Dave
Staff member
I'm reading that in two of the cases the women wanted to press charges but the prosecutors talked them out of it. They didn't want to just not press charges.
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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Unfortunately, that doesn't surprise me in the least.
Nah, I just couldn't think of a case where rare or medium rare meat + BBQ didn't come out to Korean BBQ and they've had enough bad press about eating dog.
I still have a dallas cell phone. I've been getting a lot of texts asking me to support Cruz.
I've never gotten a text from the GOP before. They must be skeered.
I've never gotten a text from the GOP before. They must be skeered.
I haven't had any texts, but because I registered as an Independent, I keep getting full page flyers in the mail telling me that I need to vote Republican because the Independents are completely controlled by the lying, fake news Democrats, and that it was DeFazio's own personal lawyer who owns the printing company that prints the county ballots in Coos County and he's the one who printed DeFazio's name smaller to try to make the Republican county clerk look bad.
Our area is like 90% blue, so it's been less of telling us to vote Democrat and more urging us to come out to vote at all.
Ugh... I keep getting Trump robocalls. They know they need to flip Columbus, Cincinnati, or Cleveland to win on the 6th but it's just not going to happen with the youth turnout we've been seeing all around the country.
GasBandit
Staff member
Cruz' ad agency had been banging down our radio-door, wanting to know the INSTANT Beto buys any ads so they can match. (We have to tell them when they ask, it's the law about campaign commercials).
I'm a registered Democrat, but I've been getting a lot of anti-Tom Malinowski ads from the Leonard Lance campaign. They're pretty sad. "Malinowski wants to institute a German-style single-payer healthcare system and end Medicare!" Well, first off, yes, having universal single payer healthcare would mean there was no need for Medicare, so that's true but kind of meaningless. Secondly, Germany is one of the wealthiest, most developed nations in Europe and their healthcare system rates higher than the US healthcare system in every objective measure except expenditure. So what you're saying there is "He wants to institute a system that gets better results for more people and for less money!" and I don't really see the negative to that.
So I looked into the Bob Hugin allegations about Menendez, and holy shit, they're crazier than I thought they were.
It turns out that the same allegations of underage prostitution were thrown at Bob Menendez in 2012, right before he was re-elected to Senate. They were quickly debunked and ignored until Hugin resurrected them. But the mind blowing part is that there's strong evidence that they were part of a plot by Cuban Intelligence to smear Menendez, who has long been a strong critic of the Castro regime and was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, where he had influence over the US's policy towards Cuba. See, the allegations were reported by a tipster using the name "Pete Williams", referring to Senator Harrison "Pete" Williams, a Senator who was convicted and served time in the Abscam scandal of the 1980s.
The underage-prostitution accusations were sent first to a nonprofit watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Unable to verify the accusations linking Menendez to underage sex workers, CREW referred Williams’s communications to the FBI.
“Menendez has many problematic issues in his past, so I am not a big defender of Bob Menendez. That said, this ad is outrageous,” said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who was the executive director of CREW at the time. “I can tell you definitively that there was no evidence ever to support the underage-prostitution allegations.” Sloan is a former Democratic congressional aide.
FBI agents conducting interviews in the Dominican Republic have found no evidence to back up the tipster’s allegations, according to two people briefed on their work.
More than a year after the initial round of allegations, Leonnig and The Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia reported on July 7, 2014:
According to a former U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of government intelligence, the CIA had obtained credible evidence, including Internet protocol addresses, linking Cuban agents to the prostitution claims and to efforts to plant the story in U.S. and Latin American media.
The alleged Cuba connection was laid out in an intelligence report provided last year to U.S. government officials and sent by secure cable to the FBI’s counterintelligence division, according to the former official and a second person with close ties to Menendez who had been briefed on the matter.
The intelligence information indicated that operatives from Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence helped create a fake tipster using the name “Pete Williams,” according to the former official. The tipster told FBI agents and others he had information about Menendez participating in poolside sex parties with underage prostitutes while vacationing at the Dominican Republic home of Salomon Melgen, a wealthy eye doctor, donor and friend of the senator.
