4/01/2023

will steven ever return on 'dynasty'? (a year old post, i forgot to post)

that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Joe Biden's Mythical Mid-Term Voters" which went up sunday. also be sure to check out Kat's "Kat's Korner: Dolly Parton still has the touch." which went up saturday. i told you about kat's review before i posted. i really loved it and i really love dolly parton's new album 'run, rose, run.'

back to isaiah's comic though, joe biden is an idiot. at this rate, he'll be lucky to survive 1 term. he's doing such a bad job that democrats might vote to remove him from office if republicans try to impeach and they might vote with the gop because they know joe can't win re-election. he's too unpopular now. it would be better for the party for them to get any 1 else - even kamala - into the oval office before the 2024 elections.

joe cannot turn this around. c.i. and i discussed this for 'polly's brew.' i'm going to ask her to address it at 'the common ills' so it can be part of the public discussion.

regarding 'dynasty,,' lucas e-mailed to complain that steven isn't on.

i agree, lucas. when they wrote steven out, i thought they were going to recast.

that's what happened in the original series.

but apparently no. and it makes no sense for him to not be back to check in.

fallon gets shot at the end of the last season and he doesn't show up? her shooting made the news.

i think they need to bring him back on for good.

but they at least need to bring him back for 3 or so episodes.

if they don't want him to be a regular, do a 3 or 4 episode story.

have him come back and be an asshole.

remember he's supposed to be finding himself.

so he comes back bossy and rude. and every 1's griping about it including sam.

then steven says to sam, 'i want you to shut your mouth and get your butt into my bed.'

and sam's kind of turned on by the assertive steven.

and they make out a few times but it quickly gets old for sam - the bossy asshole business.

so then he's in agreement with the others, as steven leaves, that maybe steven staying gone is a good thing?

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

Monday, April 11, 2022. Joe Biden continues to perseucte Julian Assange while his own corruption gets futher attention and little media needs to be asked why they are glorifying a man arrested three times for seeking sex with underage girls, convicted for it in court, sent to prison for it.

Starting with the continued persecution of Julian Assange by US President Joe Biden. Joe wants the UK to deport Australian citizen Julian Asange for the 'crime' of journalism. Alan Jones (INDEPENDENT) reports:

The continued imprisonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a “criminal act”, his wife has said.

Stella Assange was speaking on the third anniversary of her husband being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

He has since been held in Belmarsh prison in the capital while the US seeks his extradition on espionage charges, which he has always denied.

Protests took place yesterday. BBC NEWS reports:

Protests are being held to mark the third anniversary of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Supporters are escalating demands for his release from Belmarsh prison in London where he has been since he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy.

The United States continues with legal moves to extradite him to face trial on espionage charges.

Vigils are being held outside the Ecuadorian embassy, Westminster magistrates' court and Belmarsh prison.

Also yesterday, Katie Halper used her online platform to steer attention to Julian Assange.

Here's the synopsis of the video:

A night of comedy and music in support of Julian Assange, featuring Lee Camp, Margaret Kunstler, Katie Halper, Marianne Williamson, Eleanor Goldfield, John Kiriakou, Jaffer Khan, Medea Benjamin, John F O'Donnell, Luci Murphy, Steve Jones hosted by Randy Credico. Presented by Assange Countdown & NYC Free Assange.

Julian's 'crimes' include informing the public of War Crimes in Iraq.

Joe Biden wants to persecute Julian. He wants to kidnap him and bring him to the United States. Knowing Joe, he probably wants to f**k Julian as well -- or at least sniff him.. Surely he wants to treat Julian as an enemy combatant.

Joe has a non-stop war on the First Amendment. When you have so much to hide, you're no fan of a free press.

Senator Chuck Grassley (Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Senator Ron Johnson speak in the above C-SPAN video about the questionable practices of the Biden family.

Senator Ron Johnson's office issued the following:

WASHINGTON – On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) joined U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the Senate floor for the third time to discuss their investigation into the vast web of financial entanglements of the Biden family. The senators found that the Bidens not only have ties with the Chinese regime, but Russian oligarchs as well. The senators will continue their investigation until the truth about these corrupt business dealings is uncovered and the American people have answers.

Click here for the video

Sen. Johnson’s remarks as prepared, below.

Thank you, Senator Grassley.

What Senator Grassley and I have shown over the course of six speeches are the actual bank records of financial transactions tying President Biden’s son, Hunter, and his brother, James, to businesses that are essentially arms of the communist Chinese regime. But the Biden business ventures include activities in many more countries than just China.

