3/24/2018

scandal (tv and hillary)

terry e-mailed disbelief that after a 'winter break' of months, 'scandal' was not a new episode this week.

i agree, it's the final season, they should have gone straight though with no missing weeks after they finally returned from the winter break.

but it's also true that once shonda started f**king up 'scandal' two or three years ago by dropping storylines to suddenly grab some incident in the press and run with it - that's when march madness started kicking 'scandal' in the ass in ratings.

shonda better hope netflix stands by her.  she's burning her bridges so fast - trashing abc.  they can kill 'grey's anatomy' - if ellen pompei's greed doesn't kill it first.

moving on to the queen of greed, hillary clinton.  nick pemberton ('counterpunch') wades through her hideous book and notes:

I came to the next chapter: “A Day In The Life”. Get me out of here! Finally, the section on “Sisterhood”. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I miss Elitist Hillary! Everyday Hillary is way too folksy. There are three chapters devoted to “Sisterhood”. In Hillary’s world there are two sides: those who are with men and those who are with Her. Hillary, Establishment Democrats and even Establishment Republicans are on the side of women. Anyone outside of this establishment—whether they be Trump voters (in Hillary’s mind, poor people, evil men and acquiescent women) or Bernie voters (idealistic privileged men) are the enemy of Hillary, and therefore the enemy of women.
What is truly odd about Hillary is that she sees feminism in the establishment and sexism as an outside force that come from the unenlightened masses. This is consistent with her aggressive use of the police state and military-industrial complex. She views these patriarchal forms of control as civilizing forces for predatory men and their victims. What war does to women is irrelevant. What prison does to women is irrelevant. What cutting welfare does to women is irrelevant. What widening inequality does to women is irrelevant. Distrust the masses and trust the powerful is Hillary’s mantra.

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


Friday, March 23, 2018.

Let's start with another whore in David Brock's bordello.

Just so we're all clear: Trump's new national security adviser John Bolton didn't just lie about WMD's to promote the Iraq war. He stated, in 2015, that the Iraq war — which cost thousands of lives, wasted trillions of dollars, and ultimately spawned ISIS — was "worth it."





Sit your tired ass down.  Just stop.  The anniversary of the Iraq War was this week and you didn't Tweet about that, did you, whore?  No, you are one of those wack jobs with conspiracy theories about Russia.  You are so embarrassing.  You're worse than the flat earthers.  But that's fine, crazy, just don't try to grand stand on Iraq.

David Brock's whores always think they can pretend to care about Iraq and that the world won't notice they only mention Iraq when they can trash Republicans -- and only Republicans, they never use it to trust Democrats but, hey, what cunning whore goes out of their way to trash one of the johns?

Bolton thinks it's "worth it."  Like Mad Maddie Albright thought killing half a million Iraqi kids was "worth it"?

Clearly, Caroline O, you think it was "worth it" too because you've can't say a damn word about an ongoing war that's still resulting in the deaths of Iraqis and the deaths of US service members (7 last week alone -- 59 since August of 2014).  How are you any different from John Bolton?  Because I'm not seeing a bit of difference between you and Bolton.  Both of you, through your actions and deeds, normalize and condone an illegal war.  Why don't you go to David and say, "Hey, be a good pimp and don't send me out in the rain tonight?"  Then you can use that time to contemplate how whorish someone has to be to only bring up an ongoing war when it's too her political advantage?

Scurry off now, no one wants to contract a social disease from you. No one needs to hear from you.  As Jhene Aiko sings, "Yes, your mama did, she raised a fool wow" ("Never Call Me," from her album TRIP).




Or maybe Caroline O can scurry off to John Bolton?

As Isaiah noted May 12, 2005, he is "The Swingin' John Bolton."






Yes, Bolton was a menace and remains one.  But we'll cite those who speak out against war, war, war and not silly tricks like Caroline O.


I can’t think of anyone more dangerous than John Bolton to be the National Security Adviser. Pompeo and Bolton are standard bearers for the interventionist neocon foreign policy establishment, addicted to regime change wars, without any thought of the deathly cost or consequence


  • McMaster is out. Trump’s choice of John Bolton to replace him, following his pick of Pompeo, continues the extreme warhawk neocon takeover of the White House. Bolton helped build the case of WMD lies that was used to invade Iraq. Bolton still champions that war today.




