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“Out”: Trump Expels CNN’s Jim Acosta From Oval Office Over Shiteholegate Questions

President Trump ordered CNN’s star reporter Jim Acosta “out” of the Oval Office Tuesday after the Senior White House Correspondent peppered the president with charged questions about immigration, following an alleged comment made by Trump last week in which he is said to have referred to Haiti and several other impoverished nations as “shitholes.” 

After interjecting several times with increasingly insulting lines of questioning, Trump pointed at Acosta and said “Out!” – which finally rendered Acosta speechless.

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“Mr. President,” Acosta shouted three times, finally getting Trump’s attention, “Did you say that you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people from Norway? Is that true Mr. President?” Acosta barked at Trump. 

“I want them to come in from everywhere… everywhere. Thank you very much everybody,” Trump replied while Acosta continued to interject.

“Just Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts of the world… people of color,” Acosta asked – effectively calling Trump racist, to which Trump looked Acosta directly in the eye and simply said:

“Out!”

Watch here:

Different angle:

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Acosta spoke about the incident with Wolf Blitzer afterwards and said it was clear the president was ordering him out of the room. Acosta said he tried to ask his questions again when Trump and Nazarbayev gave a joint statement later on, but Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley “got right up in my face” and started shouting at him to block out any questions.

“It was that kind of a display,” Acosta recalled. “It reminded me of something you might see in less democratic countries when people at the White House or officials of a foreign government attempt to get in the way of the press in doing their jobs.”

Acosta and CNN were infamously humiliated after Trump called them “fake news” during a January, 2017 press conference in which Acosta attempted to shoehorn a question in front of another reporter: 

Meanwhile, Acosta was shut down in December by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders after he tried to grandstand during a press briefing over being called “Fake News,” telling her that sometimes reporters make “honest mistakes.” 

Sanders shot back; “When journalists make honest mistakes, they should own up to them. Sometimes, and a lot of times, you don’t,” only to be temporarily cut off by Acosta. 

“I’m sorry, I’m not finished,” Sanders fired back, adding “There is a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people… you cannot say it’s an honest mistake when you’re purposely putting out information you know is false.”

Meanwhile…

 

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What Happens To Bitcoin Next: Here Is Goldman’s Latest Technical Outlook

As the cryptocarnage accelerates and as bitcoin tags $10,000, moments ago Goldman chief’s chartist, Sheba Jafari, has released her latest technical outlook on various asset classes, among which bitcoin, and writes that as a result of the recent drubbing, “Bitcoin is nearing interesting levels.”

According to Jafari, “the market has pulled back pretty sharply off the ~19,500 highs” a sell-off which qualifies as either:

  1. a corrective 4th wave in an unfinished 5 of V from September, or alternatively
  2. a larger degree IV of V from the ultimate low.

Either way, according to Jafari, the move lower should be viewed as corrective/counter-trend.

So from a technical perspective what are the key support lines to look for next? Goldman believes that the next important level to watch  in terms of support is an equality target off the highs at 9,978. If truly corrective, this 9,978 level should in theory be the area to watch for signs of a reversal/base.

Daily Chart

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On the other hand, any drop further than 9,836 (50% from ’15) would call into question the nature of the retracement.

Beyond there, Jafari notes that any overlap with the interim high from Nov. 8th at 7,882 invalidates any potential for this to be a 4th of 5/V.  This means that “there are clear downside supports to keep in mind. The first big pivot level being at 9,978.“

Goldman’s bottom line: “Watch for signs of a base ahead of 9,978. Setup weakens through 9,836. Turn neutral/cautious through 7,882.“

Weekly Chart

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Sam Zell Sees “Irrational Exuberance” In US Stocks

Three months after Chicago-based investor Sam Zell said he believed the US equity market might extend its rally for another year or two thanks to the spike in business optimism unleashed by President Donald Trump, the legendary investor told CNBC that he’s not keeping most of his money in cash, largely because low inflation has made carrying cash much less expensive.

In an interview with CNBC, Zell reiterated his dim view of the stock market, pointing out that a handful of stocks – most notably the FANG stocks – have been responsible for most of the main benchmarks’ gains over the past year. The broader market, Zell argues, doesn’t look so great.

