he tells me. Now, 15 years later, that charge has taken him to 11 countries and almost every state. He holds multiple Guinness World Records, and he’s won gold at the world championships of pogo for the last seven years in a row. “One day I started jumping, I blinked, and now here I am emerging on the other end as what I am now,” he explains. If you watch any of Smith’s or his friend’s recent viral videos you immediately recognize a complete disregard for gravity’s limitations. But pogo wasn’t always so vertical. In fact, prior to 2004, it was inconceivable that someone could jump high enough on a pogo stick to attempt a backflip. There were, however, a handful of folks who were doing tricks on a traditional steel spring pogo. Dave Armstrong, the godfather of extreme pogo, had even created a forum — Xpogo.com — to share pictures and videos. Then, in September 2004, pogo enthusiasts were finally given the tool they needed to fly. SBI Enterprises, the makers of the original pogo stick, released the Flybar, a high-powered pogo designed by Bruce Middleton, an MIT dropout who had suffered a “‘moral crisis’ over the detachment of science from real-world problems like global poverty and dropped out,” per Smithsonian Magazine. Around this same time, Bruce Spencer, a retired firefighter, had nearly finished developing the Vurtego, the first air-powered extreme pogo stick ever sold. Suddenly, there were pogo sticks capable of catapulting human beings more than six feet in the air. And in 2009, after the first Pogopalooza, a four-day extreme pogo competition that draws jumpers from around the world to Pittsburgh, concluded, a new extreme sport was officially born. Recommended Reading 10 Heavy Smokers Who Somehow Achieved Incredible Sporting Feats Sports The Strange Saga of Lauren Boebert’s Pro Wrestler Paternity Case Politics Will Weiner, the current CEO of Xpogo, first joined the traveling band of pogo jumpers in 2012 when he was asked to be the announcer at Pogopalooza. He was working at IBM at the time, making a cushy six-figure salary as a consultant. But in 2018, after years of lending his voice to the extreme sport, Weiner decided to make pogo his career instead. “I got well-integrated in the community and really fell in love with the sport, and this guy who was running the business needed to step away,” he tells me. And since there weren’t too many other people in the pogo world who had a business background, Weiner was their only hope. In addition to growing the sport, his main goal has been to help guys like Smith earn a decent living while jumping off rooftops on an air-spring pogo. “My favorite trick is the slingshot flip,” says Smith, which, he explains, gets its name from the fact that if you don’t land it correctly, you’re going to be slung every which way. “Think of it as a front-flip leapfrog starting from the reverse,” he continues. “It’s tricky. It’s dangerous. It’s drawn blood and chipped bones many times. But it’s glorious. I didn’t come up with that trick, but I was the first — and for many years only — person to land it.” Extreme pogo’s most recent viral video was shot in early March at Paradise Valley Park in Phoenix. Aaron Homoki, better known as Jaws and one of the greatest skateboarders in the world, captured the session. It features tricks that shouldn’t be possible: Backflips into front flips. Front flips into 360 spins. Rail grinds. And one-footed flips off rooftops. “That whole shoot, we got lucky,” says Weiner. “There were a couple scares, but these young kids we got with us, it’s like they’re made out of rubber or something. I don’t understand it.” But as rubbery as they may be, they aren’t immune to injury. To that end, when Smith was 13, he went to his first world championship in Salt Lake City. “I qualified for the finals, which I was shocked to make at such a young age,” he tells me. As a result of that shock and excitement, he decided to attempt a double backflip dismount at the end of his final run. “It all built up to that moment; the hype got me buzzed up, and I was ready to fly. I sent the double!” Smith recalls. But he opened up his body too early. “I basically belly-flopped, knees first, into the concrete,” he says. He would spend the next four months in a wheelchair after shattering both of his kneecaps, all the toes on each of his feet and his nose. (He suffered a major concussion, too.) It hasn’t exactly paid either — at least in terms of dollars and cents. “Most jumpers have another job to supplement like Uber or Grubhub, odd jobs or other service industry stuff,” says Smith. “I make roughly 25-30k a year and live in a converted sprinter van.” A major barrier to extreme pogo’s growth, per Weiner, is the sport’s steep entrance cost. “You’ll have a video blow up and all these people will get excited until they see it’s almost 500 bucks for a professional pogo stick,” he says. “Or you can get a spring one, but there’s no step in between, so we lose out on a lot of potential athletes because of the economics.” Which is why Weiner has been working with Vurtego to hopefully have a $150 air-powered starter stick by Christmas. Currently, the team makes most of its money from performances and stunt shows at halftime shows and corporate events. “I’d like to get our media to the level where I think we’re making really, really good stuff,” Weiner tells me. “I don’t think anyone’s trying to be a millionaire off of this, but if we can get a bit more money where everybody’s able to Pogo full-time, that’s the goal.” As for whether or not they’ll get there, he says, “Who the hell knows? Sometimes we talk about what it’s going to be like when we make it. At the same time, we just spent a weekend with Jaws, pogoing. So maybe in some aspects, we already have made it.” Andrew Fiouzi Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL. | |
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| 04-06-22 05:58am - 991 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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The fox was smart. If he had bitten a Republican, the Republican would have demanded the right to shoot the fox. Instead, the Democratic Congressman only wants the fox to be re-located. ------ ------ Fox bites man, putting Capitol Hill on high alert Associated Press KEVIN FREKING April 6, 2022, 7:57 AM A fox looks out from a cage after being captured on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, in Washington. (U.S. Capitol Police via AP) A fox looks out from a cage after being captured on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, in Washington. (U.S. Capitol Police via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) — Capitol Hill has a fox problem. And that's not the lead-in to a joke. Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., learned firsthand Monday evening while walking to the Capitol for votes. Now he's undergoing a series of four rabies shots out of an abundance of caution. Bera said he felt something lunge at him from behind as he walked near one of the Senate office buildings. He turned and used his umbrella to fend off what he thought would be a small dog, but he soon realized he was tangling with a fox. Bera said the encounter lasted about 15 seconds. A bystander yelled to alert others and the fox fled as U.S. Capitol Police officers ran up on the scene. A medical doctor, Bera looked for puncture wounds. He didn't see evidence of any, but there was some abrasion, so he consulted the Capitol physician, who told him not to take any chances and to get treated. 'The most unusual day on the Hill in 10 years' He said he went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after votes for the first of a series of four shots. “I would say it's the most unusual day on the Hill in 10 years," Bera said of his experience. Of course, there were many joking references to Fox News at the Capitol on Tuesday. But the House Sergeant at Arms was serious when telling lawmakers and their staffs Tuesday afternoon that there had been multiple recent fox encounters and that the animals should not be approached. The warning noted that there are possibly several fox dens on the Capitol grounds and that animal control personnel would be seeking to trap and locate any that they find. In at least one case, they were successful. Capitol Police tweeted pictures of one fox safely captured in a cage. Bera harbored no ill will toward the culprit. “Hopefully, the animal can be relocated,” he said. | |
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| 04-04-22 11:11am - 993 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Starting a new thread for sites unlisted at PU. Hoping there will be faster action on getting sites listed. Also, there will be more interest in getting new sites posted to this thread for possible inclusion at PU. freeusemilf.com Got an email ad to join this site. I think it's a MILF site. Don't know very much about the site. Is it worth joining? | |
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| 04-02-22 03:18am - 995 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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She Took the White House Photos. Trump Moved to Take the Profit. Eric Lipton and Maggie Haberman Fri, April 1, 2022, 5:07 AM WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump’s tenure came to an end, the chief White House photographer, who had traveled the world with him and spent countless hours inside the White House snapping pictures, notified Trump’s aides that she intended to publish a book collecting some of her most memorable images. This was hardly a radical idea: Official photographers from every White House since President Ronald Reagan’s have published their own books. Barack Obama and George W. Bush were so supportive that they wrote forewords for them. But like so much else involving Trump, the plan by his chief photographer, Shealah Craighead, did not follow this bipartisan norm. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times First, aides to Trump asked her for a cut of her book advance payment, in exchange for his writing a foreword and helping promote the book, according to former associates of Trump. Then Trump’s team asked Craighead to hold off on her book project to allow the former president to take Craighead’s photos and those of other White House staff photographers and publish his own book, which is now selling for as much as $230 a copy. That the profits from Craighead’s labor are now going into Trump’s pocket has left several of Trump’s former aides upset — but not exactly surprised. “Shea’s a very talented photographer and this was really all of her hard work,” said Stephanie Grisham, who was the White House press secretary for Trump and wrote her own book, referring to Craighead by her nickname. “I just keep thinking: What a shame that he is actually now profiting off of it. But then again, this is the guy who is hawking caps and all kinds of stuff right now to raise money for himself.” Eric Draper, who was the chief White House photographer during Bush’s tenure, said the move was disrespectful to Craighead. “It’s a slap in the face,” Draper said, adding that he had spoken with Craighead last year about her plan to do her own book. “I would be disappointed if I were in her shoes.” Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, did not dispute that an aide had discussed the possibility of Trump writing a foreword for Craighead’s book and perhaps taking a cut of her advance. Her tentative deal with a publisher involved an advance in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, one industry executive said. Instead, Budowich said, Trump decided to first do his own book, a separate deal that came with a much bigger, multimillion-dollar advance. “President Trump has always had an eye for beautiful and engaging curation, which came alive through the pages of his book,” he said in a statement. Craighead said she did not want to publicly comment on matters involving a former client. But she did confirm that she has decided, at least for now, to kill her own book project. “I stay apolitical as possible, as I am a neutral historical documentarian,” she said. “By staying neutral I am able to remain a keen observer.” The 317-page book Trump published in December, titled “Our Journey Together,” includes no photo credits. It does not mention any of the photographers who took the images until the last page, where he briefly offered a “grateful acknowledgment” to “all the phenomenal White House photographers,” listing them by name, including Craighead, whose pictures make up much of the book. There is no legal prohibition on Trump assembling and publishing photographs that a White House staff member took during his tenure; under federal law, those photographs are considered in the public domain and not subject to copyright. There is a public Flickr account, now managed by the National Archives, that has 14,995 photos from the Trump White House, one-third of them listing Craighead as the photographer. But in dealing with Craighead, Trump appears to have become the first former president to try to make money from a book planned by a former White House photographer, said John Bredar, a documentary filmmaker and author who has studied the history of White House photographers. (Profits from the book published by George H.W. Bush’s chief photographer, David Valdez, were donated to his presidential library, Valdez said.) The first volume of the memoir written by Obama after leaving office included a selection of nearly 50 photos taken by the White House photographer during his tenure, Pete Souza. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also published autobiographies that included some White House photos. But there has been a long tradition of former White House photographers separately assembling their work into books. “It’s valuable for each chief photographer to do a book just for the historic record and put it together in a way that it tells sort of their story and contextualizes images,” said Souza, who worked as a White House photographer under Reagan as well as under Obama, and who has published several books of White House photos. Craighead had been a White House photographer during the tenure of George W. Bush and was known for her work with mostly Republican politicians including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Joni Ernst of Iowa. But unlike most of her predecessors, who had built relationships with presidents before they arrived at the White House, Craighead had not worked closely with Trump when she was hired just before his inauguration after his first pick for the job fell through. Trump at times would say insulting things about Craighead, telling other White House guests that he questioned her skills as a photographer, surprising other White House officials and photographers present. Trump, former White House aides said, was intensely involved in selecting photos of himself that would be released to the public, with Grisham recalling how during long flights on Air Force One, he often set aside time to review folders of photographs, after demanding that they be first printed so he could hold them and pick winners one at a time. Since leaving office, Trump has sought multiple ways to monetize his presidency, from charging supporters to attend an event and take photos with him to selling MAGA merchandise. He also has a long history of disputes from before his political career with business partners and over the years faced regular accusations that he did not properly compensate contractors. The plan to publish “Our Journey Together” came together quickly, after Craighead had already selected a book agent and negotiated a contract to publish her own book and secured a commitment from Trump to write the foreword, former White House officials said. Craighead had some questions about whether she wanted to move ahead with her own book, telling others she was not comfortable publishing a book that would be seen as an endorsement or a disparagement of Trump. It was while Craighead was debating this question that she heard from a representative for Trump that he would no longer be able to provide her right away with a foreword to the book, because Trump had a “noncompete” clause with his own publisher. Donald Trump Jr. and Trump’s campaign apparatus soon started to send out emails to his political fundraising list, urging his supporters to buy “Our Journey Together” perhaps as a Christmas gift — an example of how Trump has mixed his political efforts and his pursuit of personal profit since he left the White House. Trump’s book was published by Winning Team Publishing, a company only incorporated in October, and which was co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Sergio Gor, a former Capitol Hill aide and Republican campaign operative. Gor said the company had sold out the first 300,000 copies — which at $75 apiece for the unsigned version suggests gross sales of at least $20 million, assuming many were not given away. In addition to his advance payment, Trump is likely to earn a share of all book sales. The book is not the only way that the Trump family is cashing in on photos by White House photographers. On Presidents Day, Melania Trump opened sales of a series of digital images from Donald Trump’s White House tenure — photos of him at Mount Rushmore, exiting Air Force One and in a tuxedo for a White House dinner — for $50 apiece. This week, after The New York Times asked his office questions about the book, Trump called Craighead. It was the first time they had spoken directly since he left the White House. Trump told her he was still prepared to write a foreword for a photo book they could do together in the future, Budowich said. “It would be fun to do so,” Trump told her. 2022 The New York Times Company | |
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| 03-31-22 02:42am - 997 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Russia is planting mines in the Black Sea. This is to protect ships from foreign viruses and other evil manifestations of US Imperial designs. Also, to protect Russia from the Nazi scourge. And if some civilians get blown out of the water, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. A Russian saying, invented by Stalin and other leaders of the world. ------ ------ Ukraine says Russia planting mines in Black Sea as shipping perils grow Reuters Jonathan Saul March 30, 2022, 9:18 AM By Jonathan Saul LONDON (Reuters) - Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of planting mines in the Black Sea and said some of those munitions had to be defused off Turkey and Romania as risks to vital merchant shipping in the region grow. The Black Sea is a major shipping route for grain, oil and oil products. Its waters are shared by Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Turkey as well as Ukraine and Russia. Russia's military took control of waterways when it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, in what Moscow calls a "special operation". In recent days Turkish and Romanian military diving teams have been involved in defusing stray mines around their waters. Ukraine's foreign ministry said Russia was using naval mines as "uncontrolled drifting ammunition". "It was these drifting mines that were found March 26-28, 2022 off the coasts of Turkey and Romania," it said in a statement. The ministry said "the deliberate use by Russia of drifting sea mines turns them into a de facto weapon of indiscriminate action, which threatens, first of all, civil navigation and human life at sea in the whole waters not only of the Black and Azov Seas, but also of the Kerch and Black Sea Straits". Russian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. ACCUSATIONS Earlier this month Russia's main intelligence agency accused Ukraine of laying mines to protect ports and said several hundred of the explosives had broken from cables and drifted away. Kyiv dismissed that account as disinformation. A Ukrainian foreign ministry official told Reuters separately that the sea mines were of the "R-421-75" type, which were neither registered with or used by Ukraine's navy currently. The official said mines of this type - some 372 units - had been previously stored at Ukraine’s 174th armament base in Sevastopol and were seized by Russia's military during its annexation of Crimea in 2014 - a move not recognised internationally. "Russia, using sea mines seized in 2014, deliberately provokes and discredits Ukraine to international partners," Ukraine's foreign ministry added separately. London's marine insurance market has widened the area of waters it considers high risk in the region and insurance costs have soared. Five merchant vessels have been hit by projectiles - with one of them sunk - off Ukraine's coast with two seafarers killed, shipping officials say. "Vessels navigating in the Black Sea should maintain lookouts for mines and pay careful attention to local navigation warnings," ship insurer London P&I Club said in an advisory note on Tuesday. (Reporting by Jonathan Saul; Editing by Gareth Jones) | |
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| 03-29-22 05:02am - 999 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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In today's world, and for many years previous, it was OK for the government to lie to its citizens. This was done on the theory the less citizens know, the more the government can get away with. So when soldiers knew who took student civilians and let those students be killed, the soldiers never told anyone. Better to let the students die and say "We don't know anything" than to admit that maybe they could have saved at least some of the students. -------- -------- Mexican armed forces knew about attack on 43 students, report says Team of international experts deliver a report on the 43 missing students Ayotzinapa By Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's armed forces knew that 43 student teachers who disappeared in 2014 were being kidnapped by criminals, then hid evidence that could have helped locate them, according to a report released Monday by special investigation. Evidence obtained by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), an independent panel tasked with investigating the notorious case, revealed that Navy and Army officials kept secret that the students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College were under real-time surveillance by the state leading up to and during their abduction. "Security authorities had two intelligence processes underway, one to follow the actions of organized crime in the area and the other to track the students," the investigators said in the report, which was based on declassified documents. The students were under surveillance because their college, which has strong ties to left-wing social movements in Mexico, was viewed as a potential hotbed of subversion, the GIEI said. Neither the Army nor the Navy immediately responded to requests for comment. The kidnapping of the students on the night of Sept. 26, 2014, in the southwestern city of Iguala sparked national and international protests, and remains one of the most infamous incidents in the history of Mexico's struggle with drug gangs. The official documents reviewed by the GIEI included transcripts of conversations between soldiers and their superiors detailing the students' arrival in Iguala. From Iguala, the students had planned to travel to Mexico City to attend a protest, but were instead kidnapped by corrupt local police and handed over to a local gang. The students were then massacred and their bodies incinerated, according to the previous government. The GIEI later picked holes in that version of events and the current government ordered the case to be re-opened. So far the remains of only two of the missing students have been definitively identified. The report did not conclude what happened to the rest of the students. Mexico's armed forces have long denied having information about the crime and the students' whereabouts. Communications intercepts by the armed forces could have been used at the time to locate the students after they were kidnapped, the report found. But the armed forces denied that such intercepts existed and did not hand them over, it said. (Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) | |
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| 03-29-22 04:11am - 999 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Rival stations are suing a Woodman's location in Wisconsin for damages totaling $80,000 each Jeremy Korzeniewski Mar 22nd 2022 at 4:01PM As of today, March 22, 2022, AAA reports that the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States sits at $4.24. Obviously, that's subject to change, and since it's an average, the actual cost for someone in one part of the country will be different for buyers in another. Regardless, based on recent history, that's a lot more than drivers are used to paying for a gallon of gas. So you'd think a gas station could drum up quite a bit of business for pricing fuel less than its competitors, right? Not so fast, at least if you're in Wisconsin. A gas station managed by Woodman's Market in Waukesha, Wisconsin, was recently sued by two competitors who say it has priced its fuel artificially low. According to local ABC affiliate WISN, owners of Shell and BP stations claim that Woodman's is breaking the law by selling gas for less than the station itself paid for it. Apparently, that's a crime in Wisconsin, and the rival stations are suing for damages totaling $80,000 each. That's apparently based on the number of days they claim that Woodman's illegally undercut them. Woodman's counters that it isn't breaking Wisconsin's so-called Unfair Sales Act because it has priced its fuel to compete with a nearby Costco gas station. As you can see by clicking on Autoblog's own cheap gas finder, Costco generally prices fuel lower than other stations, which it can do because a significant portion of its profits are derived from membership fees. Costco won't sell gas to drivers that don't pay those membership fees, unlike other stations like Shell, BP and Woodman's. We're not legal experts, so we can't really comment on the merits of this lawsuit, but, as WISN found when polling pumpers pumping gas, Woodman's tactic to price its fuel lower than other stations seems to be working. "How come you pump your gas here at Woodman's," the reporter asks. "Woodman's has the best prices," comes the seemingly obvious reply. | |
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| 03-28-22 10:56am - 1000 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Trump likely committed felony by obstructing Congress, U.S judge rules https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-l...ge-rules-2022-03-28/ Trump likely committed felony by obstructing Congress, U.S judge rules Reuters Jan Wolfe March 28, 2022, 9:44 AM By Jan Wolfe WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge ruled on Monday that former President Donald Trump “more likely than not” committed a felony by attempting to obstruct Congress when he tried to subvert the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. District Judge David Carter in Los Angeles said in his ruling that the U.S. congressional committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters could obtain emails written by Trump lawyer John Eastman. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter said in a written decision. (Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Chizu Nomiyama) | |
