Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude

6/26/2024

good news and bad news

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to designate Marilyn Monroe‘s former Westside home as a historic cultural monument, thwarting the current owners’ attempt to demolish it. The move comes five months after L.A.’s Cultural Heritage Commission blocked the demolition efforts over the house’s cultural significance.

Councilwoman Traci Park — who represents the city’s 11th District — said before Wednesday’s vote: “We have an opportunity to do something today that should have been done 60 years ago. … There is likely no woman in history or culture who captures the imagination of the public the way Marilyn Monroe did. Even all these years later, her story still resonates and inspires many of us today.”

yea! marilyn monroe is a legend. for that reason alone, the house should stand.

to this day, we watch 'gentlemen prefer blonds,' 'how to marry a millionaire,' 'the prince and the show girl,' 'river of no return,' 'clash by night,' 'niagara,' 'bus stop' and 'don't bother to knock.' in addition, she stars in the best comedy of the 20th century 'some like it hot.'

she died in that house and many of us don't believe the suicide story.

it's also a very lovely spanish home. i was there when veronica hamel owned it and - being a huge marilyn fan - made myself a pain in the ass by insisting on seeing every inch of the place.

now for the bad news. zoe richards and rebecca shabad ('nbc news') report:

Three Republican state senators in South Carolina who filibustered an abortion ban in the state have lost in their primary elections this month.

Katrina Shealy, Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson lost to three male candidates and were among a bipartisan group of five women state senators who filibustered a near-total abortion ban. They were nicknamed the "sister senators."

As a result of their coordinated effort, the group was chosen last year to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

"During the filibuster, each of the five lawmakers took turns describing the complexities of pregnancy and the reproductive system, the dangers of lack of access to contraception, and inadequate privacy laws," said the announcement about them receiving the award. "In the immediate aftermath of their filibuster, the Sister Senators were heckled and harassed by anti-abortion activists. The three Republicans were also met with strong opposition from their own party — including censures and promises of primary challenges in 2024."

if you're a real republican and not 1 of those crazy kooks that nancy reagen looked down on because they were so stupid, you should wise up real damn quick.

the maga criminals do not want you in their party. if you're ever going to take your party back, you're going to have to stand up to the maga criminals and reject them.

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

Wednesday, June 26, 2024. Jamaal Bowman loses his primary, Julian Assange is free, the slaughter in Gaza continues.

A lot to cover today. Let's start with Jamaal Bowman.

I don't know Jamaal Bowman. I'm sure he's a wonderful person. But watching the attempts to save his seat in Congress? Bewilderment.

Who was this sitting member of Congress and why should I care?

Tomorrow night US President Joe Biden is scheduled to debate Convicted Felon and well known liar Donald Trump. I hope we don't see the behavior on that stage from Joe, hope this is some new Democratic Party fad passed off as 'framing' or whatever.

Jamal is probably a nice person.

But watching the nonsense that I watched -- as a nonvoter (I don't live in his state, let alone district) -- I kept waiting for a coherent story as to why he mattered and I never got that.

Beggars can't be choosers, agreed. And in a fight like this -- a Democratic Party primary -- he needed and probably took any support he could get.

That's fine for the voting booth, that's not good for get out the vote.

So the first mistake his campaign made was in the selection of some of the mouth boxes they threw in front of the cameras.

Here's tip one: Voters don't usually go for painted up whores. If you're a member of Congress trying to support another member of Congress, minimize the make up. That's especially true if you're wearing false eye lashes and even more so if those lashes are opening and closing repeatedly every time you speak. Do you think anyone's listening to you when you can't stop batting your eyes with those two to three inch eye lashes on? They're not. They're laughing at you at worst. The kinder ones are just distracted and maybe wondering if thick false eye lashes make it harder for you keep your eyes open.

Here's tip two (and see Marica's "The bald idiot needs to let someone else speak publicly"), you are trying to get them on the side of the person you're supporting. Stop yelling at them. It's one thing to be enraged about possible policy ramifications if the candidate you're supporting doesn't win. But you push people away when you're just yelling or hectoring. Nobody wants a big mouth trying to tell them what to do.

In fact, we could go on and on but we have a lot to cover so let's just sum the tips above and about 15 more I had as: Watch what Ayanna Pressley did and don't do that. Any member of The Squad could have done a better job than Pressley did.