    Eric London (WSWS) observes:

    Bolton’s reemergence within the inner circle of American imperialist decision-making exposes the role played by the Democratic Party since the run-up to the Iraq War, launched 15 years ago this week. At each stage in the preparation, launching, and expansion of the war, the Democratic Party sought to divert mass opposition to war behind its own electoral campaigns, including that of John Kerry in 2004, the 2006 midterm elections, the Barack Obama campaign in 2008, and those of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries and general election of 2016.
    Despite the fact that the Democratic Party controlled the presidency from 2009 to 2017, not a single leading figure responsible for war crimes, including the CIA officials responsible for torture, have been punished or even fired.
    Instead, Obama escalated imperialist war around the world. Just this week, the Democratic Party voted for a $1.3 trillion federal budget which includes massive increases in military spending. As a result of the imperialist character of both parties, a detestable figure like John Bolton is able to return to the Oval Office.


    The budget?

    Early this morning, the US Senate followed the House's lead and passed the $1.3 trillion spending bill that now awaits the signature of the President.  Senator Rand Paul's raised some serious questions about the bill (we posted those here) but for the snapshot we'll note this one.


    Page 357. Sec. 8116 no funds can be used in Iraq in contravention of the War Powers Act sounds good but . . . haven’t we been back in Iraq at war against new foes without any new congressional authorization?





    There hasn't been a congressional authorization.  Yet the war continues, day after day, and apparently just so it can be a political prop for posers like Caroline O.



    May 12th, Iraq is set to hold parliamentary elections and no one's been bothered by the fact that Ramadan takes place from May 15th to June 14th.   Past elections in Iraq have required many deyas -- in the case of the 2010 parliamentary elections, many months -- to settle.

    Hayder al-Abadi staked his future on the premature claim that he vanquished ISIS in Iraq.  That, of course, hasn't proven to be the case.   He hasn't been very effective eliminating corruption either. MEM reports, "Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi yesterday ordered an immediate investigation into allegations that fake jobs in the public sector were being offered to citizens by political parties in order to win votes in the country’s upcoming general elections."

    Christopher M. Blanchard (CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE) notes:

    Prime Minister Abadi has announced his plan to lead a coalition of mostly Shia parties and independent Sunni figures under the framework of his Victory (Nasr) Alliance. In launching his own coalition, Abadi is competing with Vice President and former prime minister Nouri al Maliki, who, like Abadi, is a leading member of the Dawa Party. Maliki’s State of Law alliance has been critical of Abadi’s leadership, and some State of Law members are vocal opponents of Iraq’s security partnership with the United States. Several former leaders of the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) militias organized to help fight the Islamic State are participating in the elections as candidates under the rubric of the Fatah Alliance (see textbox below).
    Other prominent Iraqi figures have organized coalitions and lists to contest the election, including a largely Sunni list led by Vice President Osama al Nujayfi and the National Alliance jointly led by Vice President Iyad Allawi, COR Speaker Salim al Juburi, and former deputy Prime Minister Salih al Mutlaq. Among Shia leaders, Ammar al Hakim’s Wisdom (Hikma) movement has formally withdrawn from the Prime Minister’s coalition, but Hakim reportedly intends to coordinate with Abadi during government formation negotiations after the election. Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr is directing his followers to support the multiparty, anti-corruption oriented Sa’irun coalition. Sadr has criticized the participation of PMF leaders in the election and is campaigning on a populist reform and anti-corruption platform.


    Barack Obama ousted Nouri al-Maliki in the fall of 2014 to make Hayder prime minister.  Former prime minister and forever thug Nouri wants to be prime minister again despite his flunkies repeatedly insisting that is not the case.  ALSUMARIA reported yesterday that Nouri has insisted Iraq is passing through a serious, make-it-or-break-it period.  Naturally, Nouri believes he's the one who can save the country -- despite nearly destroying it in 2014..  Today, ALSUMARIA notes that he's saying Iraq needs someone who can lead the country in construction and progress.  Others who would like to become prime minister include Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr who has teamed up with five other groups -- including the Iraqi Communist Party -- for this election cycle.  Two others who'd like to become prime minister, Ammar al-Hakim and Ayad Allawi, have done joint photo-ops.  Ayad Allawi should have been prime minister per the 2010 elections.  But Nouri refused to step down for eight months and brought the country to a stalemate.  Barack Obama, then president, refused to back the winner of the election and instead brokered The Erbil Agreement which, in November of 2010, gave Nouri a second term as prime minister -- in effect, nullifying the election results and overturning the will of the Iraqi people.


    March 7, 2010, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August 2010, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 

    November 10, 2010, The Erbil Agreement is signed.  November 11, 2010, the Iraqi Parliament has their first real session in over eight months and finally declares a president, a Speaker of Parliament and Nouri as prime minister-designate -- all the things that were supposed to happen in April of 2010 but didn't.


    If the post-election process goes even 1/4 as poorly as it did in 2010, Ramadan will only compound that.  Holding the election three days before Ramadan was very poor planning.

    All want to reform, but few are sinceres. The reformation in Iraq must be started right now via a set of Procedures are: Cancel privileges and pensions retailed; work on rehabilitating infrastructure and balanced external relations;




    The following community sites updated:



  • 3/21/2018

    the media's destroying itself

    this is so true.

