i was on the phone with c.i. today and she asked if i knew rosie o'donnell had a podcast? i did not.
so that's episode 4. check it out. if you like rosie, consider clicking her subscribe button.
'the resident' has aired it's final season. the show is
cancelled. that's bad news to joan who just discovered it on 'hulu' and
is in the middle of season 2. she asked if i would note it. no
problem. i actually liked the show when emily vancamp was on it. i
thought she and the male lead (the guy from 'the good wife') worked very
well together. i lost interest when she left the show.
i've
been reminded that i forgot to write about 'the company you keep.'
see, that's always going to happen if i put it off. if i don't do it
when i remember, i'll forget. sorry. if you've been reading for long,
you know that.
'the
company you keep' stars milo ventimiglia as charlie and catherine haena
kim as emma. they meet up, fall in bed and into love. she does not
know the truth about him, he does not know the truth about her. charlie
and his family are con artists running scams - 1 scam has no left them
in debt to daphne who is part of a crime family and trying to take over
her family's business. emma has a secret too. she's a c.i.a.
officer.
they're in love - and have met each other's parents - before they learn about each other.
charlie learns that she's somehow law enforcement before she learns about him.
he's
dropping off money (that his family owes daphne's family) when he spots
her doing surveillance and he knows she's something to do with law
enforcement.
he exposes
himself to her. after he finds out that daphne has her sights on emma
and has some secret she's going to use to blackmail emma and keep her
away from daphne's mob, charlie goes to warn her. how does he know
these things?
because he works for daphne.
emma exploded. she told her father he was right about charlie.
but due to the case involved, she had to work with charlie.
so
now they're working to try to bring down daphne. already daphne's
bought some of emma's silence. the dirt she had was that emma's father
cheated on her mother. they're a political family - her brother's
running for re-election - and they can't have scandal.
this episode's big twist?
charlie and his family have started another big con that emma knows nothing about and could get them busted.
she's
already refused to let him be busted. this episode, feds should have
busted him. emma was watching and, at the last minute, indicated that
charlie shouldn't be busted. otherwise, he would have ended the episode
in jail.
you have to wonder how long that's going to last and how much emma is willing to overlook?
Wednesday, April 12, 2023. Corruption dances across the American
landscape while THE ATLANTIC rushes to minimize it, 42-year-old member
of Congress 'forgets' that she's not married (and has never been
married), and much more.
Will
Crooked Clarence Thomas be punished? Will he be removed from the
Supreme Court to restore some legitimacy to the body? Or is the whole
system so corrupt that he'll be allowed to remain on the bench and
pretend like nothing happened? Barry Grey's WSWS report would argue for the latter since the whole system has become corrupt:
A common feature of the pervasive corruption of capitalist politics
and politicians in America is the practice of using privileged
information to make stock trades, particularly in the midst of the
recurring crises that beset Wall Street. In such matters, as in passing
laws to ban strikes by rail workers and impose contracts rejected by the
workers, bipartisanship prevails.
Last month’s government bailout
of rich depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the
second and third biggest bank failures in US history, is no exception.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal,
citing recent legally required disclosures, reported that three House
members, two Republicans and one Democrat, two of whom were directly
involved in secret bailout talks, made substantial trades in bank stocks
in the initial days of the crisis. According to the Journal’s
own investigation, New York Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and
Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer made trades that marked “the
latest instance of congressional stock trading intersecting with
official business.”
Malliotakis bought stock in New York Community Bankcorp (NYCB) on
March 17, two days before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced
that Flagstar Bank, a subsidiary of NYCB, would take on Signature’s
deposits. Signature, headquartered in New York City, had been placed in
receivership by New York regulators on March 12.
Just days before
she bought the stock, Malliotakis issued a statement (March 13) on her
Twitter account in which she boasted of working closely with federal and
state officials to address the failure of Signature.
“Both last
night and this morning I have been meeting with the Federal Reserve,
U.S. Department of Treasury, Governor [Kathy] Hochul and New York State
Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris to
discuss the closure of Signature Bank,” she wrote, adding, “I have been
assured all depositors will be made whole through the Deposit Insurance
Fund which is made up of contributions from all member banks, not
taxpayer funds.”
Malliotakis bought $1,001 to $15,000 in NYBC
stock on March 17. The day after the March 19 announcement that NYBC’s
Flagstar subsidiary would acquire Signature’s deposits, NYBC stock rose
32 percent, landing the congresswoman a tidy profit.
Rep.
Malliotakis’s disclosure said the stock purchase was made by her spouse,
a common excuse given by politicians who are involved in insider
trading. Unfortunately for the congresswoman, she is unmarried.
She
forgot. She forgot she wasn't married. Just slipped her mind. A Greek
Orthodox, 42-year-old woman and she 'just forgot.' Kind of hard to
believe that, kind of hard to believe it hasn't been a topic of
conversation in her own Greek Orthodox family.
Democratic
senators are calling for the Supreme Court to investigate Justice
Clarence Thomas for failing to disclose reported luxury trips funded by a
billionaire Republican donor.
The Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have announced they will hold a hearing on Supreme Court ethics.
The panel also warned of legislation, if the court does not resolve this issue on its own.
Clarence
Thomas is the dumbest U.S. Supreme Court Justice as well as the longest
serving and the most sexually creepy, I always thought, although the
limber Brett Kavanaugh bounced far ahead of him in the last category.
