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vro0m · 1 year ago

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vro0m's rewatch - 182/332

2016 Singapore GP

Hello. We're in Singapore. Nico is on pole. Brundle says Lewis looked "flustered all day". And indeed, it must be true, because he's not the one sharing the front row with Nico, Daniel is. Lewis will start third on the grid. Toto has taken the blame saying the team hasn't been able to provide him a good enough car at this point of the weekend.

Lewis on his way to the driver parade does his usual show for the crowd. Then he says it's impossible to overtake here, "almost" he adds. "So how do you win it then?" the woman asks. He shakes his head with a cynical smile. "I don't know." He chuckles. "I'm just gonna drive, try and drive the socks off the car like I always have since I was a kid." He qualified 0.7 behind Nico.

Not a lot of interesting things in the build up. Of course after some people vehemently denied it happening last time, F1 has been sold to liberty media. So of course there's a Bernie interview which we don't really care about except for the fact that Brundle says Bernie has said before he finds it difficult to work with others but he's gonna have to work with Chase Carey, the chairman. "The only thing I have to do is die and pay my tax," he replies, which is hilarious because in 2023 he's just pleaded guilty of tax fraud.

It's already time for the race because nothing interesting happened. So there's been a huge downpour during the night and the track has been washed clean. It might have an impact on the tyres.

Almost forgot the top 10 of the grid : Nico, Daniel, Lewis, Max, Raikkonen, Sainz, Kvyat, Hulkenberg, Alonso and Perez. Seb took a penalty for a gearbox change and they decided to take a lot of different PU components while they were at it, like Lewis in Belgium. He starts last.

Formation lap.

Grosjean is already out idk why.

And they are racing.

Good start for Nico, Lewis has to defend against Raikkonen behind him OH THERE'S A CRASH. Hulkenberg touched with someone, spun around and hit the wall facing the wrong way. Thankfully no one collected him but someone hit some debris as well. It's a safety car already. They have to go through the pitlane given that Hulkenberg is on the pit straight. Wow Alonso got a really good start and Max a terrible one. Here's how they line up behind the safety car : Nico =, Daniel =, Lewis =, Raikkonen +1, Alonso +4, Kvyat +1, Sainz -1, Max -4, Massa +?, Magnussen +?. Who collided with Hulkenberg then? Was it Perez? No it was Sainz, who's lucky he ended up where he is with this collision. On the replay we see him move out of his starting line to overtake Max from the left and as he joins the middle line, his right rear gets right in between Hulkenberg's front and rear left and of course the rear left hits Sainz' front right and that's what sends him spinning right in front of Max who's lucky he didn't ran into him because he was right on his front wing. I wonder if he got damage out of that. It'd be a miracle if they really didn't touch because it was a matter of centimetres.

Daniel pits, Valtteri has a puncture, Lewis pits. Valtteri almost collides with Seb as he leaves the box. Remember they're going through the pitlane. Did the others actually pit or was it some automatic thing because they went through there? Oh god. We see the start from Max's on-board and I don't even know how he didn't collect Hulkenberg, it's insane. I'll gif it.

Jenson is missing half his front wing. No Lewis and Daniel are still P2 and P3, I don't think they really pitted. It must have been the sensors going off automatically. Safety car in at the end of lap 2.

Lewis attacks Daniel but can't do anything yet. Again a couple corners later. And again. And again. Every corner.

OH MY GOD. wait. On a replay we see a marshal running off the track as the cars arrive at full speed METRES AWAY. Insane image. Extremely dangerous. Unacceptable really.

Some broken piece of bodywork from the collision has been flapping off Sainz' car and 6 laps in he gets a black and orange flag as the stewards see it as a potential danger. Verstappen is currently stuck half a second behind him, while Sainz himself is stuck 0.7 seconds behind Kvyat and so the commentators are wondering whether Horner is about to call Toro Rosso to have them move aside for Max. Now Verstappen is told Sainz is about to come in because of the black and orange flag. But Sainz doesn't come in. Ted thinks they're trying to make the stop coincide with their planned pit stop but they might get a penalty for staying out with a dangerous car. Ocon is under investigation for overtaking under the safety car. The stewards are also looking at the start incident and at the unsafe release. No further action for the collision. Nico is warned about brake management by his team. No further action for the unsafe release. And Nico is again warned about his brakes. The team sounds nervous. He needs to lift and coast. He's three and something seconds ahead of Daniel, it should be okay? Brundle says as we watch Lewis go by that his front brakes also look pretty yellow-white hot. I'm not good enough to see that myself but it doesn't bode well. Despite the warnings, Nico keeps increasing his gap to Daniel.

It's lap 10. Nico, Daniel +4.0, Lewis +2.2, Raikkonen +2.3, Alonso +8.5, Kvyat +1.1, Verstappen +0.9, Massa +1.7, Magnussen +3.6, Gutierrez +1.4. Bono to Lewis : "So we really need to get on top of these front brakes." I can't understand Lewis' answer and I can't find the radio transcript. I just know it ends with "so much". He doesn't seem to be backing off either. Are these idiots playing chicken until one of them loses his brakes? Ted says Raikkonen has been told Mercedes is starting to panic about Lewis' tyres but he believes it might be at least partially bluff because again, they are still extending the gaps here. Bunch of pit stops. Lewis : "Can you keep me up to date please I have no clue what's going on." What's happening is he's losing loads of time on Nico as he is now actually managing the brakes. Ted says Mercedes said they're both managing the brakes now so they don't become a problem later on. Mmmh. Daniel and Lewis pit. It's unusual for them to pit the second car first. Very nervous about the tyre strategy, because they put him on softs while all the other teams are avoiding them apparently. Daniel is on supersofts. Lewis is not happy about it. "Come on guys, I needed a strategy that could get me past." Nico also gets soft tyres and it's a 4.3 stop. What the fuck are they doing? Raikkonen finally pits from the lead. Verstappen is battling Kvyat for P9 and it's tense and personal. Kvyat pushes Max wide over the kerb." Come on, man…" Verstappen comments on radio. Crofty comments that if he likes getting "punchy" when he overtakes, he has to expect the others to do the same to him.

It's lap 20. Nico, Daniel +6.0, Lewis +5.0, Raikkonen +3.2, Perez +11.3, Seb +1.7, Alonso +4.8, Kvyat +2.3, Verstappen +0.4, Massa +1.7. Raikkonen apparently is faster than all three cars ahead of him. Max attacks again, and can't make it again. Kvyat is told he's racing Alonso. The commentators think it's code for let Max pass because it's not about him anyway. There's a piece of debris on the track. Maybe from Massa's car? Double yellows waved at the end of the lap. I think someone retrieved that piece of debris. Unfortunate because I think a safety car would have been good… Lewis says they have to come up with a plan so he doesn't lose P3 because this is all the pace he got with the brakes. He's unhappy. Raikkonen is catching him. There's a three way battle for 10th between Sainz, Seb and Gutierrez and it's stressful because all three of them are wheel to wheel on this very narrow track. Seb wins it.

Lap 30. "Is the other car not having the same problems?" Lewis asks. Bono says Nico has a similar pace and is doing a similar level of management. "He does have the issue." But Lewis is under pressure from Raikkonen and Nico has a comfortable 4 second gap to Daniel. Lewis is 9.3 seconds behind, Raikkonen less than a second from him. Then it's Alonso 32 seconds down, Kvyat +2.5, Magnussen +6.7, Seb +6.8, Gutierrez +8.5, and Perez +0.8. Raikkonen is told again that Lewis has big brakes problems. Daniel pits. He's out behind Raikkonen in P4. I can't believe we're only barely halfway through this race. Raikkonen overtakes Lewis, expectedly. Now what, Merc? Nico pits. Raikkonen pits. Valtteri is having a super long pit stop and Ted says it looks like his seat belts have come undone. Lewis pits. It's a good 2.2 stop. He's out 5.6 seconds behind Raikkonen. Valtteri is retiring. I don't know why. Why are they saying he got married the week prior? He was never married was he? OH HE WAS. I did not know that at all. Not that it matters lol. (I'm still nosy so I still wanted to see what she looked like and boy does he have a type. Anyhoo.) Two consecutive messages to Lewis : first he's told there might be opportunities at the end of the race so he needs to use all of the PU, then he's told they're gonna move to plan B and he needs to pull Raikkonen in. So is that 3 stops? What's the gap to Raikkonen now? 5.3. Mmh.

It's lap 40. Lewis just set the fastest lap. Nico, Ricciardo +4.4, Raikkonen +5.6, Lewis +4.6, Seb +15.0, Verstappen +6.5, Alonso +6.7, Perez +1.8, Massa +1.4. Lewis gained 0.938 seconds on Raikkonen in the last lap. Let's go! Two laps later the gap is down to 3.4. To Nico "Gap to Ricciardo is four point thr–" – "Stop, stop ! Stop telling me that." Oh Ted explains what happened to Valtteri : his engine cooked itself while he was sitting in the pitlane because his seatbelt was undone. Unfortunate. Seb pits. Lewis to Raikkonen gap down to 2.3. 1.9. Jenson retires. Verstappen pits. Lewis pits, for supersofts. Why not ultrasofts? Raikkonen is told to push, I guess they're gonna pit him as well? Oh they're not sure, over the radio. Weird. The garage is still. He eventually pits. It's used ultrasofts for him. Lewis is ahead but just so! 0.6. 0.8. 0.6. 0.7. Pull away, come on! The Merc garage is very happy about this undercut. Ricciardo pits, he's still P2. Nico is told to push hard. It's a chain reaction! He doesn't pit! They're waiting for him but he didn't come in. Verstappen is hunting Kvyat down again. Oof. It's done. And Perez overtakes Kvyat as well immediately after. Messy overtakes. They're struggling with grip.

It's lap 50, we're finally getting close to the end. Nico, Ricciardo now +21.6, Lewis +5.7, Raikkonen +1.6, Seb +13.5, Alonso +26.3, Verstappen +6.9, Perez +4.5, Kvyat +0.5, Magnussen +3.6. Ricciardo gained 3.6 seconds on Nico in the last lap. Why didn't he pit? Ricciardo is told at the current pace he'll catch him with 4 laps to go. But well his tyres are not gonna allow him to maintain that pace for long are they? 10 laps to go. Nico asks how much more he can take out of the brakes and they tell him they'll let him know. Ricciardo is now 11.3 seconds behind. Lewis is 7.1 seconds off, his fight is with Raikkonen who's only 2.3 behind him. Max overtakes Alonso for P6. Nico hits traffic. 8.2. With 4 laps to go, Nico finally puts in a faster lap than Daniel. 5.3. He got DRS thanks to backmarkers. 3.9. It won't be enough for RBR.

It's the end of the race.

Nico wins ahead of Ricciardo and Lewis. He's now 8 points ahead in the standings.

Absolutely nothing happens in the cooldown room. Daniel forgets to take off his cap during the anthem. Lewis just hands his champagne bottle over to the Merc rep and doesn't really take part.

It's Lewis' 99th podium though!

Oh okay so actually Lewis had a hydraulic leak at some point in the weekend and so he didn't practise as much as Nico. Toto says it means he couldn't "double check" the setup, and he wasn't happy with his setup.

HAHA. So Seb finished 5th even though he started 22nd. The journalist interviewing him asks "Sebastian when you sat on the grid at the start of that race I don't suppose you could have imagined finishing fifth, could you?" – "Why not?" he says with twinkling eyes.

Alright let's listen to Lewis. He says he doesn't believe there was an opportunity for him to get a better result. He feels like he did everything he could. He made a mistake which wasn't great but he feels like it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. "Very trying weekend," he says. It happens and you have to take it on the chin and move forward. She doesn't understand what mistakes he's talking about. He says he passed him. She says right the pitstops. He says no I went wide and he passed me.

She asks about him asking for a strategy that allowed him to go fast over the radio. Did he get it in the end? He looks down while she asks, then shuffles uncomfortably. Hums.

"Well it was really… It doesn't really matter to be honest," he says, "I was having such problems with my brakes, doesn't matter what strategy they put me on." He takes a deep breath in.

He says they extended his first stint and they pitted him at the same time as (he gets a hint of smile, kind of cynical?) he thinks of his name, Daniel, he says, he shakes his head slightly all the while as he talks, still with the hint of a smile, "which didn't make sense to me" he says.

He calls it a missed opportunity. He still reiterates he had such problems with his brakes he wouldn't have been able to beat Daniel anyway.

About the engine he says it was turned up, he only turned it down once he had a gap to the car behind but then they told him he had plenty of engine to use because he thinks it's the last time he has to use this one so… He smiles, his eyes shine a bit.

She says it's tough to leave today being 8 points behind Nico, does he reset for Malaysia? He says it's not as tough as they think. "I don't know why but…" he makes a face.

I'm not convinced. He says he's been there before but he's also been a lot worse so. Anything he's learnt from this weekend in his approach. “Erm not really no.”

#f1 #lewis hamilton #vro0m's race reviews #2016 #2016 singapore gp

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uselessheretic · 3 years ago

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banri day?? banri????? i dont have anything new but ill post a scene from wip that will never be finished where juza goes to camp for two weeks and banri experiences realizashuns

Banri rolled through morning practice like a derailed train.

“What the fuck,” he repeated for what may have been the twelfth time that day.

“Well,” Omi said while cocking his head and squinting at the screen. “I’m glad he’s making friends!”

“Since when did Hyodo have friends?” Banri asked.

“We’re his friends.”

“And that’s a fat fucking L on your part, but me? I’m built different.”

Omi frowned as he puzzled over Banri’s words. “I’m sorry. I do not know what most of that sentence means.”

“God Omi,” Banri said while sucking his teeth. “You’re so old.”

“I’m three years older than you.”

Banri furrowed his perfectly tweezed eyebrows as he considered that. “Nah, that’s fake.”

Azami, interested in the conversation for the first time, took one of his earbuds out. “I have theories,” he stated.

“About Hyodo?”

“Why would I––Nevermind. Anyways, I think Omi is evading tax fraud.” The way Azami stated it made it sound like he had put a lot of thought into this. It was a convincing argument.

“Hm…” Banri considered it.

“I’m a student…” Omi defended himself.

“Yeah, tell that to the government, Boomer.”

“I have an ID!”

“And I’m from a Yakuza family. I know that shit’s easy to fake, but whatever.” Azami gestured to his eyes signalling a I’m watching you warning.

Banri slapped Omi on the back of his freakishly broad shoulders. “Come on, you are kinda a whole ass mom. I don’t know what aged you up like that.”

Azami scratched at his head, also thinking about it. “Trauma?”

“Maybe?”

They both looked to Omi, who just shrugged in response.

“I mean, yeah, probably,” he agreed.

Mystery solved, Banri was more than ready to go back to the subject at hand.

“I wanna see!” Taichi made grabby hands towards the phone still in Omi’s hands. Omi tossed it to him, and Taichi, only fumbling a little, made a triumphant noise when he caught it. His eyes flew wide when he pulled up the screenshot of Kazunari’s post.

“She’s cute!” Taichi announced in a shocked voice.

“It’s insane!” The beginning of a tension headache was starting to form. Banri rubbed viciously at his temples, as if trying to drill into his skull and rip the migraine out of his head.

Taichi wasn’t helping as he cried out in jealousy. “No fair! I want to talk to a girl who’s that cute!”

“She’s not that cute,” Banri mumbled.

“Yes, she is!” Taichi insisted. “Azami, what do you think?”

Azami yelped as Banri’s phone was shoved in his face. Reluctantly, he took a quick peak. “She has nice skin. It looks smooth and healthy. I think she needs a lighter moisturizer though. Juza better be wearing sunscreen out there.”

“See, even Azami said she was a total babe!” Taichi said, triumphantly.

“I didn’t say that!” Azami sputtered out.

“When did she become a babe?” Banri complained. “What happened to cute?”

With a serious expression, Taichi placed a hand on Banri’s shoulder. “Bro, you can be cute and a babe at the same time. Girls are versatile like that.”

He put a little too much force in slapping Taichi’s hand away. “Shut up. Anybody would look cute next to Hyodo’s busted up mug.”

Omi hummed in thought. “Do you think you might be a bit jealous, Banri?”

“Huh?” It was a ridiculous assumption, so ridiculous that it left Banri devoid of words and with his mouth hanging open in shock.

Jealous? Jealous of what? That Hyodo could talk to some girl that wasn’t even that cute?

Okay, maybe she was a bit cute in a tomboy-ish way, but “babe” was still going too far! She was just some girl. One with nice skin and a pretty smile who happened to be talking to Juza.

There was no reason for Banri to be jealous because Banri was perfectly capable of walking outside and finding a girl twice as attractive to chat up. There was nothing special about getting lucky that a chick could stand his presence for long enough to engage in what was probably a dry and awkward conversation.

“Banny? You in there?” Taichi’s voice broke through like a lighthouse through fog, snapping Banri out of his thoughts as he waved a hand in front of his face.

“Why would I be jealous of Hyodo?” Banri finally spit out. “I can pull girls way hotter than that.”

Omi chuckled awkwardly and turned away. “Not exactly what I meant, but sure.”

“It’s just a surprise is all! Since when did Hyodo talk to girls? Forreal, when has anybody ever seen him talk to any girl?”

“He talks to The Director!” Omi said.

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t figured out that The Director’s a girl.”

And in a show of impeccable timing, that was the exact moment Izumi decided to enter the practice room with Sakyo trailing behind her.

“Come again?” Izumi asked.

“What the hell are any of you talking about?” Sakyo’s voice was practically a snarl.

“No, really. Come again?” Izumi repeated herself, a smile on her face as she cocked her head in a questioning manner.

Deciding that Sakyo was the less frightening of the two options to deal with, Banri held his phone up as he called out to him. “Furuichi! Hyodo’s being a whore on Instablam!”

A fascinating mixture of exhaustion, anger, regret, and even more exhaustion colored Sakyo’s expression. Knowing he didn’t want to hear an answer, but aware that there was no way to avoid it, Sakyo asked, “What?”

Omi tried to reign the conversation in as a voice of reason. “Banri’s just a bit worked up is all.” And then, in a stage-whisper that was completely useless, he said, “He’s jealous that Juza’s talking to a cute girl.”

“I’m not fucking jealous and she’s not fucking cute!” Banri yelled at a reasonable volume considering the circumstances.

“Christ on a fucking cracker,” Sakyo had reached the limits of his patience. “Everybody shut the hell up! Practice begins NOW!”

The small group of actors broke up, taking their cue to start setting up for practice, something they should’ve done fifteen minutes earlier.

“She is cute though! Director, you should see!” Taichi said as he tried to carry too many chairs at once to clear the floor.

“Banri’s just being mean,” Omi agreed as he took the majority of the chairs out from Taichi’s arm who had begun to tilt dangerously.

“No, this whole thing is just bullshit is all,” Banri argued. “That has to look bad for the company, right? Isn’t he supposed to be acting, not slutting it up in the woods.”

“What?” Izumi asked. “What does any of that even mean, Banri!”

Banri handed her his phone, pouting as he saw Sakyo take a half-interested peek over her shoulder.

“Aw, he’s making friends!” Izumi said with not even a hint of slutshaming.

“How is that allowed?” Banri asked. “And since when did he talk to girls? Come on, I can’t be the only one stumped by that!”

The others in the room made some vague mumbling noises.

“I mean, did he lie though?” Azami said.

“He’s allowed to make friends. That’s what camp is for! Do you think girls and boys can’t be friends, Banri?” Izumi’s voice was tactfully disappointed.

“Don’t try to trap me, I took a Women's Studies course last semester,” he said while crossing his arms. “I know chicks and dudes can hang, or whatever.”

“I–Chicks? Seriously, Banri?”

Banri blinked in confusion. “What? It’s not like I said bitc–”

Before he could finish his sentence, Sakyo smacked him in the back of the head. Hard.

“Watch yourself,” Sakyo warned him. He sighed as he watched Banri rub at the sore spot pouting. “What would you even want me to do? Give him the birds and the bees speech?”

Banri balked at the suggestion. “Gross… I can’t even imagine what that’d be like.”

“What?” Sakyo asked. “Do you need it explained too, Settsu?”

“It’s awful,” Azami spoke with blank eyes that had seen horror. “Don’t do it. Save yourself.”

“Juza and lady sitting in a tree,” Taichi sang out. “K-I-S-I-N-G!”

“Shut up!” Azami shoved at Taichi with a bright red blush. “That’s disgusting!”

“Agreed,” Sakyo said with an affirmative nod.

Omi mouthed the letters while ticking them off on his fingers, “I think you may have missed a letter, Taichi. There should be two S’s,”

“Huh? Are you sure? K-I-S-Ohhh!” The world’s smallest lightbulb sputtered on above his head.

“No, it’s S, Taichi. S,” Omi tried to correct him. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

“Yeah, I got that!” Taichi said. “Juza and lady sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-”

“No!” Azami yelled.

“Huh?” Omi said while furrowing his eyebrows. “It’s definitely two S’s. K-I-S-”

“Stop talking about kissing!” Azami begged. He covered his ears, sinking to the floor in a horrified teenaged ball.

Meanwhile, Banri stood off to the side. Tired. Defeated. “Izumi?” he called for The Director weakly.

“Yes?” she asked with concern in her voice.

“I think I’m in hell.” He could barely speak above a hoarse whisper.

Izumi patted him on the back, gentle and caring. “It’ll be okay, Banri. Although we will need to circle back to that ‘bitches’ thing later, kay?”

#writings #a3:pcu

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youreacowgirllikeme · 4 years ago

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Objection

Note: I’m a sucker for AUs, so here is a Lawyer!Chris fic nobody asked for, the plot (or whatever) is veery loosely inspired by this book I’m reading atm (The Hating Game) and by the the fact that Chris talking about lawyer stuff is incredibly hot to me

Warning: swearing (a lot), smut, Chris bashing (for the story line, pls don’t take this seriously, I adore this man to death), NSFW, slight exhibitionism

Plus another warning, I am not a lawyer or trained in any other legal profession, so if there are inaccuracies in the way I used certain terms I am sorry

„Objection, your honor, this is hearsay!” you shouted, shooting a furious glance over to the defense table, and to the absolute menace standing in front of it.

Chris Cuomo. The most obnoxious, arrogant, loud-mouthed asshole you ever had the misfortune to meet in court. He was a senior partner at one of New York’s most prestigious law firms, specialized on getting their wealthy clients out of everything from tax fraud to outright corruption.

This man stood for everything that, in your opinion, was wrong with the justice system and this country in general. Everything about him screamed elitist, boarding school, frat boy, preppy rich guy that had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He flaunted his famous last name around whenever he had the chance and it got him right to the top of the business.

You, on the opposite, went to law school on a scholarship, worked your ass of and now practiced law working for the district attorney to prosecute and convict the very people Cuomo tried to kept out of jail to afford the ridiculous Upper East Side Penthouse he probably had. You tried to push the fact that he was one of the most brilliant lawyers you knew aside, because you just hated him. No respect, no admiration for his legal genius, he was the bane of your existence fair and square.

You clashed heads in court more than once, and by now he knew exactly how to rile you up, smug bastard. His current client was accused of tax and investment fraud of incredible extent, and there he was, trying to discredit your main witness in front of the jury with some ridiculous accusations about them having a personal vendetta against the defendant. You saw your case crumbling in front of you as the witness got tangled up in Cuomo’s relentless questioning, stumbling over their own words, their credibility shrinking with each minute.

He did what he did best, lulling in people with his charm and striking when they least expected it. And he always did it with his disgusting smile on his disgustingly handsome face. Yes, of course he had to be a hot, fit, well-built asshole, making your professional life miserable at every chance he got.

Sometimes, he even had the audacity to wink at you. In court. During a trial. You wanted to punch him in his perfect face more than anything else.

The judge disrupted your thoughts.

“Dismissed, Ms. Y/L/N, and mind your tone in my courtroom. And Mr. Cuomo, please keep your questions professional or this interrogation will be over.” The judge said, shooting the both of you a warning glance.

“No more questions anyway, your honor, I think the jury heard it all.” Cuomo said, and almost strutted back to the defense table. And with a look over to the jury, you knew he was probably right. They eyed your witness suspiciously, and you almost wanted to stomp down out of pure rage. The fucker just destroyed your chance for a swift conviction right in front of your eyes. You needed more time to gather new evidence, or this would be over.

“Your honor, the prosecution is asking the court for adjournment.” You said, trying your best to not let your frustration show.

“Granted, the trial will be continued tomorrow. Court is dismissed.”

You put the case files into your bag and practically stormed out of the court room, passing the defense table without as much as a sideward glance.

But he caught up with you in the parking deck of the building.

“You’re aware you can’t win this one, right, Y/L/N? It’s all circumstantial, even you should see that.” His smug voice suddenly said from behind you as you were just about to get into your car.

You whirled around, pulse hammering in your chest out of pure anger.

“This is unprofessional even by your standards, Cuomo, I’m not discussing this case with you in a parking lot. Now why don’t you get into this environmental nightmare you call a car and leave me the hell alone.” You hissed, pointing over to where his obnoxiously big SUV was standing.

“Don’t talk to me like that, Y/L/N, just because you can’t handle yourself in court.” He said, smirk still firmly in place. His hands were playing with the car keys, and you were mesmerized for a second by how large his hands were. They looked like shovels.

“Whatever you��re plotting in that weird little brain of yours, stop staring at me.” Cuomo said, actually sounding a bit unsettled. You snapped out of it and went right back into anger mode.

“Staring at you? God, you’re so fucking full of yourself, aren’t you, you condescending prick? Not everything revolves around you and your spoiled ass, Cuomo.”

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, girl?” he snapped, raising his voice now. You clearly got to him, and seeing a crack in his arrogant façade gave you a satisfying sense of triumph. You couldn’t stop now, even if his angry face was screaming danger.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, your highness, are you used to people worshipping the ground you walk on because you had the dumb luck to be born with the Cuomo name? Fun fact, nobody cares, you’re still an asshole, just with a fancy suit.” You really threw all caution away, and one look at Cuomo told you that you’ve definitely gone too far.

Because he was livid. There was a vein on his temple that was literally pulsating, his hands were balled to fists at his side and his blue eyes were so full of fury that you were scared to look directly at him.

He took two giant steps in your direction, backing you up against your car. You were caught, Cuomo’s giant frame in front of you with no way to escape his wrath.

You looked up at him, daring to meet his eyes directly. He looked at you like he was about to kill you. You tried to recall your fury from some seconds ago, but the heat radiating from his body and the way his huge arms had you trapped on both sides of your head were making it impossible for you to focus. Damn him for being so attractive. You wanted to fight him, but you also wanted to press yourself against his body and feel what was underneath that suit.

“You presumptuous little…” he spat, stopping himself before saying something truly insulting. He took a deep breath, and looked at you again. And then he saw it.

The way you were biting your lip, the way your pupils were dilated.

And he smiled, a cruel smirk that send shivers down your spine. He brought his face even closer to yours and dropped his voice.

“You know, I got really good at reading people, comes with the job, I guess. But you are making it so easy for me, Y/L/N, look at you?” His mouth was at your ear now, his hot breath tickling your neck.

“Do you really want me to leave you alone? Doesn’t seem like it to me.”

You could barely think straight anymore, you wanted to tell him to fuck off, but it just came out as an embarrassing, needy whimper.

He chuckled darkly, and goosebumps broke out all over your body. Why did this man, that you hated more than almost anyone else, reduce to a state of arousal you had never experienced before just by whispering in your ear? Your panties were already soaked, and he didn’t even touch you. With your last few functioning brain cells, you cursed your needy, weak body, before you tiled your head to the side, baring your neck to Chris mouth.

He breathed over your skin, teasing you without actually touching. You felt like you were going insane.

“Please.” You whispered.

“What? Use your words, darling.”

“Kiss my neck, touch me, anything, just do it, asshole.” You hissed, glad you were able to form a coherent sentence.

“So impolite.” He chuckled and pressed a kiss to the side of your neck before starting to suck lightly. You moaned softly and pressed your pelvis into his. You could feel his hardness through his slacks, his unaffected behavior was clearly an act, he was just as aroused as you were.

One of his hands went down to squeeze your ass hard, bringing another surge of wetness to your panties.

Seeing him getting into this gave you some of your courage back, and you started to grind against him, making him growl against your neck.

“Is that everything you got, Cuomo.” You asked, trying to rile him up a bit. You really enjoyed the way he was manhandling you, as much as it pained you to admit it. But his hands were wandering under your skirt now, so you might as well just go with it.

Your provocative behavior clearly had the desired effect on him, because he grabbed your waist in a bruising grip, spun you around and pinned you against your car, his erection pressing against your ass. He yanked up your skirt and tore off your panties, leaving your lower body completely bare.

By now, you were glad that you picked the parking spot on the top floor, because your two cars were the only ones left and no one would come up here at this hour to catch you, about to be railed against your vehicle by Chris Cuomo.

“My, my, Y/L/N, this really turns you on, doesn’t it?” You could hear his breathy voice from behind you, and then felt a thick finger slowly being pressed into your aching pussy, followed by a sharp intake of breath. “Fuck, you already are so wet for me.” Chris growled.

“Are you going to fuck me soon, or do I have to take care of it myself?” You asked, teasingly.

He swore under his breath and gave your ass a sharp slap, making you welp.

You heard the sound of his zipper, and the rustle of foil.

“You really brought a condom to court, Cuomo? Wow, you are even more shameless than I imagined.”

“Shut up.” He growled, and you did, because he lined up his cock and slowly started pressing into you. He was big, and you had to bury your face into your arm to muffle the obscene sounds coming out of your mouth at the feeling of being stretched like this. He bottomed out with a low moan, and immediately started a fast, hard pace, pushing you against your car with every move of his hips.

You turned your head around to look at him. His face was flushed, and his eyes were fixed on the sight of his cock sliding in and out of you.

The friction was delicious, and he was hitting a perfect spot deep inside you with every thrust. Your moans became louder and louder, and he pressed one of his large hands over your mouth.

“Be quiet, you don’t want someone to catch little Miss Righteous being screwed in the parking lot by big, bad Cuomo, don’t you?” he whispered in your ear between husky breaths, and you could only cry out against his palm as he was speeding up his thrusts. The idea of someone catching you here was as arousing as it was terrifying.

Suddenly, Chris other hand sneaked around you to press on your clit, hard, and you screamed into his hand as your orgasm hit you like a punch to the gut, your walls gripping his cock like a vice while he was still fucking you through your climax.

“That’s it, darling, come for me. Fuck.” He groaned, before suddenly going tense as he reached his peak as well, cock buried deep inside you.

You slumped against your car with a huff, and the brief glimpse you caught of your reflection in the window made you question what you just did even more. Not only did you have (amazing, mind-blowing) sex with the opposing lawyer, he also absolutely wrecked you, you looked like you just had the roughest night ever with your hair undone, your makeup smudged and your panties in shreds on the floor of the parking lot. You hastily pulled down your skit again and tried to fix your hair as much as possible to get a minimum of decorum back.

Chris was just disposing the condom into a nearby bin, already looking calm and composed again. You hated him for that, and for the broad, self-satisfied grin that was all over his face again. And still, your heart gave a little flip as he approached you.

“That was fun.” He smirked, “We should definitely do that again. But not today, I’m busy. See you in court.”

He started to make his way to his car, and there was definitely a spring in his step.

“In your dreams, Cuomo.” You mumbled after him but couldn’t suppress a smile. That was, until you looked into the side mirror of your car to check your makeup and saw the giant, purple bruise on the side of your neck.

“Cuomo!” you screamed. “Come back here right now, you imbecile, you gave me a fucking hickey!”

“Better wear a scarf then tomorrow!” he called, entering his car. “And don’t make plans for after the trial, I’m taking you to dinner to celebrate my victory. And I mean that.”

And with that, he drove off. And as much as you hated yourself to admit it, you were really looking forward to having dinner with this idiot. After you destroyed him in court, of course.

#chris cuomo #chris cuomo fanfiction #chris cuomo x reader #smut #cnn #cnn anchors #fanfiction #chris cuomo fic

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statusquoergo · 5 years ago

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Luckily for us, after the debacle that was last week’s episode, this one really has nowhere to go but up.

Aside from pretending that that big dramatic fight at the end of the previous episode never happened, they didn’t do too badly with it, either.

First of all, because Donna prides herself on keeping the firm together, Faye calls her to inform her that she’s fired Samantha, and Faye knows that when everyone acts against her, “it won’t be through proper channels,” and if Donna doesn’t stop them, the firm likely won’t survive the year (another reminder that the senior partners threatening a mass resignation was utterly toothless). That’s a good and true point and all that but I have to ask, did Donna move into Harvey’s place at some point and I missed it? Why wasn’t that a bigger deal? Or is she just over there like, all the time?

That’s a pretty minor concern, in the grand scheme of things, it’s just been bugging me. Anyway Samantha goes to Robert because after she was fired, she “didn’t know where else to go,” and Robert, who already knows about the outcome of the Mike Ross case because of course he does (even though it wrapped, like, yesterday), tells her to sit tight because her partners are probably already at work on a plan to kick Faye out of the firm and get Samantha her job back. Samantha isn’t so sure; “Harvey’s the reason [she] got fired in the first place,” after all. And he doesn’t trust you anymore, you mean, mean lady.

Harvey, Louis, Donna, and Alex are, in fact, meeting on the Rooftop of Major Decisions to figure out how they’re going to get rid of Faye and get Samantha her job back (that was quick); they agree to “find something” in Faye’s apparently spotless record that’ll prompt the NYSBA to remove her (even though a special master is under the purview of the judiciary…). In a lingering shot that's definitely not foreshadowing anything, Donna elects to respond with a nervous expression rather than a verbal agreement (despite the fact that reporting Faye to the NYSBA was, as of about a minute ago, her idea).

Hey, did you know this show is sponsored by Lexus? Lexus would really like to remind you that Suits is sponsored by Lexus. So as Harvey steps out of his dramatically center-frame Lexus, Robert accosts him to give him shit for not getting Faye out of the firm fast enough, even though it’s been about two days, and they came up with a plan last night. (Truly this show exists in another realm of time and space.) Harvey defends himself for yelling at Samantha for lying to his face (specifically counter to Robert’s assertion that he yelled at her because her fabrication was an attack on Mike, which, hurtful), and Robert clues him in that Faye fired Samantha because she saw them fighting in the middle of Samantha’s office. Because him dragging her down to the file room would’ve been way less suspicious.

Apparently Katrina’s amazing idea to delete Brian’s voicemail wasn’t so amazing after all, because if she’d bothered to listen to it, she might not be so blindsided to find him in her office with a suit against Katrina’s client, Kurt’s Coffee, on behalf of his client Kurt, who’s decided he was forced out of the company even though Katrina is quite certain that he left of his own volition and was fairly compensated. She threatens to have Brian thrown off the case due to conflict of interest, being that he represented Kurt’s Coffee when he worked at ZSLWW, but he asks her not to do that on the grounds that his move “hasn’t gone great” and he really needs this to impress the partners. She declines to have him removed but will nevertheless be filing a motion to dismiss, which he’s totally fine with. That’s so almost professional of them, I’m so proud.

