Showing posts with label Playboy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Playboy. Show all posts

Saturday, April 4, 2026

Thursday, April 4, 1946. Hirohito lucks out.

The Far Eastern Commission exempted Emperor Hirohito from war crime prosecution.

Richard C. Miller took a series of swimsuit photographs of Marilyn Monroe.  In them, which because of copyright we will not post here, she appears of much more normal proportions than she would later, which is interesting for a variety of reasons we've already covered.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 2, 1946. MacArthur bans fraternization, Murray tries for national health insurance.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 3. The Quack Edition.

  


BASH: Is this measles outbreak a consequence of the administration undermining support for vaccines?

DR OZ: I don't believe so. Secretary Kennedy has been advocating for measles vaccines

BASH: Oh, come on

From a CNN Interview of Mehmet Oz, a prime example of the Oprah Effect.1 

In fairness to Dr. Oz, who in fairness should not be a government official, he does want people to get the measles vaccine.

Also in fairness, the dissing of vaccines isn't really a Trump thing in and of itself, but he gave it some boosted unneeded assistance by taking the political step of promising Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a job as the HHS Secretary if he'd drop out of the last Presidential race.  Kennedy is a quack, and an opponent of vaccines in varying degrees (it seems to change day by day).  The rise of this movement, however, started with people like Jenny McCarthy who sadly has a son with autism.  McCarthy herself was a Playboy model and her only real expertise is in showing her naked visage, something that really doesn't qualify a person for anything serious, and in fact may achieve much the opposite.

Oh, and by the way, Jenny McCarthy appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show multiple times in the 2000s to discuss her erroneous theories on autism and vaccines, and to promote a book she wrote.

Much of this story has to do with the inability to understand the difference between present conditions and past ones.  People tend to assume that negative developments in a population mean a negative present condition. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they also represent a positive one.  I'll give a personal example.

In 1982 I had pneumonia while at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.  I was extremely ill, literally on death's door.  

Before the advent of antibiotics the fatality rates for bacterial pneumonia were between 60% and 70%.

Not good.

Now, the survivability rate is pretty good.

I've had a colon surgery for a developing condition that would have killed me even thirty years ago.

The point?  Well, if I go on to develop Alzheimer's, which I pray I do not, it'll mostly be because I didn't die at age 19 of pneumonia.

Also, fwiw, Meet The Press this weekend had a physician on who noted that diseases we can now vaccinate for are associated with cancer, which is a developing field of medicine.  I.e., you get some disease that's not big deal when young, and then you get cancer when older.  You don't want cancer.

A fellow I know who suffered a heart attack, and who was otherwise very healthy, may have developed his heart condition this way as well.

Get vaccinated.

March 10, 2026

The worst cabinet in American history

And it's not even close.

March 15, 2026

The Trump Interregnum is threatening to pull broadcasting licenses of those who do not give a happy spin to the war against Iran.

March 21, 2026

Waging a war against American airports must be easier than waging a war against a real country that fights back:

cont:


Absolutely reprehensible.

At this point, support of Trump is indecent.

March 31, 2026
We were horrible in Vietnam until we did Rolling Thunder One and Rolling Thunder Two, and then we won. As soon as we do half-measures, we lose. The faster we get this over the better. If we seize Kharg Island, it's technically boots on the ground. It could be done almost flawlessly. If we have enough firepower, it would be very easy to defend.
Rep. Rich McCormick, whom apparently is unaware that the US lost the Vietnam War.

Footnotes:

1. The Oprah Effect is so named here to explain the phenomenon of Oprah Winfrey putting some flaming bogosity on to her popular daytime television show and thereby having millions of people give it credence.  There are a fair number of examples, including the rise of Dr. Oz.

Related Threads

Doug Wilson, the Calvinist preacher who appeared in Pete Hegseth's weekly Pentagon prayer meeting, says that in his preferred Christian nation, anything that Protestants consider to be a "public displays of idolatry" would be banned, including Catholic parades.

Last edition:

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 2. The War is a Racket edition.

Friday, March 27, 2026

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 3. The Quack Edition.

 


BASH: Is this measles outbreak a consequence of the administration undermining support for vaccines?