In our September and November 2020 reports we showed a vast web of the Biden family’s foreign financial entanglements that were largely ignored by the media, and falsely labeled Russian disinformation by our Democrat colleagues. As outrageous as the suppression of our reports and the false attacks were, perhaps the most egregious behavior came from 51 former Intelligence Agency officials who lent their names and reputations to an effort designed to convince the American public that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Without any evidence backing their assertion, they engaged in their own “information operation” by signing a public letter right before the election. Their letter was actual disinformation, coming from what are supposed to be trusted former members of our U.S. intelligence agencies.

They should all be ashamed and held accountable for spreading this disinformation. By signing that disinformation letter, they reinforced false claims that the records on the laptop were not legitimate.

By casting doubt on evidence of the Bidens’ corrupt practices, these former intelligence officials interfered in the 2020 election to a far greater extent than Russia could have ever hoped to achieve. Their willing accomplices in the press amplified this disinformation letter and by doing so were equally guilty of egregious election interference.

In August 2020, I wrote a public letter detailing the history, purpose and goals of my oversight and investigations. In that letter, I laid out the timeline of Joe and Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine. The timeline is very revealing.

February 2014 – The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine.
April 16, 2014 – then-Vice President Joe Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House.
April 21 (Five days later) – Joe Biden visited Ukraine, and the media described him as the “public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.”
April 22 (the very next day) – Archer joined the board of Burisma.
April 28 (Six days later) – British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa Zlochevsky.
May 13, 2014 (three weeks later) – Hunter Biden joined the board of Bursima.

Because of the findings in our reports and the excellent investigative journalism on the part of John Solomon, we also now know that Hunter was involved with Elena Baturina, the corrupt and now-sanctioned wife of the former Mayor of Moscow during the very same time period.

On February 14, 2014 Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden.

Between April 4 and April 5, 2014, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer sent emails about meeting with Baturina potentially relating to a business deal in Chelsea, New York.

On April 13, 2014, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer discuss the potential business deal involving Baturina. Archer wrote that Baturina “confirmed green light to fund deposit.” Archer continued, “Just spent two hours on the phone with Kiev. I am confident at this point this is a good, if not life changing, deal if the Uk[raine] doesn’t collapse in the meantime.”

It is quite interesting to see how much significant activity involving the Bidens and corrupt actors in Russia and Ukraine occurred within a six-week period only two months after the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. It sure looks like they intended to cash in on the turmoil in Ukraine.

In my August 2020 letter, I listed a number of questions about then-Vice President Biden’s interaction with Hunter Biden’s business partner and other family members’ foreign financial dealings. In making this letter public, my hope was that the press would begin to ask then-presidential candidate Joe Biden these important questions.

It should come to no surprise that the corporate media was completely uninterested and failed to conduct any investigative journalism.

Nearly two years after I wrote this public letter, the mainstream media has still not adequately pressed President Biden for answers to these very legitimate questions:

Why did Joe Biden meet with Devon Archer at the White House on April 16, 2014? What was discussed? Did they discuss anything related to Ukraine, Hunter Biden, or Burisma?
Was Joe Biden aware that Devon Archer joined the board of Burisma six days later?
Does Joe Biden believe Burisma and its owner are corrupt?
When did Joe Biden first become aware that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
When did Joe Biden first become aware of how much money Hunter Biden was being compensated by Burisma?
What does Joe Biden know about Hunter or James Biden’s business dealings in China?
What does Joe Biden know about financial benefits his brothers and sister-in-law have obtained because of their relationship to him?

Investigative reporter John Solomon has added more questions to this list, including:

What, if anything, did Joe Biden know about his son's dealings with Russian oligarch Elena Baturina?
A 2017 series of memos referred to a Chinese business deal that involved Hunter Biden and included a 10% equity for the “big guy.” What did Joe Biden know about this specific deal and who was the “big guy”?
Emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop, now in the possession of the FBI, refer to shared accounts or bills between Joe Biden and Hunter. Did Hunter ever give Joe Biden any money, gift or financial benefit from Hunter’s business dealings?

After a long-overdue analysis, the New York Times and Washington Post have finally admitted that records from Hunter’s laptop are authentic, which means – although they will NEVER admit this – that Senator Grassley and I were right and they were wrong.

It is interesting to read how limited and muted their mea culpas are. My guess is that they learned a lot from their coverage of Nixon’s Watergate scandal cover-up. They learned that when you’ve been caught in a cover-up – and that is what has happened here – you try to limit the damage by telling a little bit of the truth. In the Intelligence world, this strategy is called a “limited hang out.” The Watergate conspirators called it a “modified limited hang out.”