Ilhan Omar, for example, invites you into a conversation when she's advocating for someone or some issue. Pressley, from the opening, leaves you off put.

Again, I don't know Jamaal. More importantly, after weeks of his defenders taking to the media and YOUTUBE (I'm not referring to podcasters offering analysis, I'm referring to guests on those shows who were supposedly advocating on his behalf), I still don't know him.

AIPAC is awful and shouldn't be allowed to be involved in US races. No foreign money should be allowed period. And that's something people could have supported. Israel sticking its nose in a US district election? No one wants that anymore than they want France or China or even the UK flooding our 'home' elections.

So you could have made that a strategy. When AIPAC was raised, I understood what they were getting at but don't think most listening would. They needed to make that a strong point and they needed to make it an easy to understand point.

But they failed at that.

Just like they failed to tell us his record and failed to let us know his plans for the future.

AIPAC defined him as unworthy and all his supporters that spoke to the media did was say, "Oh, but he's a good guy."

That's not how you fight.

Andrew Solender (AXIOS) notes:

AIPAC spent at least $14.5 million on anti-Bowman ads through its PAC, United Democracy Project, as of June 20, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Much of the spending came after a poll in March from pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel showed Bowman trailing by 17 points.
Bowman has emerged as one of Congress' most vocal critics of Israel in recent years, with Latimer running as a pro-Israel alternative in the heavily Jewish, affluent suburban district.

Now with all the money that was spent to defeat Jamaal, there's a good chance it wouldn't have mattered what he or his supporters did.

And the AXIOS article notes, "Said another Democrat more bluntly: 'AIPAC didn't pull a fire alarm. AIPAC didn't speculate about 9/11'." Yeah, he had baggage.

But that could have been defeated or at least strongly challenged and it wasn't. I have no idea what he plans next. He could run as an independent in this cycle. And he could win. I never would have thought when Ned Lamont defeated the awful Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party that this country would have to endure Lieberman in the Senate again. But he managed to pull off a miracle. Bowman could do the same. If he's planning that or if anyone else is being targeted by AIPAC, they need to make AIPAC the target.

"I'm trying to work for you" is the appeal to the voters "while this mega rich lobbyist group wants me out to install someone who will work on behalf of a foreign government. Local politics does not translate as 'whatever Israel wants'."

In terms of Thursday night, Joe Biden better explain what needs to be done and better stress that it's about making America all it can be for all Americans. He better bring us into the dream he has for this country. The media spokespeople Bowman had did not do that for Jamaal.

Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) notes:

Progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman lost his reelection bid in New York's 16th Congressional District on Tuesday to an establishment-backed county official whose campaign was propelled by nearly $15 million in spending by AIPAC's Republican-funded super PAC.

The United Democracy Project's (UDP) spending made the Democratic primary contest the most expensive House race in U.S. history. According to a Sludgeanalysis of independent election expenditures dating back to 2001, UDP's $14.5 million onslaught to oust Bowman was "more than any other group besides those affiliated with a political party has ever spent on a House election."

The investment paid off, with Westchester County Executive George Latimer leading Bowman by a margin of 58% to 42% with close to 90% of the vote counted in the 16th District, which was redrawn ahead of the 2022 midterms to include more of suburban Westchester County and less of the Bronx.

Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal who won his House seat in 2020 by defeating AIPAC favorite Eliot Engel, said in his concession speech late Tuesday that "we should be outraged when a super PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people into believing something that isn't true."

Now let's move to Julian Assange.

I kept watching THE GUARDIAN's live feed yesterday to make sure this didn't end up a double cross. I'm so relieved that it wasn't.

Amy Goodman (DEMOCRACY NOW!) noted yesterday:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been freed from Belmarsh Prison in London, where he has been incarcerated for the past five years, after accepting a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors. After a decade-plus of legal challenges, Assange will plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material for publishing classified documents detailing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks. The Australian publisher is expected to be sentenced to time served and allowed to return home, where he reportedly will seek a pardon.

Some community members have e-mailed about how they wish he hadn't entered a guilty plea. But they seem to understand why he did. I've got at least ten in the public e-mail account raging that he betrayed journalism and blah blah blah.

In our current world there was one of two choices for Julian: Stay in prison or leave.

He has spent years fighting for a free press and will likely spend many more years doing so. (However, if he wants to go to a private life and focus on his own personal life, he's more than done enough.)

