SAY WHAT?

INTEL REPORT--When Genie Harrison talks, it’s hard not to sit up and pay attention. Harrison ― an employment attorney based in L.A. who represents survivors of discrimination, retaliation and sexual assault ― has a cool and commanding voice honed by years of addressing courtrooms. And when I bring up recent comments from Harvey Weinstein’s legal team that the disgraced media mogul feels “railroaded” by the accusations against him, her voice deepens almost to a growl.

“He is the victimizer. He is the perpetrator,” Harrison seethes, before taking a swipe at Weinstein’s legal team for co-opting the concept of victimization for their client’s benefit. “They’re trying to go with ‘up is down and down is up.’”

 INTEL REPORT--There should be a word to describe the thing that happens when you have a new favorite word for a month or so and you become so enamored with it that you inject it into as many conversations as you can. For instance, right now that word for me is zeitgeist. I’ve always had a deep affinity for words with prominent “Zs” and when I say zeitgeist it feels like my mouth is getting a foot massage. I even caught myself, during a conversation last night, referring to a thing as (sigh) zeitgeisty.

INTEL REPORT--Hear me out: 6ix9ine, the rainbow-haired Brooklyn rapper who has the sex number “69” tattooed all over his face and body, and Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the Kardashian brood, who got career-defining lip fillers well before her 18th birthday, became famous for basically the same reason.

INTEL REPORT--Hear me out: 6ix9ine, the rainbow-haired Brooklyn rapper who has the sex number “69” tattooed all over his face and body, and Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the Kardashian brood, who got career-defining lip fillers well before her 18th birthday, became famous for basically the same reason.

Also known as Tekashi69, 6ix9ine grew up poor in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, dropped out of school at 13, and eventually achieved online infamy for his appearance before he even decided he wanted to become a rapper. “I didn’t really want to be a rapper or whatever,” he said in a podcast interview. “I just thought of making music because everybody was like: ‘You look mad cool.’” Now in federal prison for gang-related crimes, which he has said he committed largely to cultivate his tough guy persona, Tekashi69 reached the Billboard charts because he was so committed to looking insane on the internet that the world was forced to notice. Speaking about the charges he faced for using a child in a sexual performance — he posted a video on his Instagram wherein other men had sex with a 13-year-old girl while the rapper touched her and paraded in front of the camera — he admitted, “I was doing it for my image.”

INTEL REPORT--Scarlett Johansson threw her support behind Woody Allen, who has been accused of sexual abuse. (Photo above: Scarlett Johansson, Woody Allen. “I love Woody,” the Jewish actress told the Hollywood Reporter in an article published Wednesday. “I believe him, and I would work with him anytime.” 

In 1992, Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexual abuse. The Jewish filmmaker denies the claims.

INTEL REPORT--A Washington, D.C., doctor is accusing Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar of being the reason her husband left her, in explosive divorce papers she filed in D.C. Superior Court.

According to BuzzFeed, which credits the New York Post for first reporting on the filing, Dr. Beth Mynett said that as a result of her husband, political consultant Tim Mynett’s, “shocking declaration of love” for the freshman congresswoman, she is seeking a divorce.

INTEL REPORT--An insulting social media post by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro aimed at French First Lady Brigitte Macron offered a window into the worldview of powerful men whose destructive policies show no regard for vulnerable populations and the plant at-large, Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein observed Monday.

Bolsonaro remarked on Macron's appearance while she and her husband hosted the G7 summit and as thousands acres of the Amazon rain forest burned as a result of Bolsonaro's pro-deforestation policies. Climate action groups have pointed to the president's encouragement of farmers, loggers, and ranchers who want the forest cleared for their own use, as primary reasons for the blazes.

INTEL REPORT— On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump quoted a conservative talk show host named Wayne Allyn Root to defend comments he had made the day before that angered many in the Jewish community: that Jews who vote for Democrats show “a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” 

“Thank you to Wayne Allyn Root for the very nice words,” Trump said before quoting something Root has said previously about the president. (Photo above: Wayne Allyn Root appears on Larry King's "PolitiKING" show in 2015. (Screenshot from YouTube) 

INTEL REPORT--Planned Parenthood will no longer be part of the federal Title X program because of new Trump administration restrictions.

Planned Parenthood will no longer participate in the federal Title X program, which provides family planning services such as contraception to low-income individuals.

INTEL REPORT--Like most people, I have spent the last 18 months or so trying to make sense of Donald Trump. The real questions are whether he is actually clever in some way — after all, he beat the system and became President — and what is the thing with Russia?

This week we learned some fundamental truths about Donald Trump.

1. Trump is not a genius

INTEL REPORT--One of the nation’s most extreme antigay pastors has called for the death of comedian Sarah Silverman and the actress isn’t about to let it go unnoticed.

Adam Fannin, formerly of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, now preaches at the Law of Liberty Baptist Church. Stedfast is best known for being the home of radical preacher Donnie Romero who called for God to “finish the job” after the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting that killed dozens of mostly young gay Latinos.

INTEL REPORT--President Donald Trump’s Facebook page ran approximately 2,200 ads earlier this year stoking xenophobia and warning of an “invasion” by immigrants ― a revelation receiving attention in the wake of the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which the gunman may have been acting on a white supremacist manifesto.

One set of video ads ― of which there are three versions ― urges social media users to help fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, flashing all-caps warnings that the U.S. is in a “state of emergency” and that “America’s safety is at risk.”

Above the visuals are messages claiming it’s “CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION” and guard the border to protect the nation.

INTEL REPORT--Conservative politicians have been quick to shift the blame for mass shootings away from racism and guns to LGBTQ people and video games. 

Over the weekend, mass shootings happened in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and a bar in Dayton, Ohio, leaving at least 29 people dead altogether. 

In Ohio, state representative Candice Keller (R) (photo above) posted on her Facebook page that “liberals start the blame game” after every mass shooting. So she decided to start the blame game herself this time.

INTEL REPORT--This summer the U.S. women’s soccer team handily won the World Cup — for the fourth time. They never trailed during the entire tournament.

They’re the most successful women’s soccer team on earth, but the future isn’t as clear as the past was. 

Women’s soccer is gaining steam around the globe, with several debutantes at this year’s tournament. And with a European club soccer infrastructure finally investing in the women’s game, the United States cannot rest on their laurels. They have to up their own investment to keep on top of the game.

INTEL REPORT--In a bipartisan deal that one anti-war critic said demonstrates how thoroughly "broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon," 219 House Democrats and 65 Republicans on Thursday voted to approve a budget agreement that includes $1.48 trillion in military spending over the next two years. 

Just 16 Democrats—including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—voted against the two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement. Largely due to expressed concerns about the deficit, 132 Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) also voted no. 

The final vote was 284-149. (See the full roll call.)  

INTEL REPORT-- I went to graduate school thinking I was straight. Then I realized I wasn’t. 

I came out of the closet almost two years ago, right after deciding to do my graduate research in Montana. Suddenly, I had an extra consideration on my plate: What would it be like to be gay in Montana? What will it be like to be gay wherever else my career takes me?

On the whole, I love it here. Montana feels like a pretty accepting place, but it’s a mixed bag. During Pride week, the governor, Democrat Steve Bullock, flew the LGBTQ Pride flag above the state capitol for the first time in the state’s history. Republicans immediately criticized him for it.

INTEL REPORT--lhan Omar has spent most of her adult life making trouble—good trouble, as her colleague John Lewis, with whom she’s just introduced a resolution supporting Americans’ right to participate in boycott movements, likes to say. So it’s perhaps understandable that she maintains an impressive cool under the repeated onslaught of criticism, threats, and rage thrown her way, from the right as well as well as from the Democratic leadership.

INTEL REPORT--Last June, Fabian Cardoza headed to the shower in the dilapidated Merced County Main Jail. The 20-year-old had spent a month there awaiting trial on a robbery charge. Two cellmates boxed him in. One pinned Cardoza to the floor. The other slipped a braided bedsheet around his neck and tightened it.

It was just past noon, but no correctional officers took notice. No one was monitoring the video camera that watched the area and, because the facility was so outdated, officers would have had to stand directly in front of the cell to see anything inside.

INTEL REPORT--At a bail hearing on Monday, lawyers for rich white guy and accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein will have the chutzpah to ask their client be released to await trial in his $77 million, prosthetic-breast-and-child-porn-filled Upper East Side mansion, one of two homes (out of his total of six) where he allegedly “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls." 

Their request, sent initially in a letter to District Court Judge Richard Berman, comes after the sudden resignation of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta for his earlier “sweetheart deal” for Epstein and Acosta's creepy press conference to make himself look good - Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown: "In reality, there is nothing here that makes him look good." 

INTEL REPORT--Marking the unholy first time "an American president's public pronouncements have been deemed too scabrous for repetition," a federal judge ruled this week that New Orleans officials violated an artist's freedom of speech when they tried to censor a mural quoting Trump's infamous "Access Hollywood" pussy profanities. 

The mural was created in November 2017 after warehouse owner and real estate developer Neal Morris gave permission to street artist Cashy D to paint it on a Morris property on South Liberty Street. 

INTEL REPORT--Donald Trump might be weaseling out of his promise of a White House invitation after the U.S. won the Women’s World Cup, after Fox News broadcast people celebrating the victory by chanting “Fuck Trump!”

Days ago, captain of the U.S. Women’s National Team Megan Rapinoe got into a war of words with Trump. She said in an interview that, if she’s invited to the White House, she definitely wouldn’t go.

“I’m not going to the f–king White House,” she responded.

“We’re not gonna be invited. I doubt it,” she added, explaining that Trump doesn’t usually invite teams if he doesn’t think they’ll come, and several of her teammates had backed her up.