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What's Up With Harvey?

Just so people know what I'm talking about months and years later, here's a NYT story from yesterday:

Harvey Weinstein Is Fired After Sexual Harassment Reports

People can talk about the pros and cons and victims and gossip and creepiness and abuses and so on about this dude, but something more is going on than taking down a pervert.

The left is piling on Weinstein and they mean hardcore business. They want blood and they want it to hurt real bad before the kill. Don't forget, he is (or was :) ) pals with former President Obama.

After a lot of right wing mockery about the silence of Meryl Streep and other A list actors (and sundry A list celebrities) on Harvey's sexual bullying over decades, it seems like the gates of hell have now been opened on him from those very same stars. 

Everybody and their brother is soapboxing all of a sudden. Hell, they didn't even do that with Anthony Weiner and there were photos of his junk all over the Internet. And everybody and their brother is saying they didn't know about Harvey, had no clue about Harvey, etc. etc. etc. They are shocked, shocked, shocked about Harvey, they piously clamor!

(When everybody knew or heard stories for decades, of course. Like with Cosby.)

So what's up with Harvey?

Why is Harvey Weinstein all of a sudden the scapegoat of a leftwing mainstream that magically has become more Puritanical than fundamentalist Christians?

If I find out anything, I will let you know. And if you find out anything, please share...

Michael

EDIT: Breitbart is keeping a live update thing going with a constantly changing headline (started two days ago, this edit being on Oct. 12):

**Live Updates** — Harvey Weinstein Scandal

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There is no way that some plain harassment is all there is here. That's the first telling, by NYT, so that when the truth comes out they can all deny it, saying the right wing is crazy and exaggerating, "we already heard this story - he only traded some sexual favors for starring roles." Hollywood is controlled by Luciferian cults and this monster is at the top of them - he's guilty of life-in-prison crimes, just keep watching. Half the board quit. The remaining board fired him and they are already talking about renaming the company. No way is this just about some plain harassment, Hollywood is offering him up in hopes they can stop the coming avalanche, NYT obliged. It won't work.

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Poor Harvey.

Even CNN is coming after him. First it features President Trump saying he's known Weinstein a long time and is not surprised about what's happening to him.

Now CNN is even trying to shame former presidents into piling on.

As Democrats denounce Weinstein, Clintons and Obama stay mum

From the article:

Quote

Many Democratic office holders were quick to repudiate disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein following a bombshell report detailing decades of alleged sexual harassment.

But former Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- all of whom have longstanding ties to Weinstein, a major Democratic Party fundraiser -- have not publicly addressed the accusations.

Representatives for the Clintons have not responded to comment for this story, and Obama's office declined to comment.

The recent report in The New York Times cataloged accusations of sexual harassment against the filmmaker that spanned three decades. Three days after the report, Weinstein was fired by the company he co-founded.

Longtime Hillary Clinton aides have been confused by the former secretary of state's silence on the issue, questioning -- in private -- why she has not weighed in at all.

Weinstein has long been a Clinton donor with ties to the political family. Weinstein was one of many from Hollywood who donated to Bill Clinton's legal defense fund in the 1990s, a Washington Post report from the time stated. More recently, the Clintons rented a home next to Weinstein in the Hamptons in 2015, and Weinstein served as a connector between Hollywood stars and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.

Weinstein raised about $1.5 million from 1990-2016, according to data from the campaign finance-tracking Center for Responsive Politics, and was a bundler for Clinton's 2016 effort, including at a star-studded fundraiser for Clinton in June 2016 at Weinstein's Manhattan home.

Clinton personally headlined multiple fundraisers Weinstein was involved in organizing during the campaign.

CRP's OpenSecrets website shows Weinstein was a bundler for Obama as well, and the Hollywood giant visited the White House on several occasions during Obama's tenure. At a White House event for student films in 2013, first lady Michelle Obama credited Weinstein for making the event happen and praised him as a wonderful person and a good friend.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has been outspoken on the issue of sexual assault, also has not appeared to make any public statements about Weinstein since the report came out, and the Biden Foundation did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

Several Democrats announced their intention to return donations received from Weinstein or donate them to charity in the wake of the Times report. But as a bundler, much of his work for campaigns was gathering up donations from others into large sums -- making potentially returning Weinstein's donations more complicated for politicians like Clinton and Obama.

