Weekend Open Thread
[guest post by Dana]
Feel free to talk about anything you think is newsworthy or might interest readers.
I’ll start:
First news item: Authorities release two child rapists instead of holding them until ICE picked them up:
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Mexican nationals were each taken into custody for separate incidents in the Tri-State Area on charges they sexually assaulted a minor.
Despite requests that the men be held in jail until officers from ICE could pick them up, local law enforcement in both states released the suspects back into the public.
Their crimes, and how their release came about:
ICE says the first man — Luciano Trejo-Dominguez – was arrested by Vineland, New Jersey police for allegedly restraining and sexually assaulting a child younger than 16 on Aug. 12.
Over the next two days, ICE and Pacific Enforcement Response Center both filed detainers to have Trejo-Dominguez held at the Cumberland County Jail. Those requests were denied and the alleged rapist was released on Aug. 23.
Trejo-Dominguez has been charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault of a victim 13-15 years-old, criminal restraint, criminal sexual contact, and endangering the welfare of a child.
The other man – Joaquin Rodriguez Quiroz – was arrested by police in New York’s Westchester County on 3rd-degree rape charges on Sept. 6.
Quiroz allegedly raped a minor under 17 years-old, which is a class-E felony in New York.
ICE again lodged a detainer request with the Westchester County Jail on Sept. 7, but the Mexican national was released after posting bond.
Second news item: Republicans want Rudy Guiliani to just shut the heck up already:
“I have great respect for Mr. Giuliani, but I said this yesterday and take it for what it’s worth: He’s wild as a March hare,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “He’s like a lot of senators, he’s kind of a free range chicken, he kind of gets out there. What he says is his business, I don’t speak for him.”
Others put it more bluntly.
“I think it would be a good thing if he would go take a vacation,” a senior GOP lawmaker told POLITICO, one of several who declined to go on the record so they could speak critically of Giuliani.
Even some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill don’t think Giuliani is doing the president or the party any favors by being such a constant presence in the media.
“Rudy’s saying a lot of things and I’m not sure he’s helping the president by being on TV every 15 minutes,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters this week.
Third news item: Rudy Guiliani has cancelled a paid appearance at a Kremlin-backed conference in Armenia next week, where he was the only American scheduled to speak:
Giuliani, who confirmed to The Washington Post on Friday morning that he would attend the event, reversed himself that evening after The Post reported on his participation in the meeting, which Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials are expected to attend.
The two-day conference is sponsored by Russia and the Moscow-based Eurasian Economic Union, a trade alliance launched by Putin in 2014 as a counterweight to the European Union.
…Giuliani was set to participate in a panel led by Sergey Glazyev, a longtime Putin adviser who has been under U.S. sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine five years ago.
Giuliani said Friday evening that he was no longer planning to attend the meeting. “I didn’t know Putin was going,” he said in a brief interview, adding in a text: “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
Note: Giuliani angrily rejected questions about whether it would be appropriate for him to attend the event at which he also appeared last year.
“I will try to not knowingly talk to a Russian until this is all over,” he retorted.
Fourth news item: Cancel culture cancels reporter who cancelled private citizen:
A Des Moines Register reporter who was let go this week over a piece that received heavy backlash has blamed “right-wing ideologues” for his firing and suggested he’d experienced oppression like “women and journalists of color” face in the industry.
Aaron Calvin’s profile on 24-year-old Iowan and impromptu philanthropist Carson King, who raised over $1 million for a children’s hospital, sparked an uproar because it had referred to a pair of racist tweets King had written as a 16-year-old high school student — tweets for which King expressed remorse.
Calvin himself said he was caught off-guard after his critics delved into his own social media history and found racist and other offensive tweets. The Register announced on Thursday that Calvin was “no longer with the paper,” as his tweets went against their employee policy.
In an interview with Buzzfeed published Friday, Calvin declared that “this event basically set my entire life on fire.”
“I was reminded by an editor to background Carson … and I found a few tweets that he published in high school that were racist jokes,” the 27-year-old reporter said. “I knew if I found them, other people would find them as well.”
Calvin insisted that “throughout this entire process,” the editors, the editorial board and Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter “knew” and “approved” the inclusion of King’s tweets in the profile.
When asked about his own tweets from 2010-2013, which included the use of the n-word, hate speech against cops and a demeaning tweet about gay marriage, Calvin called them “frankly embarrassing” and said he would not have written them today. He also insisted they were “taken out of context.”