Regardless of what it’s called, what the New York Times and Washington Post are doing is not telling the whole truth. I doubt they ever will. But just in case they decide to pursue the truth with a bit more rigor, they can use this list of relevant questions as a good starting point for what they should be asking President Biden.

For our part, Senator Grassley and I will continue to ask tough questions, review more information and records and transparently provide that information to the American public.

We intend to pursue and uncover the truth.

I will turn the floor over to Senator Grassley for his closing remarks.

CBS NEWS reports:

The issues were discussed on MSNBC's MORNING JOE and I was asked to note it. I know the guest on the segment (Dan Abrams) and I was told the segment included a report by Pete Williams. Fine. I was willing to note it. Then I streamed it. Mika is trash and I've never been able to stand her. Her father is responsible for the deaths of so many and that's before we even touch on don't have sex on the job. I find her depraved and disgusting. I don't need her to editorialize before a conversation can begin and I certainly don't need her insisting nothing to see here before the discussion begins. If there's nothing to see here then find another story to cover, dead. That shouldn't be hard, not even for an idiot like Mike. We're not noting it, sorry. I will note Dan Abrams discussing the various issues on NEWS NATION.

And, in the second segment of the REVOLUTIONARY BLACKOUT video below, Sabby Sabs addresses situational ethics and hypocrisy with regards to the Biden ethics scandal.

Miranda Devine (NY POST) offers:

It is not just the e-mails and other material on Hunter’s abandoned laptop which point to Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s multimillion-dollar global influence-peddling schemes when he was vice president.

There is also the six-hour interview Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski gave to the FBI last year, along with a trove of documents, e-mails and encrypted messages.

Bobulinski has publicly named Joe Biden as the “Big Guy,” referenced in e-mails, whose 10% equity in a joint venture with Chinese energy company CEFC was held for him by Hunter.

Now the identity of the Big Guy has become a topic for the Delaware probe.

At least one of the witnesses before the grand jury has been asked: who is the Big Guy?

Sources familiar with the investigation say Bobulinski is yet to appear, but if he does not testify before the grand jury, something is very wrong.

Perhaps US attorney David Weiss is saving the best for last.

The pressure on Weiss is immense, as the four-year investigation into the president’s son and his business partners, including his uncle James Biden, Joe’s younger brother, threatens to become an election issue in November.

Alarm bells are starting to ring in Democratic circles as the White House stonewalls in the face of increasing media inquiries. In two absurd statements in recent days, White House spokespeople said the president stands by his pre-election statement that Hunter never received any money from China, and he continues to deny that he knew anything about his son’s overseas business dealings.

The White House position is unsustainable.

When not attempting to coveer for the corruption within his own family, Joe pushes for war with Russia. Already, in grocery stores across America, the supplies are limited. Go in, look around. Notice that, for example, there are huge empty spaces on the chips aisle. Notice how canned goods is missing major

Joe is a failure. And the media doesn't want to call him on it but the America people will in the mid-terms. Inflation, higher gas prices. We're not all Joe's sister. Everyon can get a bribe passed off as payment for work needed for dictating a bunch of lies that make Joe Biden look good. There's no audience for a book about Joe Biden. Michelle Obama -- who does have supporters -- did not sell well with her book. Joe has nothing to insprie. And his sister has enabled and covered for him for decades. No one expects truth or anything interesting in her 'book.' But, hey, she was overpaid and the conglomerate knows Joe recognizes payments (bribes) to his family.

Jim Lobe (RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT) notes:

The evening news programs of the three dominant U.S. television networks devoted more coverage to the war in Ukraine last month than in any other month during all wars, including those in which the U.S. military was directly engaged, since the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report. The only exception was the last war in which U.S. forces participated in Europe, the 1999 Kosovo campaign.

Combined, the three networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — devoted 562 minutes to the first full month of the war in Ukraine. That was more time than in the first month of the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 (240 mins), its intervention in Somalia in 1992 (423 mins), and even the first month of its invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001 (306 minutes), according to a commentary published Thursday by Andrew Tyndall, who has monitored and coded the three networks’ nightly news each weekday since 1988.

“Astonishingly, the two peak months of coverage of the [2003] Iraq war each saw less saturated coverage than last month in Ukraine (414 minutes in March of 2003 and 455 minutes in April),” he wrote. “…The only three months of war coverage in the last 35 years that have been more intensive than last month were Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 (1,208 minutes) and his subsequent removal in January and February 1991 (1,177 and 1,033 minutes respectively).”

That was at a time, however, when the network evening news devoted about a third more time to foreign news than it has in recent years when international news coverage has fallen to all-time lows.