Calls for response

An editorial from The New York Times on Friday implored the Clintons and Obama to disavow Weinstein, calling on Democrats to make sure his status as a major party donor would not prevent anyone from speaking out.

. . .

Many Democrats have also called on their colleagues to repudiate Weinstein.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in a CNN interview on Sunday that Democrats should give any money they received from Weinstein back.

"I mean this is a pretty bad guy who did some really awful things," Murphy said.

Since her electoral defeat last November, Hillary Clinton has been outspoken on a range of issues, and during her presidential campaign she went after Trump for allegations of sexual assault.

Bill Clinton has been plagued by allegations of sexual harassment and assault throughout his own political career.

In December 2015, Hillary Clinton was asked about some of the accusations and her own assertions that victims who allege assault should be believed. In the context of allegations against her husband, Clinton said, "I would say that everyone should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence."

Obama has largely shied away from the public eye since leaving office, apart from delivering a few speeches and issuing statements in response to Trump administration moves on areas like climate change and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

They're even calling out Biden...

And the pressure builds and builds. I wonder if the US is going to adopt the guillotine for public executions. It sounds like a lot of Harvey's former friends would be happy with that. :) 

It's bad, folks. Harvey has the pro-Democrat fake news coming after him. Tsk tsk tsk... I fear he's in for a rough patch.

Also, about President Trump knowing poor Harvey. It's a good thing the President never took Harvey's politics money, huh? It looks like the Dems are in pretty deep. Especially Hillary Clinton, who luvs her some corruption money.

Imagine having to give all that moolah back after you've gotten used to having it...

:evil: 

Michael

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Jeez, the feeding frenzy in the fake news media is brutal. And it looks like the company is going to take his name off it. As to his brother's machinations in taking it over, I remember reading a story once about Cain and Abel... :) 

AP: Hollywood condemnation of Weinstein grows louder

New York Times: Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet and Glenn Close Speak Out on Harvey Weinstein

Huffpost: TV Journalist Says Harvey Weinstein Masturbated In Front Of Her

Hollywood Reporter: Harvey Weinstein Lawyers Battling N.Y. Times, New Yorker Over Potentially Explosive Stories (Exclusive)

Jezebel: Rose McGowan Wants the Board of Harvey Weinstein's Company to Resign 'Immediately'

Daily Beast: Harvey Weinstein Is Finished. Which Accused Hollywood Predator Will Be Next?

Vox: Meryl Streep believes the media didn’t know about Harvey Weinstein. She’s wrong.

And on and on and on...

I'm not even mentioning the conservative press, which is having a field day. :)

Still, I want to know what is behind this viciousness of the leftie press.

Objectivity, it ain't.

The members of the mainstream fake news collude with each other on matters like this. And the call has gone out that poor Harvey is not only fair game, they want his scalp. And they all know this is a shitstorm with massive potential for blowback on them since they all colluded with Weinstein for decades.

So I wonder... Who is gaining what with this?

Michael

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On 7/24/2016 at 2:37 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I predict the following about Ailes and the sexual harassment stuff.

This is a smokescreen and will fizzle after its use is over. Poor Gretchen will either have to go hard left, or be ground up into professional oblivion and banished to country church circuits. I think she has been played, to be honest, and she doesn't realize it yet.

Roger Ailes is not Bill Cosby, but the media is trying to do the same thing to Ailes they did to Cosby, and here's the important part--in the same way. That will be their undoing. It's one thing to attack the talent (Cosby) with the media. It's another to attack one of the media puppet-masters (Ailes) with the media. Those are two different games with different rules.

 

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26 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

 

On 7/24/2016 at 4:37 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I predict the following about Ailes and the sexual harassment stuff.

This is a smokescreen and will fizzle after its use is over. Poor Gretchen will either have to go hard left, or be ground up into professional oblivion and banished to country church circuits. I think she has been played, to be honest, and she doesn't realize it yet.

Roger Ailes is not Bill Cosby, but the media is trying to do the same thing to Ailes they did to Cosby, and here's the important part--in the same way. That will be their undoing. It's one thing to attack the talent (Cosby) with the media. It's another to attack one of the media puppet-masters (Ailes) with the media. Those are two different games with different rules.

 

William,

So I made a bad prediction. Guess I'm not God, huh?

:)

I don't even mind being wrong. You know why?

