1/10/2024

'fargo' dot escapes

debate

 


that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Debate" went up a little while ago.


last week, stan ('FARGO -- Gator goes looking and two killings') and  i (''fargo' - dot tells her story') covered episode 8 of 'fargo.'  last night, 'fx' aired episode 9.  stan's grabbing roy and i'm grabbing dot.

so dot is still locked up and still trying to escape.  she uses the bed frame to try to reach a screw in the ceiling rafter that she wants to use to try to get loose.  the bed frame falls.  she's mad.  and notices the floor is now damaged.  she bangs on the floor with her feet. as she's doing that, roy's walking outside.  he pulls 1 of his gang over and tells him that they need to kill dorothy.

she's managed to knock down far enough that there's a space she can crawl down through the floor.  she does that with the bed over.  the henchman comes in and thinks she's escaped.

under the floor, she gets a nail and unlocks the handcuffs.

she then makes it to the house where she grabs a cell phone and calls her husband wayne and daughter sunny.  they have questions but she can't answer because kaern (roy's current wife) comes in and points a rifle at dot to force her to hang up.  karen hates dot and rages and rages.  dot points out the black eye and asks what happened - was she not sufficiently praising roy's ego? - and says that she can free karen and karen's daughters from the abuse.  karen's not having it.  so dot knocks her out, takes the rifle and heads downstairs.  in the kitchen, she turns all four burners on the gas stove on.  then she sneaks out of the house.

lorraine tells indira that they've got to take out roy.  she snaps at one of her attorneys to call the orange man (trump) because after all the money she poured into his campaign, he better send in the feds and the military - send them to roy's ranch.  indira has already explained it's where lorraine's trusted attorney (david foley) last was - she knows where his cell phone last pinged.

at the ranch, sadly, when roy comes back in, he smells the gas and yells at the his crew that dot's been in there and to go search for her.


dot hides by the windmill in the covered hole that they tossed.  she uses karen's cellphone to call lorraine's house.  she asks lorraine to tell her daughter and wayne that - lorraine's not having it.  she tells her 'daughter' (she uses that term for dot - dot's her daughter-in-law that she's hated for years until now) that she's going to be fine and put on her big girl pants.  dot says she'll go in fighting and indira puts the call on speaker and tells her no.  she says hide and that highway patrol witt farr will be searching for her.  indira calls will and texts dot's cell phone number to help him find her.

roy and his henchmen are searching for her.  he goes to the dug out and he was wrong.  but suddenly, someone's moving the cover over the hole by the windmill.  roy's crew.  3 of them.  as dot watches them, they are all shot dead.

it's munch.  dot thinks she's about to be killed.  instead he reaches down with his hand and helps her out and then tells her she's a freed tiger.

this was episode nine. so next tuesday will be the tenth and final episode.


c.i, in the snapshot this morning, rightly called out some entertainment goons for a hideous letter.  1 of those goons was michael rapaport.  he's also in the news for this:


Michael Rapaport excoriated Hollywood for what he perceived to be total silence on the hostages being held by Hamas at the Golden Globes on Sunday.

The actor, who has been vocal in raising awareness about the hostages who were taken during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, took to social media on Tuesday, posting a video slamming the Globes attendees for not talking about the issue. "I'm embarrassed that not one person said one thing, unless I'm mistaken at the Golden Globes the other night, about the 133 hostages that were kidnapped in broad daylight from Israel on October 7th," said Rapaport.

