Beet L. Jooz

(DAILYWIRE) — The BBC , in an attempt to take gender confusion to the next level, issued a video with the hashtag #NoMore Boys&Girls, in which a little girl toddler was dressed in boy’s clothes and given a boy’s name, while a little boy toddler was clothed in a dress and given a girl’s name. The tweet accompanying the video read, “Are you sure you don’t gender stereotype children?”

In the video, the children play with adult volunteers in an experiment to see if the volunteers display “gender-stereotyping.”

The video begins with this caption, as the children are dressed in clothes befitting the opposite sex:

U.S. spy satellites have detected renewed activity at the North Korean factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

New York Post

Mystery of MH370 only grows after final report into disappearance New York Post One of the world's greatest aviation mysteries just got more mysterious. In the four years since Malaysia Airlines Flt. MH370 vanished, conspiracy theories about why it went off course and where it ended up have run wild in the imaginations of amateur ... and more »

In recent weeks, it’s become apparent to me, America’s leading social and cultural critic and guardian of entertainment mores, that comedy must no longer be considered funny.

What’s the point of mocking politicians if they don’t immediately drop to their knees and beg forgiveness? How can we laugh at a monkey getting hit in the face with a pie when we know that monkey will spend the night, and all subsequent nights, in a cage?

Those of us who’ve chuckled, guffawed, or bleated at the misfortune of others have been forever implicated in a system that can no longer be sustained. Humor has become a furnace, and we’re all wearing the ashes of its victims to create the perfect smoky eye.

When Jon Stewart stood in front of a crowd of 10,000 cool kids in Washington DC in 2010 and said “Nya nya nya NAMBLA, hey lady!”—remarks that he later tearfully apologized for—he presaged a moment when humor would no longer matter and the resistance would die in the writer’s room. The days when a well-placed barb could bring down a president or a CEO had vanished. Suddenly, the joke was on us, and we wore it like a shroud.

We see this evidenced most strongly in Hannah Gadsby’s revolutionary new Netflix anti-standup special, “No No Nanette,” in which she claims that “nothing is funny anymore because I say so.” While that seems outrageous at first, she’s actually correct. Things that used to seem humorous simply lie there flat, like a dog on the deck in summertime.

Ever since Donald Trump became president, I’ve tried to laugh, but it hasn’t worked. My go-to crack-up mechanisms—“Spaceballs,” the “Night Man” episode of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia,” that video from The Chive of the guy jumping into the frozen swimming pool that they play in a loop at my gym—just don’t land. Nothing makes me smile anymore. It’s never funny in Philadelphia.

Clearly, the times have become serious. We no longer live in an age of comedy. We live in an age of essays about why the age of comedy has ended. White male comedians and black male comedians have been exposed as tired, privileged serial masturbators. Their high-priced TV deals must be removed and immediately redistributed to the people in the form of affordable housing vouchers. Anything less could not only be considered unfunny, it could be considered a crime.

Whereas comedy was once the provenance of perpetual underdogs like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope, now it gets deployed by the privileged to enhance status. I, for one, have grown weary of supporting this system, even while I profit from its excesses.

We must replace this tired formula of “setup” and “punchline” with one that advances a social-justice agenda by giving voice to marginalized peoples all over the world. Everyone must have the same access to the Puffy Shirt.

The other night I watched an episode of “Rick And Morty” and thought to myself, “What are they talking about? I don’t get it.” That’s actually an aside that has nothing to do with this particular essay. But I can hardly be the only person who feels that way.

Meanwhile, though, what passes as “the comedy of uncomfortable truths” is in reality “the tragedy of comfortable lies.” We learned less about Steve Martin from his “cat juggling” routine than we did from his honest and sincere banjo playing.

When Ellen DeGeneres holds “humorous” cute-baby photo contests on her show, she’s really upholding a normative view of family life that cannot be sustained. The audience ends up complicit in this sinister laugh-lie. Like the winning baby in Ellen’s contest, we’re all wearing spaghetti on our faces. Funny is the enemy of the good, although John Mulaney gets a pass because he’s cute.

Ironically, there’s only one solution to our comedy problem: More comedy. In a serious world, only one thing can set us free. But comedy must be different moving forward. Rather than crack wise, we must all craft deeply moving personal narratives of inherited trauma and use them to passive-aggressively criticize those who came before us. That particular humor tradition goes back to Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker. Now it must re-emerge.

