tenderfoot
tenderfoot's Journal'Unclear, unfunny, delete': editor's notes on Milo Yiannopoulos book revealed
Court submissions in lawsuit over far-right provocateur’s memoir reveal concerns over weak arguments, boasting and racism
Court documents filed in the US have revealed the editorial concerns of the publisher Simon & Schuster about the manuscript of the “alt-right” controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos’s autobiography Dangerous.
Having reportedly secured the book for an advance of $255,000 (£200,000), Simon & Schuster cancelled the deal in February after a recording emerged that appeared to show Yiannopoulos endorsing sex between “younger boys” and older men.
In July, Yiannopoulos set out to sue Simon & Schuster for $10m for breach of contract. As part of the case, Simon & Schuster have submitted documents that reveal the problems they had with the book. Among other criticisms, the publisher’s notes say Yiannopoulos needed a “stronger argument against feminism than saying that they are ugly and sexless and have cats” and that another chapter needs “a better central thesis than the notion that gay people should go back in the closet”.
In addition to the documents, a full copy of an early manuscript of the book, complete with the Simon & Schuster editor Mitchell Ivers’s notes, is available to download from the New York state courts’ website.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/28/unclear-unfunny-delete-editors-notes-on-milo-yiannopoulos-book-revealed
https://twitter.com/jasonpinter/status/946070219176513536
https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/946347142012051456
Price of 40-year-old cancer drug hiked 1,400% by new owners
Source: CBS News
Prices for a cancer drug called lomustine have skyrocketed nearly 1,400 percent since 2013, putting a potentially life-saving treatment out of reach for patients suffering from brain tumors and Hodgkin's lymphoma. Though the 40-year-old medication is no longer protected by patents, no generic version is available.
According to the Wall Street Journal, lomustine was sold by Bristol-Myers Squib for years under the brand name CeeNU at a price of about $50 a capsule for the highest dose. The drugmaker sold lomustine in 2013 to a little-known Miami startup called NextSource, which proceeded to hike lomustine's price nine times since. It now charges about $768 per pill for the medication.
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Henry S. Friedman, a professor of neurosurgery at Duke University School of Medicine, accused NextSource of "price-gouging" in an interview with the Journal, adding: "People are not going to be able to afford it, or they're going to pay a lot of money and have financial liability."
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Soaring prices for cancer drugs are a concern for both patients and doctors because financial pressures can lead to delays in seeking treatment that can easily surpass six figures per year. A study published earlier this year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found prices for 24 patented injectible Medicare Part B drugs rose an average of 18 percent annually over the past eight years on an inflation-adjusted basis. Prices continued to rise even when generic versions of the drug became available.
Patients with cancer are among the most likely to feel the pain of recent drug price hikes. Novartis (NVS), the Swiss drugmaker, is charging $475,000 per patient for its Kymriah treatment for certain types of blood cancers. Another blood cancer medication developed by Gilead Sciences (GILD) called Yescarta costs $373,000. (According to Bloomberg News, patients have experienced delays in getting the breakthrough treatment because of payment delays by both private insurers and Medicare and Medicaid.) The brain tumor treatment called Alecensa is priced at nearly $160,000 a year.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-drug-lomustine-price-hiked-1400-percent-by-new-owners/
Jamil Smith: President Trump and the imagined war on Christmas
https://twitter.com/JamilSmith/status/945089471652945920President Trump’s first year in office has impacted Americans well beyond policy. He’s in every story, in everything, it seems. On our final show, we look at how he and Republicans have even politicized Christmas. We discuss how Americans celebrate in ways that look different than a Hallmark card — including people who want their holiday symbols, like Santa — to look like them.
https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/one-year-later/president-trump-and-the-imagined-war-on-christmas
FBI: Man planned Christmas terror attack for SF's Pier 39
Officials say they've stopped a man who was planning a possible Christmas terror attack in San Francisco.
We've learned the FBI has arrested a man by the name of Everitt Aaron Jameson from Modesto. They say he wanted to target Pier 39.
According to FBI documents, Jameson picked out that location because he "had been there before and knew it was a heavily crowded area." He added that it would be easy to "funnel" people into an area where he could inflict casualties.
Jameson reportedly said he was inspired by the New York terror attack on Oct. 31, when a man drove into a crowd of people.
The documents also say Jameson was posting and liking pro-ISIS and pro-terrorism content on Facebook.
Officials say Jameson was talking to an undercover FBI agent. They add that he was arrested earlier this week and a search warrant was executed at his Modesto home. Several firearms were found, along with fireworks.
http://abc7news.com/fbi-man-planned-christmas-terror-attack-for-sfs-pier-39/2812473/
Everitt Aaron Jameson: https://www.facebook.com/everittj/
"Ayn Rand's 'It's a Wonderful Life'"
https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/944238504665649152Trump has a new labor advisor.
Trump has a new “labor” advisor. His name is James Sherk. His big issue is federal workers are paid too much and have too many job benefits. They also don’t work enough, according to Sherk. Trump has empowered him to fix the problem by cutting salaries and benefits for federal workers. In other words, James Sherk seems like a really nice guy.
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James is a 2003 graduate of Hillsdale College, the uber-ideological rightwing college in Michigan, which churns out far-right shock troops. (Hillsdale first became a rightwing cause celebre when it refused all federal aid so as to not come under federal regulations opposing racism. They’ve maintained the tradition. Just a few years ago the College’s President got in trouble for snarking that he guessed the school “violated the standards for diversity because we didn’t have enough dark ones, I guess, is what they meant.”) Then James did three years getting a Masters at the University of Rochester. From the time he left there until a few months ago he’s held various policy jobs at The Heritage Foundation.
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Sherk thinks that federal workers are fat and lazy and need to be kicked into shape. He has literally had no experience in the private sector, ever. He has had no experience working in government, ever. Given the nature of these jobs at Heritage (check out the link above) there’s a relatively legit (though perhaps ungenerous) argument that he’s never held a job job in his life. His entire professional life has been spent at Heritage.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-are-they-2
Trump hosted the NRA at the White House on the anniversary of Sandy Hook massacre
Not only did Donald Trump not tweet out messages of condolences for families who lost loved ones five years ago on Thursday at the Sand Hook gun massacre in Connecticut, and not only did White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on that day insist there’s simply nothing that can be done to battle American epidemic of gun violence, but Trump himself managed to insult the Sandy Hook families in another appalling way.
In a craven display of collective indifference, Trump hosted Wayne LaPierre, the controversial head of the NRA, at the White House on Thursday night, as families and friends of the elementary school gun massacre were remembering the victims of the horrific killing spree.
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Gun safety advocate Shannon Watts, who founded the group Moms Demand Action, noted on Twitter the contrast between how Trump and Obama deal with families of Sandy Hook, as well as the memories of the slain:
https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/941714564575477760
https://shareblue.com/trump-hosted-the-nra-at-the-white-house-on-the-anniversary-of-sandy-hook-massacre/
Trump's America: Swastikas painted at synagogue in Woodland Hills
Swastikas and other graffiti were found on Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills earlier this week, and authorities are investigating the actions as a hate crime, it was reported Thursday.
The vandalism, which also included the writing of a gang name and a profane drawing, occurred between late Sunday evening and early Monday morning on a sign near the street and on a guard shack at the entrance of the synagogue, the Daily News reported.
“It's a symbol normally used for hate purposes placed on a Jewish temple,” LAPD Det. Nick Abbinanti told the newspaper. Authorities said they have no suspect information, but that they did find similar tagging in the area about three to four miles away, on an alley wall in the West Hills area.
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“We immediately contacted the LAPD ... and before parents and children could arrive for school, our security team inspected the synagogue grounds to ensure the safety of our children,” the statement said. “The offensive symbols and other taggings have already been removed.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-temple-vandalism-20171214-story.html
Alabama proves that appealing to Trump voters is a lost cause. The power is elsewhere
In 2012, a man who believed in what he called "legitimate rape" ran for senator of Missouri, the state where I live. Todd Akin, a Republican, was the front-runner until he said rape victims should be denied abortions because, "if it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down." It horrified both my state and my country. Republican women abandoned Mr. Akin in droves, and his opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, trounced him at the polls, 54.8 per cent to 39.1 per cent.
Today, Mr. Akin's remark would barely register on the public radar, as a man accused of sexual assault holds the presidency and rancid revelations of brutal misogyny among our elected officials emerge daily. This grotesque plunge in standards led many, including me, to expect Roy Moore to win the Alabama Senate seat. I was thrilled to be wrong.
Before Tuesday night, Mr. Moore seemed like the embodiment of a government that had forsaken everything decent and good. Mr. Moore is an accused serial child molester who believes America was greatest when it had slavery, a disgraced lawyer who wanted to eliminate every amendment after the 10th and a hypocrite who wrapped his hatred of black, Muslim and LGBTQ citizens in a cloak of cynical piety. He was abetted by the enthusiastic support of Donald Trump and Stephen Bannon, as well as the cowardice of Republican officials, most of whom refused to forthrightly condemn him.
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What the Alabama race demonstrates to Democrats is that attempting to pry away white Trump voters is a bad strategy, both morally and politically. The priority of any representative should be protecting the rights of the most vulnerable – particularly their right to vote, without which all other rights are threatened. The job of an elected official is to serve the entire body politic, something Mr. Moore showed no desire to do. He sought instead to punish certain Alabamians for their mere existence – for things no one can change, such as race or sexual orientation, or for having progressive beliefs to which they are legally entitled. Like the President, Mr. Moore ran on the politics of subjugation, and those who voted for him could do so only because they knew they would not be among the subjugated.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/alabama-proves-that-appealing-to-trump-voters-is-a-lost-cause-the-power-is-elsewhere/article37313990
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Member since: Tue Sep 3, 2013, 01:59 PM
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