"All that billion-dollar Barbie feminism and all these young conscious actors and actresses and there's [the] hostages that are the exact same age as them. And not one actor, not one director, not one producer, not one comedian. Nobody said anything before the Golden Globes, after the Golden Globes [or] during the Golden Globes," he added.


michael's interested in feminism, is he?  after beating up lili taylor, he's a feminist?  

reality, no one said 1 word about the children of gaza.  

i would've liked them recognized - the real victims - but they weren't.  

and i didn't trash the awards because of it (though 'wsws' did).  i was actually relieved to get through a ceremony that focused on the arts.  and, apparently, i'm not the only 1.  the globes got their best audience in years and there was no drop-off as the awards continued.

i find it so telling that a man who is known for beating women wants to ignore the murdering of children.


let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Wednesday, Janaury 10, 2023.  Journalists and children are killed in the slaughter on Gaza but so many Hollywood celebrities remain silent while writing a letter that's laughable, Crooked Clarence Thomas can't sit in judgment of his wife's activities and must recues himself, and much more.


At THE GUARDIAN, Chris McGreal writes of the many journalists that have been killed in the months long slaughter of Gaza and notes:

Even reporting from Gaza during the second intifada 20 years ago, when the Israeli military regularly invaded, bombed and flattened Palestinian neighbourhoods, did not feel especially unsafe compared with other regions. Not that the Israeli army was above killing people it knew to be journalists.

In 2003, an Israeli soldier shot dead the British documentary cameraman James Miller in Gaza. An inquest in the UK returned a verdict of unlawful killing. Israel declined to prosecute the soldier responsible but it did pay £1.5m in compensation, which Miller’s family said was “probably the closest we’ll get to an admission of guilt on the part of the Israelis”.

Miller’s killing looked to be part of a pattern of ill-disciplined Israeli soldiers shooting whoever they felt like – not only journalists but UN officials and aid workers as well as Palestinian children. The army was usually quick to try to cover up the killings but it did not appear they were coordinated.

Gaza looks very different today. As the CPJ and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders say, the scale and nature of the deaths of journalists and their families suggests there is more going on than a few ill-disciplined soldiers taking pot shots at reporters, even taking into account the deaths of thousands of other Palestinians, including more than 8,000 children.

Certainly the message from some Israeli leaders is that journalists are fair game. Israeli politicians were quick to call for the “elimination” of a number of Palestinian journalists working for foreign news organisations who were falsely accused by a pro-Israel pressure group in the US of being “embedded with Hamas” on 7 October. Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, said they should be hunted down as terrorists, reflecting a widely held suspicion among Israeli officials that Palestinian journalists are an appendage of Hamas.

Miller’s family got a payout because he was British. Dead western journalists create more waves, which is presumably one of the reasons Israel has locked the foreign press out of Gaza during the present war. International news organisations now rely on those same Palestinian reporters targeted by Israel. They provide many of the pictures the rest of the world sees of the horror in Gaza.


And when not killed, tortured?  ALJAZEERA reports:

Journalist Diaa al-Kahlout, who was detained by Israeli authorities along with dozens of other Palestinian men in northern Gaza on December 7, has described painful details of his 25 days in Israeli custody.

“There are no red lines for the Israeli army in dealing with detainees from Gaza,” al-Kahlout, who was released earlier this week, told Al Jazeera. “We were sitting in a situation of torture”.

Al-Kahlout, a Gaza-based correspondent for news outlet Al Araby Al Jadeed, said Israel’s Shin Bet security service interrogated him about his reporting and journalistic sources while in custody.

During this time, he also saw prisoners being “beaten and humiliated”, facing conditions that amounted to “torture”, he said.



I guess the question is about the silence -- the silence of Julianna Margulies, Mayim Bialik, David Schwimmer and all the other hate mongers who refuse to call out these attacks on journalists.  Is it because they're filthy liars.  I read their whiny little letter and thought, "Al Jolson was in Blackface.  He was in Blackface."  Yet what they're whining about in the letter is that he played a character who is first  generation born in the US and is moving away from the traditions of his immigrant parents  -- demographically speaking, studies show this but I guess sociology and demographics weren't courses you studied.  


But you ignore that reality and instead try to turn a highly offensive film -- due to Blackface -- into something else completely.  

Have you no shame?

 We're not linking to the piece of garbage letter that they signed but we will not how racist the ones signing that letter are.