Laughter is the best medicine. Only comedy can heal its self-inflicted wounds.

As long as it doesn’t contain jokes.

In May 2018, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman resigned from office in disgrace following reports that he had physically assaulted four women. Before his departure, Schneiderman had launched a year-long investigation into peaceful pro-life protestors. He eventually filed suit against 13 individuals in June 2017, alleging violations of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) and the state and city corollaries.

Ironically, in a press release announcing the lawsuit, Schneiderman accused the protestors of “threatening, violent, and obstructive behavior” at Choices Women’s Medical Center, a Queens, New York abortion facility.

However, after holding a hearing on the claims, a federal judge found the attorney general’s witnesses were not reliable and “that despite the availability of hundreds of hours of video evidence, the [attorney general] has not cited a single video that corroborates the witness testimony claiming near-weekly violations. Instead, the video evidence contradicts the escorts’ accounts of protestor conduct on specific occasions.”

While the decision obviously represents a victory for the defendants, most of whom are members of the Church at the Rock or Grace Baptist Church, the district court’s detailed summary of the facts proves important for another reason: It exposes the lies and tactics abortion activists and politicians rely upon to silence pro-life voices.

Government Surveillance of Pro-Life Activists

In her 100-plus page order, Judge Carol Bagley Amon, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dispassionately detailed Schneiderman’s efforts to keep the Christian protestors quiet, and why. At a press conference held outside the Choices facility to announce his lawsuit against the protestors, Schneiderman declared this is “not a nation where you can choose your point of view.”

In furtherance of these efforts, the attorney general dispatched undercover investigators to Choices, with most of the investigators “pretending to be patients and their companions, and wearing hidden cameras recording video and audio.” But, as Bagley Amon explained, “[d]espite these investigative activities, the [attorney general] did not call any of its investigators as witnesses, and introduced few of the undercover videos as evidence.”

In addition to the undercover investigators, Schneiderman used two of the abortion “escorts”—volunteers who walked abortion clients into the Choice facility—to help gather evidence. The escorts, Pearl Brady and Theresa White, wore recording devices and helped prepare a “protester dossier” that collected personal information about the protestors.

White recorded the protestors’ license plate numbers and periodically searched the Internet for information about the protestors. Brady also conducted Internet searches to learn information about the individuals protesting outside Choices and “created and maintained a Facebook account in which she pretended to be ‘Shelly Walker,’ a vocal and fictitious anti-abortion advocate. Brady used this fake account to ‘friend’ some of the protestors on Facebook, gather information about them, and determine whether they posted online any of the photos and videos they took outside Choices.”

In Court, Pretend You Don’t Know The Truth

Brady also used Facebook to communicate via “group chat” with fellow escort witnesses about how to testify in depositions: “Just remember,” she said, “yes, no, I don’t know, I don’t remember, and I don’t understand the question. Short answers. Don’t elaborate. This is for them to get more information, and it’s our job to give them as little help as possible.” These “directions” led the federal judge to question Brady’s veracity.

The attorney general called Brady, White, and several other escorts to testify as witnesses at a hearing held between February 12 and March 6, 2018. The judge found these witnesses’ testimony largely unreliable based on the “inconsistencies between [the witnesses’] descriptions of protestor conduct and the conduct shown in the supporting videos and photographs.” Although the district court generously called the witnesses’ sworn testimony “exaggerated descriptions of protestor misconduct,” “inconsistencies,” or “misremembered specific events,” the truth is the abortion activists lied.

For instance, one escort testified that two protestors “moved into [her],” but when questioned further revealed they had not actually moved “into her” but only close to her. The same escort had also testified in a deposition that the defendants had unlawfully obstructed clients from entering the abortion facility, but admitted after being confronted with a video recording that there was no such obstruction.

The district court also reviewed the security videos admitted as evidence and concluded that, contrary to the attorney general’s claim, the videos did not show the protestors obstructing access to Choices. Additionally, a security guard falsely testified that protestors would “shoulder check” clients, but when questioned on cross-examination, he admitted that what he really meant was that someone accidentally bumped into another person.

