The ‘Not So Much’ Hollywood Sex Scandals By Frank Salvato

You cannot turn on a television or cable news show these days without hearing about another Hollywood celebrity claiming to have been sexually assaulted by someone with influence in show business. From influential producers to prominent actors to lesser knowns trying to make it to stardom, there appears to be a wave of predatory depravity emanating from the elite circles in entertainment. I say “appears” because we all know the truth. This stuff; the people who do these acts and are willing to have these acts done to them have been around since the first movie studio and recording contract.

When the revelation that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein used his power and position to intimidate women – young starlets – to have sex with him came to light, one of the most disingenuous gasps wafted across the information sphere. News programs and social media were on fire in their castigation of the man. Somehow, in an industry that created the term “casting couch,” the idea that a powerful movie producer would extract sex in exchange for making someone famous was suddenly foreign and appalling.

Just as with the transition from darkness to light in the flip of a switch, many who once found moral relativism in advancing their careers through gratuitous sex acts with the powerful now see themselves as victims. It is as if being a predatory victim of the elite in Hollywood is now a prize to be coveted; a label that gains the wearer entry into the “in crowd.” The designation is a cloak of relevance in today’s entertainment industry.

This is not to say that all of those who are claiming victimhood in this wave of wanton subjugation are not indeed victims. Many naïve people have gone to Hollywood only to become the prey of maniacal degenerates and megalomaniacs who dwell in that sphere; opportunistic cretins whose only way to find self-worth is to oppress and damage others, physically, emotionally and intellectually. Those people, the bright-eyed and star-struck who end up used and cast aside, they are the real victims of an industry peppered with human refuse that has been allowed to ascend to influence.

However, just as there are naïve innocents that get chewed up in the pornographic gears of Hollywood, so, too, are there the opportunists employing moral relativism who intellectually barter their dignity for stardom. There are, and there can be no doubt about this, people – both men and women – who will and have rationalized getting on their backs and/or knees to be “anointed” to fame and fortune. One can only imagine the “stains” a fluorescent light would reveal if shined on the inhabitants of Tinsel Town’s red carpets. It is enough to make one feel the need for a hot shower.

The allegations in the Bibi-hunt: Spine-chilling stuff P. David Hornik

A report on Channel 10—a known stronghold of Bibi-animosity—claims that:

“senior law enforcement officials have concluded there is sufficient evidence to file an indictment against [Prime Minister Netanyahu] on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust…. The report quoted an unofficial police opinion according to which the evidence that has accumulated against Netanyahu is robust…. The State Attorney’s Office, Channel 10 reported, was also coming to the opinion that there are grounds to file an indictment on bribery, but was not as sure as the police.”

Most of the latest purported information—once again leaked by the police, guardians of virtue in the Bibi-hunt who have leaked ruthlessly and systematically throughout this affair—concerns Case 1000, in which Netanyahu is alleged to have done favors for his longtime friend, businessman and movie mogul Arnon Milchan, in return for gifts of cigars and champagne.

In other words, the suspicions center on bribery—Netanyahu illicitly receiving stuff from Milchan as a quid pro quo.

And what is Netanyahu alleged to have done for Milchan in return for the “bribe”?

The charge that keeps reappearing is that Netanyahu asked then-secretary of state John Kerry to help get Milchan a ten-year visa so that Milchan could stay in the U.S. to do what he does there.

If it’s true, it’s not exactly spine-chilling. Let’s say you have a friend in the States who badly wants a long-term visa, and you have an ongoing connection with the secretary of state, with whom you converse for hours at a time. What would you do?

In normal times—one might even say in a normal country—this is not the stuff of which “corruption scandals” are made. If Netanyahu indeed asked for Kerry’s help with Milchan’s visa, it was absolutely routine behavior of a kind that very few people involved in public life have not engaged in.

Even stranger in this case is that the ostensible “bribe” did not consist of money—usually the stuff of which bribes are made—but of nonmonetary gifts. Netanyahu appears to acknowledge receiving these gifts of cigars and champagne from Milchan for years, saying that—again—this was within the normal, noncriminal bounds of human behavior, a friend giving presents to a friend.

What, then, constituted the bribe? If the Netanyahu-Milchan friendship goes back years—and that is not in dispute—it’s hard to imagine Netanyahu, in return for Milchan asking for help with the visa, needing some certain quantity of cigar boxes, or some certain set of champagne crates, as “the bribe.”

“I Am On a Mission”: Muslim Terrorist Runs Over Chinese Students in France Daniel Greenfield

This latest Muslim terrorist attack took place near Toulouse. You may remember Toulouse as the location of the vicious Muslim terror spree by Mohammed Merah which included the murder of Jewish children in a school. There was widespread support for Merah’s actions among Muslim colonists in France.

Now we have yet another terrorist attack.

Abdellah B, a 28-year-old, rammed a Renault Clio into three students at the IGS campus, in a suburb of Toulouse. The victims are Chinese students in their early 20s. Two women and one man.

The French authorities are pivoting to their usuals standby, psychiatric problems. Most media accounts emphasize the psychiatric angle without using the terrorist’s name.

But the L’Express account offers something more.

“When he was arrested, he told the police, ‘I am on a mission,'” one of our sources said. The prosecutor’s office of Toulouse also specifies that he said he planned his attack “for a month”.

Abdellah (Slave of Allah) had the usual criminal record that most of these attackers do.

The Mayor of Toulouse is very shocked. And the French media is compulsively interviewing shrinks. But here’s a little context about Islamic terrorists and mental illness.

A Muslim terrorist stabbed four people at a train station near Munich while screaming, “Allahu Akbar”. In between proclaiming the glory of Allah, he also shouted that his victims were all “unbelievers”. A woman heard him say, “Infidel, you must die”.

The German authorities came to the inescapable conclusion that the attack had nothing to do with Islam. Instead the Muslim terrorist had been “mentally ill” and was probably not even fit to stand trial. The Koran wasn’t to blame. It was the fault of his psychological problems.

In Russia, Muslim monster Gyulchekhra Bobokulova beheaded a 4-year-old girl and displayed her head in the street while shouting, “Allahu Akbar. I hate democracy. I am a terrorist. I want you dead.” Faced with these bafflingly inscrutable statements, the authorities blamed mental illness.

Dems Fuming as Trump Remakes Federal Judiciary By Michael Walsh

Meanwhile, back at the Swamp:

In the weeks before Donald J. Trump took office, lawyers joining his administration gathered at a law firm near the Capitol, where Donald F. McGahn II, the soon-to-be White House counsel, filled a white board with a secret battle plan to fill the federal appeals courts with young and deeply conservative judges.

Mr. McGahn, instructed by Mr. Trump to maximize the opportunity to reshape the judiciary, mapped out potential nominees and a strategy, according to two people familiar with the effort: Start by filling vacancies on appeals courts with multiple openings and where Democratic senators up for re-election next year in states won by Mr. Trump — like Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania — could be pressured not to block his nominees. And to speed them through confirmation, avoid clogging the Senate with too many nominees for the district courts, where legal philosophy is less crucial.

Nearly a year later, that plan is coming to fruition. Mr. Trump has already appointed eight appellate judges, the most this early in a presidency since Richard M. Nixon, and on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to send a ninth appellate nominee — Mr. Trump’s deputy White House counsel, Gregory Katsas — to the floor.

Republicans are systematically filling appellate seats they held open during President Barack Obama’s final two years in office with a particularly conservative group of judges with life tenure. Democrats — who in late 2013 abolished the ability of 41 lawmakers to block such nominees with a filibuster, then quickly lost control of the Senate — have scant power to stop them.

Gee, that’s too damn bad. As I wrote at the time, the Harry Reid Democrats were acting like a party that thought the fix was in, and that they would never lose another election for a long, long time. Oops. CONTINUE AT SITE

MORRIS “MOE” BERG -CATCHER, COACH AND SPY

Morris “Moe” Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972), was a baseball catcher and later coach in the Major League. Berg graduated from Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was a polyglot with scholarly interests in history.

In 1934 during a trip to Japan, ostensibly to play in baseball demonstrations, Berg was able to surreptitiously film Tokyo City harbor. As spy he traveled in Europe to gather intelligence on resistance groups and the German nuclear program.

During World War 2 Berg traveled throughout Europe gathering intelligence on partisan groups and German nuclear programs.

At great risk as a Jew, Berg spent parts of 1944 and 1945 in Germany, helping arrange for the capture of several prominent German atomic scientists by U.S. troops before the Russians got them. At war’s end, Berg was offered the Medal of Merit, the highest award given to civilian in the war effort, but he modestly declined it. His sister accepted on his behalf.

He died in May 1972. His remains were cremated and the ashes spread on Mount Scopus in Israel.

His baseball card is displayed in the CIA.

The other DiMaggio got lots of hits…also served in World War II By Silvio Canto, Jr.

One of my favorite things is to read about baseball players who served in World War II, from Bob Feller in the U.S. Navy to Jerry Coleman in the U.S. Marines.

How do you get any attention when your brother Joe is the best paid player in the game and your teammate playing right field is arguably the best hitter ever?

Well, that’s the story of Dominic Paul DiMaggio, who was born in San Francisco and actually wanted to be a chemical engineer. Eventually, baseball caught up with engineering, and Dom played in the majors with his famous brother Joe and other brother Vince.

The story goes like this:

Dominic made his major-league debut on April 16, 1940, and had little trouble adjusting to the big leagues, hitting .301 and scoring 81 runs in 108 games in his rookie season. Going into spring training, Dom was concerned that he might not get to play because Boston was loaded with good outfielders: Ted Williams in left, Doc Cramer in center, Lou Finney in right, and Joe Vosmik, a 10-year veteran, as backup.

But Dom, at age 23, had a solid spring and was able to beat out Finney, a .300 hitter the year before, for the starting right fielder’s job. Later in the season, Dom was moved to center field, and there he remained for the rest of his career. The Red Sox showed confidence in DiMaggio by trading Doc Cramer to the Senators during the offseason.

Dom had fond memories of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, and especially the media interest in the DiMaggio brothers in center field. He recalled that the newspapers made a big deal out of the first time in 1940 when the Yankees visited Boston for a five-game series.

Dom had 11 hits to Joe’s nine, or as Dom said, “Twenty hits for the family in one series.”

One week later in New York, Joe advised his younger brother to move back because the ball carried well in that part of the ballpark. The next day Dom, taking Joe’s advice, was able to run down a fly ball hit 460 feet to deep center – off the bat of brother Joe.

Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and baseball had to take a back seat:

The Long, Strange History of Dieting Fads By Melissa Wdowik

“Of all the parasites that affect humanity I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more distressing than that of Obesity.”

So started William Banting‘s “Letter on Corpulence,” likely the first diet book ever published. Banting, an overweight undertaker, published the book in 1864 to espouse his success after replacing an excessive intake of bread, sugar and potatoes with mostly meat, fish and vegetables.

Since then, fad diets have appeared in many forms. To what length will people go to achieve their desired figure? As a professor of nutrition and eating behaviors, my sense is the history of dieting shows vanity outweighs common sense.
Liquid-based diets

Let’s jump back to 1028, the year William the Conqueror was born. Healthy most of his life, he became so overweight in later years that he went on a liquid diet consisting of almost nothing but alcohol. He lost enough weight to resume riding his cherished horse, but a riding accident soon led to his untimely death.

We do know of one case in which consuming more alcohol than food allegedly led to longevity. In 1558, Italian nobleman Luigi Cornaro restricted himself daily to 12 ounces of food and 14 ounces of wine. Rumor has it he lived to a ripe 102 years of age, earning his approach the nickname The Immortality Diet.

Another alcohol-focused plan, The Drinking Man’s Diet, was introduced in the 1960s. This included so-called “manly” foods like steak and fish, along with as much alcohol as desired.

Poet Lord Byron credited his thin, pale look to vinegar and water. This practice reemerged in the 1950s as the popular Apple Cider Vinegar Diet, which instructs people to drink a mixture of equal parts honey and vinegar. The latest version, although not scientifically supported, claims that three teaspoons of apple cider vinegar before each meal will curb cravings and cut fat.
Cleanses

“Cleaner” liquid diets, cleanses and detoxes are designed to supposedly rid the body of toxins, despite our natural ability to do so.
A 1950 ad for ‘vitamin candy.’ nesster/flickr, CC BY

In 1941, alternative health enthusiast Stanley Burroughs created the Master Cleanse, or Lemonade Diet, to eliminate cravings for junk food, alcohol, tobacco and drugs. All you had to do was consume a mixture of lemon or lime juice, maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper six times a day for at least 10 days. Beyoncé made this popular again in 2006, saying she lost 20 pounds in two weeks.

TV physician Dr. Oz and others have since promoted their own versions, varying in length and foods allowed. Most include a daily laxative and copious amounts of water.

The Trump Collusion Case Is Not Getting the Clinton Emails Treatment If the Justice Department is hell-bent on making a case, it plays an intimidating game of hardball. By Andrew C. McCarthy

In July 2016, the Obama administration announced its decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for felony mishandling of classified information and destruction of government files. In the aftermath, I observed that there is a very aggressive way that the Justice Department and the FBI go about their business when they are trying to make a case — one profoundly different from the way they went about the Clinton emails investigation. There, they tried not to make the case.

That observation bears repeating today, as we watch Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of any possible Trump-campaign collusion in Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Mueller is a former FBI director and top Justice Department prosecutor. To say he is going about the collusion caper aggressively would be an understatement. The earth is being scorched by the stunningly large team he has assembled, which includes 16 other prosecutors (among them, Democratic party donors and activists) along with dozens of investigators (mostly from the FBI and IRS).

At the end of October, Mueller announced the first charges in the case. In the intensive commentary that followed, another investigative development attracted almost no attention. But in terms of Mueller’s seriousness of purpose, it speaks just as loudly as the George Papadopoulos guilty plea and the indictment of Paul Manafort and Richard Gates.

Mueller succeeded in convincing a federal judge to force an attorney for Manafort and Gates to provide grand-jury testimony against them. As Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports, just as the charges against these defendants were announced with great fanfare, the U.S. district court in Washington, D.C., quietly unsealed a ruling compelling the testimony of the lawyer — who, though not referred to by name in the decision, has been identified by CNN as Melissa Laurenza, a partner at the Akin Gump law firm.

Interestingly, the jurist who rendered the 37-page memorandum opinion is Beryl A. Howell, who served for years as a senior Judiciary Committee adviser to the fiercely partisan Democratic Senator Pat Leahy (of Vermont) before being appointed to the bench by President Obama. Howell is now the district court’s chief judge. Why do I think that, in choosing to set up shop in Washington, Mueller and his team noted the district court’s local rule that vests the chief judge with responsibility to “hear and determine all matters relating to proceedings before the grand jury”? (See here, Rule 57.14 at p. 168.)

And why do I think that the Trump collusion case is not getting the kid-glove Clinton emails treatment?

Name: “Sword of Islam”? Let Him In! by Douglas Murray

Even the craziest immigration systems dreamed up by European officials have not yet come up with something like America’s “diversity visa” lottery, by which someone named “Sword of Islam” is promptly let into the country — only then to mow people down in a New York bicycle lane.

Nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country.

Instead of looking warm and big-hearted, you begin to look as if you were just unforgivably lax with the security of your own citizens. So an entire political class has been.

It is only eight weeks since an 18-year old Iraqi-born man walked onto the London Underground and left a bomb on the District line. Fortunately for the rush-hour commuters and school children on that train, the detonating device went off without managing to set off the bomb itself. Had the device worked, the many passengers who suffered life-changing burns would instead have been among many other people taken away in body bags. Ahmed Hassan came to the UK illegally in 2015 and was subsequently provided with foster care by the British government. He has now been charged, and is awaiting trial, for causing an explosion and attempted murder.

As stories like that of Mr. Hassan emerge, there are varying reactions. Some people say that this act is not indicative of anything, and that we must accept that such things happen — like the weather. Others suggest that anyone might leave a bomb on the District line in the morning, and that there is no more reason to alter your border policy because of it than there is to alter your meteorological policy because of it.

As poll after poll shows, however, the majority of the public in Britain — as in every other European country — think something else. They think that a country that has lost a grip on its immigration policy is very likely to lose control of its security policy, and that one may indeed follow the other.

So the British public were not at all reassured by the news this month that the country’s Home Office has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign nationals who were due to be removed from the country. Nor that there is no evidence of any effort to find the people in question.

Figures revealed in two new reviews by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration showed that nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country. This figure includes over 700 foreign national offenders (FNOs) who went missing after being released into the community from prison. It also revealed that around 80,000 foreign nationals are required to check in on a regular basis at police stations and immigration centres while authorities prepare for them to leave the country. By the end of 2016, just under 56,000 of them had failed to keep appointments and had become persons “whose whereabouts are unknown and all mandatory procedures to re-establish contact with the migrant have failed.”

Nevertheless, with a straight face, Brandon Lewis, the immigration minister for the present Conservative government, declared that “People who have no right to live in this country should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them.” Yet he still admitted that “Elements of these reports make for difficult reading.”

Jim Campbell At the End of Our Rope see note please

This column is from and about Australia but applicable to all the nations of the Anglosphere -America, Canada and England…….rsk

Even the most cursory inspection reveals the integrity of institutions and mores is coming apart. From a failing yet ever more costly education system to defence policies crafted to achieve electoral advantage, rather than national security, the strands of what once held us together are rupturing.

A wire rope is made to support a load under tension and composed of many woven steel strands. But wire ropes sometimes break, the best policy being to conduct regular examinations and, just in case, never to place any part of your body near the rope in case it fails. When the first strand goes the load and strain on the remaining wires intensifies until, most likely sooner than later, the next-weakest wire fails, and so on. There is nothing that can be done to stop the deterioration or, eventually, the catastrophic failure that sees the severed rope become a whip-lashing peril to all unlucky enough to be nearby at the time. Many a tilt-truck driver has been grievously injured when his winch rope’s unnoticed deterioration became suddenly and catastrophically apparent.

You’ve probably guessed that I’m invoking a metaphor about society. In Australia right now even the most cursory inspection reveals strands whose integrity is either partially or wholly gone. Let me identify some of these strands; I am sure readers can add their own.

Discipline: Today, discipline appears to be absent or marginal in many areas: the schoolroom, the home, public behaviour, even our parliament. Don’t like a former prime minister? Well head-butt him because, well, why not! Arguing your case requires thought and effort and logic. It’s so much easier (and far more satisfying) to make your case with a forehead to the nose. Yes, you might end up in court, but it will be to the cheers of your Twitter admirers and urgers.

Respect: This seems to be regarded as one of yesterday’s virtues, as we see in almost all areas of public and private life: customer service, attitude to the elderly, simple gestures such as opening a door, road rage. Or think of it this way: you are Australia’s greatest tennis player but hold unfashionable views about re-defining the word “marriage”. Expect your center court achievements to count for nothing as activists push to remove your name from the stadium built to honour your sporting achievements. Why extend respect when a public burning is so much more fun?

Education: Where does one start? In no particular order: lack of emphasis on the three Rs; the inclusion in the syllabus — indeed, elevation – of lifestyle advocacy. Even as Australia slips ever further down the international rankings, the amount poured into “education” grows, yet teacher unions and bureaucrats insist it is still not enough. And it gets worse at the tertiary level. Universities now focus on generating revenue rather than promoting academic excellence. To be fair, this is all they can do, as the schools system delivers every year a fresh crop of minds either half-formed or so polluted by approved doctrine that the critical thought once seen as the essence of university life is beyond them. Ever wonder about the popularity of gay studies, womens studies and all the other make-it-up-as-you-go-along “studies”? The explanation is simple: useless courses are the perfect vehicles to keep the fees flowing and bums on lecture room seats. That a degree in, say, feminist film studies is unlikely to enhance job prospects is never mentioned.

Law and order: In Victoria almost one billion dollars every year is shaken out of motorists who travel just a whisker over the speed limit — respectable citizens for the most part whose only crime is to have money in the bank the government thinks should be better used underwriting its education system (see above) and other follies. Meanwhile teen gangs rampage through the late-night suburbs and police warn that any homeowner who defends home, life and property against push-in invaders risks being charged with vigilantism. Nevertheless, sporting goods stores sell out of baseball bats.