But of course “right-wing idealogues” are to blame for Calvin *choosing* to set an innocent guy’s life on fire by exposing stupid tweets made when he was a stupid 16-year old kid, right?? If you’re a reporter who chooses to cancel someone out, and then as a result, you yourself get cancelled and then Blame Others for Your Own Irresponsible Decisions, well, I’m not losing any sleep over you being cancelled out.
Fifth news item: Sarah Jeong, the ever delightful writer who loves everyone, especially old white men, has stepped down from the NYT editorial board:
“Sarah decided to leave the editorial board in August,” deputy editorial board member Kate Kingsbury told CNN on Friday. “But we’re glad to still have her journalism and insights around technology in our pages through her work as a contributor.”
Jeong is now serving as a “contracted contributor for NYT Opinion,” CNN reported. The Times did not announce Jeong’s departure from its editorial board at the time in August.
The news regarding Jeong’s status came hours after she raised eyebrows on Twitter over her response to a columnist for The Guardian who urged against people canceling their subscription to the Times.
“I’m as frustrated with @nytimes as anyone. But an individual canceling a subscription does nothing. It’s self-indulgent. It’s not a movement or a boycott,” wrote Guardian columnist Siva Vaidhyanathan, warning that “Even if it did matter it would hurt many great journalists like @nhannahjones @sarahjeong and @jbouie.”
“You’re wrong. NYT does pay attention to subscriber cancellations,” replied Jeong. “It’s one of the metrics for ‘outrage’ that they take to distinguish between ‘real’ outrage and superficial outrage. What subscribers say can back up dissenting views inside the paper about what it should do and be.”
And finally, let’s end with a serious face-palm:
Chinese communist revolution 1949 led to greatest emancipation of women in world history, ending foot binding, concubines & forced marriage & beginning the mass education of girls & opening up all-male occupations to women – decades ahead of the West. @CCriadoPerez @lynne_segal pic.twitter.com/4QEbNLFzLt
— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) September 27, 2019
I just can’t even…
Have a great weekend.
(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)
–Dana
Good morning.
Dana (05f22b) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:00 amOpen borders are the greater good. Your childrens rapes are acceptable and even necessary collateral damage in the pursuit of a greater good
steveg (354706) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:21 amOnly 60 million dead, well theres that.
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:25 amBecause there are so many defenders of the president, who saw through this mockery of legitimate investigative and legal authority.
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:34 amHow about this senator, inform yourself better about these kerfluffles. Where have you been fof 3 days.
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:40 amAs for guiliani, he would have been the only one pleading the anti iran regime in central asia, remember when they tried to blow him up at a conference in europe.
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:49 amI first read this on Drudge
http://thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/bean-dip-meth-508216
This woman generously shared her drug of choice with her co-workers and now she is facing charges.
steveg (354706) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:56 amThis act of selflessness spurred me towards starting a crowdfunding site to raise money for her defense. My idea is to take the cash raised and hopefully buy two kilos of crystal that we can sell on the street and effectively leverage donations at least 4X over.
There should be a compulsory, statutory process for detaining illegal aliens in these situations.
Until the law is fixed, it will stay broken. It’s not really any more complicated than that.
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:59 amI miss DRJ and Beldar.
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:06 am“Until the law is fixed, it will stay broken. It’s not really any more complicated than that.l
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 9:59 am
Let’s get Trump impeached first.
Munroe (04d79e) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:17 amCredible and effective leadership will be required, so yes.
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:21 amPriorities, maguire must have wondered with all thats happening in the world they drag me over this petty spat. Of course the procedures were streamlined and sean davis cant get an answer why this was done.
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:24 amNow old habits die hard, bolton visited zelensky on august 28th and told them not to sell a certain tech to china, like poroshenko had done with north korea
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:31 amWait that never happened before:
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:35 amhttps://thefederalist.com/2019/09/28/susan-rice-obama-put-call-transcripts-on-top-secret-server-too/
Complication comes into play because both sides of the aisle prefer to leave the law in a broken state. There are statutory processes in place but both parties refuse to close the “compulsory” loophole.
Whether you like him or not, Stephen Miller is a smart young guy inside the WH who is very passionate about detaining illegal criminals. I’m confident Miller and like minded people have scoured the Federal and state statutes for anything they could use to either force detention, and/or penalize state and local scofflaws. I’m sure they’ve found some law from the 1800’s they think they can use
steveg (354706) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:38 amI’m jaded on the issue, so I think if Miller has something, he will only roll it out on a test basis early next election cycle to see how it polls.