“I think if you look at the growth we’ve had in the stock market this last year and you eliminate the fang stocks the growth ain’t so terrific. Generally speaking, when you get to the Russell 2,000 and mid-tier stocks, they’re not nearly as frothy….The Russell 2000 is hitting highs but from a much lower base.”

Zell has long been skeptical of tech megacap valuations. As he pointed out during an interview with Goldman Sachs last year, in order to justify the multiple that Amazon trades at today, the company would have to be worth 25% of the US economy five years from now.

Billionaire Sam Zell on markets: I think the current situation seems like irrational exuberance from CNBC.

 

Indeed, the current situation, Zell said, “seems like irrational exuberance,” echoing a warning that then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan famously issued in 1996 about the market environment.

Several years ago, Zell said the US expansion was in the eighth or ninth inning of the cycle. But Zell said late last year that the election of President Trump has changed things. There is more optimism in the business sector now, Zell said, which means the expansion will probably have “extra innings.”

What he means is that, with Trump in office, the real economy could continue to rack up a few consecutive quarters of 3% growth, Zell said.

“I think the opportunity for the country to grow at 3% is real. I think the current situation seems like irrational exuberance,” Zell said.

And since we’ve never experienced eight straight years of 2% growth, nobody has any frame of reference to suggest how long this cycle could last.

Zell believes the cycle could drag on for a while yet.

“I think one of the arguments is if you deferred over 1% of growth through over regulation etc. growth may in fact dispute the cycle. Maybe if eight of it is at 2% growth, that’s much longer than we’re used to,” Zell said.

“We’re dealing with something we don’t know about. We’ve never had 8 years of 2% growth. We’ve had a period of time where growth has been impeded by regulation by over-involvement of government by an anti-business White House.”

Zell says with asset valuations are high across markets following years of central banks pumping cash into the financial system. There are few opportunities left, Zell said.

“It’s very frustrating as somebody who’s spent his whole life taking risks, making investments…all of a sudden there’s relatively few to bet on in a very low inflationary environment like this. The burden of carrying cash is nothing like it was when rates were at 8% or 10%.”

Years ago, Zell said, the Fed’s quantitative easing would’ve been called something else: debasing the currency.

“We have flooded the world with money…every other time we didn’t call it quantitative easing we called it debasing the currency and it resulted in the dollar going down. We just did it, and it didn’t happen. Will it happen? I don’t know.”

In summary, now is a good time to hold cash. Wait for equity and real estate prices to plunge, and be ready to try and catch that falling knife.

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This Fund’s Investment Peformance Rivals Bitcoin, Puts Warren Buffett To Shame

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

There’s a really unique investment company in Europe you ought to know about… because they are insanely profitable.

In fact, a few days ago the company announced that they expect to report an annual profit of $55 BILLION for 2017.

That’s more money than Apple makes… which makes this European group THE most profitable company in the world.

Its stock price has more than QUINTUPLED in the past three years, and nearly tripled in the last nine months.

Those are practically cryptocurrency returns. And it crushes the stock performance of Apple, Amazon, etc.

What’s even more impressive is that, while Apple and other highly profitable companies like Berkshire Hathaway, PetroChina, and JP Morgan Chase often have tens of thousands of employees or more, these guys only have around 800.

It’s an absolutely amazing business… But I haven’t even told you the best part yet.

They have a LEGAL monopoly on their product.

Literally ZERO other companies are allowed to compete with them. So they have a lock on the entire market. It’s extraordinary.

You might not be familiar with the company… but you’ve undoubtedly heard of its product.

 

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It’s the Swiss franc.

And the company is Swiss National Bank (SNB), i.e. the central bank of Switzerland.

Yes, the Swiss National Bank is actually a publicly traded company, just like Apple or General Electric; it’s listed on the stock market in Switzerland under the ticker symbol SNBN.

And yes, the SNB really is the most profitable publicly-traded company in the world. The chairman of the bank expects they made $55 BILLION in 2017.

To put that number in context, $55 billion is equal to roughly 8% of the entire Swiss economy.

The equivalent amount in the United States would be $1.5 TRILLION. So, yeah, it’s a lot.

You might be wondering– how is it possible that a central bank made such a staggering sum of money?

It’s an easy, four-step strategy.

Step 1: Obtain a monopoly on the currency.