DR OZ: I don't believe so. Secretary Kennedy has been advocating for measles vaccines

BASH: Oh, come on

From a CNN Interview of Mehmet Oz, a prime example of the Oprah Effect.1 

In fairness to Dr. Oz, who in fairness should not be a government official, he does want people to get the measles vaccine.

Also in fairness, the dissing of vaccines isn't really a Trump thing in and of itself, but he gave it some boosted unneeded assistance by taking the political step of promising Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a job as the HHS Secretary if he'd drop out of the last Presidential race.  Kennedy is a quack, and an opponent of vaccines in varying degrees (it seems to change day by day).  The rise of this movement, however, started with people like Jenny McCarthy who sadly has a son with autism.  McCarthy herself was a Playboy model and her only real expertise is in showing her naked visage, something that really doesn't qualify a person for anything serious, and in fact may achieve much the opposite.

Oh, and by the way, Jenny McCarthy appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show multiple times in the 2000s to discuss her erroneous theories on autism and vaccines, and to promote a book she wrote.

Much of this story has to do with the inability to understand the difference between present conditions and past ones.  People tend to assume that negative developments in a population mean a negative present condition. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they also represent a positive one.  I'll give a personal example.

In 1982 I had pneumonia while at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.  I was extremely ill, literally on death's door.  

Before the advent of antibiotics the fatality rates for bacterial pneumonia were between 60% and 70%.

Not good.

Now, the survivability rate is pretty good.

I've had a colon surgery for a developing condition that would have killed me even thirty years ago.

The point?  Well, if I go on to develop Alzheimer's, which I pray I do not, it'll mostly be because I didn't die at age 19 of pneumonia.

Also, fwiw, Meet The Press this weekend had a physician on who noted that diseases we can now vaccinate for are associated with cancer, which is a developing field of medicine.  I.e., you get some disease that's not big deal when young, and then you get cancer when older.  You don't want cancer.

A fellow I know who suffered a heart attack, and who was otherwise very healthy, may have developed his heart condition this way as well.

Get vaccinated.

March 10, 2026

The worst cabinet in American history

And it's not even close.

March 15, 2026

The Trump Interregnum is threatening to pull broadcasting licenses of those who do not give a happy spin to the war against Iran.

March 21, 2026

Waging a war against American airports must be easier than waging a war against a real country that fights back:


March 27, 2026.

In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, President Donald J. Trump’s signature alongside @SecScottBessent's will soon appear on U.S. currency, marking a first in history, and symbolizes @POTUS ' leadership and dedication to our great nation will carry a lasting impact

U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach.

And hence, the era of defacement of U.S. currency began.

Seriously, my prediction will be for those dealing in cash, the number of "F***" next to Donny's signature, or replicas of his public Epstein birthday card's, or any number of defacements, will be epic.

The sycophantic sucking up this this demented twit is beyond all understanding.  When this is all over, and it will be soon, Bessant ought to spend every day for the rest of his life apologizing.

Footnotes:

1. The Oprah Effect is so named here to explain the phenomenon of Oprah Winfrey putting some flaming bogosity on to her popular daytime television show and thereby having millions of people give it credence.  There are a fair number of examples, including the rise of Dr. Oz.

Related Threads

Doug Wilson, the Calvinist preacher who appeared in Pete Hegseth's weekly Pentagon prayer meeting, says that in his preferred Christian nation, anything that Protestants consider to be a "public displays of idolatry" would be banned, including Catholic parades.

Last edition:

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 2. The War is a Racket edition.

Monday, March 23, 2026

Saturday, March 23, 1946. Marilyn Monroe and the Wedding Industrial Complex. Truman warns Stalin, and holds up testing the bomb. No public necking in Japan.

A really interesting Richard C. Miller photograph of Marilyn Monroe was taken, which we learned of due to Reddit's 80 Years Ago Sub, and which we repost here via fair use.



Miller had "discovered" Monroe, who was already modeling following her photo spread in World War Two's Yank.  Miller, typical for the era, photographed her in swimsuits, including bikinis (very modest ones by today's standards), but also  had a an entire series of other topics, including the subject shooting firearms.  Here he depicted her in a wedding dress.