#14
Of course they did. I’m sure presidents all the way back to Washington did something similar.
So the never trumpers will just move the goal posts to the “two wrongs don’t make it right” argument, when their real beef is not with people doing this type of thing, its 100% a beef with their “bogey man” doing this type of thing.
I’m very confident every president since the telegraph was invented has had conversations with foreign heads of state that read way worse than this one.
steveg (354706) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:49 amCoincidence im sure:
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:01 amhttps://mobile.twitter.com/wretchardthecat
Patrick on the new thread shows me that I was wrong to use the percentage of 100
steveg (354706) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:03 amBill Maher sticks a knife in Biden
Maher told his audience, “Why can’t politicians tell their f*cking kids, “Get a job!”… If Don Jr. did what Hunter Biden did, “It would be all Rachel Maddow was talking about.”
steveg (354706) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:03 amThe southern fried version is thomas ravenel, what a hot mess!
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:06 amWhere’d DRJ go?
Ben Wittes:
Giuliani is about as patriotic as his “client”. If the “Enemy of the People’ hadn’t brought up Giuliani’s participation, he would’ve happily taken a check from a Moscow-based organization founded by Putin, the dictator who has been hostile to our interests for years.
Here’s an interesting take from the guy who interviewed US Envoy Volcker, right when the State Department guy was dealing with the fallout from Trump’s infamous call.
Trump’s bias against Ukraine hasn’t changed, even though that nation is a victim of Putin’s fascist imperialism. The way I see it, Trump is hostile to Ukraine for three reasons: (1) they’re resisting his good friend Vlad, (2) one of its politicians exposed Paul Manafort to be corrupt, and Manafort acted as a pro-Putin operative in Ukraine, (3) Trump has been chumped into believing the urban myth that Joe Biden did something illegal wrt Hunter Biden.
Paul Montagu (f2c051) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:06 amI’ve been wondering about all the Chinese movies that just have to have a strong woman protagonist or several. They are for sure controlled by the Chinese government. Are they shown in China or are they just for export?
nk (9651fb) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:10 amEddie Murphy ‘cringes’ at old ‘ignorant’ stand-up material
In 1996, Murphy issued an apology for using jokes about AIDS in his act during the 1980’s.
The full interview in the NYT is here. Murphy sounds very down-to-earth these days. He’ll be hosting SNL in December, for the first time since 1984.
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:18 amRe: Des Moines Register vs Beer Guy:
I worked a couple years out of Iowa City about six years ago and I still have some connections. Word there is Carson King (beer guy) said some favorable things about Trump and boom, Twitter mining. Anyone even remotely conservative must not be allowed to look good in media, especially someone being cast as a hero. The editor who approved the entire process is a huge Warren fan. When I checked her twitter feed 5 out the 6 most recent teeets included Warren standing in front of an American flag.
The response by writer (Aaron Colvin), editor, the DMR and Buzzfeed is as lame obvious deflection as you can get. Carson King comes out as the adult by comparison.
Things noticed in the msm response to the ‘journalism’ dumpster fire:
King’s tweets from when he was in high school are described as ‘racist’ while reporters racist/homophobic/cop-hating etc. tweets from when he was an adult reporter at Buzzfeed are described as ‘inappropriate’.
Very few reports mention that Aaron Colvin was writing for the DMR from Brooklyn.
The DMR claimed to be doing a thorough investigation but apparently that did not include finding out who informed Anheuser-Busch about the tweets. According to some they also get the timeline wrong on AB cancelling their connection to King after his speech admitting the tweets, when they severed ties before his speech. Also, they do not divulge if there is a consistent degree of social media mining for people featured. We already know they go harder after people donating money to a children’s hospital than they do for their own employees.
Over 150,000 have signed a petition demanding the DMR apologize to King. The paper’s CYA follow-up says they have heard from ‘hundreds’ of people. The follow-up did not include an apology, Colvin apologized for the tweets but never directly apologized to King for basically using tweets from a 16 year old to basically cancel him as a public figure.
Would love an outside authority to find out the real process and timeline on what happened here, something similar to the CJR’s pretty thorough report on Rolling Stone and the UVA game rape crisis which found massive systemic failure of reporting basics.