Was he just supposed to rot in jail? That's what the ten appear to think. For him to die in jail, they appear to think, would have been better.

It's a free world, we can think what we want and we can say what we want.

And I guess what I'll say back to the ten of you is:

Great, then you do you. You make that your goal to so support journalism that you're a prisoner for years and you take it at least one more year than Julian did. And I'll certainly applaud you for that and support you.

Governments abandoned him, news outlets abandoned him.

He fought and he fought bravely.

He's free now and I'm happyy for him.

Kevin Gosztola addresses the latest in the video below.

Abdel Qadder Sabbah, Mohammad Al Sawalhi, Tareq El Helou, Kareem Khadder, Sana Noor Haq, Paula Hancocks, Jo Shelley and Byron Blunt (CNN) report:

Younis lays disorientated on a green mattress in Nasser Hospital, in southern Gaza. His long brown eyelashes rest delicately on his pale sunken face, as he drifts in and out of sleep.

The 9-year-old Palestinian boy lies in his mother’s arms, clearly wasted from severe malnutrition and suffering from dehydration. His blue jogging bottoms hang off his emaciated legs, as his tiny ribcage protrudes from his billowy orange T-shirt.

“I call on people with conscience to help me find health care for my son, so that he can go back to normal,” his mother, Ghanima Juma’a, told CNN last week at the hospital in Khan Younis. “I am losing my son in front of my eyes.”

Two months ago, the family was forced to flee the southern city of Rafah as Israel ramped up its attacks there. These days, they struggle to survive, living along the polluted coastline of Asda’a — near the Al-Mawasi tent camp — where they cannot find enough food, water, or even shade from the Gaza heat.

“We have to keep moving from one area to the other because of the war and the invasion… Life is difficult,” his mother said. “We don’t even have a tent over our heads.”

Israel’s war in Gaza has depleted the territory’s health system, leaving staff unable to treat malnourished children. Doctors told CNN they are being forced to turn away parents begging for baby milk, unable to even triage young patients with chronic illnesses compounded by severe hunger.

And as Israel continues its siege on Gaza, preventing aid groups getting enough food into the enclave, parents say they have no choice but to watch their children starve to death. More than eight months of bombardment has shredded infrastructure, wiped out communities and laid waste to entire neighborhoods. Sanitation systems — already stressed by water shortages from extreme heat — have been heavily destroyed, according to the UN, diminishing access to clean water.

At THE GUARDIAN, John Oakes writes:

For many months now, it has been no secret that one of America’s closest allies has been using hunger as a weapon against a civilian population. That hunger is being used by Israel is supremely ironic, given the particular role that privation from food plays both in Jewish philosophy and in the grim history of the Jewish people. It is a charge that the Jewish state has repeatedly denied in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Beginning this past winter, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam both condemned Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. Governmental organizations have also begun to echo those accusations. “In Gaza, we are no longer on the brink of a famine, we are in a state of famine,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said several weeks ago. The Gaza population was facing a “man-made disaster”, Borrell reported. The United Nations World Food Program concurs: a “full-blown famine” is taking place in northern Gaza, according to the head of the program. This was followed by the international criminal court considering issuing warrants against leaders of both Hamas and Israel, and, in the case of the Israelis, for the war crime of starvation of civilians.

Even Germany, which for obvious historical reasons has long been one of Israel’s staunchest allies, finally has begun to warn against using starvation to win a war. The Germans would know about such a tactic. During the second world war, 380,000 people were crowded into the Warsaw ghetto, barricaded, and left to die by the Nazis.

Much of what we know about the effects of long-term starvation comes from a manuscript smuggled out of the ghetto in 1942 and translated into English in the 1970s as Hunger Disease. The remarkable document was compiled by a heroic team of 28 Jewish doctors working under unimaginable conditions.

Hunger Disease tracks the effects of starvation with both precision and striking descriptions: in breaking starvation down into three stages, Hunger Disease catalogs stage one, when surplus fat disappears, as being “reminiscent of the time before the war when people went to Marienbad, Karlsbad, or Vichy for a reducing cure and came back looking younger and feeling better”. With time and no break in malnutrition, starvation enters stage two: “Gradually youth was drained and young people changed into withered old people.” Eventually, “like a melting wax candle”, patients slip into the final, terminal stage.