Overtly demonstrating how truly unnecessary it was for Robert to threaten Harvey, Louis arrives at Harvey’s office to opine that chatting up Faye’s ex-husband George is their best bet for digging up shit on her, except that the divorce settlement is sealed and he might not talk to them. Harvey dismisses the issue by saying that they’ll make him, and I honestly can’t tell if he’s being overly confident, or depressed and uncaring.

Next up, Alex takes a truly bizarre reading of Faye’s behavior when he approaches Donna to play the lead plaintiff in a suit against Faye on the grounds that she has a problem with strong women. To wit, she tried to strip Donna of her vote (point of order, she would have been equally satisfied to accept Harvey losing his vote), she took Gretchen from Louis against her will (point of order, Gretchen offered her services so Donna could go on a date with Harvey), and she fired Samantha without proof (point of order, she saw Harvey and Samantha yelling about fabricating evidence and when confronted, Samantha cleared Harvey’s name but not her own). Alex probably just forgot to mention the part where she took Louis's managing partnership. Donna refuses to “go after another woman on false pretenses,” which I guess is our feminism quota for the…season, and clarifies that she didn’t actually join in on the rooftop agreement to do “whatever it takes” to get rid of Faye, not to mention the fact that “shit like this is exactly why she’s here in the first place.” Alex immediately apologizes, fessing up that he feels bad for not warning Samantha that Faye asked him to spy on her out of the suspicion that she would do “exactly what she did.” Donna helpfully points out that Faye spying on them isn’t exactly a secret, Samantha chose to “cross a line” anyway, and if Alex really wants to help her, he should probably go stop her from doing whatever stupid shortsighted thing she’s going to do to make things worse.

Speaking of, Samantha is meeting up with her old buddy Tom, who you’d be forgiven for forgetting was introduced in “Managing Partner” (s08e10) as the dude who enlisted Samantha as an FBI informant against Jarvis, Ellis, and Green (former owners of the firm currently known as Rand Kaldor); Samantha wants to cash in her chit to get the FBI to dig up some dirt on Faye, but Tom won’t let himself be burned twice, so he demands information on her client Gavin Andrews in exchange. Samantha argues that any information she knew before yesterday is covered by attorney-client privilege, Tom conveniently forgets about the crime-fraud exception and orders her to “get some shit on him starting today,” she frets that Andrews doesn’t trust her anymore, and Tom says that the terms of his offer are non-negotiable. So take that.

You know what show had a cute and not-offensive take on the whole “two people of the same gender being understandably mistaken for a couple” trope? Parks and Recreation. You know what show does not so much? Suits. Harvey and Louis apparently secured their meeting with Faye’s ex by posing as a couple purchasing a term life insurance policy, but George calls bullshit on that immediately because Harvey is way too hot to be marrying Louis. So…yay, equal rights. George explains that the line he crossed was over-billing his firm’s three biggest clients and using the surplus to fund some class actions, and Faye reported him to the Ethics Board as soon as she found out, but boy isn’t it weird that she “squeezed every nickle” out of him and then let him keep his license?

Susan approaches Katrina at the copy machine, the firm’s second most appropriate and third most common place for people to accost each other with requests for favors (less appropriate than the offices but ahead of the bathroom), to offer her services in the Kurt’s Coffee suit, and Katrina eventually admits that she wants to be “armed to the teeth with case law” when she makes her motion to dismiss. Susan seems rather pleased, and I gotta say, I’m liking this dynamic.

Lo and behold, George was telling the truth about the divorce settlement: Faye cleaned him out. But! Louis doesn’t trust him, and his story doesn’t line up with the Faye they know. Fair enough, but wait a second— “It’s easy to not care about money when you have it.” George’s testimony won’t be enough to prove that Faye took the money to pursue her dream of becoming a special master, but Louis knows where to start.

Alex finds Samantha in the gym demonstrating some truly lackluster boxing skills and offers to help her with whatever plan she’s devised to get back at Faye, but it seems that turning Gavin Andrews in to the FBI is too batshit insane, even for him, because the “list of shit” Andrews has on her will land her in prison for sure. Samantha yet again brings up her tumultuous childhood, and silly me thinking she was going to say something about the firm feeling like a real family, the problem here is actually that she promised herself that once she aged out of the foster system, she’d “never feel that powerless again.” She and Alex figure out that the one person in the world Andrews trusts less than Samantha is his niece, who owes them one on account of the fact that they previously told her that Andrews was using her name in his tax evasion scheme (not sure I follow that, but okay), so they’re going to do…something. Sounds good.

Apparently Louis and Harvey think Faye did more than just screw over her ex-husband; they think she “manipulated the Ethics Board for personal gain,” and they need Gretchen’s help to prove it: They want her to reach out to her contacts at her former place of employment for any dirt she can dig up on Faye. She agrees…on the condition that Harvey throw Louis a baby shower. Because he wants one. And like, I can see how this might seem cute or sentimental or whatever, if you’re into that sort of thing, but it’s also mild emotional blackmail (not as bad as Donna gunning for COO, but still), or at least extortion, and definitely wildly inappropriate workplace behavior, not the least of it because they’re her superiors.

Part II

#suits usa #s09e06 #season 9 #analysis

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the-gay-artstronuat-blog · 5 years ago

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While I was there

While I was there, I went through one of the trainings they offer—a cam girl boot camp, so to speak. To be a cam girl, I learned, you have to be able to field sexual requests and be an expert on all kinds of fetishes so that you always know what clients are talking about. On top of that, you also have to be a pseudo therapist. The coach trained me on how to respond to different fetish requests, what to wear, how to do my makeup, how to pose, how to use the equipment, and just how to interact with clients in general. It turns out that, according to my coach, what people like is generally not the super over-the-top sexy woman. They want someone who looks hot but is pretty normal and chill, who they can just talk to.Is Sandy Bell a victim? She says she is not, though feminists such as Irina Ilisei say the question is more complicated than it seems.This comes off as somewhere between cynicism and naive denial, but the fact that she knows of any girls at all who've raped and beaten suggests that it is, at the very least, a real occupational hazard.Three young women have revealed what it is like working as a 'camgirl', taking their clothes off in front of a camera and performing sex acts for strangers online.

"I teach them about fetishes - what a fetish is, why a person has one… We study Freud and a lot of psychology. And we study a book of gestures because women must be sensual, smart and beautiful.So as I sat there, in front of my laptop, I thought to myself, Why didnt I just respond the way that I normally do when somebody proclaims something which I dont agree with? Why didnt I just say, firmly but reasonably, you are wrong and these are the reasons why… Perhaps it was because it was so personal, that I felt like for once, I wasnt defending femininity as a whole, but just myself. Which on the surface would seem like a less daunting task, but for me it left me stumped. I knew that I was a feminist and it wasnt often that I had to justify myself to anybody. I was used to breaking down all the reasons that men used to justify their behavior.Camming has become a huge part of the sex industry over the past decade, and it’s continuing to grow. There’s a lot of cam girls who now monetize and advertise through social media, so they're kind of the new "it girls" in a way—they’re rock stars, they’re influencers. Some of them have millions of followers on Instagram.The massive LiveJasmin would have you believe it's owned by "Gestao e Investimentos, Lda", a company based in an autonomous region of Portugal — and has a host of fraud complaints lodged against one of its subsidiaries. But a recent tax bust against LiveJasmin's Hungarian CEO Gattyán György — one of the richest men in Hungary — and his corporation, Dolcer Holdings, shows just how muddled the corporate picture is. No doubt deliberately.

"I usually go for dresses, lingerie, or leather," she says.Studio 20 is the largest studio webcam franchise in the world. It has nine branches in Romania, including one employing "cam-boys" who service the gay market. Its other branches are in the Colombian city of Cali, Budapest and Los Angeles. She started in the German porn game at 17, and moved on to cam modelling years later in Bangkok. Two years ago she was the number one rated model on MyFreeCams — meaning her link was at the very top of the site's barren layout — bringing in around $US37,000 per month. These days, girls in those top slots can earn up to an insane $US75,000 per month. The competition is cutthroat. The MFC ratings battle is ruthless, as tips beget more tips: if you're being paid well, you move up the totem pole, ensuring a snowball effect of even more attention and money.Sites do virtually nothing to curb or discourage this kind of treatment. CONTINUED BELOW...

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entergamingxp · 4 years ago

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The Smash Bros. and Sky Williams Controversy, Explained

July 13, 2020 11:30 AM EST

After several accounts of misconduct, Sky Williams is the latest member of the Smash community outed for mistreatment and fraud.

Over the past week, we have seen numerous popular figureheads in the Smash Bros. community being accused of heinous crimes such as sexual harassment and pedophilia, with even more similar accusations coming about by the day. Earlier this week, however, a new allegation came to light and became the newest hot topic on social media.

Greg “Sky” Williams, a well-known and once-beloved Smash content creator, has been accused of terrible living experiences at the properties he managed, resulting in fraud. In addition, he has also been accused of owing several friends and members in the community a large abundance of money that was loaned to him due to reasons that ended up not being true.

The truth about Zero, Katie, and Skyhttps://t.co/lL9SluWR0X

— Jisu (@JisuArtist) July 5, 2020

Williams is known for housing prominent Smash players along with others at his “Sky Houses” in Southern California, which went on from 2014 to now. The accusations began after a former resident, Jacqueline “Jisu” Choe, wrote about her experiences inside the house she lived in and her interactions with Williams.

“Have you ever talked to someone where every single thing they say doesn’t seem to make sense, and yet they’re so adamant you might start to believe them,” Choe rhetorically asked. She added:

“To be honest, I don’t know why I didn’t come forward about this sooner; maybe it’s his large following, maybe it’s just because he physically towers over me, or threatened to ‘beat me’ several times at the house — I don’t know. Even as ‘jokes,’ I slowly grew to learn over the years that he is so full of shit and insane that I can’t trust him.”

Choe also went into more detail about how Williams would harass her to make commissions for him and that the one time she did, she wasn’t paid for her work.

My experience as a roommate in the Sky house

Read: https://t.co/d0SK84WlH0

— Amphy

(@AmphyPop) July 9, 2020

Another artist, known as “JollyOxen” on Twitter, was specifically hired by Williams to move to one of the houses to work on video editing for him. According to JollyOxen’s fiance “Amphy”, things started out well until they got on Williams’s bad side. Sky told the tenants that they had to find a new location due to being evicted from the house they were currently at, leading to approximately ten people sharing a hotel room together until Williams found a new place in Hacienda, which specifically was know as the “Sky Mansion.”

After being promised the maid quarters of the mansion, the couple was instead forced to live in the garage with two other roommates, which they were told was insulated (it wasn’t), which caused them to suffer through heatwaves with no air conditioning. Another roommate was later added to their room along with a different tenant residing in the house storing extra belongings in their room. There was even a house cat that would leave rat heads in the garage. Amphy also explains how they were called derogatory terms like “garbage rats” and “slaves,” not being paid for work, but given an allowance of $100 a week, as well as being forced to share a single bagel with other people after giving Williams money to get them something to eat during food runs.

some notes on how the sky williams house worked https://t.co/i2lpmi0L4c

— ffSade (@ffSade) July 6, 2020

Melissa “ffSade” Yabumoto, who lived there at the same time, detailed how the house was structured like a pyramid with Sky naturally on top. Depending on the relationship one had with a roommate would determine how much rent they would pay, which could always change. Sade explained, “If Sky or a ‘higher tier resident’ did not like you, then chances were that you had to pay an additional fee. Furthermore, romantic couples were given a fee in the form of a ‘couples tax’.” He would allegedly use animals as nicknames for roommates including “Monkey” and “Gorilla,” plus the usage of racial-related nicknames as well. Williams apparently had money issues, but whenever he had it, he would waste it either on luxury items or through gambling in Las Vegas.

An incident that was mentioned by many former roommates in the past week involved Sky threatening the entire house that he would break their valuables unless they gave him $350 after a guest visited without his knowledge. Other allegations given to Williams included poor treatment of women at the mansion and minors who were offered alcohol with his knowledge or at the very least, his complicity.

Sky owes me 55,000 dollars

Read: https://t.co/aDMcghZIxs

— Samuelson (@iamaSamuelson) July 8, 2020

Following the revelation of these experiences, a current tenant of the house named Samuelson went to Twitter and explained how Williams owed him $55,000. This incident caused numerous people to come forward and do the same, leading to an approximate sum of nearly $360,000. “Sky and I go way back to the Brawl days, I’ve known him since 2008,” said Samuelson. He explained further in his statement:

“I left the Smash scene and didn’t talk to him very much at all after my departure, but I still had fond memories of him going to Smash tournaments together and whatnot. We barely talked up until 2017 which is when he messaged me out of the blue saying he’s in serious debt to the IRS. He told me he would go to prison and his career would be over unless he received a significant amount of money. After several back and forth messages, I eventually agreed to lend him 55,000 dollars.”

Back in 2017, Sky posted a video on his YouTube channel explaining his massive debt to the IRS, which was the same year that he leased out the Sky Mansion.

Jesus Christ how much fucking debt does Sky Williams have at this point I’ve seen 4+ people say Sky owes them over 10k

— h (@on11Lum) July 8, 2020

Samuelson explained the deal they made where Williams would pay him back a thousand dollars a month for ninety days after giving out the loan. Instead of using the money towards his debt, Sky used it to lease the now “Sky Mansion.” Before learning the truth, Williams told Samuelson that he didn’t use the money as planned because his dad had cancer, which he could relate to with his own mother previously having the illness. Sam later found out that his dad never had cancer, with Sky’s excuse being that his own dad lied to him about it and used the money to get cosmetic surgery on his penis. In his statement, Samuelson also added that he backs everything that Yabumoto “ffSade” said regarding the social structure of the house and that Williams hasn’t paid him back any of the money that he owes him.

https://t.co/yGejBEJKUj

The Sky House. My Statement.

— ♡♪!? (@SkyWilliams) July 7, 2020

After the toppling of accusations, Sky decided to make a statement through a livestream on his Twitch channel. The stream ran for a little over two hours where Williams primarily focused on the allegations made by Choe and Yabumoto, which began with him taking ownership of everything that has taken place inside the house, whether he was ignorant about it or not. As the stream continued, Williams began to go off-topic, talking about other victims’ experiences without their consent and tried to shift himself as a victim, progressing him to eventually break down partway through. It wasn’t until Samuelson unplugged the router in their house where the stream ended.

The live stream statement was a massive mistake. I elected to not listen to any comments to not get distracted and I ended up hurting even more people than I already have with my actions for the past 7 years. I did it live because I felt it was the only non edited way to do this.

— ♡♪!? (@SkyWilliams) July 8, 2020

Following the stream, Williams made a lengthy Twitter thread apologizing for the stream and explained what his current actions will be moving forward, which involves working to clear all his debt and making a Google doc with all the facts. “…this isn’t a document about defending me, it’s about the raw truth – and making sure that everything I’m saying is just the facts of the matter takes a LOT of time, but I’m getting it done,” Williams explained. He finished his statement by saying “never in my life would I want to hurt this many people and I’m more sorry than words can express, so I just hope my actions of contrition to follow convey how much I want to truly make things right for all involved.”

As of now, Williams has yet to post the document he has said to be working on or any update regarding the clearance of his debt.

July 13, 2020 11:30 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/the-smash-bros-and-sky-williams-controversy-explained/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-smash-bros-and-sky-williams-controversy-explained

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progressiveparty · 5 years ago

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We, the American people, believe in peace and diplomacy, not war with Iran. This is an urgent situation — a loud and clear rejection of war will deliver an important message. Sign the NO WAR ON IRAN petition. Share this page with other Progressives via social media. The White House builds a path… Read more » Read more Monthly Child Allowance – For Each Child Petitions

Monthly Child Allowance – For Each Child

May 14, 2019

A plan to introduce a monthly child allowance. The plan is something every parent should know about to have a better future. A monthly allowance to help parents to offset some of the costs of raising a child. The amount paid is a flat sum tax free for each child and is not affected by… Read more » Read more Prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ communities Petitions

Prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ communities

May 3, 2019

Prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ communities The Equality Act should protect all communities. Join us to get the bill through the Senate: If you can, please take the next step with a donation to Progressives in order to help fight back! Thank you! “The ability to have a job, to receive medical… Read more » Read more Petition to rename Fifth Avenue – where Trump Tower sits – after Barack Obama Petitions

Petition to rename Fifth Avenue – where Trump Tower sits – after Barack Obama

April 22, 2019

Thousands support petition to rename street in front of Trump Tower after Barack Obama Thousands of people have signed an online petition asking to rename the section of Fifth Avenue in front of New York City’s Trump Tower after former President Barack Obama. “The City of Los Angeles recently honored former President Barack Obama by… Read more » Read more Support for marijuana legalization Petitions

Support for marijuana legalization

April 19, 2019

It is insane to me that we arrest some 600,000 people a year for the possession of marijuana. An overwhelming 65% of the American people already support legalizing marijuana—including a majority of Republicans and Democrats—and understand the need to decriminalize marijuana usage. The American people agree. It is time our federal government listens…. Read more » Read more Read More

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September 8, 2019

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September 8, 2019

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September 7, 2019

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Restore workers’ rights to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The Workplace Democracy Plan It was the trade union movement that built the middle class in this country, and it is the trade union movement that is going to rebuild the middle class in America once again. In order to strengthen America’s middle… Read more » Read more Health Care for All – Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders website, medicare for all

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The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference is one of the largest yearly events hosted in the Nation’s Capital! Annually: elected officials, political operatives, lobbyists, corporations, and advocacy organizations convene in Washington, DC to discuss the issues most imperative to the Black community. In addition to the many discussions and seminars that will take... Read more » {dn} {dl} {hn} {hl} {mn} {ml} {sn} {sl} View Program Attend

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Is there something in your community, county, or nation that you want to see changed? Try creating a petition. Petitions can have a real impact if they are carefully thought out and written properly. You may already have a cause or… Gather Signatures – Become publicly searchable Create a Petition on Issues that Matter to… Read more » Read more Medicare-for-All Plan Detailed: Improves Health Care, Cuts Costs Press Release

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September 5, 2019

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August 30, 2019

PRESS RELEASE The next presidential election may still be one year away, but the Progressive Party is working hard on a clear strategy for 2020 and beyond. Progressives looking beyond 2019 The Democrats are pouring its energy into the elections and more Democratic candidates who call themselves progressive entered and won. Organizers from the Progressive… Read more » Read more A Chat With Progressive Leaders About the Future of the Left Press Release

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August 25, 2019

Three progressive leaders talk about where they think the Democratic Party should be headed. The progressive leaders talk about the state of the progressive movement. NINA TURNER: One of the top goals of this movement is first recognizing that it is a truly multiracial movement. A lot of times when people see the faces of the… Read more » Read more Proposing Public Funding of Campaigns Press Release

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nebris · 8 years ago

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Trump's Art of the Deal and Roy Cohn: “Always Hit Back”

DONALD TRUMP HAS FAILED at many things: his casinos went bankrupt, his “university” collapsed in lawsuits, his TV show was cancelled. But he was hugely successful with one undertaking: his book Trump The Art of the Deal. It was, to use some of his favorite adjectives, something terrific, spending almost a year on the New York Times bestseller list in 1987, including 13 tremendous weeks at Number One. It has sold more than a million copies, earning him millions and millions in royalties. (And it is undoubtedly more successful than almost any book ever written about in LARB.)

Reading the book is a miserable experience, especially now. Every page provides at least one example of what Garry Trudeau calls “big, honking hubris.” And it’s full of lies, of course; lies about his, well, deals.

But Art of the Deal does contain one massively important truth: it explains why he has been so wild in his attacks over the last few months on people he is not running against this year. This conduct has driven Republican political professionals to despair, and seems inexplicable: spending a week tweeting about a Venezuelan beauty queen for gaining weight; going after the Khan family, whose soldier son was killed in Afghanistan; attacking Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking Republican in Congress — when every political strategy requires that he devote all his energy to attacking Hillary Clinton.

Trying to explain his behavior, pundits have said we were witnessing Trump’s “inability to restrain his worse impulses,” or that he “blindly follows his ego,” or that he’s “like a two-year-old” (here and here). And many have been saying he is simply crazy. In fact if you Google “Trump and crazy,” you get 66 million results — starting with President Obama, who said recently that Trump comes from “the swamp of crazy.”

There’s a better explanation. Trump’s statements are not infantile or impulsive or insane, but rather are part of a conscious, consistent, long-term strategy for dealing with criticism and opposition. It’s all there in Art of the Deal, Chapter 5, “The Move to Manhattan,” where Trump tells the story of how in 1973 he managed to join a private club — of course it was “the hottest in the city and perhaps the most exclusive,” and of course its members included “some of the most successful men and the most beautiful women in the world.” It was the kind of place, he wrote, “where you were likely to see a wealthy seventy-five-year-old guy walk in with three blondes from Sweden.” In other words, Trump’s kind of place.

But it wasn’t the blondes at that club that most interested him. It was a New York lawyer named Roy Cohn. For liberals and leftists in New York, Roy Cohn was the personification of evil, the reptilian right-hand man and snarling chief counsel for Joe McCarthy during the darkest days of the blacklist, and later a notorious legal attack dog and fixer for mobsters and corrupt politicians.

Roy Cohn taught young Donald Trump two simple precepts: Always hit back. Never apologize. That’s exactly what we’ve seen Trump doing throughout the campaign, and especially the last several weeks. So if a Venezuelan beauty queen says you treated her cruelly, you say she made a sex tape. If the father of a dead soldier criticizes you on TV, you say he didn’t allow his wife to speak. And if the most powerful Republican in Washington says he won’t defend you any more, you spend days calling him “weak and ineffective.” Because you always hit back. And you never apologize. That’s what Trump learned from the man who became his mentor.

There’s a lot about Roy Cohn that’s not in Art of the Deal. Trump does let his readers know that “I don’t kid myself about Roy. He was no Boy Scout.” Trump left out the story of the first part of Cohn’s career, when he worked as a young federal prosecutor who helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Then he went to work for McCarthy. Missing from Art of the Deal: the famous photo showing Cohn whispering in McCarthy’s ear during hearings of his Senate committee, where the term “McCarthyism” entered the lexicon.

Also missing from Trump’s book: the story of how, after the fall of McCarthy, Cohn opened his own law office and became what the New York Times called “New York’s most feared lawyer,” with a client list that included mobsters like ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, accused wife-murderer Claus von Bulow, and, in the words of the Times, “the quasi-reputable George Steinbrenner.”

When Trump met Cohn, the family business was in crisis. Trump was working for his father, Fred, renting out apartments in Queens and Brooklyn. That year the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sued Trump and his father, charging them with refusing to rent to black people. It was the first time Donald Trump’s name appeared in the New York Times. The family lawyers told the Trumps to settle. That’s in the book.

Then Donald met Roy Cohn — Trump was 27, Cohn was 50 — and something clicked between them. Trump told him about the family’s legal problems. This episode provides one of the climactic moments of the book, and one of the key lessons readers are supposed to learn about “the art of the deal.” Cohn’s advice was clear: don’t settle. Hit back. Trump quoted Cohn’s words: “Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court.” The Trumps signed up with him.

Trump’s book is wildly misleading on what happened next, although it’s the story he’s been telling ever since, including in the first debate. He says “we ended up making a minor settlement without admitting any guilt. […] and that was the end of the suit.”

The true story is much richer and more revealing. Cohn’s response to United States v. Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump and Trump Management Inc. showed Donald how to deal with opponents: he filed a countersuit against the federal government, calling the Justice Department complaint “baseless” and “irresponsible.” He demanded $100 million in damages — something like half a billion in today’s dollars.

The judge in the case wasn’t impressed. He dismissed the countersuit, calling it “wasting time and paper.” Cohn fought back, accusing the Justice Department of “Gestapo-like tactics.” He called the FBI investigators “storm troopers.” The delays lasted two years, after which the Trumps finally had to settle. The consent decree they signed required that they rent to more black people and that they put ads in black newspapers saying they were an “equal housing opportunity” company. The government press release called the consent decree “one of the most far-reaching ever negotiated.”

Cohn had a different approach: the Trumps’ press released called it a victory. It’s a lot like Trump declaring victory after the presidential debates.

That was the point at which Roy Cohn “became Donald’s mentor,” says Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, who wrote the 1992 book Trump: The Deals and the Downfall. After that, Cohn was Trump’s “constant adviser on every significant aspect of his business and personal life.” You don’t learn that from Art of the Deal. After the story about the housing discrimination settlement, Roy Cohn appears only once in the rest of the book – getting a tax exemption for Trump Tower in 1981.

One other Roy Cohn story is missing from Art of the Deal: his disbarment in 1986, the year before the book was published. The Bar Association charged Cohn with “fraud, deceit and misrepresentation” — for “lying on a bar application, for taking a client’s money, for altering the will of an incapacitated man,” as Politico explained. In the disbarment proceedings, Cohn received testimonials from Barbara Walters, Geraldine Ferraro, Alan Dershowitz, and William Buckley — and also from Donald Trump, who, according to Alexander Cockburn in The Nation, “testified that Cohn was a fine fellow.” It didn’t work. The five-judge appellate panel said they found Cohn’s explanations “incomprehensible” and “incredible” and his testimony “misleading” and “untruthful.” (Trump didn’t mention his testimony at Roy Cohn’s disbarment proceedings in Art of the Deal. When researchers at The Smoking Gun website asked the courts for a copy of that testimony, they were told that all the records had been destroyed in a 2015 fire at a Brooklyn waterfront warehouse where the New York state court system stored its records.) Five weeks after his disbarment, Roy Cohn died — of AIDS. Fifteen months after that, Art of the Deal was published.

Cohn is long gone, but his tactics have come to dominate our dark political landscape this season — and it’s all there, in Donald Trump’s huge, amazing, tremendous best seller.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/roy-cohn-trump-art-deal-always-hit-back/

#Donald Trump #roy cohn

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itsthefishdoctor-blog · 8 years ago

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The United States of Delusion

I don’t even know what to say today y'all.

There has been just a massive amount of mind-boggling nonsense inundating us for the past week that I can’t feel anything other than overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed by the outrageous comments the president has made. I’m overwhelmed by the bold-faced LIES that he has spewed; overwhelmed by the hypocrisy of every single thing he has done and said.

I knew this was coming. I knew it when I cast my ballot for a woman I didn’t think was the best choice but wasn’t an absolute psychopath. I knew it when y'all told us to give him a chance because even though he hadn’t taken office, his hateful rhetoric had already changed the tone of our nation. To be honest, I’ve know it every single time the carrot has opened his mouth. I knew this was coming and I am STILL blown away.

And of course, I’m blown away by this clown. His presidency literally exceeds my comprehension. But what blows me away even more than his bullshit, is the lack of outrage from those of you who voted for him.

Y'all. This. Dude. Lied. To. You.

Not that this a new thing for him. He lied multiple times on the campaign trail (“lock her up” is still ringing particularly loud) and has continued to lie since he was elected. It literally is the most unreal sort of lying I’ve ever seen. It’s bold-faced and its over INSANE things. Like, who actually lies about doing/saying something they are well documented to have done/said? Seriously? WHO DOES THAT?

We’ve had politicians who lie before. That is not at all new, in fact its basically a requirement. But every single time we’ve caught them in a lie, they have to make a big public apology (which you wont accept) and then we hold it against them and call them a liar for the rest of their career. Example: Bill Clinton was not impeached because he had an affair. Bill Clinton was impeached because he LIED about having the affair. Which in comparison to the lies our new fearless leader is spewing, seem like child’s play. I won’t even begin to discuss the ridiculousness of that entire process (especially Trump’s use of it to undermine Bill’s wife and her run for president) but the hypocrisy is, once-again, mind blowing.

SO ANYWAYS.

I’ve posted a nice article on my facebook page choked full of the lies Donald Trump has spewed in the past week vs. the facts that actually happened here in the real world. Seriously, this blows my mind that these are things being debated. Read it or don’t, but I promise there is actual evidence that contradicts the crap the president has tried to make into facts. But that, again isn’t really the point of all this.

What we need to talk about right now, is the state of my country.

Because I am not entirely sure what is happening or who’s country this is anymore. If I’ve seen anything in the past week, it’s that Donald Trump is very well set on making this HIS country and he doesn’t give a flying fuck what he has to do or who he has to throw under the bus to get there.

And I don’t know why there are so many of my fellow citizens who voted for him who are not scared or downright pissed about this. Because y'all are the ones who trusted him. You chose to put your faith in a man and in the span of a week he has completely overhauled your country. I don’t know if you just don’t understand what all these executive orders mean (to be fair, there have been an exorbitant amount) or just don’t care because somehow they don’t apply to you. Because I’ve defended y'all. I have allowed you to justify your vote for other things but I’m done now. Because I’m not entirely sure there’s anything that man can say or do to make some of you even question him, let alone denounce his actions.

When you have a man in charge of the greatest free nation in the world telling the press what they can and cannot report, you are no longer a part of a free nation. When you have a president silencing SCIENTISTS and evidence-based facts, you no longer live in a safe nation. When you have a president using religion to decide who can and cannot enter our country, you no longer live in America (a nation literally founded by men running away from the nationalized Church of England).

The point is we have entered some sort of insane alternate universe where we call lies alternate facts. A world where we ignore hypocrisy unless its directed against our opponent. A place where we look the other way when something unjust happens that doesn’t apply to us. A nation that doesn’t make any damn sense and pretty much defies every single principle it was founded on.

So I’m gonna talk about hypocrisy for a second because its about damn time we start holding each other accountable.

You DO NOT get to criticize pro-life women at your women’s march. You DO NOT get to yell at people afraid to let in refugees when it took you five years to pay attention to the crisis in Syria. You DO NOT get to remain silent when a SNL writer says horrible things about Baron Trump because of who his father is. You DO NOT get to say Trump is not a “legitimate president”. You DO NOT get to remain silent when protesters destroy property or attack police. You DO NOT get to support the women’s march but stay silent to the Black Lives Matter movement. You DO NOT get to freak out about Republicans racism and make fun of Melania’s broken English. You DO NOT get to criticize the people who felt like they had no choice to vote for Trump when your party nominated a lackluster candidate through some pretty sketchy tactics. You DO NOT get to act like the ACA is affordable for most people or the best option for healthcare for our nation. You DO NOT get to remain silent when Madonna threatens to blow up the white house. You DO NOT get to act like illegal immigrants didn’t break the law.

You DO NOT get to preach to me about how you voted for Trump because he was financially conservative and then not lose your damn mind when he essentially forces you to pay for an utterly useless wall. You DO NOT get to tell me healthcare is too expensive to be a universal right but a billion dollar wall isn’t. You DO NOT get to talk to me about the Democrats ridiculous spending when the GOP wasted $7 million to investigate Hilary in Benghazi TWICE and who knows how much investigating Trump’s newest bullshit voter fraud claim. You DO NOT get to tell me you are pro-life and refuse to allow Syrian refugees into our country. You DO NOT get to say “what would Jesus do” to defend fetuses but not actual, fully formed humans. You DO NOT get to tell me radical Muslims pose more of a threat domestically than mentally ill white guys like Dylan Roof or Adam Lanza. You DO NOT get to get your panties in a wad about how we’ve become a “politically correct” country where you can’t say what you want and not BE UTTERLY TERRIFIED that the president has essentially put a gag order on the EPA, NASA, the National Park Service, etc. You DO NOT get to chant “drain the swamp” at your terrifying rallies and then remain silent when Trump builds a cabinet overflowing with the most under-qualified and swampiest, swamp monsters. You DO NOT get to demand to see President Obama’s birth certificate but not Trump’s tax returns. You DO NOT get to criticize peaceful protests against Trump’s low-class behavior when y'all protested Obama’s election because of his skin color. And you DEFINITELY DO NOT get to say celebrities need to stay out of politics when you fools elected one.

Y'all are afraid of ISIS and don’t understand how banning immigrants from ISIS’ stomping grounds feeds directly into their recruiters hands. How banning people from Muslim predominate countries (but not the most Muslim predominate countries and not the countries who have a history of attacking us) shows all the people who ISIS recruit just how horrible the Americans are. Y'all THREW THE BIGGEST FREAKING FIT EVER about Hilary’s freaking email server (even though most of us don’t even know what the heck a private email server is) and then are silent when Donald Trump’s administration has done the EXACT SAME THING. Y'all were up in arms about the Clinton Foundations international connections but look the other way when your president makes a bullshit executive order to ban Muslims only from countries he is convenient enough not to have financial ties to (and then believe the nonsense that Obama did the same thing in 2011: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/29/trumps-facile-claim-that-his-refugee-policy-is-similar-to-obama-in-2011/?utm_term=.328b3f2a974d). You DO NOT get to highlight a portion of that executive order and claim our president refuses to support countries that oppress the LGBTQ community when he openly supports Putin.

Here’s the thing y'all. We need to figure out just what it is we stand for. Because I really don’t think anyone has any clue anymore. We’ve warped our views and beliefs to fit into certain political parties who have their own conflicting views. Republicans are conservative unless its something they want (like a wall). They want the government to stay out of their wallets but are okay with it in women’s reproductive organs. Democrats want everyone to be respected and then call every single Trump supporter a bigot/racist/oppressor. They want the government to stay out of their reproductive organs but provide them free birth control. These labels are only further examples of the division that has broken our country. We are so divided over words that don’t even represent well-organized ideas.

We’ve got to stop y'all. We have to come back to the ideas we were founded on. We weren’t meant to have a national religion. We weren’t meant to have just two political parties; as if that could possibly represent every single American adequately. We weren’t meant to deny immigrants when the founders themselves were immigrants.

But more than that, we need to be good humans. We need to help those who’s homelands have been destroyed because we refused to get involved until it was too late. We need to speak up about injustice in the world and demand action. We need to be kind and fair and generous and compassionate. We need to acknowledge when those we disagree with do the right thing. We need to call out the people we support when they do the wrong thing. We need to respect our fellow humans no matter who they are because, duh. Seriously, duh.

I say all of that knowing full well that even if all of that happens, we may not be any better off. I know that change is a hard thing for people to do and that a few people have a very difficult time changing the world. I know that President Trump will continue to do whatever he wants to do regardless of who it upsets. I know that most of us are too proud to admit, our “opponent” has some valid points.

But I have to say something and I have to try something. Because I feel SO FREAKING HOPELESS. Even though I have watched amazing things unfold in the past week to counter this monster of a president, I feel defeated.

I don’t know what is going to happen next and I’m truly terrified to find out. I can’t even begin to imagine how those of you are who aren’t a privileged white woman are feeling. I’m sorry for you. I really, really am. I want you to know that I’ve got your back and I will fight for you with every fiber of my being because I am grateful for your existence. And you matter. We, the people are the best part of this country and we are what makes America great. I will defend your right to be treated with respect and dignity no matter what. And I can only hope that enough people will do the same. I hope enough people can be as bold as Judge Ann Donnelly or the 3 million women who marched or John McCain who opposed Trump’s latest executive order.

I guess really all I can do right now is continue to hope. I hope we continue to stand up for each other even if its for people who are totally different than us or people we will never meet. I hope that we can all figure out what really matters is the type of people we are and the values we hold and act on. I hope we can be the type of people who inspire others to overcome hate and can bring the generation behind us into a better, more respectful world.

I know this is all very Mean Girls-esque but I sincerely wish I had a big ass plastic crown to break apart and throw at everyone. Because really, y'all are beautiful and if Cady Heron can figure out how to apologize for being a bitch and try to make amends for it in a two hour film, I think our country can probably get through the next four years without pushing anyone in front of a bus.

(That’s a crappy Mean Girls reference; please don’t push people in front of busses)

-Be kind to one another-

also a friendly reminder this blog is for me and possible future nuggets who I want to remember that their mom was definitely not cool with all this bullshit they’ll have to learn in history class. And also for anyone who feels as shitty as I do and needs some love ✌️️

#isthisreallife #unitedstatesoffelusion #whatishappening #donaldtrump #strongertogether #bekindtooneanother

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coin-news-blog · 5 years ago

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Court Instructs Craig Wright to Distribute Billions to Plaintiffs

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/court-instructs-craig-wright-to-distribute-billions-to-plaintiffs

Court Instructs Craig Wright to Distribute Billions to Plaintiffs

On August 26, the self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor, Craig Wright, was ordered by Southern District Court of Florida to distribute half of his BTC holdings and intellectual property assets from prior to 2014. According to the Kleiman estate attorney Vel Freedman, the family has waited a long time for the ruling and they believe things are headed in the right direction.

Kleiman Family Awarded 50% of Craig Wright’s Supposed BTC Mined Prior to 2014

According to multiple sources, the infamous Craig Wright appeared in Florida on Monday to defend himself against the Kleiman family’s lawsuit. The now-deceased David Kleiman was Wright’s business partner for years and the family has accused Wright of manipulating Dave’s inheritance. At the date of filing on February 14, 2018, they said the value of Dave’s assets “far exceed $5,118,266,427.50 USD before punitive or treble damages.” The Kleiman estate and Dave’s brother Ira insisted “Craig perpetrated a scheme against Dave’s estate to seize Dave’s bitcoins and his rights to certain intellectual property associated with the Bitcoin technology.” Fast forward to August 26, 2019, as Florida Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart advised the court that the Kleiman estate should get half of the BTC Wright allegedly mined with Kleiman before 2014. Moreover, half the intellectual property owned by Wright before December 31, 2013 should also be handed over to the plaintiffs, Reinhart recommended.

Since 2016, Craig Wright has claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin.

Not too long after Kleiman passed away on April 26, 2013, the plaintiffs said Wright reached out to Dave’s brother Ira and told him he partnered with Dave to “mine bitcoin, and create valuable IP.” The Kleiman estate says that Wright said Dave signed all these property rights away “in exchange for non-controlling share of a non-operational Australian company worth ‘millions.’” The plaintiffs accused Wright of document manipulation, fraud, and outright forgery. “As part of this plan, Craig forged a series of contracts that purported to transfer Dave’s assets to Craig and/or companies controlled by him. Craig backdated these contracts and forged Dave’s signature on them,” the lawsuit’s argument claims. According to reporter Katie Ananina who witnessed the hearing on Monday, the Judge said “Dr. Wright did not impress me as someone telling the truth. All Craig’s testimonies have been rejected on this matter.”

Federal District Court: “Craig Wright is a fraud”

Us: “Yeah, we know”

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) August 26, 2019

“By this time y’all already know the outcome — 50% of all the patents related to Bitcoin and filed prior Dave’s death going Kleimans — So do 50% of the coins supposedly mined by CSW and Dave,” Ananina tweeted. “CSW pays Kleiman’s legal fees.” Judge Reinhart’s recommendation must be accepted by Judge Beth Bloom, however, who is also presiding over the case. Another reporter who calls himself 22nd Century Crypto witnessed the court proceedings as well and stated that Judge Reinhart implied he doesn’t believe the notorious Tulip Trust exists. “Any coins mined by [Craig Wright] from the time he met [David Kleiman] till the time [David Kleiman] passed is up for debate. As well as any IP that was developed during that time period,” the reporter explained. 22nd Century Crypto added:

And, yeah, I was right. And Craig Wright just lost, bigly. https://t.co/XXQbekYIJv

— Palley (@stephendpalley) August 26, 2019

Wright’s ‘Whale Warning’ and a New Novel

Following the statements of the cryptocurrency reporters who attended the hearing, the Kleiman estate’s attorney Vel Freedman commented on Judge Reinhart’s ruling. “The Kleiman family has waited a long time to recover assets that should have been returned to it shortly after Dave’s unfortunate death in 2013,” Freedman tweeted. “Today’s ruling marks an important step in the right direction.”

Judge will not refer to civil or criminal contempt though

— 22nd Century Crypto (@22centurycrypto) August 26, 2019

After the court proceedings, Craig Wright gave an interview to crypto publication Modern Consensus and told the interviewer that he expects the Kleimans will have to pay billions in taxes. Wright explained that he plans to comply with the courts and stated: “If the court makes an order, I will comply with the order. And the court has made an order. It’s that simple.” The self-styled Satoshi also said that the Judge “won’t rule on whether I’m Satoshi” and that people should be prepared for what lies ahead. Wright insisted:

When asked whether the Kleimans will receive BCH and BSV, Wright explained in his interview that they would only receive BTC. “According to the judge it’s only from before Dave died, so only BTC. Sorry BTC,” Wright explained during his interview after the August 26 hearing.

Many litigators and journalists following the story understand that there’s still more to the Kleiman v. Wright case to come and the lawsuit could drag out for a few more months. Wright’s legal counsel can file an objection or try to appeal the process this week. The only thing filed so far is a paperless minute entry for the proceedings with Judge Reinhart, which took about two and a half hours. On social media channels like Twitter and Reddit, the crypto community has shown extreme exuberance in regards to the ruling. Digital asset supporters wonder how Wright will be able to pay the Kleimans as a lot of crypto proponents do not believe Wright even has a trust with hundreds of thousands of BTC.

The US court *did NOT* rule that Wright/Kleiman were Satoshi Nakamoto

Anyone telling you otherwise is either insane or a liar.

— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne) August 27, 2019

Cryptocurrency proponents had hoped the ruling might push Wright out of the limelight but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far. Wright doesn’t seem fazed by the ruling, even though he said: “This is not an outcome I would have liked.” Moreover, Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV) supporters have used the ruling to prove that Wright is Satoshi. “And Craig is officially proven Satoshi in court… So I guess it’s not that bad after all,” one BSV supporter exclaimed after the hearing.

So Ira Klienman inherits 5 billion $ in Bitcoin from his brother that Craig Wright must hand over. Where Ira is there is a 40% estate tax, so thats 2 billion dollars. Watch out for a big dump of bitcoin into the market unless he has the cash n hand.

— Daisy 🌼 (@DaisyEdwardsOz) August 27, 2019

In addition to the lawsuit in Florida and the ruling on Monday, the popular crypto Twitter handle @Pons De Serres revealed that Wright published a book two days ago called “Satoshi’s Vision: The Art of Bitcoin.” “”Now, Craig Wright steps forward to explain why he chose to use a pseudonym, why he left, and why he returned,” the book’s forward explains. The cryptocurrency community is already tearing the book to shreds, finding discrepancies and errors. The Kleiman v. Wright case still has to deal with more procedures tied to the discovery process, possible appeals and objections, and Judge Beth Bloom will weigh in on the matter as well.

Source: news.bitcoin

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saam2 · 7 years ago

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How The ACORN Scandal Seeded Today’s Nightmare Politics

It did not occur to Bertha Lewis to be afraid.

She was watching the final presidential debate of 2008, and John McCain had just said something insane. “We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy,” the Arizona Republican proclaimed.

Lewis had been leading ACORN ― the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ― for about five months. ACORN advocated for the poor. In addition to helping families navigate federal aid programs, the group ran campaigns to improve city sanitation, protested against predatory lenders and registered people to vote. The nation’s top Republican politician had just declared this body of work tantamount to stealing an election.

“It was absurd,” Lewis said in a recent interview. “Those words had no meaning.”

If anything, Lewis reasoned, the attack was probably good news. Republicans had always loathed ACORN, in no small part because poor voters tend to vote Democrat, but open, inflammatory denunciations of the group were generally confined to the talk radio fringe.

Lewis had been bogged down in a top-to-bottom overhaul of ACORN’s financial and managerial structure ever since she accepted her promotion. If GOP leaders were escalating things in October, she figured it meant she was running a solid voter registration operation despite all the paperwork she’d been buried in.

McCain’s debate paranoia wasn’t an isolated outburst. It became the Republican Party’s closing pitch for the 2008 election, amplified in political media. U.S. newspapers published over 1,700 stories on ACORN during October ― more than 10 times the average monthly total so far that year. More than three-fourths of these stories were devoted to allegations of “voter fraud.”

The illegal voting accusations never panned out. But within 18 months, Lewis would be forced to close ACORN’s doors ― exhausted, short-staffed, out of money and, most important, out of allies.

ACORN had survived for more than 40 years. Its sudden collapse was a defining moment in 21st century American politics. The explosive cocktail of racism, dishonesty, incompetence and cowardice that brought down the organization reveals as much about Washington Democrats as it does about the conservative movement. It marked the Republican Party’s full transition from the coded winks and nods of Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to the bellicose white nativism that defines Donald Trump, and it exposed a Democratic Party establishment unprepared for dirty tricks in the Digital Age and unwilling to defend many of the black voters and activists it claimed to represent.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) turned ACORN into an enemy during his final presidential debate with Barack Obama in 2008.

After McCain lost the 2008 election, his allegations of a vast ACORN conspiracy to steal the election looked even more preposterous. Nobody could find a single fraudulent vote that had been cast by someone connected to ACORN. But the ACORN story kept bouncing around conservative media anyway. Prosecutors in a few states cited a handful of ACORN employees for shoddy voter registration ― submitting incomplete forms or paperwork with bogus names like “Donald Duck” or “Tony Romo.” In many cases, ACORN itself had flagged the faulty documents before turning them over to state officials, since election laws required that all registration paperwork an organization had collected be turned in. This detail often wasn’t included in the stories.

Then in September 2009, everybody seemed to forget about ACORN voter fraud entirely. Right-wing provocateurs James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released a batch of undercover videos through Andrew Breitbart’s new website that appeared to show ACORN employees offering to help O’Keefe get away with all kinds of outrages, including dodging tax payments for an underage prostitution ring he claimed he wanted to smuggle into the country. Fox News pumped out updates on the story day after day as more videos were released in a slow trickle. O’Keefe appeared on “Fox & Friends” dressed like a 1970s stereotype of a pimp one morning, and Breitbart and Giles would make Sean Hannity’s show another evening.

Several formal investigations would later find that, although the undercover videos might have been embarrassing, ACORN workers didn’t violate any laws. The district attorney’s office in Brooklyn, New York, found “no criminality” after a five-month investigation. Neither did the California attorney general’s office. The murder “confession” touted by Fox turned out to be a prank by an ACORN employee who’d caught on to the stunt. (State investigators interviewed her ex-husbands, who were still very much alive.)

In an interview with HuffPost, O’Keefe said it’s wrong to focus on whether his work uncovered actual criminality.

“It exposed immorality. It exposed soullessness,” he said. “Undercover work is about testing and affirming what people are willing to do.”

O’Keefe has clung to the fact that ACORN workers in Baltimore gave him tax advice for his illegal business, including tips on “how to disguise my 13 underage El Salvadorian sex girls on the tax returns,” as he claimed on Reddit in January.

In fact, after being told the girls didn’t have Social Security numbers, the ACORN worker told O’Keefe that “we can’t use them at all,” according to unedited transcripts originally posted to Breitbart’s site. Confronted about the transcript, O’Keefe said it was still “highly immoral” for ACORN employees to help him report illegal income to the IRS. But even that’s questionable, since illegal income is supposed to be reported to the IRS.

“One of the things a tax preparer has to do when you have a client with illegal income is navigate between reporting the illegal income ― which must be done ― and protecting the client’s right not to incriminate himself,” according to Larry Zelenak, a tax professor at Duke University School of Law.

A crime may well have been committed at the ACORN offices ― by O’Keefe. California state law prohibits non-consensual recordings of confidential conversations. The state granted him immunity from potential charges in exchange for access to his complete recordings, but it didn’t wipe out his liability in civil lawsuits. O’Keefe eventually agreed to pay a $100,000 settlement to a former ACORN employee who had actually contacted the police after O’Keefe’s visit but was portrayed in the video as a willing collaborator. As part of the settlement, O’Keefe said he regretted “any pain” he caused the man.

But Washington didn’t wait around for the facts to come out. On Sept. 14, 2009, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted 83 to 7 to block some federal grants to ACORN. Government funding typically accounted for 10 to 15 percent of ACORN’s annual funding. The group received $48.4 million from the federal government from 2005 to 2009 ― most of it, including a $25 million grant in 2008, for housing counseling and foreclosure mitigation.

On Sept. 17, the House followed suit, with 172 Democrats joining 173 Republicans in voting to defund ACORN, including some of the most progressive voices in the party, such as Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and John Conyers (D-Mich.).

Today, Democrats don’t like to talk about that vote. Several told HuffPost they didn’t remember how they voted or why they voted the way they did, other than to note the vote occurred amid a rash of scandalous ACORN headlines.

“Democrats panicked and felt like they had to be a part of that,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), one of the 75 Democrats who voted no, told HuffPost.

Democrats had assumed a defensive posture following electoral victories in November 2008 and wanted to focus on their policy agenda, according to Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who missed the vote.

“We’re fighting about Dodd-Frank, we’re fighting about stimulus, we’re fighting about the Affordable Care Act, and we’re fighting about climate change and cap-and-trade,” Connolly said. “Huge battles. Huge! I think the calculus for some of my colleagues was, ‘How much political capital do I want to expend on this when I have these other big ones?’”

But that wasn’t how Republicans saw Democrats at the time. Democrats were on a roll ― they had taken control of Congress in 2006 and pounded Republicans again in 2008. They’d just reclaimed the White House. The GOP was the party of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis and the bank bailouts. Reeling from these failures, the official Democratic rebuke of ACORN seemed to chart a new course for Republican political strategy in which aggressive attacks from Breitbart and Fox News ― however outlandish ― could force Democrats into concessions.

“In many ways, I feel like this issue was a prelude to how conservatives would weaponize issues going forward in the tea party era that would follow,” said Kurt Bardella, who has worked for both Breitbart and as a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the foremost Republican ACORN opponent in Congress. (Bardella is currently a columnist for HuffPost.)

“ACORN was the only political success Republicans experienced in this period of time,” Bardella said. “I think having a win that the Breitbart side of the world could claim as their own gave them the first real sense that the Republican base was with them more than the politicians, and they could leverage and activate that to play a more impactful role in shaping the direction of the GOP.”

A day after the Senate voted to defund ACORN, an incredulous Jon Stewart featured the O’Keefe video on “The Daily Show,” shaming journalists for missing the apparently massive nationwide fraud underway at ACORN. Hadn’t Republicans been warning about the group for years?

“Where the hell were you?” Stewart ranted.

Reporters had, in fact, scrutinized ACORN, turning up a major scandal at the organization the previous year. In July 2008, The New York Times reported that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled almost $1 million from the organization from 1999 to 2000 and kept it secret from the ACORN board. Rathke was fired, and some funders, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, decided to sever ties with the group. But there was not a rush for the exits. Drummond Pike, the head of the Tides Foundation, personally paid back the embezzlement debt.

The board promoted Lewis from her position in New York’s ACORN office to replace Wade Rathke, and she spent much of the next year auditing finances and reorganizing ACORN’s management structure. As the country’s financial crisis escalated, she beefed up the group’s anti-foreclosure activism, and by the summer of 2009, the stigma from the embezzlement scandal seemed to have faded. Republicans weren’t really harping on it. Instead, Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) were raising a fuss over the possibility that ACORN volunteers might somehow corrupt the census.

The reforms Lewis implemented convinced Dave Beckwith, who was then the executive director of the Needmor Fund, a philanthropy that supports social justice work, that ACORN had turned a corner. “They took organizational internal repair very seriously,” Beckwith told HuffPost. “They changed the role the board played, they became much more transparent about finances and they changed leadership.”

But when the O’Keefe videos hit, ACORN was still in a funding hole. Lewis and other longtime ACORN staffers say the group could have weathered the storm if the Democratic Party hadn’t abandoned it. It wasn’t just a question of losing government grants. The vote to defund ACORN sent a very clear signal to liberal donors that ACORN wasn’t worth defending.

“We tried to engage the philanthropic community in understanding what happened and the degree to which the organization was taking the repair process,” said Beckwith. “And frankly, most were not interested in hearing that story because they had been convinced by a false narrative of corruption and malfeasance.”

By the spring of 2010, the organization was out of money and officially closed its doors.

Other liberal and left-wing organizations also refused to speak out on ACORN’s behalf, Lewis said. When she reached out to Planned Parenthood, which O’Keefe had gone after the year before, she said the reproductive health care nonprofit told her that it didn’t want to help or even be seen together. As Lewis saw it, Planned Parenthood’s leaders seemed to feel like they had “dodged a bullet” in avoiding a congressional funding battle and didn’t want to court any further controversy.

Another ACORN alum, former executive director Steve Kest, says Planned Parenthood didn’t just leave ACORN for dead. It made phone calls to funders and members of Congress on behalf of ACORN ― more than plenty of other liberal groups were willing to do.

“It is clear now that the attack on ACORN was the beginning of a new era of extreme attacks on community-based organizations,” Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Erica Sackin told HuffPost. “None of us, including Planned Parenthood, knew enough or did enough in that moment to expose these video attacks for what they were.”

When a different group of conservatives published videos that purported to show Planned Parenthood negotiating fees for fetal organ tissue in 2015 and Republicans sought to defund group, Democrats and liberals rallied instead of running for cover, offering a much stronger defense than ACORN had enjoyed.

Lewis thinks this was a matter of optics. While Planned Parenthood serves plenty of low-income black and brown women, it has always deployed accomplished, well-to-do white women as the centerpiece of its public image. Planned Parenthood officials make the rounds at Democratic Party fundraisers and fancy liberal conferences. ACORN hired poor people of color and held sit-ins at bank branches.

“If we had been a community group ― like, stick to your neighborhood, give out some turkeys, give the natives some blankets, do social services, occasionally have a silent march and then kneel down and pray ― that might have been fine,” Lewis said. “The attacks on the organization were all around race …. It was because our constituency was black.”

Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The O’Keefe videos dropped about a month after a different ACORN-related bombshell that had gone almost entirely unnoticed. In August 2009, the House Judiciary Committee released thousands of pages of emails and transcripts related to President George W. Bush’s controversial decision to fire several Department of Justice prosecutors in his second term.

The documents revealed that in 2006, after a U.S. attorney in New Mexico refused to file bogus voter fraud charges against an ACORN worker, the Bush administration retaliated by firing him ― an account that corroborated a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general. This was a major scandal. The president had fired prosecutors for refusing to bring a nonsense case against an organization he believed to be a political enemy.

The U.S. attorney scandal was not new in 2009, but the details about the involvement of White House adviser Karl Rove were. Several major news outlets picked up on it ― but nearly all of them missed that Rove’s displeasure with the New Mexico prosecutor wasn’t just about voter fraud. It was about voter fraud and ACORN.

Nearly a decade since the documents were disclosed, however, Rove remains a respected member of the Republican intelligentsia. O’Keefe, though he succeeded where Rove failed, is disgraced. Most of his subsequent undercover projects have fallen flat ― none more dramatically than last year’s attempt to discredit the Alabama women who had credibly accused Senate candidate Roy Moore of having abused or stalked them when they were teenagers.

Several Democrats told HuffPost they didn’t think they would fall for another smear campaign like the one waged against ACORN. O’Keefe and Breitbart were new figures in 2009. People wouldn’t take them seriously today.

“Having been there and done it, I think there’s some wisdom now that would take hold that would perhaps prevent this from happening again,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who voted in favor of the 2009 ACORN resolution.

But Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) isn’t so sure.

“We react spontaneously to virtually anything, and sometimes overreact,” Yarmuth said. “The impact of social media has increased exponentially since 2009 where you can get swamped by social media on any particular misstep or issue. The potential for that happening again is greater, not less.”

KAREN BLEIER via Getty Images

Without ACORN to kick around, the Republican Party’s voter fraud claims have evolved. President Trump claims 3 million to 5 million illegal votes cost him the popular vote in 2016, and he even appointed a commission to investigate the supposed problem. Its work was clearly farcical, and the commission disbanded earlier this year in disarray.

ACORN registered more than 865,000 voters for the 2008 election. While other groups have tried to pick up the slack, there’s a reason Republicans haven’t selected a new organization to serve as the voter fraud boogeyman: nobody is doing the same caliber work on the same scale that ACORN did.

And while just about every possible explanation for Trump’s 77,744-vote margin of victory in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan has been explored to death, almost nobody talks about the effect ACORN might have had in those states.

If Congress has learned any lessons from the ACORN episode, you wouldn’t know it from the legislative record. Each year, government spending bills typically include new bans on funding for ACORN or its successors ― a term with no legal definition. Congress blocked money for ACORN again in its March funding bill.

Issa, who championed the original, successful defunding effort in 2009, told HuffPost that ACORN offshoots might still be at large, though he could not name any. The conservative group Judicial Watch hasn’t raised alarms about an alleged ACORN affiliate receiving federal funds since 2014.

Bardella, the former Issa spokesman, said Republicans had been right to investigate ACORN’s use of federal funds and its finances back in 2009. But he said Issa is probably foolish to raise the specter of ACORN successor groups running amok.

“He’s just talking out of his ass.”

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The post How The ACORN Scandal Seeded Today’s Nightmare Politics appeared first on SAAM.TV.

Learn More: http://www.saam.tv/how-the-acorn-scandal-seeded-todays-nightmare-politics/

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coin-news-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Court Instructs Craig Wright to Distribute Billions to Plaintiffs

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/court-instructs-craig-wright-to-distribute-billions-to-plaintiffs

Court Instructs Craig Wright to Distribute Billions to Plaintiffs

Kleiman Family Awarded 50% of Craig Wright’s Supposed BTC Mined Prior to 2014

Since 2016, Craig Wright has claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin.

Federal District Court: “Craig Wright is a fraud”

Us: “Yeah, we know”

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) August 26, 2019

And, yeah, I was right. And Craig Wright just lost, bigly. https://t.co/XXQbekYIJv

— Palley (@stephendpalley) August 26, 2019

Wright’s ‘Whale Warning’ and a New Novel

Judge will not refer to civil or criminal contempt though

— 22nd Century Crypto (@22centurycrypto) August 26, 2019

The US court *did NOT* rule that Wright/Kleiman were Satoshi Nakamoto

Anyone telling you otherwise is either insane or a liar.

— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne) August 27, 2019

— Daisy 🌼 (@DaisyEdwardsOz) August 27, 2019

Source: news.bitcoin

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