A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, which functions as the island’s U.S. diplomatic outpost, did not respond to requests for comment.
Menendez has long been a tough critic of the Cuban government and the Castro brothers. He was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2013 to 2015 and is now the ranking Democrat on the panel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...x-4JBiQA&noredirect=on&utm_term=.8f081bf52dd2
So I looked into the Bob Hugin allegations about Menendez, and holy shit, they're crazier than I thought they were.
It turns out that the same allegations of underage prostitution were thrown at Bob Menendez in 2012, right before he was re-elected to Senate. They were quickly debunked and ignored until Hugin resurrected them. But the mind blowing part is that there's strong evidence that they were part of a plot by Cuban Intelligence to smear Menendez, who has long been a strong critic of the Castro regime and was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, where he had influence over the US's policy towards Cuba. See, the allegations were reported by a tipster using the name "Pete Williams", referring to Senator Harrison "Pete" Williams, a Senator who was convicted and served time in the Abscam scandal of the 1980s.
The underage-prostitution accusations were sent first to a nonprofit watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Unable to verify the accusations linking Menendez to underage sex workers, CREW referred Williams’s communications to the FBI.
“Menendez has many problematic issues in his past, so I am not a big defender of Bob Menendez. That said, this ad is outrageous,” said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who was the executive director of CREW at the time. “I can tell you definitively that there was no evidence ever to support the underage-prostitution allegations.” Sloan is a former Democratic congressional aide.
FBI agents conducting interviews in the Dominican Republic have found no evidence to back up the tipster’s allegations, according to two people briefed on their work.
More than a year after the initial round of allegations, Leonnig and The Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia reported on July 7, 2014:
According to a former U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of government intelligence, the CIA had obtained credible evidence, including Internet protocol addresses, linking Cuban agents to the prostitution claims and to efforts to plant the story in U.S. and Latin American media.
The alleged Cuba connection was laid out in an intelligence report provided last year to U.S. government officials and sent by secure cable to the FBI’s counterintelligence division, according to the former official and a second person with close ties to Menendez who had been briefed on the matter.
The intelligence information indicated that operatives from Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence helped create a fake tipster using the name “Pete Williams,” according to the former official. The tipster told FBI agents and others he had information about Menendez participating in poolside sex parties with underage prostitutes while vacationing at the Dominican Republic home of Salomon Melgen, a wealthy eye doctor, donor and friend of the senator.
A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, which functions as the island’s U.S. diplomatic outpost, did not respond to requests for comment.
Menendez has long been a tough critic of the Cuban government and the Castro brothers. He was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2013 to 2015 and is now the ranking Democrat on the panel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...x-4JBiQA&noredirect=on&utm_term=.8f081bf52dd2
And now, because all of the shit that he's been slapped down for already hasn't been enough, Kemp is having the Democratic Party of Georgia investigated for a "failed hack" of the state voter registration system - continuing to recuse himself from launching investigations into his opponents in a race he's participating in.
<sigh> I so badly want to get off Mr. Cheeto's wild ride...
US Military Apologizes for "Accidental" Racist Language in Welcome Booklet for Soldiers Serving in Afghanistan.
US Military Apologizes for "Accidental" Racist Language in Welcome Booklet for Soldiers Serving in Afghanistan.
The specific case in question doesn’t trouble me as much as the part where they talk about how it will embolden people who want to weaken that separation further (or remove it entirely)...because they’re not wrong. There’s plenty of folks out there salivating at the thought of either outright theocracy or else an excuse to abandon the Rule of Law.
—Patrick
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I bet the updated booklet is gonna nonsensically change the offending word to read "African American."
Well, the full report in the investigation into Kavanaugh has been released. The Senate Judiciary Committee finds no evidence to support any claims against Kavanaugh. Personally, though, I'm a little skeptical of an investigative report that cites the following as "evidence" that Kavanaugh wasn't a heavy drinker.