In
2016, Thomas asked a question in court, breaking a 10-year silence. For
a decade, the man had nothing to say. Was he shy? He’s no longer shy,
his confidence built up from hanging with billionaire Harlan Crow.
“What
first attracted you to the billionaire Harlan Crow?” I’d ask Thomas.
“What first attracted you to the non-bright and biddable Justice
Thomas?” I’d ask Crow.
They’re
a pairing made in American hell, a bad influence on each other and a
terror to fellow citizens, particularly women. For 20 years, Crow has
treated Thomas and his family to luxury cruises on his yacht, flights on
his private jet, and stays at his East Texas ranch and his private
Adirondacks resort, ProPublica reveals. His gifts, including portraits, have been lavish. Thomas keeps them secret.
ProPublica’s scrupulously reported new piece
on Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong luxury travel on the dime of a
single GOP megadonor will probably not shock you at all. Sure, the
dollar amounts spent are astronomical, and of course the justice failed
to report any of it, and of course the megadonor insists that he and
Thomas are dear old friends, so of course the superyacht and the flights
on the Bombardier Global 5000 jet and the resorts are all perfectly
benign. So while the details are shocking, the pattern here is hardly a
new one. This is a longstanding ethics loophole that has been exploited
by parties with political interests in cases before the court to curry
favor in exchange for astonishing junkets and perks. It is allowed to
happen.
We
will doubtless spend a few news cycles expressing outrage that Harlan
Crow has spent millions of dollars lavishing the Thomases with lux
vacations and high-end travel and barely pretended to separate business
and pleasure, giving half a million dollars
to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas in 2011 (which funded her
own $120,000 salary). But because the justices are left to police
themselves and opt not to do so, we will turn to other matters in due
time. Before the outrage dries up, however, it is worth zeroing in on
two aspects of the ProPublica report that do have lasting legal
implications. First, the same people who benefited from the lax status
quo continue to fight against any meaningful reforms that might curb the
justices’ gravy train. Second, the rules governing Thomas’ conduct over
these years, while terribly insufficient, actually did require
him to disclose at least some of these extravagant gifts. The fact that
he ignored the rules anyway illustrates just how difficult it will be
to force the justices to obey the law: Without the strong threat of
enforcement, a putative public servant like Thomas will thumb his nose
at the law.
If
there is a single image that captures this seedy state of affairs, it
is a painting of Thomas hanging out with Leonard Leo (Federalist Society
co-chair and judicial power broker) and Mark Paoletta (who has served
as chief counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence and general counsel
of Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget). Both are political
operatives, though Crow assures us that they would never dare talk about
Thomas’ work. This image should be enough to shock anyone into taking
action against the spigot of dark money that flows directly from
billionaire donors into the court,
its justices, and their spouses’ pockets. Continuing to live as though
there is nothing to be done about any of this is a choice. We make it
every day.
It
is a horror show. And note the silence -- still -- from so many 'left'
YOUTUBERS. And note the shameful whores rushing in to defend Clarence
and/or his sugar daddy. The always embarrassing ATLANTIC offers garbage
from Graeme Wood who rushes to defend Nazi Harlan Crow -- Clarence's
sugar daddy:
Recent reporting by ProPublica
has suggested that that is what Harlan Crow in fact is: a sinister
Croesus meddling in world affairs, chiefly by corrupting Clarence Thomas
with gifts of private-jet flights and bottles of pricey French wine.
Crow also owns Nazi memorabilia, including paintings by Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, and a set of swastika-emblazoned napkins.
But,
please note, Graeme insists that doesn't make him a Nazi. After you
question Graeme's sanity, the next one is to ask if Harlan is also
Graeme's sugar daddy?
No, you don't own a
signed copy of MEIN KAMPF unless you're a fan boi. If you're disturbed
-- the natural reaction -- by Hitler crimes and you somehow end up with a
signed copy, you throw it in the trash. You discontinue it as a
collector's item in the interest of the millions who suffered because of
Hitler. That's before we get to the paintings and the
"swastika-emblazoned napkins."
Hon, Happy April 20th. Clarence and Ginni are coming over, where do we keep the swastika-emblazoned napkins?
I've already placed them on the sideboard, right next to our commemorative Heinrich Himmler plates. Happy April 20th.
The incident reflects the broader lack of accountability at the
high court regarding off-bench behavior. Justices regularly brush aside
reporters’ queries for specifics on travel and gifts, book advances and
other extracurricular activities.
They have repeatedly spurned calls by members of Congress that
they adopt a formal ethics code. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Dick Durbin made another such plea to Roberts this week as he also urged
the chief justice to open an investigation into Thomas’ conduct.
At the same time, the high court has long benefited from a certain
degree of good will, free of the scrutiny watchdog groups and news
media have given the legislative and executive branches of government.
They may have squandered that good will.
Polls show the public approval of the court – now controlled by a
conservative supermajority – plunging. The pattern was accelerated after
last summer’s reversal of longstanding precedent in multiple cases,
most notably the decision dissolving nearly a half century of abortion
rights precedent.
It's an illegitimate court and its image is in tatters. This cannot stand.
There’s
no need to demonize and dehumanize any group of people in a legislative
process stacked in Republicans state lawmakers’ favor from the get-go.
Those are the spoils of 20 years of gerrymandering, packing courts with
partisans and voter suppression.
Florida
Republicans hold a super-majority and have all the votes in the
Legislature necessary to pass whatever bill they and their autocratic agenda-setting leader, Gov. DeSantis, could possibly desire.