And, yes, they don't speak out for the journalists being killed.  They don't speak out for the children but they scream and rage about the silence on the still unproven rapes of October 7th.  Talk about victim mentality.  This is the salt0in-the-wound they need to rub in order to justify the killing of all the children, it's what they have to do because they know deep in side that there is no excuse or justification for what the Israeli government is doing.


Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns in the strongest possible terms the 8 January strike on an MSF shelter in Gaza, Palestine, which led to the death of the five-year-old daughter of an MSF staff member.

Yesterday morning, a shell, resembling that from a tank, broke through the wall of the building where over 100 MSF staff and their family members were seeking shelter in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip. The five-year-old girl was critically injured by the strike and underwent surgery at the Gaza European Hospital. However, she later died of her injuries on 9 January. Three other people were slightly injured in the strike.

“We are outraged and deeply saddened by the death of yet another family member of our MSF staff,” says Thomas Lauvin, MSF project coordinator in Gaza. “This strike on civilians is unacceptable and, once again, goes to show that it doesn’t matter where you are in Gaza, nowhere is safe.”

“The shell did not detonate on impact, otherwise many more of our staff and their families would have most likely been killed,” Lauvin added.

Prior to the incident, MSF notified Israeli forces that the shelter near Gaza European Hospital was housing MSF staff and their families. Furthermore, no evacuation orders were issued before the strike. While MSF is not able to confirm the origin of the shell, it appears to be similar to those used by Israeli tanks. MSF has contacted Israeli authorities and is seeking further explanation.

Four MSF staff have been killed since the beginning of the war, in addition to numerous family members.

We reiterate our call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire in Gaza. Indiscriminate violence against civilians must end now.



Security camera video from a West Bank village shows a young man standing in a central square when he is suddenly shot and drops to the ground. Two others rushing to his aid are also hit, leaving a 17-year-old dead, moments before Israeli military jeeps roll in.

An Associated Press review of the video and interviews with the two wounded survivors showed Israeli soldiers opened fire on the three when they did not appear to pose a threat. 

One of the wounded Palestinians was shot a second time after he got up and tried to hop away.


Yesterday, Amy Goodman (DEMOCRACY NOW!) noted, "Israel has also carried out a number of military raids in the occupied West Bank. On Monday, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinian men in the city of Tulkarem. Video has emerged showing an Israeli military vehicle running over one of the men who had been shot. More than 340 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7."  Last night, Rebecca noted THE WASHINGTON POST reporting:


The threats were sent via Facebook on Oct. 9 to residents of Qusra, a Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank: “To all the rats in the sewers of Qusra village we are waiting for you and we will have no mercy. The day of revenge is coming.”

Two days later, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, a group of masked and armed Israeli settlers struck the village in what would be the deadliest attack by settlers in the West Bank since the Israel-Gaza war began three months ago.

A Washington Post review of exclusive visuals of the attack, medical records and interviews with witnesses and first responders reveals that one of the Palestinians killed, 17-year-old Obada Saed Abu Srour, was shot in the back by settlers, probably as he was running from gunfire.

Israeli troops, meanwhile, did not forcefully intervene, despite their obligation under international and Israeli law to protect all residents of the West Bank, including Palestinians. Soldiers and police were photographed at the scene of the deaths only after the attack ended, even though troops stationed at nearby military outposts were within earshot of the gunfire and had views of an earlier attack by settlers, the visual evidence shows.

 

It's outrageous and the world sees it and knows it's outrageous.  Julia Conley (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

After arriving at the United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, ostensibly for a scheduled tour, three dozen rabbis and rabbinical students made their way into the U.N. Security Council's chamber to stage the latest high-profile demonstration demanding the United States end its opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza.

The rabbis—whose action was organized by Rabbis for Cease-fire, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, and IfNotNow—displayed banners with messages for U.S. President Joe Biden: "Biden: The World Says Cease-Fire," and "Biden: Stop Vetoing Peace."

