Somewhere in the dim dark vaults of the Intertubz is a picture of me standing next to MTM’s statue in Minneapolis.
Jeff Bezos’ Penis
Let’s just stay on this topic the whole show.
He doesn’t like you. I don’t like you either.
Don’t ride angry.
Congress’ Angels
Ladies Night
Why is the shortest Month Black History Month? And why did Saturday Night Live take a week off?
This Week In Blackface History
I hate the Internet.
There’s a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.
That’s not actually true. Nicholas Cage is mistaking Schizophrenia– “a mental disorder characterized by abnormal behavior, strange speech and a decreased ability to understand reality… symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, hearing voices that do not exist, reduced social engagement and emotional expression and lack of motivation.” with Multiple Personality Disorder, a whole different thing.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
a Cold War prisoner exchange; boxer Mike Tyson convicted of rape; Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ opens on Broadway; Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a Changin” released.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ is prepared for the possibility that Democrats in New York could redraw her district after the 2020 election, she told The Intercept in an interview.
Following the 2020 census, every state will draw new district boundaries to reflect changes in the population, the political implications of which will stretch for at least the next decade. In 2014, New York approved a constitutional amendment establishing a nonpartisan redistricting commission, which is set to take over the redistricting process starting in 2020. The 10-member commission, meant to be independent from the legislature, is made up of individuals selected by leaders from the state Senate and Assembly, and the original eight members pick two additional members.
But Ocasio-Cortez’s most determined adversaries are not partisan Republicans, but Democrats who say that she has been a disruptive influence. The Hill recently reported that at least one member of Congress has been urging New York party leaders to recruit a Democratic primary challenger to Ocasio-Cortez. But the news led to a surge of donations to Ocasio-Cortez, suggesting that a more efficient means of ousting her might be simply to eliminate her district.
THE 1990S WERE among the most punishing decades in the recent history of American justice. Zealous prosecutors competed to put the most people behind bars, and politicians were eager to pass new laws to extend sentences. In San Francisco, Terence Hallinan was one of the only prosecutors in America bucking the trend.
A legendary civil rights activist, defense attorney, former city supervisor, and an outspoken advocate for marijuana legalization, Hallinan rode a wave of discontent and squeaked by in his election to become San Francisco district attorney in 1995. He swiftly fired senior prosecutors in order to hire more minorities and reformists. He instructed his deputies to avoid the practice of objecting to a proposed juror for a criminal trial — an unusual stance that weakened the hand of the DA’s office — to avoid empaneling all-white juries.
Sex work, said Hallinan, was a public health problem — not a criminal offense. He quickly made waves by claiming that he would fight for nonviolent offenders to receive social services over jail time and called drug use a victimless crime, an argument that invited contempt from law enforcement officials.
Yet Hallinan — considered one of the “most left-wing politicians in the country” — was expelled in 2003 after just two terms in office, despite San Francisco’s notorious liberal bent. An up-and-coming young career prosecutor named Kamala Harris, running in her first bid for public office, unseated him.
LESS THAN A month after Democrats — many of them running on “Medicare for All” — won back control of the House of Representatives in November, the top health policy aide to then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Blue Cross Blue Shield executives and assured them that party leadership had strong reservations about single-payer health care and was more focused on lowering drug prices, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
Pelosi adviser Wendell Primus detailed five objections to Medicare for All and said that Democrats would be allies to the insurance industry in the fight against single-payer health care. Primus pitched the insurers on supporting Democrats on efforts to shrink drug prices, specifically by backing a number of measures that the pharmaceutical lobby is opposing.
Primus, in a slide presentation obtained by The Intercept, criticized single payer on the basis of cost (“Monies are needed for other priorities”), opposition (“Stakeholders are against; Creates winners and losers”), and “implementation challenges.” We have recreated the slides for source protection purposes.
When Tulsi Gabbard announced her plans to run in the 2020 presidential election, I predicted that it would disrupt war propaganda narratives and force a much-needed conversation about US interventionism, but I didn’t realize that it would happen so quickly, so ubiquitously, and so explosively. Gabbard officially began her campaign for president a mere three days ago, and already she’s become the front line upon which the debate about US warmongering is happening. Even if you oppose Gabbard’s run for the presidency, this should be self-evident to you by now.
This dynamic became more apparent than ever today in Gabbard’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, hosted by spouses Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. It should here be noted since we’re talking about war propaganda that in 2009 Scarborough turned down an easy run for the US Senate because he decided that he could have more influence on public policy as the host of Morning Joe than he could as one of 100 US senators, which tells you everything you need to know about why I focus more on US mass media propaganda than I do on US politics. It should also be noted that Brzezinski is the daughter of the late Carter administration cold warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose influential ideas about US world domination, arming extremist factions to advance US interests, and hawkish agendas against Russia continue to infect US foreign policy to this day. Mika is part of a political dynasty, with bothbrothers being US political insiders as well.