But they carry the bully gene in their souls.
They’ve
now advanced to quash the most vulnerable among us with evil verbal
attacks that have no place in society, much less the Florida House.
At a committee hearing Monday, Rep. Webster Barnaby, a Deltona Republican, railed against transgender people, calling them “demons and imps” and “mutants from another planet.”
Disgusting
behavior on many levels, but the lack of decorum and civility is
especially galling because he’s targeting vulnerable people —
misunderstood transgender people, who have the highest suicide rates in
the country.
Last
month in Nashville, widely regarded as the entertainment capital of the
South, Tennessee lawmakers passed a law that bans one class of
entertainer: "male and female impersonators," otherwise known as drag
performers. However, a day before the nation's first anti-drag law was set to take effect, a federal judge temporarily blocked it for violating the First Amendment.
That
is right. It's a free speech issue. You wouldn't know that from
watching the endlessly pontificating Jonathan Turley as he climbed the
cross for every right winger who got what was coming to them -- booed.
Booing is not free speech, he Tweets endlessly and he write over and
over in bad columns for FOX "NEWS" and THE NEW YORK POST. Once upon a
time, before he became so disgusting, other newspapers would carry him.
Not now. So Swirley shows up to whine of how uncivil and mean and
wrong it is when a hate merchant gets booed (or claims that they were
'assaulted' when there's no evidence to back that claim up) but when
lawmakers try to strip performers of their First Amendment right, that
doesn't warrant a column -- after over a year of this, he will do a blog
post -- where he pretends he just stop breast feeding his own children
and -- having birthed children (and nearly gotten back that figure) --
he knows how disgusting drag queens are but . . . maybe even they have
some rights too? Such is the decaying mind of what once the country's
leading legal light.
Back to Roman Feeser:
How did drag queens get dragged into politics? For that, we turn to the city of Jackson, Tennessee.
In
March, Tennessee state Rep. Chris Todd, a Republican, indicated to the
state Senate that it was his constituents who requested he take up the
bill: "This past year in my community, we had a local group decide to do
a, quote, family-friendly drag show. When they listed this as
family-friendly, my community rose up."
The
community of Jackson never even saw the scheduled Pride performance
before opponents raised thousands of dollars in donations and filed an
injunction to prevent it from taking place. Todd then introduced the new
bill as an obscenity statute to prevent "adult cabaret performers like
drag queens from performing in public spaces where children could be
present."
Critics
of the bill say an obscenity law is already on the books, and that this
is specifically targeting the LGBTQIA+ community.
And
it does target them. That's why these laws are being proposed. But
that doesn't concern Jonathan Turley. He's too busy throwing his lot in
with Lorie Smith -- the web 'designer' who insists her free speech
rights would be abused and denied if she were forced to design a website
for a same-sex couple. Jonathan's so deep in his homophobia that he
can't even note that the woman has no standing. She's not been asked to
do this and said "no." But, you know, maybe someday, it might come up,
possibly. So by all means let's waste the Supreme Court's time. Once
upon a time, law professors grasped standing, taught standing and
questioned it when a case moved forward when the person bringing it did
not have standing.
But
when, like Jonathan Turley, you now drop to all fours and beg the
bigotry to take you from behind, you can't be bothered with legal
concepts.
If he didn't also
agree to a ball-gag, maybe he could explain to us all how Lorie Smith
has been injured? She thinks she will. She thinks someday a same-sex
couple is going to come to her for a website -- they'd have to be really
self-loathing to pay her any money -- and that, when that happens, she
will be damaged. Where's the injury right now? There is none.
But
that's what we have that no one wants to get honest about: A crazed
right-wing, motivated by hate, working to overturn the rights of
everyone. They plot in secret, they seek out idiots like Lorie Smith to
pursue cases and they try to get those cases with the judges they
want. I'd argue the whole thing is a criminal conspiracy that is
abusing the courts and is a threat to democracy. As Nazi worshipper
Harlan Crow demonstrates, big money gives you access. Clarence Thomas'
sugar daddy is all about pay-to-play and democracy and the law are
destroyed as a result.
But
don't look to Turley to weigh in on that, he's too busy gazing up at
the hate merchants as he kneels before them, ready to service their
every need.
It's
really sad when someone's kink is so out of control that they let it
destroy their reputation but, boys and girls, that's how low Turley's
sunk.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro visibly stumbled as he attempted to defend Republican billionaire donor Harlan Crow’s ownership of Nazi memorabilia and remnants from totalitarian regimes.
The Daily Wire founder used his latest podcast to defend Clarence Thomas’ from ProPublica’s report that
the Supreme Court justice accepted luxurious gifts and vacations paid
for by Crow, and Thomas never marked any of this down in his financial
disclosures. This led to Shapiro fuming over the scrutiny Crow has received for his collection of historical pieces from toppled autocracies.
How sad, how very sad. Billy on the "Unplugged" episode of DIFFICULT PEOPLE (Billy Eichner's
character) was tempted by Cecil Jefford until he saw the man's
collection of Nazi artifacts. That was all it took for Billy. Sadly,
the same cannot be said for Ben Shapiro and, Ben, John Mulaney is not playing the part of Harlan Crow. So exactly what is it that has turned your head?
(John Mulaney's next comedy special debuts on NETFLIX, April 25th, FYI.)
Ben Shapiro can take comfort in the fact that he's still young. John Stauber can't claim to be young. Or good looking.
For
those who don't know, George Sorors has given to Human Rights Watch so
John's furious. I don't like George Soros. I'm on record and that goes
back to the '00s. I had to go on record because Ava and I were accused
of taking Soros money. I don't take blood money. And I'm not a
whore. I can't be bought. Why did the rumor start? Ava and I wrote a piece
that numerous sites reposted (without our permission, which is fine)
and many were, like Danny Schechter's MEDIA CHANNEL, sites that took
money from Soros. We did not take money from him. We did not take
money from anyone. We were not asked by anyone if they could reprint
and we were not told by anyone that they had reposted us. I knew Danny
offline. When I found out that the Soros claim was because of Danny's
reposting, I asked him if he realized that he had damaged our reputation
and he replied with a list of other sites that had reposted Ava and my
piece. Those people may have received money from Soros (I know Danny
did) but Ava and I didn't. And we made clear of that and that we found
the assertion offensive because George Soros has made his money off the
blood of others. That is his line of work. Others have to suffer for
him to profit.
Unlike John Stauber, I reject
George Soros. John kind of does. He pretends he's enraged by everyone
who takes Soros money and but then he reTweets Susan "Medea" Benjamin,
for example. Does he really not know how much money Soros has given
Global Exchange?
He's deranged. (Actually both are, John and George.)
How
stupid is John? I mean, I know he's stupid. Rebecca's rightly pointed
out "john stauber is the 21st century david horowitz." He's gone over to the right and offers his homophobia and his
transphobia and reTweets the most objectionable people -- as Rebecca and
Ruth have repeatedly documented. (He also blocked me when I objected
to his lying about a friend of mine in a Tweet. John just makes up
garbage these days.) But has he lost all his marbles (Ruth was
just saying he was senile with dementia.) The reason I ask is it was
last week that the new spokesperson was noted. And yet FOX BUSINESS
NEWS knows the immediate impact. From looking at sales records? No,
from cherry picking a few bars. Is it even five? Bad writing bores me
and I didn't make it through the whole article.
Imagine
that, FOX BUSINESS "NEWS" -- from the network trying to demonize trans
people -- publishes an article with no real figures or, for that matter,
data and former media critic John Stauber swallows it down to the hairy
root. Well, at least he's found a calling. He's kind of like a
priest . . . with too much time on his hands and unlimited access to
minors.
The Iraqi government has called on Turkiye to apologise for an attack on an airport in the country's northern Kurdish region, Reuters news agency reports.
According to the report, the Iraqi demand on Saturday came as a Turkish Defence Ministry official told the Reuters news agency that no Turkish Armed Forces operation had taken place in that region in recent days.
Iraq's presidency said the attack on
Friday took place in the vicinity of the Sulaimaniyah Airport in the
semi-autonomous Kurdish region, denouncing it as a "flagrant aggression"
against its sovereignty.
The US press that has ignored this attack continue to ignore it.
from sunday, that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY "Crooked Clarence" about clarence thomas who took bribes from his 'friend' the nazi-sugar daddy.
former
child star brooke shields hasn't had a career in years. if we're
honest, she has had no career as an adult. 1 guest spot on 'friends'
does not a career make. 'suddenly susan' was sandwiched between 2 hit
shows on thursday nights on nbc and it still wasn't a hit.
Brooke Shields has said that the director of "The Blue Lagoon" has tried to reach out to her following the release of her new Hulu documentary, in which she has accused him of wanting "to sell my sexual awakening."
In a teaser clip from Tuesday's episode of "The Drew Barrymore Show,"
the actor and model said she's let Randal Kleiser's calls go straight
to voicemail as she's not interested in "bringing any of it back up
again."
"Now
that the documentary is out, have any of the male directors reached out
to you, like Louis Malle and Franco Zeffirelli?" Barrymore asked,
referring to the filmmakers behind two of Shields' earliest roles,
"Pretty Baby" and "Endless Love."
Shields
replied that both had died, but said that Kleiser, the director behind
the coming-of-age story, was still alive and had tried to make contact
with her.
She
said: "I saw his name on my phone, and I was like, 'What do I do?' And I
let it go to voicemail because I was like, 'I want to see what the tone
is.'"
"He wants to chat. I don't know about what," Shields said of the "Grease" director.
However, Shields indicated that she might not return to call as "I don't feel like bringing any of it back up again."
Poor
Brooke? Modeling and films gave her a life, paid her bills. Her
mother, a struggling single-mom, protected her -- yes, Teri protected
Brooke. Brooke wasn't raped while Teri was responsible for her. Teri
watched out for her daughter. Teri -- not noted in the 'documentary' --
made sure Brooke had fun as well. Brooke talks about how Teri would
ask her each day if she wanted to work and, if Brooke didn't, they'd go
to the beach or something else. Brooke knows her mother did more than
that. Brooke knows that Teri made sure it wasn't all work when it was
time to promote a film. She, for example, destroyed the people
responsible for BLUE LAGOON's NYC premiere because Brooke had no fun
with that. She demanded -- and got -- better treatment and better
schedules for the other openings.
Brooke's the one
who chose to disclose that she was a virgin -- she did it to have a
publicity hook for the book she had coming out. You know, the same way
she waited until she needed to promote PRETTY BABY: BROOKE SHIELDS to
disclose that she was raped as a young adult.