More Doctored and Exaggerated Evidence

Beyond the false testimony from the abortion escorts, the attorney general attempted to prove one of the protestors illegally intimidated clients when she filmed women on two occasions. The judge, however, noted that the protestor credibly testified that they “began filming because they had ‘a lot of incidents where the escorts would just surround, surround us ladies, at least those that were giving out literatures, [sic] and they would purposely push us out the way [sic] so, to have something documented, to have it on video just to protect ourselves because it’s going to be, when they call the cops, I want to be able to show the cops we didn’t do anything wrong.” Given the escorts’ propensity to lie, the protestors acted prudently, as well as legally, since they avoided capturing the clients’ faces on video.

Nonetheless, Bagley Amon refused to find that the witnesses intentionally lied at the hearing, stating instead “their overstatements of what occurred and who caused it are colored by their views that the protestors are overzealous and that it is the escorts’ mission to shield patients from any interaction with them.” But it wasn’t just the abortion activists’ testimony that was euphemistically “overstated,” it was also forms the abortion facility kept supposedly detailing confrontations with the protestors.

The attorney general attempted to admit these forms, which consisted of “Clinic Escort Recaps” and “Protester Experience Questionnaires,” but the judge refused to give that “evidence” any weight, finding the forms were not reliable. For instance, the Clinic Escort Recap forms, which escorts completed during a debriefing inside the abortion facility after the protestors left, purportedly provided an overview of the day’s events and noted any significant incidents. But the details included were false.

Bagley Amon illustrated this problem by pointing to one Clinic Escort Recap that stated: “Mary Lou called [the police] at 8:10 after being shoved by Ron and Griepp.” But, as Bagley Amon noted, the escort admitted during the hearing that the men did not “actually shove her,” but just moved toward her very quickly.

The attorney general also sought to prove the protestors violated the law by sharing the responses clients provided in “Protester Experience Questionnaires.” These questionnaires asked clients to summarize any interaction with protestors and any efforts to prevent them from entering the abortion facility.

The judge refused to consider this evidence because only a sampling of the questionnaires was submitted. Most were destroyed. When asked about the facility’s decision to destroy the forms, the abortion facility’s director of the volunteer escort program lied, claiming she had a system for deciding which questionnaires to keep, before eventually admitting she had no system.

Bad Behavior Is a Bad Reason to Respond In Kind?

Although the judge refused to call the abortion facility witnesses liars, she nonetheless concluded that their testimony was “insufficiently reliable” to support the attorney general’s accusation that the defendants used force against the escorts and clients. The district court likewise rejected claims that the defendants intentionally harassed the clients, in violation of the access laws. Yet the judge added a word of caution, telling the defendants that her “decision should not embolden the defendants to engage in more aggressive conduct,” noting that some of the protestors’ actions came close to crossing the line.

The judge added a practical point that pro-life protestors would be wise to heed: When a client asks to be left alone, voluntarily disengaging is evidence of goodwill. Continuing to hound the women will annoy and not persuade, and not only violates the law but would be contrary to the defendants’ stated objectives.

Goodwill and non-confrontational offers of help, however, won’t placate abortion activists, as seen most recently when the Texas-based Whole Woman’s Health abortion facility lobbied the South Bend, Indiana mayor to prevent a pregnancy resource center from locating next door. The nearly 35-year-old Women’s Care Center pledge to prohibiting all protesting on its property and stressed that there has never been an act of violence associated with its organization.

Nonetheless, the Democratic major, Pete Buttigieg, vetoed the common council’s rezoning approval necessary for the Women’s Care Center to open. Buttigieg justified his decision based on the same type of evidence Bagley Amon found worthless— abortion facility employees’ self-reported, anecdotal claims of violence.

Whole Woman’s Health’s reliance on fake statistics benefitted the abortion provider no more than the New York-based Choice abortion facility’s attempt to silence protestors with false claims of violence. Following the mayor’s veto and the common council’s failure to override the veto, a business owner across the street offered to sell his property (which was properly zoned) to the Women’s Care Center. This location proves even more ideal, because women facing crisis pregnancies will be able to access the pregnancy resource center without crossing paths with the protestors picketing across the street.

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

President Trump’s recent Tweets expressing displeasure with the Federal Reserve’s (minor) interest rate increases led to accusations that President Trump is undermining the Federal Reserve’s independence. But, the critics ignore the fact that Federal Reserve “independence” is one of the great myths of American politics.