The suffering and the defiance of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto have become touchstones for students of Jewish history, a story that every Jew knows well. As Holocaust museums struggle to address the Israel-Gaza war, the idea that we can somehow put what is happening in Gaza at a distant remove from the history of the Warsaw ghetto is grotesque.

The deaths continue to mount as the assault on Gaza continues. Doctors Without Borders issued the following:

NEW YORK/JERUSALEM, June 25, 2024 — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is outraged and strongly condemns the killing of our colleague, Fadi Al-Wadiya, in an attack this morning in Gaza City.

Al-Wadiya was killed along with five other people, including three children, near an MSF clinic. He was cycling to work at the time, on his way to provide medical care to others who had been injured. Al-Wadiya was a 33-year-old physiotherapist and father of three who joined MSF in 2018.

"Killing a health care worker while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza is beyond shocking," said Caroline Seguin, MSF operations manager for Palestine. “It's cynical and abhorrent.”

MSF Physiotherapist Fadi Al-Wadiya does exercises with a young patient. — MSF Physiotherapist Fadi Al-Wadiya treats a young patient at Bitlahia Clinic in the north of Gaza, a health facility previously supported by MSF.

Al-Wadiya's death marks the sixth killing of an MSF colleague in Gaza since October 7. This attack is yet another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians and health care workers in Gaza. In total, approximately 500 health workers have been killed in Gaza since October.

MSF is continuing to verify the details of this horrific incident.

An immediate and sustained ceasefire is critical to prevent more deaths and injuries and scale up the amount of aid getting into the Strip.

Each day that the assault goes on, the Israeli government loses more support and the Israeli state looks worse on the international stage. How many doctors are going to be killed? How many aid workers? How many reporters? How many children?

War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is out of touch with the real world and he is a serious threat to the safety of the state of Israel. His actions are exhausting any good will left among the world's people. We witness day after day a so-called assault on a terrorist or 'terrorist' group that has been defined in practice as an assault on anyone who is Palestinian -- of any age -- and on any foreign person who tries to aid the civilians of Gaza. That's not targeting terrorism and after almost nine months the world rejects that lie.

It is a genocide. Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reports:

The UN has reportedly told Israeli officials that it may soon be forced to suspend its various humanitarian aid operations in Gaza, after Israeli forces have spent months targeting and killing humanitarian workers in their genocidal assault.

Two UN officials told the Associated Press in a report published Tuesday that the UN sent a letter to Israeli officials this month saying that the UN’s aid operations in Gaza — which act in some capacities as government services — may have to come to a halt if Israel doesn’t stop targeting humanitarian workers.

The letter called for Israel to open up channels for humanitarian workers to communicate with Israeli officials about ensuring their operations are safe from the Israeli military, a process known as deconfliction, the letter reportedly said. The talks between UN and Israeli officials are ongoing, and no final decision has been made.

Gaza remains under assault. Day 263 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "At least 37,718 Palestinians have been killed and 86,377 injured in Israel's war on Gaza since October 7, the enclave's Health Ministry said on Wednesday. Over the past 24 hours, 60 people have been killed and 140 injured, the ministry added." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons. In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."

As for the area itself? Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells." Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."

The following sites updated:

6/25/2024

another 'm3gan' movie, disgusting sean penn

this is good news - at least to me:

Sci-fi and horror have always gone hand in hand, and there’s no better example than the timeless rebellious android trope. From HAL-9000 to the Terminator, a machine attempting to replace humanity gets to the core of our fears about what we might do to ourselves with our own technology. In 2023, this idea was taken to unsettling heights with M3GAN, the campy horror thriller about a sassy babysitting robot that proved popular enough to kick off a minor dance craze.

M3GAN 2.0 is already slated for a 2025 release, but like any modern movie that makes enough money, the story is also getting a spinoff that transforms the film into a franchise.

Variety reports that Blumhouse Productions and James Wan’s Atomic Monster have begun development on Soulm8te, a thriller set in the same universe as M3GAN. It follows a man who “acquires an Artificially Intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife. In an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless lovebot into a deadly soulmate.” The movie, directed by Kate Dolan, is scheduled for a 2026 release.

i loved the movie 'm3gan.' i thought it was funny and moving. i felt for that robot. now for this nonsense from sean penn:

Sean Penn recently said in an interview with The New York Times that 2008’s “Milk” was “the last time I had a good time” on a film set, adding: “I went 15 years miserable on sets.” While Penn earned critical acclaim and his second Oscar for best actor thanks to his portrayal of the openly gay politician Harvey Milk, he told The Times he could not star in the film today as straight actors playing queer characters has become too hotly debated in Hollywood.