Brooke's done that her entire life. So take some accountability.
she's
a failed actress. as a child actress all she knew to do was take off
her clothes. she did that as a model as well. she needs to take
accountability. 'i was a child!' i'm sick of it. i'm especially sick
of her claiming the director of 'blue lagoon' wanted to 'exploit' her.
she read the script. she knew she was playing a little girl stranded on
an island with a little boy and that, when they hit puberty, they mess
around (that is how her character becomes pregnant). so she needs to
stop lying about being exploited. she was 14. she and her mother
wanted to make the film. she made it. stop whining now. i'm really
sick of it.
even at 14, she
knew another nudie was not going to help her (she had a double for the
nude scenes in this film). but she wanted the role.
she took it and delivered the same wooden performance she continues to deliver.
she has the sort of acting 'talent' that's never taxed by a bob hope sketch and that's about all she can handle.
she needs to take accountability and stop blaming every 1 else.
Tuesday, April 11, 2023. The State Dept and DoD try to avoid the topic
of Turkey bombing Iraq, FOX "NEWS" took part in inciting a riot,
DEMOCRACY NOW! does the work Jonathan Turley won't, and much more.
Sulaimaniyah. That's where the airport was bombed last Friday. That's where Saturday, Michael R. Gordon (WALL ST. JOURNAL) reported that the Turkish government carried out an attack Friday on a convoy in
Iraq which included three US military members.
The issue came up in the US State Dept press briefing on Monday moderated by spokesperson Vedant Patel.
QUESTION: Thank you very much. I’d like to go back,
if you like, to last week, last Friday. It’s been confirmed that three
U.S. military personnel were traveling with the SDF’s Mazloum Kobane in
northern Iraq on Friday. This was confirmed by the CENTCOM. My question
is going to be: Is the United States now putting American lives at risk
in providing round-the-clock personal protection to Mazloum Abdi
wherever he may go because we all know that this man comes from the
ranks of an organization that’s on your list of FTOs?
MR PATEL: I’m not familiar with this case, so I’m
going to have to check on – check with our team and get back to you.
Obviously, for any comment about force posture or the positioning of
American troops, I’d refer you to our Pentagon colleagues.
QUESTION: Do you know of anything, any information
at the State Department, that Mazloum Abdi’s dealings in northern Iraq
or northern Syria, wherever it may be, that the United States is
actually providing some sort of security guarantees so that he can
travel safely?
MR PATEL: I just – I don’t have anything to offer on that. But I’m happy to check and see if we can have anything to say.
[. . .]
MR PATEL: That is a hypothetical I’m not going to
engage in, Dylan. Again, the – our – you have heard me say, you’ve heard
the Secretary say that we intend to reschedule this trip when
conditions allow.
Go ahead, in the back.
QUESTION: Back on the drone strike on the U.S. convoy in the vicinity of Sulaymaniyah airport.
MR PATEL: Yeah.
QUESTION: You’re aware of that strike? Okay. There
are some reports saying that the strike carried out by Türkiye. Can you
confirm that the drone was Turkish? If not, who does the U.S. believe
carried out the strike?
MR PATEL: So let me say a couple of things, and my
colleagues at the Pentagon can speak to some of these – more specifics.
Our Department of Defense is investigating the attack on the convoy on
April 7th. That convoy included U.S. military personnel. We can confirm
that there were no casualties, and we of course forcefully oppose any
action that threatens the safety and security of U.S. personnel. U.S.
forces remain in Iraq and Syria in support of local partners to achieve
the enduring defeat of ISIS. The degradation of ISIS in the region
continues to be an important priority of ours.
And broadly, I’m going to defer to the DOD and their investigation
before speaking to any source or origination. What I will just reaffirm
is that any action in Iraq should respect Iraqi sovereignty and
territorial integrity. And we encourage governments to work together to
deconflict cross-border military operations.
QUESTION: Has the U.S. – has the U.S. spoken with Türkiye or someone —
MR PATEL: I’m just not going to get ahead of the DOD’s investigation.
QUESTION: That’s something. When I asked the
question, you said that you didn’t know what happened on Friday in
northern Iraq. Now, you just provide a statement on same subject. That
was my question.
MR PATEL: I didn’t – I didn’t understand that’s what you were asking about.
QUESTION: Yeah.
MR PATEL: I thought you were asking about —
QUESTION: I was asking – the three U.S. military
personnel were traveling with Mazloum Abdi. Can you confirm that, that
they were in the convoy together?
MR PATEL: Understood. I did not realize that that’s
what you were speaking to. So I’m not going to get into the specifics of
– beyond what I just said. I would refer you to —
QUESTION: (Inaudible), right?
MR PATEL: I would refer you to the Pentagon to speak
more specifically. What I can just say is that the convoy included U.S.
military personnel and that there are no casualties.
QUESTION: Do you know why the U.S. military personnel were there, specifically?
MR PATEL: Again, that is a question for our colleagues at the Department of Defense.
Go ahead.
Very poor
performance by the spokesperson -- and that shirt's hideous -- not
really sure what to start with here. Turkey is being spelled
differently by the US government now? When did that start? Hint, no
one's told DoD about the spell change. Second, ask DoD is really not an
answer, it's just a dance.
The Dept of Defense
also held a press briefing yesterday. It was moderated by spokesperson
Chris Meagher and it was populated wit a bunch of idiots. He kept
avoiding the same questions over the recent document leaks but that's
all they wanted to talk about -- the press. They included Nancy Youssef
who used covering Iraq to make a name for herself on the national
level. PBS should've asked about Iraq as well but, as they demonstrated
for four weeks of 20 year anniversary 'celebration,' they don't give a
damn about Iraq.
It's really appalling to me that it was a VOICE OF AMERICA staffer who brought up the issue.
Q: Hey, thanks for doing this. Two quick clarifications. One, to
Jen's question, you wouldn't say specifically how many documents have
been shared but can you give us a better idea on the scope of this? I
mean, can we say, you know, as many as 100? Without getting specific,
just give us some more detail on the scope of that. That's number one.
And
then number two, you said you'd talked to allies. Sabrina mentioned
that as well. Was Turkey one of these allies that you've spoken to about
this? Because they were specifically mentioned in the documents. And
when you had that conversation, was there also a conversation about the
strike in Iraq over the weekend?
MR. MEAGHER: Thanks, Carla.
So
in terms of the scope, I'm just not going to get into any more
specifics. We continue to review and assess both the veracity and kind
of the scope of what we're looking at there. So I'm just not going to
have anything further for you on that.
In terms of our allies and
partners engagement, I'm not going to get into the specifics of who
we're engaging, other than to say that the Department and U.S. officials
are working at high levels to have these conversations. Those
conversations began over the weekend and continue today.
Q: So
just to follow up, if you can't say if you talked to Turkey about these
leaks, can you at least say whether or not Turkey was reached out to as a
result of the strikes that happened over the weekend?
MR. MEAGHER: No, I don't have anything for you on that.
Again, no one's informed DoD that the US government has elected to use a new spelling for Turkey.
Though
DoD reporters weren't interested in the topic, Iraq continues to demand
an apology from Turkey for this bombing. Three US service members were
in the convoy that was targeted.
Karwan Faidhi Dri (RUDAW) adds, "The strike comes a few days after Turkey imposed a three-month flight
ban on Sulaimani’s airport because of what Turkey’s foreign ministry
dubbed “infiltration” by the PKK."
But
apparently let's all be Nancy A. Youssef and PBS and just ignore what
happened. That is what they and their outlets are doing.
This ASHARQ AL-AWSAT article NEEDS TO BE FIXED IMMEDIATELY.
The person pictured under the headline and identified in the caption
["Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammad al-Halbousi (dpa)"] is not the
Speaker of Parliament. How do I know? For one thing, no woman has been
Speaker of Parliament in Iraq in the last 20 years. For another, the
woman pictured is Tsai Ing-wen and I'd hope most news consumers in the
US would know that.
If they can fix their photo, we may note what the news article says.
Still
on Iraq. I'm all for reparations if they can get a representative
government. I'm not for handing over a dollar to the government
presently -- it is far too corrupt. But there are Iraqi individuals who
can get compensation right now because we know who they are and we know
the US government harmed them. They can be given money with no
in-between to steal part or all of it.
In one image, naked detainees with bags over their heads are piled on
top of each other in a grotesque human pyramid. An American soldier —
Sabrina Harman — leans over them from behind, grinning. Her smiling
colleague, Charles Graner, gives a thumbs up.
Majli believes he
is one of the men in the human pyramid photograph. He remembers being
forced to lie, naked, on the bare skin of another prisoner, and the
feeling of being crushed as other naked detainees were piled on top of
him. "I was heavier back then, so they put me close to the bottom," he
remembers. "I wished for death. I would rather have been dead than to be
in that position."
Majli describes a culture of abuse and humiliation inside Abu Ghraib. He
remembers an American soldier threw sound grenades into his and other
detainees' cells. He recalls guards poking at his genitals with wooden
sticks, setting snarling police dogs on inmates and soldiers firing live
ammunition around them. Majli says he developed pneumonia after guards
flooded his cell with cold water as a tactic to stop the prisoners from
getting rest. "They wouldn't let us sleep for days."
Now
let's try to get through a few issues quickly. January 6, 2021, there
was a riot in DC. We have not focused on that here. We've not clutched
the pearls or acted as though the riot was the end of humanity. Things
seem to be getting sorted out fine with one exception. James Halpin (THE CITIZEN'S VOICE) reports:
Two
years ago, Annie Howell was such an ardent supporter of then-President
Donald Trump that when his re-election began slipping from his grasp,
she climbed through a broken window at the U.S. Capitol and recorded a
video in a trashed conference room shouting, "Whose house? Our house!"
But
as Mr. Trump surrendered Tuesday on felony document fraud charges,
Howell's once-unwavering loyalty to the former president had given way
to regret for her role in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
During
an interview with The Citizens' Voice, she said she feels she had been
"brainwashed" and that she now realizes Mr. Trump's claims of widespread
voter fraud amounted to little more than smoke and mirrors designed to
mislead his supporters.
Good
for Annie Howell that she can reflect and learn from it. But I would
argue her statements point to FOX NEWS. FOX NEWS lied on air.
Repeatedly.
This is no longer in dispute.
Mother Tucker Carlson -- Glenneth Greenwald's sainted Mother -- lied.
He pumped up a frenzy to get ratings and he was lying and he knew what
he was broadcasting lies. Edward Helmore (GUARDIAN) reported:
While anchors Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo have
been singled out for pushing false claims of a fraudulent election, the
fallout has landed primarily on Carlson.
In
group chats obtained by Dominion, the network’s biggest names – Carlson,
Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity – appeared to doubt claims of election
fraud that were featured prominently on the network. At the same time,
Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, said in a court deposition that anyone who
knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast “should be reprimanded, maybe got
rid of”.
So far, Fox is standing by its stars.
On Thursday, Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, heir apparent and
executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation, voiced
support for management, its roster of stars and backed Fox New’s
editorial standards.
“A news organization has
an obligation – and it is an obligation – to report news fulsomely
[sic], wholesomely and without fear or favor. That’s what Fox News has
always done and that’s what Fox News will always do,” he said.
That
might not wash with many observers and media critics. But probably of
equal concern, especially for Carlson, are some of the private opinions
voiced about Trump. The Dominion lawsuit revealed a text from Carlson
declaring: “I hate him passionately.”
Nor
is that the only political fight Carlson became mired in last week.
Carlson was directly criticized by the White House deputy press
secretary, Andrew Bates, for describing the January 6 rioters as
“orderly and meek … sightseers” as he began broadcasting footage from
the insurrection handed to him by Republican House speaker Kevin
McCarthy.
If Mother Tucker -- friend
to con artists like tubby Tara Reade -- knowingly lied on air about the
election, I think we're talking inciting a riot.
It's
a little much legal for the faded and tiny mind of Jonathan Turley to
digest or explore. He's too busy attacking AOC for saying that a
federal judge's questionable verdict should be ignored and acting as
though no administration has ever set aside a federal judge's verdict.
In addition, she's not the only one calling for it.
Appearing
on CNN This Morning, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) slammed the decision from
Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, who
ruled Friday to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone, a drug used to perform medication abortions.
“Do
you think that a judge in Texas should be able to say that an FDA’s
determination about a drug is invalid?” asked Kaitlin Collins.
When Mace said she did not, Collins inquired if Mace agreed with Ocasio-Cortez’s assertion that the Biden administration and FDA should ignore Kacsmaryk’s decision.
Mace replied in the affirmative:
I
would, this is an FDA-approved drug. I support the usage of
FDA-approved drugs even if I might disagree. It’s not up to us to decide
as legislators or even as the court system whether or not this is the
right drug to use or not, number one. So I agree with ignoring it at
this point, but there are other lawsuits that are happening right now in
other states as well over this issue. But to look at the case itself,
when you look at the law that the judge used, an old law that the
Supreme Court said was unconstitutional, this thing should just be
thrown out, quite frankly.
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
When the U.S. district judge, the federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk,
ruled Friday in Texas that the Food and Drug Administration’s
23-year-old approval of the leading abortion drug mifepristone violates
the law, he cited the 1873 Comstock Act. The so-called anti-vice law
prohibits the mailing or distribution of, quote, “obscene materials” and
has been dormant for half a century.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the 50-year-old federal right to abortion in its Dobbs
decision last year, the Justice Department issued a memorandum that
said the Comstock Act does not prohibit the mailing of such drugs as
mifepristone. But in his ruling, the Trump-appointed anti-abortion
judge, Kacsmaryk, agrees with plaintiffs in the case that the law does
in fact prohibit mailing the drug.
For more, we’re joined by Lauren MacIvor Thompson, historian of birth control, specialist in specifically the Comstock Act.
Lauren MacIvor Thompson, if you can explain what this ruling is he
invoked from eighteen — from the 19th century, eighteen seventy — what
was it? — nine — 1873?
LAUREN MacIVOR THOMPSON:
Yeah, 1873. You’re right. So, yeah, this, as a historian, when I read
the opinion on Friday afternoon, I was just kind of gobsmacked, although
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, as Jessica and Alexis already
pointed out. The Comstock Act of 1873 was the product of a vice
reformer, Anthony Comstock, who lobbied Congress in 1873, and the law
was passed in March of 1873, so we’re looking at 150 years now just last
month. And the law essentially criminalized anything having to do with
sex at the federal level, and that included instruments that could be
used for the prevention of conception or to procure abortion. And so,
for the judge to raise the Comstock law from the dead, essentially, as a
viable legal strategy in order to achieve a ban on medication abortion,
you know, as a historian, I just really saw us kind of coming full
circle, and not in a good way.
AMYGOODMAN: And talk more about this. And talk more about who Comstock was and what this means about where this country is going.
LAUREN MacIVOR THOMPSON:
Yeah, that’s such a good question, because I think we do have to look
at Anthony Comstock specifically as a person. It illustrates, in many
ways, how one person can have a really outsize impact on our democracy.
Comstock served in the Union Army, where he was really scandalized by
the amount of alcohol, pornography, you know, that his fellow soldiers
were taking advantage of during the Civil War. And after the war, he
went to New York, where he aligned himself with the Young Men’s
Christian Association, and he started a sort of offshoot of that group
called the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. And at that
point, he actually went — he was funded to go down to Washington, D.C.,
and to lobby Congress for this obscenity law. And he was just obsessed
with sex, and he was able to get the senators and representatives at the
time on board. And it was one of the quickest laws that has ever been
passed in American history. There was really, really no opposition to
it.
AMYGOODMAN: Um —
LAUREN MacIVOR THOMPSON: And so — yes?
AMYGOODMAN: I was just going to say, Michelle Goldberg writes in The New York Times,
“the Comstock Act, the notorious anti-obscenity law used to indict the
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, ban books by D.H. Lawrence
and arrest people by the thousands,” turning 150 last month.
