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- MS NOW Host Mauls Graham Platner’s Dropout Video: ‘Lots of Finger-Pointing a...
MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell savaged Graham Platner‘s hotly anticipated announcement that he was dropping out of the crucial Maine Senate contest, blasting the disgraced candidate for taking “zero responsibility” for the controversies that doomed his campaign. Platner’s tortured bid to oust longtime incumbent Susan Collins (R-ME) finally came to an end Wednesday night when he dropped a social media video announcing he was suspending his campaign — and again denying sexual assault allegations against him. Rampell, in for Chris Hayes on All In with Chris Hayes, was blunt in her assessment of Platner’s lengthy statement: Well, that was Graham Platner officially announcing that he is dropping off of the ballot for Maine Senate, or excuse me, for federal Senate from Maine, but taking zero responsibility for any of the scandals and more troubling things in his past that have destroyed that campaign, instead blaming, let’s see, corporate media, the political establishment, lots of hate for the political establishment, saying that we banded together, we did it the way we were told we were supposed to make change, and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. So lots of finger pointing and blame and not taking any responsibility. Note that whoever he conceives of as the political establishment, you do have many of his once allies, including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, also calling for him to drop out. People who believe many of the same policy ideas believe in many of the same policy ideas that Graham Platner himself says that he was taken down for. He also said during that 10 minute video that all we were asking for was health care, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas. We were asking for a fair system. We are asking for an end to the corruption. So lots of allegations that he was being taken out by nefarious forces that are forcing him to suspend his campaign, rather than the drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal that has dogged his campaign and that have littered the last few months with red flags. Watch above via MS NOW.The post MS NOW Host Mauls Graham Platner’s Dropout Video: ‘Lots of Finger-Pointing and Blame’ and ‘Zero Responsibility’ first appeared on Mediaite. [TheTopNews] Read More.1 hour ago - Democrats Gain Powerful Republican Ally in Demand for Answers About Kash Patelâ€...
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has joined Democratic colleagues in requesting more information on FBI Director Kash Patel’s flights and his department’s purchase of BMW vehicles, according to a new report. MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported on Thursday that Grassley sent a letter to Patel demanding information as whistleblower accounts to Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees have red-flagged Patel’s taxpayer-backed travel as the head of the FBI. “For each trip where you used an FBI aircraft for personal travel, have you reimbursed the FBI as required by law? If yes, please provide the records,” Grassley wrote in his letter. He called for an “independent and objective review” of Patel’s travel and asked for a reason why the FBI “decided to purchase BMW vehicles instead of Chevy Suburbans.” Patel “pressed the FBI” for the purchase of multiple BMW vehicles with special armor plating, MS NOW reported in December, citing sources familiar with the situation. “Government agencies, including the FBI, routinely evaluate, replace and update vehicle fleets based on usage, security needs or budgetary decisions,” FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said at the time. The purchase raised some concerns as the FBI had a long-standing policy of purchasing Chevrolet Suburban SUVs. Patel’s personal jet travel as the head of the FBI has also raised concern with critics. Officials have said Patel reimburses travel that is personal, which equates to what he would fork over typically for commercial travel. Democratic lawmakers specifically noted a “VIP snorkel” trip Patel reportedly took. According to a report based on government emails purportedly obtained by the Associated Press, Patel took an “exclusive excursion” around the sunken USS Arizona battleship, a Pearl Harbor memorial during a trip to Hawaii. “Your VIP snorkeling experience in Hawaii was not an isolated incident,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote in a letter. “You frequently demand special perks on ‘official’ trips around the globe, such as a taxpayer-funded helicopter tour during your multi-country jaunt across East Asia and other recreational activities like jet skiing.” The lawmakers cited a source who told them Patel told field office personnel in a meeting, “If you have golf, hockey, fishing, or hunting and beautiful sights, you’re going to see a lot of me.” “This is not the conduct of a committed and faithful public servant, especially one entrusted with ensuring the safety of almost 350… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - Skeptical Maggie Haberman Calls Trump Plane Switch Excuse ‘a Little Hard to Be...New York Times scribe Maggie Haberman called out President Donald Trump over his excuse for switching planes on the way home from the annual NATO Summit in Turkey, calling security concerns with the new Air Force One a “related complication” of the Iran war. Trump had claimed the $400 million jet, a gift from the Qatari government, was “flying to Europe to one of the big bases…so the soldiers can see it.” That claim raised eyebrows, including from former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who called the given reason “a cover story.” It was later reported that the U.S. Secret Service had asked the president to switch planes as a security precaution. Appearing Wednesday on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Haberman noted the still developing reporting on Trump’s mysterious plane swap and also cast doubt on Trump’s reason for doing so. “It’s a little hard to believe,” she said, before going on to link the security issues with the Iran war: KAITLAN COLLINS: Well, Maggie, you mentioned the president and these trips. You know, one thing that was bizarre about today is there is nothing the president has talked about more, maybe beyond the renovations, than this new Air Force One that he has, the Qatari gifted plane. He just started flying it last week. He’s only taken it on a handful of trips, and he flew it to Turkey. But then he announced that he was sending the new plane ahead to a military base, and he would take the old Air Force One, which he has denigrated and said was, you know, an old plane out of date, embarrassing to meet with world leaders flying on that plane. He flew that back from Turkey to the United Kingdom. And there was even video of him walking from the old plane. We’re showing that now and getting on the new Air Force One when he says it’s just for, for troops to, to tour it, is that something that you buy? MAGGIE HABERMAN: It’s a little hard to believe that this is the only reason that that happened, for all of the reasons you suggested, my colleagues, I believe, are reporting and my colleagues, Tyler Pager and Shawn McCreesh, have been in Turkey covering this summit, and my colleagues are reporting, I believe, that the Secret Service had concerns about what could happen. And, you know, I… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago
- Porn site company fined £630,000 over failed age checks
Ofcom has fined a slew of sites it says are failing to prevent children accessing their adult content. [TheTopNews] Read More.3 hours ago - Joe Scarborough Loses It on ‘Hypocritical’ Republicans ‘Outraged’ at Dem...Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough unloaded on “hypocritical” Republicans “spending their time on Fox News and social media,” trashing Democrats for picking scandal-hit Graham Platner “after the past decade.” The remarks came Thursday after the MS NOW crew rolled back clips from Platner’s video, posted Wednesday night, announcing he would be “suspending campaign operations” in his bid for Maine’s senatorial seat after allegations of sexual assault were published by Politico and had led to a withdrawal of support from the Democratic Party. Platner vehemently denied the allegations. After watching the video, Scarborough noted that Platner’s denial was done as “clearly and as strongly as you can deny these charges” before criticizing “people in the media” he said were “summarily” branding the former candidate a “rapist.” The host noted to viewers that even when conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh faced his sexual misconduct accusations, the Morning Joe crew had held that those casually labeling him “a sexual harasser or rapist without any due process” needed to “take a deep breath.” Continuing, he rounded on the Republican critics of Democrats in the wake of the Platner allegations. Republicans that are spending their time on Fox News and social media outraged that Democrats would support – dare support – a candidate who was accused of sexual impropriety, even when that candidate vehemently denied that, that is beyond hypocritical. That is just sheer farce. This is even beyond South Park levels of farce what I am reading on X, what I am reading in social media, what I am seeing on TV after the past decade. Referencing allegations against President Donald Trump, which he has denied, and the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, Ken Paxton, who was convicted of fraud, which he too denied, Scarborough continued: And by the way, if you want to talk about morally challenged candidates, you don’t have to look at the White House. You don’t have to look at Republicans bowing and scraping for the past decade – just look at Texas! Look at who Republicans are behind as they’re trying to suggest that [James] Talarico is gay! ‘But look at Paxton. He’s not!’ I mean, the hypocrisy! You know, Republicans should just really just shut up. They really should just shut up. If they’re going to be critical of Democrats for supporting a morally challenged candidate or one who has been accused of… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 hours ago
- What if It’s Not the Phones?
When the 82-year-old psychologist Peter Gray describes the way he grew up, he punctuates the anecdotes by saying that modern parents would be arrested for letting a child have such fun. When he was 4 years old, he would walk to a store in Minneapolis to buy cigarettes for his grandmother. When he was 11, he would sometimes stay home from school in Hill City, Minnesota, to operate a newspaper printing press owned by his mother and stepfather.His parents were not arrested, and that’s because the childhood they permitted him to have was basically normal at the time, even if his family did have a newspaper printing press in the house. As a boy, Peter was obsessed with fishing and baseball; neighborhood friends taught him how to ride his bike and catch grasshoppers. Although Gray’s career as a scientist would begin with laboratory studies of rat hormones, he eventually found his way to writing about his childhood, in a fashion. Over the course of his 30 years in the psychology department at Boston College, he mixed principles of biology and anthropology to put together an evolutionary theory of play.Gray’s academic work defines play as a self-directed activity done only for its own sake. This, he came to believe, enables kids to figure out how to solve their own problems, nurture their own relationships, make their own rules, and manage their own disappointments. But he says that our society has spent the past 70 years or so interfering with that process. We’ve made it harder and harder for kids to do anything: They’re kept indoors for greater portions of the day and given less unstructured time; they play organized sports supervised by adults; they don’t go anywhere alone. Gray grew certain that this loss of independence has been harmful to their mental health.Gray’s theory, which he laid out in a 2013 book called Free to Learn, quickly found a welcome audience. The book was celebrated by advocates of free-range parenting and won endorsement from academic luminaries such as Steven Pinker. When Gray’s fellow psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his co-author Greg Lukianoff published their 2018 best seller on the threat of safetyism, The Coddling of the American Mind, they used the title of Gray’s popular TEDx talk “The Decline of Play” as a chapter header. Haidt, who is an Atlantic contributor, told me that Gray was “the star academic” in the section… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 hours ago
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