It's kinda cool to watch the leftwing media power-mongers being hoisted on their own petard, or, in modern English, being blown up by their own bomb.

They wanted to take out conservative voices with abuse of women and they managed to pull it off with a couple. But they should have remembered their own history of abusing women, say, starting with Ted Kennedy getting away with literal murder and all the sordid mess that has ensued after that.

Like the Daily Beast article I mentioned above said when asking who is next to fall, "KARMA IS A BITCH."

:evil:

But I still maintain there is something else going on with Weinstein and the fake news. This sudden hostility by long-standing accomplices stinks.

Michael

 

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9 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But I still maintain there is something else going on with Weinstein and the fake news. This sudden hostility by long-standing accomplices stinks.

Here's what bothers me about this so far. I can't understand who among the power players gain what.

With the Cosby takedown for sexually abusing women, I can understand where that came from. President Obama and his peeps had been covertly encouraging groups like Black Lives Matter, etc. This kind of agenda can only spread in the public through victimization propaganda, that is, when people perceive they are victims, they turn to a savior to get them out of their predicament. Enter the left.

But the left can't seen to take off with the general public except for flash fires like Occupy Wall Street. Don't forget, that particular movement happened as a response to the Tea Party sweep of midterm elections. The top-down leftie people only had Obama in the White House back then as proof the left was relevant to average folks. The rest of the political movement in the country was swinging hard in the opposite direction: House, Senate, Governors, state legislatures, and even at local government levels all over the country.

So to get people moving, they had to keep their divided assets in order (blacks, gays, Latinos, etc.). But Bill Cosby back then was going out telling young black folks they were not victims and they needed to take responsibility for their own lives. They needed to live productive lives, get jobs, clean up, etc. And lots of young folks were listening to him. If the victimization story were to spread to the tipping point in the mainstream, he had to go. So the backroom progressive powers that be gave the green light to Gloria Allred, the Brock fake news propaganda machine (see The Smear by Sharyl Attkisson for documentation on how that machine works), and others to trash Cosby and it basically worked. 

I don't like what they did to Cosby, but at least I understand it.

As to Ailes and O'Reilly, the same shtick was used to gin up a phony public outrage. Oh, some people were outraged, but not the general public the way they made it appear. The jokers in this deck were the Murdoch kids. James and Lachlan may be made of the same genetic material as their old man, but they are far, far more shallow and vain.

Granted, the Trump election stung  old man Rupert, but he knows how to keep running things in all political winds. His kids, though, hated the innuendo during cocktail parties they attended among the elitists. Everybody in that bubble was on the left or favored the ruling class so much, it didn't matter. But there they were representing a company that helped the enemy (to their clique) take power. I bet they got teased a lot.

So it was incredibly easy for the progressive powers that be to get rid of Ailes and O'Reilly. Everybody thinks the media circuses were staged to influence the public. They weren't. They were staged to influence James and Lachlan and influence they did. And out with Ailes and later O'Reilly.

At least the old man is not stupid. He reined in his kids and stopped the bleeding at Fox before it turned into a suicidal blood bath.

So that I can understand, also. In fact, there is a life lesson there. If you want to create a market empire, do it with your own property. When you use the property of others, you are vulnerable to other upcoming people who may not like you as the winds among the owners change.

And that leads me to Harvey Weinstein and why this whole thing is not understandable. First off, it's his own damn company. To get a powerful person out of his own powerful company, somebody more powerful--way more powerful at that--has to be really, really pissed at him.

Before the establishment fake news cartel will crucify one of their own for sexual abuse, before an Allred (Bloom) will jump ship, before the elite darlings among the progressives will come out in a bash-fest on an insider, there has to be orders coming down from the top (what I call the backroom progressive powers that be). It's obvious that this order has been issued. 

What I don't understand is why. What are the hidden bigshots gaining with this?

The only thing I can think of is that Malia Obama got an internship at the Weinstein Company after President Obama left office. So there's that: Malia, hot, nineteen years old, royalty so to speak, and Harvey as her boss. What could possibly go wrong? :) 

Maybe something happened and mommy and daddy were not amused... :) 

Maybe...

Hmmm...

Maybe...

But my gut tells me something else is going on...

Michael

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1507310347352-AP_712191093860.jpeg

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I think Harvey has already left the US.

Last night he was scheduled to fly to Europe for sex therapy or sumpin'...