Last month’s coverage of Ukraine even eclipsed by a wide margin the three networks’ coverage of the chaotic end of Washington’s 20-year war in Afghanistan last summer. Last August, the month with the most intense coverage, the three networks devoted a total of 345 minutes (or only about 60 percent of last month’s total Ukraine coverage) to the war’s abrupt denouement. Once U.S. forces had fully withdrawn by August 31, network coverage of Afghanistan fell precipitously to a total of just 103 minutes between September 1 and the end of year, despite the desperation of the country’s humanitarian situation that followed (and persists).

While the major cable news networks often receive more public attention, the evening news shows of ABC, CBS, and NBC collectively remain the single most important source of international news in the United States.

The push for war certainly received more attention that Iraq did last month. Last month was the 19th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War -- an ongoing war NEHR NEWs AGENCY reports:

According to Iraqi sources, two US military logistics convoys have been targeted in southern and northern Iraq.

A security source said that a logistics convoy belonging to US troops was hit by an explosion in Salah ad-Din, north of Baghdad.

Also, a roadside bomb exploded in the path of US military logistics crossing the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar.

Remember, in 2009, Barack Obama's grandstanding on Iraq, how he knew the US had done everything it could and how it was time to leave and how . . .

13 years later and US troops remain on the ground in Iraq.

Joe Biden care to explain that?

I don't like lairs. I have been kind and I'm tired of it. There's a Twitter wave now in support of Scott Ritter. Poor Scotty. He was banned. In 2002!!!! Well, he was still on cable then. That's your first lie, idiots. Richard Medhurst and others have been making it very clear that they don't care for women or girls.

Scott Ritter lost TV access when his second arrest for attempting to engage in sex with an underage girl became known. Most likely, his political enemies -- Democrats and Republicans -- leaked it to the media. But let's stop the nonsense of his being removed from corporate media because he was telling the truth.

And let's start asking various outlets -- CONVO COUCH, Richard Medhurst, Jackson Hinkle and others -- exactly what are you trying to do?

You're bringing on a man convicted of attempting to engage in sex with an underage girl. A man who sought girls out on the internet for sexual purposes.

His lawyer got him off on the first arrest. The second came with a slap on the wrist. The third happened after Barack was president and it went to trial. Scott cried to the court, real tears, about how he couldn't control it and he was so embarrassed and . . .

Off he went to prison.

And now Richard and others bring him on their shows without any sort of warning?

his conviction. F

He's a sex criminal. Convicted. A convicted felon. He admitted it in court. I know he's walked it back since he got out. I don't care.

And if that's the best you have to foffer, you need to learn how to make an argument. A convicted felon who preys on young girls is not someone you should be promoting.

If you're going to bring him on your show, you need to at least note his conviction.

In 2004 and 2004, we had to make this case. People finally got the point allowing them to avoid being embarrassed by his third arrest.

I can't elieve that I'm again having to take time on this.

Don't pretend you're about equality if you're promoting a man who wants to harm underage girls. Don't pretend that you're about truth when you lie that he was expunged from the airwaves because he was arguing about the Iraq War when he was tossed from corporate airwaves when they learned of his arrest and that it was his second arrest.

I don't know why you insist upon bringing on a predator to begin with. Mayb eyou just don't give a s**t what happens to women and girls? Maybe you should answer that question.

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Joe Biden's Mythical Mid-Term Voters" went up earlier this morning and Kat's "Kat's Korner: Dolly Parton still has the touch." The following sites updated:

3/31/2023

matt damon needs undergarments

can some 1 get matt damon a bra?

i don't mean a training bra. matt's fully devolped.

that's him on jimmy kimmel's show from earlier this week (tuesday). what can we say?

how bout was he drinking kool-aid before he came on. what's with his weird lips and the skin around them?

2nd, put on a bra. he starts lifting those hands and that chest starts flopping around.

i guess it's good. if we weren't drawn to that, we'd have to note the weird aging thing that's going on with his upper arms. or maybe how he just stockier each year.

poor matt. he can't act and his ability to play eye candy soured a long time ago. bit parts in films now. guess who couldn't even book a procedural on basic cable. i'm sure he'll be fine though. just be patient with him when you're going through the drive thru.

on matt damon, see stan's 'Does anyone need Ben Afflekc's AIR?' and ann's 'Matt Damon does not sell tickets.'

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

Friday, March 31, 2023. One lie about the Iraq War gets pointed out and two more spring up, responsibility is an upsetting term for Jennifer Aniston, there's a reason that voter participation in Iraq dropped significantly, and much more.

That's Mehdi Hasan debating Tom Nichols on the legalities of the illegal Iraq War. A few realities slipped in on the coverage of Iraq this anniversary. A few.