“No. It could not happen in a time like this,” Penn said about not playing Harvey Milk in 2024. “It’s a time of tremendous overreach. It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”

sean penn is the perfect example of a straight man who should never play gay.

why?

he was a raging homophobe. some gave him a pass because of an 'ellen' episode. no pass. being on the 8th episode of season 5 of 'ellen' was a gift. season 4 had ended as 1 of the most watched episodes on t.v. -- 'the puppy.' that's the episode that demi moore, laura dern, oprah winfrey, billy bob thornton, k.d. lange and many others. 42 million people tuned in to watch the episode. any smart person knew season 5 wouldn't get those numbers but it would be a show many watched and 13.72 million people did watch it when it first aired -- that was live viewing - no day after or next week.

big deal he played a guy praising (straight) emma thompson for being gay (in the episode, emma was secretly gay).

for that, the loser got to play harvey milk.

shouldn't have happened. he was a homophobe and has remained a homophobe. you may remember 3 or so years back when he was trashing harry styles and other men for dressing 'girly' (his term in 1 interview) and how awful this was for manhood? he's garbage and always has been. here's sarah finnan ('image') reporting on that:

Actor Sean Penn enraged Thandiwe Newton – and the internet at large – with his recent ponderings about “feminised” men.

Publicly condemning him for something he said in an interview, Newton went straight to Twitter to voice her thoughts on his comments… and she definitely didn’t hold back.

“Dude what are you SAY-ING??,” she questioned. “Like for REAL? You’re a jibbering FOOL. MF you used to be sexy but now you’re just tragic.”

“In front of your DAUGHTER!? That poor little mite. Thank God her Mum’s so dope. Please stop ruining the brilliance of #LicoricePizza with this nonsense,” Newton finished in a second follow-up tweet.

[. . .]

It’s also worth noting that the actor has a slew of domestic abuse and violence allegations against him, dating all the way back to the late 80s when he was married to Madonna. She reportedly even ended up in hospital on one occasion after he hit her across the head with a baseball bat. Madonna never pressed charges though as Penn was already facing 60 days jail time for assaulting a film extra.

and he didn't deserve an oscar for 'milk' to begin with. he's never deserved an oscar and has been a joke in 1 film after another and a terror on the set of every film he's made.

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

Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Julian Assange is said to be free, the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case in the next term on transgender cure -- a case that requires four justices recuse themselves, the press examines the Israeli government's killing of journalists, and much more.

Jintamas Saksornchai, Alanna durkin Richer and Eric Tucker (AP) report, "A plane carrying Julian Assange landed Tuesday in Bangkok for refueling, as the WikiLeaks founder was on his way to enter a plea deal with the U.S. government that will free him and resolve the legal case that spanned years and continents over the publication of a trove of classified documents."

Kevin Gosztola discussed the news last night.

Michael Kosnar, Ryan J. Reilly and Patrick Smith (NBC NEWS) explain, "A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie said Assange would appear in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S.-controlled territory north of Guam, at 9 a.m. local time Wednesday (7 p.m. ET Tuesday) to plead guilty." REUTERS adds, "U.S. prosecutors said Assange wanted to go to a court close to his home of Australia but not on the continental United States." BBC NEWS spoke with Stella Assange and "Only after he signs a deal with an American judge in the US jurisdiction of the Northern Mariana Islands will Mr Assange be a 'free man', she said."

I can understand the desire to celebrate this but I'll wait to make sure the US government lives up to its side of the deal -- which apparently will be 7:00 pm EST tonight.

Hopefully, by this evening, Julian will be free.

But none of us in the US are free from the corrupt and crooked Supreme Court. Melissa Quinn (CBS NEWS) reported yesterday:

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider whether a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming health care for transgender minors violates the Constitution, setting the stage for a major decision on transgender rights in its next term.

The justices agreed to review a lower court decision upholding Tennessee's ban, which was appealed by the Justice Department and transgender youth who argue that the laws are outside the bounds of the 14th Amendment.