I wonder, I wonder... What are the extradition policies of the country he's interested in? You know, where his sex clinic of choice is. After all, there's talk of rape charges.

Ahh... There goes my conspiracy thinking again...

We're all sure Harvey is a model citizen other than his... ahem... little problem. We all know he will come running back to the US if summoned to court to face rape charges, right?

:evil:

Michael

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52 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

We're all sure Harvey is a model citizen.

:evil:Michael

Of course he is... he went for the model types didn't he?  --J

 

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Breitbart is keeping a live update going on this scandal with a constantly changing headline. I included the link in the opening post, but here is the headline for right now (but it will be different later):

**Live Updates** — Harvey Weinstein Scandal: Report Says Board Knew About Payoffs. Affleck Dubbed ‘Buttman.’ Twitter Silences McGowan. Bourdain Blasts Hillary.

LOL...

:)

Michael

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And as long as I'm in a laughing mood, Rush Limbaugh thinks Harvey Weinstein should hire Hillary Clinton of Bimbo Eruptions, Inc. for damage control.

He said she's the most cheated-on woman in America and she still preserved the job and reputation of her sexual predator husband. Not only that, by doing so, she single-handedly saved the Democratic party. How? By bullying women (much more competently than Harvey ever could) and silencing them. So she's got a track record to envy.

And, as part of her service, after she works her magic, she makes sure the sexual predator gets heaps of praise in the media.

So he advises Harvey not to waste money on PR firms or reputation control. Hire Hillary. She's awfully expensive, but worth every cent. Nobody can destroy the reputations of female victims like she can and get results. She can make any serial sexual predator viable again as a public persona.

:)

LOL...

Michael

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Here's an aside.

I'm no fan of public sexual Puritanism. Especially not when raunchy show business people are involved and posturing as holier than thou. 

On the other hand, I am enormously enjoying the spectacle of the way this thing is spreading to catch A List actors and actresses and how surprised they seem. Also, it's quite a hoot to see all those other sanctimonious actresses and actors running for the hills so that WHAT THEY DID does not see the light of day.

:)

These idiots are so stupid they never realized that sexual Puritanism, even under the guise of feminism and social justice, is a boomerang, not a spear. You don't throw that weapon at someone unless you know how to catch it when it comes back at you.

And just you wait. Social media giants and the press are next.

:) 

Michael

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Question

Have you ever walked into a situation, not known much about it, asked a question or two, then had people take your head off? And then a group piles on you if you don't immediately capitulate in shame?

I can think of a lot of issues I have dealt with over the years like that.

The Iraq war is a good one. Back when it happened, you couldn't question the wisdom of it without someone coming down on you hard and questioning your motivations. And God forbid if you asked if it was about control of rich oil fields...

Nowadays, nobody thinks it was wise to go into war and almost everybody agrees it was all about the oil.

Other issues have come up over the years, some on the left, some on the right. One of the most recent ones was asking innocent questions about Donald Trump during the primaries. Fortunately, I stood firm and look where that went. :) 

On the left, there is climate change. The nastiness has mellowed a little because the bullies saw that they were not gaining ground with the public through intimidation. But there are lots and lots of other issues.

For example, Harvey Weinstein. How many people have real life experience in show business? But everybody knows--hell, they are more certain than certain--that all women in Hollywood are saints and victims of powerful man-monsters, right? So if anyone were to dare ask in public if there were women who tried to seduce Weinstein or set him up with sex in public, they would get their head bit off.

But that nastiness is covering something deeper. Why did the elite left turn en masse on Weinstein? What in hell did he do to piss them off that badly? No one, and that means no one, goes from having the entire elite cover for them and kill stories, to suddenly pile on and trash their history over that same time period without a coordinated attack ordered from on high.

 

Conspiracy Theory Setup

And here we come to a conspiracy theory I have been bouncing around in my head. Please be advised, this is only a conspiracy theory for now. A speculation.

Let's start with another issue that you cannot ask questions about: the connection between vaccines and autism. All you have to do is ask about why there are so many stories where a person takes a child to get vaccinated, then the child comes home immediately altered. "Experts" will crawl out of the woodwork to scream at you that the science has been settled on that. There is no connection. This has been disproved. Disprooooooooved, did you hear? There never can be a connection. It's simply not possible. Never, ever ever, under any circumstance. Not even if something new gets discovered. Science has that one sewn up for all eternity, baby. So quit talking crap and acting like an ignorant yahoo. Or worse... Are you anti-science? Hmmmm?...