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| 03-28-22 12:27am - 1000 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Watch the brief clip on YouTube. It doesn't appear to be a comedy skit. It appears to be real. Where Will Smith is really angry with Chris Rock, going on stage and slapping Chris Rock and telling Chris Rock to stop making jokes about Will Smith's wife. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myjEoDypUD8 ---- ---- Will Smith, Chris Rock involved in heated moment at Oscars Associated Press TIM REYNOLDS March 27, 2022, 8:16 PM Will Smith marched on stage and appeared to smack presenter Chris Rock during Sunday night's Oscars after Rock made a joke about the appearance of Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. The crowd at the Dolby Theatre hushed as Smith twice shouted at Rock to “keep my wife’s name out of your (expletive) mouth.” Rock took aim at Pinkett Smith's shaved head, saying, “Jada, I love you. GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see it, all right?” Pinkett Smith revealed in 2018 that she was diagnosed with alopecia. She has often discussed the challenge of hair loss on Instagram and other social media platforms. Smith, nominated for best actor for his role in “King Richard,” walked onto the stage and took a swing at Rock with an open palm, generating a loud smack. Smith walked back to his seat and shouted for Rock to leave Pinkett Smith alone. Rock replied that he was just making a “GI Jane” joke — and Smith yelled back at him a second time. “That was the greatest night in the history of television,” Rock said, then resumed his role as presenter. A few minutes later, rapper Sean Combs — on stage to introduce a tribute to “The Godfather” — tried to play peacemaker and suggested Smith and Rock settle their differences at an Oscars afterparty. “Will and Chris, we’re going to solve that like family at the Gold party,” Combs said. Pinkett Smith was also the subject of jokes from Rock when he hosted the Oscars in 2016. She did not attend the Oscars that year, saying at the time her decision stemmed from a lack of diversity among award nominees and how Black artists were not properly represented. | |
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| 03-27-22 12:40pm - 1001 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Note: I've seen Ana de Armas in movies. In this Marilyn Monroe movie, Ana de Armas is supposed to be blonde. Like Marilyn Monroe. But Ana de Armas is a brunette. Dark hair. Almost black. Or maybe it is black hair. Why couldn't they find a blonde to play Marilyn Monroe? Madonna is blonde. And Madonna is famed for being sexy. Why couldn't they have hired Madonna? On second thought, Ana de Armas is prettier than Madonna. Maybe that's why they picked Ana. ------- ------- Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe Movie Gets Rare NC-17 Rating for Sexual Content The MPAA has given the biopic 'Blonde,' starring Ana de Armas as the celebrity icon, an adults-only rating. March 24, 2022 1:37pm Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe biopic officially has an NC-17 rating. Blonde, which stars Ana de Armas (Deep Water) as the iconic actress and pinup model, was given the rare adults-only rating for “some sexual content” by the Motion Picture Association on Wednesday. Director Andrew Dominik previously predicted the film, which is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, would get an NC-17, defiantly telling Screen Daily in February: “It’s a demanding movie. If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office. It’s an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe, it’s kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story.” The director also said Netflix “insisted” on hiring editor Jennifer Lame (Tenet) “to curb the excesses of the movie,” which includes a rape scene that was also in Oates’ book. Oates’ acclaimed 2000 novel is a 700-page fictionalized take on Monroe’s life, which The New Yorker once dubbed “the definitive study of American celebrity.” Netflix has previously streamed NC-17 movies produced by other studios (such as 2013’s Blue Is the Warmest Color), but Blonde seemingly marks the first movie produced by Netflix to receive the hard-core rating. Dominik has expressed appreciation for Netflix’s support, noting, “It’s much easier to support stuff when you like it. It’s much harder when you don’t. I have nothing but gratitude for Netflix.” Blonde co-stars Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson. The film was originally rumored to premiere in May outside of competition at Cannes, but reportedly is no longer expected during the festival. If Blonde does open in theaters before moving to streaming, the NC-17 label could be an obstacle for some cinemas that have been reluctant to play films with that rating in the past. However, Netflix often relies on smaller indie chains that may not have the same objections, so it isn’t as significant as if it were a major studio release relying on a wide break. In any case, Netflix has not officially announced any release plan or date as of yet. | |
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| 03-27-22 11:33am - 1001 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
My personal opinion: James Gunn tweeted controversial (offensive) tweets in 2008 and 2009. He has explained he did it for effect, not because he believed the tweets. This was done over 10 years ago. He has apologized for the tweets many times since. So why is Disney firing Gunn for the tweets? Walt Disney, who founded Disney, was a Nazi sympathizer. He personally hosted Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl when she came to promote her film Olympia in 1938, a month after the infamous assault on Jews known as Kristallnacht. Disney was also reported to attend many meetings of the American Nazi Party before the US entered World War 2. So Disney will hold Gunn accountable and guilty for tweets he did over 10 years ago. While ignoring the dark side of Walt Disney's legacy? There are critics of Disney, who don't believe all is sunshine and light in the Magic Kingdom. The way they treat their workers. Not the executives. The workers. But Disney acts all high and mighty when they criticize or fire or boycott people. ------- ------- James Gunn has left 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3' after controversial tweets resurfaced online. By Borys Kit, Aaron Couch July 20, 2018 12:19pm James Gunn is exiting Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The move comes after conservative personalities resurfaced old tweets Thursday in which the filmmaker joked about controversial topics such as pedophilia and rape. Gunn has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him,” Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn said in a statement Friday. On Thursday, Gunn tweeted in response to the tweets being resurfaced, “Many people who have followed my career know, when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I have discussed publicly many times, as I’ve developed as a person, so has my work and my humor.” He added: “It’s not to say I’m better, but I am very, very different than I was a few years ago; today I try to root my work in love and connection and less in anger. My days saying something just because it’s shocking and trying to get a reaction are over.” The offensive tweets came to light after conservative website The Daily Caller dug up the social media posts, which were mostly posted in 2008 and 2009. Soon after, conservative personalities were tweeting to followers to confront Gunn at Comic-Con. Gunn had been expected to be at Sony’s presentation on Friday. Insiders say Gunn is not expected to be part of the panel now. Gunn issued a statement on Friday afternoon, saying that he “regretted” the tweets in question and stressed that “they don’t reflect the person I am today.” “My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative,” his statement read. “I have regretted them for many years since — not just because they were stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don’t reflect the person I am today or have been for some time.” He continued: “Regardless of how much time has passed, I understand and accept the business decisions taken today. Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting, understanding, committed to equality, and far more thoughtful about my public statements and my obligations to our public discourse. To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my deepest apologies. Love to all.” Gunn has been writing the script for Guardians 3, and the movie was expected to begin shooting in Atlanta in the fall for an expected 2020 release date, though Marvel Studios had never officially announced the date. The Guardians movies have been a massive success for Disney and Marvel. The first movie made more than $773 million worldwide while the second made $863 million. The films stood out from other Marvel movies as they were infused with Gunn’s off-kilter filmmaking sensibilities that owed more to indie genre movies than slicker cookie-cutter studio fare. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige had previously indicated that Gunn would continue to work with Marvel after Guardians 3, helping shepherd the cosmic side of the studio’s universe. | |
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| 03-25-22 04:36am - 1003 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Halo, a new SF series coming to Paramount+, will feature aliens threatening human existence in a 26th-century showdown. TV series based on the video game 'Halo'. Cool costumes, newly designed guns that explode on the screen. Feature yourself in one of these massive, titanium-enriched suits blowing up aliens and evil criminals with just one look out of your computer-enhanced, lasered eyeballs. Better than Tom Cruise. This is the next-generation of super-duper-heroes on steroids. | |
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| 03-19-22 01:28am - 1009 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Cops are under a lot of pressure. They have to capture or kill slime ball crooks and other people who might be doing wrong. That is why they need strong women to back them up. Read the story of a cop who was betrayed by his wife. Can he believe in human sanctity and goodness ever again? ---- ---- In The Know by Yahoo Cop dad comes home early to surprise wife, breaks down when he discovers her ‘betrayal: ‘I would never do this to her’ Cassie Morris Thu, March 17, 2022, 12:42 PM A dad broke down when he discovered his wife had committed the ultimate betrayal, and the footage has people cracking up around the world. Cop and TikToker @officer_baker gained nearly 750,000 views, 161,000 likes and 5,400 comments when he uploaded the emotional video to his account. However, much like the mom who got an alarming call from her daughter’s school saying she was leaving with a “strange man” every day, Officer Baker’s viral video has a hilarious twist ending that TikTokers didn’t see coming. According to Baker, it all began when he came home early to surprise his wife. That’s when he discovered her deep and unforgivable betrayal. “I’ve never been more angry. … I’m hurt, I’m sad,” the dad said to the camera, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I want y’all to see what she did to me. … I would never do this to her. … I feel betrayed!” The grieving husband, still in his uniform, continued, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t trust her now. … I can’t trust her.” Knowing his viewers would be on pins and needles at this point, eager to know what his wife had done to hurt him so deeply, Baker finally revealed the cruel offense. His wife, the mother of his child and partner in life, had eaten the very last Krispy Kreme glazed donut. “She didn’t save me a bite, nothin’. She didn’t care about me, bro,” the officer cried. TikTokers were shocked by the wife’s baked goods betrayal. “Man, you don’t need her. Keep your head up, G,” one user wrote in the comments. “I can’t believe she did that,” another wrote. “Damn bro, I know how that is. Keep your head up king,” commented another user. “I’m sorry man. You’ll get through this,” said another. “I’m sorry she did this to you. Stay strong,” one user wrote. “Leave her!!!” cried another. “Man I thought you were being serious. You had me rolling. This is hilarious,” another user commented, laugh-crying emojis in tow. Hopefully, for the sake of their child, Baker and his wife will manage to work through this challenging time together, and find a way to reestablish trust in their relationship. | |
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| 03-16-22 03:59am - 1012 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Sanctions-savaged Russia teeters on brink of historic default Reuters Marc Jones March 16, 2022, 2:36 AM LONDON (Reuters) - The economic cost of Russia's assault on Ukraine was fully exposed on Wednesday as Vladimir Putin's sanctions-ravaged government teetered on the brink of its first international debt default since the Bolshevik revolution. Moscow was due to pay $117 million in interest on two dollar-denominated sovereign bonds it had sold back in 2013. But the limits it now faces making payments, and talk from the Kremlin that it might pay in roubles - triggering a default anyway - meant even veteran investors were left guessing at what might happen. One described it as the most closely watched government debt payment since Greece's default at the height of the euro zone crisis. Others said an emergency 'grace period' that allows Russia another 30 days to make the payment could drag the saga out. "The thing about defaults is that they are never clear cut and this is no exception," said Pictet emerging market portfolio manager Guido Chamorro. "There is a grace period, so we are not really going to know whether this is a default or not until April 15," he said referring to the situation if no coupon payment is made. "Anything could happen in the grace period." It had nearly $650 billion of currency reserves A Russian government debt default was unthinkable until what Putin called a "special military operation" in Ukraine began in late February. It had nearly $650 billion of currency reserves, coveted investment-grade credit ratings with S&P Global, Moody's and Fitch, and was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a day selling its oil and gas at soaring prices. Then the tanks rolled and the United States, Europe and their Western allies fired back with unprecedented sanctions, which froze two-thirds of Russia's reserves that it turned out were held overseas. "I think the market now expects Russia not to make the (bond) payments," the head of emerging market debt at Aegon Asset Management Jeff Grills, adding the conflict was one of the few emerging market events capable of really unsettling global markets. That is because Russia's role as one of the world's top commodity producers has sent prices and global inflation skywards. At the same time it has left Russia a virtual pariah state, crippled by sanctions and watching hundreds of the world's largest firms now quit the country after deciding their presence there is no longer feasible. DEFAULT SCENARIOS As for Russia's battered government bonds, most are now changing hands at just 10%-20% of their face value. The two payments on Wednesday are the first of several, with another $615 million due over the rest of March, and the first 'principal' - final full payment of a bond - on April 4 worth $2 billion alone. Experienced investors see three potential scenarios for how Wednesday's crucial deadline plays out. The first is that Moscow pays in full and in dollars, meaning default worries go away for the time being. Big Russian energy providers Gazprom and Rosneft have both made payments on international bonds over the last 10 days so there is still a sliver of hope it could be done if Moscow feels it is in its interests. The second possibility is that Moscow doesn't pay, starting the 30-day grace period countdown clock until default. A third option where Russia pays but in roubles is also possible, although the legal terms of the bonds would mean that is still tantamount to a default. The 30-day grace rule would still apply. "Maybe we will know today (if they pay) but maybe we won't," said Pictet's Chamorro. His firm doesn't hold the bonds, but does hold other Russian bond - and when a country defaults on one of its bonds it tends to mean all its bonds 'cross default'. "In situations like these it's safest to expect the unexpected. You can't really rule anything out". | |
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| 03-15-22 04:13am - 1013 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Jussie Smollett, an innocent black man who was found guilty of lying to cops and telling untrue stories, is now in jail. Some people are angry with Smollett, and writing bad things about him. So Smollett's lawyers want Smollett out of jail: "Any custodial setting poses a safety and health danger" to his life. People are not normally put into jail for safety and health reasons. But Smollett claims he is innocent. Therefore, many people argue that he's been punished enough by being found guilty. Jussie's family argues that "Jussie is strong and would never hurt himself." But being in jail is hurtful to his image. And he deserves better. Let my people go, the Lord said. Should we let Jussie Smollett go, because he wanted some extra publicity for his career? ------ ------ Jussie Smollett's lawyers file emergency motion to stay his sentence, as his sibling receives 'threatening phone calls' Yahoo Celebrity Raechal Shewfelt March 14, 2022, 3:26 PM Three months after Jussie Smollett was convicted of lying to police about being the victim of a hate crime and four days after beginning his 150-day sentence at Cook County Jail in Illinois, the actor's legal team has filed an emergency motion in his case. They're asking the court to either stay his sentence or grant him bond. In the document, filed March 11 and obtained by Yahoo Entertainment, Smollett's attorneys argue that "vicious threats" against him on social media indicate the violence that he "may experience during incarceration." However, they say that, if Smollett is put into what equates to solitary confinement, that could cause "extraordinary damage" to his mental health: "Any custodial setting poses a safety and health danger" to his life. Jussie Smollett appears for his sentencing on March 10 at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago. (Photo: Brian Cassella/Pool/Chicago Tribune) Jussie Smollett appears for his sentencing on March 10 at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago. (Photo: Brian Cassella/Pool/Chicago Tribune) The Cook's County Sheriff's Office previously clarified that Smollett was being held in "protective custody status," which means that he has his own cell which is monitored by cameras inside and by an officer stationed outside. "As with all detained persons, Mr. Smollett is entitled to have substantial time out of his cell in the common areas on the tier where he is housed, where he is able to use the telephone, watch television, and interact with staff," a spokesperson said. "During such times out of cell, other detainees will not be present in the common areas. These protocols are routinely used for individuals ordered into protective custody who may potentially be at risk of harm due to the nature of their charges, their profession, or their noteworthy status." The motion also cites a medical doctor's opinion that Smollett has a compromised immune system and is at "serious health risk" if he contracts COVID-19 behind bars. Meanwhile, his family has alleged that he is being improperly held in the "psych ward" at the facility. They reiterated Monday in the update from Smollett's legal team that "Jussie is strong and would never hurt himself." They also disclosed that Jussie gave the phone number of an emergency contact, one of his siblings, when he began his incarceration Thursday, and that the owner of that number had received "threatening, harassing, racist and homophobic" calls in the days since. Jussie Smollett, pictured in December 2018, was convicted in February of lying to police. (Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Jussie Smollett, pictured in December 2018, was convicted in February of lying to police. (Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Prosecutors have five days to respond to the Smollett team. The former Empire actor was sentenced last week to 150 days in jail, 30 months of probation, a $120,000 payment in restitution to Chicago plus an additional $25,000 fine, after having been convicted on five felony counts of disorderly conduct for making false reports of a hate crime. In January 2019, Smollett, who is Black and gay, claimed that two men had attacked him while he was walking home in Chicago at 2 a.m. He said they had yelled racist and homophobic slurs as they put a noose around his neck and poured bleach on him. Brothers Abimbola ("Bola") and Olabinjo ("Ola") Osundairo later told police that Smollett had paid them to $3,500 to fake the incident. Smollett has maintained his innocence, including when he left the courtroom after his sentencing. | |
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| 03-11-22 04:22pm - 1017 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Says it's better to let Russia take over Ukraine. Let bygones be bygones. If Ukraine can't stand on it own two feet, let Russia take it over. And why waste American money on a losing cause? Give the money to the 1%, who will use it wisely. The poor and unwashed would only use money for drugs and prostitition. And maybe booze and pornography. Make America great Again. Vote for Trump. ----- ----- Why some American leftists are critical of U.S. assistance to Ukraine Yahoo News Ben Adler March 11, 2022, 10:50 AM The phenomenon of Republicans who admire Russian President Vladimir Putin is well known — especially since its most voluble proponent is former President Donald Trump. But on the left, there also exists a smaller movement that holds the United States and its NATO allies as at least somewhat responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin, an authoritarian nationalist who has enacted laws targeting LGBTQ people and jailed liberal dissidents, has never been lionized on the left. Still, a cadre of far-left activists and pundits argue that the U.S. risked provoking confrontation with Russia by expanding NATO to its borders, and some are opposed to giving military aid to Ukraine or imposing economic sanctions on Russia. “Everyone I know is united in condemning this war, and none of us like Putin,” Branko Marcetic, a staff writer at the Marxist journal Jacobin, told Yahoo News. But, he said, that doesn’t mean the U.S. should arm Ukraine. A Ukrainian serviceman holds an American-made antitank guided missile during a training exercise. “The idea of sending weapons to Ukraine — I think there’s a defensible argument for it,” Marcetic said. “The problem is, there was a similarly defensible argument for arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s when they were fighting a Soviet invasion.” The mujahideen were militias that fell into civil war with one another after the Soviets withdrew. The Taliban grew out of that war, later giving safe harbor to al-Qaida. Similarly, Marcetic warns, U.S. weapons could wind up in the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov Battalion, a part of the Ukrainian National Guard. Putin, who said at the onset of the war that Russia’s aim was “the de-Nazification of Ukraine,” has used the existence of groups like the Azov Battalion to justify his invasion. “Because Putin has used that pretext, and because it’s such a big element of Kremlin propaganda at the moment, that in the West there’s a whole idea of ‘there’s no Nazi problem in Ukraine’ ... which is just not true,” Marcetic said. As Marcetic and others on the left see it, any action that escalates tensions with Russia or intensifies the conflict militarily could lead to disastrous unintended consequences. “The solution to this conflict is not going to be military,” Marcetic said. “It’s going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement.” “I’m against funding a proxy war that will lead to more bloodshed and — if the corporate media calling for a no-fly zone has its way — possibly nuclear war,” Katie Halper, a left-wing commentator and talk show host, told Yahoo News. “Putin’s invasion was unjust, illegal and immoral,” she added. “But that doesn’t make arming Ukraine to fight a protracted miserable proxy war, with no winners but the war industry, the right thing to do.” Shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, Halper and her co-host Aaron Maté produced an episode of their podcast, “Useful Idiots,” entitled “How the US Caused the Ukraine Crisis.” (Halper’s previous co-host Matt Taibbi, a columnist on Substack who used to work for Rolling Stone, is also a contrarian on Russia, having mocked the notion that Russia might invade right up until it did.) On Wednesday, on the website the Grayzone, far-left journalist Max Blumenthal, who has been deeply critical of U.S. and Israeli policies, conducted a friendly interview with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a conservative with libertarian leanings who voted against a congressional resolution stating U.S. support for Ukraine. The next day, Blumenthal pressed Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a progressive Democrat, on why Americans should support sanctions on Russia if it raises gasoline prices. “After campaigning on a peace platform, Ro Khanna sounds like a Bush-era neocon, spouting American exceptionalist bromides about freedom not being free,” Blumenthal concluded on Twitter. In a recent editorial, the Nation magazine, a left-liberal tribune, while decrying the invasion, called for diplomacy instead of “a rush to arms” or sanctions that it warned “will hurt not only Russia — oligarchs and ordinary citizens alike — but also Europe, the US, and the global economy’s bystanders.” A number of other progressive journalists have raised some similar concerns. Jeremy Scahill of the Intercept warned that arming Ukraine could prolong the war. Scahill also noted that the United States has previously invaded and occupied Iraq without provocation. Some on the far left, such as former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, have been arguing for years that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and U.S. support for pro-Western forces in Ukraine were provocations to Russia. Concerns that NATO’s post-Cold War expansion into Eastern Europe could lead to a confrontation with Moscow are by no means limited to the left. As Ukraine fights for survival, there are some democratic socialists who come to some similar conclusions as their unlikely allies on the right about how the U.S. should, or should not, respond to the war in Ukraine. Rep. Ilhan Omar, for example, worries that replacing Russian oil with oil from Saudi Arabia will empower the Middle Eastern kingdom, which has a deplorable record on human rights and is prosecuting a brutal war in Yemen. Omar, along with fellow left-leaning Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, was one of two House Democrats who voted Wednesday against banning Russian oil imports; they were joined in their opposition by 15 right-wing Republicans. “If our issue is that we don’t want to buy oil from a powerful country that is conducting a devastating war on its weaker neighbor, I just don’t see Saudi Arabia hardly being a principled solution,” Omar said in a radio interview on “Democracy Now” on Tuesday. Omar has been clear that she opposes Russia’s invasion and supports U.S. aid to Ukraine. So her reasoning is quite different from that of Republicans like Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who in a speech over the weekend called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” presiding over a government that “is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil.” (After a video of Cawthorn’s remarks was picked up by news outlets, the freshman congressman tweeted that Putin’s invasion was “disgusting.”) Rescue members search for victims among rubble in Yemen. Rescue workers search for victims among the rubble after jets of a Saudi-led coalition targeted a prison on Jan. 22 in Saadah, Yemen. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images) In fact, all of the members of Congress who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America, including Bush and Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, have broadly backed the Biden administration’s alliance with Ukraine. But the organization to which they belong has other ideas. In its Feb. 26 statement on the war, the DSA criticized Russia’s invasion but also came out against any effort to arm Ukraine or sanction Russia. It also called for the end of U.S. involvement in NATO. “This crisis requires an immediate international antiwar response demanding de-escalation, international cooperation, and opposition to unilateral coercive measures, militarization, and other forms of economic and military brinkmanship that will only exacerbate the human toll of this conflict,” the group’s National Political Committee wrote. “DSA reaffirms our call for the US to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict.” The DSA’s statement was controversial among its own members. “They felt they had to criticize the United States for imperialism, for provoking the Russians,” Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College and a founding member of the DSA, told Yahoo News. Dreier called the statement “tone-deaf about the moment we’re in as a country — and about the role of progressives and the left working in politics.” The DSA North Star Steering Committee, which urges the group to take a more politically pragmatic approach, issued a statement endorsing economic sanctions. “It is precisely because we oppose outside military intervention that we have an obligation to advocate for other means to compel a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine,” the committee stated. Rep. Jamaal Bowman speaks into a microphone outside the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, outside the U.S. Capitol, calls for action on the Build Back Better Act before the State of the Union address on March 1. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images). Bowman also took a very different tack than the DSA. “I vigorously condemn Russian imperialism,” Bowman said in a statement on the day Russia invaded its neighbor. “I am committed to supporting the Biden administration in holding Putin and his oligarchs accountable. ... I support NATO and will continue to do so during this crisis.” Bowman is nonetheless contending with a primary challenger who is demanding that he explicitly renounce the DSA’s position. | |
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| 03-11-22 12:06am - 1017 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Jussie Smollett sentenced to 150 days in jail for staging hate crime Yahoo Celebrity Suzy Byrne,Taryn Ryder March 10, 2022, 5:05 PM Jussie Smollett has been sentenced to 150 days in jail and 30 months of probation for staging a hate crime against himself. The actor — who received support from some Hollywood friends but failed to sway an obviously displeased judge — faced a maximum sentence of three years in state prison. The ruling was handed down to the erstwhile Empire star, 39, by Judge James B. Linn at Chicago's George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse on Thursday. The judge did not hold back when sentencing the actor, whom he called "profoundly arrogant," "selfish" and a "narcissistic," at the end of a wild hearing that took almost six hours. The marathon session ended with an outburst from Smollett, who maintained his innocence throughout, before he was taken immediately to jail. "I am not suicidal," Smollett yelled in the courtroom. "I am not suicidal. I am innocent and I am not suicidal. If I did this then it means I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years, and the fears of the LGBT community. Your honor, I respect you and I respect the jury, but I did not do this and I am not suicidal. And if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself and you must all know that. I respect you, your honor. I respect your decision. ... I am not suicidal." Actor Jussie Smollett appears at his sentencing hearing Thursday, March 10, 2022 at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago. Smollett is back in court to learn if a judge will order him locked up for his conviction of lying to police about a racist and homophobic attack that he orchestrated or allow him to remain free. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool) Jussie Smollett appears at his sentencing for faking a hate crime on Thursday, March 10, 2022 at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago. (Photo: Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool) Smollett will serve a total of five months in the Cook County Jail, not prison, which is typical for shorter sentences. He was also sentenced to 30 months' felony probation, ordered to pay $120,106 of restitution to the city of Chicago and pay $25,000 fine. "I know that there his nothing that I will do here today that will come close to the damage you have done to your own life," the judge told Smollett. "You destroyed your life as you knew it." Linn emphasized the jury got Smollett's verdict right. In December, the entertainer was convicted for repeatedly reporting to police that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime. Prosecutors say Smollett staged the January 2019 incident to garner sympathy and help his acting career. "Frankly, I do not believe you did it for the money," the judge said, noting Smollett was making around $2 million a year. "The only thing I can find is that you really craved the attention." The judge scolded Smollett for preying on a country "that was slowly trying to heal past injustices and current injustices." "You wanted to make yourself more famous, and for a while it worked," the judge continued, calling out Smollett for throwing a "national pity party for yourself." Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor, applauded the five-month jail sentence, saying in a statement, "The criminal conviction of Jussie Smollett by a jury of his peers and today’s sentencing should send a clear message to everyone in the city of Chicago that false claims and allegations will not be tolerated." Smollett faced up to three years in prison for each of the five felony counts of disorderly conduct — for making false reports in the days following the incident — for which he was convicted and a $25,000 fine. He was acquitted on a sixth count — of lying to an investigator weeks after the incident. Although Smollett did not address the court ahead of sentencing on the advice of his attorney, his grandmother was one of many emotional witnesses who spoke on his behalf, calling him a "justice warrior." "Jussie is loved and respected by all who know him," she said, asking the judge not to send her grandson to prison. "If you do, send me along with him." Smollett was not expected to serve time behind bars. Legal experts pointed to the fact that he does not have any prior felony convictions, and his conviction here is for a low-level, nonviolent crime. Also, no one was injured by his crime. Samuel L. Jackson and his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and actress Alfre Woodard were among those to write letters to the judge asking for leniency. However, the judge pointed to "ample factors" that made prison time reasonable, including Smollett's "premeditation" for the crime, the pain he caused "real victims of hate crimes," the damage to the city of Chicago and Smollett's "performance on the witness stand" in December as he said the actor committed "perjury." Before Smollett's sentence was handed down, his attorneys tried to persuade the judge to overturn the conviction or retry the case, citing 13 different errors in the handling of the case. They argued Smollett should have had immunity after the original charges were initially dropped. They also said that a special prosecutor never should have been appointed in this case. They also took issue with the selection of the special prosecutor. Smollett, who is Black and gay, claimed he was the victim of a hate crime when two men wearing ski masks poured bleach on him, put a noose around his neck and yelled racist and homophobic slurs on a freezing Chicago night. He claimed he had been walking home, on Jan. 29, 2019 at about 2 a.m., after getting food at a Subway. The police investigation led to two brothers, Abimbola ("Bola") and Olabinjo ("Ola") Osundairo, who were acquaintances of the actor. They testified at the December trial that Smollett paid them $3,500 in part to stage the attack. Actor Jussie Smollett, one-time star of the TV drama Jussie Smollett arriving for his sentencing hearing on March 10, 2022. (Photo: REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski) Smollett testified that he did not recognize them the night of the attack — and didn't know why they attacked him. He said the $3,500 was paid to Bola for personal training services. The actor also claimed he and Bola had a sexual relationship with his attorney implying homophobia could have been a motive for the attack. (Bola denied a relationship.) The defense also alleged the brothers tried to get Smollett to pay them $1 million to not cooperate with prosecutors. Smollett was initially indicted in March 2019 on 16 counts of felony disorderly conduct. However, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office abruptly dropped all charges weeks later, keeping his $10,000 bond and saying community service he had completed was enough. A special prosecutor was appointed to look into it in August 2019 leading to new charges against Smollett, who was written off Empire, and ultimately the conviction. Separately, the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit against Smollett in 2019 after he refused to pay back the $130,106.15 for the police investigation. Smollett filed a countersuit. The city of Chicago vowed to pursue the lawsuit after Smollett's conviction. Smollett's defense attorneys have said they intend to fight the verdict in appellate court. | |
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| 03-10-22 09:16am - 1018 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
John Eastman, a lawyer, advised Trump on how he could remain President of the US, even if people voted for Joe Biden. Eastman told Trump that Mike Pence, the Vice President, had the authority to reject electoral votes or delay their counting, so Republican-led state legislatures could cast their votes for Trump even though more voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden. Most people don't know that lawyers are geniuses: they can make pipe dreams come true. Unfortunately, after Trump lost the election, John Eastman retired. The nation has lost one of its guiding lights. ------- ------- Judge rules against Trump lawyer John Eastman in dispute with Jan. 6 investigators LA Times March 9, 2022, 4:00 PM A federal judge on Wednesday handed an incremental victory to the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection in a case involving California attorney John Eastman. Eastman, who advised former President Trump on efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has been fighting to prevent the committee from seeing more than 100 emails involving him. The judge ruled against Eastman for now, saying the court would review the documents to determine which can be turned over to the panel. Eastman has emerged as a central figure in the committee's investigation into Trump's efforts to subvert the election results. He wrote two legal memos arguing that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to unilaterally reject electoral votes or delay their counting, which could have opened the door for Republican-led state legislatures to cast their votes for Trump even though more voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden. The advice was disregarded by Pence and roundly denounced by legal experts when it became public last year. The congressional committee subpoenaed emails sent or received by Eastman from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021. Eastman sued to block release of the documents, which are housed on the server of Chapman University in Orange, which was Eastman's employer at the time. He argued that they're protected from disclosure by attorney-client privilege and related legal rules. The judge rejected that blanket claim. "After reading the emails, the Court will determine for each document whether any privilege existed, whether that privilege was waived, and whether any exceptions apply," wrote U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who is based in Santa Ana. "Ultimately, the Court will issue a written decision including its full analysis and its final determination of which, if any, documents must be disclosed to the Select Committee." The committee had argued for the court review of 111 disputed emails in a hearing on Tuesday, which also offered more insight into the panel's theory of potential criminal charges against Trump, which was first revealed last week in a court filing pertaining to Eastman's lawsuit. In that filing, the committee alleged that the emails it was seeking from Eastman could show that Trump broke multiple laws by seeking to block the certification of Biden's win despite knowing that his claims of fraud were unfounded. The committee said attorney-client privilege between Eastman and Trump would not apply to evidence demonstrating crime or fraud. Charles Burnham, an attorney for Eastman, acknowledged in the hearing it was likely the judge would review the documents and tamped down expectations the emails would reveal blatant wrongdoing. "There’s not going to be an email where anyone involved in the campaign effort says, 'We’ve got to have some ruffians rush the Capitol if the vice president doesn’t make the decision we want.' It's not going to be there," Burnham said. "There's not going to be an email that says, 'We all know the election had no fraud or illegality, but we've got to come up with something.'” Douglas Letter, counsel for the House select committee, said while they didn't expect the emails would show such flagrant violations, there was already information that points to fraud or criminal intent. He cited an email to Pence's counsel, Greg Jacob, in which Eastman said Trump had been advised there was nothing supporting his allegations of electoral fraud, but "once [Trump] gets something in his head, it's hard to get him to change course." "That's pretty strong evidence ... that Trump was ignoring all of the very clear evidence because he wanted something different," Letter said. "He wanted the vice president to do something that was plainly against the Constitution. Carter, in his order, did not address the committee's allegations of criminal or fraudulent activity. He said the panel raised sufficient questions about whether Eastman's emails would be shielded under attorney-client privilege or as work product made in anticipation of a lawsuit. While the ruling advances the committee's efforts, Carter noted that "reading the emails does not mean that the Court will ultimately require disclosure." The order did not specify when it will determine which emails should be turned over to congressional investigators. The hearing also involved an attorney for Chapman University, where Eastman served as law professor and onetime dean of the law school. An uproar over Eastman's involvement with Trump, including his appearance at a pro-Trump rally immediately preceding the insurrection at the Capitol, prompted the professor to retire abruptly one week after Jan. 6. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. | |