The protest came weeks after the U.S. alone vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for Israel to end its bombardment of Gaza, which has killed at least 23,210 people, injured more than 59,100, and left thousands more missing and feared dead under rubble, as the population of the enclave faces starvation and disease stemming from Israel's blockade.

"[President Joe] Biden and the U.S. must stop vetoing peace and end Israel's bombing and starvation of Gaza," said IfNotNow.


Gaza remains under assault.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is now well over  20,000. NBC NEWS notes, "The vast majority of its 2.2 million people are displaced, and an estimated half face starvation amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis."    THE GUARDIAN notes, "A total of 23,210 Palestinians have been killed and 59,167 have been wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday."  In addition to the dead and the injured, there are the missing.  AP notes, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  And the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."  Max Butterworth (NBC NEWS) adds, "Satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies on Sunday reveal three of the main hospitals in Gaza from above, surrounded by the rubble of destroyed buildings after weeks of intense bombing in the region by Israeli forces."


US President Joe Biden is facing mounting criticism for his participation in the slaughter and refusal to demand a cease-fire.  From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!




AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to South Carolina, where President Biden delivered his second campaign speech of the year at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 2015 eight Black parishioners and their pastor were shot dead by a white supremacist. Biden remembered the victims.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: On June 17th, 2015, the beautiful souls, five survivors — and five survivors invited a stranger into this church to pray with them. The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate, of rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison, a poison that’s for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. Oh, it is. It’s a poison. Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America, not today, tomorrow or ever.

PROTESTERS: Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: That’s all right. That’s all right.

PROTESTERS: Ceasefire now!

AMY GOODMAN: As he spoke, Biden was disrupted by activists demanding a Gaza ceasefire.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Without light, there’s no path from this darkness.

PROTESTER: If you really care about the lives lost here, then you should honor the lives lost and call for a ceasefire in Palestine!

PROTESTERS: Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!

AMY GOODMAN: As the protesters were removed from the church, supporters of President Biden began chanting “four more years.” He addressed the protesters.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I understand their passion. And I’ve been quietly working — I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza. I’ve been using all that I can to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Without naming Donald Trump, Biden blasted the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate as a loser who tried to overthrow the 2020 election results by urging his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. A number carried Confederate flags and wore white supremacist and far-right symbols.

Following the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in 2015, following the mass funeral at the University of Charleston arena that thousands came out for, our next guest, Bree Newsome Bass, scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and removed the Confederate flag. As police officers shouted at her to come down, she shimmied to the top of the flagpole, took the flag in her hand and said, “You come against me with hatred. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.”

BREE NEWSOME BASS: You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today!

AMY GOODMAN: While Bree Newsome was arrested, along with an ally, it was only after this action that the Confederate flag was formally removed from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina at the time. She has faced fresh backlash after she didn’t mention slavery when asked about the cause of the U.S. Civil War during a recent town hall in New Hampshire.

Well, for more, we’re joined in Raleigh, North Carolina, by Bree Newsome Bass, artist, antiracist activist.

Bree, welcome back to Democracy Now! This certainly does take us back. As people debate whether it was Nikki Haley who ultimately forced the flag to come down, we’re going to the woman who actually took it down and risked your freedom to do it. Talk about why you did that then — ultimately, the Legislature would vote to take it down — and how you feel about what’s happening today.

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yes. And thank you again so much for having me on.

You know, and I want to make it clear: Yes, I did scale the pole and take the Confederate flag down; this was an issue that people had been protesting for years and years and years. And that’s part of what made it so egregious in 2015, when we had the massacre at Emanuel AME and South Carolina refused to lower the flag, because part of the reason why they were refusing to lower the flag is that they had passed a law in the year 2000 saying that it couldn’t be lowered for any reason, after they moved it from the Capitol dome to the flagpole on the lawn, where it was at the time that I took it down. So this had been going on for years and years and years.