The case will be argued in the Supreme Court's next term, which begins in October, with a decision likely by the end of June 2025. The dispute thrusts the Supreme Court into the center of a politically fraught issue that has sparked a wave of legislative action by state lawmakers.

The Crooked Court has refused to fall basic laws and precedents and fashions rulings as though this was day one, year one and nothing had ever happened before they hijacked the Court.

There is little reason that, come the first Monday in October, this would be any different.

Except for the fact that four of the nine members of the Court should immediately recuse themselves from this case.

Molly Redden (HUFFINGTON POST) reports:

A group at the center of conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo’s network funneled $750,000 to an influential new lobbying operation that pushes anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the country, new tax records show.

Do No Harm presents itself as a grassroots association of doctors against gender-affirming care and diversity efforts in the medical profession. The group, which was founded in 2022, does not disclose its donors. But newly disclosed tax filings provided to HuffPost by Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog, show that the Concord Fund, the funding arm of Leo’s network, donated $750,000 in 2022 to Do No Harm Action, the group’s official lobbying effort.

Do No Harm also received more than $1.4 million from a nonprofit, the Project on Fair Representation, run by conservative activist Edward Blum, new records show. Blum, a conservative activist who helped engineer two Supreme Court cases that struck down affirmative action and major sections of the Voting Rights Act, is now a Do No Harm board member.

HuffPost previously revealed that Do No Harm received $1 million in seed funding from Joseph Edelman, a billionaire hedge fund CEO, and his wife, Suzy Edelman, who has said she considers “transgenderism” “a fiction designed to destroy.”

Leo is best known as the kingpin of a decades-long effort to pack the federal judiciary with conservative judges. As the leader of the Federalist Society, Leo assembled a vast and secretive network of wealthy donors and nonprofits to amplify the power of the conservative legal movement, culminating in Leo handpicking the list of former President Donald Trump’s potential nominees to the Supreme Court. While some of his efforts are highly public, others, like the funding of Do No Harm, occur with little fanfare.

Due to have been promoted for the Court by Leo, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett should recuse. Leo is a known transphobe and homophobe. I do not see how them being handpicked by this transphobe cannot impact on their decision making. But they aren't the only ones who need to recuse, Clarence Thomas needs to as well. This is from Emma Green's June 5, 2023 report for THE NEW YORKER entitled "Is It Possible to Be Both Moderate and Anti-Woke?:"

Suzy Edelman, another donor, who gave fair a million dollars in 2021, wrote in an e-mail to Weiss, “It’s your courage that inspired me to join the movement—not just to reform what’s been captured, but to build new, wonderful things.” I know Weiss a little bit—we’ve hung out in professional settings a few times over the years. When fair was founded, she had just left the New York Times in a very public way, and she was focussed on launching new organizations. “I think we are in a moment of profound change in American life, in which many old institutions are crumbling or have lost trust,” she told me recently.

[. . .]

Behind the scenes, there was deeper trouble. Suzy Edelman, one of the donors who gave a million dollars in 2021, had started asking questions about whether her gift had been used appropriately, requesting fair’s receipts and copies of the contracts that it used for volunteers and staff. For months, Edelman had also been questioning fair’s approach, particularly on gender issues. “Sex-based rights matter. Single sex spaces for women and girls must be protected. Transgenderism is a fiction designed to destroy,” she had written in an e-mail. She noted that fair had positioned its programs as an “alternative” to mainstream D.E.I., or diversity, equity, and inclusion, training, but, she said, “You can’t ‘DEI-lite’ this issue.” (A spokesperson for Edelman maintained that her concerns about fair were not related to its politics, only its “governance and use of charitable funds.”)

Weiss and Bartning exchanged terse e-mails about Edelman in August. “I am quite nervous that she has gotten to the Crows, which would be really damaging to me personally,” Weiss wrote, referring to Harlan Crow. (“I leaned on many of my personal relationships and friendships to help launch this nonprofit,” Weiss told me. “I was sick over the idea that their time, trust, and money wasn’t being properly protected.”) Bartning replied that he had recently spoken to Crow’s chief of staff. “She was complimentary of what we have accomplished, but said Harlan wanted to ‘let up on the gas a bit’ since their priorities/focus have shifted to more ‘in your face’ activism (my words, not hers).” (Crow did not respond to a request for comment.)

Harlan Crow -- that's Crooked Clarence's sugar daddy.