Wish I could find it but there was a great photo of a subscriber’s letter cancelling his subscription to the DMR. The paper had a green ‘GO PAPERLESS’ stamp on the envelope. He circled it and wrote ‘OK’.
harkin (58d012) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:50 am_
I believe those movies were meant for local consumption. If you believe the folklore around the creation of Wing Chun by a Shaolin nun for a girl (Wing Chun), then Strong women have been around since then. I think Cheng Pei-Pei* was the first female Martial arts movie superstar. My favorite Martial arts movies featured Women kicking butt.
But yes, Wushu came with the Chinese Communist revolution.
*You might remember her playing “Jade Fox” in Crouching tiger, hidden dragon.
felipe (023cc9) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:52 amAnd good to know Communist China ended foot-binding, concubines and forced marriage decades before those western imperialist dogs. Too bad it took totalitarianism, starvation and murder of millions to get-er-done.
harkin (58d012) — 9/28/2019 @ 11:57 amSpeaking of Wushu.
felipe (023cc9) — 9/28/2019 @ 12:03 pmMay Miller-notRedSteeze catch the same fate as Lee Atwater. I’m 7up and he’s caffeine.
urbanleftbehind (f81fb3) — 9/28/2019 @ 12:03 pmSome feminine Wushu. It’s not Giselle.
felipe (023cc9) — 9/28/2019 @ 12:18 pmJoe Wilson, Valerie Plame’s husband, dead at 69.
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 12:20 pmOh snap, did Antonio Brown “out” Baker Mayfield? (and not in the gay sense). http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/09/28/baker-mayfield-antonio-brown-trade-shots-on-social-media/
urbanleftbehind (f81fb3) — 9/28/2019 @ 12:23 pmLourae🐾
@Flaaaaalala
Sarah Jeong: f**k trump
NYT: go ahead on sis👍🏼
SJ: and f**k whitey amirite
NYT: kween
SJ: and f**k subscribers
NYT: you’re fired
harkin (58d012) — 9/28/2019 @ 12:57 pm_
I thought we couldn’t use our own judgement to decide if someone might have committed a crime until they’d been duly convicted by a court of law. As unconvicted people, surely they are pure as the driven snow and so we needn’t really worry about them being on the streets? (I am fine with them being deported, just reviewing a bit of cognitive dissonance that I often read.)
Rudy really should be quiet, he’s not helping.
I had to look up who the twitter dude is. He sure doesn’t seem to know much about Chinese attitudes about women (I also don’t know much, but apparently I know more than he does.) I hope he’s more knowledgeable about LGBTQ+ rights, since it seems to be his thing.
Nic (896fdf) — 9/28/2019 @ 1:18 pmI agree about Rudy. The man doesn’t know when to shut up. He always has to talk, and he always has to make sure everyone knows RUDY! is here, making the great decisions, doing important things, and in general is VERY, VERY IMPORTANT.
But he’s the best Trump can do. He’s a lawyer, and he’s willing to go on TV and defend Trump. Unlike Sessions who seemed more interested in keeping out of the spotlight and not taking any flak from anyone for any reason. Maybe its better to have a fighting General, who takes a drink now and then, rather than a cowardly sober General, who runs away from a fight.
rcocean (1a839e) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:01 pmDouble post…
In the full video of Trump at the UN pep talk, he also talked about how he brought up Biden, and his son, with the Chinese trade rep, and that he should get the Chines to “look into” whether they were doing anything in China, “because lots of people are saying Hunter Biden took $1.5B from the Chinese”.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:05 pmIt wasn’t Sessions’ job to defend Trump, do you not understand that?
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:08 pmThanks, felipe!
nk (9651fb) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:29 pmthat’s why china isn’t our foe, the other burisma board members associate, devon archer had an associate allen ho, who went up for selling nuclear secrets as a part of cgn, this is why a year ago, they tightened up the protocols on nuclear technology transfers,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:35 pmdavis, O’Rourke, now this rocket surgeon, with a taste for shoe leather,
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/28/texas-democrat-forced-to-apologize-for-saying-gov-greg-abbott-hates-trees-because-one-fell-on-him/
narciso (d1f714) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:39 pmhis name is a killing word,
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2019/09/27/after-years-sliming-new-york-times-has-nerve-declare-boriss-brexit
narciso (d1f714) — 9/28/2019 @ 2:47 pmThe President of the United States Is Unwell
He goes on to point out one instance after another of Trump being unable to coherently express the simplest of ideas, and contrasts his word salad with Mike Pompeo’s statement at the same availability. Trump’s mental incapacity is, as he suggests, shocking.