When it comes to intimidating the Federal Reserve, President Trump pales in comparison to President Lyndon Johnson. After the Federal Reserve increased interest rates in 1965, President Johnson summoned then-Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin to Johnson’s Texas ranch where Johnson shoved him against the wall. Physically assaulting the Fed chairman is probably a greater threat to Federal Reserve independence than questioning the Fed’s policies on Twitter.

While Johnson is an extreme example, history is full of cases where presidents pressured the Federal Reserve to adopt policies compatible with the presidents’ agendas — and helpful to their reelection campaigns. Presidents have been pressuring the Fed since its creation. President Warren Harding called on the Fed to lower rates. Richard Nixon was caught on tape joking with then-Fed chair Arthur Burns about Fed independence. And Lloyd Bentsen, President Bill Clinton’s first Treasury secretary, bragged about a “gentleman’s agreement” with then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

President Trump’s call for low interest rates contradicts Trump’s earlier correct criticism of the Fed’s low interest rate policy as harming middle-class Americans. Low rates can harm the middle class, but they also benefit spend-and-borrow politicians and their favorite special interests by lowering the federal government’s borrowing costs. Significant rate increases could make it impossible for the government to service its existing debt, thus making it difficult for President Trump and Congress to continue increasing welfare and warfare spending.

President Trump will have a long-lasting impact on monetary policy. Two of the three sitting members of the Fed’s board were appointed by President Trump. Two more of Trump’s nominees are pending in the Senate. The nomination of economist Marvin Goodfriend may be in jeopardy because Goodfriend advocates “negative interest rates,” which is a Federal Reserve-imposed tax on savings. If Goodfriend is defeated, President Trump can just nominate another candidate. President Trump will also be able to nominate two other board members. Therefore, by the end of his first term, President Trump could appoint six of the Federal Reserve’s seven board members.

The specter of a Federal Reserve Board dominated by Trump appointees should cause some to rethink the wisdom of allowing a secretive central bank to exercise near-monopoly control over monetary policy. Fear of the havoc a Trumpian Fed could cause may even lead some to support the Audit the Fed legislation and the growing movement to allow Americans to “exit” the Federal Reserve System by using alternatives to fiat money, such as cryptocurrencies and gold.

Given the Federal Reserve’s power to help or hinder a president’s economic agenda and reelection prospects, it is no surprise that presidents try to influence Fed policy. But, instead of worrying about protecting the Fed from President Trump, we should all worry about protecting the American people from the Fed. The first step is passing the Audit the Fed bill, which Congress should do before adjourning to hit the campaign trail. This will let the people know the full truth about America’s monetary policy. Auditing, then ending, the Fed is key to permanently draining the welfare-warfare swamp.

Two days after Charles Koch voiced his growing displeasure with Trump's domestic, foreign and economic policy, warning that Trump tariffs could trigger a US recession, President Trump responded on Tuesday by slamming the powerful Koch-led donor network as “globalist” and “a total joke,” rejecting the conservative group amid reports that the network was shifting away from him over trade and immigration issues.

Trump alleged that his policies have “made them richer” and that they “want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed,” while he supports the American worker. In another tweet Trump called them: “Two nice guys with bad ideas.”

"The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against strong borders and powerful trade. I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas," Trump said in a post on Twitter.

"They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them richer" Trump continued his angry tirade: "Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn. They want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed, I’m for America First & the American Worker - a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas. Make America Great Again!"

The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade. I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

....them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn. They want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed, I’m for America First & the American Worker - a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas. Make America Great Again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

Trump’s angry tweets echoed comments that Steve Bannon made a day earlier. "We don’t have time to have some theoretical discussion and to have their spokesman come out and say the president is divisive," he told Politico.

Trump’s comments followed a Bloomberg report that the Koch donor network sought to distance itself from Trump and the Republican Party at a weekend gathering in Colorado where, among other concerns were also raised that his trade policies could fuel a recession.

Charles and David Koch have been a force in American politics for decades, channeling billions of dollars into conservative causes. But the billionaire industrialist pair didn’t support Trump in the 2016 campaign, even though their network has since praised his administration’s efforts to cut taxes and regulations. More recently, it has criticized his actions on trade issues.

