Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox that Trump can "narrow the gender gap by showing a softer side, in more personal moments." She added, "For example, I'd like to see him personally jail a woman who's had an abortion, like he's promised to, or pay a prostitute with a check" pic.twitter.com/S0G4EGG2Qn
— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) September 26, 2024
Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "MAGA Matt and Mark Pal Around." Disgraced US House Rep Matt Gaetz complains, "All the sudden a grown man can't party with an underage teenager? What's net? Outlawing sex trafficking!" Throwing an arm around Matt, disgraced GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina Mark Robinson offers, "Don't worry, Matt. I got your back. And your front." Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS.
Allegations of sexual harassment
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson wrote in her memoir that Gaetz harassed her repeatedly.[248] She writes that during a trip to Camp David in 2020 he interrupted her meeting with Kevin McCarthy, repeatedly asking her to "escort" him to his room. Gaetz has denied these actions.[249]
Federal investigations into sex trafficking
In January 2020, the U.S. Secret Service reportedly received a tip that, in April 2018, Gaetz had accompanied Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg to a government office where Greenberg was producing fake IDs.[250] Greenberg was indicted in August 2020 on an array of charges, including sex trafficking a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and creating fake IDs to facilitate sex trafficking.[251][252] The investigation of Greenberg led federal officials to look into some of Gaetz's related activities.[250] In late 2020, the Justice Department opened its investigation of Gaetz for allegedly sex trafficking the same 17-year-old girl in 2017 and whether he had violated federal sex trafficking laws by paying her to travel with him across state lines.[251][253][254] As part of his plea bargain, Greenberg cooperated with the investigation of Gaetz and others.[255][256]
On March 30, 2021, Axios reported that Gaetz was "seriously considering not seeking re-election and possibly leaving Congress early for a job at Newsmax".[257] The same day, The New York Times reported the Justice Department's investigation of Gaetz.[251] According to CNN, a person briefed on the matter said investigators also examined whether Gaetz used campaign money in his relationships with young women for travel and expenses and whether cash and drugs were involved.[258] By April 2, the Justice Department was examining whether Gaetz asked women to recruit others for sex.[259][260]
According to the 2021 reports, federal investigators were looking into Gaetz's September 2018 trip to the Bahamas.[252] Gaetz was reportedly joined by marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon Jason Pirozzolo, who allegedly paid trip accommodations, traveling expenses, and escort services. Investigators were reportedly exploring whether the escorts were sexually trafficked for Gaetz and whether Gaetz accepted paid escorts in exchange for political access or legislative favors for Pirozzolo, who at the time chaired the board of the Medical Marijuana Physicians Association. Gaetz made two speeches for the organization while in Congress, and Pirozzolo gave two separate donations of $1,000 to Gaetz's campaign arm "Friends of Matt Gaetz", in March 2016 and May 2017.[261] A spokeswoman for Gaetz denied the new allegations.[262] A woman on the Bahamas trip—a Capitol Hill intern who did not work in Gaetz's office but who was dating Gaetz—reportedly agreed in May 2021 to cooperate with investigators, who believe she has information about Gaetz's financial transactions on the trip.[263][264]
Investigators believe that Greenberg met women through a website for sex and introduced them to Gaetz, who also had sex with them.[251] Evidence including mobile payment receipts reportedly suggesting Gaetz had illegally exchanged money for sex, such as May 2018 Venmo transaction records showing Gaetz sending $900 (with a memo referring to a woman) to Greenberg, who then relayed the money (with the memos "tuition" and "school") to three women, one of whom was 18.[265] Joseph Ellicott, an associate of both Gaetz and Greenberg, pleaded guilty in January 2022 to two charges related to this investigation and is also cooperating with authorities.[266]
Gaetz had argued in a November 2020 Fox News appearance that Trump "should pardon Michael Flynn [and] everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic".[267][268] In late 2020, Greenberg apparently attempted to secure a pardon from the Trump administration via a confession letter (first reported by The Daily Beast in April 2021), writing that he and Gaetz had had sex with a 17-year-old girl they believed was 19, and that payments had been made on behalf of Gaetz to her and other women in exchange for sex.[269] Greenberg attempted to bribe Roger Stone with a $250,000 Bitcoin payment to secure a presidential pardon, texting Stone, "They know [Gaetz] paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage."[269] By the end of the Trump administration, Greenberg was under indictment, investigators had been questioning some Gaetz associates, and federal agents had seized the phone of one of Gaetz's former girlfriends.[270] Gaetz's phone was also seized, and he changed his phone number in late December.[252]
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
- Harris laid out her vision for an “opportunity economy” and called for greater investments in manufacturing for new technologies to boost the American economy, particularly in historic manufacturing cities like Pittsburgh, where she spoke.
- Some details about Harris’ plans were shared in a policy paper released by the campaign following her speech. Specifically, Harris is calling for a new tax credit that she would call “America Forward.” The tax credit would be targeted at investment and job creation in key strategic industries, according to the policy paper, which mentions steel and iron, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, aerospace, autos and farming.
- And later on Wednesday, Harris spoke with MSNBC where said Trump’s plan to increase tariffs in all foreign imports demonstrates he is “not very serious” in his thinking around economic issues. Harris also said Trump’s economic proposals would “invite a recession by the middle of next year,” adding that economists agree her plan would “grow the economy.”
- Also during the MSNBC interview, Harris responded to Trump labeling himself a “protector” of women by arguing that Trump has helped “punish women” through his role in appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices who helped overturn abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.
Mehdi's interview and Angela's the week before really just underscored what a lazy and incompetent media we have in the US. Third time. This is Jill Stein's third time running for president and it's the first time she's ever been challenged in an interview. For her two previous campaigns, the media has treated her like a child with a terminal disease in a Make A Wish program whose dream was to run for president. She has gotten one pass after another.
Her cult couldn't handle her being challenged. They trashed Angela and Mehdi for not just sitting across from Stein and fawning over her.
The howls and hisses coming from her cult was something to witness. Or seemed that way until things got even worse. As she slowly grasped just how idiotic she had come out, she took to TWITTER with a Tweet insisting she hadn't been allowed to respond in a "nuanced and serious" manner but now, on TWITTER where nuance and seriousness are all the rage, she wanted to say that, yes, Putin was a War Criminal and here's a list of others.
And then the breast beating, garment rending and howling truly began.
The crazies really came out as Kyle noted in a SECULAR TALK segment.
He missed noting some important crazies. Maybe he was trying to be kind? Maybe the amount of crazies was just so high that many had to be excluded.
You can't exclude one person.
It is unfortunate that elements in the Stein campaign have confused
Jill's consistent anti-imperialism by attempting to play to the middle
with the condemnation of the empire's favorite enemies. International
criminality is coming from one source - the "collective West."
And that Tweet was coming from one source -- the 'collective Idiot.'
Ajamu
Baraka Tweeted that. He took time out of his never-ending research on
what 'really' brought down The Twin Towers to Tweet:
It is unfortunate that elements in the Stein campaign have confused
Jill's consistent anti-imperialism by attempting to play to the middle
with the condemnation of the empire's favorite enemies. International
criminality is coming from one source - the "collective West."
Ajamu Baraka, for any who don't know, was Jill's running mate the last time she ran for president.
Apparently what we and so many others saw as a Tweet put out by Jill Stein was actually a 'controlled demolition' carried out by others meant to bring down the campaign of Jill Stein.
We don't need a government created commission to look into the matter of whether or not Ajamu is certifiable. No, we think the evidence on that is scattered all around and not across some open field but right there on his TWITTER feed for all to see. And to see his fellow Truthers like PACIFICA's Ann Garrion wanting to know "who wrote statement?"
Apparently, neither Ann nor Ajamu feel that Jill could have written the statement -- either because they think she's too stupid to write or because they believe she's such a push over that you can get her to put her name to anything.
It's bad when people see you that way -- but it's really, really bad when one of the people seeing you like that is your former running mate.
AMY GOODMAN: As pressure builds for a ceasefire after 27 days of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, we spend the rest of the hour with the acclaimed author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. This summer, he spoke at a literary festival in the West Bank that connected the Palestinian struggle with decolonization struggles around the world. In Ramallah, he opened his remarks with a comparison between the struggle of African Americans and Palestinians.
In recent weeks, Coates joined dozens of other writers and artists in signing “An Open Letter from Participants in the Palestine Festival of Literature,” that was published in The New York Review of Books and called for, quote, “the international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and to finally pursuing a comprehensive and just political solution in Palestine.”
AMY GOODMAN: Last night, Ta-Nehisi Coates participated in another event hosted by organizers of the Palestine Festival of Literature, or PalFest, in the James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary here in New York City. It was called “But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience.”
Ta-Nehisi is the recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the National Book Award for his book Between the World and Me. We Were Eight Years in Power is another book, An American Tragedy, and his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. His novel is titled The Water Dancer. In 2014, he wrote an award-winning cover story for The Atlantic magazine headlined “The Case for Reparations.”
Ta-Nehisi, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, under extremely difficult circumstances. Last night, this remarkable event almost didn’t happen. I mean, it was in the James Chapel of Union Theological Seminary, but venue after venue had said no to this gathering. And without almost any publicity, well over a thousand people turned out, but the place only held 300, so people went over across the street to another place of 300, overcrowd, overflow, and then thousands watched on the live video stream. Can you talk about your experience being in the West Bank, going to the Occupied Territories, and how it changed you?
TA-NEHISI COATES: Oh wow. I spent 10 days in Palestine, in the Occupied Territories and in Israel proper. I’ve had the great luxury over the past 10 years of seeing a few countries. I have not spent more time or seen more of another country or another territory than I did this summer.
I think what shocked me the most was, in any sort of opinion piece or reported piece, or whatever you want to call it, that I’ve read about Israel and about the conflict with the Palestinians, there’s a word that comes up all the time, and it is “complexity,” that and its closely related adjective, “complicated.” And so, while I had my skepticisms and I had my suspicions of the Israeli government, of the occupation, what I expected was that I would find a situation in which it was hard to discern right from wrong, it was hard to understand the morality at play, it was hard to understand the conflict. And perhaps the most shocking thing was I immediately understood what was going on over there.
Probably the best example I can think of is the second day, when we went to Hebron, and the reality of the occupation became clear. We were driving out of East Jerusalem. I was with PalFest, and we were driving out of East Jerusalem into the West Bank. And, you know, you could see the settlements, and they would point out the settlements. And it suddenly dawned on me that I was in a region of the world where some people could vote and some people could not. And that was obviously very, very familiar to me. I got to Hebron, and we got out as a group of writers, and we were given a tour by our Palestinian guide. And we got to a certain street, and he said to us, “I can’t walk down this street. If you want to continue, you have to continue without me.” And that was shocking to me.
And we walked down the street, and we came back, and there was a market area. Hebron is very, very poor. It wasn’t always very poor, but it’s very, very poor. Its market area has been shut down. But there are a few vendors there that I wanted to support. And I was walking to try to get to the vendor, and I was stopped at a checkpoint. Checkpoints all through the city, checkpoints obviously all through the West Bank. Your mobility is completely inhibited, and the mobility of the Palestinians is totally inhibited.
And I was walking to the checkpoint, and an Israeli guard stepped out, probably about the age of my son. And he said to me, “What’s your religion, bro?” And I said, “Well, you know, I’m not really religious.” And he said, “Come on. Stop messing around. What is your religion?” I said, “I’m not playing. I’m not really religious.” And it became clear to me that unless I professed my religion, and the right religion, I wasn’t going to be allowed to walk forward. So, he said, “Well, OK, so what was your parents’ religion?” I said, “Well, they weren’t that religious, either.” He says, “What were your grandparents’ religion?” And I said, “My grandmother was a Christian.” And then he allowed me to pass.
And it became very, very clear to me what was going on there. And I have to say it was quite familiar. Again, I was in a territory where your mobility is inhibited, where your voting rights are inhibited, where your right to the water is inhibited, where your right to housing is inhibited. And it’s all inhibited based on ethnicity. And that sounded extremely, extremely familiar to me.
And so, the most shocking thing about my time over there was how uncomplicated it actually is. Now, I’m not saying the details of it are not complicated. History is always complicated. Present events are always complicated. But the way this is reported in the Western media is as though one needs a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights, including the right that we treasure most, the franchise, the right to vote, and then declaring that state a democracy. It’s actually not that hard to understand. It’s actually quite familiar to those of us with a familiarity to African American history.
In 2005, she received her Juris Doctor from the UC Berkeley School of Law and was awarded the Francine Diaz Memorial Scholarship Award.[10] She completed her L.L.M at Georgetown University Law Center in 2012.[11]
In 2010, she was a co-founder of Jadaliyya, an online magazine published in English, Arabic, and French, and which is affiliated with the non-profit Arab Studies Institute, operating in Washington, D.C. and Beirut.
Erakat has served as "legal counsel to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee"[3] and has previously taught at Georgetown University.[3][11] From 2012–2014, she was a Freedman Fellow with Temple University Beasley School of Law.[12] Erakat also has taught international studies at George Mason University at Fairfax, Virginia.
She currently serves on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as an associate professor at Rutgers University,[13][14] is a member of the Board of Directors for the Trans-Arab Research Institute,[15] and is a policy advisor with Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.[16]
Every four years, DN! devotes a week to the GOP convention and a week to the Democratic Party convention. And that week? They expand from one hour to two hours daily. 10 hours of coverage for the GOP convention and 10 hours of coverage for the Democrats. And the Green Party? Amy tosses them a paragraph in headlines when she bother to note their convention at all.