demmiblue
demmiblue's JournalFox News Reporter Diana Falzone Sues Network
Source: New York Magazine
Yet another woman has filed a gender-discrimination claim against Fox News today, bringing the total number of lawsuits against the media company to at least 15. Fox News online reporter Diana Falzone filed suit in New York Supreme Court alleging she was demoted after publishing an essay in January on Fox News’ website about suffering from endometriosis. “The male-dominated senior management of Fox News obviously objected to the fact that a female on-air host had disclosed that she suffers from a women’s reproductive-health condition, which, in their eyes, detracted from her sex appeal and made her less desirable,” the lawsuit claims.
Falzone has appeared on Fox since 2008, on Hannity as well as the Fox Business Network with hosts Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo. She also hosts online shows on Fox News’ website.
In the suit, Falzone says she cleared her essay with her supervisors, Refet Kaplan and Chris Kensler, executives at Foxnews.com. In the piece, Falzone goes into detail about her experience with endometriosis, which affects an estimated 176 million women globally. “It was just days after my 33rd birthday when my doctor delivered the worst news of my life: I will likely never have a child and fulfill my greatest wish of being a mother,” she wrote. “When hit with the news that I am infertile, I could not stop crying. And not only was it very unlikely I’d ever conceive, my health was in jeopardy.”
Falzone says that after the piece ran, Kaplan told her that the “Second Floor,” referring to the network’s top executives Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, no longer wanted her appearing on-air. According to the suit, Kaplan said Falzone was “permanently banned from ever appearing on air on any Foxnews.com, Fox News Network, Fox Business News Network or any other Fox News medium and would never again be permitted to host her own shows or conduct her own interviews.” Falzone claims that a producer later told her she was also banned from doing voice-overs. When Falzone asked Kaplan why she was being demoted, he declined to say, according to the suit.
Read more: http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/05/diana-falzone-fox-news-reporter-sues-network-gender-discrimination.html
Oh, and, buh-bye, Bill.
Trump Defends Invite to Philippines' Duterte Amid Drug War Toll
Source: Boomberg
U.S. President Donald Trump underscored his eagerness to meet with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte despite international condemnation of the Asian leader’s violent crackdown on drug addicts and dealers.
“The Philippines is very important to me strategically and militarily,” Trump said Monday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News, two days after he invited the Philippines leader to Washington. “I look forward to meeting him. If he comes to the White House that’s fine.”
A White House statement after the April 29 call said the two leaders discussed “the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs.” Trump also committed to taking part in a summit with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations near Manila in November.
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“You know he’s very popular in the Philippines,” Trump said. “He has a very high approval rating in the Philippines.”
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-01/trump-defends-invite-to-philippines-duterte-amid-drug-war-toll?utm_content=politics&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-politics
Approval ratings fetish and business deals.
Image via Raw Story: https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/ivanka-trump-hawks-familys-new-development-in-philippines-as-dad-invites-strongman-to-white-house/
On come on!: CNN guest crushes GOP panelists attempt to spin Trumps Andrew Jackson blunder
Source: Raw Story
During a panel discussion about Trump’s questioning why the Civil War needed to happen, Dennard tried to make the case that Trump was simply asking the question to help educate the public and to make sure that nothing like the Civil War ever happens again in the United States.
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“That is the most nonsensical statement I’ve ever heard on any television program before,” he said. “We all know why there was a Civil War: Because Southern states treated people inhumanely. Immoral slavery existed, they refused to give it up… where did Donald Trump get his history degree from, Trump University?”
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Dennard then accused Press of wanting to forget the lessons of history, and said that he wanted to “do away with the Holocaust Museum, do away with the new African American Museum.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/on-come-on-cnn-guest-crushes-gop-panelists-attempt-to-spin-trumps-andrew-jackson-blunder/
Trump Says Hed Meet With Kim Jong Un Under Right Circumstances
Source: Bloomberg
President Donald Trump said he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid heightened tensions over his country’s nuclear weapons program if the circumstances were right.
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump said Monday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News. “If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”
The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, and as recently as last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at the United Nations that the U.S. would negotiate with Kim’s regime only if it made credible steps toward giving up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
“Most political people would never say that,” Trump said of his willingness to meet with the reclusive Kim, “but I’m telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news.”
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-01/trump-says-he-d-meet-with-north-korea-s-kim-if-situation-s-right
"We have breaking news." That pretty much sums it up.
What Its Really Like to Cover Trump
Source: Politico Magazine
This marks the fourth year in a row that Politico Magazine has surveyed the White House press corps, our annual snapshot of the highs, lows and general chaos of trying to cover the most powerful office on earth. Every administration has its own running fights with the press, but this year the context was different from the start: a new president who gets unparalleled media attention, yet has publicly attacked the press over and over since taking office. President Donald Trump has called the media “fake news,” the “enemy of the American people,” “dishonest” and much more; he has singled out individual reporters with criticism and name-calling. At the same time, Trump has welcomed multiple outlets into the Oval Office for interviews, makes a point of praising the journalists he likes, and devours print and TV coverage of him and his staff. And in case there was any doubt that this was a new team with a whole new relationship to the media, for the first time (that we know of), someone in the press corps leaked our questions to the administration—and, for the first time, the White House emailed Politico Magazine demanding detailed answers about the survey and how it was conducted. (The answers are in the fine print at the end of this piece.)