Trump's latest outburst is especially troubling because keeping the Koch donor network happy is important to Republicans, especially in election years.

It plans to spend about $400 million on state and federal policy and politics during the two-year cycle that culminates with November’s balloting, a 60 percent increase over 2015-16. Besides trying to influence electoral politics, the organization also works on education, criminal justice, workforce and poverty issues.

The Koch network’s decision Monday not to support Representative Kevin Cramer against Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota was cast as a warning to other Republicans who might be tempted to stray from the free-market, fiscally restrained approach backed by the Kochs and their followers. As Bloomberg noted, the decision not to back Cramer, as the network sought to put on a more bipartisan face, was announced at a briefing for more than 500 donors gathered for a three-day meeting at a luxury resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“We can’t support him at this time,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the network’s flagship political organization.

Heitkamp is one of 10 Senate Democrats who face re-election in November in states Trump won in 2016. While polls and analysts suggest Democrats have a strong chance of winning the 23 seats they need to gain control of the House, their odds of winning a Senate majority are much slimmer.

As we reported previously, Charles Koch, 82, the chief executive officer of Koch Industries, told reporters Sunday he worries Trump’s actions on trade and tariffs put the booming U.S. economy at risk of recession.

Yet while senior officials from the network had blamed Trump for the nation’s divisions a day earlier, Koch stopped short of that.

“We’ve had divisiveness long before Trump became president,” he said in rare on-the-record exchange with reporters. “I’m into hating the sin, not the sinner.”

That particular nuance was lost on Trump this morning, however, who just decided to launch yet another verbal war, this time with an especially powerful opponent.

Courts divided over whether monument is secular or religious symbol

"The View" co-host Meghan McCain said Friday that she might not have married conservative pundit and Federalist publisher Ben Domenech nearly so quickly were it not for President Trump.On Friday's episode of the da...

(Daily Signal) Venezuela’s inflation may hit 1 million percent by the end of the year, the International Monetary Fund announced on Monday.

This incredible hyperinflation is reminiscent of Weimar Germany during the years immediately after World War I, in which wheelbarrows full of cash were required to buy bare essential items, like a loaf of bread.

To counter the hyperinflation problem, Venezuela’s answer is to lop off five zeros from its currency value and launch a state-backed cryptocurrency.

'Hateful conduct'

The reason why may not be immediately evident for those unfamiliar with one of America's lesser-known conflicts

This is the best article ever on what drove the FBI to 10mm, .40 S&W and back to the 9mm

It is only three percent contained

Dallas Cowboy Executive Vice President Stephen Jones has laid down the law: Stand for the anthem, or play elsewhere.

The Colorado State Capitol Hall of Presidential Portraits briefly displayed a portrait of Vladimir Putin in the spot where President Donald Trump‘s portrait was supposed to go.

State Senator Steve Fenberg noticed the portrait on Thursday and snapped a photo before a tour guide took the portrait prank down.

As seen in the Colorado State Capitol Hall of Presidential Portraits today…#putinpotus pic.twitter.com/cW2cmqtmWM

— Steve Fenberg (@SteveFenberg) July 26, 2018

The spot designated for 45’s portrait now stands empty because according to Denver’s News 9, the Colorado Citizens for Culture is hard up for donations in order to fund the Trump portrait for the space.

“The group has received $0 of the $10,000 needed for the portrait, says Jay Seller, who runs Colorado Citizens for Culture,” News 9 reports.

The report also added: “They typically collect the money within about four months, according to Seller – that was the case for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Both of those portraits cost about $10,000, as well.”

Both Bush and Obama are currently in place on the wall in the Hall.

[image via screengrab]

The story behind longtime Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle's unexpected announcement last week that she would be leaving her top-paying spot at the network to move to a pro-Donald Trump super PAC just took a surprising twist.

Most might know Guilfoyle as the busty, long-legged no-nonsense brunette co-host of The Five. Only days ago Guilfoyle said she was voluntarily leaving her role at the network to hit the campaign trail with Donald Trump Jr., who she has been dating since the spring.

However, a new bombshell report alleges based on dozens of interviews with multiple inside sources at Fox that she left while facing a hail of sexual misconduct allegations, which spurred a formal investigation by the network.

