Lenny's thoughts on this world of ours

First, I want to thank you for all your reading. This is my 99th blog and so far there have been more than 14,100 page views. Dozens of you are reading and clicking more than once, even when I don’t post anything, and the numbers have really been going up.

Reading above what’s above would good thing to do over the long weekend. For those of you who haven’t been, I recently achieved the trifecta of categories: golden showers, pass gas (fart), and semen (cum) – all for news reasons, of course, and each used only once – so maybe you’ll start by subscribing.

You never know what’ll come up next!

Here is a hint. It’s called Follow-Up Friday, and it’s good to see Harvey Weinstein in deep (pick a bodily substance from above).

The New York Times wrote Weinstein facing

“charges that he had raped one woman and forced another to perform oral sex … stood not only as a breakthrough in the investigation into sex-crime claims against him but as a watershed in the larger #MeToo movement.”

According to The Times via Slate Magazine,

“Weinstein arrived at the precinct at 7:30am, got fingerprinted, then departed in handcuffs—without his books—about an hour later. From there he was driven to the courthouse, where he was arraigned at 9:25am and made bail on a cashier’s check for $1 million.”

Yes, you read “books” and Slate reported,

“Footage of his arrival shows Weinstein entering the precinct with three books in his arms—one about Elia Kazan, another about Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a third, floppy, leather-bound volume that hasn’t been identified.”

Then upon further review, Slate suspected the “books were almost certainly props” since,

“The choice of titles might also be designed to send some kind of message: Elia Kazan was a brilliant but disgraced film director and a ‘calculating, unfaithful womanizer’; composer Richard Rodgers was known to be sexually aggressive with the women who performed his musicals.”

Whether criminal suspects in New York get to read books they bring is under debate but Slate noted,

“Under normal circumstances, a person who surrenders to police can expect to wait 12 to 24 hours before heading off to see a judge. This includes time spent waiting to be transported to the courthouse, as officers don’t tend to make this trip until they have a group of people ready for arraignment. The fact that Weinstein got the ‘walkthrough’ treatment—coming in and out in just two hours—suggests that all arrangements (including the amount of his bail) had been worked out ahead of time by his lawyer and the district attorney’s office.”

That shouldn’t happen.

Neither should this: another school shooting. Today’s happened at an Indiana middle school. At least nobody was killed. CNN reports three people were injured — a teacher and a student, according to Noblesville’s police chief — “but hospital officials said at least three people, including one adult, were being treated. One student had an ankle fracture.”

A student was arrested a short time later, in or near his classroom. The chief said he’d asked for permission to leave the room and “he returned armed with two handguns.”

What did Indiana’s former governor have to say?

CNN noted “The shooting comes a week after 10 people were killed at a school in Santa Fe, Texas,” and “There have been 23 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed so far this year – an average of more than one shooting a week.”

I guess many more people than the usual students and teachers can’t wait for this school year to finally end.

I don’t know of any other Noblesville so there was no confusion like Santa Fe, when I showed you Philadelphia’s WTXF-Fox 29 (my former employer) did nothing but take a story from their sister-station in Houston, which didn’t have to specify a state.

Unfortunately for folks in Connecticut, FTVLive’s Scott Jones found out about this from WTNH-Channel 8 (my former competition).

Maybe Fox 29 will finally learn to take its journalism and attention to detail more seriously, like its three main competitors, so it doesn’t mislead its viewers or readers. Heck, even Connecticut journalists were confused!

It didn’t take long, but Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg is back in the news for a victory against one of the biggest supermarkets in the southeast – Publix – and Florida GOP primary gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam, for that matter.

Putnam made news for not getting any invitations to appear on Fox News, while his opponent, Congressman Ron DeSantis, has been on about a hundred times so far this year.

 

 

 

 

 

Besides the fair and balanced folks at Fox, Putnam has one friend and one enemy. The friend is Publix (not because it’s prude) and the enemy is Hogg, and today, Publix announced it’s suspending all corporate campaign contributions immediately.

The Tampa Bay Times reported Publix had given $670,000 to Putnam campaigns over the last three years. Its headline, ten days ago, was “Publix is supporting Adam Putnam’s run for governor like no politician before.”