Jon Schwarz (INDEPENDENT) has held THE NEW YORK TIMES accountable on some of its articles in the last weeks, for example, but it's sort of an endless, never-ending effort as he notes:

For the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, the New York Times published an article by Max Fisher headlined “20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?”

The article is a fairly cogent summation of the evidence. However, when it was first published, it was undermined by an extremely significant and extremely funny mistake. After inquiries from The Intercept, the paper has changed the original mistake into a fresh, new mistake.

Here’s how the article originally read:

Mr. Hussein had ejected international weapons inspectors, which was seen in Washington as a humiliating policy failure for Mr. Clinton.

When the American leader was weakened by scandal later that year [in 1998], congressional Republicans pounced, passing the Iraq Liberation Act …

One reason this is so funny is because in 1998 the Times accurately reported what happened. The United Nations inspections team, called UNSCOM, was not expelled by Saddam Hussein, but rather was withdrawn by Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM, after he consulted with the U.S. — about the fact that the U.S. was about to start bombing Iraq, in a campaign called Operation Desert Fox.

Even funnier is that the Times went on to claim erroneously that Iraq had expelled UNSCOM in 1998 at least five times, twice in 1999 and then in 2000, 2002 and 2003. It issued corrections on the three latter articles.

Two decades later, the paper apparently wanted to recapture its youth by being wrong again. The paper has now issued its fourth correction on this subject. Its present-day story currently reads:

Hussein had ejected international weapons inspectors in 1997, which was seen in Washington as a humiliating policy failure for Mr. Clinton.

Then, when Mr. Clinton was weakened by scandal in 1998, congressional Republicans pounced, passing the Iraq Liberation Act …

Wonderfully enough, this is also wrong. Iraq did expel the American members of the U.N. inspections team in 1997. But the rest remained in Iraq until they were withdrawn by the United Nations. All, including the Americans, returned to Iraq eight days later.

You can find this information in a story published when it happened, by a little-known paper called the New York Times.

The corrected text in the 2023 story also leaves out the reason Iraq expelled the (American) inspectors in 1997: Because some of the Americans were conducting espionage against Iraq. Again, you can read about this in the New York Times.

It's like Jon plugs one leak and then two more spring up. It's endless.

And disappointing. Did someone just say Akeel Abbas? They should have. He's not an idiot and he's capable of a lot. So why is so damn disappointing this morning at FOREIGN AFFAIRS? Partly because he's teamed up with Shayan Talabany. Why? Who the hell knows. She's long been part of the Conservative movement in the UK so it's natural that she'd end up holding hands with War Criminal Tony Blair (she's at his Institute for Global Change aka War Crimes Inc).

First off, it's one thing to say democracy might be a new concept for Iraqis. It's another to be insulting and portray the Iraqi people as immature. It's really insulting. But what's really awful is the effort to deny reality.

I'm not in the damn mood this morning. Year after year, we've pointed out reality. That's especially true with regard to declining participation in elections. And there's a reason for the decline as we have repeatedly pointed out. They ignore reality.

From their awful article:

This new dissatisfaction can be seen in the declining voter turnout despite increasing birthrates. Iraq’s population grew from 25 million in 2005 to approximately 42 million in 2022. Yet while almost 80 percent of eligible voters turned out to vote in the December 2005 parliamentary election, a meager 41 percent at most took part in the October 2021 early elections (although this statistic has been contested by many observers who claim it is inflated because it represents 41 percent of registered Iraqi voters, not eligible voters, millions of whom did not register to vote).

[. . .]

As early as 2011, mounting frustrations were fueling protests across the country, from the Kurdistan region in the north to the south. These frustrations crystallized and erupted in a major 2019-20 protest movement, widely known as Tishreen—the Arabic name for the month of October, when the protests started and won nationwide support. These protests offered the first opportunity for serious bottom-up reform aiming to dismantle the current and failed sect-based politics and bring in merit-based politics, in which the ruling elite is held accountable and judged based on achievements, not identity.

What happened between 2005 and 2011?

What could have made the belief in voting plummet in Iraq?

Violence depressed the turnout in most of the election cycles in the '00s and '10s, absolutely. But in 2010, it was as high as 62%.

What changed?

If you've paid attention, I just gave you the clue: 2010.

Don't blame the Iraqi people or supposed immaturity for the lower turnout.

Nouri al-Maliki is a thug. Former prime minister, forever thug. Then-Senator Hillary Clinton said so in a heavily covered 2008 Senate hearing. Then-Senator Joe Biden said so in another Senate hearing that I believe we were the only ones to cover. (I saw no press there and we remain the only ones aware of what Joe said and what then-Senator Russ Feingold said.) In 2008, the US government knew he was a thug. Bully Boy Bush installed him as prime minister in 2006. As we noted before anyone else did, Nouri was paranoid. The CIA profile on him found him to be so paranoid that he would be easy for the US government to manipulate. That's why he was installed as prime minister.