Ensure that you, and you alone, have the authority to conjure as much money as you want out of thin air, and that everyone else in the country is required to use it.

Step 2: Print countless amounts of money to inflate asset prices

Like most central banks, the Swiss National Bank ballooned its balance sheet after the financial crisis kicked off in 2008, growing its size EIGHT TIMES from roughly 100 billion francs to over 800 billion.

In other words, they conjured hundreds of billions of francs out of thin air– an amount that’s larger than the size of the entire Swiss economy.

Eventually the money they printed started circulating into the economy… and making its way into financial markets.

And as you can imagine, when an enormous tidal wave of cash starts flooding into stock or bond markets, asset prices tend to rise.

Step 3: Keep cutting interest rates… until they’re NEGATIVE

Just to make extra sure that businesses and individuals in Switzerland would actually spend the hundreds of billions of francs that had just been printed, the SNB adopted a NEGATIVE interest rate policy in 2015.

This meant that banks, corporations, and individuals all had to PAY in order to save their money.

So naturally people started parking their capital elsewhere. They started buying bonds. Stocks. Anything they could get their hands on that wouldn’t charge them interest.

This increase in demand continued to push up asset prices.

Step 4: Buy assets… then continue inflating asset prices.

All the while, the SNB was buying up assets. Stocks. Bonds. They even own roughly $85 billion of US companies like Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola, and Visa.

So, the more stock and bond prices rose, the more money the SNB made.

Essentially the SNB raked in ENORMOUS investment profits because they printed hundreds of billions of francs, which inflated the prices of assets that they themselves were buying.

Pretty amazing.

And today, because of those artificial investment gains that they engineered for themselves, the SNB is now the most profitable company in the world.

Oh, and just so you know the other half of the story, while the central bank is raking in record profits, total debt in Switzerland has skyrocketed.

As an example, household debt in Switzerland as a percentage of GDP is now one of the highest in the world.

This is a testament to the absurdity of our modern day monetary system… a system in which unelected central banks are awarded dictatorial control of the money supply, and consequently enormous power over our lives.

With a monetary system like this, it’s easy to understand why there’s so much interest in decentralized cryptocurrencies…

And to continue learning how to safely grow your wealth, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.

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DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Overturn “Dreamer” Immigrant Ruling

The DOJ said on Tuesday it will ask the US Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s ruling last week that blocked President Trump’s move to end the “Dreamer” program which protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

The Trump administration said it will file an appeal of the judge’s injunction directly with the conservative-majority Supreme Court as well as appeal to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the department said.

As Reuters reports, the DOJ is not filing an emergency application that, if successful, would result in the judge’s ruling being put on hold, which means the programme will remain in effect during the litigation.

“It defies both law and common sense for DACA … to somehow be mandated nationwide by a single district court in  San Francisco,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “We are now taking the rare step of requesting direct review on the merits of this injunction by the Supreme Court so that this issue may be resolved quickly and fairly for all the parties involved,” Sessions added.

The DOJ’s move to go directly to the Supreme Court is unusual – if expected – as the administration is essentially seeking to circumvent the 9th Circuit appeals court, which has previously ruled against it over Trump’s travel bans on people entering the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries, and has been accused by conservatives of having a liberal bias.

* * *

In September, the president the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a programme put in place in 2012 by Barack Obama, effective in March. Subsequently, a variety of Democratic state attorneys general, organizations and individuals challenged Trump’s action in multiple federal courts. The administration is challenging a Jan. 9 decision by San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who ruled that DACA must remain in place while the litigation is resolved.

Alsup’s ruling came during tense negotiations between Trump and congressional leaders over immigration policy. Those talks fell apart after Trump rejected a bipartisan deal and provoked outrage with his reported use of the term “shithole” to describe African countries in a meeting with lawmakers on immigration.

Since DACA was implemented, about 800,000 young adults dubbed Dreamers – mostly Hispanic –  have been protected from deportation and allowed to work legally in the United States under DACA. As of September, when the most recent figures were made available, 690,000 young adults were protected under the programme.

“Dreamers came out of the shadows based on a representation that if they qualified for the status, they would be allowed to stay in the country. Now they’re being used as bargaining chips in a high-stakes immigration policy debate in which their status should have no part,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for the public interest law firm Public Counsel, which represents six DACA recipients in the case.