:) 

You can get away with this on normal people, but when the child of a rich and famous person comes back weird from a vaccination, it's stickier. A rich and famous person like, say, Robert De Niro, who founded the Tribeca film festival. Last year he wanted to exhibit a documentary on autism and vaccines called Vaxxed. And he was talking about another called Trace Amounts. The sheer nastiness of the outrage he faced led him to cancel the screening, but he was awfully perplexed. He said even if only 20% were factual, it was worth looking at, but the powers that be behind the scenes did not want to hear about it. No way, José. No tin foil hat shit. Cut it out or we will do BAD THINGS. (You can read about this here.)

So he announced he and Harvey Weinstein were going to do a documentary on it, but he didn't want to discuss it further. His words, not mind. As he said in the article: "I don’t what to talk much about it, because when I talk about it, something happens."

Nobody can deny how much money is involved in the vaccination industry (and, yes, it's so big we can call it a separate industry). Big pharma, baby.

Has anybody asked about legal opioids? I mean, if I were a manufacturer of a synthetic opiod and selling, say, $10 million a year in supplying doctors and hospitals, and suddenly my sales skyrocketed to, say, half a billion dollars a year within a short term, don't you think someone in my company would be curious when they read an article talking about the opioid epidemic in America and a staggering number of overdoses--all from drugs ultimately obtained by someone with a legal prescription?

Jeez... This isn't brain science...

I believe the pharmaceutical companies have done wonders for human health, but they also have this drug pusher side. And they can get worse than Columbian drug cartels. Their most lucrative business model is serving a nation of addicts who must buy over and over and never get enough, not a nation of healthy people who use drugs to heal from actual sickness.

So what would happen if someone were to make a serious challenge to their bottom line? Imagine this. If the public ever believed for real that vaccines cause autism, the stampede would be disastrous for the pharmaceutical industry. The sheer size of the losses would probably make some companies go out of business. 

And on another point, has anyone turned on TV recently? Or opened a newspaper? Or looked at online ads? There are drug ads everywhere. One after another after another. Every goddam one of them comes with a big fat paycheck to the media outlet and big pharma doesn't mind paying top dollar. 

 

What If?

So I find it reasonable--as speculation--to imagine Weinstein went forth on the De Niro project. When he started getting the standard push back, he reveled in it, thinking he had Obama and Clinton in his hip pocket for protection.

And I can imagines the owners of the pharmaceutical companies met the owners of the media--all behind closed doors--to figure out what to do about Harvey. As negotiations came and went, Harvey dug in his heels, the pharmaceutical companies said they didn't see any point in advertising anymore to media outlets that covered his efforts, and the media folks, starting with the funds-starved New York Times, said, no problem. We can fix this. We have a decade old story to start the ball rolling and we will get permission from the establishment top for a pile-on. Feminism and campus rape are recent mainstream narratives, so moving it over to Harvey, who is an asshole to women by nature, became a piece of cake.

Why not do that with De Niro? Well, he's loved. He's admired. He's a movie hero. An icon. Think of this like bear baiting of old. People used to chain up a bear in a public square and the public would stand around and pick at it with sharpened sticks, throw stones at it, etc., to watch the bear get pissed and growl. People would laugh at that. And they could come in droves to see it. After all, the bear is big, ugly and dangerous. But try doing that with a puppy dog. It just wouldn't work. (OK, OK, puppy dog as a metaphor for De Niro is a stretch :) , but you see what I mean.) Harvey makes a great bear for this process.

So they trashed Weinstein and thus nixed the high-powered documentary on an autism-vaccine theme. God knows what famous movie stars Weinstein had lined up for that damn thing. But now Harvey is no more and the pharmaceutical industry kept the money flowing to the media. Oh yeah... and there's this. If anyone else who wants to make such a film, that person needs to take a long hard look at what they did to Harvey... (add ominous music...)

I don't know if this is true, but it has all the ingredients to make sense. At least it's something to alleviate the cognitive dissonance. And that's a hell of a lot better than believing Hollywood grew a conscience all of a sudden. :) 

Maybe time will tell whether this is in the ball park. Maybe not...

Michael

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