And Nikki Haley actually opposed taking the flag down, right up until those massacres occurred and the mounting political protest and, you know, the pressure made it where she basically had to, at that point, support the flag coming down. So, ideologically, she has never really had the stance of being opposed to either the Confederacy or — excuse me — symbols of the Confederacy, and certainly not opposed to racist policies. She went right from the governorship to serving in the Trump administration. And she’s had a number of incidents over the years, where the things that she says or the things that she does directly contradict with her claim of having led the way on taking the Confederate flag down. At one of her recent rallies, she played that song “Find Out in a Small Town,” you know, the song that people really raised a lot of concern about because it was obviously alluding to sundown towns and the racial violence that Black people have experienced here for decades and decades and decades. So this is not new for Nikki Haley. It just shows that she does not really represent antiracism in any real way.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bree, I’d like to ask you — in response to President Biden’s speech, you posted on social media, quote, “How the Black church is used as a prop for white politicians actually proves the point that racism is alive & well & strong.” Could you expand on that?

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think that the whole way that the incidents in 2015, both the massacre at Emanuel AME, the refocus on the Confederate flag there in South Carolina, the formal ceremony around taking the flag down, and the way that American politics returns to those moments again and again and again speaks to how relevant it still is, the fact that Black churches are frequently used as, you know, political campaign stops for politicians.

In this case with Joe Biden, you know, he is clearly trying to make an appeal not just to Black voters, but really trying to fend off criticism that he is racist, that he is sponsoring a genocide. And that criticism is completely well founded, because he is sponsoring a genocide, and genocide is the most extreme form of racial violence that there is. And so, to use the pulpit at Emanuel AME in this manner, to make it a prop, essentially, for Joe Biden’s reelection bid, to me, is the greatest assault on truth. I know Joe Biden stood there in the pulpit and said that there is an assault on truth that’s happening right now. Joe Biden is, in many ways, leading that assault. And I know that he’s running against Donald Trump, who we know is also a serial liar, but Donald Trump is not the one who is currently in office right now. It is Joe Biden.

And this effort to use the church, not just the Black church, but the site of racial violence, of a mass murder, to deflect from the fact that Joe Biden himself is bombing churches, bombing mosques, bombing places of worship and murdering many civilians, people who have sought shelter in those places, it just exposes the complete hypocrisy of this entire situation and the vacuum of moral leadership at the top. And that’s why I took offense to it. I think that’s why many people who watched it took offense to it. I’m very glad that the young people stood up and protested, because even though they were few in that audience, they represented the majority of people worldwide.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting, Bree. The polls that have just come out today indicate that Nikki Haley is surging in the polls in New Hampshire. You referenced where she stood on the Confederate flag. I wanted to go back to 2014, when then-South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley suggested South Carolina had resolved its image problem and that having the Confederate flag at the Statehouse was fine because not a single CEO had complained. She was speaking at a gubernatorial debate.

GOV. NIKKI HALEY: You know, the Confederate flag is a very sensitive issue. And what I can tell you is, over the last three-and-a-half years I spend a lot of my days on the phones with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state. I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag. What is important here is that we look at the fact that, yes, perception of South Carolina matters. That’s why we have everybody answering the phones, “It’s a great day in South Carolina.” That’s why we’re being named the friendliest state, the most patriotic state, and getting all these great accolades. But we really kind of fixed all that when you elected the first Indian American female governor, when we appointed the first African American U.S. senator.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Nikki Haley back in 2014. Bree Newsome Bass, your final comment?

BREE NEWSOME BASS: I mean, I think that says it all, right? So, first of all, she’s saying that it’s OK, the optics are OK. Right? We’re not talking about the substance. We’re not talking about the experience. We’re not talking about whether people are actually experiencing equal treatment under the law. Just the optics. So the optics are fine, because it’s not disrupting business, right? And then the other thing that she offers as evidence that everything is OK is the fact that she’s nonwhite, she is an Indian American woman, and then she points to other people in the administration — excuse me — who are nonwhite.