In March 2010, Iraq held elections. He was the sitting prime minister. He bribed the people -- the ice dispensing was the cheapest and most laughable. But he was awful. And the media thought he'd win. It was seen as a given -- so much so that before a single vote was counted -- let alone tallies released -- NPR declared him the winner.

He didn't win.

Iraqiya won. A new coalition created right ahead of the election.

And then what happened?

Nouri refused to step down. This is the political stalemate. And at the beginning, the US government insisted that they would stand by the votes -- stand with the Iraqi people.

Instead, Barack Obama turned on the Iraqi people. Samantha Power advocated for a second term for Nouri and insisted that Nouri was the best chance to get what they wanted.

So after eight months of a political stalemate, the US government negotiated The Erbil Agreement, a legal contract between the various political parties. In exchange for this, they would do that. They? They had to agree to a second term for Nouri. In exchange, he would do this or that. But Nouri used the contract to be named prime minister-designate and then refused to honor it. Two months later, his then-spokesperson (who'd flee Iraq when Nouri turned on him) declared that the contract wasn't legal or binding.

But the contract put in place Nouri for a second term. Nouri who was running secret prisons. And we all knew it by then.

You're an Iraqi and you've got a thug representing you. You turn out to vote -- despite all the obstacles, including violence. Your vote and the voters of others means Nouri is gone as prime minister and the next one will come from Iraqiya. But . . .

Then US President Barack Obama overturns your vote, overturns the votes period and gifts Nouri with a second term.

What is the point of voting?

Why has voting participation in Iraq decreased?

What a stupid question.

Of course, it decreased. The US government is responsible for that and it is annoying that this is ignored repeatedly but it is especially appalling when it's being ignored in articles supposedly addressing this issue.

ON POINT (NPR) did a great job yesterday bringing Iraqis into the discussion of 20 years later as host Meghna Chakrabarti spoke with journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Ideally, we'll note in next week. Ava and I are going to try to work it into our piece for Third. This is the best coverage that NPR did this anniversary of the war.

Yesterday, the White House issued the following:

March 30, 2023

A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility

Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates the joy, strength, and absolute courage of some of the bravest people I know — people who have too often had to put their jobs, relationships, and lives on the line just to be their true selves. Today, we show millions of transgender and nonbinary Americans that we see them, they belong, and they should be treated with dignity and respect. Their courage has given countless others strength, but no one should have to be brave just to be themselves. Every American deserves that freedom.

Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul — proudly serving in the military, curing deadly diseases, holding elected office, running thriving businesses, fighting for justice, raising families, and much more. As kids, they deserve what every child deserves: the chance to learn in safe and supportive schools, to develop meaningful friendships, and to live openly and honestly. As adults, they deserve the same rights enjoyed by every American, including equal access to health care, housing, and jobs and the chance to age with grace as senior citizens. But today, too many transgender Americans are still denied those rights and freedoms. A wave of discriminatory State laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone. An epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, in particular women and girls of color, has taken lives far too soon. Last year’s Club Q shooting in Colorado was another painful example of this kind of violence — a stain on the conscience of our Nation.

My Administration has fought to end these injustices from day one, working to ensure that transgender people and the entire LGBTQI+ community can live openly and safely. On my first day as President, I issued an Executive Order directing the Federal Government to root out discrimination against LGBTQI+ people and their families. We have appointed a record number of openly LGBTQI+ leaders, and I was proud to rescind the ban on openly transgender people serving in the military. We are also working to make public spaces and travel more accessible, including with more inclusive gender markers on United States passports. We are improving access to public services and entitlements like Social Security. We are cracking down on discrimination in housing and education. And last December, I signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, ensuring that every American can marry the person they love and have that marriage accepted, period.

Meanwhile, we are also working to ease the tremendous strain that discrimination, bullying, and harassment can put on transgender children — more than half of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year. The Department of Education is, for example, helping ensure that transgender students have equal opportunities to learn and thrive at school, and the Department of Justice is pushing back against extreme laws that seek to ban evidence-based gender-affirming health care.

There is much more to do. I continue to call on the Congress to finally pass the Equality Act and extend long-overdue civil rights protections to all LGBTQI+ Americans to ensure they can live with safety and dignity. Together, we also have to keep challenging the hundreds of hateful State laws that have been introduced across the country, making sure every child knows that they are made in the image of God, that they are loved, and that we are standing up for them.