The real life model had already been married and divorced by this time, having married at age 16 and then filing for divorce while her husband was deployed in the Navy during the Second World War.  This photograph is actually commonly claimed to be a wedding photo from her first marriage, which it is not, although the veil is remarkably similar to the one she actually wore in her wedding.


Actual photograph of Monroe at her first wedding, when she was 16 years old.

In the studio photograph she's holding some sort of book with a Christian cross on it, with that style of cross depiction very common for the era.  This is what causes us to note this photograph in a way, as it brings up the topic addressed here:

The Wedding Industrial Complex

Notes from the Spesia Underground


A really interesting episode.

This really fascinating look at modern weddings brings up a whole host of things we routinely discuss here, including agrarianism and subsidiarity.  The episode from Catholic Stuff You Should Know points out the extent that weddings were, at at the time the photo of Norma Jean was taken above still remained, community affairs and not big bride focused shows.

We've lost a lot here.

And we really need to recapture it.

While indelicate, this also shows the portrayal of a really beautiful woman before Playboy perverted all of that.

Monroe was, as is well known, Playboy's first, and unwilling, centerfold.  But what's interesting here is that prior to Playboy arriving on the scene, this was not an uncommon depiction of a really beautiful woman.  There were, of course, already some women who were focused on for being really busty, Jane Russell giving an example, but the theme did not absolutely dominate.  To look at the 19 year old Monroe here, you would not have thought of her in that fashion.  A decade later, you would, and even after Life intervened to push her nude photograph first as an art item.  We've dealt with that before here as well, although frankly we need to modify our entry.  That post is here:

Appearance. Shape and being in shape and women (men will come next).

Also posted via fair use, Colliers had an article on keeping everyone employed year around, showing how times were in fact changing.

We've looked at that here too.

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

Truman presented an ultimatum to Stalin demanding the Soviets comply with the agreement to pull their troops from Iran.

The Rocky Mountain News was a morning paper, so they didn't catch that, but they did catch something else that Truman had ordered the day prior.



The Army issued an order prohibiting soldiers from engaging in public displays of affection with Japanese women.


Out Our Way's gag was based on cleaning out the ash bin of a stove, something that's likely completely lost on modern readers.


Argentina extended its claims over Antarctica.

Mad King Donny must not be aware of this or we'd be staking a claim.

Indonesia Tentara Republik Indonesia (Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia) evacuated Indonesian citizens from the city of Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, after which the area was burned to avoid its use by the Dutch.

Commemorated as the Bandung Sea of Fire and a great patriotic act, poor people really don't have much of a say in things like this.

Last edition:

Friday, March 22, 1946. First U.S. rocket to escape the atmosphere.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Was it a honeytrap?

Never get into an elevator with a Polish blonde”

David M. Evans, Consular/Economic Officer, Warsaw, 1964-1967

Cold War era Greek poster warning Greek officers not to yield to oddly friendly women.

The British newspaper The Guardian seems to think so, but The Guardian tends towards the salacious.

It would explain, however, a lot.

We speak, of course, of Epstein Island and the ongoing cover-up of what occurred there.

Yes, cover-up.  The U.S. government is covering it up.

A honey trap is an age old espionage technique.  A country sends somebody, make or female, to have compromising sex with the target.  Once he's compromised, he, and it's almost always a he, is really compromised.  Sexual sins can be amongst the very worse, even in this libertine age.

The Soviet Union was a master at the honey trap. Max Hastings, in his book on World War Two espionage, details this quite a bit and well known examples abound.  While not often put this way, Soviet recruiting in pre World War Two and early Cold War Britain was based on honey traps, with the added element that they wer\e homosexual honey traps.  Homosexuality was illegal in the UK at the time as well as devastating to a person's reputation, but surprisingly common in the "public school" system.  The Soviets learned who would be well placed at some point to be a spy, and provided the sexual target to bring the person in.

The more common female honey trap is of course well known, and was also well deployed by the Soviets, as well as other nations.

Maria Butina is a recently example who buddied up to the Trump administration and the National Rifle Association to gather intelligence from Conservative power brokers, although there's no accusation that she employed sex in her efforts.

