July 20, 2016

Jill Harth, 1990's Trump "attempted rape" accuser, breaks silence, demands apology.

There's a video at the link.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/20/donald-trump-sexual-assault-allegations-jill-harth-interview

A woman at the centre of sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump has spoken for the first time in detail about her personal experience with the billionaire tycoon who this week became the Republican nominee for president.

Jill Harth, a makeup artist, has stayed quiet for almost 20 years about the way Trump pursued her, and – according to a lawsuit she instigated – cornered her and groped her in his daughter’s bedroom.

After Trump mounted his campaign for the White House, details emerged of the 1997 complaint, in which Harth accused him of “attempted ‘rape’”.

She said she was quickly inundated with interview requests from major US television networks, but resolved not to speak about the events – until Trump publicly said in May that her claims were “meritless” and his daughter Ivanka gave an interview in which she said her father was “not a groper”.

Harth, who feels she has been publicly branded a liar and believes her business has suffered because of her association with the allegations, decided to speak out about her experience with Trump because she wants an apology.

SNIP

July 20, 2016

Why does the media give Melania the kid glove treatment compared to Michelle?

Commentators instantly excused Melania on the grounds that she wasn’t a political person – only a spouse. She couldn’t possibly be blamed for the plagiarism.

And maybe they’re right. Maybe she was ill-served by someone in the campaign.

But imagine the reaction if Michelle had plagiarized Nancy Reagan. Or if she’d had a history of posing nude on a bearskin rug. Or if she was the third wife, a “trophy” wife.

What is so different about the two women, that makes the media treat Melania with so much more deference?

Like Melania, Michelle was a reluctant campaigner.

Like Melania, Michelle preferred to concentrate on her own successful career.

But unlike Melania, Michelle never did anything wrong, yet she faced far more criticism.

Both women are tall, striking, and of similar age. But only the sight of the white “supermodel” reduces much of the media into googly-eyed submission.

The Don knew this, of course, when he swapped his second wife for his third. That was part of the attraction. He knows white women like Melania turn many men into mush-brains, and that he’d benefit from some of her reflected glory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama

Although she has campaigned on her husband's behalf since early in his political career by handshaking and fund-raising, she did not relish the activity at first. When she campaigned during her husband's 2000 run for United States House of Representatives, her boss at the University of Chicago asked if there was any single thing about campaigning that she enjoyed; after some thought, she replied that visiting so many living rooms had given her some new decorating ideas.[87] She reportedly turned down requests by the campaign for her to attend fundraisers.[88] Obama was against her husband's run for the congressional seat and after his defeat would have preferred her husband tending to the financial needs of the family in what she deemed a more practical way.

SNIP

In May 2007, three months after her husband declared his presidential candidacy, Obama reduced her professional responsibilities by 80 percent to support his presidential campaign.[20] Early in the campaign, she had limited involvement in which she traveled to political events only two days a week and rarely traveled overnight;[94] by early February 2008 her participation had increased significantly, attending thirty-three events in eight days.[65] She made several campaign appearances with Oprah Winfrey.[95][96] She wrote her own stump speeches for her husband's presidential campaign and generally spoke without notes.[28]

July 20, 2016

Gavin Long, Baton Rouge cop-killer. Member of rightwing Sovereign Rights movement.

How many other disturbed individuals are these groups attracting?

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/18/cop_killer_gavin_long_and_the_danger_of_the_sovereign_citizens_movement/

On Sunday, three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were killed and three others wounded by a gunman. Gavin Long, age 29, has been identified as the alleged shooter. He is African-American, from Kansas City, and a former United States Marine.

SNIP

As reported on Sunday by the Kansas City Star:

Long declared himself a sovereign citizen in records filed with the Jackson County Recorder of Deeds last year.


SNIP

The sovereign citizens movement is a right-wing network of individuals and organizations numbering in the hundreds of thousands who believe that the United States government is illegitimate.

If true, Gavin Long’s attack on police is part of a larger pattern of violence by right-wing domestic terrorists against police, firefighters, and other representatives of state authority. The vast majority if not all of these attacks have been committed by white men.

In August of 2015, The Kansas City Star ran a feature on the sovereign citizens movement —which also attracts white supremacists — and how it has expanded to included African-Americans and other people of color.

July 20, 2016

I just un-muted my TV long enough to hear Ben Carson connect Hillary with Lucifer.

At least, I think I did.

Can someone provide some context, please?

I've got him back on mute, but I'd still like to know . . .

July 20, 2016

Jill Harth again accuses Trump of 90's sexual assault, demands apology.

http://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/exclusive-trump-business-associate-accuses-him-of-sexual-assault-demands-apology/

In her first ever on-camera interview (see above), Jill Harth, who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990’s, spoke out to LawNewz founder Dan Abrams. Harth has also hired high profile Los Angeles based attorney, Lisa Bloom, to represent her and Bloom is sure making it sound like they may soon sue the presidential hopeful for defamation.

As LawNewz first unearthed in February, Harth filed a lawsuit against the real estate mogul in 1997 accusing him of sexual assault, including “groping” her under her dress on several occasions, “forcibly” moving her to his daughter’s bedroom at Mar-a-Lago in an “attempted rape,” and repeatedly and aggressively propositioning her. On Monday, she not only stood by those allegations but demanded that Trump retract his statements earlier this year in which he called some of her claims “false” and “libelous.”

