Is Khan Noonien Singh running Starfleet in this timeline?
No, he’d have been deported to the Klingon Empire by now. The braying asshole whose shysters just extorted $16 million from Paramount is merely a student of his methods:
“I’ve done far worse than kill you. I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you.”
To boldly go … where? To the bank for a cashier’s check, it seems. Hold the phasers, drop the shields, piss on the dilithium crystals and call in the Tribbles.
Beam me up, Scotty — there’s no intelligent life down here.
Mad Blog Media 
No surprises here. Classic dumpster move. Move along, move along.
Lotta strands in the ol’ Duder’s head here. Paramount is, of course, the home of “Star Trek.” Paramount wants a merger with Skydance. The $16 mil’ isn’t a bribe or nothin’, nossir, nuh uh. They’re just cutting the nuts off “60 Minutes” to keep it from pissing on the furniture and humping the advertisers’ legs.
The thing Paramount forgets is that once you start paying protection, you never stop paying protection.
“Nice media company yis got here. Be a shame if sumpin’ happened to it. …”
Word. Protection is exactly what it is; excuse me while I slap my forehead. Classic Michael Cohen or Roy Cohn play.
With this crowd, probably more like Kid Sally Palumbo from Jimmy Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
Kid Sally was the sort of dude who was not above shaking down a Weight Watchers club, dropping “veiled hints,” such as, “You could be dead in a bomb accident.”
The problem is, Paramount (60 Minutes?) did selectively edit the piece leading to distortion of what was said, and got nailed for it. They probably would not have prevailed in court, so $16 million was a cost-effective expenditure to put it to rest. It will be interesting to see the outcome of Gov Newsom’s recent lawsuit against Faux News for essentially the same distortion editing. The gov is seeking $787 million, an amount which somehow rings a bell. Fox PR dept dismissed it as “frivolous.”
It’s far from clear that Paramount-CBS News would’ve lost in court. The press gets a lot of latitude in these matters … some say too much, but in this case? Nah. Was that portion of the interview badly edited to make for better TV? Sure. But a deliberate attempt to queer the election? I seriously doubt it, and much harder to prove in any event.
Poynter has a good rundown on the deets.
OK, trying to determine what was said and what was reported in the summary is beyond my click-thru abilities and/or determination, but I do appreciate the link you provided. I got my info from a major news source that I’ve come to trust (not sure now which one), and I went with my recollection of that. I defer to your more complete, insider views.
Again, the Newsom case v Faux News holds hope for me.
After 15 years of newspapers and 30 of magazines, it’s just impossible for me to look away from the jillion-vehicle pileup we call the “news” these days. Whether it should be called “professional interest” or “appalled voyeurism” is a matter for the psychiatrists.
It’s kind of like watching “The Bear” in reverse: A fancy eatery gets turned into a sammich shop with a filthy kitchen and everyone yelling “FUCK!” at each other all the time.
These lawsuits are part of a bigger pattern of delaying and litigating everything while he and his sycophants continue to do whatever they want. You saw what they did in the first 100 days of their reign. It likely takes a 100 days to get a court date in a severely stressed judicial system. Meanwhile federal grants and contracts get cancelled and employees get fired en masse. Democracy is under attack while the supremes are on summer vacation on someone else’s dime.
O, indeed. This has always been his M.O. He used it on contractors he stiffed. “So sue me” is his family motto. While the lawyers wrangle, he gets back to breaking the law.
The Bear would have made more money in the long run if they had started as a seven course prix fixe dinner-only joint and slowly paired things down until they were left with just a sandwich.
They coulda been somebody, like Trivelli’s Hoagies in Bibleburg, next to Murphy’s Tavern.
Selective editing … as opposed to … what? … random editing?
Is Trump familiar with Fox News?
Every week during the campaign, they took 90 minutes of incoherent blather and found a 30 second clip that wouldn’t offend their viewers.
(Aside: I was thought the Democrats biggest mistake was not consistently daring people to listen to an entire rally from start to finish. And calling Fox a bunch of wimps for not having the balls too air the entire thing.)
Now let us drink the Tranya!
I have been subjected to some random editing over the years. Committed some of it too.
Selective editing … that leads to a distortion of what was actually said.
I guess my Urban Sombrero hasn’t been adequately keeping the radiation off my melon (oh, wait, that’s J. Peterman!) but I’m still confused as to how shrinking a long answer into a shorter answer for the purpose of promoting the show is a willful distortion. If you play the interview backwards, does it say Paul Is Dead or turn into Judas Priest lyrics?
Probably too much tranya.
The debate over what CBS News may or may not have done recalls the wisdom of Hunter S. Thompson in “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72”:
I gotta get me some of this. Only $250 for 3.3 oz. Just announced along with latest on taxes, sorry, tariffs.
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1HJnse.img?w=768&h=513&m=6
Hate to change the subject, but here in Janesville, Wisconsin a cyclist was killed by a city employee driving a garbage truck. The Janesville Gazette, prides itself on focusing on local news. Fuckers relegated this bit to a small note on page three.
Please excuse my outrage.
My local newspaper is useless as “tits on a boar hog” as my Dad used to say. Better off going door to door to find out anything really going on here. That’s cause the “reporters” are never/ever on site. Just take things off the police blotter or maybe the scanner. Don’t you just love the “developing story” message? And it never develops! POG has likely ground his teeth down to nubs over today’s so called news reports.
What remains of local news is a pitiful sight, to be sure. Here in Duck!Burg we have a locally owned paper with what seems to be a sizable staff, but damme if I can tell what they’re all up to. Lots of features and sports. Stories go uncovered and first takes vanish unfollowed by detailed reports.
I subscribe to the digital edition to save trees and fuel, since the Journal no longer prints its own paper — The New Mexican in Fanta Se handles that chore for them and for a number of other regional papers.
This is not unusual. The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado printed a ton of smaller regional papers until Gatehouse/Gannett snatched them up and shut down the printing press. Now what remains of The Chieftain is printed at The Denver Post, as is the Bibleburg Gazette.
This means earlier deadlines for reporters and editors. It also means that newspapers can sell off their real estate and move their reduced staffs into smaller spaces.
The gig lost a lot of its majesty when the printing left town. There was nothing quite like hearing the presses cranking up to speed at midnight and grabbing a fresh copy of the paper for one last quick check to make sure we hadn’t fucked something up.
I gotta hand it to the Coloradoan. They let 90% of their staff go, got scarfed up by USA Today, but still do an ok job of getting around town.
Election coverage is top notch. You’ll get each ballot measure broken down, pros and cons, explanation of second and third order effects.
And their gang-around-town stuff is excellent, if restaurant openings is important to you.
I hate the mandated USA Today layout, obviously are forced to use their CMS. Makes reading it with a cup of coffee almost painful.
But the local staff is clearly doing the best they can
Yeah, they’re one of the few bright spots in the inky darkness that is Gannett. Check out The Pueblo Chieftain sometime. Great John God. And we thought the place was fucked up under private ownership when we worked there in the mid-Eighties.
I’m really sorry to hear about the incident. I see that the online Gazette edition doesn’t say much about it. Did you by chance know the cyclist?
The victim was not someone I knew. This morning the tv news said he was an incoming high school freshman.
We had a cyclist killed here yesterday. A squib on a local TV station’s website and bupkis in the paper. No followup. To the press anyone on a bicycle is a “cyclist,” but in that area it could’ve been anyone from a down-and-outer to a local racer getting in some miles before the heat hit.
To be fair, it’s been a busy couple of days. What appears to have been a fireworks explosion took out an entire house, damaged nearby property, and sent a couple people to hospitals. We got fires out the wazoo, stiffs in the streets, and a burger flipper charged with shooting someone 10 times over a bike sale. Patronize your friendly local IBD, kids. They may want to shoot you, but probably won’t.
Our school district has one death and one pretty bad hit-and-drag in recent memory, and the crazy thing is, both were in the four-way stop in front of the school. If we can’t convince drivers to put down the phone for one block while cruising thru the school zone, we are so fucked.