Closing the pot-luck tabs ...
Harvey Weinstein has sued his brother, Bob Weinstein, and another executive at the Weinstein Company alleging fraud and a conspiracy to push him out of the company.
The suit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York Saturday, alleges that Bob Weinstein, Weinstein Company executive David Glasser and others got Harvey Weinstein to guarantee a $45 million loan from AI International Holdings to support the film production and distribution company. However, the suit alleges that the money was not used to help the company, but rather that Bob Weinstein and Glasser took the money for “personal use, unauthorized bonuses, and unrelated financial dealings.”
Ed: Can we root for both of them to lose? Seriously?
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On a single Sunday, CBS 'News' managed to :
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 17, 2025
- Blame ‘weaponized free speech' for the Holocaust
- Glorify German authorities conducting pre-dawn raids on citizens over social media posts
- Run an “interview" with fmr. USAID head Samantha Power’s radical leftwing speech writer… pic.twitter.com/a15u2x7bUC
Ed: To paraphrase memorable philosopher Walter Sobchak: Say what you will about MSNBC, but at least it's an ethos.
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The knowledge that these police-state concepts were being planned for deployment here was a major strike against the Biden/Harris campaign. Vance Friday was surely speaking not just to Europe, but to America’s own intelligence services, which have been the surreptitious sponsors (if not the architects) of a lot of these European laws against “misinformation.” Though the 60 Minutes piece centered on German officials, it’s hard to avoid thinking of this subtext when watching last night’s story. Germany is a state whose constitution allows it under extreme circumstances to reject democratic choices in order to preserve a pre-determined set of values. The power to reject speech falls into the same general intellectual basket.
I wonder if after Vance told off Europe, Europe is telling Americans it has a successful model for preventing unwelcome election results. In German media that would be merely obnoxious. From 60 Minutes? It’s wild. A true head-shaker.
Ed: I don't mean this as a criticism of Matt Taibbi, but it's not THAT much of a head-shaker. 60 Minutes just got caught editing Kamala Harris' interview to make her sound more coherent, and 60 Minutes has a decades-long track record of dishonest practices. As does CBS News more generally.
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New audio between a nearby medevac helicopter and air traffic control at Toronto Pearson International Airport shows crew responding after the crash landing of a Delta Airlines flight.
— ABC News (@ABC) February 17, 2025
All 80 people onboard were evacuated.
Read more: https://t.co/LI5o6XT3UV pic.twitter.com/U0XOrrVDTk
Ed: Glad everyone got out, which is a testament to the professionalism of the Delta crew. But this will raise a lot of questions about how a plane flipped after landing, and whether conditions at the airport contributed to the accident. I spent years flying in and out of Minneapolis in the winter, so I know it can be done safely, but sometimes it means taking more time to ensure safety.
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The foreman of the jury that found that CNN committed defamation against U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young doesn’t believe the network did itself any favors during the high-stakes trial.
"I think it may change the way a lot of people look at CNN and maybe not take their news 100% to be correct," Katy Svitenko told Fox News Digital in her first interview.
Ed: Worth reading in full. Apparently, the testimony of CNN's principals turned out to have done the most damage to CNN. They came across as arrogant and unremorseful, the forewoman told Fox. Or to paraphrase again, this time from an old axiom, they opened their mouths and removed all doubt.
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WATCH: @SenTimKaine on DOGE downsizing the federal government and how the cuts are negatively impacting veterans. pic.twitter.com/DqEBrRnbuE
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) February 16, 2025
Ed: The Poster Child Strategy continues apace for Democrats. Every time a House or Senate Democrat laments a very specific line item being interrupted, two questions should be asked. What percentage of that spending actually reached the Poster Children, as opposed to the bureaucrats and paid NGO staffers? And why doesn't Tim Kaine (in this case) propose a specific appropriation for that cause in Congress?
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NATO's last annual report revealed the U.S. represents 53 percent of the GDP of all countries in the alliance. But the U.S. makes 67 percent of alliance defense expenditures. NATO sets a goal for members to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Even with rising tensions, only 11 of the alliance's 32 members hit that benchmark in that report (the next report should show more meeting the goal).
Among the countries not hitting the 2 percent mark are Canada, France, and Germany—all wealthy countries that could significantly contribute to the alliance's defense. Germany claims to have hit the 2 percent target in its latest budget. But Canada's government reportedly told NATO that it "will never" hit the target.
Ed: Why not? Canada spends too much on its welfare state, which means we are partially subsidizing it. If Canada doesn't want to be treated as a province of the US, maybe it should stop acting like one.
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It's true Trump is violating a lot of norms regarding the relationship between the executive and the civil service.
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) February 17, 2025
It's also true that these "norms" were all established in the 20th century and have almost zero basis in Constitutional lines of authority.
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The most significant change is that all potential sponsors must be fingerprinted, and the fingerprints must be sent to the FBI to check for criminal records. No child will be released to a sponsor until their fingerprints are recorded in the unaccompanied child’s file. In addition, all identification documents must be legible and unexpired.
Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policy complain that cumbersome fingerprinting and identification rules could delay the vetting of sponsors, leading to a backlog and overcrowding in shelters that house unaccompanied children. They also fear that under Harper, who has been an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2007, ORR will share information about the sponsors, most of whom are illegal immigrants themselves, with ICE, making it easier to arrest and deport them. But Harper was unapologetic in an email to the ORR staff. “The pervasive fraud in the sponsor process is undeniable,’ she wrote.
Ed: Read this in full and be amazed that we didn't fingerprint 'sponsors' before now. Consider this in light of all the hoops one must jump through in order to foster or adopt children. Yet the Biden administration never vetted these 'sponsors' at all, which meant that traffickers exploited this system to put children into sexual slavery on an industrial scale.
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Nearly a decade ago, Camille Paglia saw transgenderism as a sign of the unraveling of our civilization, and a predictor of the future rise of "heroic masculinity". And here we are. @moveincircles pic.twitter.com/57WmGqlhr2
— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) February 10, 2025
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🚨NEW: @FrankLuntz says former Biden, Clinton voters who flipped to Trump in 2024 "love" how fast he's moving 🚨
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) February 17, 2025
"They love the pace of change. They were very fed up over the last four years. They wanted action ... results. They looked at prices ... affordability ...… pic.twitter.com/oTl0EDs3mx
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