“I know I am going to have backlash, but I have been through enough. Bring it on. I’m a lot stronger now than I was 20 years ago,” she told Abrams.

SNIP

July 19, 2016

Blacks lash out against Melania Trump on Twitter after Plagiarized Speech

***posted to the African American Group***

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/us/politics/melania-trump-twitter-blacks.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FPresidential%20Election%202016&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Collection®ion=Marginalia&src=me&version=newsevent&pgtype=article

Word spread fast that Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday bore striking similarities to one delivered by Michelle Obama at the Democratic convention in 2008, and the furor ignited an intense backlash among blacks posting on Twitter.

While many blacks began accusing Ms. Trump of plagiarism, scores of others went a step further by focusing on the wider racial implications involving the two women and their husbands.

On “Black Twitter,” a term used to describe trending topics among black users on the social media site, #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes began trending as people satirically attributed famous lines by black leaders and black musical performers to Ms. Trump. Others altered famous photos from prominent black figures to jokingly accuse Ms. Trump of taking credit for those moments as well.

SNIP

July 19, 2016

Cosmopolitan: Response to Melania's plagiarism is example of white privilege.

The writer of this article, Brittney Cooper, is an assistant professor at Rutgers University.


http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a61559/melania-trump-michelle-obama-plagiarism/

Melania Trump owes Michelle Obama an apology. On Monday, Trump plagiarized several lines of Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention speech. Not only did Melania Trump claim that she wrote the speech, "with as little help as possible," but the Donald Trump campaign has doubled down in support of her, suggesting that the lines she borrowed included "common words and phrases," and therefore represent nothing particularly unique or remarkable about Obama's own words. I guess this is what Melania Trump, and generations of white women, mean by "help." It seems to mean that they rely upon black women's labor to help them look good, sound good, and gain influence, while treating that labor as wholly expendable.

Obama had a lot riding on her 2008 convention speech. Early in her husband's campaign, she had been roundly disparaged and condemned by the public as being angry, untrustworthy, and unpatriotic. After Barack Obama won the Iowa primary, Michelle Obama told an audience that for the first time in her life, she was proud of her country. Right-wing critics feigned outrage at her supposedly unpatriotic remarks, and suggested that her willingness to reference even indirectly America's history of racial discrimination and injustice was divisive.

When Obama stepped to the podium in 2008, her speech was not only a referendum on her husband's fitness for the presidency, but on her fitness for the position of first lady. Trump labored under no such pressure Monday night. Yes, the wives of powerful men are always under extreme scrutiny about their dress, comportment, intelligence, and performance of femininity. Trump is no exception. She has and will face sexism. But even the brouhaha over exposure of her nude photo shoot in British GQ has fallen out of the news cycle. Trump did not have to prove the worthiness of white women to be granted the status of ladyhood, in the same way that Obama had to do as a representative black woman in 2008.

SNIP

Now the wife of the Republican nominee boldly steals the thinking and words of the current first lady. And now pundits and commentators on the right and the left suggested on morning news programs that we should feel sympathy for Trump. I believe that Trump's speech suggests at some level that she identifies with and admires Obama, but I have no sympathy for white women who appropriate and steal the intellectual labor of black women. The idea that white women are always sympathetic, even when they have lied, cheated, or stolen, is morally repugnant and offensive to black women who are often viewed as untrustworthy even when we are at the top of our respective games. Taylor Swift has also profited from this vulnerable white femininity narrative by trafficking in ideas that she was being picked on by Kanye West, even when he clearly obtained consent to make reference to her in his music. In black feminist circles, we refer to this never-ending procession of sympathy for white women in the face of clear offense as "white lady tears." Black women are afforded no such kindnesses.

Ask Michelle Obama.

July 19, 2016

Melanie's speech didn't sound like the speech

of a woman who loves her husband.

She couldn't come up one warm, personal anecdote, even with the help of speechwriters. Even though everyone knew that was the goal -- to humanize him. Instead, it was one platitude after another, along with a couple paragraphs that really didn't fit in because they were stolen from someone else's very personal speech.

I witnessed a similar situation once, before a funeral. The man died without children, but with a number of nieces and nephews. The minister asked the relatives for stories that he could include in the service, and no one -- not one niece or nephew -- could come up with a warm, fuzzy story about the man. Finally, one of the family friends thought of something, and the minister wrote it down.

Melanie's situation reminded me of that. She couldn't think of any good stories to tell about the Don. How sad. But it makes sense because pathologic narcissists simply are not lovable. As bad as they are out in public, they are even more difficult for the people they're living with. The relatives of a narcissist must make the N proud -- or else. You are either the greatest, because you make the narcissist proud, or you are just a mosquito on the podium, waiting to be flattened.

So Melania strung a bunch of platitudes together and hoped no one would notice. And probably no one would have if she hadn't included some of Michelle's passionate words in the middle of it all.

July 19, 2016

Re: Melania. Someone tonight made the comment that her speech didn't have much "red meat."

That it had a lot more "blue meat." (I was flipping back and forth between MSNBC and CNN so I'm not sure which.)

That's what I'd thought listening to it, too -- that it sounded more like a Democratic speech than anything I've heard from Trump or any other R in years.

And now we know why.

July 19, 2016

Has anyone spotted Elizabeth Dole? Bob will be getting some award

tonight -- and he's the only former nominee to be attending.

So where's his wife? Or did I just miss her?

ON EDIT: Last year they announced that he was giving $100k to her organization for helping military families. I wonder if he came through with that or if it was another fake donation.