So if you’ve ever wondered how outlets like MSNBC keep everyone on message and fully in alignment with the US war machine’s agendas, there’s a good insight into how. Combine that with the way they stock their punditry lineup with US intelligence community insiders and fire any pundit who refuses to toe the military-industrial complex line, and it’s not hard to see how they’ve developed such a tight echo chamber of hostility toward any resistance to US interventionism. Which explains what we’re about to discuss next.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Vice-President Mike Pence has begged Donald J. Trump not to make him sit next to a woman during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, sources confirmed on Monday.
According to those sources, an emotional Pence came close to breaking down in tears as he explained that being seated next to a woman other than his wife was a violation of his personal code of behavior.
Pence offered Trump a variety of solutions to the problem, including introducing a third chair between him and the woman where his wife, Karen Pence, could be seated for the duration of the speech, “to make sure that that woman doesn’t try anything.”
“Let Mother sit next to me, or let me sit on Mother’s lap, but don’t make me sit next to that woman alone,” Pence reportedly sobbed.
“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
On Sunday mornings we present a preview of the guests on the morning talk shows so you can choose which ones to watch or some do something more worth your time on a Sunday morning.
This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Attorney for AMI CEO David Pecker Elkan Abramowitz; House Budget Committee Chair Rep. John Yarmuth (D_KY); Conference Committee on Homeland Security member Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA0; ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams and Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
The roundtable guests are: ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl; former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; Washington Times Senior Opinion Columnist Monica Crowley; former Tallahassee Mayor and 2018 Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Andrew Gillum; and Democracy for America CEO Yvette Simpson.
Face the Nation: Host Margaret Brennan’s guests are: Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir; Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC); Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA); Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA).
Her panel guests are: Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times; Jonah Goldberg, National Review; Ed O’Keefe, CBS News; and Margaret Talev, Bloomberg News.
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this week’s “MTP” are: Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney; Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO); and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
The panel guests are: NBC political analyst David Brody; MSNBC anchor Katy Tur; Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos; and Kimberly Atkins, MSNBC correspondent.
State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY); South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Butigeig (D).
His panel guests are: Former State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA); former Rep. Mia Love (R-UT); Democratic strategist Nina Turner; and Rep. Nanette D. Barragán (D-CA).
If Matthew Whitaker’s performance before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday is considered a good one I shudder to think how desperate Unidicted Co-conspirastor Bottomless Pinocchio and his coterie of Criminals, Accessories Before, During, and After the Fact, are.
It was my great misfortune to watch large swathes of it and Whitaker was pwned by every single Democrat, even the most junior. He was sweaty, combative, nervous, self contradictory, evasive (in transparently obvious ways, I mean you could tell he was constantly lying), and in general not ready for even the most poorly produced and low budget “Reality” TV show.
It was truly horrible and it is hard to find even a conservative commentator who thought any better of it than I did.
But apparently that’s not the view from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“[Trump] liked the combative approach,” the outside adviser who’s familiar with the president’s thinking said. “He thought the Democrats were grandstanding.”
During his testimony, Whitaker at one point chided new House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), telling him “Mr. Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up.”
White House officials, the adviser told Axios, learned that they should “not give an inch, push back, resist, delay, deflect.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have identified a new angle following the Whitaker hearing.
“The White House recognizes that it can do little to resist the House Dems’ demands for testimony,” the report noted. “Republicans just hope that over time, they can argue to their base that Dems have been guilty of overreach and ‘show trials.’”
A GOP operative that spoke to Axios said that Republicans believe Americans may side with the acting attorney general.
“It doesn’t take long for ordinary voters — who are very different from people in Washington — to start seeing participating committee members as pompous, rude and belittling, and begin to side with whoever is sitting in the hot seat,” the operative said.
How dare you Communists pick on our poor Racist White Guys (the correct translation for “ordinary voters” in Republican Doublespeak) and make them look like yammering idiots trying to make excuses for the inexcusable? After decades of re-education and brainwashing that has rotted the minds of even their elite “intellectuals” who at least tried to hide their naked greed, bigotry, and ignorance, one of the most pernicious (and I’m afraid longest lasting) consequence is they are now emboldened to let their freak flag fly.
Look, I’m a total Geek but I don’t walk into a Bar and try and impress people with my detailed and comprehensive knowledge of Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Star Trek/DCU/MCU and even more obscure Science Fiction trivia (Babylon Five? Stargate? Farscape? Firefly?). Wynnona works for a while but falls apart when people figure out I’m talking about Earp, not Judd.
My point is that even I’m not totally unaware that a lot of people are just not into the same things. They are guilty pleasures and I feel the proper shame about devoting as much time and mental space to them as I do (the above is not a comprehensive list, I also know waaay too much about Gold Rush and The Curse of Oak Island).
Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio has normalized (to a certain extent and for a minority of the population) Nazi/Klan Fascist Hate Speech and Conspiracy Theories and they are so far gone in their delusions that they no longer recognize reality. I wouldn’t call it exactly infantile (though they seem to have problems with object permanence also) but usually children in their early development learn to distinguish Fantasy from Fact. The core problem for Republicans is that they have fallen into the trap of believing their own disinformation and assuming mere wishing and denial have magical power to alter actuality.