Among the multiple allegations are that the well-known anchor "showed colleagues personal photos of male genitalia" and engaged in "emotionally abusive behavior".

The Huffington Post cites first-hand accounts from Fox insiders, who say "Guilfoyle was informed her time at Fox News was up following a human resources investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior including sexual misconduct, and that her lawyers had been involved since the spring."

This reportedly includes an investigation into her showing lewd penis pics in her possession and identifying the men featured in the photos to distressed onlookers, according to the report:

Six sources said Guilfoyle’s behavior included showing personal photographs of male genitalia to colleagues (and identifying whose genitals they were), regularly discussing sexual matters at work and engaging in emotionally abusive behavior toward hair and makeup artists and support staff.

Guilfoyle announced Tuesday that she's left the network, however HuffPost sources say she was warned she must resign by July, but delayed her exit while having personal allies appeal directly to head of parent company 21st Century Fox, Rupert Murdoch — appeals that were apparently unsuccessful.

It is also likely that as several journalists began to uncover the misconduct allegations, she's made a quick exit in order to avoid embarrassment and a possible lengthy internal fight and investigation with the network. 

HuffPost sources, said to include up to "21 sources inside and outside Fox News and 21st Century Fox," remain unnamed because "they aren’t authorized to speak to the press, did not want to raise Guilfoyle’s ire or have signed nondisclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking to others about their experiences."

No doubt when some of the specific stories do come out it'll reveal some pretty interesting water cooler conversation and photo sharing going on at Fox. 

Guilfoyle’s attorney John Singer issued the following statement in response questions by the HuffPost investigation:

"Any accusations of Kimberly engaging in inappropriate work-place conduct are unequivocally baseless and have been viciously made by disgruntled and self-interested employees. During her lengthy and decorated tenure with the company, Kimberly was beloved, well-respected, and supportive of anyone she ever met. It’s utterly preposterous that there are those who are nefariously and greedily twisting innocent conversations amongst close friends into much more than what it actually was for financial gain. Kimberly has happily moved onto the next chapter of her life and hopes others will do the same."

Previously The Daily Beast reported that Fox News staff was allegedly engaged in a "hostile whisper campaign” against Guilfoyle, accusing her of misusing company resources including the use of network makeup artists to prep for personal outings; however Friday's revelations are the most serious to date. 

It appears that some of the allegations that were subject to internal investigation centered in part around Guilfoyle's close colleague Eric Bolling, himself pressured out for sexual misconduct in September 2017. 

The Huffington Post describes:

For many years, Guilfoyle was close to her Fox News colleague Eric Bolling, who was pushed out of the network after HuffPost reported that he sent unsolicited lewd photos to female colleagues.

They shared a young female assistant who, according to three sources, was deeply unhappy at work and was desperate to get out from under what she described to sources as Guilfoyle’s emotionally abusive behavior and attempts to involve her in her personal sexual matters by regularly sharing details about her sex life."

[Guilfoyle’s assistant] was desperate to get away from Kimberly, she kept on trying to find a way to get a new job or get reassigned within the network," a source who had spoken to the assistant told HuffPost.

The report noted that according to employees parent company 21st Century Fox encourages problematic employees or persons inviting scandal to retire or resign rather than be fired. Thus Guilfoyle was not formally terminated.

Fox News has of late faced multiple scandals involving allegations of sexism and harassment on the part of powerful executives and media personalities, for example the headline grabbing events surrounding the famously bellicose host Bill O'Reilly; however, accusations of dick pic sharing have rarely gone the other way in terms of gender, as in Guilfoyle case. 

Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that Russia became America’s sworn enemy in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. As is often the case, however, conventional wisdom can be illusory.

In the momentous 2016 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a faraway dark kingdom known as Russia, the fantastic fable goes, hijacked that part of the American brain responsible for critical thinking and lever pulling with a few thousand dollars’ worth of Facebook and Twitter adverts, bots and whatnot. The result of that gross intrusion into the squeaky clean machinery of the God-blessed US election system is now more or less well-documented history brought to you by the US mainstream media: Donald Trump, with some assistance from the Russians that has never been adequately explained, pulled the presidential contest out from under the wobbly feet of Hillary Clinton. 

For those who unwittingly bought that work of fiction, I can only offer my sincere condolences. In fact, Russiagate is just the latest installment of an anti-Russia story that has been ongoing since the presidency of George W. Bush.