Well, that’s the entire problem right there. The idea is that so long as we can keep business going as usual, it doesn’t matter that there’s violence, it doesn’t matter that there’s racism. All that matters is the optics. And that is what Nikki Haley’s campaign represents in her falsely claiming that she led the way on taking the Confederate flag down. That’s what Joe Biden’s campaign represents in terms of thinking that all that matters is giving a speech at a church, and ignoring all of the churches that are being blown up and all of the Palestinians that are being killed, ignored the fact that young people are demanding a future, and we have people who are older who don’t seem to care at all that this assault in Palestine is disproportionately affecting children or killing children.

And then, in the case of Nikki Haley, again, she does not truly represent any of the things that she is claiming when it comes to being antiracist. You can say whatever words you want to say, you can put together whatever kind of events you want to put together, but the fact is that the truth is going to be the truth. We see what is actually happening.

And I support all of the disruptions, because the last thing that we need is to carry on business as usual when our democracy is absolutely under attack. Democracy is under attack worldwide. And genocide is the most extreme — the most extreme form of racial violence that there is. So there’s no way that we are fighting white supremacy simply by taking down a flag or having an event at Emanuel AME in the midst of genocide, in the midst of doing away with affirmative action, voting rights, the attack on abortion rights. This is where we are at. It’s a very dangerous place. And I hope that people look beyond the optics and support those people who are disrupting, because the last thing that we need is to carry on with business as usual.

AMY GOODMAN: Bree Newsome Bass, artist, antiracist activist. In 2015, following the massacre of the eight African American parishioners and their pastor by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Bree scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and removed the Confederate flag.

Next up, we go to the growing support for reparations in America. Stay with us.



Joe's heckled as protests in the country continue.  JD Morris (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE) reports on another development:

San Francisco supervisors have joined the ranks of local legislative bodies calling for a sustained cease-fire in Gaza. 

The Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday in favor of a resolution spearheaded by Supervisor Dean Preston that urges the Biden Administration and Congress to support a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War, along with the delivery of humanitarian aid and the release of all hostages in the region. Supervisors passed the resolution in an 8-3 vote after Board President Aaron Peskin successfully overhauled the document’s language in an effort to gain wider support from his colleagues.

The resolution — which also condemns antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination — drew an outpouring of public feedback, including from hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who packed City Hall when it was introduced late last year. A similar scene played out Monday, when the board’s Rules Committee advanced the resolution and public comment lasted for several emotional hours. 



The resolution passed as amended with an 8-3 vote. In addition to calling for a cease-fire, the resolution also condemns anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks, as well as calls for humanitarian aid in the region and the release of hostages.

The amendment introduced by Board of Supervisor President Aaron Peskin calls for the Biden Administration to do the same. It further condemns Hamas's attack on Oct. 7 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response which has killed thousands.



 A few dozen protesters on Tuesday evening urged the St. Louis County Council to pass a resolution demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.

Local governments nationwide, including in St. Louis, have considered symbolic cease-fire resolutions calling for an end to Israeli assaults on the blockaded strip that have caused a humanitarian crisis. Resolutions have also supported Israel after the militant group Hamas killed about 1,200 and took more than 200 hostages in an attack launched on Oct. 7.

Haley Millner, a St. Louis County resident, said the Israeli bombardment of innocent civilians over the past four months amounts to genocide. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians and displaced almost 85% of its population of 2.3 million. A quarter face starvation.


We need to wind down but we've got one more topic.  The Sweetheart of The Federalist Society, professional nitwit and transphobe Jonathan Turley hissed at US House Rep Nancy Pelosi yesterday because someone took a dump in his littler box:


Hardly a profile of courage. As with President Biden, Pelosi refused to do as principled Democrats have done in denouncing this antidemocratic effort. When history called for people of good faith to stand up, some shrugged and walked away.


It's not Nancy's job to stand against the Constitution.  I get it, Jonathan's life now is just one long, never ending stagger down the Walk of Shame but the reality is Donald Trump broke his oath of office.