This is the place where I put in the full pitiful recording so you can see it and judge for yourselves (I claim nothing except my experiments are duplicable), but I warn you it’s an extremely painful experience and I forgive you for averting your lying eyes.
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here.
Fragile and supremely buttery, these cocoa-flavored shortbread cookies are dunked partway in melted chocolate and sprinkled with an optional topping of crushed freeze-fried raspberries. [..]
Be sure not to roll the dough thinner than 1/2 inch. Otherwise, the cookies are apt to break and crumble after baking. Their thickness helps keep them intact.
A lobster for those who prefer eating lobster without the work and without a bib, this recipe is meant for an intimate supper à deux, whether for Valentine’s Day or not. Freshly cooked lobster is preferred, but some may splurge and buy a pound of preshucked lobster meat. Serve with crusty French bread or toasted thick slices of baguette cut on a long diagonal.
Requiring just one pan, this recipe yields supremely crisp, juicy chicken thighs and hot honey schmaltz, which serves as a warm vinaigrette for sturdy greens and a sauce for your — let’s say it again — supremely crisp, juicy chicken thighs.
Inspired by the All Steak restaurant in Cullman, Alabama, these thinly-rolled, brightly-flavored orange rolls have both zest and juice, giving them an intoxicating aroma and a full burst of sweet citrus flavor.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Beatles appear on TV’s ‘Ed Sullivan’; Sen. Joseph McCarthy launches his anti-communist crusade; World War II’s Battle of Guadalcanal ends; Soviet leader Yuri Andropov dies; author Alice Walker born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
Something unusual happened to me yesterday. Actually, for me it wasn’t just unusual — it was a first. I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought. I’m glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing. Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.
AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, led by David Pecker, recently entered into an immunity deal with the Department of Justice related to their role in the so-called “Catch and Kill” process on behalf of President Trump and his election campaign. Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they’ve taken on behalf of the Saudi Government.
And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:
“After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions…”
Federal investigators and legitimate media have of course suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Enquirer and AMI for political reasons. And yet AMI keeps claiming otherwise:
“American Media emphatically rejects any assertion that its reporting was instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.”
Of course, legitimate media have been challenging that assertion for a long time.
…
I didn’t know much about most of that a few weeks ago when intimate texts messages from me were published in the National Enquirer. I engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained, and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by the Enquirer. As it turns out, there are now several independent investigations looking into this matter.
To lead my investigation, I retained Gavin de Becker. I’ve known Mr. de Becker for twenty years, his expertise in this arena is excellent, and he’s one of the smartest and most capable leaders I know. I asked him to prioritize protecting my time since I have other things I prefer to work on and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter.
Here’s a piece of context: My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy.
President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.
(Even though The Post is a complexifier for me, I do not at all regret my investment. The Post is a critical institution with a critical mission. My stewardship of The Post and my support of its mission, which will remain unswerving, is something I will be most proud of when I’m 90 and reviewing my life, if I’m lucky enough to live that long, regardless of any complexities it creates for me.)
Back to the story: Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is “apoplectic” about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.
A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker’s apoplexy, we were approached, verbally at first, with an offer. They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn’t stop our investigation.
My lawyers argued that AMI has no right to publish photos since any person holds the copyright to their own photos, and since the photos in themselves don’t add anything newsworthy.
AMI’s claim of newsworthiness is that the photos are necessary to show Amazon shareholders that my business judgment is terrible. I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago, and drove all the packages to the post office myself. Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people, just finished its most profitable year ever, even while investing heavily in new initiatives, and it’s usually somewhere between the #1 and #5 most valuable company in the world. I will let those results speak for themselves.
OK, back to their threat to publish intimate photos of me. I guess we (me, my lawyers, and Gavin de Becker) didn’t react to the generalized threat with enough fear, so they sent this:
From: Howard, Dylan [[email protected]] (Chief Content Officer, AMI) Sent: Tuesday, February 5, 2019 3:33 PM To: Martin Singer (litigation counsel for Mr. de Becker) Subject:. Jeff Bezos & Ms. Lauren Sanchez Photos
CONFIDENTIAL & NOT FOR DISTRIBIUTION
Marty:
I am leaving the office for the night. I will be available on my cell — 917 XXX-XXXX.
However, in the interests of expediating this situation, and with The Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of The National Enquirer’s initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering.
In addition to the “below the belt selfie — otherwise colloquially known as a ‘d*ck pick’” — The Enquirer obtained a further nine images. These include:
· Mr. Bezos face selfie at what appears to be a business meeting.
· Ms. Sanchez response — a photograph of her smoking a cigar in what appears to be a simulated oral sex scene.
· A shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring. He’s wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts — and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment.
· A full-length body selfie of Mr. Bezos wearing just a pair of tight black boxer-briefs or trunks, with his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring.
· A selfie of Mr. Bezos fully clothed.
· A full-length scantily-clad body shot with short trunks.
· A naked selfie in a bathroom — while wearing his wedding ring. Mr. Bezos is wearing nothing but a white towel — and the top of his pubic region can be seen.
· Ms. Sanchez wearing a plunging red neckline dress revealing her cleavage and a glimpse of her nether region.
· Ms. Sanchez wearing a two-piece red bikini with gold detail dress revealing her cleavage.
It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail — and quickly.
Dylan.
Well, that got my attention. But not in the way they likely hoped. Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? (On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI, and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.)
In the AMI letters I’m making public, you will see the precise details of their extortionate proposal: They will publish the personal photos unless Gavin de Becker and I make the specific false public statement to the press that we “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”
If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they say they’ll publish the photos, and quickly. And there’s an associated threat: They’ll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from that lie.
Be assured, no real journalists ever propose anything like what is happening here: I will not report embarrassing information about you if you do X for me. And if you don’t do X quickly, I will report the embarrassing information.
Nothing I might write here could tell the National Enquirer story as eloquently as their own words below.
These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.
Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos
From: Fine, Jon [[email protected]] (Deputy General Counsel, AMI) Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2019 5:57 PM To: Martin Singer (Mr de Becker’s attorney) Subject: Re: EXTERNAL* RE: Bezos et al / American Media et al
Marty –
Here are our proposed terms:
1. A full and complete mutual release of all claims that American Media, on the one hand, and Jeff Bezos and Gavin de Becker (the “Bezos Parties”), on the other, may have against each other.
2. A public, mutually-agreed upon acknowledgment from the Bezos Parties, released through a mutually-agreeable news outlet, affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AM’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces, and an agreement that they will cease referring to such a possibility.
3. AM agrees not to publish, distribute, share, or describe unpublished texts and photos (the “Unpublished Materials”).
4. AM affirms that it undertook no electronic eavesdropping in connection with its reporting and has no knowledge of such conduct.
5. The agreement is completely confidential.
6. In the case of a breach of the agreement by one or more of the Bezos Parties, AM is released from its obligations under the agreement, and may publish the Unpublished Materials.
7. Any other disputes arising out of this agreement shall first be submitted to JAMS mediation in California
Thank you,
Jon
Deputy General Counsel, Media
American Media, LLC
February 5, 2019
Via email: [email protected]
Martin D. Singer
Laveley & Singer
Re: Jeff Bezos / American Media, LLC, et al.
Dear Mr. Singer:
I write in response to your February 4, 2019, letter to Dylan Howard, and to address serious concerns we have regarding the continuing defamatory activities of your client and his representatives regarding American Media’s motivations in its recent reporting about your client.
As a primary matter, please be advised that our newsgathering and reporting on matters involving your client, including any use of your client’s “private photographs,” has been, and will continue to be, consistent with applicable laws. As you know, “the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies . . . for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting . . . is not an infringement of copyright.” 17 USC Sec. 107. With millions of Americans having a vested interest in the success of Amazon, of which your client remains founder, chairman, CEO, and president, an exploration of Mr. Bezos’ judgment as reflected by his texts and photos is indeed newsworthy and in the public interest.
Beyond the copyright issues you raise, we also find it necessary to address various unsubstantiated defamatory statements and scurrilous rumors attributed to your client’s representatives in the press suggesting that “strong leads point to political motives”1 in the publication of The National Enquirer story. Indeed, you yourself declared the “politically motivated underpinnings” of our reporting to be “self-evident” in your correspondence on Mr. de Becker’s behalf to Mr. Howard dated January 31, 2019.
Once again, as I advised you in my February 1 response to your January 31 correspondence, American Media emphatically rejects any assertion that its reporting was instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise. Simply put, this was and is a news story.
Yet, it is our understanding that your client’s representatives, including the Washington Post, continue to pursue and to disseminate these false and spurious allegations in a manner that is injurious to American Media and its executives.
Accordingly, we hereby demand that you cease and desist such defamatory conduct immediately. Any further dissemination of these false, vicious, speculative and unsubstantiated statements is done at your client’s peril. Absent the immediate cessation of the defamatory conduct, we will have no choice but to pursue all remedies available under applicable law.
As I advised previously, we stand by the legality of our newsgathering and reporting on this matter of public interest and concern. Moreover, American Media is undeterred from continuing its reporting on a story that is unambiguously in the public interest — a position Mr. Bezos clearly appreciates as reflected in Boies Schiller January 9 letter to American Media stating that your client “does not intend to discourage reporting about him” and “supports journalistic efforts.”
That said, if your client agrees to cease and desist such defamatory behavior, we are willing to engage in constructive conversations regarding the texts and photos which we have in our possession. Dylan Howard stands ready to discuss the matter at your convenience.
All other rights, claims, counterclaims and defenses are specifically reserved and not waived.
Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos said Thursday that he was the target of an extortion and blackmail effort by the National Enquirer, which he accused of threatening to publish intimate pictures of him unless he backed off an investigation of the tabloid.
In an extraordinary post to the online publishing platform Medium, Bezos said the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc., made the threat after he began investigating how the tabloid obtained text messages that revealed his relationship with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez.
Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, wrote that the Enquirer wanted him to make a false public statement that he and his security consultant, Gavin de Becker, “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”
Bezos declined to do so.