As for the timing, even if the high court agrees to take up the case, it is unlikely to rule until its next term, which starts in October and runs until June 2019.

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Buchanan: Is America’s Immigration Plan A Yellow-Brick Road To Utopia (Or National Suicide)?

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

President Trump “said things which were hate-filled, vile and racist. … I cannot believe … any president has ever spoken the words that I … heard our president speak yesterday.”

So wailed Sen. Dick Durbin after departing the White House.

And what caused the minority leader to almost faint dead away?

Trump called Haiti a “s—-hole country,” said Durbin, and then asked why we don’t have more immigrants from neat places “like Norway.”

With that, there erupted one of the great media firestorms of the Trump era. On Martin Luther King Day, it was still blazing.

Trump concedes he may have disparaged Haiti, which, at last check, was not listed among “Best Places to Live” in the Western Hemisphere. Yet Trump insists he did not demean the Haitian people.

Still, by contrasting Norway as a desirable source of immigrants, as opposed to Haiti, El Salvador and Africa, Trump tabled a question that is roiling the West, the answer to which will decide its fate.

Trump is saying with words, as he has with policies, that in taking in a million people a year, race, religion and national origin matter, if we are to preserve our national unity and national character.

Moreover, on deciding who comes, and who does not, Americans have the sovereign right to discriminate in favor of some continents, countries and cultures, and against others.

Moreover, in stating his own preferences, Trump is in a tradition as old as the Republic.

The original Colonies did not want Catholics here. Ben Franklin feared Pennsylvania was being overrun by stupid Germans:

“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”

Just as anti-immigrant parties have arisen in Europe to stem the flood of refugees from the Mideast and Africa, an American Party (“Know-Nothings”) was formed to halt the surge of Irish immigrants during the Potato Famine of 1845-1849.

Lincoln wanted slaves repatriated to Africa.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, we had Chinese and Japanese exclusion acts.

“Californians have properly objected” to Japanese migrants, said V.P. nominee FDR “on the sound basic ground that … the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.”

After the Great Migration of Italians, Poles, Jews and East Europeans, from 1890 to 1920, the Immigration Act of 1925 established quotas based on the national origins of the American people in 1890, thus favoring Brits, Scots-Irish, Irish and Germans.

Civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, a major figure in Dr. King’s March on Washington, said of the Harding-Coolidge restrictive quotas:

“We favor reducing immigration to nothing … shutting out the Germans … Italians … Hindus … Chinese and even the Negroes from the West Indies. The country is suffering from immigration indigestion.”

The Senate floor leader of the 1965 Immigration Act addressed what were then regarded as valid concerns about the future racial and ethnic composition of the country. Sen. Edward Kennedy pledged:

“Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually … the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset. … S. 500 will not inundate America with immigrants from … the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia.”

What Kennedy assured America would not happen, did happen.

Today, issues of immigration and race are tearing countries and continents apart. There are anti-immigrant parties in every nation in Europe. Turkey is being bribed to keep Syrian refugees out of Europe.

Boatloads of Africans from Libya are being turned back in the Med. After building a wall to keep them out, Bibi Netanyahu has told “illegal aliens” from Africa: Get out of Israel by March, or go to jail.

Angela Merkel’s Party may have suffered irreparable damage when she let a million Mideast refugees in. The larger concentrations of Arabs, Africans and Turks in Britain, France and Germany are not assimilating. Central European nations are sealing borders.

Europe fears a future in which the continent, with its shrinking numbers of native-born, is swamped by peoples from the Third World.

Yet the future-alarmed Europeans are resisting is a future U.S. elites have embraced. Among the reasons, endless mass migration here means the demographic death of the GOP.

In U.S. presidential elections, persons of color whose roots are in Asia, Africa and Latin America vote 4-1 Democratic, and against the candidates favored by American’s vanishing white majority. Not for the first time, liberal ideology comports precisely with liberal interests.

Mass immigration means an America in 2050 with no core majority, made up of minorities of every race, color, religion and culture on earth, a continent-wide replica of the wonderful diversity we see today in the U.N. General Assembly.

Such a country has never existed before.

Are we on the Yellow Brick Road to the new Utopia – or on the path to national suicide?

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Bannon Subpoenaed By Muller, CFPB Backs Away From Payday Lending Rule, and Trump Admin. Appeals DACA Decision to Supreme Court: P.M. Links

  • Former Brietbart News chief and advisor to President Trump Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed as part of Robert Muller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
  • The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will “reconsider” its controversial payday lending rules.
  • Trump will appeal a 9th Circuit ruling blocking his DACA repeal to the Supreme Court.
  • A broken rail reportedly caused a Metro train to derail in downtown D.C.
  • California couple arrested for shackling, torturing their 13 kids.

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Why Worrying Over a Minority Majority America Is Dumb

MultiracialKidsFlagPavelIlyukhinDreamstimeAccording to a 2015 U.S. Census Bureau report, “by 2044, more than half of all Americans are projected to belong to a minority group (any group other than non-Hispanic White alone).” That projection depends on Americans a generation hence quiescently staying in the ethnic and racial pigeonholes into which the census takers want to stuff them.

A new Pew Research Center study, “Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant Connections Fall Away,” finds that lots of people with Hispanic heritage do not identify themselves as being Hispanic when filling out Census survey forms. By the third generation, 56 percent of respondents simply identify themselves as American.

Also by the third generation, 75 percent of Americans with Hispanic ancestry live in households where English is the predominant language and in which 24 percent are bilingual. A 2012 Pew survey of Latinos on language use reported that 92 percent of second generation and 96 percent of third generation speak English well. That’s basically the same trajectory followed by the descendants of earlier groups of immigrants.

The Census Bureau in 2020 may further allow us to test this idea of assimilation, considering allowing folks who check off white to mark boxes for groups like German, Irish, Italian, Polish, English and so forth.

However, parsing ethnicities that closely means that from the point of view of early-20th century nativists, America has been a majority minority country for a while now. As I have earlier argued:

By 2050, just as the earlier waves of Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish immigrants were assimilated, so too will today’s Hispanic immigrants and their descendants be. For all intents and purposes, Hispanics will become as “white” as Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles….It is my hope and belief that Americans of whatever ancestry living in 2050 will look back and wonder why ever did anyone care about the ethnic makeup of the American population. America is an ideal, not a tribe.

It bears noting that since the first census in 1790 the bureau has drawn a big distinction between white and black people living in this country. This is the result of the compromise in the Constitution in which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College. Consequently, in the early censuses, people were categorized as free white persons, all other free persons, or slaves. After the Civil War, the constitutional distinction between white and black citizens should no longer have mattered. Nevertheless, all censuses have maintained and enumerated white and black citizens in separate categories.

Apparently, on the principle that if it is acceptable for the census to divide citizens into black and white racial categories, other ethnic groupings are fair game, too. In 1890 the census asked whether people were white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. The bureau also asked the number of years a person had lived in the U.S. and whether they were naturalized. In the five censuses from 1900 to 1940, the bureau simply asked each person’s “color or race” and whether they were foreign-born.

In 1950, the census asked each person to identify as “White, Negro, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Other race – spell out.” In 1960, Hawaiian, Part-Hawaiian, Aleut and Eskimo were added to the list of possible ethnicities, presumably because Hawaii and Alaska had joined the Union the year before. It was not until 1970, when the bureau began asking, “Is this person’s origin or descent (fill in one circle) Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish, No, none of the above.”

Let’s consider a counterfactual. Between 1880 and 1920, more than four million Italians, five million Poles, two million more Germans*, and two million Jews immigrated to the U.S. By 1915, about 15 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born (today it’s about 13.5 percent). Imagine if the Census Bureau had set up and maintained national origin and ethnic categories for Italians, Poles, Germans and Jews in 1910; what percentage of Americans would today choose an ethnic identity more specific than the white option that has been part of every census since 1790?

The census began categorizing Americans as black or white based on an invidious Constitutional compromise that has long since been irrelevant. Here’s a proposal: Let’s do away with any questions with regard to a person’s race or ethnicity in the 2020 Census.

*One of those was my great-grandfather Anton Pinn who left Rhineland-Palatinate in Bavaria in the 1880s to settle eventually in the German communities of central Texas. For what it’s worth, Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump also left Rhineland-Palatinate at about the same time.

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If Aziz Ansari Were a College Student, He Could Have Been Expelled for Less

Aziz AnsariLast week, babe.net published an anonymous woman’s account of her date with actor/comedian Aziz Ansari, who she says pressured her into uncomfortable and unwanted sex, failing to heed her “verbal and non-verbal cues.”

In response, the internet has produced wave after wave of takes. The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan said the article was “3,000 words of revenge porn” and unfit for publication. Vox‘s Anna North characterized Ansari’s behavior as common among all-too-many men, and thus worth discussing. The New York Times‘s Bari Weiss wrote that if Ansari was guilty of anything, it was “not being a mind reader,” and fretted that this incident could tarnish the #MeToo movement. Reason‘s own Elizabeth Nolan Brown thought both parties—as well as men and women in general—could benefit from more communication about sexual desires.

These are wildly different takes, and there are dozens more perspectives offered in The Washington Post, National Review, Jezebel, on Twitter, and elsewhere. But most of the takes have one thing in common: they explicitly reject the original article’s assertion that Aziz Ansari committed sexual assault. Ansari behaved badly, and there is much to be said about how he ignored his date’s wishes, thought only of himself, and expected sexual gratification at every turn. But he is not a rapist, most people seem to agree.

And yet, boorish behavior similar to Ansari’s—behavior that most pundits say they consider gross but not criminal, at least in Ansari’s case—is routinely investigated as sexual misconduct on university campuses. Ansari is lucky he’s not a college student; otherwise he could have been accused months or a year after the incident, investigated by a lone administrator with sole power to decide which witnesses to interview, called before a hearing to answer charges he does not fully understand, forbidden from consulting a lawyer or cross-examining his accuser, found responsible for sexual misconduct under a preponderance of the evidence standard, and expelled from campus as required by Title IX, the federal statute that mandates gender equality in schools.

I’ve covered scores of campus sexual misconduct disputes for Reason. Frequently, the details of the incidents sound a whole lot like the Ansari mess: intoxicated participants, a mutual desire to engage in some level of sexual activity but different expectations as to how far and how fast things should go, “non-verbal cues” that were ignored or perhaps just misunderstood by one party, agreement that a phase of the encounter was consensual but disagreement as to when and whether consent was withdrawn, and gradual re-thinking of the experience as full-on assault. “It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” Ansari’s date, known as “Grace,” told babe.net. “I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault.” Student-victims often take a long time to make up their minds about this, too. As Emily Yoffe has noted, about 40 percent of student-victims don’t report their alleged rape right away—these complainants wait an average of 11 months.

Consider a few Title IX cases where young men suffered severe consequences for engaging in behavior quite similar to Ansari’s, or even less obviously bad.

At Occidental College, a male student, “John Doe,” had sex with a female student, “Jane Roe.” Jane had every intention of sleeping with John—she had asked him to keep a condom handy. Later, she felt badly about the experience, and was persuaded by a sociology professor that because she was impaired by alcohol during the encounter, she couldn’t have given consent. John was eventually expelled.

At Amherst College, two intoxicated students, “John Doe,” and “Jane Roe,” retired to a dorm room, where Jane performed oral sex on John. John would later claim he blacked out while this was happening, and had little memory of it. Amherst administrators deemed his story “credible,” but noted that drunkenness was never an excuse for engaging in nonconsensual sex—which is what Jane accused John of, two years later. He was expelled.

Two Michigan State University students, “Nathan” and “Melanie” agreed to meet up for sex in the summer of 2014. According to Bridge, Melanie was interested in an emotional, romantic relationship, while Nathan just wanted casual sex with a friend. They were interrupted during their sexual encounter—they were doing it in a car—which made Melanie extremely upset, and called to mind a traumatic experience from her past. Nathan, according to Melanie, did a bad job of comforting her, and then tried to resume the encounter by reaching under Melanie’s shirt and touching her bra. She said no, and he stopped—and that was the end of their relationship. A year later, Melanie underwent surgery to transition to a man. Afraid of running into Nathan in the men’s restroom at MSU, she filed a Title IX complaint alleging that he had violated the university’s sexual misconduct policy during the rendezvous in the car. Nathan was found responsible.

At the University of Southern California, “Jane Roe” and “John Doe” met up at an off-campus fraternity party and started dancing. Later that night, they went to a bedroom to have sex. Both agreed that this first encounter was consensual; it was the second encounter that Jane later disputed. This time, two other males—students from a different university—joined them. The sex became rougher than Jane wanted, and one of the other students—not John—slapped Jane on the butt. She started to cry, and the encounter came to a premature end. Jane needed counselling after the incident, and eventually decided to initiate a Title IX complaint. Since John was the only other participant in the orgy who actually attended USC, he became its subject. Jane admitted that John hadn’t raped her, but he had failed to prevent the other guys from slapping her—he wasn’t attuned to her needs, or looking out for her interests. Accused of 11 separate sexual misconduct violations, John was found guilty of two and suspended for a year.

I could cite dozens more cases of drunken hookups gone wrong, misinterpreted signals, and unmet expectations that culminated in powerful institutions punishing young men for sexual assault. If it would be wrong to call Aziz Ansari a rapist, it was wrong to call these young men rapists. And it would be wrong to export the campus policies under which these young men were found responsible—low evidence standards, affirmative consent, automatic belief in the honesty of accusers—to the rest of the country (something many activists want). Let’s hold real sexual abusers accountable without discarding important protections for the accused in the process.

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White House Doctor Says Trump’s Cognitive Test Is Normal, Has “Incredibly Good Genes”

Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician to the president, presented his findings on Trump’s health status, including his mental acuity, and the Trump resistance will be disappointed to learn according to the doctor’s assessment, President Donald Trump had a normal score on a cognitive exam and is in excellent health, although he could “benefit from a lower-fat diet and more exercise.”

According to the test, Trump, 71, is about 6 feet, 3 inches tall; weighed in at 239 pounds; had a resting heart rate of 68 and blood pressure of 122 over 74. The doctor said that Trump is seeking to lose 10-15 lbs over the next year through diet and exercise. Amusingly, Trump has “healthy teeth and gums”; no dentures according to the doctor.

More importantly, Trump got perfect score on Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a test of mental functions Jackson says wasn’t needed and given after Trump asked for it to put doubts about his mental abilities to rest.

The president has an “above average exercise capacity” for someone of his age and gender.

“In summary, the president’s overall health is excellent,” Ronny Jackson told reporters. “He continues to enjoy the significant long-term cardiac and overall health benefits that come from a lifetime of abstinence from tobacco and alcohol.”

Some more details:

  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP WEIGHS 239LBS, 75 INCHES TALL
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP’S MEDICAL EXAM SHOWED HE WEIGHED 239 POUNDS
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP’S BLOOD PRESSURE WAS 122/74
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS CONGNITIVE SCREENING EXAM ON TRUMP WAS 30/30, A NORMAL READING
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP TAKES CRESTOR TO LOWER CHOLESTEROL
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP TAKES PROPECIA FOR HAIR LOSS
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP’S OVERALL HEALTH IS EXCELLENT
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP WOULD BENEFIT FROM A LOWER FAT DIET
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP IS LIKELY TO REMAIN HEALTHY FOR THE REMAINDER OF HIS PRESIDENCY
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP WOULD LIKE TO LOSE 10 TO 15 POUNDS
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS HE HAD NO CONCERNS ABOUT TRUMP’S COGNITIVE ABILITY
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP ASKED HIM TO DO A COGNITIVE TEST
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP DID EXCEEDINGLY WELL ON COGNITIVE TEST
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS HE HAD GIVEN TRUMP MEDICATION THAT MAY HAVE RESULTED IN EPISODE IN WHICH TRUMP SLURRED WORDS
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS HE WOULD LIKE TO LOWER TRUMP’S LDL CHOLESTEROL
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP HAS A LOT OF ENERGY AND STAMINA
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP HAS “INCREDIBLY GOOD GENES”
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS COGNITIVE TEST CONDUCTED ON TRUMP WOULD HAVE REVEALED EVIDENCE OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE OR OTHER ISSUE
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP SLEEPS FOUR TO FIVE HOURS A NIGHT
  • WHITE HOUSE DOCTOR SAYS TRUMP DOES TAKE AN AMBIEN OCCASIONALLY ON LONG TRIPS

With all that said, however, we doubt that the issue of Trump’s mental competence has been resolved once and for all.

via RSS http://ift.tt/2B6srCW Tyler Durden