America is founded on the idea that all people are created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout their lives. We have never fully lived up to that, but we have never walked away from it either. Today, as we celebrate transgender people, we also celebrate every American’s fundamental right to be themselves, bringing us closer to realizing America’s full promise.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2023, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination against all transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

The statement comes as Mother Tucker Carlson has declared a holy war on the LGBTQ+ community via FOX NEWS. Luke Gentile (WASHINGTON EXAMINER) notes Human Rights Campaign's Charlotte Clymer was on MSNBC with Joy Reid and addressed Tucker's hateful jihad:

"I'm from the great state of Texas. I served in the military. I go to church every Sunday. My faith is very important to me, but God made me in her image," Clymer said. "God made me transgender, and to see these people so cynically weaponize this and exploit these children's deaths and their teachers' deaths, it breaks my heart."

"I can't see where the biblical principles of loving your neighbor and walking the walk with Christ that they can see. I can't see what they're seeing."

At MSNBC, Noor Noman weighs in on Mother Tucker's jihad:

On Tuesday night, much of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show was a deeply disturbing diatribe targeting trans people, painting them as terroristic anti-Christs, afforded special privileges by the elite. “The people in charge despise working-class whites, but they venerate the trans community,” Carlson said.

“The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity, and therefore its natural enemy,” he continued, echoing violent and fascistic ideologies, like crypto- and neofascism. “In Christianity, the price of admission is admitting that you’re not God. Christians openly concede that they have no real power over anything, and for that matter, very little personal virtue. … The trans movement takes the opposite view. Trans ideology claims dominion over nature itself. ‘We can change the identity we were born with,’ they will tell you with wild-eyed certainty. Christians can never agree with the statement because these are powers they believe God alone possesses.” He concluded the segment with a warning for Americans about the dangers of the so-called trans movement: “Yesterday’s massacre did not happen because of lax gun laws. Yesterday’s massacre happened because of a deranged and demonic ideology that is infecting this country.”

Here, of course, Carlson is wrong; if there is one measure that would curb rampant gun deaths in this country, it would be making it more difficult to obtain assault-style weapons, of which police said the Nashville attacker had two (plus a handgun). As my colleague Hayes Brown argued, access to guns, not ideology, is fundamentally responsible for the mass shooting crisis.

But, given the tragic reality of rampant access to guns, research shows that there is a commonality among mass shooters, who often experience trauma and deep levels of social rejection and bullying. And ironically, it is precisely this kind of rhetoric Carlson shared, which targets and vilifies entire groups of people, that will increase the likelihood of this type of violence, in lieu of a ban on assault weapons.

Sociologist James Densley, a criminal justice professor at Metropolitan State University, and Jillian Peterson, associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, conducted a rigorous study on the profiles of every mass shooter, defined as everyone “who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship since 1999," to gain better insight into any potential commonalities. The hope was that an evidence-based approach to the psychology of mass shooters would make it easier to detect people prone to committing these acts of violence before tragedy struck. The duo’s research was funded by the Justice Department and ultimately compiled into a book, “The Violence Project: How To Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic.”

“There’s this really consistent pathway,” Peterson said of mass shooters in an interview with Melanie Warner in Politico last May. “Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers.”

Crucially, this internalized pain at some point becomes externalized, Peterson explained: “What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, ‘Whose fault is this?’ Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward.”

The hateful rhetoric of those such as Carlson helps perpetuate these very social dynamics. In fact, Carlson’s rhetoric is so divisive and unhinged that it helps create the social conditions that hurt and isolate both the victimized — “working-class whites” — and the vilified — trans people. Carlson creates a direct and spurious connection between the perceived social injustices of working-class, white Americans and “the rise of transgenderism” (referred to on Fox News earlier this month as a “social contagion”). In so doing, he is terrorizing the trans community, fomenting hate and social isolation.

Into this waddles Jennifer Aniston who is lamenting that FRIENDS is rightly criticized for its lack of diversity. Today, she's upset. Really? I'm not in the mood for a Karen. I'm really not. And I try not to use that term. But I'm damn tired of both her and Lisa Kudrow pretending this is new criticism. It's not. They were called out for this while the shows was on. They were called out in the first seasons. In fact, their sitcom set in NYC aired opposite another sitcom set in NYC. Anyone remember that? LIVING SINGLE -- with Kim Fields, Queen Latifah, Erika Alexander and Kim Cole. So stop fronting, Jen. No one's buying your nonsense. The show was called out from the beginning for this. She makes it worse by then blathering away with, "Now it's a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it really hard for comedians, because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, make fun of life. [Before] you could joke about a bigot and have a laugh -- that was hysterical. And it was about educating people on how ridiculous people were. And now we're not allowed to do that."