Bari knew what Harlan wanted and so does Clarence. And Clarence is also indebted to Leonard Leo. CREW noted last year:

Even as the Supreme Court was deliberating Citizens United, Crow reportedly provided the major funding for Liberty Central, another dark money group, this one with links to Justice Thomas. Liberty Central was a 501(c)(4) organization founded by Ginni Thomas in late 2009 that counted Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo as a board member. Ms. Thomas served as president through November 2010 and was paid a salary of more than $120,000. According to Politico, of the $550,000 in anonymous start-up funds the group received in 2009, $500,000 came from Crow, who also held an event for the group at his Dallas home a few months after it launched.

Even as the Supreme Court was deliberating Citizens United, Crow reportedly provided the major funding for Liberty Central, another dark money group, this one with links to Justice Thomas. Liberty Central was a 501(c)(4) organization founded by Ginni Thomas in late 2009 that counted Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo as a board member. Ms. Thomas served as president through November 2010 and was paid a salary of more than $120,000. According to Politico, of the $550,000 in anonymous start-up funds the group received in 2009, $500,000 came from Crow, who also held an event for the group at his Dallas home a few months after it launched.

It's all too incestuous and Crooke Clarence needs to recuse. Let's note this from QUORA:

Richard Gould-Saltman
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Juris Doctor in Law, University of Southern California (Graduated 1978)Upvoted by
David White
, JD & BS x 3 Law, University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law (1983)1y

The canons of judicial ethics require judges to avoid “not only impropriety, but the appearance of impropriety”. Hell, my wife, who’s a judge, won’t even provide restaurant reviews on Yelp or TripAdvisor for any place in So Cal, out of concern to avoid the appearance of endorsement.

You tell me: do the gifts to Thomas LOOK fishy?

They do look fishy and no reasonable person can suspend disbelief and pretend that a fair vote can take place without recusals.

Looking fishy. The whores like Ben Stiller and Jerry Seinfeld and that bald headed idiot Julianna Margulies have to regularly lie for the Israeli government because that government is committing War Crimes and each day more and more people catch on. Not only do they catch on, they shake their heads in disgust that so-called American citizens are whoring for a foreign government.

Their efforts to pretty up a genocide fail and expose them as the uncaring liars that they are.

RTE notes, "Two of the Israeli airstrikes hit two schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people, medics said. Another strike on a house in the Shati (Beach) camp, one of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, killed ten others." Jennifer Hansler (CNN) reports:

A high risk of famine persists in Gaza and the situation “remains catastrophic” as the war between Israel and Hamas continues, according to a report released Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

“A high risk of famine persists across the whole of the Gaza Strip as long as conflict continues and humanitarian access is restricted,” the report said. “Only the cessation of hostilities in conjunction with sustained humanitarian access to the entire Gaza Strip can reduce the risk of a famine occurring in the Gaza Strip.”

The report projects that 96% of the population of Gaza – more than 2 million people – will face crisis, emergency, or catastrophic levels of food insecurity through at least the end of September. Nearly half a million are projected to face catastrophic levels, the most severe level on the IPC scale where people “experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities.”

The supporters of genocide can't pretty that up so they just lie about it and deny the children who have starved to death and insist it's not taking place (today THE TIMES OF ISRAEL throws reality out the door as it hops on that band wagon).

And when not killing and terrorizing children, the Israeli government makes journalists the target. This morning, Hoda Osman and Farah Jallad (INDEPENDENT) reports:

"Targeting of al Ghefari tower, which houses media offices, west of Gaza City,” read the chyron of Alhurra TV, a U.S. government Arabic broadcaster, just before 11:57 a.m. local time on November 2. The channel was covering the strike on an 18-story building, the tallest in the Gaza Strip. The building is visible in the far left corner of the screen when suddenly an explosion rattles the image. Debris and smoke fly live on camera. The presenter, unsure of what had happened, says, “We don’t know yet where this strike is, but it happened live just now.”

What the presenter didn’t know was that viewers were watching live on TV a strike on another media organization, Agence France-Presse, less than an hour after the one on the offices of Palestine Media Group in the al-Ghefari tower — the very building Alhurra TV was discussing while viewing the AFP live feed. AFP itself occupies the 10th and 11th floors of the 12-story Haji Tower, just a few hundred meters, or 0.2 miles, away on the same street.Targeting of al Ghefari tower, which houses media offices, west of Gaza City,” read the chyron of Alhurra TV, a U.S. government Arabic broadcaster, just before 11:57 a.m. local time on November 2. The channel was covering the strike on an 18-story building, the tallest in the Gaza Strip. The building is visible in the far left corner of the screen when suddenly an explosion rattles the image. Debris and smoke fly live on camera. The presenter, unsure of what had happened, says, “We don’t know yet where this strike is, but it happened live just now.”