Instead, he published what he said were emails from Enquirer executives to a lawyer representing de Becker. In one, top Enquirer editor Dylan Howard appears to suggest that the tabloid would publish a series of salacious photos of Bezos and one of Sanchez if AMI’s terms weren’t met.
“I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering,” Howard wrote, going on to say that the Enquirer had a “below the belt selfie” of Bezos, among other shots. Howard added, “It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail — and quickly.”
Bezos noted that the email “got my attention,” but said that “any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?”
The post, which was linked from Bezos’s Twitter account, was a remarkable escalation of a spat between the world’s richest man and a tabloid known for its loyalty to the president of the United States.
The story spilled into public on Jan. 9 when Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, revealed they would be divorcing after 25 years of marriage — roughly two days after the Enquirer had informed him it would be publishing a story about his relationship with Sanchez. The Enquirer later published what it called “sleazy text messages and gushing love notes” between Bezos and Sanchez, raising questions about how the tabloid was able to get such intimate material. Bezos began to investigate how the leak of his private information came about.
AMI’s chief executive, David Pecker, has had a long friendship with President Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Bezos, Amazon and The Washington Post. Pecker directed the Enquirer to write favorable stories about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, while paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress her claim of a long-running affair with Trump.
On Jan. 31, de Becker was quoted in the Daily Beast suggesting that the Enquirer’s pursuit of Bezos was politically motivated.
On Feb. 5, The Post reported that Bezos and de Becker suspected that the source of the text and photo leaks may have been Sanchez’s brother, Michael, a California public relations executive who is close to Pecker and various figures in Trump’s orbit, including former campaign advisers Roger Stone and Carter Page. Michael Sanchez denied any involvement in revealing his sister’s relationship with Bezos.
The Post reported that Sanchez said he was told by multiple people at AMI that the Enquirer set out to do “a takedown to make Trump happy.”
Pecker is now cooperating with federal investigators who are looking into the company’s involvement with the Trump campaign.
Bezos’s public letter seems to suggest that federal agents should investigate whether AMI may have violated the terms of its non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors in Manhattan over its role in the 2016 hush money payments.
“Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten,” Bezos wrote. In the next sentence, Bezos describes the non-prosecution agreement struck in September between AMI and the Justice Department.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan did not immediately comment on Bezos’s assertion that AMI had committed extortion.
Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said Bezos’s allegations, if accurate, could have serious consequences for both prosecutors and AMI.
“This could constitute criminal conduct in the eyes of a prosecutor, if these allegations are true,” said Mintz. “For prosecutors, your worst nightmare is watching a cooperation deal unravel. Alleged conduct like this puts them in the position to rethink that deal and potentially turn around and have to prosecute AMI, and that undermines their ability to continue to use them to assist other ongoing investigations.”
…
In his post on Medium, Bezos called his ownership of The Post “a complexifier” for him. He wrote that it’s “unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy. President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.”
Despite mounting evidence, Trump has disputed that Khashoggi was killed on the orders of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi monarch was the subject of a flattering glossy magazine produced by AMI in 2016, at a time when the Saudi regime was attempting to portray Mohammed as a reformer in Middle Eastern politics.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia told a top aide in a conversation in 2017 that he would use “a bullet” on Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist killed in October, if Mr. Khashoggi did not return to the kingdom and end his criticism of the Saudi government, according to current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of intelligence reports.
The conversation, intercepted by American intelligence agencies, is the most detailed evidence to date that the crown prince considered killing Mr. Khashoggi long before a team of Saudi operatives strangled him inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and dismembered his body using a bone saw. Mr. Khashoggi’s murder prompted weeks of outrage around the world and among both parties in Washington, where senior lawmakers called for an investigation into who was responsible.
The Saudi government has denied that the young crown prince played any role in the killing, and President Trump has publicly shown little interest in trying to get the facts about who was responsible. Prince Mohammed, the next in line to the Saudi throne behind his ailing father, King Salman, has become the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and a close ally of the Trump White House — especially Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
The conversation appears to have been recently transcribed and analyzed as part of an effort by intelligence agencies to find proof of who was responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s death. The National Security Agency and other American spy agencies are now sifting through years of the crown prince’s voice and text communications that the N.S.A. routinely intercepted and stored, much as the agency has long done for other top foreign officials, including close allies of the United States.
For the past several months, the National Security Agency has circulated intelligence reports to other spy agencies, the White House and close foreign allies about the crown prince’s communications. The reports were described by several current and former officials. Weeks after the killing, the C.I.A. finished its first assessment about the operation, concluding that Prince Mohammed had ordered it.
The conversation between Prince Mohammed and the aide, Turki Aldakhil, took place in September 2017, as officials in the kingdom were growing increasingly alarmed about Mr. Khashoggi’s criticisms of the Saudi government. That same month, Mr. Khashoggi began writing opinion columns for The Washington Post, and top Saudi officials discussed ways to lure him back to Saudi Arabia.
In the conversation, Prince Mohammed said that if Mr. Khashoggi could not be enticed back to Saudi Arabia, then he should be returned by force. If neither of those methods worked, the crown prince said, then he would go after Mr. Khashoggi “with a bullet,” according to the officials familiar with one of the intelligence reports, which was produced in early December.