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| 03-10-22 02:27am - 1018 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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This is a short interview with Chloe Cherry, who is starring in a non-porn role on an HBO TV series. She's finished her porn career, but she's doing well as an actress. Wishing her the best. -------- -------- 'Euphoria' breakout star Chloe Cherry says she 'lost a lot of female friends' after doing porn David Artavia Wed, March 9, 2022, 12:25 PM Chloe Cherry has gained a growing number of fans since her breakout role in HBO’s Euphoria. In a candid interview on the podcast Call Her Daddy, the actress opened up about her years working as an adult film star, how she overcame a serious eating disorder and how all of it has impacted her relationship with friends, family and herself. “I was a pornstar for many years. I worked very hard in that industry,” said Cherry, who’s starred in over 200 adult films and has over 125 million views on PornHub. Though now Cherry admits she's “done” with the industry, she said she doesn’t regret being part of it. However, her work took a toll on her personal relationships. “The only thing that sucks about working in porn is the way that people will treat you outside of the industry,” she explained. “Just the way that, suddenly, my friends that I was friends with in high school didn’t want to be friends anymore because they thought I was going to f*** their boyfriend. It’s like, I don’t want anything to do with your boyfriend.” “These weird ideas that people get about you I think that’s the only bad thing about it,” she added of being in the porn industry. “People thought just because you were this way on camera that you are actually going to be [that person].” “I lost a lot of female friends because they thought I couldn’t be around them,” she added. “Or their boyfriend would say no you can’t hang out with her, and they actually would listen to them, which I thought was the craziest part.” That level of judgment, Cherry explained, also extended to her family — including her mother, who said “probably the most hurtful words” to her about the topic. “My mom said to me that sex work is the lowest thing a person can do,” she remembered. “And that’s like the one thing I’ll share [publicly] that I disagree with so deeply. And I don’t know if there are other people out there that agree with that but I think trying to put down your own family is lower." | |
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| 03-09-22 12:10pm - 1019 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
I understand that sex work can be a complex issue. But I think John Oliver was trying to be helpful, when he seemed to argue that sex work should not be a criminal activity. However, some people feel it should still be a criminal activity, or else pimps "will profit big while those who are exploited suffer." I'm not a lawyer, but if you have sex with someone, and there is money exchanged, both the buyer and the seller can be charged with criminal activity. ------ ------ Ashley Judd calls out John Oliver for insensitive comments about sex work: 'Listen to survivors' Yahoo Entertainment David Artavia March 8, 2022, 8:40 AM Following John Oliver's on-air comments last week about sex work, the Last Week Tonight host earned a growing number of critics — including, recently, from actress Ashley Judd. The comedian's troubles began during a segment last month in which he addressed the issue of sex work and how it’s interpreted in local, state and federal laws in the United States. NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 11: Ashley Judd speaks onstage at the 10th Anniversary Women In The World Summit - Day 2 at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on April 11, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images) Ashley Judd, pictured in 2019, is once again using her platform to speak out on issues affecting sex workers. (Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images) “Everything about the way we regulate sex work in this country is confusing and counterproductive,” he said, adding that it’s either “demonizing, patronizing or just plain wrong.” At one point, Oliver featured an interview with a former sex worker, now lawyer, who said that at one point in his life he’d worked at Subway, after which Oliver used the opportunity to make what some view as an off-color joke. “The main difference between sex work and working at Subway is at least in sex work you actually know what the customer is eating,” he said before adding, “And yet, some people feel highly uncomfortable with the very idea that sex is labor and therefore should be treated as such.” However, Oliver’s approach to making light of sex workers and human trafficking by comparing them to Subway workers didn’t sit well for others, especially former and current sex workers themselves: Then on Tuesday, Judd re-shared a video made by World Without Exploitation, an organization whose goal is to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation across the globe. “John Oliver compared prostitution to making sandwiches at Subway,” the caption read alongside a video featuring sex work survivors reading an open letter to the host. “Survivors listened to John Oliver. Now it’s time for John Oliver to #ListenToSurvivors," it concluded. In the video, the participants spoke from the heart while providing additional context on the issue that they argue was missed by Oliver. “Dear John Oliver,” the participants began in the video. “We love your show and we love how you always stand up for the people over the powerful, but as survivors of the sex trade we’re here to tell you this time you got it wrong.” “We get it,” they continued. “As a privileged wealthy straight white guy, you’re not at the best vantage point to understand an industry based on misogyny, racism and economic equality. So here are a few things you missed: Sex buyers are overwhelmingly white guys buying mostly poor Black and brown women and girls, LGBTQI-plus folks and young people. White guys with money buying people of color for their own use.” They also explained that the sex trade disproportionately represents people of color and other minority groups. “In places where Black women and girls make up 6 percent of the population, they can represent over 50 percent of those prostituted,” they acknowledged. “In some spots, Indigenous communities only make up 1 percent of the population but can make up to 70 percent of those sold.” “We completely agree we should not be criminalizing those bought and old in the sex trade,” the video participants point out. “When you talk about decriminalizing the sex trade, what you’re really talking about is whether or not buyers, brothel owners and pimps should be able to operate legally. That’s precisely why pimps support full decriminalization: They will profit big while those who are exploited suffer. So I guess you could say everything you said in your show is spoken like a true John.” “As far as comparing being sold in the sex trade as having a job in Subway making sandwiches, I wonder if the Subway employees have to deal with occupational hazards such as rape and sodomy. Hilarious, right John?” they added. “You reduced our exploitation to a bunch of jokes.” “When you speak, people listen,” they concluded. “You can’t afford to get this wrong. So next time, listen and investigate all sides before you speak. Listen to survivors. Not just the guys who look like you or to those in the sex trade with the privilege to enter and exit anytime they want. You cannot erase those with lived experience. The question is simple: Who do you stand with?” Judd, who last year nearly lost her leg in a harrowing accident, has always been vocal about issues pertaining to women’s rights and protections for sex workers and rape victims — even though at times it hasn’t been embraced by some activists. NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 28: Tarana Burke (L) and Ashley Judd speak onstage at #MeToo founder Tarana Burke and Ashley Judd speak onstage at Time's Up during the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival) Last November, the actress vowed that Time's Up, a nonprofit focused on fighting sexual abuse in Hollywood and beyond, will return stronger after a "major reset." “We still need Time’s Up, and that’s why we’re going down to the studs, taking a look at the mistakes we made, learning from our errors and being completely transparent and accountable in the same way that we demand other organizations be transparent and accountable,” she told Variety. In terms of what went wrong with the organization, the actress explained, “As a board, we didn’t have some guardrails in place that were important, and that was a governing lapse on our part, which we regret.” “That’s a mistake we will not make in the future," she added. "There were some communication lapses, and we didn’t have a strong middle management core, so that was a structural challenge. Even though we were super clear about our singleness of purpose for a fair and equitable workplace, there were some people who seemed not to be entirely clear about our mission.” “It is a process, and it’s tough in the culture in which we live to rebuild trust,” she said. “Hopefully by releasing the report and keeping our word about transparency, that’s an initial step. And we ask for the suspension of disbelief. We’re going to get it right. We’re going to take the time it takes, and we understand the urgency for Time’s Up to exist.” | |
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| 03-09-22 07:40am - 1019 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Black Panther director Ryan Coogler arrested after being mistaken for bank robber Police were called after Coogler handed staff a note saying he wanted to withdraw money from his own account discreetly Wed 9 Mar 2022 10.02 EST Black Panther director Ryan Coogler was mistaken for a bank robber and arrested after trying to withdraw money from his bank account. Coogler confirmed the incident, which happened in January, to Variety after TMZ first reported it. According to a police report obtained by TMZ, Coogler, who is currently filming the Black Panther sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in Atlanta, Georgia, entered a bank in the city and handed the cashier a note reading: “I would like to withdraw $12,000 cash from my checking account. Please do the money count somewhere else. I’d like to be discreet.” The transaction triggered an alarm, according to the report, and bank staff called the police. Coogler and two other people with him were arrested, and later released. Coogler told Variety: “This situation should never have happened … However, Bank of America worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction and we have moved on.” Prior to global blockbuster Black Panther, which was released in 2018, Coogler directed Rocky spin-off Creed in 2015, starring Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone, and his 2013 directorial debut Fruitvale Station, about a real-life police killing that also featured Jordan in the lead role. | |
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| 03-09-22 07:08am - 1019 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Kelly Clarkson Settles Divorce, Will Pay Brandon Blackstock Over $1.3M Plus Monthly Spousal Support People Olivia Jakiel March 8, 2022, 4:47 PM Kelly Clarkson's divorce from Brandon Blackstock has been finalized. The singer, 39, will pay her ex a massive one-time payment of just over $1.3 million, as well as a monthly child support payment of $45,601 for their two children, River Rose, 7, and Remington Alexander, 5, which started Feb. 1, per court documents obtained by The Blast. Additionally, the couple agreed on having joint custody of their kids, although River and Remington will live at Clarkson's Los Angeles residence. A representative for Clarkson has not commented while a rep for Blackstock did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment. Another stipulation of the agreement is that both kids will be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, as they will be traveling out of state to see their father at the former couple's Montana ranch, where he'll be living for the time being. Although Clarkson will get both of their Montana properties, Blackstock, 45, will pay the "Since U Been Gone" singer $2,000 a month while he stays there until June. In addition to the one-time payment, the American Idol winner will also have to pay her ex $115,000 in spousal support per month until Jan. 31, 2024. The amount for spousal support is lower than the previous amount Clarkson was ordered to pay Blackstock in July last year, which was $150,000 per month, in addition to the $45,601 per month for child support. The court docs also state that the singer will get the family pets, multiple cars including a Ford Bronco, a Ford F-250, and a Porsche Cayenne, as well as a flight simulator. In turn, Blackstock will get the former couple's "farm cattle, livestock, stock dogs, and horses," multiple vehicles including a Ford F-350, a Ford F-250, an ATV, and several CAT snowmobiles. He will also walk away with a golf simulator and a couple of Patek Philippe watches. Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020 after seven years of marriage, PEOPLE confirmed. In July last year, Clarkson requested to be declared legally divorced in documents obtained by PEOPLE. Clarkson reasoned that she and Blackstock "both deserve the opportunity to build a new life." Clarkson was declared legally single in August, according to documents obtained by PEOPLE. The same month — after an L.A. County judge ordered her to pay Blackstock nearly $200,000 a month in spousal and child support — a source told PEOPLE she's "more than fine." "She is doing great and facing forward," a source told PEOPLE at the time. "She's enjoying the fact that she has the kids for the vast majority of the time and is enjoying time spent with them." | |
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| 03-08-22 05:30pm - 1020 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