Fang Fang, as Christine Fang had sex with two US mayors and targeted Democratic politicians in what US officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China.

Why wouldn't the Russians use it?

What we know about Epstein Island at least gives us every reason to question whether or not it was a honey trap.  The number of very wealthy and connected men that went through it, from all over the globe, made it somewhat unique, although the wealthy and powerful travel in certain circles and there are likely other places that meet this criteria.  What those other places probably didn't have, however, was mid to late teenage girls who were on the dinner menu.

There's utterly no way that the Russians did not know this.

We are told that just because men traveled to the island doesn't mean that they had sex with underage teenage girls.  Quite a few men whose names have been exposed denied every doing that, or denied every knowing that this was going on.  No doubt, that's true min many instances.  Mere wealth is enough to cause some of the wealthy to go to a place. The appearance of wealth attracts the wealthy like shit attracts flies, and I use that analogy intentionally.  But that doesn't mean ever single man who went there ended up in bed with a 15 year old.

Having said that, however, it's clear that girls about that age were there for the offering, and that's the next point.  A honeytrap isn't a rape of the target, it's an offering that tempts the target.  Some men might very well go through a place, particularly perhaps like Bill Clinton did with his wife, and never be tempted, maybe, or even know what's going on.  But to not have some clue strains credibility.  One thing that's showing up, and thank to the Guardian you can see them, is photos of the young girls.  Their faces are blacked out, and in some cases their boobs, but what's interesting is they are of a type.  They're thin girls and look like teens, not the heavy chested women of the Playboy magazine type.  They look, even in the redacted photographs, just like what they were, thing flat chested girls who should have been in high school.

They look like the girl that Donald Trump drew on Epstein's birth card.

And all the more appropriate for a honeytrap.

World War Two Navy era poster.  If the Honeytrap thesis is correct, it's not the girls who were actually the spies. They were only used to compromise the targets, if that happened.

If you are attracting the flies in this fashion, you have to have something to attract them to, and something that compromises them.  Back in the 1970s illicit sex alone would have done that, but in the 2000s?  Maybe not.  And on top of it the guests on Epstein Island were flying in and out, although some did that quite a bit.  Offer a super model up on the plate might not work for a variety of reasons, one being that the supermodel would probably say no.  You aren't going to get any Kate Uptons on Epstein Island.

But  you might very well get the desperate and confused.  Pretty girls on the economic and domestic edge, whose parents are desperate as well.  They'd make ideal entries on the sexual menu.  They are like the prostitute who is murdered to set up the Senator in The Godfather, Part II.  Girls with nothing who "never existed".

You only have to offer them up to the willing, have a camera around, and voila, the target is compromised.

Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre, need we say more.  Posted under fair use exception.

What we know for an absolute certainty is that there were a lot of rich and powerful men who went to Epstein Island.

We also know for sure that a selection of them screwed teenage girls there.

We know for certain that the first time that Epstein was arrested, he got a mysteriously sweetheart deal from a Federal Prosecutor.1  He was being protected.

He was being protected, because his clientele was being protected on some level.

We also know that people who claimed to be horrified about what was going on and to have cut off their connection with him, didn't when they claimed to.  Even while he was in prison he was receiving contacts from the rich and powerful.

We know that right now only a little over 50% of the materials the government has on him has been released and we are informed that the rest will not be.  We've learned of more of the names, but we haven't learned the names of the girls. Their anonymity isn't protection, it makes them a hostage.

We now that there's been a diehard effort to keep material from being revealed and that the names of the victimizers have not been fully revealed, or even really slightly revealed.

What we just don't know, is why.

What we also know is that early on Trump claimed to be for releasing the files.  He radically changed his view when he was in office, but we don't know why.  It could be that his name shows up more than he thought it would, even if so far nobody has come out and said this material shows he screwed teenage girls.2   Or it could be that there's something so compromising in these files that its hugely damaging to somebody he's protecting.

Without a full release of the files, we don't know what that is.  But it'd have to be pretty bad.  