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/28/poll-trump-white-house-press-corps-journalists-215051
This cracked me up:
Robert Reich: Through history tyrants have befriended other tyrants, to their mutual advantage.
Let's look at Trump's recent record:
via Twitter
Trump's America? Not for long. Democratic women are taking our country back.
Source: The Hill
As we evaluate Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, there is much cause for alarm. From attacking our healthcare system to attempting to institute an unconstitutional "Muslim Ban" to appointing a Supreme Court justice who wants to take away women’s bodily autonomy, each new policy his administration promotes threatens our democracy and sets our country back further from the bright future so many of us have been working decades to build.
Watching the daily destruction of all that we as Democrats and progressives care about, I find myself clinging to the only silver lining I can find — the wave of Democratic women determined to take their communities and our country back.
Nearly 130 Emerge America alumnae have stepped forward and announced that they are running for office in 2017 in state and local races. That’s a woman for every day Trump has been in office plus 30 more. And we expect the number of Democratic women running for office to continue to grow with each day.
An even more hopeful sign of what is yet to come, is that women are already winning elections in 2017. Every week it seems like we are greeted with the welcome news that a Democratic woman candidate has won her race and can use her position to help lead the resistance to Donald Trump.
Just this week, Emerge Massachusetts alumna Maureen Butt was elected to the Wakefield Board of Selectmen, winning her seat in a crowded field of six people. The only person of color in the race, she is the first female Muslim-American selectman in Massachusetts and the third Muslim-American elected to office in the state.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/national-party-news/331143-trumps-america-has-a-silver-lining-democratic-women
99 Days in 99 Seconds (Video Tweet- The Late Show)
https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/857997621989957632Alex Jones Suffers Defeat In Custody Hearing
Source: Buzz Feed News
The jury, which deliberated for roughly nine and a half hours, ruled Thursday night to give Kelly Jones joint custody with the ability to dictate the residence of the children. Previously she had joint custody with limited, supervised visitation rights with residence dictated by Alex Jones.
It was a defeat for Alex Jones, who watched the verdict with a stoic expression and left promptly after the verdict without talking to reporters. Upon hearing the verdict, Kelly Jones dabbed her eyes with a tissue and hugged her lawyer, Robert Hoffman.
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But the thorny prospect of untangling Jones' professional life from his personal life was largely rejected by the court. Judge Orlinda Naranjo would not allow attorneys for Jones' ex-wife to submit clips from Infowars, Jones' radio and online news outlet that broadcasts his conspiratorial views.
During a hearing last week without the jury present, Naranjo did not allow into evidence multiple clips of Jones angry, shirtless, and ranting on his show. The judge also disallowed a clip of Jones and his 14-year-old son at a party where there was a dartboard plastered with images of Hillary Clinton on the grounds that the evidence was overtly political. "I don't want this case tried in the press. It should be tried in here," the judge told the attorneys.
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The court got its wish. Infowars and Jones' status as America's best-known conspiracy theorist were rarely mentioned around the jury, save for a few brief moments where Kelly Jones' attorneys noted that Jones "spewed violent hate in his professional life." Only one very short clip of Jones allegedly intoxicated on air was played for the jury. (The clip was edited at the request of the judge to remove the phrase "1776 will commence again" on the grounds that it was political speech.)
Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/jones-trial-verdict?utm_term=.mgvJ44dn15#.jiV088qelp
A New International Advice Line Will Help American Women End Their Pregnancies
Source: Mother Jones
Since 2014, Women Help Women has responded to over 100,000 emails from women around the world seeking abortions in countries where the procedure is highly restricted or outright banned. Among other services, the group sometimes arranges to have the abortion-inducing drugs misoprostol and mifepristone sent internationally and then counsels the recipient on their safe usage.
"We know there are different barriers that prevent people from being able to access the abortion care that they need," says Jessica Shaw, a professor at the University of Calgary in Canada and a Women Help Women board member. "This is already going on, and we're stepping up in anticipation that things likely will get worse with new laws coming in over the next few years."
Women Help Women—whose new American project is called Self-Managed Abortion, Safe and Supported (SASS)—won't be sending misoprostol or mifepristone to women in the United States for fear, says Shaw, of litigation. Instead counselors will advise the small but significant number of women in the US who manage to obtain the drugs without the assistance of a health care provider on how to successfully administer them. For added protection, WHW counselors responding to queries from American women will be working abroad, including from Canada.
Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/women-help-women-self-induced-abortion-misoprostol
This is where we are... 21st century back alleys.