I thought that Dune, the 1984 movie by David Lynch was enjoyable. The movie bombed, and David Lynch was dissatisfied with the movie that was released. The studio had taken control of the movie and edited it down to a shorter length, trying to make it more commercial. But this article says the Lynch movie was terrible. I think that's a personal opinion, and does not reflect the value of the 1984 movie. Also, I didn't think the 2021 Dune was that great. Even though it had 10 Oscar nominations, the movie left you hanging. The 2021 Dune only covered half the Dune novel. The ending was like a cliff-hanger for a serial, where you're saying to yourself, "Where's the rest of the movie?" ------ ------ Variety Mar 8, 2022 12:50pm PT ‘Dune: Part 2’ Casts Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Florence Pugh may soon be touching down in Arrakis. The Oscar-nominated star of “Little Women” and “Black Widow” is in negotiations to join the cast of “Dune: Part 2,” Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros.’ follow-up to the critically acclaimed, commercially successful (for a pandemic) “Dune.” If the deal closes, Pugh will play Princess Irulan Corrino, a royal who becomes romantically entangled with Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides. It’s a critical role, one with the potential to grow if “Dune” stretches deeper into novelist Frank Herbert’s literary canon. Production on the sequel is expected to start this summer, and the film is slated to hit theaters on Oct. 20, 2023. It brings back much of the ensemble from the first film, including Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya and Javier Bardem. Denis Villeneuve, credited with making a book thought to be un-adaptable into something cinematic and comprehensible, returns as director. For a sign of how terribly these things can go, look no further than David Lynch’s justly excoriated 1984 version of the same source material. “Dune” grossed nearly $400 million globally and snagged 10 Oscar nominations, including nods for best picture and best adapted screenplay. Villeneuve was snubbed in the best director category, an omission that produced some blowback. Pugh recently reprised her role as Yelena Romanoff on the Disney Plus series “Hawkeye.” She will soon be seen acting opposite Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Matt Damon in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” and will also appear in Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” and Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wonder.” Pugh is repped by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment and Curtis Brown. | |
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| 03-08-22 10:06am - 1020 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
John Landis is still alive. That makes it more important for Jamie Lee Curtis to sue him for forcing Curtis to strip in front of the cameras. Women must stand up for their rights, in this new age of Women's empowerment. And she can also sue James Cameron, who's got money. He filmed Curtis doing a striptease. The things women are forced to do in films. Don't their parents teach them better? And if their parents are at fault, can they sue not only their directors, but their parents as well? And the United States of America, for allowing this enslavement of women to continue, in the land of the free? -------- -------- Jamie Lee Curtis Felt ‘Embarrassed’ by ‘Trading Places’ Nude Scene: ‘Did I Like It? No’ Variety Zack Sharf March 7, 2022, 3:33 PM Jamie Lee Curtis recently told People magazine that she felt “embarrassed” going nude for “Trading Places” when she was 21 years old. Curtis starred as a call girl in the John Landis-directed 1983 comedy opposite Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. Curtis appears topless in the film. “I was 21 years old and the part required Ophelia to take off her dress,” Curtis said. “Did I like doing it? No. Did I feel embarrassed that I was doing it? Yes. Did I look OK? Yeah. Did I know what I was doing? Yeah. Did I like it? No. Was I doing it because it was the job? Yes.” Curtis added, “I wouldn’t do it today, it’s the last thing in the world I would do now. I also am married for 37 years, I wasn’t married then. I’m a mother of children. Absolutely not.” Following Curtis’ breakout scream queen roles in “Halloween” and “Prom Night,” the comedy blockbuster “Trading Places” served as a larger breakthrough for her career. The actor’s topless scenes garnered significant attention at the time of the film’s release. It’s hardly the only risqué moment of Curtis’ film career. Her striptease in James Cameron’s 1994 action comedy “True Lies” also generated buzz. Curtis told People last year about what it was like watching the scene with her father, Tony Curtis. “Thousands of people — and you know, it gets really quiet during that sequence, because it’s a little sexy,” Curtis said. “Then when [Helen] falls and then gets back up, oh my God. The place, it was a huge … because you’re anxious. Then the laugh, and it’s all [director James Cameron]. To his great credit, it’s all him. He knew, it’s a comedy. It’s a comedy.” Curtis recently announced she had wrapped production on “Halloween Ends,” the third installment in David Gordon Green’s recent “Halloween” trilogy. The film is expected to mark the end of Curtis’ tenure playing Laurie Strode. The movie is set for release on Oct. 14 from Universal. | |
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| 02-24-22 09:10am - 1032 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Russia invades Ukraine. But not to worry. Trump has declared Russia's invasion is a work of genius. And if the U.S. or Europe is worried about a war, then Trump will step in and solve the problem: Trump holds the title of General Bone Spurs, which refers to his medical deferment for bone spurs to avoid military service during the Vietnam war. Also, Putin said he was sending in peace-keeping forces. So ignore the reports of large explosions, and dead military and civilians. Putin is only trying to help. -------- -------- Associated Press Russia attacks Ukraine; peace in Europe 'shattered' YURAS KARMANAU, JIM HEINTZ, VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and DASHA LITVINOVA Wed, February 23, 2022, 9:51 PM KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine on Thursday, hitting cities and bases with airstrikes or shelling, as civilians piled into trains and cars to flee. Ukraine's government said Russian tanks and troops rolled across the border in a “full-scale war” that could rewrite the geopolitical order and whose fallout already reverberated around the world. In unleashing Moscow's most aggressive action since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, President Vladimir Putin deflected global condemnation and cascading new sanctions — and chillingly referred to his country’s nuclear arsenal. He threatened any foreign country attempting to interfere with “consequences you have never seen.” Ukraine's president said Russian forces were trying to seize the Chernobyl nuclear plant, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, and Ukrainian forces were battling other troops just miles from Kyiv for control of a strategic airport. Large explosions were heard in the capital there and in other cities, and people massed in train stations and took to roads, as the government said the former Soviet republic was seeing a long-anticipated invasion from the east, north and south. The chief of the NATO alliance said the “brutal act of war" shattered peace in Europe, joining a chorus of world leaders who decried the attack, which could cause massive casualties, topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government and upend the post-Cold War security order. The conflict was already shaking global financial markets: Stocks plunged and oil prices soared amid concerns that heating bills and food prices would skyrocket. Condemnation rained down not only from the U.S. and Europe, but from South Korea, Australia and beyond — and many governments readied new sanctions. Even friendly leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban sought to distance themselves from Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cut diplomatic ties with Moscow and declared martial law. “As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history," Zelenskyy tweeted. "Russia has embarked on a path of evil, but Ukraine is defending itself and won’t give up its freedom.” His adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said: “A full-scale war in Europe has begun. ... Russia is not only attacking Ukraine, but the rules of normal life in the modern world.” While some nervous Europeans speculated about a possible new world war, the U.S. and its NATO partners have so far shown no indication they would join in a war against Russia. They instead mobilized troops and equipment around Ukraine’s western flank — as Ukraine pleaded for defense assistance and help protecting its airspace. In Washington, President Joe Biden convened a meeting of the National Security Council on Thursday to discuss Ukraine as the U.S. prepares new sanctions. Biden administration officials have signaled that two of the measures they were considering most strongly include hitting Russia’s biggest banks and slapping on new export controls meant to starve Russia’s industries and military of U.S. semiconductors and other high-tech components. The attacks came first from the air. Later Ukrainian authorities described ground invasions in multiple regions, and border guards released footage showing a line of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine’s government-held territory. European authorities declared the country’s airspace an active conflict zone. In a worrying development, Zelenskyy said Russian forces were trying to seize the Chernobyl plant, and a Ukrainian official said Russian shelling hit a radioactive waste repository and an increase in radiation levels was reported. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. Other governments did not immediately corroborate or confirm the claims. The plant was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident when a nuclear reactor exploded in April 1986, spewing radioactive waste across Europe. The plant lies 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital of Kyiv. After weeks of denying plans to invade, Putin launched the operation on a country the size of Texas that has increasingly tilted toward the democratic West and away from Moscow's sway. The autocratic leader made clear earlier this week that he sees no reason for Ukraine to exist, raising fears of possible broader conflict in the vast space that the Soviet Union once ruled. Putin denied plans to occupy Ukraine, but his ultimate goals remain hazy. Ukrainians who had long braced for the prospect of an assault were urged to shelter in place and not to panic despite the dire warnings. “We are facing a war and horror. What could be worse?” 64-year-old Liudmila Gireyeva said in Kyiv. She planned to flee the city and try to eventually get to Poland to join her daughter. Putin “will be damned by history, and Ukrainians are damning him.” With social media amplifying a torrent of military claims and counter-claims, it was difficult to determine exactly what was happening on the ground. Ukraine’s military chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi said his troops were fighting Russian forces just 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the capital — in Hostomel, which is home to the Antonov aircraft maker and has a runway that is long enough to handle even the biggest cargo planes. Russian officials said separatist forces backed by Russia in the east have taken a new strip of territory from Ukrainian forces, but have not acknowledged ground troops elsewhere in the country. Associated Press reporters saw or confirmed explosions in the capital, in Mariupol on the Azov Sea, Kharkiv in the east and beyond. AP confirmed video showing Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukrainian-held territory in the north from Belarus and from Russian-annexed Crimea in the south. Russian and Ukrainian authorities made competing claims about damage they had inflicted. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had destroyed scores of Ukrainian air bases, military facilities and drones, and confirmed the loss of a Su-25 attack jet, blaming it on “pilot error.” It said it was not targeting cities, but using precision weapons and claimed that “there is no threat to civilian population.” Ukraine’s armed forces They reported at least 40 soldiers dead, and said a military plane carrying 14 people crashed south of Kyiv. Poland’s military increased its readiness level, and Lithuania and Moldova moved toward doing the same. Border crossings increased from Ukraine to Poland, which has prepared centers for refugees. Putin justified his actions in an overnight televised address, asserting that the attack was needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine — a false claim the U.S. had predicted he would make as a pretext for an invasion. He accused the U.S. and its allies of ignoring Russia’s demands to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and for security guarantees. The consequences of the conflict and resulting sanctions on Russia reverberated throughout the world. World stock markets plunged and oil prices on both sides of the Atlantic surged toward or above $100 per barrel, on unease about possible disruption of Russian supplies. The ruble sank. Anticipating international condemnation and countermeasures, Putin issued a stark warning to other countries not to meddle. In a reminder of Russia’s nuclear power, he warned that “no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to the destruction and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.” Among Putin’s pledges was to “denazify” Ukraine. World War II looms large in Russia, after the Soviet Union suffered more deaths than any country while fighting Adolf Hitler’s forces. Kremlin propaganda paints members of Ukrainian right-wing groups as neo-Nazis, exploiting their admiration for WWII-era Ukrainian nationalist leaders who sided with the Nazis. Ukraine is now led by a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust and angrily dismissed the Russian claims. Putin’s announcement came just hours after the Ukrainian president rejected Moscow’s claims that his country poses a threat to Russia and made a passionate, last-minute plea for peace. Zelenskyy said he asked to arrange a call with Putin late Wednesday, but the Kremlin did not respond. The attack began even as the U.N. Security Council was meeting to hold off an invasion. Members still unaware of Putin’s announcement of the operation appealed to him to stand down. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the emergency meeting, telling Putin: “Give peace a chance.” But hours later, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg indicated it was too late: “Peace on our continent has been shattered.” | |