Act 1: Smokescreen

Rewind to September 24th, 2001. Having gone on record as the first global leader to telephone George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Putin showed his support went beyond mere words. He announced a five-point plan to support America in the ‘war against terror’ that included the sharing of intelligence, as well as the opening of Russian airspace for US humanitarian flights to Central Asia. 

In the words of perennial Kremlin critic, Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, Putin’s “acquiescence to NATO troops in Central Asia signaled a reversal of two hundred years of Russian foreign policy. Under Yeltsin, the communists, and the tsars, Russia had always considered Central Asia as its 'sphere of influence.' Putin broke with that tradition.”

In other words, the new Russian leader was demonstrating his desire for Russia to have, as Henry Kissinger explained it some seven years later, “a reliable strategic partner, with America being the preferred choice.”

This leads us to the question for the ages: If it was obvious that Russia was now fully prepared to enter into a serious partnership with the United States in the ‘war on terror,’ then how do we explain George W. Bush announcing the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty just three months later?

There are some things we may take away from that move, which Putin tersely and rightly described as a “mistake.”

First, Washington must not have considered a security partnership with Moscow very important, since they certainly understood that Russia would respond negatively to the decision to scrap the 30-year-old ABM Treaty.

Second, the US must not considered the ‘war on terror’ very serious either; otherwise it would not have risked losing Russian assistance in hunting down the baddies in Central Asia and the Middle East, geographical areas where Russia has gained valuable experience over the years. This was a remarkably odd choice considering that the US military apparatus had failed spectacularly to defend the nation against a terrorist attack, coordinated by 19 amateurs, armed with box cutters, no less.

Third, as was the case with the decision to invade Iraq, a country with nodiscernible connection to the events of 9/11, as well as the imposition of the pre-drafted Patriot Act on a shell-shocked nation, the decision to break with Russia seems to have been a premeditated move on the global chessboard. Although it would be hard to prove such a claim, we can take some guidance from Rahm Emanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff, who notoriously advised, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

So why did Bush abrogate the ABM Treaty with Russia? The argument was that some “rogue state,” rumored to be Iran, might be tempted to launch a missile attack against “US interests abroad.” Yet there was absolutely no logic to the claim since Tehran was inextricably bound by the same principle of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) as were any other states that tempted fate with a surprise attack on US-Israeli interests. Further, it made no sense to focus attention on Shia-dominant Iran when the majority of the terrorists, allegedly acolytes of Osama bin Laden, reportedly hailed from Sunni-dominant Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Bush administration happily sacrificed an invincible relationship with Russia in the war on terror in order to guard against some external threat that only nominally existed, with a missile defense system that was largely unproven in the field. Again, zero logic.

However, when it is considered that the missile defense system was tailor-made by America specifically with Russia in mind, the whole scheme begins to make more sense, at least from a strategic perspective. Thus, the Bush administration used the attacks of 9/11 to not only dramatically curtail the civil rights of American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act, it also took the first steps towards encircling Russia with a so-called ‘defense system’ that has the capacity to grow in effectiveness and range.

For those who thought Russia would just sit back and let itself be encircled by foreign missiles, they were in for quite a surprise. In March 2018, Putin stunned the world, and certainly Washington’s hawks, by announcing in the annual Address to the Federal Assembly the introduction of advanced weapons systems – including those with hypersonic capabilities - designed to overcome any missile defense system in the world.

These major developments by Russia, which Putin emphasized was accomplished “without the benefit” of Soviet-era expertise, has fueled the narrative that “Putin’s Russia” is an aggressive nation with “imperial ambitions,” when in reality its goal was to form a bilateral pact with the United States and other Western states almost two decades ago post 9/11.

Now, US officials can only wring their hands in angst while speaking about an "aggressive Russia."

"Russia is the most significant threat just because they pose the only existential threat to the country right now. So we have to look at that from that perspective," declared Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.

Putin reiterated in his Address, however, that there would have been no need for Russia to have developed such advanced weapon systems if its legitimate concerns had not been dismissed by the US. 

“Nobody wanted to talk with us on the core of the problem," he said. "Nobody listened to us. Now you listen!”

To be continued: Part II: Reset, or ‘Overcharged’