LAUREN MacIVOR THOMPSON:
Yes. This was a law with teeth. There were steep fines for violating
the Comstock Act. Certainly, you could be sentenced to hard labor. You
could be sentenced to years in prison. And this really ensnared ordinary
Americans in this kind of vast anti-obscenity legal regime. And it’s
one of those things where, you know, when you look at it as a whole, it
was absolutely a violation of the Constitution. And it wasn’t until the
1920s that there were cases that began to kind of chip away — First
Amendment cases that began to chip away at the Comstock Act. But,
really, it was one of those laws that — at the federal law level, that
just kind of increased and expanded an already existing anti-abortion
legal regime, because there had been state laws existing for 30 or 40
years before that, before the Comstock Act was passed.
AMYGOODMAN: We always talk about resistance. And in 2019, you wrote a piece in the Times,
“Women Have Always Had Abortions.” You talk about the 17th and 18th
centuries, abortion legal under common law before “quickening,” or when
the pregnant woman could feel the fetus move, beginning around 16 weeks.
You write later, “Beginning in the 1850s, however, the crusade against
abortion began in earnest.” This fascinating history, relay it.
LAUREN MacIVOR THOMPSON:
Yeah. So, there were — there’s actually no laws about abortion at all
until the — beginning in the 1830s and 1840s. But in the 1850s,
particularly with the sort of spearheading of the American Medical
Association, physicians in this country began to work with legislators
— white physicians, white legislators began to work together to
criminalize abortion, essentially by 1900 in every state in the union.
And so, what you had was a statewide network of anti-abortion and
anti-contraception laws. And then, layered on top of that, by 1873, you
have the Comstock Act.
So, somebody seeking to abort a pregnancy or to prevent conception —
and, by the way, there were — you know, reproductive control items were
everywhere in America in the 19th century. You could order barrier
methods from any kind of mail order catalog or obtain them at the
pharmacy. Women were managing their fertility at home with these things.
But to do so was risking a legal arrest. I mean, it was a dangerous
prospect to do so because of the legal regime that gets put into place
at both the federal and the state levels.
It
should be self-evident from the tone and tenor of the "discourse"
(read: hysteria) over trans people right now that what we're
experiencing is a moral panic, in the same vein of the Satanic panic of
the 80s. For one thing, the whole shebang is being led by unhinged
QAnon-adjacent actors like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. and the "Libs of TikTok" lady, people who
ignore actual real world sexual abuse in order to indulge in blood
libel-style accusations painting LGBTQ people as pedophiles. For
another, the supposed "whistleblowers" the right trots out are
reminiscent of the sort of shady grifters that always step forward
during these moral panics, such as the liars who claimed they used to be Satanists, the "ex-gays" or people who say embryos scream during abortions.
Seriously, Jamie Reed, the lady they're using to make false accusations at gender-affirmation clinics, is saying kids "identify" as helicopters. One wonders if she's testing how much nonsense people will swallow because they want their prejudices affirmed so badly. As Irin Carmon of New York magazine recently
detailed, anti-trans activists are using "the same playbook" they used
to stigmatize abortion by "fomenting moral panic around the most
vulnerable and co-opting progressive tropes to help fuel it."
Sadly,
there's been robust traffic for centrists and concern trolls who are
ready to ignore all the red flags. It's all because they want so badly
to write "just asking questions" columns that imply, falsely, that the
left is taking this trans acceptance thing "too far." (Seriously,
Carmon's colleague at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, even went so far as to elevate the "kids are helicopters" lady.) Gosh, they wonder, have people actually considered
the downsides of letting trans kids play sports or use bathrooms? Or,
in their eagerness to be inclusive, are liberals a little too eager to let kids access gender-affirming care?
This
hand-wringing never slows down, despite repeatedly being debunked by
people who actually understand the issue. That alone should be a sign
that we're in midst of a baseless moral panic. But, in case anyone needs
more evidence, the recent case out of West Virginia that the Supreme
Court (wisely, for once) declined to take up should prove it.
There's
been robust traffic for centrists and concern trolls who are ready to
ignore all the red flags. It's all because they want so badly to write
"just asking questions" columns that imply, falsely, that the left is
taking this trans acceptance thing "too far."
Becky Pepper-Jackson v. West Virginia exposes how,
in their mindless hysteria, two of the biggest arguments anti-trans
people make contradict each other. The case in West Virginia is
straightforward: Pepper-Jackson is a 12-year-old transgender girl who
sued the state over a law barring her from running track. Laws like this
are cropping up across the country, and every time, the people behind
them deny that bigotry towards trans kids is the impetus. Instead, they
claim to be "concerned" about protecting cis women from having to
compete with "biological males," whose puberty allegedly makes them so
big and strong that no one assigned female at birth could ever hope to
compare.
This silliness of this argument was laid bare by Pepper-Jackson, who is an enthusiastic runner, but, as the Washington Post delicately put it,
"not among the top performers." As part of her gender-affirming care,
after all, Pepper-Jackson is on puberty blockers and estrogen hormone
therapy. As her court filing indicated, she "has not experienced and
will not experience endogenous puberty."
If
people were objecting to trans girls on sports teams in good faith,
they should feel relieved by this outcome. Turns out they had nothing to
worry about in the first place! The standard gender-affirming care that
trans girls get renders the issue moot by taking puberty out of the
equation. If anything, trans girls are at a competitive disadvantage,
because they're competing against girls who do have pubescent growth
spurts. But no, the same people who claim to be "worried" about trans
girls going through puberty turn right around and "worry" about trans
girls not going through puberty. Because they definitely don't want kids having access to those puberty blockers, either.