As we've noted, it is outlined in the Constitution -- a document he took an oath to uphold -- how the electoral college works.  The President of the United States is not a part of that system nor is he/she authorized to call states and create 'alternate' delegates.  That's cheating at a bare minimu.

Donald refused to keep his oath.  He broke it.  Disqualified from running right there.

That is a high crime and misdemeanor which goes completely against the Constitution and our democracy.


They should have impeached him on that.  They had enough proof of that even on January 6, 2021.

I had other things to focus on in real time and I don't do drama.

The crying was an embarrassment -- US House Reps and Senators crying about themselves and the violence that might have taken place against them.  I don't give a damn about that, sorry.  American children have that at their schools and Congress refuses to deal with it, so cry me a river.  They made it about themselves and that turns me off every time.

The issue was democracy.  The issue was a refusal to follow the rules.

Those were the issues.

Now I think there is more than enough evidence -- thanks mainly to the special prosecutors -- to make a case that Donald's guilty of insurrection.  

But what we do know is that he broke his oath to the Constitution.  Those actions were illegal.

And we need to be stressing that.

AOC wants Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself on the issue of Donald being on the ballot.


She's right.

But you've got the Jonathan Turleys who lie and manipulate.  

Jonathan Turley, is the electoral college process outlined in the Constitution?  Yes, it is.  Did Donald take an oath to uphold the Constitution -- the law of the land?  Yes, he did.

Did he break that oath and break the law?

Yes, he did.

Why does that matter?

Ginni Thomas supposedly knows the law.  She's married to Clarence.  He can't rule on this case.  He's got a vested interest in it.  He must recuse himself.

Again, I say Donald is guilty of insurrection and I'll also say that Ginni Thomas is as well.

However, for those who aren't there yet, Donald broke the law and Ginni helped him -- that's what they did when they broke the laws regarding the electoral college.  So, no, Clarence cannot rule on a case that involves his wife's own activities.  


 A group of 19 former Republican lawmakers are warning the Supreme Court in an open letter published in The Bulwark to end former President Donald Trump's "immunity" gambit immediately, or create a disaster for the rule of law.
Among the signatories were former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Steve Bartlett (R-TX), Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Charlie Dent (R-PA), David Jolly (R-FL), and Joe Walsh (R-IL).
"As former members of Congress, all of us Republicans, we dedicated ourselves to upholding this principle," they wrote. "And we are now deeply concerned that former President Donald Trump’s response to the ongoing criminal prosecutions against him are testing it — requiring the U.S. Supreme Court to act swiftly to meet the moment. In no case is this more true than in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In this case, the federal courts are confronted with Trump’s gambit to escape accountability altogether: assert an unprecedented claim of absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution and use the appellate process to delay the trial until after the November election."


He has to be held accountable.  If he's not, it says -- what Nixon argued -- that anything a sitting president does is legal just because they're a sitting president.  In addition, if he gets away with trying to overturn the election, that's telling the next person who loses that you don't have to step down and there's no punishment at all.


On a phone call last week, legal scholars convened a press conference to discuss the rocky road ahead and warn about the peril that could follow if higher courts grant Trump the sweeping immunity and unchecked power he craves. Speaking about the D.C. appellate court’s current consideration of Trump’s attempted power grab, attorney Norman L. Eisen put it in stark terms.

“It may be the single most important question confronting our democracy this year,” Eisen said. “There is no absolute immunity to prosecution!”

Eisen, a former Obama White House ethics czar who later helped the House Judiciary Committee build the case for Trump’s first impeachment, warned that appellate judges will essentially determine if an American president has king-like powers. He and others on the call said they expect the D.C. Court of Appeals to quickly reject Trump’s attempt to assert that a president has blanket immunity for whatever they do while in office, but they acknowledged that it will merely be a step on the way toward the showdown’s unavoidable conclusion at the Supreme Court—where three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump himself.




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