Sex with underage males will still bring a figure down, we know this.  The story of Kevin Spacey proves that.  But what about teenage girls?  A lot of the men that are in Trump's circle already, including Trump himself, have lived a life of sexual license, would teenagers be the line they couldn't cross?

Well, maybe.  Coerced sex proved the downfall of Harvey Weinstein.  Drugged sex brought down Bill Cosby.  Maybe teenage sex is still a bridge too far. We can all hope so.  And frankly somebody who would stoop so low as to engage in this activity in this situation may have well brought additional perverted elements into this.

But what would espionage do?

First, is there any evidence of it at all.

It does turn out that there were girls from what had been the USSR who showed up on the island.  Model  Ruslana Korshunova went there at age 18, and then went out a balcony window three years later in what was ruled a suicide.  Model Anna Malova is known to have flown with Prince Andrew to the island, but at the time the now 52 year old woman would have been 25.  And there are other accusations, but they are pretty murky.

There's enough, however, that Poland is launching an investigation into connections between Epstein and Russian intelligence.

Would this mean that Trump was compromised?  No, not at all.  But it might very well mean that somebody in his orbit was, and he's protecting him, or them.  There's precedent for that.

It's pretty clear that Truman attempted to bury information that the Roosevelt Administration had been compromised by Soviet spies, and frankly, the Democratic Party of the late 1940s and 1950s pretty much succeeded at that effort. The Roosevelt Administration was definitely compromised, but the effort to squash the efforts to reveal that were so successful that they destroyed the reputation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and have caused there to be a common belief that all of his acquisitions were baloney.  They weren't.  They were pretty much dead on.

And this would somewhat explain Trump being extraordinarily careful with Putin.  He's not always in Putin's camp, but he often is.  It's been hard to grasp, although there are other explanations for it.  Keeping a lid on whatever is in the Epstein files might be good for Trump. . . and Putin, and really bad for both of them if it turns out that the US, and perhaps other Western, governments were, and maybe are, heavily penetrated by Russian intelligence.


And, as a final wild note, for years now people have claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered.  The accusations frankly are not credible, but if you are going to entertain them, why isn't a Russian connection a possibility?  MAGAs have claimed that the Clinton's had him murdered, which is absolutely absurd. Frankly, it's make more sense for the Republicans to have him murdered, which would also be absurd, but make a little more sense.

If anyone was going to murder him, the Russians make the most sense.

Now, I don't think that occurred.

But I don't think Harry Dexter White was murdered either.  Just compromised.

A Russian honeytrap?

We really don't know, but it is an interesting possibility.

Footnotes.

1.  Chris Christie spoke about this on the last This Week, noting he was a U.S. prosecutor at the time and that all the U.S. Attorneys wondered what on earth was going on.  His comment was "now we know".  He didn't say, exactly, what we know, but what he meant was that we know that something was going on inside the Administration at that time that secured Epstein a deal where he was allowed to go home every day and just slept in the prison.

2.  It's not true that he hasn't been accused of that.  He has been, but so far law enforcement has not found those accusations credible, and they're never going to find them to be credible during the current administration, no matter what the situation regarding them may be.

Thursday, November 13, 2025

Blog Mirror: You Can’t “Protect Children” While Defending a Predator. And, also, What's in those files?

We of course also wrote on this just yesterday.
Lex Anteinternet: The dog that hasn't barked.:   By the way, by odd coincidence, they've given Ghislaine Maxwell a therapy dog. None of this will matter.  People will say this doesn...

What is going on here?  Something sure is.  Trump's called out all the stops, even bringing in Lauren Boebert to the Situation Room to pressure her.  Beobert, who is somebody in the MAGA camp, is apparently refusing to go along with Trump.

That in and of itself is remarkable.

What we know is that up to 1,000 girls were raped in association with Epstein.  We don't know all of the details of that by any means.  Some of the rapes were pressured "statutory rapes", but others may have been physically violent rapes of female minors, based on what little we know.  In either instance, the entire thing is horrific.

