#citizen cohn

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

UPDATE: Shortly after the publication of this statement, Rep. Andrade withdrew HB 951 and introduced an even worse bill, HB 991, in its place.

HB 991 exacerbates the threats to freedom of expression presented by HB 951. For example, with regard to anonymous sources, HB 991 does not simply presume that statements from anonymous sources are false, as in HB 951. Instead, HB 991 retains that presumption, but also goes further: When the journalist or media outlet refuses to identify an anonymous source, plaintiffs bringing a defamation claim need to prove only that statements from anonymous sources were published negligently, not with actual malice.

FIRE will oppose HB 991 every step of the way.

Statement from FIRE Legislative and Policy Director Joe Cohn

Yesterday, Florida state legislator Rep. Alex Andrade introduced HB 951, a bill that seeks to roll back the protections for free speech secured by one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the last six decades: New York Times Company v. Sullivan.

Sullivan has prevented the powerful from using defamation lawsuits to intimidate and silence their critics for more than a half-century. In Sullivan, a decision issued at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the Supreme Court held that when suing for defamation, public officials must prove the defendant spoke with “actual malice” — that is, the defendant knew his or her words were false, or spoke with reckless disregard for the truth.

Sullivan doesn’t protect deliberate falsehoods. But it does protect our right to speak out about our government and the issues of the day. By ensuring that simple mistakes made in criticizing powerful people and public figures don’t result in a costly, chilling lawsuit, the Sullivan threshold secures vitally important breathing room for public debate.

HB 951 dangerously attacks the protections Sullivan recognized. If passed into law, it would narrow the list of people who may be deemed “public figures,” meaning a wider range of commentary on today’s public issues could result in a successful defamation lawsuit. The bill also declares that speech from anonymous sources will be presumed false, and that failure to “verify or corroborate an alleged defamatory statement” will constitute actual malice. What’s more, the bill proposes awarding costs and attorney’s fees to any plaintiff who wins a defamation suit — making it even riskier for both everyday citizens and the free press to engage with important issues.

If HB 951 becomes law, the result will be far less discussion and debate on matters of public concern, as powerful public figures will be able to bully citizens and critics into silence via costly lawsuits. By presuming anonymous sources are lying, the law would kneecap investigative journalism. And by awarding costs and attorney’s fees to successful plaintiffs, the law would effectively dismantle Florida’s anti-SLAPP law, incentivizing meritless defamation claims and dissuading lawyers from representing defendants who can’t afford counsel.

Passage of this dangerous bill would spell disaster for free speech by constricting the open debate that is critical for a democracy to function.

FIRE will oppose HB 951 every step of the way.

[jamuraisack]

"Ayyyyyyy Can't you see im fucking 🎵 walking in Memphis 🎵 here?!?!?"

Marc Cohn to the citizens of Memphis

[emptymanuscript]

I feel bad that I have to be told this is Roy Cohn and Trump. I feel like Cohn is important enough historically that I should just be able to recognize him. Sadly, the first thing I picture is James Woods from the HBO tv movie, Citizen Cohn.

[steelbluehome]

GamesRadar

The Apprentice review: "Succession’s Jeremy Strong steals this solid Trump biopic" (click for article)

3 out of 5 stars

By James Mottram

Solid rather than spectacular, this Trump doesn’t tower, but it’s still a convincing portrait of avarice and venality.

"Donald has no shame..." So says his spouse Ivana Trump in The Apprentice, a lively-if-limited study of ex-President Trump’s real-estate years directed by Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider, Border) and scripted by Gabriel Sherman (Alaska Daily).

It’s a cutting statement that comes near the end of the film, as an increasingly ruthless Trump (Sebastian Stan) pays an insulting tribute to his long-time lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), offering him a gift of cufflinks. Made from cheap pewter and carrying zirconium instead of diamonds, they’re engraved with ‘Trump’, the name and brand that by now adorns his multiple hotels and other investments.

Spanning the '70s and '80s, The Apprentice takes off like a rocket, with the ambitious Trump befriended by Cohn, an attorney who’s been indicted three times and never convicted. The young Trump becomes his mentee, learning the rules of business (including "never admit defeat") which will stand him in good stead long before he gets to the White House. Cohn soon helps Trump outmaneuver the NAACP, who are trying to sue over his company refusing to rent property to Black citizens.

Above all, it’s a film about Trump’s undulating relationship with Cohn, a gay man caught up in the midst of the AIDS crisis who goes from cocksure player to Trump lackey. Performance-wise, Stan is decent if muted as Trump, straining to avoid caricature, but it’s Succession’s Strong who steals it with a multifaceted portrayal of a man scorned. 

As the Trump empire grows – New York’s The Grand Hyatt and Trump Tower are just the start of his portfolio – we get a glimpse at the man himself. "Are you a killer?" asks Ivana (Maria Bakalova), a pertinent question given his increasing love of deal-and-money-making ("Everything I do is turning to gold") at the expense of all personal relationships. Heartless to his older brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick), especially when he starts unraveling, Trump is also shown to be violent towards Ivana, in one highly disturbing rape scene.

With a Boogie Nights-esque feel (pop songs, gritty milieu), it’s entertaining to a point. Abbasi and Sherman play intriguingly with Trump’s idea that "truth is a malleable thing", something that’ll come to define his years in government. But whether the filmmakers truly get under Trump’s skin is debatable. Do we learn much new about him? Perhaps not, but it’s an absorbing journey all the same. 

The Apprentice's release date is currently TBC.

[anothersebastianblog]

So releasing ADM in September can only be the first step in an actual Oscar campaign, right? That's excellent news.

And honestly as far as the Apprentice goes, I think Seb will show the development of Trump's pathological psychology. I don't think the goal was to humanize him to the point that the viewers sympathize/like him--just to show how he learned to crudely parrot Cohn and what he became to manipulate capitalist systems the way he has.

Seb's at the top of his game now, so it's going to be compelling, and no rational people will be upset with Seb. Lots of irrational ones will be, but growing up in a dictatorship himself, I think doing this movie means a lot to Seb (because that is what Trump is aiming for, a full-fledged fascist dictatorship where the US never sees another real federal election and all women, all POC, and all LGBTQIA+ are forever second-class citizens one way or another).

Yes, i prayed for a fall release date ahahha

[jiaxin-wu]

Time02 enlightenment:

boat surrounding tree angels sky birds

Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive It was not enough now to draw the curtains; I tried to stop the eyes and ears of my memory in order not to see that band of orange in the western sky, in order not to hear those invisible birds responding from one tree to the next on either side of me who was then so tenderly embraced by her who was now dead.

flowers woman laying

Hovestadt Buehlmann, Quantum City Italian Woman would be a symbol of the artist going after beauty; Flowers would be art being used to show elegance and the strength of money; Louis XIV is power, a symbol of using art as an authoritarian means; Trolls, a symbol of mythology.

tigers people banana

Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy Now how our mind is to be separated from an animal life, and from all multitude, and to be erected, untill it ascend to that very one, good, true, and perfect, through each degree of things knowable, and knowledges

animal people art

Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium Every animal   dog, cat, mouse, rat, hedgehog   was killed and eaten and people began to consume grass and moss, old shoes and the whitewash on the walls, the bodies of the dead.

Tuck, Hobbes On the Citizen These are the true delights of society; we are drawn to them by nature, that is, by the passions innate in every animal, until as a result of bad experience or good advice one finally finds (though some people never do) that one’s appetite for present pleasures is spoiled by memories of the past; and without these delights the most eloquent talkers on these topics are dull and dry.

Hobbes, Leviathan THE INTRODUCTION Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governes the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Mutual Life by Scott Lowery

On SALE now! Pre-order Price Guarantee: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/mutual-life-by-scott-lowery/

What are the #familiar, vital connections that maintain community? What’s at stake when those ties are strained to the breaking point by pandemic anxiety, climate disasters, and the politics of resentment? This collection offers a free-ranging chronicle of everyday life during the upheavals of the past few years. Shifting from rural to urban, angry to quizzical, lyrical to conversational, Lowery’s poems look for answers in close observation of nearby nature (the honey bee and sandhill crane, “the oak leaf that still holds on”), or the shared rituals of #family and personal sustenance. Against odds, these nuanced poems voice hope for the common good—for Mutual Life.

Scott Lowery is a poet, musician, and teaching artist from the Upper Midwest. His work can be found in a wide variety of literary journals and several anthologies, with two poems nominated for Pushcart and Best of Net awards. A long-time public school teacher, Scott loves guiding poetry workshops for young writers, inside and outside of classrooms. He and his wife recently moved from rural Rollingstone, Minnesota, magnetically pulled toward their grandchildren in Milwaukee.

PRAISE FOR Mutual Life by Scott Lowery

These poems are full of music and witness—keenly felt and keenly observed. Each delivered with a quiet playful mastery that’s dazzling in the best possible way. Each one brings you into a moment lived and felt, whether it’s a moment of horror, rage or wonder. Fierce, funny, tender and ultimately hopeful, Lowery has transformed the dumpster fire of our recent past into poems you want to visit again and again.

–Naomi Cohn, founder of Known By Heart Poetry, author of The Braille Encyclopedia

Mutual Life, Scott Lowery’s stunning new collection of poems, strips away the thin veneer of contemporary American life to reveal the many fissures between hope and despair, dream and reality. The result is a remarkable book that speaks to the immediacy of our own moment, and reminds us again that we are all bound, in our mutual lives, by love and compassion.

–Robert Hedin, author of At the Great Door of Morning: Selected Poems and Translations

Scott Lowery’s poems practice “vigilant listening,” as he puts it. Lowery applies his deeply moral imagination to the daily press of events. But whether addressing the shock of climate change, the difficulties of campaign door-knocking in a conservative neighborhood, or the joys of a newborn granddaughter, his poems also show an allegiance to verbal elegance and careful construction. This book faces the world’s difficulty and offers it something beautiful in return.

–James Armstrong, author of Empire and Blue Lash

Scott Lowery explores the political and personal urgencies of the last few years, using an astonishing variety of forms and ingenious rhymes and rhythms that remind readers that he is, after all, a musician as well as a verbal magician. Lowery’s poems ask us, finally, to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder among our fellow mortals.’ Readers, step forward.

–Connie Wanek, author of Rival Gardens

In an America and world dizzy with change, the poems in Mutual Life find both solace and luscious liberation in the depths of interconnection. It is a celebratory, generously communal vision both fortified by and dissatisfied with the yesteryear landscapes of William Stafford and William Carlos Williams. How to celebrate the golden sunlight and also be a good person, family member, and citizen?

–Ed Bok Lee, author of Mitochondrial Night and Whorled

Pogo said “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” Scott Lowery is telling us the same thing in his chapbook Mutual Life. No, it’s not a book about life insurance, or is it? Lowery expresses anger and frustration at what we have created for ourselves. The poems are razor-sharp and they take no prisoners, but without the overblown rhetoric one often encounters in poems about “issues”.

–Ken McCullough, author of Broken Gates and Dark Stars

In Mutual Life, Scott Lowery brings a fine attention to detail and tender wisdom as he shows us our shared communal lives with nature, parses the challenges of politics, and sings the rescue and bright shine of family in these times. A book of vigilance, hope and humor, these poems are both luminous and unsentimental, and filled with grace that lifts you up into a wild spiral of wings.

–Diane Jarvenpa, author of The Way She Told Her Story

Please share/please repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #chapbook #read #poems #family

[ahmed25646]

Eating vegetarian could reduce the impact of the food crisis caused by the war in Ukraine

Eating vegetarian could reduce the impact of the food crisis caused by the war in Ukraine

Stop or reduce meat products to preserve the planet. A food practice that more and more citizens engaged in an ecological approach are applying. But according to a new study, adopting a vegetarian diet could also considerably limit food insecurity in Europe caused by the current multiple crises. Photo: Raluca Ioana Cohn/Getty Images Wheat, barley, sunflower oil… For more than two years, Europe…

[kp777]

By Marjorie Cohn, 

Truthout

October 17, 2022

During the Supreme Court’s oral arguments, (Oct. 4), in Merrill v. Milligan, a case that could deal a severe blow to the Voting Rights Act, Ketanji Brown Jackson powerfully rebutted right-wing attacks on voting rights by using her own “originalist” analysis of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to explain why congressional district maps cannot constitutionally be drawn in a “race-neutral” way.

Liberal judges are not generally adherents to originalism – a judicial approach that insists that constitutional provisions must be interpreted based on the popular meaning they had at the time they were drafted, and that has generally been used by conservatives to justify right-wing positions such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But in her defense of voting rights, Jackson brilliantly turned the tables on the right by crafting her own originalist argument to defend taking race into account when drawing district maps.

“The framers themselves adopted the equal protection clause, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, in a race conscious way,” Jackson said, responding to Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour’s claim that maps must be created in a “race-neutral” manner.

At issue in Merrill is Alabama’s GOP-created district map, which includes only one Black-majority district out of seven districts, despite the fact that Black people comprise 27 percent of the population. LaCour was in effect arguing that a successful challenge to a district map requires proof of discriminatory intent. But Congress has clearly said that a map violates the Voting Rights Act if its effects are discriminatory, regardless of the intent of the mapmakers.

The state of Alabama maintains that the consideration of race in drawing maps violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, claiming that it discriminates against white people.

“I don’t think we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem,” Jackson said, schooling LaCour on the intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment.

Jackson noted “they were, in fact, trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freedmen during the reconstruction period, were actually brought equal to everyone else in the society.” She said that “the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves.”

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment prohibits states from denying equal protection of the law. And the 15th Amendment forbids abridgment of the right to vote on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Citing the report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that drafted the 14th Amendment, Jackson quoted Republican Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. When he introduced the amendment, Stevens said that “unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen.” (Stevens could have been talking about Alabama.)

“That’s not a race-neutral or race-blind idea in terms of the remedy,” Jackson observed, noting that the drafters of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 “specifically stated that citizens would have the same civil rights as enjoyed by white citizens. That’s the point of that Act, to make sure that the other citizens, the black citizens, would have the same as the white citizens.”

Since the framers were concerned “that the Civil Rights Act wouldn’t have a constitutional foundation, that’s when the Fourteenth Amendment came into play,” Jackson said. It provided “a constitutional foundation for a piece of legislation that was designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens.” That, Jackson told LaCour, “was doing what the Section 2 is doing here.”

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race,” which occurs when minority voters “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” Section 2 was enacted to enforce the 15th Amendment.

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in City of Mobile v. Bolden that in order to obtain relief under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the plaintiff had to prove that the abridgement of voting rights was intentionally discriminatory.

Two years later, however, Congress amended Section 2 to specify that a voting procedure which has the effect of abridging the right to vote due to race, color, language or minority status is illegal, regardless of whether the plaintiff could prove discriminatory intent. The discriminatory effect can be proved by considering the “totality of the circumstances.”

In January, a three judge-panel of the federal district court (including two Trump-appointees) concluded that Alabama’s map likely violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and ordered the state to create a second Black majority or plurality district.

But a 5-4 conservative majority of the Supreme Court halted the district court ruling and allowed the discriminatory map to be used in the 2022 midterm elections. The high court heard oral arguments in Merrill on October 4.

Even the right-wingers on the court appeared hesitant to adopt LaCour’s invitation to require discriminatory intent, which Congress has clearly rejected. But don’t be surprised if they find a narrower ground on which to uphold Alabama’s racist map.

They might rule that the new majority-Black district could not be “reasonably compact” to satisfy the test set forth in the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles. It says that in order to successfully challenge redistricting maps that illegally dilute the voting power of a minority group, the plaintiff must show that the group is sufficiently large and compact to constitute a majority.

Brett Kavanaugh cited Alabama’s argument that the “district is too sprawling to be reasonably compact or reasonably configured.” Samuel Alito characterized that argument as “basic” and “least far-reaching.”

Such a ruling would present significant hurdles to future challenges to redistricting maps which claim that they dilute the collective voting power of Black people.

[playvod-cameroun]

Regardez Citizen Cohn en streaming

Citizen Cohn est un drame qui vous est proposé en streaming sur PlayVOD Cameroun. Rencontre avec Roy Cohn, un homme atteint de sida qui revoit les fantômes de son passé sur son lit d’hôpital.  

[incorrectlooneytunesquotes]

Sthlow down...sthtop...eating... me!

Daffy Duck to Taz

[hirokazukoreeda]

The Distinguished Citizen (El ciudadano ilustre) 2016, dir. Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn.

[fuckyeahcitizenradio]

Sign up to support Allison’s future BRAND-NEW podcast at patreon.com/allisonkilkenny for as little as $1/month!

Parker (@parkermolloy) joins the show to discuss Black Panther and to help answer Patreon questions about trans people as nuclear weapons, Hum updates, and Gary Oldman’s son denying the allegations of domestic violence. Also, striking West Virginia teachers won big over Republican lawmakers, Trump calls outgoing economic adviser Gary Cohn a “globalist,” Mississippi could be the first state with 15-week abortion ban, North Korea says it’sopen to talking denuclearization with the U.S., Trump administration suing to block California’s sanctuary state laws, Stormy Daniels suing Trump over nondisclosure agreement, and media recs: Tomorrow Will Be Different, Propagandhi, and Shark Tank

*** Only a few Desi calendars are available for the next Patreon supporters who sign up or upgrade to $10/month! patreon.com/allisonkilkenny

[moviesandotherdrugs]

The Distinguished Citizen (2016)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A dark money group is lying about Medicare cuts

The “American Prosperity Alliance” does not exist, except as an anonymously controlled bank account that has paid for the production and dissemination of a slick ad that spreads the falsehood that the Democrats have cut $300b from Medicare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xCep6NvbhE

Let me repeat: this is a lie. What “American Prosperity Alliance” is talking about here is a provision in the bill that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices, rather than simply paying whatever Big Pharma wants to charge. This practice is why Americans pay more for their drugs than, say, Canadians:

https://personalimportation.org/dramatic-drug-price-differences-canada-vs-us/

To be clear: the new bill will curb the eye-water public price-gouging that Big Pharma enjoys, and halt the transfer of $300b in public money to pharma companies’ shareholders, by allowing Medicare to bargain to get prices similar to those paid by other governments in countries like Australia, Canada, and the UK.

There is no universe in which this a $300b cut to Medicare. It’s like the Dems have pledged to halt $300b in fraud and the American Prosperity Alliance went to the country’s elderly and sick and screamed: “They’re cutting your benefits!” In fact, it’s not like that — it is that.

Who the fuck are the American Prosperity Alliance? No one knows. They’re a dark money group. Their website consists of a link to their deceptive ad, a form to sign up for their mailing list…and nothing else.

https://prosperityalliance.org/

As Lou Jacobson writes for Politifact/Kaiser Health News, this is just the latest version of a torrent of dark money disinformation that makes this claim.

https://khn.org/news/article/senate-reconciliation-bill-300-billion-medicare-drug-price-negotiation-fact-check/

For example, the West Virginia TV ad from the Center for Innovation and Free Enterprise (CIFE) in which an elderly woman was literally condemned to die by her doctor, who explained that it was all because the Democrats were going to negotiate drug prices:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/drug-companies-trying-to-scare-seniors-democratic-economic-plan_n_62ec6823e4b09fecea4c8dbb?9t

(CIFE claims to be for “free markets,” which, apparently, is a system whereby a cartel of multinationals who rely on government-issued monopolies — AKA ‘patents’ — get to demand literally any sum from the federal government and are assured of receiving it.)

As Kevin Robillard and Jonathan Cohn wrote for Huffpost, similar claims came from “America Next,” “American Commitment,” and “The 60-Plus Association” (which is like a far-right prepper version of the AARP). All of them have historically taken money from Phrma, the lobby group for Big Pharma.

The disinformation would be laughable if it wasn’t so depraved. Telling old people that giving Medicare an extra $300b to spend on patients is a $300b cut to care is straight-up lying — and thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the dark money cowards funding the American Prosperity Alliance get to lurk in the shadows. If they’re so committed to “American Prosperity,” why do they need to disguise their identities? Is it that they are planning a big reveal later that we’ll all be delighted by and they just don’t want to spoil the surprise?

The irony here is that the Medicare spending curbs in the Inflation Reduction Act are incredibly weaksauce, barely denting pharma’s profiteering. As Thomas Neuburger writes, this only kicks in as of 2026, and it only affects ten drugs.

https://neuburger.substack.com/p/the-ira-drug-price-victory

Neuburger is citing a summary from The Hill, which adds that this provision only applies to drugs that are have been around for at least nine years (13 years for biologics):

https://thehill.com/homenews/3592694-heres-whats-in-the-inflation-reduction-act-the-sweeping-health-and-climate-bill-passed-sunday/

The number of affected drugs climbs to 20 after another five years. That means that, starting in a decade, Medicare will be able to negotiate prices on 20 drugs — out of 20,000. This plan won’t bring down the prices of the most notoriously jacked-up medicine, including insulin, Eliquis, and Humira, a drug that was repeatedly re-patented through useless “formulation changes” that were designed by McKinsey, who designed a program that gave away Iphones to Abbvie scientists who came up with useless molecular changes as part of a perpetual patent scheme:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/25/strikesgiving/#cool-story-pharma-bro

In other words, Big Pharma has given up almost nothing in this bill, and they are still running around, lying their heads off like they had just been nationalized by Party Secretary Biden and had all their top scientists sent north to work on re-education farms.

Image: Grumpy Puddin (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/grumpy-puddin/5161819684

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A cigar-chomping plutocrat in a tuxedo and tophat is wielding a marionette; he is wearing a domino mask; the marionette's head is a television; the television is displaying a framegrab from the American Prosperity Alliance's deceptive ad, falsely claiming that $300b will be cut from Medicare, superimposed over the heads of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. There is a purple 'supernova' flare effect behind the television. The figure is posed against a background of white pills.]