On top of that,

“No other Florida candidate has ever come close to that kind of subsidy from Florida’s largest Fortune 500 company. Its most recent contribution, a $100,000 donation on April 30, was the largest, too, according to the latest campaign finance filings.”

Also,

“In 2016, WFTS-Channel 28 discovered seven Tampa Bay-area Publix stores failed health inspections. In those stores, food inspectors found rodent droppings, hundreds of pounds of meat and other food stored at unsafe temperatures, bugs and employees not washing their hands, according to the report. Putnam responded the next day by pulling the inspections from the department’s website and eliminating the pass/fail grading system.”

Publix is based in Lakeland, and Putnam lives in Bartow, both in Polk County.

Thanks to Hogg, Publix faced “consumer boycotts, student protests and threats to its wholesome image.” Now, it’s acknowledging the “divide” it caused by its unprecedented financial support of Putnam’s campaign.

According to the Washington Times,

“The public face of the gun control movement demanded $1 million Thursday from the Florida-based grocery chain in a tweet, just one day after calling for a “die-in” protest at its stores.”

He also wanted an acknowledgment for the gun control movement.

As for Putnam, he’s sticking with the National Rifle Association and against the wishes of the survivors, some of whom like Hogg, will be old enough to vote against him. The primary is set for Aug. 28.

Facebook is acting on something I brought you earlier this month: “protecting legitimate political discussion within our community and fighting foreign interference in elections.”

Hit the question mark for help and type in “political ads.”

The social media giant will tell you,

“When ads with political content appear on Facebook, they’re required to include information about who paid for them. An ad with political content on Facebook can be identified by the label: Sponsored – Paid for by. This label is followed by information about who paid for the ad. Learn more about what’s considered an ad with political content.”

Then, after a way to report seeing “an ad on Facebook that has political content, but doesn’t have a label showing who paid for it,” it tells you “Ads that have political content and have appeared on Facebook on or after May 7, 2018 will also appear in the Archive of Ads With Political Content.”

That’s not just candidates, but issue ads from outside parties, too. The details were revealed when the expanded requirements took effect – yesterday.

Also, Adweek reported, “Twitter revealed a similar tactic Wednesday, saying that it was teaming up with nonprofit civic organization Ballotpedia to create election labels for the accounts of candidates running in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.”

Something else you won’t be seeing on Facebook anymore are videos from The Weather Channel.

“[Facebook video] hasn’t been beneficial,” said Neil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel, according to Digiday at its Video Summit. “It has been good for Facebook, but it hasn’t been good for us.”

The publication wrote, “The Weather Channel’s Facebook presence included its main page as well as ‘weather-adjacent’ science, nature and travel verticals such as Rockets Are Cool, Crazimals and United States of Awesome.”

In March, The Weather Channel was sold to entrepreneur and entertainment executive Byron Allen, who us older folk remember from Real People. Another wise decision, sir.

Others are not as wise. Watch this news report FTVLive’s Scott Jones found from an excellent reporter, Stanley Roberts, at KRON in San Francisco. His beat is People Behaving Badly. This is for those of you who want to be in public but not on TV.

I love when people who don’t know what they’re talking about keep talking and talking, digging themselves further and further into a hole. By the way, a person has the right to shoot and record video in a public place. As far as consent for voice, which varies by state, a guy holding a video camera close by kind of tells you that you may be recorded! Sort of like a beep when you hear someone’s voicemail. Just a clue for the clueless.

And this is something I’ve seen several times before: Philadelphia’s own Frank Rizzo – former police commissioner who served two terms as mayor for most of the 1970s. He’d been out of office for less than a year when approached by a KYW-TV3 investigative reporter. This is something you shouldn’t miss, nor should the people above.

And speaking of Americans and our rights, the Philadelphia region’s two largest grocery store chains aren’t looking too super when it comes to our holidays, at least to me.

I hope Acme and ShopRite don’t know the meaning of Memorial Day, in which we honor our fallen heroes who are no longer able to barbecue or go down to the Jersey Shore. Otherwise, it’s just damn rude and insensitive.

Their recommendations to party should’ve been reminders to remember.

On that note, please don’t forget to read, show your friends and subscribe if you haven’t.

And have a good, long holiday weekend. (Wouldn’t that have been enough?)