…
At the time of the conversation with Mr. Aldakhil, Prince Mohammed was in the midst of consolidating power in the kingdom. Just months earlier, his father elevated him to second in line to the throne after Prince Mohammed plotted the ouster of his predecessor, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.
In late 2017, Prince Mohammed ordered hundreds of influential businessmen and Saudi royals — some who had been considered contenders to the throne — locked up at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where they were interrogated.
Days before the conversation with Mr. Aldakhil, according to the same intelligence report, Prince Mohammed complained to another aide — Saud al-Qahtani — that Mr. Khashoggi had grown too influential. Prince Mohammed said that Mr. Khashoggi’s articles and Twitter posts were tarnishing the crown prince’s image as a forward-thinking reformer, and the criticism was more cutting because it was coming from a journalist who had once been seen as supportive of his agenda.
When Mr. al-Qahtani said that any move against Mr. Khashoggi was risky and could create an international uproar, his boss scolded him: Saudi Arabia should not care about international reaction to how it handles its own citizens, the crown prince told Mr. al-Qahtani.
Prince Mohammed also told Mr. al-Qahtani, according to an official who has read the report, that he “did not like half-measures — he never liked them and did not believe in them.”
…
American intelligence agencies have identified Mr. al-Qahtani as the ringleader of the operation that killed Mr. Khashoggi, and last year, he was put on a list of Saudi officials sanctioned by the United States for their role in the journalist’s death. Mr. al-Qahtani is viewed in the kingdom as a brutal enforcer of the crown prince’s agenda and has used an army of online trolls to harass Saudi dissidents on social media.
After Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, the kingdom announced that Mr. al-Qahtani had been removed from his position as an adviser to the royal court. Saudi Arabia has since begun criminal proceedings against 11 individuals involved in the operation. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for five of them.
The kingdom has not released the names of the people on trial, and it is unclear whether Mr. al-Qahtani is among them.
Mr. Aldakhil, the other aide to the crown prince caught in the intercepts, until recently was the general manager of the Al Arabiya television network in Saudi Arabia. He is an influential media figure in the kingdom and a prominent adviser to the crown prince.
During the September 2017 conversation, according to intelligence reports, Mr. Aldakhil spoke to Prince Mohammed about luring Mr. Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia with the possibility of a job at Al Arabiya. The crown prince was skeptical that Mr. Khashoggi would accept the offer.
Last month, Mr. Aldakhil left his post at the network. Saudi news sites have reported that he is expected to be named the next Saudi ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.
Yeah, like that.
This is going to end very, very badly for AMI, The National Enquirer, and David Pecker. This is clearly Extortion and people who argue that killing a story doesn’t have a “Monetary Value” should ask David Pecker about the $150,000 he paid to Karen McDougal. No monetary value my ass, this proves the going rate is $150,000 on the street.
Were I Jeff Bezos I’d be asking for $70 Billion in compensatory damages (what he’s likely to give up in his divorce settlement) and triple that ($210 Billion for the Math impaired) in punitive damages under RICO.
Not that he’s likely to be able to collect mind you, David Pecker, AMI, and the Enquirer simply don’t have the cash and would be instantly bankrupt.
Still, if it were paid the interest on $346 Billion (compensatory + punitive damages as well as the $70 Billion he’ll keep after the divorce) at 2.5% is $8.650 Billion annually or $23.7 Million a day or just a little less than $1 Million an Hour.
Every Hour. Every Day. Doing nothing except sit there in nice safe T Notes. That’s Bezos money.
And this is the pissing contest you want to buy into? I think Mohammed bin Salman better check his wallet, the other so-called players can’t even buy a seat at this table.
What’s more likely is that the Southern District of New York declares a violation of their plea agreement with AMI and David Pecker and he ends up in a cell next to Michael Cohn.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
In 1961, America faced what conservatives considered a mortal threat: calls for a national health insurance program covering senior citizens. In an attempt to avert this awful fate, the American Medical Association launched what it called Operation Coffee Cup, a pioneering attempt at viral marketing.
Here’s how it worked: Doctors’ wives (hey, it was 1961) were asked to invite their friends over and play them a recording in which Ronald Reagan explained that socialized medicine would destroy American freedom. The housewives, in turn, were supposed to write letters to Congress denouncing the menace of Medicare.
Obviously the strategy didn’t work; Medicare not only came into existence, but it became so popular that these days Republicans routinely (and falsely) accuse Democrats of planning to cut the program’s funding. But the strategy — claiming that any attempt to strengthen the social safety net or limit inequality will put us on a slippery slope to totalitarianism — endures.
And so it was that Donald Trump, in his State of the Union address, briefly turned from his usual warnings about scary brown people to warnings about the threat from socialism.
What do Trump’s people, or conservatives in general, mean by “socialism”? The answer is, it depends.
Let’s consider some real news, for a change: Last year was officially proclaimed the fourth-warmest on record; scientists predict that melting ice in Antarctica and Greenland could not only raise sea levels but also further destabilize weather patterns; and progressive members of Congress are proposing a “Green New Deal,” the first policy framework ambitious enough to meet the challenge of global warming.