    If Trump sucked up to the media like his predecessors did they would love him right back.


    if it were in a book, i'd use a highlighter and line it - maybe write 'too true' in the margin.

    the media is disgracing themselves.

    they cannot hide their hatred for trump and it is discrediting them.

    donald trump's not harming them, they are harming themselves.


    they treat rumors as fact, run with them and then when it turns out to be false, they 'forget' to correct or don't own up fully to what they did.

    donald trump is no my hero.

    but watching any 1 get carved up daily can create sympathy.

    so i have no idea why the media doesn't do more to police their own behavior and try to stick to facts.

    donald trump has long said the media was out to get him and all the u.s. media does is prove him right.


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


    Wednesday, March 21, 2018.  "I want my money back."



    I never meant to be the needle that broke your back
    You were here, you were here, and you were here
    Don't look back
    I never meant to be the needle that broke your back
    You were here, you were here, and you were here
    Don't look back
    He war he war
    He will kill for you
    He war he war
    He will kill for you
    From who you can
    You know you can
    -- "He War," by Cat Power, first appears on her YOU ARE FREE

    However you count it, the Iraq War is now 15 years old.  (Or the latest wave of it.)  The Bastard War?  No, The War Of The Bastards.  It's a long, long list of bastards -- Bully Boy Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Tony Blair, John Howard, Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Olympia Snowe . . . 
    The War Of The Bastards.  How appropriate that it's birth is so clouded.  It began at the same moment around the world but, due to the time zone differences, it started on March 20th in Iraq and the late night of March 19th in the US.  

    The War Of The Bastards ignored international and domestic law, used pysops on the American people, was willfully sold by the media whores and left the US forever in debt.  US President Donald Trump's slammed for saying three trillion dollars.  Slam him when you want but when he's actually right and you slam him, you make it look like your problem isn't with his actions, it's just with him and that's not going to build a resistance though it may bring one or two more over for your circle jerk.  Play safe, kiddies.

    Three trillion is the estimated cost.  That's when the medical needs of the veterans of today's wars are factored in.

    Three trillion dollars.  And it wasn't Bush or Barack or Donald's money.  It was We The People's money.

    And we suffer, across the country as a result.




    I want my money back
    I'm down here drowning in your fat
    You got me on my knees
    Praying for everything you lack
    I ain't afraid of you
    I'm just a victim of your fears
    You cower in your tower
    Praying that I'll disappear
    I got another plan
    One that requires me to stand
    On the stage or in the street
    Don't need no microphone or beat
    And when you hear this song
    If you ain't dead sing along
    Bang and strum to these here drums
    Till you get where you belong

    I got a list of demands
    Written on the palm of my hands
    I ball my fist, you're gonna
    Know where I stand
    I'm living hand to mouth
    You wanna be somebody? See somebody?
    Try and free somebody?

    "List of Demands (Reparations)" -- the new single from The Kills

    "I want my money back!" should be the cry of the American people.

    Mike rightly called out Bernie Sander's latest for show action.  But grasp that if Bernie wants to focus on the economy, on jobs (the lack of), on the crumbling infrastructure, you can't do that without talking about where the money went.  It went to the colonize Iraq.  Three trillion dollars and counting.  And counting.

    I want my money back.

    If the senator wants to run for president again, he's going to have to explain where the money went and how, as president, he'd avoid the same thing.  Because we've now had three occupants of the Oval Office conducting the war on Iraq: Bully Boy Bush, President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.  The money continues to flow to Iraq.

    Not to help the Iraqi people, understand, but to prop up the US-created government.  The occupation and the colonization of Iraq continues as surely as the war itself does -- they are all intertwined.

    I want my money back.

    Gordon Block (WATERTOWN DAILY TIMES) reports:

    Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division formally took the lead of the international ground forces helping Iraqi troops defeat ISIS in the country.
    The ceremony took place 15 years to the day from when American forces first entered the country to take on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, after President George W. Bush and his cabinet built the case that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction.
    The Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command — Operation Inherent Resolve, previously managed by the 1st Armored Division, represents 75 nations and international organizations supporting training, advising and equipping Iraq’s security forces.


    The Iraq War has not ended.  It's amazing that those who supported the war grasp that while those of us who opposed it have a large number who self-deceive that the war is over.  Tara Copp (MILITARY TIMES) spoke with one service member who supports the ongoing and never-ending war:

    Fifteen years after the U.S. launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, the remaining U.S. troops deployed there are still needed, the spokesman for U.S. operations in western Iraq said Tuesday.
    Marine Corps Col. Seth W.B. Folsom was one of the 150,000 U.S. and coalition troops who initially crossed into Iraq 2003 and is now the commander of Task Force Lion, the continued U.S. effort in Anbar province. 
    "My Marines and I came to Iraq in 2003 because we thought it was the right thing to do and we served honorably," Folsom said Tuesday at press briefing with reporters at the Pentagon.
    "Unlike a lot of people out there right now, I'm not really interested in engaging in the same sort of self-loathing a lot of people are doing today on the anniversary.  The simple fact is this: the war has changed out here.  It's not the same war anymore.



    Well then that would mean -- if it's not the same war anymore -- that it would need something other than the 2002 Congressional authorization to go forward.  The war continues.  Many Americans live blissfully unaware of that.  Who knew we were a nation of Barbara Bushes (the old one, not the young pretty one).




    "Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

    Take a look in the mirror, America, we've become Barbara Bush.

    We're saggy and flabby -- and that's just our minds.

    How does this happen?  Well you can't pay Rachel Maddow over a million a year and still do news, apparently.  Of television outlets, all but CNN pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2008.  The only real American withdraw has been the US media's 2008 withdraw.  The print outlets?  THE WASHINGTON POST has journalists in the region -- often in Iraq itself.  MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS?  None.  Because MCCLATCHY never did s**t.  Bill Moyers started that lie.  KNIGHT RIDDER was the newspaper chain questioning the war and the claims made to support it.  KNIGHT RIDDER was purchased by MCCLATCHY (it ceased publication in July of 2006).  Now MCCLATCHY was around in the lead up to the war.  It did nothing but whore.  Don't give MCCLATCHY credit for what KNIGHT RIDDER did.  It had papers but it chose to whore like THE NEW YORK TIMES did.  THE NEW YORK TIMES?  They do have reporters in Iraq.

    Now under Barack, coverage fell there -- despite the money the paper was spending.  Why?  Jill Abrasmon -- who has attacked Judith Miller on the record and on background in a catty manner that can only be described as bitchy (well, there's the c-word but I'm still not comfortable using that).  She supported the war.  She tries to pretend otherwise but she did.  And when she was made editor of the paper, it was all about bury Iraq.  Tim Arango, remember, had the exclusive news in September 2012 that Barack was sending US troops back into Iraq and he had an on the record US military brass source.  Jill wouldn't let that be a story.  Tim finally managed to squeeze it into a report on Syria -- two paragraphs buried in there.

    Jill was trash and so is her son.  Poor Jill, disgraced.  And her son's once promising career no more.  Yes, I had a hand in the departure of Jill -- a hand (Elaine actually documented my role at her site, my part -- in the lead up to Jill being fired) -- from the paper.  But when it came to take down her son, that was pretty much 72% me.  You're welcome, Jill.  The Iraqi people pay for your sins, it's the least I can do to make sure that you and your son are miserable.

    Jill's gone (and exposed as a racist at the paper).

    If Jill were still at the paper, we wouldn't get this announcement:


    On the 15th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, we are relaunching At War, which began as a blog for our journalists and contributors in Baghdad years ago. You can read more about that here.
    One contributor, Matt Ufford, writes about rolling into Iraq on a tank, as a Marine. Above, U.S. troops keeping watch as the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation burned in April 2003.
    In our Op-Ed section, the Iraqi-born novelist Sinan Antoon writes about how he opposed the invasion, and he mourns what has happened since.
    “The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a ‘blunder,’ or even a colossal mistake,’” he writes. “It was a crime.”


    We wouldn't get that if Jill were still at the paper.  But she's gone.  Scribbling a weekly column for THE GUARDIAN -- a foreign newspaper -- and trying to pretend like that qualifies as disgrace when it's shame, she's bathed in shame and embarrassment.

    Those objecting to Judith Miller?  Miller's reports were wrong.  Miller didn't make up things, she just trusted her sources and trusted them way too much.  After the fact, Jill tried to whisper to the press to make herself look better.  Reality, Jill had the power to stop Miller's reporting but she supported it.  A lot of people want to pretend that Judith Miller is responsible for everything.  She's responsible for what she wrote.  Others above her are responsible for it making it into print and for it making it into print the way it did.

    People sometimes say no lessons were learned from this ongoing war.

    How could lessons be learned?

    There was no accountability.

    MOTHER JONES, to name but one outlet, rewarded pro-War Cheerleaders like Kevin Drum.

    The people who were right, to this day, are not applauded.

    The people who lied are still in positions of power -- even in the press.

    How can lessons be learned when that happens?

    Also true, we didn't demand accountability as a people.  When Ed Needham did his "trend" story about bug chasers (AIDS), outraged readers called that junk nonsense out and demanded that ROLLING STONE extend their subscriptions by one issue.  Imagine if NYT subscribers had done that with regards to all the editions of the paper with lies published as fact?

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