In other words, as long as everyone else is getting drunk and raping women, it's OK for Supreme Court Justices.
However, the report was dismissed because, according to an unidentified third student who also attended Yale at the same time as Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh wasn't a heavy drinker because they were all drinking that much, and his behavior wasn't inappropriate because "we were all engaged in this behavior."
In other words, as long as everyone else is getting drunk and raping women, it's OK for Supreme Court Justices.
figmentPez
Staff member
That's the Senate Judiciary Committee's report, not the FBI's report (which cannot be made public, legally). So I'm very skeptical of it's findings, since it was not done by professional investigators, and was done in a very partisan manner.
Dave
Staff member
Remember when I said I didn't trust mail-in ballots? In my eyes, if they are brazen enough to fuck with in-person ballots, it seems that it would be super DUPER easy to just ignore mail in ballots.
Looks like Dave is right again. Experts say that mail-in ballots are 10x more likely to be thrown out.
http://www.wlrn.org/post/how-verify-if-your-florida-mail-ballot-has-been-received?platform=hootsuite
Looks like Dave is right again. Experts say that mail-in ballots are 10x more likely to be thrown out.
http://www.wlrn.org/post/how-verify-if-your-florida-mail-ballot-has-been-received?platform=hootsuite
Part of it is because people are more likely to do it wrong if they are they don't have someone doing it for them. I know a bunch in Colorado end up getting thrown out because people don't sign them, for example.
I'm out of town on election day. Virginia makes early/absentee voting a PITA. But I jumped through all the hoops and the state election website says my vote has been received and processed. So yay? Of course, it can't say how I voted, so I can only hope that what I put on the paper is what was entered into the database
Voting in person tomorrow. We may have to visit two polling places since I changed to our new address and Julie didn't, but I don't care. We'll do everything we have to.
Oh hey - remember this asshole? Today he launched a "scathing rebuke" against the Republican Party leadership for supporting a gay candidate in California. Also today, following his comments regarding the leadership of his party, he picked up a vocal endorsement from his good friend, Senator Grassley, also of Iowa.
Someone I know pretty well published her feelings about the Kavanaugh hearings.
It would be great, if people could remember that there are male victims of sexual assault, rape, molestation, etc. as well as women/girls and that we deserve some of the same protections, instead of just narrowing everything down to women vs. men.
Emphasis mine. I don't want to throw out the entire body of work, but things like this, as a male victim of molestation and rape, make me livid, because it just furthers the divide. People need to stop pretending that being a victim of sexual violence is a thing that only happens to women, and maybe then men like Terry Crews wouldn't be ostracized so hard for accusing an agent of grabbing his junk.
I really hate to say it, but this probably won't happen until we (all) finally start becoming more accepting of the idea that a man can love another man, because before you can bring people's attention to the plight of men who are the victims of unwanted sexual advances (perpetrated by men onto other men, that is), you would first have to get those people to accept the idea that some men actually DO want sexual advances from other men, because right now the reason they don't categorize such violence as "sexual" is because they don't (want to) believe such a thing legitimately exists.
Soo...fight first for Teh Gay Agenda as a first step?
--Patrick
I can promise you that none of the boys my age torturing me playing "pretend to rape them," on Scout camping trips were doing it because they secretly found me attractive - they found power and control in it. Same as the youth pastor who directed four other boys to hold me down and have my best friend attempt to sodomize me - that had nothing to do with attractiveness and some people wanting same sex sexual contact, and everything to do with power. That doesn't mean that solving for more tolerant gender and sexual identity beliefs is wrong, just that - from my experience - rape very rarely has anything to do with being attracted to someone, and everything to do with wanting to take something from another person, either when that person wouldn't just 'give you' that thing, like a woman being raped and having it blamed on her "slutty outfit" or "flirtatious behaviour" leading the rapist on; or when you just want to exert the ultimate amount of control over someone, like when four boys hold you down at the direction of an adult who says they represent those boys' only hopes for eternal salvation and protection from Hell.