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| 02-23-22 07:11am - 1033 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
This young woman (around 32 years old) is running for the U.S. House of Representatives. She attended a party for young girls aged 12 and 13 years old. She drank wine and got drunk and cursed some of the girls and vomited into a hamper. Later, when sober, she denied to a TV news station that she was at the party. Still later, she admitted to the TV news station that she was at the party, but that she drank wine and took pills to help her sleep. Instead, got drunk and hallucinated, and maybe she said some things she shouldn't have said, and vomited into a hamper. But this woman is sorry if her behavior was not proper. And that's why she is qualified to be a politician: own up to your mistakes, and keep chugging on. That's the politicians' way. The woman is still planning to run for US Congresswoman from Oklahoma. ------ ------ U.S. House candidate apologizes to girls after sleepover Associated Press SEAN MURPHY February 22, 2022, 1:19 PM OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A U.S. House candidate in Oklahoma has apologized after reports that she became intoxicated at a Valentine's Day weekend sleepover for middle-school-aged girls, berated several of the children and vomited in a hamper. Democrat Abby Broyles, 32, told television station KFOR that she had an adverse reaction after drinking wine and taking sleep medication given to her by a friend. “Instead of helping me sleep, I hallucinated," Broyles told the station in a televised interview. “And I don’t remember anything until I woke up or came to, and I was throwing up in a hamper." She said she was invited to the slumber party by a good friend from law school who was the mother of one of the girls. Parents and at least one of the girls who were at the sleepover told the online news outlet NonDoc, which first reported the story, that Broyles used profanity and berated several of the 12- and 13-year-old girls at the party, commenting on one girl’s acne and another’s Hispanic ethnicity. The parent of one of the girls, Sarah Matthews, tweeted last week that she was disappointed that Broyles had not reached out to the girls to apologize. “For someone who pontificates to be undyingly pro woman, I am disgusted by your behavior and find it appalling you couldn’t understand why their parents are angry,” Matthews wrote. Broyles, who initially denied to NonDoc that she had attended the party, apologized last week during her interview with KFOR, a news channel for which she used to work as a journalist. “I want to say sorry from the bottom of my heart, I apologize for any hurt or damage or trauma that my behavior, when I didn’t know what I was doing, caused," Broyles said. “I’m deeply sorry." In a statement provided to The Associated Press on Tuesday, Broyles said she doesn't believe she would have said the things she's accused of saying and that she has no plans to drop out of the race. “The things I'm accused to have said are not who I am. They're not a reflection of my beliefs at all," Broyles said. “It's clear this media smear campaign is politically backed, and I won't stop fighting for Oklahomans." Broyles, an attorney who was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Oklahoma in 2020, announced last year she planned to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Stephanie Bice for the 5th Congressional District that includes Oklahoma City. | |
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| 02-22-22 06:01pm - 1034 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Trump says Putin is a genius for invading the Ukraine. Grabbing parts of the Ukraine will only make Russia stronger. If Trump was still president, Putin would never have dared invade. But Biden is weak, with no plans to oppose Putin. Trump is sad the US has such a weak president. Vote for Trump, and make America great again. ------- ------- Trump praises Putin's 'genius' incursion into Ukraine Yahoo News Ben Adler February 22, 2022, 3:40 PM Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine to support Russian-backed separatists in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. In an appearance on the right-wing talk radio program "The Buck Sexton Show," Trump broke his conspicuous silence on the crisis to applaud the Russian dictator. "This is genius," he said of Putin's decision on Monday to officially recognize the breakaway provinces and authorize the use of Russian military personnel to assist them. "So Putin is now saying it’s independent — a large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace, all right." Trump is a long-standing fan of Putin's. In 2013, he wondered on Twitter if the Russian autocrat would attend his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and whether the two would become "best friends." Putin did not show up. In the following years, Trump repeatedly spoke highly of Putin's strategic acumen, noted the strongman's intention to "re-build the Russian Empire" and defended Putin's habit of killing dissidents and journalists, arguing that the United States does the same thing. Putin's recent move is widely considered an assault on Ukraine's sovereignty. As NPR explained, "The announcement is a serious escalation that effectively kills the Minsk accords, which set out a series of military and political steps designed to resolve the status of the two breakaway regions and end the 8-year-old conflict there." It is unclear exactly what Trump would like the U.S. military to do on the southern U.S. border. Trump went on to heap more praise on Putin and to claim that Russia would have been less aggressive if he were still in the White House. "No, but think of it," the former president continued. "Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. I know him very well — very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, 'You know, I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent.' He used the word 'independent.' 'And we’re gonna go out, and we’re gonna in, and we’re gonna help keep peace.'” During the 2016 campaign, Trump publicly encouraged Russia to continue its efforts to hack into the campaign email system of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as part of the enemy nation's effort to help him win. Once in office, he sided with Russia over U.S. intelligence agencies in accepting Russia's claims not to have been involved in election interference. Trump concluded his comments on Tuesday by asserting that President Biden had not responded to the Russian aggression. "You gotta say this is pretty savvy," Trump said. "And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad." The United States imposed new economic sanctions on Tuesday. At the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Trump's comments. "We try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy," Psaki said, before noting how Trump had sided with Russia when it annexed the Crimean Peninsula, another portion of Ukraine. "There's a bit of a different approach," she said. In 2019, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch a scurrilous investigation of Biden because Trump wanted to weaken his likely 2020 Democratic opponent. When Zelensky refused, the Trump administration withheld congressionally approved aid to Ukraine, which is illegal according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. That resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Trump subsequently claimed — without evidence, and at odds with all the evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence officials — that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had interfered in the 2016 election. In Trump's elaborate conspiracy theory, Ukraine did this in order to frame Russia. And what was Trump's source for these claims, according to one senior government official who spoke to the Washington Post? “Putin told me.” | |
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| 02-14-22 11:32pm - 1041 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
In Pakistan, it's OK to kill a relative because of family honor. Pakistan appeals court frees brother convicted of 'honour killing' of social media star Reuters Mubasher Bukhari February 14, 2022, 6:45 PM FILE PHOTO: Protesters wear masks depicting Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media celebrity who according to police was strangled in what appeared to be an "honour killing" in 2016, in Karachi By Mubasher Bukhari LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani appeals court on Monday acquitted the brother of social media star Qandeel Baloch of her murder, a 2016 killing that sparked national outrage and changes in laws covering so-called "honour killings". Muhammad Waseem appealed against his 2019 murder conviction and life sentence. A court in the central city of Multan struck down the conviction after major witnesses retracted their testimony, defence lawyer Sardar Mehboob said without elaborating. A government prosecutor confirmed the acquittal. His mother had also submitted a statement in the court that she had pardoned him, he added. It was not clear whether the court considered the mother's statement in its decision. The main amendment in laws dealing with "honour killings" in the conservative Muslim country was that no one could be set free based solely on a pardon by a family member. Waseem had admitted in a 2016 media conference organised by police that he strangled his 26-year-old sister due to her social media activities. Baloch had posted Facebook posts in which she spoke of trying to change "the typical orthodox mindset" of people in Pakistan. She faced frequent abuse and death threats but continued to post pictures and videos seen as provocative. She had built a modelling career on the back of her social media fame, but drew ire from many Pakistanis. Her killing sent shockwaves across Pakistan and triggered an outpouring of grief on social media, spurring the government to tighten laws dealing with men who would kill a close relative in the name of family honour. Hundreds of women are killed each year in Pakistan by family members over perceived offences to honour, including elopement, fraternization with men outside marriage or other infractions against conservative Muslim values on female modesty. (Writing by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Mark Heinrich) | |
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| 02-14-22 10:58pm - 1041 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Trump Organization declares victory after accounting firm says Trump financial statements aren't reliable. Accounting firm: Trump financial statements aren't reliable Associated Press MICHAEL R. SISAK February 14, 2022, 3:46 PM NEW YORK (AP) — The accounting firm that prepared former President Donald Trump’s annual financial statements says the documents, used to secure lucrative loans and burnish Trump's image as a wealthy businessman, “should no longer be relied upon” after New York's attorney general said they regularly misstated the value of assets. In a letter to the Trump Organization's lawyer Feb. 9, Mazars USA LLP advised the company to inform anyone who had gotten the documents not to use them when assessing the financial health of the company and the former president. The letter came just weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office uncovered evidence Trump and the company used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of its golf clubs, skyscrapers and other property to get loans and tax benefits. “While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate,” Mazars General Counsel William J. Kelly wrote to his Trump Organization counterpart, Alan Garten. Kelly said Mazars performed its work on the financial statements “in accordance with professional standards” but that it could no longer stand by the documents in light of James' findings and its own investigation. Kelly also informed Garten that Mazars could no longer work with Trump because of a conflict of interest and urged him to find another tax preparer. Mazars said its conclusions applied to Trump's financial statements for 2011 to 2020. Another accounting firm prepared his financial statement for 2021, according to court filings. James' office included a copy of Kelly's letter in a court filing Monday as she seeks to enforce a subpoena to have Trump and his two eldest children testify in her civil investigation. A state court judge, Arthur Engoron, is scheduled to hear arguments in the dispute on Thursday. The Manhattan district attorney's office is running a parallel criminal investigation into Trump's business practices. Trump has given his Statement of Financial Condition — a yearly snapshot of his holdings — to banks to secure hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans on properties such as a Wall Street office building and a Florida golf course, and to financial magazines to justify his place on the list of the richest people in the world. In a statement, the Trump Organization said Kelly's letter “confirms that after conducting a subsequent review of all prior statements of financial condition, Mazars’ work was performed in accordance with all applicable accounting standards and principles and that such statements of financial condition do not contain any material discrepancies. This confirmation effectively renders the investigations by the DA and AG moot." | |
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