Jennifer could you be more stupid?

That is not what happened. CBS polled -- and then buried the study -- and found people laughing with ALL IN THE FAMILY weren't learning racism was bad. They thought Archie was hilarious. It's one of the reasons Caroll O'Connor began to hate doing the show. Nothing was being accomplished except it was promoting racism and, to those opposed to racism, it was turning a bigot into a loveable rascal. That's what the polling demonstrated and that's why CBS buried the study. But periodicals reported on it. And have continued to do so. From 2021's CINEMA SCHOLARS article by Cassandra Feltus:

In 1974, Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach conducted a U.S.-Canadian-based study to examine various viewers’ perception of the sitcom. The purpose of the study stemmed from the results of a CBS opinion survey. CBS reported that most people simply enjoyed All In The Family and did not take offense to its content.

Using the selective perception hypothesis and selective exposure hypothesis, Vidmar and Rokeach discovered that viewer perception is oppositional to the dominant reading of the show, as well as different than the results of the CBS survey.

The selective perception hypothesis suggests that a person’s values and attitudes will affect their perception and interpretation of content. If a person already subscribes to a racist ideology, they are more likely to enjoy the show for reasons in line with their values.

These high prejudiced viewers would relate to Archie Bunker and view him in a positive light. They would see Archie as the voice of reason, while any liberal-minded characters were the ones causing conflict.

A person who believes in equal rights and has a more progressive worldview would likely enjoy the show for its intended purpose as a satire on bigotry. Low prejudiced viewers would see Archie as a loud, domineering racist. In contrast, they would admire Mike for his tolerance of Archie’s bigotry and for always standing up for his liberal beliefs.

The selective exposure hypothesis suggests that people tend to expose themselves to content that aligns with their already established attitudes and beliefs. High prejudiced people are more likely to watch All In The Family because they identify with the main character and his worldview.

The study found that the show appealed more to high prejudiced viewers, who agreed with Archie Bunker’s view on race, than lower prejudiced viewers, who found his opinions to be insensitive and offensive.

The overall result of the study proved that Lear’s dominant reading of All In The Family was not what most of the audience perceived. It was found that most viewers enjoy watching the show because they think Archie speaks the truth about American society. With this data, the study concluded that the program is more likely reinforcing prejudice and racism, rather than combating it.

Do you get it? Because every thing you said, every word, is wrong. How does it feel to be so monumentally stupid?

John Russel (LGBTQ NATION) notes:

Aniston’s assertion that jokes about bigots educate people and reveal the absurdity of bigotry is also worth noting. Research has indicated that satirizing bigotry rarely changes people’s attitudes, and authors Malcolm Gladwell and Jonathan Coe have argued that laughing at satirical portrayals of political problems like bigotry can actually diffuse the discomfort with them that could lead to actual political action.

Aniston’s comments suggest an anxiety on her part about what can and cannot be said in a comedic context that echoes Chappelle and Gervais’s rage against “cancel culture.” But that anxiety neglects the way comedy functions, and in particular what the undercurrents of homophobia and outright transphobia on Friends implied about queer and trans people. The show’s jokes about Chandler, Ross, and Joey’s casual discomfort with queerness, their frequent panic at being considered gay, may have—as Aniston implied—been intended to reveal how ridiculous homophobia is.

But those jokes also normalized that discomfort, portraying it as harmlessly laughable rather than toxic. The show did little to dismantle the notion that queerness is shameful, instead making its 90s audience comfortable with laughing it off rather than interrogating why grown men would be so fearful of being considered gay.

Friends’ treatment of Chandler’s transgender parent was even worse, consistently portraying her as an oddity, a freak, someone whose experience of herself and the world could never be understood by “normal” cisgender people.

Oh, Jen, go back to pretending that you have a career with bad Adam Sandler films. Or maybe just go back to pretending that you're desperately seeking a man to fall in love with. But please, go away from this topic, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

A lot of people are attacking drag queens. Their attacks don't reflect the mood of the country. David Hudson (QUEERTY) notes:

[A] new poll reveals most people in the US oppose legislative restrictions on drag shows.

The NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll surveyed people across the political spectrum. It found the biggest issues people are worried about are the economy, “preserving democracy”, immigration, crime and the climate.

On the topic of introducing drag bans, as recently done in Tennessee, 58% opposed such moves. This rose to 73% of Democrats and fell to 37% of Republicans. 57% of those who stated they were Independent opposed such drag restrictions. Overall, just 39% said they supported restrictions on drag performances.

The following sites updated: