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President Trump, who just five months ago said he wanted “to get out” of Syria and bring U.S. troops home soon, has agreed to a new strategy that indefinitely extends the military effort there and launches a major diplomatic push to achieve American objectives, according to senior State Department officials.

Trump agrees to an indefinite military effort and new diplomatic push in Syria, U.S. officials say

Actors and fans defend 'Cosby Show' actor after articles job-shame him for working at Trader Joe's

An honest man doing an honest day's work used to be something to be celebrated in America. But it didn't seem like it -- over the Labor Day weekend, of all times -- after actor Geoffrey Owens was spotted at a Trader Joe's in New Jersey, bagging groceries.

It all started with an article in the Daily Mail late last week. A customer at the store in Clifton, New Jersey, spotted Owens -- best known for his role as son-in-law Elvin Tibideaux on "The Cosby Show" -- working as a cashier and snapped a picture.

The image became the basis for the Daily Mail's story under the job-shaming headline, "From learning lines to serving the long line!" The details in the story were just as insulting: "Wearing an ID badge bearing his name, the former star wore a Trader Joe's T-shirt with stain marks on the front as he weighed a bag of potatoes."

The story exploded on social media over the holiday weekend after Fox News picked it up and tweeted out its own version. But the articles seemed to produce a flood of support for Owens, as well as a conversation about job-shaming and classism. Other actors, as well as fans, defended him.

Geoffrey Owens' message to job-shamers: Honor the 'dignity of work'

Leave him alone, he's not a rapist.

It's OK to job shame anyone working at the Daily Mail.

If you are defrauding the American people by disguising your own orders as the President's you are a criminal! If you want to be part of the 'resistance' stand and be counted like a man!

The piece suggests America is currently under a "two-track presidency." If President Trump wants to do something the people in his administration think is good, they go along with it. If he wants to do something they think is bad, they find ways around it. This is in keeping with what the Bob Woodward book excerpt revealed: Senior officials are taking things off Trump's desk to keep him from seeing them.

Nobody who’s part of the real resistance should be celebrating this. If you work in this administration and carry out any part of Trump's agenda, you are enabling him, not undermining him. If we have a president so incompetent that his most trusted advisors have to play peekaboo to preserve national security, then those people should be working to get him out of office, not just spare us from his cruelest impulses.

...

If they really believe there's a need to subvert the president to protect the country, they should be getting this person out of the White House. But they're too cowardly and afraid of the possible implications.

No, anonymous Trump official, you're not 'part of the resistance.' You're a coward

Black Strap Molasses (song)

The song's lyrics discuss popular health foods of the time. The verses make "absurd" claims about the supposed benefits of these foods, and the chorus runs:

Black strap molasses and the wheat germ bread
Makes you live so long you wish you were dead
You add a little yogurt and you'll be well fed
On the black strap molasses and the wheat germ bread.

One contemporary review interpreted the lyrics as referring specifically to the "Live Longer" diet advocated by nutritionist Gayelord Hauser. Hauser, labeled a "quack" by the American Medical Association, gained widespread popularity in the mid-twentieth century promoting "wonder foods" including blackstrap molasses, wheat germ, and yogurt, as well as brewer's yeast and powdered milk. He was known as a nutrition guru to many Hollywood celebrities.

Molasses.

Previously: NYT: #MeToo Leader/Victim Settled With Her Own Accuser

Just some further developments.

Italian Filmmaker Wears "Weinstein is Innocent" Shirt on 'Suspiria' Red Carpet

Her father directed the original film. The article discusses Italian attitudes towards #MeToo.

Asia Argento's Episodes on Parts Unknown No Longer Streaming After She's Accused of Sexual Assault

CNN has stopped streaming episodes of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown that include Asia Argento after a sexual assault allegation was made against her.

“In light of the recent news reports about Asia Argento, CNN will discontinue airing past episodes of Parts Unknown that included her, until further notice,” a CNN spokesperson tells PEOPLE.

Argento, 42, appeared in the Rome and Southern Italy episodes of the show and directed a Hong Kong episode, during which Bourdain said, “To fall in love with Asia is one thing. To fall in love in Asia is another. Both have happened to me.”

A Buenos Aires episode, which did not feature Argento, was also removed from CNN Go for unspecified reasons, according to BuzzFeed News which was first to report.

Leah McSweeney and Asia Argento’s war of words could escalate

When Penthouse columnist Leah McSweeney lambasted Asia Argento last month in a column called “Can We Talk About Toxic Femininity?,” she was hit with an angry legal letter from Argento’s team, she said.

McSweeney posted the letter on Instagram after she wrote in the opinion column that Argento, who has accused Harvey Weinstein of rape, instead “had a sexual relationship with Weinstein, which resulted in a transactional, consensual union, because — let’s be honest — that’s how Hollywood works.”

Rose McGowan Says Asia Argento Admitted to Sleeping With Young Actor

Rose McGowan, one of the leading voices of the #MeToo movement, said Monday that her partner had exchanged text messages with the actress and director Asia Argento in which Ms. Argento said that she had indeed slept with the actor Jimmy Bennett — an act that Ms. Argento recently denied.

In a lengthy statement, Ms. McGowan also said that her partner — the model Rain Dove — told her that in text messages, Ms. Argento had said that she had been receiving unsolicited nude photos of Mr. Bennett since the time he was 12 years old and had not informed the authorities or told him to stop sending the photos.

So she did the deed, but little Jimmy may have been thirstier than he remembers.

Rain Dove speaks out about Asia Argento allegations

Argento complained, Dove told CNN, that she was being extorted for money by Bennett and initially denied having sex with him. Argento later contradicted herself in an alleged text exchange with Dove, which Dove shared with CNN.

"The Public knows nothing, only what the NYT wrote. Which is one sided. The shakedown letter. The horny kid jumped me...," an alleged text from Argento read.

"So it was rape? Or an attempted sexual action?" Rain Dove replied in a text viewed by CNN.

"I had sex with him it felt weird. I didn't know he was a minor until the shakedown letter," Argento allegedly wrote in response.

2013 photo, with comments

Damage control:

The future of #MeToo: 'The movement is bigger than Asia Argento'

And finally, some real cheese.

Agents Tried to Flip Russian Oligarchs. The Fallout Spread to Trump. (archive)

In the estimation of American officials, Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, has faced credible accusations of extortion, bribery and even murder.

They also thought he might make a good source.

Between 2014 and 2016, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant. They signaled that they might provide help with his trouble in getting visas for the United States or even explore other steps to address his legal problems. In exchange, they were hoping for information on Russian organized crime and, later, on possible Russian aid to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to current and former officials and associates of Mr. Deripaska. In one dramatic encounter, F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced and uninvited at a home Mr. Deripaska maintains in New York and pressed him on whether Paul Manafort, a former business partner of his who went on to become chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, had served as a link between the campaign and the Kremlin.

The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader, clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia’s richest men, nearly all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V. Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said.

Two of the players in the effort were Bruce G. Ohr, the Justice Department official who has recently become a target of attacks by Mr. Trump, and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled a dossier of purported links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The systematic effort to win the cooperation of the oligarchs, which has not previously been revealed, does not appear to have scored any successes. And in Mr. Deripaska’s case, he told the American investigators that he disagreed with their theories about Russian organized crime and Kremlin collusion in the campaign, a person familiar with the exchanges said. The person added that Mr. Deripaska even notified the Kremlin about the American efforts to cultivate him.

"Thanks, but no thanks."

How McCain Got the Last Word Against Trump (archive)

By the time he died on Saturday, Mr. McCain had carefully stage-managed a four-day celebration of his life — but what was also an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump and his agenda. For years, Mr. Trump had used Twitter and the presidential bully pulpit to mock and condemn the senator. In death, Mr. McCain found a way to have the last word, even quietly making it clear through friends that Mr. Trump was not welcome at the services.

“I think it’s fair to say that they have a very different view of this country and what this country means, here and abroad,” said Mark Salter, the senator’s longtime friend and co-author who sat with Mr. McCain — often with a lump in his throat — during the many discussions about his looming death. “His overall message was: ‘It doesn’t have to be this shitty.’”

The series of events honoring Mr. McCain is the kind of grandiose spectacle that is normally reserved for someone who became president, not someone who twice failed to do so. Friends said that Mr. McCain was surprised by the level of interest in his death even as he planned it.

When advisers suggested that his coffin should lie in state at the Arizona Capitol, Mr. McCain said he believed the legislature would never approve such a rare honor for him, recalled Rick Davis, who had been at Mr. McCain’s side for decades and served as his 2008 campaign chairman. “Every inch of the way, he underestimated what he thought this would be about,” Mr. Davis said.

The memorial events this week began in Arizona on Wednesday, when Mr. McCain’s body was taken to the Capitol, and will continue Thursday at a service at North Phoenix Baptist Church. The procession will then shift to the nation’s capital, when Mr. McCain’s coffin will arrive at an air base outside Washington as the president holds one of his raucous campaign-style rallies for supporters in Indiana.

By the weekend, when virtually all of official Washington — Democrats and Republicans alike — gathers at the National Cathedral for a nationally televised farewell, Mr. Trump is expected to have retreated to Camp David, where White House aides hope he will contain his anger at the attention being lavished on Mr. McCain.

[...] Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian activist who survived two poisoning attempts for his opposition to the government of President Vladimir V. Putin, said that Mr. McCain, who was widely seen as one of the Russian leader’s fiercest detractors, had also asked him in April to be a pallbearer. “He spoke the truth regardless of party or political situations,” Mr. Kara-Murza said. “That was his defining characteristic.”

In Washington, a town where Mr. Trump has given Mr. Putin an open invitation to visit, Mr. Kara-Murza said that Mr. McCain’s choice of a Russian pallbearer — one repeatedly brought to the brink of death for challenging his country’s authoritarian brand of politics — was “actually pretty symbolic.”

John McCain: Sarah Palin 'excluded from his funeral'

Have we just seen ghosts of black holes from another universe?

Evidence that Universe has infinite cycle of Big Bangs from very early black holes

Separately:

Physicists Say They've Come Up With a Mathematical Model For a Viable Time Machine

All you need is the same exotic matter that powers your Alcubierre drive. What? You don't have one of those?

My daughter just went to a Drag(on) party (sp???):

literally a pre-wedding party for two guys (and there was a stage drag theater contest).
My questions (being an old guy trying to fit into a new world)

1. Is it husband and wife or husband and husband (wife and wife for lesbians)?
2. Why do people do drag? and why don't they dress that way all the time if they like doing it so much?
3. I knew a 'flaming homo' in Toronto (did not know him well enough to ask questions like this): why do some guys act straight and some so feminine to outright flaming in yo' face?

Will probably remember some other questions later... does anyone have a primer?

Honestly asking.... this is all new to the guy who grew up (small town) saying "Ha...you're a homo!" without really knowing what that meant (when told about a 'circle jerk' i wondered why a bunch of guys would want to do that while thinking about women, lol).

Let the flaming begin!

**A side thought:
In the future there WILL be sex bots:
.....there will also be 'child sex bots' (and will/can child sex bots be made illegal?)... thinking about this is kind of disturbing, but i know it IS coming, sooner or later.
    Will something like that take care of a pedo's needs or lead to something worse?

If you had a fully functioning sex-bot that looks/feels real with wonderful AI, would you consider never having a relationship (such as marriage) again or just stick with sex-bot?
If my wife died and i had a bot/AI that was acceptable, i might just stick with it, methinks.

Damn, my mind is going tonight!

Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, was one of the executives who helped arrange $420,000 in payments to longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen to help reimburse him for hush money he paid an adult-film star.

Weisslberg was granted immunity by federal investigators in New York in exchange for his truthful testimony about his role in the payments, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Weisselberg is the person identified in court filings as “Executive-1,” who prosecutors said helped authorize $420,000 in payments to Cohen, one person said. He testified before a grand jury investigating Cohen last month

Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, who allegedly helped arrange hush-money reimbursement to Cohen, granted immunity

Federal prosecutors reached an immunity deal with the tabloid executive David J. Pecker, a key witness in their monthslong investigation into payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Mr. Pecker is the chairman of American Media Inc., the nation’s biggest tabloid news publisher, which was involved in the payments, which prosecutors have identified as illegal contributions made in violation of campaign finance law.

David Pecker, Chief of National Enquirer’s Publisher, Is Said to Get Immunity in Trump Inquiry