Was Trump a rapist?  So far we have no reason to believe that, other than the "where there's smoke there's fire".  Trump has, a long history of hanging out with those who have an interest in screwing teenagers and who have carried out their interest.  Epstein wasn't the first in that category.  The first that we know of, and probably the first significant person, was John Casablancas, who owned a modeling agency. Frankly, modeling agencies tend towards being morally dubious in some instances, but Casablancas was personally so.  He divorced his first wife due to an affair with model Stephanie Seymour whom he began seeing when she was 14 years old. At age 50 he married 17 year old Aline Mendonça de Carvalho Wermelinger.

Casablancas  represented Ivanka Trump when she became a fashion model at age 15.1 

It's worth remembering here that Trump is nearly 80 years old.  He was born in 1946, which means he turned 20, as a rich man, in 1966, and 30, in 1976.  Trump, therefore, had wealth right in the era in which American sexual morals really began to plummet and he was in his 70s when the clubbing scenes in New York was in full swing.2  People complain about the US being a moral sewer now, but that's because their memories are bad.  The 70s were really a decade of rank libertinism.3 

They were also one which winked at Hebephilia and Ephebophilia, or rather, more accurately accepted the gross sexualization of early teenage girls  and men preying on them, with that getting advanced at first by Playboy which really flirted with the lines of illegality with its centerfolds.4   Advertising in the era really dipped down into the younger years, for girls, in a way that you couldn't and wouldn't now, for instance:


How old do we think that girl is?  Not old.

Brooke Shields as a young woman was shown only in her "Calvin Klein's" and portrayed a 12 or 13 year old prostitute in the 1976 film Pretty Baby (which she now detests) and a castaway in Blue Lagoon who grows into, I guess, a teenage common law marriage portrayed as the natural ideal.  Shields regards herself as having been exploited, which she truly was.  Only slightly older, 1968's Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirelli featured Olivia Hussey' topless visage, albeit briefly, in a quite sexualized portrayal of the Juliet character. She was 14 years old and later sued.5

In spite of the horrors of such things as transgenderism, the re-creation of the lower class Victorian "common law" marriage arrangement in a new form in the American lower middle class, and the overall breakdown in sexual standards in the Western world, the outright aggressive exploitation of women sexually has really retreated.  Retreating with it was a fairly open acceptance of what we'd now call "date rape".  The concept that pressuring women into sex by way of position and power constituted rape flat out didn't exist.  Even as a teenager myself in the 1970s, I can recall that jokes based on "get 'er drunk" were really common with the suggestion that happened relatively commonly, and that it wasn't regarded as rape.  For that matter, as early as the early 1980s, I can recall instances of men in certain positions being caught in sexual relationships with underaged teens and simply losing their positions, quietly, over it.6 

The point of all of this is that maybe a person could party down with John Casablancas while being a self admitted libertine and avoid picking the teenage fruit that others were picking, but most people who would find that morally reprehensible, which would be most people, would avoid hanging out with such people pretty quickly.  For one thing, the behavior is gross and disgusting. For another, hanging out with kiddy diddlers would cause a person to run the risk of being regarded as a diddler.

Be that as it may, Trump went from Casablancas on to Jeffrey Epstein, whom he started hanging out with in the 1990s, some twenty, more or less, years after Casablancas. Epstein shows up in a Mar A Lago party's video footage in 1992. That party featured NFL cheerleaders. Trump flew on Epstein's private jet at least seven times in the 1990s.  In 1997 Trump and Epstein were photographed together at a Victoria's Secret "Angels" party in New York.  In 2002 Trump made his now infamous comment that Epstein was a "terrific guy" they shared interest in "beautiful women".  Trump noted that Epstein's interests were in women on the "younger" side.  In 2003 Trump drew a nude figure, with oddly small breasts, in a birthday card for Epstein, with a really enigmatic comment, and signed his name as, basically, pubic hairs.7

Now we know that Epstein had commented that Trump knew about the "girls" and that Epstein claimed, in a private email, that Trump knew this due to Virginia Giuffre, the teenager who would be supplied to Prince Andrew.. Giuffre's father worked as a maintenance manager at the Mar-a-Lago property and helped Giuffre obtain a job there.  Maxwell recruited her to Epstein from Mar A Lago.

None of this proves in any fashion that Trump was diddling.  Indeed, Giuffre states that Trump never touched her.  Other women who were associated with Epstein have claimed that, but all of those claims have remained basically on the fringes of this story.  So all that can really be said is that Trump has lead a life of moral dissolution with adult women, and he's hung around with men who had an extremely creepy attraction to girls in their teens, but there's no evidence that Trump personally crossed that line.

But there sure is a lot of evidence that he doesn't want the Epstein files released.

Indeed, he's downright desperate about it.

Why?

Earlier on Trump indicated he wanted the files released.  Releasing the files became sort of a MAGA crusade, with MAGA's convinced that they'd provide damaging information on Bill (and maybe Hillary) Clinton.  Indeed, as recently as a couple of months ago a MAGA I know maintained that the files were being kept secret due to what they'd show about Clinton, and maybe Obama (who is in no way implicated in any of this), thereby making the bizarre assertion that the Republicans are keeping material secret to protect a former Democratic President they detest.

Eh?

Given Trump's change in tune, what probably is in there is one of two things.  One, the most likely, is that it's been pointed out that some rich and powerful person in the Trump circle is implicated, and badly.  Trump may be protecting that person or persons, and if he is, there's some connection either with Trump or the GOP that must really be needed for protection.

The other possibility is that he knows, which he didn't before, that he's implicated as somebody who really knew something grotesque.  Epstein himself, in his emails, noted that he apparently told Ghislaine to knock something off, and Trump has maintained that had to do with raiding staff from Mar A Lago.  But what if what he knew is something worse, that women were being recruited to be sex slaves, which is basically what these poor girls were.

Whatever it is, we don't know.

The files are going to be released, which brings up these two things.

Trumps willingness to act illegally is now so pronounced that there has to be a strong suspicion that the files are being scrubbed.  When they are released, and they will be, there's a good chance that some of the contents will be gone.  This did occur to some extent with the files on the Kennedy Assassination, although I personally don't believe in the various conspiracy theories in that area, so it can definitely be accomplished.

For that reason, and for others, I also feel that the files should be released as is, complete with names of the victims.  I know that's not the norm, and why, but the whole truth here is never going to come out if we don't know who was subject to this barbarity.  And, ironically, in this instance releasing the names protects them.  As noted earlier, Trump was sued by an anonymous woman who withdrew her suit after being subject to much pressure.  There may perhaps be nothing to those claims, but the fact is, at this point, that we're dealing with men who are enormously wealthy and powerful, and have the means to threaten their victims as long as their identities remain unknown.

Footnotes:

1.  On this, Trump has famously remarked about going back stage in, I believe, Miss World, competitions, or some such competitions, while the competitors were topless. These young women would, however, be of age.  This is still pretty creepy.

2.  The New York club scene was famously a cesspool, and heavily associated with drugs.  There is, however, no reason to believe that Trump has ever taken illegal drugs.  Indeed, due to the exposure to alcoholism provided by his brother, Trump does not drink.

3.  As a minor note, the culture of the times reflected back in the form of music.

Rock music has been regarded, probably pretty inaccurately, as sort of countercultural.  More accurately, when it was really popular, it reflected the cultural influence of people ranging from their teens into their thirties.  Real rock music is pretty much dead now.

The 1970s and early 1980s saw a fair amount of rock music that outright endorsed ephebophilia and hebephilia.  Ted Nugent's 1981 Jailbait outright did, with the female subject (victim) declared to be 13 years old. Kiss' 1977 subject was a bit older in Christine Sixteen. The Police hit the subject with Don’t Stand So Close to Me in 1980which involves a teacher being attracted to a female student. That song is particularly creepy given its reference to Lolita and due to the fact that one of the members of The Police had been a teacher who admitted to having been attracted to female students, but not having acted upon it.

ABBA, which is regarded as sort of a bubblegum rock band, touched on the topic in 1979's Does Your Mother Know?, with the protagonist outright expressing torture over the advances of an underaged girl.  The Knack's 1979 song Good Girls Don't at least kept the behavior down at mutual teenage level.  Aerosmith broke into popularity with 1975's Walk This Way which is a tour de force of sexual double entendres all celebrating teenage sex. The story was flipped in Rod Stewart's 1971 Maggie May in which a teenage male regrets being seduced out of school by an older woman. 

So that's a bunch of song, but were they that popular?  Some really were, at least by my memory.  I don't recall Nugent's song at all, but the only song of Nugent's I recall being popular wsa Cat Scratch Fever, which is about prostitutes.  And Kiss was regarded, where I lived, as sort of juvenile joke more popular with junior high kids than us mature high schoolers, so I don't remember their song either.

The Police's Don't Stand So Close To Me, however, was hugely popular, although not with me, mostly because I can't stand that band.  ABBA's Does Your Mother Know? was also big.  Walk This Way was so big that even though it had been released in 1975, it was still really popular in the early 80s, which at the time was amazing as songs aged quickly.  Maggie May shares that status as it was popular over a decade after its original release.  Good Girls Don't didn't age well at all, in contrast, but it was huge in 1979.

Almost all of these songs, or maybe all of them, are outright reprehensible, which is the point.  Amazingly, they were heard all the time in the 70s and 80s, and nobody really said anything about it. The only time I recall anyone condemning the lyrics of a song was in 1977 when a Parish Priest lambasted Only The Good Die Young by Billy Joel from the pulpit.  I don't know where he'd learned of the song, but the Church was associated with the school, which went up to 9th Grade, and I now wonder if it was there.  I was in junior high myself at the time and I had no idea what he was talking about.  My father didn't either, and asked me about the song after Mass.  It'd be years before I heard it, and like every Billy Joel song, I was underwhelmed.

4. We've touched on this before, but Playboy got in trouble in Europe as it was viewed as encouraging ephebophilia and hebephilia, and moreover being in that category while barely disguised as not being.  It actually changed some of its content, notably its cartoons, as a result.  Nonetheless, some Playboy models, such as Frances Camuglia were barely legal teens when photographed, and in fact a few were younger than 18 years old.  One model's photographs went to press when she was still 17, with it apparently being the case that Playboy was unaware of her actual age, while it still played up that she was just out of high school.  Another was outright known to be 17 when she was photographed with the magazine holding her photos until she turned 18.

5.  All the then teenage actors in these films later maintained, probably correctly, that they suffered lifelong emotional trauma for having been in these films.  Shields has been particularly critical of her mother for pushing her into them.

6.  More specifically, I can recall three high school teachers in this category.  Neither was arrested, they were simply let go.  Another was a National Guard officer who was a local businessman.  He was quickly discharged from the National Guard and there was as criminal proceeding, but the charge never hit the news and the resulting sentence was minor.

7.  Trump has denied this, of course, but there seems to be no doubt.  Assuming that it is Trump's, it's impossible not to conclude that he at least knew of Epstein's unrestrained lustful conduct.  There was at least one other drawing, by somebody else, that alluded to the same thing.  The thing here is that Epstein was strongly attracted to teenage girls, and if you know that the guy is strongly attracted to females sexually, and his targets are. . . well.

Postscript:

I thought about predicting this, but thought it too icky.

The last few days, as this has been breaking, I thought that, at some point, MAGA commentors would come out and basically start excusing ephebophilia.  I should answer the question, first, on "what's that" although its been explained here before.  According to Wikipedia:

Ephebophilia is the primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19 and showing Tanner stages 4 to 5 of physical development.

And now its happened.

Megyn Kelly "There's a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old…”

Well, yeah, there is, in more ways than one.  A 5 year old is particularly gross as a victim and technically that's pedophilia.  But ephebophilia is pretty darned disgusting as well, and rape in that context, which much or all of this would be by modern definitions is horrific.  Moreover, according to some of the testimony, some of these girls were 14, or even 13, which is hebephilia and creeping right up n the edge of pedophelia.

And it's being excuse.  That's what I thought would start to happen.

So, what we're starting to see, so that it's clear, is "yeah. . well, sure, they were jumping little teenage girls, but that's okay. . "

It's not okay.

And not only is it not okay, these people are starting to make the excuses now, without anything actually saying that Trump did that.  We know of course that somebody was. . . but we don't know who.

What a moral sewer.

Related threads:

The dog that hasn't barked.


The Epstein Files. What's in them that Trump wants to keep them hidden?*