Alhurra broadcast the strike live not because it had its own camera in the tower, but because the network was tapped into an AFP live feed from a camera set up on the balcony of the 10th floor. The attack caused extensive damage to the building and offices: a large hole in one side of the building, and significant interior destruction. Fortunately, no one was there. AFP’s Gaza City staff of eight had evacuated the building, leaving behind a mostly unmanned camera powered by solar panels, broadcasting a 24/7 live feed. AFP was the only one of the three major global news agencies still broadcasting live from the Gaza Strip.

AFP immediately contacted the Israeli military. The initial response was that there were no strikes on the building. Pressed for more details, the Israeli spokesperson said the army had carried out a strike nearby that “might have caused debris” but that “the building was not targeted in any way.” AFP said the extent of the damage cannot be explained by the military’s response and requested “an in-depth and transparent investigation.”

The condemnations were swift. AFP’s chair and chief executive Fabrice Fries said the bureau’s location was known and communicated to the Israeli military routinely “precisely to prevent such an attack and to allow us to continue to provide images on the ground.” The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, issued a statement categorizing it as an “attack.” The International Federation of Journalists demanded “an immediate investigation.”

After the early November strike, the war in Gaza grew more intense and the number of Palestinians killed, reported to be over 37,000 today, continued to climb. The scale of the destruction was beyond anyone’s expectations.

The AFP incident was mostly laid to rest until Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and its partners, including AFP, began looking into it as part of the Gaza Project: a collaboration of 50 journalists from 13 media organizations coordinated by Forbidden Stories to investigate attacks on journalists and press infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.

CNA notes:

A collaborative investigation by international media outlets on Tuesday (Jun 25) shed light on the circumstances behind more than 100 Palestinian journalists and media workers being killed in the Gaza war, some while wearing a press vest.

A consortium led by investigative outlet Forbidden Stories and involving around 50 journalists from 13 organisations including AFP, The Guardian and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism group (ARIJ) took part in the four-month probe.

It looked into strikes involving journalists and media infrastructure since Israel launched a devastating offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas carrying out an unprecedented attack in Israel on Oct 7.

"More than 100 journalists and media workers have been killed," Forbidden Stories' Laurent Richard said in an editorial accompanying the Gaza Project's publication.

"Today's Gaza journalists have long known that their 'press' vests do not protect them," he wrote.

"Worse still, the protective gear might further expose them."

Harry Davies, Manisha Ganguly, David Pegg, Hoda Osman, Yuval Abraham and Bethan McKernan (GUARDIAN) explain:

As Israel’s offensive in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, its military has repeatedly said it is not deliberately targeting the media.

“There is no policy of targeting media personnel,” a senior official said, attributing the record number of journalists killed to the scale and intensity of a bombardment in which so many of Gaza’s civilians have died.

However, an investigation by the Guardian suggests that amid a loosening of the Israel Defense Force’s interpretation of the laws of war after the deadly Hamas-led attacks on 7 October, some within the IDF appear to have viewed journalists working in Gaza for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Hamas to be legitimate military targets.

The investigation is part of the Gaza project, a collaboration led by the Paris-based non-profit Forbidden Stories, which has analysed the deaths of journalists in Gaza since Israel began its offensive.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) records at least 103 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in the war in Gaza. Other lists suggest that number is higher.

Since foreign media are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza, the work of documenting the war on the ground has fallen to Palestinian journalists in the territory, many of whom have continued to work despite grave risks to their safety.

In a war in which Israel has dropped tens of thousands of bombs on a densely populated territory, it is perhaps inevitable that so many journalists have been killed. Among the dead are also doctors, teachers, civil servants, aid workers, paramedics and poets.

Gaza remains under assault. Day 262 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "At least 37,658 Palestinians have been killed and 86,237 others injured in Israel's war on Gaza since October 7, the enclave's Health Ministry said. Over the past 24 hours, 32 people were killed and 139 injured." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted: