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defensefilms · 3 years

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Kwame Brown Fights Back

I love this.

I love when the mandem are talking breezy thinking that they can say whatever they want and then they get smacked in the mouth for it.

So as seems to happen very often in the NBA media, former NBA players turned podcast hosts, Stephen Jackson and Matt Branes went on their now well-known platform and made jokes about the long since retired Kwame Brown during an interview with former Wizards guard, Gilbert Arenas.

This time however things were different.

Kwame Brown has had a Youtube channel for the last 2 years now. I don’t blame anyone for not knowing about it because the guy doesn’t really market his channel. He runs it like an average joe with no resources, which is fine.

Kwame went on his channel and absolutely proceeded to air out Barnes, Jackson and Arenas. It was fun, it was entertaining but it was also eye-opening.

I can 100% see how NBA players are the type of guys that spend thousands of dollars on women and that they don’t have the emotional intelligence to really understand what type of timing these girls are on. Especially the type of girls that date pro-athletes.

Peep game, because guys in the corporate world sometimes deal with this same dynamic.

If I spend the majority of my youth on a basketball court or in an office, I’m sacrificing time. That’s time I could spend anywhere doing anything but it’s also time where I definitely won’t be having any kind of first hand experience with the opposite sex, you get me? So you work your ass off to get to a certain number/expendable income and when you finally get there, you’re still playing catch-up because these women are faster than you on a social level.

Their gamed up and you’re a square. This is what a lot of Kevin Samuels’ fanbase is dealing with.

Kwame went DEEEEP in his assassination of the two gentlemen. Citing that Barnes was once cuckolded by former Lakers point guard, Derek Fisher and that Stephen Jackson was known for dropping racks on women he don’t even know.

That man, Gilbert Arenas, should have kept his mouth shut.

Like bro has no right to ever speak on anyone else’s behavior. This fool recorded himself on camera jumping over the fence and entering Nick Young’s property a few years ago. He would have been in his late 30′s at that time. Gilbert can be captivating to listen to and he often is, but you always have to remember that bro is a knucklehead.

Kwame made a slew of great points and it’s funny how the perception of him as a man and a player changes once you hear the guy speak for himself.

Kwame also shed light on how Michael Jordan wanted him traded for Elton Brand back in 2001 and that the Wizards front office stopped it. That’s when reports of his injuries started to make the news and snow balled into people concluding he was a bust.

Jordan never wanted Kwame as his starting center and that’s why he made his life miserable. I want Kwame to talk more about the kind of power Michael Jordan had with people in the media because honestly it will shed a lot of light on how Jordan actually operates.

Let’s never ever forget about Stephen A Smith, he’s the guy that was responsible for a lot of the Kwame Brown slander.

I hope Kwame throws this dude from the top floor of a tall building for this bullshit. Stephen A actually had the nerve to go on ESPN’s KJZ show with Keyshawn Johnson and tried to defend this bullshit.

Stuff like this is why I’ve never aspired to be part of the corporate world and when you work for ESPN, it’s not like working in other aspects of film and television where you might be on location in different places. The job is way more corporate, depending on the specific show in question.

The thing is that the corporate world is a great place for fake tough guys. You can say things and no matter how heated the confrontation is, or how egregious the insults are, they’re probably gonna get away with it because there are never any direct and immediate consequences. So man will mouth-off all day.

No one in the history of people wearing matching shoes, has benefitted more from fake, corporate, tough guy-ism than Stephen A Smith. This dude is a clown.

What I hate most about your veteran sport television analysts is that they claim to be real journalists that got it out the mud. However, look at the media culture they’ve created. They piss and moan about how people should pay their dues and yet they violate so many journalistic principles every time you turn around.

The boy Skip Bayless was exposed by a Cowboys beat reporter named Mike Fisher, for years worth of lies that helped him rise to the top.

Stuff like this is why I can’t stand the older generation.

Every one of these guys, outside of Kwame, should have kept their mouths shut.

End of story.

#nba #nba news #kwame brown #stephen jackson #matt barnes #stephen a smith #gilbert arenas

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talesofsadhuman · 4 years

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words left unsaid: social media au- get to know the characters!!

Reader- grad student (bio) but has to take an english class bc it is a req, and hates it bc she can’t write a paper to save her life. Maybe with a cute professor, she’ll actually try. Works in a lab under Alexander Pierce (he is her grad advisor/supervisor) and also teaches a human anatomy class. Lives with Wanda, Nat, and MJ; loves them to pieces. Likes to bake when stressed out and to destress. Super allergic to dogs and cats but still loves them. If this is how I go, THIS IS HOW I GO. Also, Harry Styles’ #1 fan. Don’t ask.

Nat- grad student (legal studies) why don’t you just got to law school? Because there’s more to this system than to just being a lawyer. does want to be judge just so she can have a gavel. Loves her housemates, esp reader bc she is a cinnamon roll. Has history w buck but they ended on good terms and likes to make him uncomfortable sometimes. Is not ready to settle down and dates a lot but don’t judge her. That’s her job.

Bucky- prof (English) likes books, not people. Is best friends with Steve and Sam although he acts like he loathes Sam. Writes on his spare time. Became a professor bc he didn’t know what else to do with an English degree but wants to do more. Lives with Steve. Has a cute lil cat that he takes with him to class. Not sure if students like him or his cat. Nerds out to Star Wars.

Steve- prof (biochemistry) wins trivia all the time bc he knows so much. Nerd. Best friends with Sam and Buck. Tolerates Tony. Loathes Clint. Voted hottest professor on campus by undergrad girls. Saw the poll. Voted for Bucky, Sam was pissed. He works in a lab near reader so they always see eachother. She goes to his lab one day asking for some material and they strike up a platonic friendship. Will sometimes not go home because he is stuck in his lab.

Tony- professor (electrical engineering and computer science) teaches notoriously difficult class and tortures students all year but passes all of them at the end. Babysitter of clown trio (Bucky, Sam, and Steve). Is happily married to Pepper Potts and has an adorable daughter, Morgan. He befriends undergrad sophomore, Peter, and they tinker with stuff together. Unofficially takes reader under his wing as he helps her create a code to make lab life easier.

Sam- prof (physics) also teaches one of the most difficult classes on campus but is great at teaching it, and is loved by students. Best friends with Steve and Bucky although he’s always fighting with Bucky. Believes he’s the cutest of clown trio and not not down for engaging in shenanigans. Lives with Clint but spends a lot of time at Steve and Bucky’s place. Always drags the boys to bars and events to get them to socialize. Is an enabler.

Wanda- grad student (behavioral psychology) got into psych bc she’s into serial killers. Oddly enough, so are many of her peers. Analyzes her friends’ behavior and calls them out. They love/hate her for it. She’s an instructor for an intro to psych class and also interns at a clinic. Got into behavioral psychology bc she wants to be a behavior analyst. Although she is p responsible, she is an enabler and seeks to provide her friends w cheap thrills

Peter- undergrad student (Computer Science) looks up to Tony and is a giant nerd. He befriend Tony and they tinker together. Volunteers at an animal shelter; sometimes fosters pups and cats. In love with MJ. Tags along with MJ and her house bc they love him. Is super smart and helps everyone around but sometimes, bc he is too good to others, he forgets to take care of himself. Which is where MJ comes and does so.

MJ- undergrad student (psychology) unlike Wanda, MJ is a serial killer. Jk. But reads into people and figures might as well put it to use. Read a lot. Like Wanda, analyzes her friend’s behavior and calls them out. Draws and designs for fun. Can’t go out for shenanigans w housemates bc she’s not of age but doesn’t mind it, she hangs out with peter and they watch movies. Looks up to all her housemates and loves them, esp since they took her in when her original housing fell through. Also, in love with Peter but denies it.

Clint-prof (pe) not actually a prof, more like a coach. Is a giant goof ball, loved by students and surprisingly, very good at yoga. Teaches 5 different courses: Yoga, Archery, Tennis, CrossFit, and swim. His classes are always filled with students who think he’s hot and he’s totally oblivious that they’re flirting with him, he just thinks they’re being nice to him. Total gym bro but still great. Spends a lot of time adventuring but hangs out with the guys as well.

#marvel au #bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #bucky au #bucky #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes x reader #steve rogers #natasha romanov #wanda maximoff #clint barton #tony stark #sam wilson #social media au #michelle jones #peter parker #words left unsaid #bucky social media au

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canchewread · 3 years

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Author’s note: as an independent, anarcho-syndicalist analyst who currently doesn’t even have a Twitter account, my ability to do the work I do online hinges on word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations; if you like this article, please share a link to it someplace else on social media.

The Trump Suspensions, Big Tech and Section 230

If the truth is to be told, I've spent the better part of the past week and a half trying to put Trump and his coup attempt behind me; with a hyper-capitalist Biden administration on tap, and already trafficking in austerity mythology and neoliberal authoritarianism, my internal analyst's relevancy clock is ticking like a time bomb. Furthermore, I believe that the fallout from the actual chud insurrection on January 6th, has finally rendered Trump himself an impotent, and increasingly less relevant, figure in what I have repeatedly predicted will be an ongoing American fascist movement. Finally of course, after five years of writing “yes, this guy is literally a fascist” over and over, I've grown extremely weary of arguing about what fascism is, and isn't, with contrarian left types who don't realize they're still operating under the hypnotic spell of American exceptionalism.

Unsurprisingly however, the news itself hasn't really given a damn what I'd rather be analyzing, and the fallout from the chud riot in D.C., has utterly dominated the coverage and discourse; creating infuriating and irresponsible narratives about what is ultimately a clear cut act of politicized violence by far right, fascist extremists. Recently, I've been offering a lot of push-back on narratives popular among the more reactionary elements of the online “left,” but today I'd like to turn our attention to a popular “neoliberal” (but not necessarily Democratic Party) narrative being pushed by elite capital, and the cluster of companies we collectively know as Big Tech. Namely, the idea that in the wake of the coup attempt, billion dollar social media companies should be lauded for finally suspending the accounts of Donald Trump and thousands of his fascist cronies, on their various services.

Now, don't get me wrong here; this isn't going to be a rant about censorship, and I personally think it's an unquestionably good thing that Trump (and fascist organizers) have been driven off social media, but something smells like rotting fish in all this, and I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that greedy, crypto-reactionary Tech Bros running billion dollar social media companies, are at the heart of it. To understand my problem here however, the first thing we have to ask is “why was Trump suspended from social media?”

Obviously each of the various social media companies have released statements about their decisions, but we're not really here to waste our time dissecting what amounts to public relations and propaganda. On an extremely basic level, most people understand that Trump's accounts were suspended for using election fraud conspiracy theories to ultimately incite fascist violence, and inspire a chud insurrection that left five people dead. Reduced to its essence, this then leaves us with three major “justifications” for the Trump suspensions; spreading dangerous conspiracy theories, inciting an insurrection, and inspiring (lethal) violence – all very good reasons to suspend someone's Twitter or Facebook account, wouldn't you say?

Unfortunately for guys like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey however, there are in fact some obvious problems with this narrative no matter which angle you choose to approach it from; let's start with the fact that Trump's social media feeds have been creating dead bodies and inspiring reactionary violence for years. It is no great secret that racialized violence and hate crimes have risen drastically in America (and the larger Pig Empire) since Trump launched his first election campaign with an explicitly fascist speech about Mexicans and migrants. What is far less often discussed however, even on ostensibly “liberal” news networks, is the ways in which Trump (and his tweets) have already directly inspired violence and murder in America and even abroad:

In addition to the surging national hate crime figures, a May 2020 investigation turned up at least “54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.” As ABC notes, “the cases are remarkable in that a link to the president is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt. These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases identified by ABC News, it was perpetrators themselves who invoked the president in connection with their case, not anyone else.”

At least three different mass shooters (Pittsburgh, El Paso, Christchurch New Zealand) can convincingly be said to be have been inspired by Trump, or Trump’s rhetoric in some direct and observable way. Their total body count is eighty-four dead people who would likely still be breathing today, if Donald Trump had never logged on to social media or been given a platform to spread hatred and fascist ideology.

All of this is of course to say nothing of Trump’s peripheral involvement with and support for other groups responsible for right wing violence, like the Q-Anon conspiracy movement, or the neo-Nazi rioters who tore up Charlottesville and murdered Heather Heyer.

Naturally then, the obvious question becomes, if Trump was suspended for inciting deadly violence on January 6th in D.C., why wasn't he suspended for doing exactly the same thing before now? Hell, I'll do you one better; if Trump is suspended for inciting reactionary violence and murder, then why aren't guys like fascist provocateur Andy Ngo, and Wilks Brothers muppet Ben Shapiro (who himself has inspired an international body count) also suspended? Right, it simply doesn't track, and therefore we can conclude that Trump's social media suspensions really didn't have anything to do with inciting violence.

Alright, so be it, maybe you personally agree that “inspiring deadly violence and hate crimes” is somehow a loose reason to suspend a guy's social media accounts, whether he's president or not. Maybe, you figure that where Trump really crossed the line was purposely inciting a goddamn insurrection, and you're happy that Big Tech corporations understand the fine line between fascist murders and fascist terrorism. Unfortunately, that narrative doesn't track either because this isn't the first time Trump has tried to inspire an insurrection on Twitter; please recall the partially-AstroTurfed “Anti-Lockdown protests” in the spring, and in particular Trump's attempts to inspire an uprising in my home state of Michigan. Do you remember the “Liberate Michigan” tweet? The armed fascist militias occupying the Michigan legislature? The chud plot to kidnap and perhaps kill, the Governor of Michigan? Would it surprise you to learn that many of the same people who participated in those prior chud protests were part of the crowd that stormed Capitol Hill on January 6th? Is Jack Dorsey really arguing that Trump's insurrectionist tweets in the spring were fine, but his insurrectionist tweets in January are not because... more people saw the later on TV? Say what?

All of which of course brings us to the somewhat nebulous, “dangerous conspiracy theories” portion of the rationale for suspending Trump now, in the wake of the chud uprising. It's not much of a leg to stand on either however, because not only has Trump been pushing election fraud conspiracy theories for the past freaking year, but that isn't even the most dangerous and deadly example of his false reality narrative causing carnage in our society. You can take your pick, but I'd wager that both the Q-Anon conspiracy movement Trump has openly supported on social media, and the unhinged coronavirus conspiracies he propagated online for months and months, have much higher body counts than anything we saw on Capitol Hill. Why should anyone believe Big Tech companies care about conspiracy theories and how many people they kill, given their prior behavior up to this point? Please keep in mind that these are the same companies that decided not to suspend Trump's accounts when he was using them to threaten North Korea with annihilation; an act that could have easily lead to a catastrophic nuclear exchange if Kim Jong Un were half as un-moored from reality as our CIA-loyal media likes to imply.

Given all that then, what is the real reason behind suspending Trump's social media accounts? Again, it’s not that I'm concerned that a flatulent billionaire fascist manbaby lost some of his favorite outlets to spread fascist conspiracy theories, but why now, and not then?

To understand that, we're going to have to take a little bit of a detour here and talk about Section 230. What is Section 230? A portion of the American law that governs the internet, which ultimately indemnifies social media companies from legal liability for the crap other people post on their platforms. Without Section 230, victims of fascist violence organized on Facebook, could conceivably sue the pants off Big Tech companies for allowing that to happen. This is of course an existential crisis to gigantic tech firms that rely heavily on wildly unpredictable algorithms and automated processes to avoid having to hire moderators and actually keep an eye on what users are doing with their platforms. Furthermore, in the lead up to the 2020 election, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump talked about repealing Section 230, for (and this is key here) entirely different reasons.

Trump and his numerous allies in the Republican Party spent much of 2020 using the threat of repealing Section 230 as a cudgel against social media companies taking even mild action to combat these same dangerous conspiracy theories, and the spread of fascist ideology online. The GOP argument, disingenuously presented as a defense of free speech, was then that if Big Tech didn't let the fascists say whatever they wanted, regardless of its veracity or the potential consequences, they would open up companies like Twitter and Facebook to American libel laws. Of course, that's pretty laughable if we're talking about someone like Laura Loomer suing Twitter over her account being suspended, but Big Tech companies only have to look as far as Peter Theil's ultimately successful quest to destroy Gawker to realize it only takes one reactionary judge in a high enough chair, to sink their battleships entirely. Obviously then, you don't really need to be a genius to figure out Big Tech companies weren't excited about the idea of suspending Trump or his followers, because that would presumably result in an all-out assault on Section 230 from the sitting President of the United States and his (still quite influential) political party.

Ok, so great news for the Tech Bros right? Biden won after all, and barring a chud uprising on a scale not even I think they're capable of, he's about to become POTUS. Not so fast, because Biden and the so-called “centrist” neoliberal establishment in the Democratic Party are also threatening to repeal Section 230 for their own political advantage. The neoliberals too are disingenuously hiding their motives, this time behind a desire to combat hate speech and disinformation; truly noble goals, but obviously utterly irrelevant to rich white liberals who've spent the past five years conflating both Russian spies, and murderous fascist thugs, with leftists who want healthcare. Truthfully, this entire maneuver ultimately represents a ruling class, liberal elite attempt to arbitrate what is and isn't considered true, or newsworthy in the public discourse; a quest they've been furiously working on since the first Bernie Sanders political insurgency threatened to topple Democratic Party leadership, and naturally, throughout the bogus Russigate fever dream that dominated the first two years of Trump's presidency. Of course, even after Biden won the election, there really wasn't much reason for Big Tech companies to take this threat seriously; clearly the Republican Senate wasn't going to allow elite liberal censors to use a potential Section 230 repeal to dictate who can say what online, right?

Yeah, about that Republican Senate majority though; whoops. What if I told you then that the decision to suspend Trump's social media accounts sooner or later, was largely a forgone conclusion after the events of January 5th, not January 6th, 2021? What happened on January 5th? Joe Biden and the Democratic Party swept the Georgia special elections, effectively taking control of the American Senate, and putting folks like Zuck and Dorsey squarely in Biden's line of fire going forward.

Thus it can be said that the answer to both of our questions, “why wasn't Trump suspended before,” and “why is Trump suspended now” ultimately come down to who wields power in our society and our old nemesis, the profit motive. Companies like Twitter and Facebook don't really give a damn about disinformation, conspiracy theories or even Tweets that rack up their own body counts; what they care about is maintaining the warm embrace of legal impunity their business model depends on, and they'll do anything, to appease anyone with the power to remove that embrace, if they think it'll keep the gravy train going. Big Tech isn't fighting fascism, it's fighting oversight and the tyranny of having to pay live human moderators; there's nothing noble or praiseworthy about that, even if I'm still forced to admit that the censored neoliberal authoritarian alternative would be no better, and might be quite a damn sight worse.

Come meet the new boss; same as the old boss, indeed.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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thebachelordiaries · 6 years

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Jocks And Finance Bros: Bachelorette First Impressions

Becca, I hope you like jocks and finance bros.

If not, you’re shit out of luck.

Becca dates one athlete and they beat that one dating preference of her’s to death by casting 18 or so former athletes. Kind of like how they beat “Let’s Do The Damn Thing” tagline to death.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

A letter to the men on this season of The Bachelorette:

Do you think you deserve this goddess of a woman, Becca Kufrin? You probably don’t. You probably think too highly of yourself to know this.

Maybe two of you will be good enough for her. Five of you may turn out to be decent people, but that’s me being generous. If it’s anything like JoJo’s season, we will have just one or two decent men. ABC producers, please don’t let me down. Oh wait, you already did with the super-short bios.

This season we have 25 28 men vying for Becca’s heart, or at least a blue checkmark on their Instagram page. At least one of you will get fake engaged on Paradise and six of you will move from middle-of-nowhere USA to Los Angeles and move back home within a year. I’m not sure which guys will do that yet, but it’s always fun to guess!

Anyway, good luck with your 15 minutes of fame!

Signed,

The Bachelor Diaries.

WTF: No Q&A?

ABC did not include the usual Q&A in this year’s cast bios. I’m so offended. How will I truly understand these men if I don’t know what kind of fruit they’d be or what kind of superpower they’d want?

I would boycott this season because of this, but I have literally nothing better to do on Monday nights, or any night for that matter. I’m still going to try my best to roast these men, of course. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Despite no Q&A’s, I will still form my own opinions on these guys. I, like Kanye West, am a free thinker. Go poopidy-scoop yourself, ABC.

Ok, now let’s get to know these men:

Alex, 31, Construction Manager

Alex is the male equivalent of the basic white girl. He likes country music, his dog, the beach and skiing. He probably has “Let’s go on a hike together!” on his Bumble profile and regularly wears a Patagonia dad hat.

Blake, 28, Sales Rep

We already met horse boy Blake on After The Final Rose. He either played baseball or football in college. Thanks for being so concise, ABC. However, he looks like a baseball player to me. While originally from a small town in Colorado, he definitley lives in LA now. He also believes “two people need to be independent in order to truly love each other” so I think that means he’s into open relationships and or will cheat on you.

Chase, 27, Advertising VP

Chase, unlike Blake, was definitley a college baseball player who was apparently good enough to be in the College Wold Series but evidently not good enough to go pro— at least longterm. We also met Chase on ATFR and I don’t remember much about him. He likes “adventure” and the “outdoors” so he’s quite the special snowflake.

Chris, 30, Sales Trainer

What even is a sales trainer? Chris hopes to retire by 40. In this economy? Good luck with that. He is passionate about “fitness” and “health” which is so unique and different. I feel like I really got to know him through that piece of information.

Christian, 28, Banker

Christian is a former semi-pro soccer player who moved to the US from Mexico when he was three. I feel like his picture makes him look like he has a little head, but other than that he seems alright.

Christon, 31, Former Harlem Globetrotter/ Professional Dunker

I spent a good 30 seconds wondering why two guys with the same name didn’t have their last name initials included in their bios. It took another 30 seconds to notice that Christon was spelled differently than Christian. So this dude is a professional dunker in LA. My first thought is that he’d have a pretty good intro video package for The Bachelorette. Anyone want to put money down that he gets one?

Clay, 30, Pro Football Player

Clay was on his way to the poetry slam but somehow got lost and ended up on the Bachelorette. He allegedly doesn’t curse but is a fan of hip-hop music. I think he is the “famous” football player who was in talks to be on this season. Apparently I should care. Never heard of him.

Colton, 26, Former Pro Football Player

“Hi, my name is Colt and welcome to my Youtube Channel!” That’s the vibe I’m getting from this picture. I’m also getting Blake Griffin vibes. He just looks strangely tan here. Colton may have a job at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I’m curious to know if he has a story as to WHY he is involved with CF. He also lives in Denver and has a dog named Sniper, which is awkward because the neighboring city of Boulder just banned assault weapons.

EDIT: He was the guy who asked out Aly Raisman via public video and they briefly dated. I shipped them so hard. I AM SHOOKETH.

Connor, 25, Fitness Coach

I feel like I’m going to be sick if I hear one more guy talk about how they were “almost” a professional athlete and how much they lo0o0o0ove working out. I’m sadly only at the beginning of this cast list. Someone pray for me. And someone pray that Connor’s eyebrows grow back after that terrible wax job.

Darius, 26, Pharmaceutical Sales Rep

Darius works for big pharma yet claims to be dedicating his life to helping others. Err, okay. He likes to dance and travels a lot so my guess is he’s probably not ready to settle down at age 26 despite his 36-year-old hairline.

David, 25, Venture Capitalist

David looks like every finance bro who lives in West Village and only dates 22-year-old Instagram models. The only difference is that he lives in Denver instead of Manhattan, which by society’s standards makes him more wholesome. He also loves guacamole, but dislikes avocado, which roughly translates to: I don’t cook and eat Chipotle for dinner every night.

Grant, 27, Electrician

The only way Grant is making it past night one is if he shows up fully dressed as a member of the Village People or as Bob The Builder. If not, he has no chance.

Garrett, 29, Medical Sales Rep

Pro tip to ABC: The letter A comes before the letter R in the alphabet. These names are out of order.

Anyway, Garret reminds me of Ben Afleck in that his face just makes me want to punch him..in the face. Besides the fact that he also works for big pharma, he actually has outdoor hobbies besides “I enjoy fresh air and walking in the woods” like fly fishing and showshoeing. I’m hoping he isn’t a giant jerk because I kind of like him.

Jake, 29, Marketing Consultant

I thought his name was “Joke” at first because I am a terrible person. I think Joke...I mean Jake...is from the same city as Becca. (I’m assuming Minnesota only has one city) I feel like all hot people in cities have this inner-circle where they know of each other, so maybe they’ve crossed paths before.

Jason, 29, Sr. Corporate Banker

Andrew Keegan? I love your work. “Jason” likes sports and singing along to Disney movies. He contains multitudes.

Jean Blanc, 31, Colognoisseur

I love that ABC took a smart, educated, immigrant with a successful job and gave him a fake occupation on television. Jean Blanc is a cologne connoisseur. I feel like he would smell good. 10/10 would smell him.

Joe, 31, Grocery Store Owner

I feel like a lot of these bios are the equivalent to what it’s like to drive in an Uber. The driver is always explaining to you how successful they are and where they traveled as a way to prove they aren’t some loser driving you around. Joe’s bio screams “Yeah I own a grocery store but also worked in finance before I burnt myself out, so don’t judge me.” Nobody was judging you, but now I am.

John, 28, Software Engineer

John hopes to be the first Asian male to make it out of night one on The Bachelorette. I can already tell he’s better than most of these guys: he works at a start-up in Silicon Valley, likes wine, plays guitar and bakes banana bread. He deserves a rose, dammit!

Jordan, 26, Male Model

Robert Mills, who is like an important ABC guy or something, called Jordan the “greatest Bachelorette contestant of all time.” Clearly he’s trying to make us forget about Chad. Good luck with that, Robert. Definitley not happening.

So Jordan is probably this season’s villain. Whatever, I don’t care. I DO care, however, that his bio is bragging about a mediocre 4:24 mile time and “sprinting to the finish line.” The time was written as “4.24″ by ABC and a comma is also missing from that sentence. ABC, let me know if you want to hire me as an editor. Back to the mile comment: A mile is an endurance mid-distance race. Nobody is technically sprinting in it, unless it’s a tactical race. Puns don’t work if they’re factually incorrect.

Kamil, 30, Social Media Participant

Kamil works in real estate and is a part-time model, but ABC decided to call him a “social media participant.” He’s originally from Poland but lives in Upstate New York, which is evident based on the fact he’s wearing a denim button-up shirt.

Leo, 31, Stuntman

It’s crazy how fast Alex Bordy grew his hair in a year. “Not Alex Bordy” is a stuntman in LA, which I heard is a pretty sick job. I am personally a fan of his hair. He knows how to tame those curls and probably rocks a great man bun. I would love to know what products he uses.

Lincoln, 26, Account Executive

Lincoln has a lot of things going on in his bio. He moved to Boston from Nigeria as a teenager, went to college in Kentucky and moved to Santa Monica for work. We met him on ATFR and he was super nervous, cute and had an accent to make most girls swoon. I’d say make him The Bachelor but 26 is too young in my opinion.

Mike, 27, Sports Analyst

How come every Ohio sports fan names their dog Riggins? Based on his hair, I’m assuming Mike is a radio sports analyst. That hair on television? No thank you. Hopefully Leo can give him some tips to make his hair look decent. Did you know: Becca’s psycho ex Ross used to have long hair? It was not cute. But I don’t think Becca is going to send the long-haired guys home immediately a la the notoriously shallow Andi Dorfman.

Nick, 27, Attorney

I’m excited for Nick to be on the show because I know him by association. Let me explain: A friend of mine went to school with one of his friends and periodically stalks her social media. The friend is a girl, so I think he’s friends with mostly girls, which may explain why he loves to “brunch.” He looks terrible in this photo. Nick gives me polished, sexually ambiguous vibes based on how he appears on Insta. I also knew he was going to be on the show before R*ality St*ve, which made me feel powerful. It was a rush.

Rickey, 27, IT Consultant

I know of Rickey too. He was a Bodybuilding.com Spokesmodel Search finalist in 2017. Hashtag #rightreasons. I’m not sure how “online personal trainer” translates to IT consultant, but ok. Side note: I don’t think bodybuilders look good in suits so he might go home night one.

Ryan, 26, Banjoist

Before the “Yanny or Laurel” debate there was the “Ryan or Brian” debate on After The Final Rose. Evidently the answer is Ryan. He’s the new Wells and I could not be more excited to watch this babe on my television screen. He plays at least four instruments and loves to sail. He also screams “family money” but it’s ok, we can mooch off his parents together.

Trent, 28, Realtor

Can you imagine having a child and naming it Trent? This guy never had a chance. He is a realtor and a part-time model (I swear I wrote the same thing a few contestants up) and has appeared on covers of romance novels, but I certainly wouldn’t call him the next Fabio.

Wills, 29, Graphic Designer

Wills is a graphic designer who loves Harry Potter. I see no problem here. Except for maybe his porno-stache.

Prediction corner:

Welcome to the prediction corner where I never get anything right. Oh, you know what happens because you read spoilers? Please keep that information to yourself. I like to find out what happens on my own.

Without further ado, here are my baseless predictions:

First Impression Rose: The guys who got the First Impression Rose on the last three seasons became engaged to The Bachelorette. If that happens this year I demand a scientific case study to explain the power of first impressions on women. Anyway, I think Ryan gets it.

Season Villain: Jordan (that was easy)

Next Bachelor: Blake (don’t ask me why)

Winner: Garrett (I like him)

Comment below to let me know your early favorites!

#The Bachelorette #Becca Kufrin #abc #Arie Luyendyk #chris harrison #photo credit ABC

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preciousmetals0 · 4 years

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6.6 Million Job Cuts; Luckin Nuts; Zoom’s a Klutz

6.6 Million Job Cuts; Luckin Nuts; Zoom’s a Klutz:

Thanks, I Hate Record-Setting Years

Anyone else tired of records?

I’m not talking about vinyl. My vinyl collection is one of the few things keeping me sane during this quarantine (The White Album, Led Zeppelin IV, Ziggy Stardust, Dark Side of the Moon, Facelift, Paul’s Boutique, World Domination … it gets more eccentric as the list goes on).

No, I’m talking about economic records. We set quite a few of those lately … and not in a good way.

Today, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that a record 6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week. Furthermore, the previous week’s record was revised higher to 3.34 million unemployment claims.

Another record: The two-week total for U.S. unemployment claims comes to just shy of 10 million.

Less than a month ago, claims trickled in at their slowest pace in 50 years. Now this…

Tomorrow, we’ll get an initial look at the official U.S. employment numbers. But the March jobs report won’t show the worst of what’s going on. Economists predict that the U.S. shed 100,000 jobs last month — a bit higher than the ADP figures released on Wednesday, but far from the figures that weekly jobless claims show.

What that means is this: Wall Street has another month to stew in anticipation until we finally get real, hard data on COVID-19’s impact on the U.S. economy. On that front, economists project that the April report will show losses of 10 million jobs or more, with the unemployment rate spiking above 10%.

The Takeaway:

Yesterday, I called the market’s recent rally a head fake. I stand by that statement.

There’s a tenet in sentiment investing that says something like: When the market rallies in the face of overwhelming negativity, that’s a good thing.

You’ve heard the saying “climbing a wall of worry?” That’s what we’re talking about here … or are we?

You see, to truly climb a “wall of worry” investors need to know all the facts. All of the negativity and downside risks need to be priced into the market … into stock prices.

Right now, they aren’t. We don’t know the full extent of COVID-19’s impact on the U.S. economy — or any other economy for that matter.

And yet, the market rallied today in the face of 6.6 million jobless claims and the prospect of 10% unemployment. Wall Street acts as if we already saw the worst that COVID-19 can throw at us … as if Wall Street has all the facts.

Truth be told, if all the facts were known, this would be the time to buy.

But we’re still in the dark regarding a broad swath of the U.S. and global economies.

What I’m trying to say is that, unless you’re a day trader or a speculator, this relief rally is a sucker play. Stocks will fall further as more economic data is reported. We haven’t seen the worst and it will have a negative impact on the market as a whole.

Now is the time to keep your powder dry, hold until you see the whites of their eyes, sit on the sidelines or whatever idiom you prefer. A golden time for investors will come when this is all over, and you don’t want to jump the gun and miss out on real opportunities when they finally arise.

This too shall pass, and Great Stuff readers will be prepared to take full advantage of the new, post-COVID-19 market when it arrives.

Going: Let’s Make a Deal

If you’ve speculated on energy stocks lately, today was your day to make bank!

Behind door No. 3, we have President Trump tweeting the possibility of a truce between Saudi Arabia and Russia:

Just spoke to my friend MBS (Crown Prince) of Saudi Arabia, who spoke with President Putin of Russia, & I expect & hope that they will be cutting back approximately 10 Million Barrels, and maybe substantially more which, if it happens, will be GREAT for the oil & gas industry!

That was all it took to send oil prices soaring 20%. Sector leader ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) jumped 8%, while Royal Dutch Shell PLC (OTC: RYDAF) spiked more than 12%.

The bottom line for the energy market is that someone in the industry needs to do something. We’re quickly running out of places to put the oil we’re producing, leading some analysts to project negative prices for “black gold.”

As with the rest of the market, don’t let this 20% spike lure you in.

Going: “Zoombombing”

From COVID-19 darling investment to pariah in two days? Sound impossible?

Not if you’re Zoom Video Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: ZM). The videoconferencing upstart saw a wellspring of users flooding to its platform amid the coronavirus quarantine. Today, the company announced that daily active users skyrocketed to more than 200 million from just 10 million in December.

That’s a truly massive increase in customers, and it’s one that ZM investors would typically cheer. “Would” is the keyword here. In the past week, Zoom:

However, as seen with Facebook, the general public tends to shake these things off rather quickly — if they’re even aware in the first place.

Additionally, Zoom took measures to quickly address these concerns. It stopped sharing data with Facebook, started work on a patch for Mac security and issued guidelines on how to avoid “zoombombing.”

The bottom line for investors here is that Zoom is quickly becoming the next verb for videoconferencing, just as “Skype me, bro!” was before it.

If the company can overcome these latest privacy issues, Zoom has massive potential. It could become the de facto solution in videoconferencing, which should last long after the quarantines are over.

Gone: Luckin Nuts

Misconduct? Fabricating transactions?

Someone’s had a bit too much caffeine. Luckin Coffee Inc. (Nasdaq: LK) is in hot water today, after it announced that it began to investigate “misconduct, including fabricating certain transactions” carried out in fiscal 2019.

The company appointed a special committee of independent directors, suspending Chief Operating Officer Jian Liu along with other staff implicated in the misconduct. In a statement, Luckin said:

As a result, investors should no longer rely upon the Company’s previous financial statements and earning releases for the nine months ended September 30, 2019 and the two quarters starting April 1, 2019 and ended September 30, 2019, including the prior guidance on net revenues from products for the fourth quarter of 2019, and other communications relating to these consolidated financial statements.

That’s not just crazy, that’s Luckin nuts. You can basically throw out all of last year’s financial statements, earnings and guidance for the Chinese bean water boiler.

Combine this with the Chinese coronavirus quarantines, and it’s no wonder why LK stock is down more than 82% from its January peak. Bargain hunters beware, LK should eventually rebound, but there could be more downside in store before all this is over.

In this ever-changing world of kooky coffee conspiracies, there’s one thing I can always look forward to: your emails!

You Marco, I Polo … it’s Reader Feedback time again.

The Long Run

No rescue bill is goin to save America and its people unless and until the U.S lockdown for at least a month just like its friend India. America just needs to stop all commercial activities. its offices, malls, shopping centers and trading makers.

[…]

This is a long term investment that U.S needs to invest in right now … Just think beyond markets. Be human. Market was not there before you and will not be after you. Only thing that matters is us as a species. We can still act before it’s too late and give a better future and markets to our future generations.

— Abhinav D.

Abhinav, well said! Forgive me for keeping your email brief here, but I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Just last week, Great Stuff remarked that you can pass a spending bill worth however much you want — keeping some oil on the economy’s spinning gears — but that won’t rehire the 6.6 million people who are now jobless.

That said, the people who most need to hear your point won’t think they’re the problem. I tell you, the stubbornness that stay-at-home orders have inflamed in some people … why, it’s like an old man trying to return soup at a deli.

Short and Sweet

— Dairold W.

I see your point, and raise you this: 42.

Buy inverse ETFs.

— Louis L.

I must give due diligence where due diligence is due. You, sir, are cleary a tried-and-true Great Stuff reader! Why, we recommended an inverse exchange-traded fund (ETF) — the ProShares Short S&P 500 (NYSE: SH) — back on March 16. Kudos to you, Louis…

It’s a veritable hootenanny (that’s a technical term … in Kentucky, at least) of risk tolerance in these markets, and I should’ve known some Great Stuff readers are eager to bear the storm.

From early responders in yesterday’s Poll of the Week, roughly a quarter of you are picking gems from dirt in the beaten-down energy sector, with another 11.5% braving the biotech boom. (If any actual COVID-19 relief comes from the dozens of these biotech stocks turned overnight vaccine experts … some of you will have a field day!)

Yet, by and large, nearly half of you are bargain hunting in emerging tech trends. From 5G to the Internet of Things, I can’t blame your enthusiasm — trust me, faster connections can’t reach my neck of the woods soon enough!

Now, if long-term, high-growth tech trends are your thing, Ian King’s research in Automatic Fortunes could be perfect for you. Not only does Ian find the right tipping-point trends that should outlive the virus shenanigans, but he also pinpoints each trend’s standout leader.

It’s that simple and the 5G explosion is no different.

Click here to learn more about Ian King’s tech research!

Have you written in yet? What’s stopping you? Drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know how you’re doing out there in this crazy market.

That’s a wrap for today. But if you’re still craving more Great Stuff, you can check us out on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

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actutrends · 4 years

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The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn’s Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy

Misty Keasler for POLITICO Magazine

Keith Kloor is an author in New york city and adjunct professor of journalism at New york city University.

The three-day conference in November 2018 was called “Operation Classified” and promised guests they would “come away with an extensive understanding of the Deep State.” Included speakers, gathered at a Hilton hotel in a Dallas suburban area, consisted of militia leaders, anti-vaxxers, a UFO activist, along with a former federal prosecutor called Sidney Powell, who provided a somber, noteless recitation in a homey Southern accent.

Powell was there as a leading proponent, on cable news and in op-eds, of a conspiratorial narrative advanced by the far best: that unique counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia examination was part of a plot by the intelligence community to force President Donald Trump from workplace. “This goes so deep and so wide, it is astounding,” Powell said with a heavy sigh throughout her 40- minute speech.

In the audience was Joseph Flynn, sibling of Michael Flynn– the retired three-star lieutenant general who had actually served quickly as Trump’s very first nationwide security advisor prior to accepting cooperate with the Mueller probe and pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his discussions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. The conference, in reality, belonged to a fundraising event for Flynn’s legal defense fund, of which Joseph is a trustee, in addition to his sister Barbara Redgate. For more than a year, Michael Flynn had actually been defended by Covington & Burling, the effective white-shoe law firm, but his brother or sisters thought their bro’s guilty plea was “a choice made in haste,” as Joseph put it to me. They wished to combat, not give up. Michael Flynn did too, according to Joseph: “He never ever felt he was guilty. He never felt he devoted any criminal offenses. We only pled guilty since he had shitty legal counsel on this.” (Covington & Burling decreased to comment.)

At the Dallas conference, Joseph Flynn introduced himself to Powell, who already understood his sibling. The two spoke at length over coffee, finding that they saw Michael Flynn’s case the very same way, they both told POLITICO Publication. Powell thought that Flynn, like Trump, was a victim of a supposed deep state plot, which he had actually pleaded guilty just because he was persuaded by overzealous district attorneys. “She was very much in tune with General Mike’s case,” Redgate informed me. “Sidney,” Joseph says, “is a fighter”– which he says he emphasized to his sibling.

7 months later– after Powell had actually publicly exhorted Michael Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea and think about finding another legal representative– Flynn fired his group at Covington & Burling and worked with Powell as his lead attorney. It was a striking turnabout: Flynn went from appearing to take the high roadway, by cooperating with the Mueller investigation, to seeking legal counsel from a Fox News pundit who believed Mueller was the criminal and Flynn the victim.

While Trump applauded the brand-new hire on Twitter, calling Powell a “EXCELLENT ATTORNEY,” legal observers scratched their heads. Powell, who remains in her 60 s (she would not validate her exact age), had shared content from social media accounts related to QAnon, the comprehensive conspiracy movement holding in part that Trump is doing battle with demonic, pedophile-loving Democrats and members of the deep state. The timing was likewise odd. Flynn’s sentencing had been postponed at that point since of procedural problems, but it was anticipated soon. And Mueller had suggested that Flynn receive no prison time because of the “considerable assistance” he supplied in the special counsel investigation. (Flynn, under Powell’s advisement, is not speaking to the media.)

It was clear quickly enough that Powell was taking a different tack. The government countered that it had actually already relinquished any relevant product and that Powell was advancing “conspiracy theories” to fish for evidence that did not exist.

When I met Powell in Manhattan early last month, I asked if she was worried the brand-new aggressive legal technique may backfire; Flynn had actually already declared his guilty plea a year ago in a testy hearing prior to Sullivan, who is respected as a fair-minded, no-nonsense jurist. Powell was feeling bullish.

” I do not know how, but I can read the way these particular government attorneys say things to understand that they are lying and concealing things,” she discussed, describing the prosecutors in the Flynn case. “And I called soon as I began hearing and seeing what was going on with General Flynn that he had been established.” (The lead district attorney in the Flynn case did not react to ask for comment for this short article.)

Truth struck numerous days after our breakfast, when Sullivan unequivocally declined Powell’s requests for additional government files and for the case to be dismissed. Soon afterward, federal government district attorneys advised that Flynn get up to 6 months in jail– a reversal of the earlier recommendation that he not be jailed. “Perhaps Hiring Sidney Powell Was a Substantial, Monstrous Error for Michael Flynn,” one headline suggested

This week, Flynn formally sought to withdraw his guilty plea “due to the fact that of the federal government’s bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of the plea contract,” as Powell wrote in a court brief

That Powell was apparently blind to this likely outcome talks to her full welcome of the Trumpian values of complaint and “alternative facts.” Which wasn’t always her M.O.: A federal prosecutor herself for a decade, Powell turned on her own ilk and spent years making a forceful case versus prosecutorial overreach– a legitimate concern. It was when her cause pertained to line up with Trump’s and Flynn’s plight as targets of Mueller’s probe that she worked her method into a deep state-hating, MAGA-loving network that landed her a high-profile client.

While a technique of denial and assaulting the enemy might have worked for Trump during the Mueller investigation (and may yet work for him in his impeachment trial), Michael Flynn is not the president. If her client ends up in jail, it might be because of the Trumpian method Sidney Powell embraced.

” Crackpot conspiracy theories get simple traction on the web,” states John Schindler, a former NSA analyst who has been crucial of Flynn, however likewise of Hillary Clinton and the FBI “They’re less most likely to do well in federal court.”

Sidney Powell’s story, up to a point, is the really design of a high-achieving legal representative.

She knew from an early age what she wished to finish with her life. “My mother said I utilized to come house from kindergarten and watch ‘Perry Mason,'” remembers Powell, who grew up in a tight-knit working-class household in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was 19 when, in 1974, she was accepted into law school at the University of North Carolina, after rushing through her B.A. at UNC. “I was on student loans,” Powell describes. “My household couldn’t manage to help. … I understood what I wished to do. I didn’t see any reason in stringing it out.”

Powell’s friends describe her as smart, brave and extremely driven. At the outset of her profession, in the late 1970 s and early 1980 s she worked as a federal district attorney in the Western District of Texas, along the border, which back then “was on the front lines of the drug wars,” says Carl Pierce, her associate at the time, who directed a special drug trafficking system. It was a harrowing period, he states: “They were trying to kill our witnesses, assassinate our district attorneys.” A judge in one of Pierce’s cases was killed six weeks after Powell got here on the task. According to Pierce, there were times when the government lawyers needed to wear bulletproof vests and be accompanied by federal marshals. “I was trying these [drug] cases, and Sidney was keeping them convicted on appeal,” Pierce states. “She’s an excellent appellate lawyer.”

After approximately 10 years with the Justice Department, Powell struck out on her own as a federal appellate legal representative. As she would later on boast in a 2015 talk, “Individuals generally call me when the ox is kind of deep in the ditch,” and needs a method out.

A turning point for Powell came in the 2000 s when she spent almost a decade representing executives captured up in the Enron scandal, in which the chief executives of the Texas-based energy business were founded guilty for monetary fraud. Some of the government’s Enron-related cases, consisting of 2 of Powell’s, were ultimately overturned by greater courts for various legal reasons. Whether federal government prosecutors involved in Enron-related cases were just being aggressive or had actually abused their power refers debate. Powell, for her part, left from the experience thinking the prosecutors had bent the law to unfairly prosecute her customers and were never ever held to account for their actions. She ended up being convinced that “prosecutorial misconduct,” in the kind of suppression of evidence beneficial to the defense, was a prevalent problem in the judicial system.

In 2014, she set out her case in a self-published book, Accredited to Lie, which, as Powell puts it on her site, “exposes the strong-arm, illegal, and dishonest tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their conceited pursuit of power to the greatest halls of our federal government.” Powell says she composed the book “since I could not get the system to work.” (When expert legal associations would not act upon her ethics complaints against the district attorneys, Powell states, she thought about quitting law entirely.) In his foreword to the book, Alex Kozinski, an influential federal judge who retired suddenly in 2017, after several allegations of sexual harassment, heaped appreciation on Powell however stopped short of endorsing her sweeping claims. Still, he wrote, Certified to Lie “ought to serve as the start of a severe conversation about whether our criminal justice system continues to measure up to its vaunted track record.”

That didn’t exactly happen. For numerous years after it was released, Powell and the book were mainly disregarded, which exasperated her. Powell believes the media, even on the right, made “a considerable effort to kill this book with silence,” as she put it in a 2015 talk The conspiracy seemingly reached Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which, she claimed, made her book challenging to purchase. “I in fact thought we had liberty of press up until I wrote the book,” she said in her talk at “Operation Classified.” (While reporting this short article, I purchased a copy at my local Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn.)

Powell says she does not care for politics, and there might have been some reality to this at one point: As the 2016 governmental project was ramping up, she took off for a six-month, around-the-world cruise and then a three-week trip to Antarctica, which she made a video about and published to YouTube.

In the summer of 2017, Powell’s luck altered. The team of legal private investigators Mueller assembled for the Russia probe included several Justice Department alumni who took place to have actually been the very same district attorneys she had villainized in Certified to Lie Robert Mueller, she tweeted, was “hiring out of my book!” Powell released red informs via Twitter and op-eds: “It’s everything about WHO they want to get & they’ll do ANYTHING to win,” she tweeted in June, tagging Amphibian Gingrich, Hannity and the White House press secretary. This time, her rather niche interest lined up with Trump’s own situations, and conservative power brokers observed her call. Over the summertime, Gingrich began promoting Powell’s book all over the media Licensed to Lie, the previous GOP Home speaker and Trump ally stated on Twitter, was “ready to become an extremely essential book.”

Powell rode her sudden wave of celebrity to political significance and started appearing on the programs that had actually formerly neglected her, accepting Trumpian talking points about not just the Mueller report but other problems, too. On Dobbs’ show, to take one example, Powell recommended that “the ongoing invasion of this nation” by immigrants might be the cause of “diseases spreading across the nation that are triggering polio-like paralysis of our kids.”

” Sidney the Media Figure,” as Powell describes herself on one of her sites, is a somewhat amped-up version of her real-life persona. One of Powell’s neighbors in Dallas, Patricia Falvey, an author of historical fiction who does not recognize as Republican, told me Powell’s buddies aren’t all in “lockstep” with her politically; Falvey and Powell primarily talk about household, travel and charity work.

But anybody viewing Powell’s media strikes or following her rat-a-tat Twitter feed– all operated on her own, she informs me– could see she was now a passionate homeowner of MAGA-world.

Perhaps it was inescapable that Powell and Flynn would come together in common cause. Flynn has constantly been something of a maverick, but he too had an improvement. An appreciated, if hard-charging, patriot, he grew disgruntled during his time as head of the Defense Intelligence Firm in the Obama administration. By the 2016 presidential election, Flynn was spreading outrageous conspiracy theories— consisting of the allegation that Hillary Clinton was involved with a kid sex trafficking ring– and found himself chanting, “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention.

Over the course of his legal fight, Flynn has actually drawn in a group of fans with likewise controversial views. By all accounts, Flynn’s legal experience has taken an enormous financial toll on him and his family; as of July 2019, he owed more than $4.6 million dollars in unsettled attorney costs, according to court records.

That consists of John B. Wells, who arranged the 2018 Dallas fundraising event, which, according to Wells, raised “a healthy five-figure contribution” for the legal fund. Wells, 62, is a voice-over star turned itinerant radio host with an internet-streaming program; Flynn contacted one time during the 2016 project. Wells appeared on Alex Jones’ show, “Infowars,” in 2013 and discussed how “it’s been practically established that the CIA and al Qaeda are practically one.” In his opening remarks at” Operation Classified,” he spoke of the “criminal cabal we describe as federal government,” and he praised QAnon, the conspiracy movement that seems to believe a worldwide gang of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the media, Hollywood and the political establishment is privately running the world. “Q is a real thing,” Wells stated to cheers in the audience. (Wells did not react to an ask for remark.)

Michael Flynn himself was set to appear at a QAnon-related fundraising event on his behalf this previous summer, but he pulled out after news of the event ended up being public. (It was around this time that the FBI noted the amorphous fringe group as a potential domestic terrorism risk– QAnon supporters have actually been connected to acts of violence.) Redgate and Joseph Flynn have also magnified QAnon, though both brother or sisters reject having “any relationship to QAnon,” as Joseph put it to me. When I asked him about his and Redgate’s retweets, he reacted: “There’s a lot of people that do investigative research on Twitter.”

Similarly, Powell, who told me she is being paid out of the Flynn legal fund however reduced her rates “dramatically” for him, has retweeted QAnon accounts too and, according to reporting by Media Matters, appeared on a QAnon-affiliated YouTube show, where she thanked the host for his “big and extremely handy” support. I asked Powell about this, and she reacted in an e-mail: “I don’t understand anything about Q Anon, or Q. I couldn’t inform you what that was. I speak [at] SCADS of places and would go to evictions of Hell and talk to the devil himself if it would help stop the abuses of law and prosecutorial power and corruption I have actually seen in our government.”

While “FlynnLand,” as Joseph calls it, has embraced Powell (” We love Sidney!” Redgate gushes), it was never ever clear that Sullivan, Michael Flynn’s judge, would follow along.

Powell, it seems clear, anticipated Sullivan to be on her side. In a 2018 article for the Daily Caller— more than a year before she would be hired by Flynn– she asserted that Sullivan was “all set, prepared and able to hold Mr. Mueller liable to the law and who has the wherewithal to dismiss the case against General Flynn– for egregious federal government misbehavior– if Mueller doesn’t transfer to dismiss it himself.” Sullivan in fact is understood for bringing the hammer down on overreaching district attorneys, as in the trial of previous Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. “Emmet G. Sullivan is one judge who understands a cover-up when he sees one,” she composed in a 2014 Observer column “I like this guy!” Powell has exclaimed in some of her public talks.

” Let me put me put it this way,” she said at our breakfast in New York. “If I were in the federal government’s shoes, I would transfer to dismiss this case prior to Judge Sullivan does anything else.”

Her conviction was strengthened by the release, in early December, of the long-awaited report by the inspector general for the Justice Department, which found that the FBI’s preliminary examination into possible ties in between Russia and Trump campaign authorities (the precursor to the Mueller probe) was ruined by careless and inappropriate approaches. Powell felt that the IG findings provided weight to a crucial element of her argument: that FBI agents controlled the notes from their interview with Flynn to make him look guilty.

However in mid-December, Sullivan turned down the idea that the initial FBI counterintelligence investigation of former Trump officials– Flynn included– was a deep state plot versus Trump, and that Flynn had been deceived into his perjury by dishonest FBI representatives. At the close of his judgment, Sullivan wrote: “the Court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI performed an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false declarations and that the federal government pressured him to get in a guilty plea. The record proves otherwise.”

Powell stayed mum for almost a month. Powell argued that federal government district attorneys had breached the terms of his plea contract and asked for Sullivan to delay his sentencing to consider her argument and allow time for the federal government to respond.

” Withdrawing the guilty plea appears like an odd strategy at this phase,” McQuade, the law teacher, says. “Her representation of Flynn as a victim of government overreach suggests that her technique is to seek compassion from a section of the public and a pardon from President Trump.” (” It’s bullshit. Total bullshit,” Powell says about the prospect of fishing for a presidential pardon.)

It’s uncertain how Flynn’s case will end, and what it will suggest for Powell.

” Possibly you will get the last laugh,” I pleasantly provided.

” I believe I will,” she said securely.

It wasn’t up until we both withstood leave that I realized how high Powell was (6 feet) which she was wearing tight-fitting leopard print pants and matching boots with two-inch heels and gleaming spikes. She saw my eyes grow wide at the sight of the boots. “I call these my attitude adjusters,” Powell said with a huge smile. “And I don’t suggest my attitude.”

The post The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn’s Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy appeared first on Actu Trends.

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worldtopnewsoftheday · 5 years

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In the nomination race, the senators from Massachusetts and Vermont are dominant. Many expect both to pass Joe BidenBernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren hug after participating in the second Democratic primary debate in Detroit, Michigan. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty ImagesAmong the what ifs and what might have beens of politics in America there is Ready for Warren, a group that urged Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016.“If I’m being quite frank, I’m upset that she didn’t and haven’t really forgiven her,” said Dave Handy, a political organiser who was part of that effort. “We could have avoided a lot of trouble if she had just had the courage to run.”Handy threw in his lot with Bernie Sanders instead. “Even though progressives like myself begged her, Liz refused to run and this whole apparatus that Bernie now has – that I’m a part of and many progressives and now many democratic socialists are a part of – could have been hers. And we could have avoided the whole ‘Bernie bro’ myth that’s been carved out.”Activists such as Handy illustrate divided loyalties and an exquisite dilemma for progressives as Democrats choose their nominee to take on Donald Trump in 2020. Polls show Sanders and Warren running almost neck and neck behind the centrist Joe Biden, begging the question: to avoid splitting the vote, should one drop out and endorse the other?With both candidates drawing bigger crowds than a former vice-president who seems increasingly gaffe-prone and vulnerable, there is no sign of it happening any time soon. Indeed, some on the left believe Sanders and Warren are poised to push Biden into third and go head to head.> Warren and Bernie have been dominating the debate; I feel like the Biden campaign is very much on the defensive> > Charles ChamberlainCenk Uygur, host and founder of the online news show The Young Turks, wrote in the Washington Post this week: “While Warren and Sanders draw thousands, his audiences are far smaller. His campaign is gasping for breath, and we’re only in August. The Biden fade has begun. I’m not sure he will even be in the race by Iowa.”Uygur added: “This race now isn’t between Warren and Biden; it’s between Warren and Sanders. And for progressives, that’s a dream come true.” ‘Elizabeth Warren Is Completely Serious’Sanders, a senator from Vermont who at 77 is the oldest candidate in the field, no longer has the element of surprise he enjoyed against Hillary Clinton in 2016. He continues to promise free tuition at public universities, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and universal healthcare. He still has a peerless network of small-dollar donors and continues to generate enthusiasm at rallies.Warren, a 70-year-old senator from Massachusetts and longtime critic of Wall Street, has enjoyed a slow but inexorable surge. She has promised to “fight” – one of her favourite words – a rigged system and has released detailed policy proposals on everything from breaking up tech companies to implementing a “wealth tax” on the rich.Her populist economic message has struck a chord, drawing big crowds – 15,000 in Seattle; 12,000 in St Paul, Minnesota – and positive media buzz. “The Very Real Possibility of President Elizabeth Warren” was Rolling Stone’s headline; “Slowly and Persistently, Elizabeth Warren Is On the Rise” declared New York magazine; “Elizabeth Warren Is Completely Serious” trumpeted a profile in the New York Times.Charles Chamberlain, chair of the progressive group Democracy for America, said: “She’s the big winner of the last eight months. We’ve seen her steadily climb among our members. It’s a well run, well executed campaign, clearly engaging with voters. But Bernie Sanders has also been campaigning hard – it’s been ‘steady as she goes’.“Warren and Bernie have been dominating the debate; I feel like the Biden campaign is very much on the defensive when it comes to policy. The rallies for Biden are eerily reminiscent of the lacklustre campaign of Hillary Clinton. Warren and Bernie are going to event after event and just getting bigger.”Joe Biden listens to a question from a representative of Moms Demand Action, a pro-gun control group, in South Carolina. Photograph: Sean Rayford/Getty ImagesChamberlain shares the view that Biden will fade.“I think this is going to come down to a Democratic primary with Warren and Bernie at the top,” he said. “Neither should drop out. They need to fight this to the end, even if that means going to a convention where deals have to be made.”Who would win such a fight remains a matter of conjecture. Sanders won his first national union endorsement this week from the 35,000-member United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. But most unions remain on the fence.Liberal groups are also split. In June Warren led a MoveOn survey with the support of 38% of members, followed by Sanders with 17%. In July, Sanders topped a Democracy for America poll with 32%, followed by Warren on 26%. In both cases, Warren had gained ground.Indeed, she has gathered momentum nationally, overcoming controversy about her dubious claims of Native American ancestry, while Sanders has arguably hit a ceiling. There is a perception, at least, that she is gaining at his expense.Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chair now a political analyst for the MSNBC network, said: “You’ve seen, in the rise of Elizabeth Warren, the Bernie Sanders voter falling off of Bernie, finding a better, younger fort to to dock their ship to, if you will. They don’t think that they are losing a step with Elizabeth; in fact, they are probably gaining a few more steps because she checked a number of other boxes for them – in terms of being a woman, for example.> If both campaigns feel that they have traction, you won’t have an incentive there for either one of them to drop out> > John Zogby“We’ve seen that in the numbers, how she’s eclipsed him and now passed him in the polling, where in some polls she’s a lot closer to Joe Biden than Bernie was in the past.”This week Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York became the sixth Democrat to drop out of the race since July. Steele does not expect Sanders or Warren to throw in the towel any time soon.“If both campaigns feel that they have traction and they’re polling relatively close to each other, you won’t have an incentive there for either one of them to drop out. They’re both raising money, they’re both organising on the ground.“I think they’re going to be fairly competitive with each other until one separates clearly from the other. That has not happened yet. If I’m Elizabeth Warren, I’m not going to cede that ground to Bernie Sanders, and if I’m Bernie Sanders I’m certainly not going to cede ground to her that I established going back to 2016.” ‘Bearer of the torch’Imagined as a Venn diagram, there is common ground between Warren and Sanders voters but each has their own distinct base. A survey by the Pew Research Center this month found that about seven in 10 of Warren’s supporters are white, compared to about half of Sanders’ backers. Warren’s supporters are substantially more likely to have a college degree compared with supporters of Biden and Sanders.John Zogby, a pollster and author, said: “Because of progressive ideology there is some sort of overlap, but they are different. Warren picks up support among women that ordinarily Sanders would not get, including former Clinton supporters who regard her as the bearer of the torch to get a woman elected.“To assume that if one drops out, he or she would back the other is too facile. If Warren dropped out, she would probably consider that she had some leverage in the mainstream of the party and a chance to run again in the future, so would most likely endorse a mainstream figure like Biden.”The senators have differences in style and substance. Warren embraces the term “capitalist” and is seen by some as less disruptive to corporate interests; Sanders characterises himself as a “democratic socialist” and offers fewer policy specifics. Warren refused to appear on Fox News; Sanders held a town hall on the network. Warren has just taken her 50,000th campaign selfie with supporters who wait in long lines; Sanders retains a curmudgeonly persona and showed little appetite for small talk at the recent Iowa state fair.But when the duo, who remain fast friends, appeared together in the second debate in Detroit, distinctions appeared insignificant as they joined forces to fend off centrists on their support of policies such as Medicare for All, which would extend the existing government-run health insurance programme to all Americans, largely eliminating a role for private insurance.In the end, however, even if the progressive dream comes true, there is bound to be disappointment and compromise for someone. Handy, 31, the former Ready for Warren activist, said: “In terms of the entire political spectrum, I would much prefer a Warren administration to a [Kamala] Harris administration or a second term of Trump. But that said, it just won’t go far enough.“What this country needs now more than ever is what we had post-world war two with the building of the American middle class and FDR’s incredible social reform. That is what a Sanders administration will do, and my fear is that a Warren administration will not go far enough in addressing income inequality, in addressing criminal justice reform, in addressing our climate, in addressing all of these problems.”

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Meet Time Warner's New Boss: A Hollywood Outsider With a Grand Plan

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/10/meet-time-warners-new-boss-a-hollywood-outsider-with-a-grand-plan/

Meet Time Warner's New Boss: A Hollywood Outsider With a Grand Plan

“Investment in content is going to increase,” says John Stankey in his first interview since being named to oversee HBO, Warner Bros. and CNN as he reveals AT&T’s post-merger synergy strategy, Peter Chernin’s potential role and the top priority for making a mark in showbiz: “We’re going to have to earn our way in.”

Not so long ago, John Stankey could hardly answer when asked to name a TV show or movie that he liked. But the 54-year-old head of AT&T’s entertainment group — who will run Time Warner, assuming AT&T’s $85.4 billion acquisition wins federal approval, as expected — says it became clear to him in the past year or two that he had to buckle down and watch some entertainment.

“I realized I had to spend more time getting exposed to what’s out there,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter in his first interview since he was tapped July 28 to run the to-be-renamed Time Warner. “It’s part of my work routine.” But he still doesn’t seem to have much of a list of favorites. Looking for programs to watch with his wife of 26 years, he says he’s seen all of Downton Abbey and some of Showtime’s Homeland. But his wife is way ahead of him on HBO’s Game of Thrones. His only appointment viewing? College football.

At 6-foot-5 with a deep voice and abundant self-confidence, Stankey looks and sounds like what he is: a metrics-oriented 30-year veteran of a telecom company whose first language is business-speak. Raised and educated in Los Angeles, he seems a bit more Dallas (home of AT&T) than Southern California at this point. But he’s a graduate of Loyola Marymount and got his MBA from UCLA. And he was chief strategy officer when AT&T acquired DirecTV for $48.5 billion in 2015, a deal that made AT&T the biggest pay TV company in the country.

Among the many questions surrounding the Time Warner acquisition, the overarching one is: What will AT&T do with a company — home to HBO, the Warner Bros. studio, Turner Broadcasting and CNN — that outgoing chairman Jeff Bewkes has trimmed down and managed in preparation for a sale? There are two schools of thought. Some high-level industry observers believe AT&T will strengthen the assets, for example, by using its data on consumer habits to help the Turner networks withstand competition from giants Facebook and Google, or by increasing HBO’s roughly $2 billion programming spend to help it keep pace with Netflix and Amazon. Others suspect that whatever AT&T may say now, it will eventually squeeze Time Warner like a lemon, offering its content at a discount to hold on to existing customers and wringing out cash to pay dividends.

Stankey dismisses the latter scenario. “This is an awful lot of overhead just to do that,” he says. “I categorically disagree with the perspective that our goal is simply to run it and harvest cash flows.” Instead, Stankey says the acquisition will help both AT&T and Time Warner thrive despite the rapid changes in their respective businesses. And he says that might give consumers of entertainment some more appetizing options, such as ads that are more relevant to individual viewers and less frequent. “We can’t continue to jam an ever-increasing amount of advertising down consumers’ throats in a 30-minute block,” he says.

For sports fans, Stankey wants to explore questions such as how to offer programming in new ways. “Instead of having to watch a baseball game for three hours, can the content be reconstructed in the context of millennials?” he asks. “How do you allow people to come in and out of the game with social cues?”

But industry analyst Craig Moffett is a skeptic, saying he already sees signs that AT&T will squeeze its new acquisition because the company is trying to protect its “portfolio of businesses that are suffering from declining revenues.” AT&T is primarily a telecom company, he adds: “They approach most businesses as, how can they help wireless?” The tell, he says, is that AT&T already has started offering HBO to its customers at a discount. He notes that DirecTV — which had an exodus of executives following the AT&T acquisition — was used in the same fashion. “What can [Stankey] point to at DirecTV that is going to give confidence to the longtime employees of Time Warner?” he asks.

But Stankey offers no apologies: “Somebody on the outside might say, ‘They’re giving [DirecTV] away.’ The question is, how long is that [DirecTV] customer a customer, and how deep is the relationship?”

BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield lays out a more hopeful vision of AT&T’s strategy — at least for HBO. “I hope he recognizes the importance of increasing the investment in it,” he says. “HBO is severely underinvested relative to Netflix.” (HBO’s annual spend is about $2 billion versus Netflix’s $6 billion.) He says AT&T can cut back on Turner expenses to harvest cash. “HBO is the incredible brand,” he says. “There is such potential, and the window for capitalizing on it is shortening.”

Stankey says AT&T sees great value in original content and wants to grow the Time Warner businesses, but he is vague as to how much it will spend and how soon (the fact that the Trump administration has yet to greenlight the acquisition likely is a factor in his reluctance to comment more substantively). “Over time, investment in content is going to increase,” he says. “My goal would be to find a lane to continue to ramp up investment in content at a higher level than today and to benefit from some of the efficiencies, some of the synergies.”

It’s fair to say that Time Warner insiders are nervous about how Stankey will handle some of the entertainment world’s most vaunted legacy properties. There are other suits with no direct experience creating content who are running famed media companies, but those execs spent much, if not all, of their careers in the business. NBCUniversal’s Steve Burke rose through the ranks at Disney, and Bob Bakish put in a decade at Viacom before his surprise ascent. Sony’s Tony Vinciquerra is a Fox veteran.

Stankey has been getting some Hollywood education from another Fox alum, Peter Chernin. The two met in 2013 when the Chernin Group and AT&T teamed up in an unsuccessful bid to buy Hulu. Chernin instead joined with AT&T to form the digital-video company Otter Media. (Sources say AT&T is now poised to acquire Chernin’s stake of slightly more than 50 percent.) Stankey says Chernin has become “a great friend” who has “been very pointed” in teaching him about the entertainment industry. Chernin also has been pointed in ruling out an executive position at Time Warner, but the two seem likely to continue to do business. “Is there a possibility that we find opportunities that we’re jointly interested in?” says Stankey. “I wouldn’t rule that out.”

Chernin says Stankey is “a really good guy with a dry sense of humor,” but adds that he’s also strategic and thoughtful. Chernin predicts his priorities will be to build “a genuinely targeted advertising business,” to be aggressive about building up data-driven video-on-demand and about helping Warners get better at selling content, whether it’s Harry Potter or DC Comics, to the right customers. “I don’t think you’re going to see John trying to greenlight movies and looking at rough cuts,” says Chernin. “You’ll see him trying to unlock the opportunity.”

To that end, Stankey says Warners CEO Kevin Tsujihara won’t be replaced: “He’s a talented guy.” Stankey expects to be in the loop if the studio intends to make, say, a $200 million movie, but “in terms of getting down to the specifics of what is the right content to make a $200 million bet on, that’s not where I’m going to spend my time and energy.”

Stankey is very clear that the entertainment industry has its own idiosyncratic culture and AT&T does not intend to try to change it. Instead, the company intends to approach with respect. “We’re going to have to earn our way in,” he says. “My job is to demonstrate that there is value we can bring.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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