Please don’t stop reading. I know that climate change isn’t the sexiest of topics. I could be writing about President Trump’s latest tweetstorm, or the shade he was thrown by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the State of the Union speech, or the blackface and sexual assault scandals that could force Virginia’s top three officials to resign, or Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) ongoing racial-identity crisis, or the House Intelligence Committee’s new investigation of some anomalous Trump Organization deals that involved huge and unexplained amounts of cash.
Those are all big and important stories, but climate change is the biggest, most important story of our time. Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will judge us by how well we meet the challenge, and so far we are failing. Miserably.
Billionaire Tom Steyer is cranking up pressure on key House Democrats to impeach President Donald Trump where he thinks they’ll feel it most — back in their home districts.
Steyer’s first targets are three powerful committee chairmen, Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). But the liberal megadonor isn’t stopping there: He will soon turn his attention to rank-and-file members seated on the committees that would be involved in impeachment proceedings, including freshmen.
And Steyer’s Need to Impeach PAC is considering going after the top three Democratic leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).
The previously unreported plans to single out additional members on the Ways and Means, Judiciary and Oversight Committees, detailed by Steyer and his advisers, represent the latest turn in Steyer’s multimillion-dollar campaign to impeach Trump. And the thinly veiled threat against the Democratic upper brass puts the former hedge fund manager turned activist squarely at odds with leaders of the party.
“There’s a gigantic cost to not listening to your constituents,” Steyer said in an interview with POLITICO. “There’s a gigantic cost to thumbing your nose at democracy.”
Kevin Mack, Steyer’s lead strategist on Need to Impeach, said the PAC has virtually unlimited resources to spend in targeted districts. The group has committed $40 million to the campaign for 2019 so far. The offensive includes TV and digital ad buys, paid staff in key districts and volunteers to organize canvassing.
“We haven’t ruled out going into leadership districts,” said Mack. “Why does Steny Hoyer get a pass, why does Jim Clyburn get a pass? They’re all hiding behind the Mueller report.”
Though Mack said the PAC isn’t ready to back primary challengers against Democrats, that’s not being ruled out, either.
Steyer’s frustration with Democrats’ hesitancy to impeach Trump is palpable. But Steyer believes that veteran lawmakers like Neal, Nadler and Cummings will listen to their constituents if Need to Impeach gives voters a loud enough bullhorn.
Steyer, at least publicly, has no official timeline for the next steps his PAC might take if Democrats don’t make move aggressively to obtain Trump’s tax returns or begin building a credible impeachment case against the president. He simply said he will continue to place negative ad buys in districts like Neal’s and Nadler’s, informing their constituents where their representative stands on impeachment.
“We’re not saying, ‘We’re so brilliant, listen to us,’ we’re saying, ‘Listen to your constituents,’” Steyer said. “It’s not like we can just hold our breath until something happens.”
There’s little incentive for Neal, Nadler and Cummings to oblige. They are in safe blue districts and have warned that the political cost of launching impeachment proceedings against Trump before special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings are known could be high for newly empowered House Democrats. Nadler, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has repeatedly said Democrats need to “wait and see” on impeachment.
Cummings, who shortly after the election unveiled a laundry list of investigations his Oversight Committee will conduct, scoffed at the idea that Steyer’s campaign could change his mind.
“He ought to spend his money on something else,” said Cummings. “I’m going to run my committee with integrity, transparency and accountability.”
“I was mayor of a big city,” Neal, the Ways and Means chairman and former mayor of Springfield, Mass., quipped. “No, it doesn’t bother me, no.”
Need to Impeach chose Neal for its first campaign targeting a congressional district. The effort, which started this week, includes paid staff and a $109,000, two-week television ad buy in the relatively small Springfield market. The group says it will soon add another $100,000 in digital ad buys.
“It’s time to hold Donald Trump accountable, and we can do our part here in Massachusetts. All we need is our Congressman Richard Neal to be with us,” the TV spot says. “Neal can subpoena Trump’s tax returns and vote to start impeachment hearings against the most lawless and corrupt president in American history.”
Neal’s position remains unchanged: He wants to wait until Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign is finished. Neal is consulting the counsel of the House of Representatives and the Joint Committee on Taxation to determine the appropriate legal steps to move forward with the “unprecedented request” for Trump’s tax returns, the congressman’s spokesman William Tranghese said.
“There’s a discernible process that’s acknowledged and at the moment I think my position is consistent with the party leadership on the Democratic side,” Neal said.
Steyer said he’s spoken with Democratic leaders and has “some sense of where they stand,” though he wouldn’t disclose details of his conversations. The campaigns targeting Nadler and Cummings will start shortly after Steyer’s Feb. 12 town hall in Springfield. Steyer will hold town halls in both Nadler and Cummings’ districts.
Need to Impeach will also have a presence in the districts represented by Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters. But the campaign in Waters’ district is designed to boost the California Democrat. Waters was an early supporter of impeachment and demanding Trump’s tax returns.
“There is a lot of things we can talk about in Congress that I care about and agree with leadership on that are not going to happen,” Steyer said. “This is an actual crisis … we can deal with that crisis or talk about legislation that’s not going to happen.”
But more than a year into Steyer’s multimillion-dollar impeachment push, Democrats aren’t changing their calculus.
“I hear people say, ‘Why didn’t they do it the first day,'” Pelosi told POLITICO this week, referring to impeachment proceedings. “You have to do it right.”
She added: “You have to protect the prerogatives of the House of Representatives and you cannot be scattershot about that.”
Steyer lives in Pelosi’s congressional district and the two have “been friends for many years,” Pelosi said. But “why don’t we keep our focus on the Republicans?” she asked.
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight; a billionaire from California is coming into the district to spend money against Richie, who used to be the mayor of Springfield, and is now the chairman of the Ways and Means committee who is making us very proud of Massachusetts,” Pelosi said.
It is, she added, a “waste of time and money.”
Hmm… maybe.
Tom Steyer’s Net Worth is estimated as $1.7 Billion. Unlike Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio he is an actual, factual Billionaire.
How much money is a Billion? Left in T Notes it generates north of $25 Million a year or $2 Million a month and at the end of spending that you have exactly the same amount of money you did before.
And Tom Steyer has about twice that. And a donor network.
So while we’re not talking Aircraft Carrier money here I would imagine he can generate a modicum of fuss and bother if he put his mind to it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is much better looking than Bernie Sanders
You want some more of that? Chuckles the Todd
No, this is not an AOC fanboy site though now that I think about it maybe it should be. Then we could coattail some of those sweet, sweet page hits that I can’t measure and don’t care about off her Twitter and InstaGram feeds.
What do Trump’s people, or conservatives in general, mean by “socialism”? The answer is, it depends.
Sometimes it means any kind of economic liberalism. Thus after the SOTU, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, lauded the Trump economy and declared that “we’re not going back to socialism” — i.e., apparently America itself was a socialist hellhole as recently as 2016. Who knew?
Other times, however, it means Soviet-style central planning, or Venezuela-style nationalization of industry, never mind the reality that there is essentially nobody in American political life who advocates such things.
The trick — and “trick” is the right word — involves shuttling between these utterly different meanings, and hoping that people don’t notice. You say you want free college tuition? Think of all the people who died in the Ukraine famine! And no, this isn’t a caricature: Read the strange, smarmy report on socialism that Trump’s economists released last fall; that’s pretty much how its argument goes.
So let’s talk about what’s really on the table.
Some progressive U.S. politicians now describe themselves as socialists, and a significant number of voters, including a majority of voters under 30, say they approve of socialism. But neither the politicians nor the voters are clamoring for government seizure of the means of production. Instead, they’ve taken on board conservative rhetoric that describes anything that tempers the excesses of a market economy as socialism, and in effect said, “Well, in that case I’m a socialist.”
What Americans who support “socialism” actually want is what the rest of the world calls social democracy: A market economy, but with extreme hardship limited by a strong social safety net and extreme inequality limited by progressive taxation. They want us to look like Denmark or Norway, not Venezuela.
And in case you haven’t been there, the Nordic countries are not, in fact, hellholes. They have somewhat lower G.D.P. per capita than we do, but that’s largely because they take more vacations. Compared with America, they have higher life expectancy, much less poverty and significantly higher overall life satisfaction. Oh, and they have high levels of entrepreneurship — because people are more willing to take the risk of starting a business when they know that they won’t lose their health care or plunge into abject poverty if they fail.
Trump’s economists clearly had a hard time fitting the reality of Nordic societies into their anti-socialist manifesto. In some places they say that the Nordics aren’t really socialist; in others they try desperately to show that despite appearances, Danes and Swedes are suffering — for example, it’s expensive for them to operate a pickup truck. I am not making this up.
What about the slippery slope from liberalism to totalitarianism? There’s absolutely no evidence that it exists. Medicare didn’t destroy freedom. Stalinist Russia and Maoist China didn’t evolve out of social democracies. Venezuela was a corrupt petrostate long before Hugo Chávez came along. If there’s a road to serfdom, I can’t think of any nation that took it.
So scaremongering over socialism is both silly and dishonest. But will it be politically effective?
Probably not. After all, voters overwhelmingly support most of the policies proposed by American “socialists,” including higher taxes on the wealthy and making Medicare available to everyone (although they don’t support plans that would force people to give up private insurance — a warning to Democrats not to make single-payer purity a litmus test).
On the other hand, we should never discount the power of dishonesty. Right-wing media will portray whomever the Democrats nominate for president as the second coming of Leon Trotsky, and millions of people will believe them. Let’s just hope that the rest of the media report the clean little secret of American socialism, which is that it isn’t radical at all.
Krugman is wrong about Single Payer, but he’s always been wrong about Single Payer. Health Insurance MegaCorps are perversely incentivized to deny needed treatment and should be legislated out of existence entirely. They are nothing but leeches.
Cartnoons are not always ha ha funny folks, but they usually have a point.
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s 