Dave (1bb933) — 9/28/2019 @ 3:02 pmno more peaky blinders,
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bowl-cut-white-supremacist-symbol-890888/
I think making this murderous tweaker symbol of anything, was illconsidered,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/28/2019 @ 3:59 pm@9- #metoo, Dave.
mg (8cbc69) — 9/28/2019 @ 4:34 pmClimate ‘consensus’ alert:
The Resplandy et al paper published in Nature last year and which has been the basis for countless alarmist articles and which was pulled (shortly after statisticians pointed out glaring mistakes) for fine tuning which would result in no significant effect on the original claim of ocean warming being even more severe than recently thought………has been retracted in full.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/09/25/resplandy-et-al-part-5-final-outcome/
From the comments
“It’s OK to make mistakes and then admit and/or fix them. This is what Christy did. This is what Lindzen did. This is what Michael Mann refused to do with his hockey stick. This is what Sherwood refused to do when he first used a deceptive color graph to “prove” the existent of a tropical hot spot, and when he later wanted us to believe that we should throw out balloon and satellite data and instead depend on his derivation of tropospheric temperatures through wind shear and an assumption of natural variability.
Hughes blamed 2016 GBR coral bleaching on global warming and Jim Steele, and then later Wolanski in a published paper, showed that bleaching was due to lowered sea levels from El Nino and natural current mechanics. Did Hughes admit any error?”
Why is it that the skeptics release their code and admit/correct mistakes much more than the alarmists?
harkin (58d012) — 9/28/2019 @ 5:14 pmAnd speaking of climate:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/343553/
harkin (dc1411) — 9/28/2019 @ 8:17 pmOh lord, how did I miss this nugget of pure gold.
Heeheeha, Liddle’ not Liddle with the hyphen, you know, the hyphen…’…
This guy is the President, of all of the US, President of ‘Murika, with the hyphen.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:21 pmJust because all the dictionaries have gone full Never Trump, eliminating the word liddle’ and changing the name of the hyphen to apostrophe ….
And whatabout Woodrow Wilson?
nk (9651fb) — 9/28/2019 @ 10:52 pmWell, to change the subject, as this is an open thread, I’m looking forward to watching Martin Scorcese’s latest mob film, The Irishman. This reviewer considers it an epic masterpiece.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/martin-scorseses-the-irishman-a-bloody-epic-masterpiece-and-al-pacinos-greatest-performance-in-years?ref=home
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 9/29/2019 @ 7:33 amMatt Pearce 🦅
@mattdpearce
hrrrrmmm NYT has very quietly edited away the NRA quid pro quo language
https://mobile.twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1177712798916214784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1177712798916214784&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fgregp-3534%2F2019%2F09%2F27%2Fnever-mind-new-york-times-stealth-edits-its-big-scoop-on-the-nra-and-president-trump%2F
harkin (58d012) — 9/29/2019 @ 9:33 am_
I opened my computer today and found this video of Lauterbrunnen Switzerland it is beautiful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_4XZuUqwoc
I believe Lauterbrunnen was discovered by Matt Lauer and the “T” was added later
steveg (354706) — 9/29/2019 @ 9:58 amA few weeks ago Patterico mocked people who believe in the deep state. I didn’t go back to find his exact words on the subject, but he does like the word “morons”.
In their own words, here are people deep within the state.
steveg (354706) — 9/29/2019 @ 10:03 amhttps://www.thenewneo.com/2019/09/28/the-deep-state-hatched-its-plot-against-trump-very-early-and-they-told-us-so/
Dan moldea leading hoffa expert, considers the tale sheeran told brandis ludicrous.
Narciso (beeb9a) — 9/29/2019 @ 10:26 amSurvival tip: If you’re hiding in the woods from the police of a totalitarian surveillance state, don’t roof your cave with blue tiles and leave your trash and other stuff in front of its entrance. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49874969 And steps? Seriously?
nk (dbc370) — 9/30/2019 @ 7:13 pm“Rudy’s saying a lot of things and I’m not sure he’s helping the president by being on TV every 15 minutes,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters this week.
Rudy Kettle meet Senator Pot.
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/2/2019 @ 3:14 pm