Jim (Con't): First up, BNJABAT e-mailed to say last week's summer read edition was the worst thing he's "ever read. Ever." Thanks for your e-mail. There was also praise for it but I think I enjoyed BNJABAT's e-mail the most of all the ones on the summer read. Turning to a serious subject, singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse has died. Kat has a piece up at The Common Ills about that.
Kat: Yeah, it was my Katy Perry piece. I can't stand Perry's voice or looks but the songwriters -- that does not include Katy -- wrote a catchy little song with "Last Friday Night." Katy went on to demonstrate that not only did she not co-write the song, she didn't understand it either by making a video that completely negates the storyline of the song. So I worked on that on our plane ride back home yesterday. And I was happy that I was going to have something to post because I do get e-mails asking, "Why aren't you writing about music?" But as I was getting ready to type it up last night, the news was Amy Winehouse had died. So I rewrote the piece to work in Amy. She's "the real" of the title, "The Real and The Synthetic."
Jim: Okay. And we'll all miss Amy Winehouse and her talent. One of last week's big topics in the community was captured in Betty's "Tired of the racial double standard," Rebecca's "the little bitch debbie wasserman schultz," Ruth's "And the Emily's List you rode in on!," Kat's "Gwen Moore, Jackie Spier and the rest, get a damn life," Marica's "White girl attacks Black man and then whines" and Stan's "Black man attacked for defending himself." I'm going to ask Marcia to start us off on this.
Marcia: Okay. Two Congress members went after each other last week. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat and the Chair of the DNC, took to the House floor to insult Republican Allen West when he wasn't present. When he learned of what she'd done, he fired back with an e-mail to her and to the House leadership. We got into it when we started seeing the way Wasserman Schultz and others were attempting to spin it. Kat and I were on the phone talking about it and I believe most people who wrote about it in the community spoke with Kat as well. We just couldn't believe it. Because now the spin was that West was sexist for any number of things he'd said about Little Debbie. Boo-hoos for Debbie. As I said in my title, "White girl" that would be Debbie "attacks Black man" that would be Allen "and then whines." Grow the hell up.
Jim: There was a lot of anger in the posts and, Rebecca, you talked about why that was.
Rebecca: Right. Debbie and her gang thought they were going to play "Poor Debbie Picked On By Sexist!" and ride it to victory. But this is the same Debbie who refused to call out the sexist treatment of Hillary in 2008. This includes when Little Debbie was supposed to be a Hillary supporter. Now once she flipped to Barack, all she did was offer excuses and dismissals. So the idea that this woman who did nothing when the most sexist attacks against a political candidate politics has ever seen took place is now going to try to woo the supporters of Hillary by pretending she's the injured party was outrageous.
Jim: And Stan, your take was along those lines as well but emphasizing something no one else had outright stated.
Stan: The woman trashed him on the floor of the House. Her fan base says she told the truth. I don't really care one way or the other. I care that when a Black man defends himself, all the sudden Debbie and her gang show up to start screaming "Not fair!" She started it. And there really was an uncurrent of race to this story from the minute she and her minions started attacking. I believe we called out the spin that West calling Wasserman Schultz "vile" was sexist -- it wasn't sexist at all. You would have thought he had physically threatened her or accused her of being on her period -- the way Barack Obama did to Hillary in 2008, remember. They were trying to stir up outrage and it wasn't worthy of outrage but it did demonstrate how desperate they were.
Jim: Alright. Now Betty, as I noted, commented on it and in that post and in "Leave Maxine alone," she's defending Maxine Waters. A reader with no name given and numbers for his or her AOL e-mail account wants to know why Betty can write that and Cedric and Wally can "attack Sheila Jackson Lee" in "The Enron Whore defends Barack" and "THIS JUST IN! LOOK WHO'S SUPPORTING HIM!"?
Betty: Well, for starters, Wally and Cedric are not me. It's that simple. I liked what they wrote, by the way. But there's no reason for them to cover the topic I cover or whatever. They pursue their own interests as they should.
Jim: Cedric?
Cedric: If the guy or gal's asking how we came to write about it, when Wally and I are writing, we're on the phone with each other and at least one of us is going through the news -- sometimes both of us. And we're noting whatever's outrageous or ridiculous to each other. And we're riffing on it and making jokes to each other while we try to find something we can use. In that case, that morning, we ran out of time. And Ann pointed that out to me. She tapped me on the shoulder and whispered I had been on the phone for 45 minutes. Usually, Wally and I take about 15 minutes tops to get the thing written and posted. We'd not written a single word duirng that 45 minutes. And Ann, so everyone knows, was tapping my shoulder to tell me that not because she was saying, "You're on the phone too long!" but because I usually jump in the shower right after Wally and I are done writing when we write in the morning. And Ann takes her shower after me. So she was letting me know she was hopping in the shower. So anyway, we needed something and we'd spent forever on that topic so that's what we went with. That's the technical part. In terms of the post itself, I'll toss to Wally.
Wally: Sheila Jackson Lee made an idiot out of herself by insisting that Republican objection to a so-called solution to the so-called debt crisis was racism. She's a dumb idiot. And we started talking, Cedric and I, about how stupid she was -- with many examples -- then we started wondering why the hell she's talking the economy to begin with? She sure as hell wasn't speaking on to the topic when Enron collapsed because she was tight with Ken Lay. And if we had a functioning government, all those enablers of Ken Lay would have been kicked out of Congress. They should have been and that includes Sheila Jackson Lee.
Ty: Alright. An e-mail that came in Saturday insists C.I. is "trying to hide" Friday's "Iraq snapshot" because it doesn't display currently. C.I.
C.I.: I dictate the snapshots. I have no idea why Friday's is too wide. Generally that happens when something from a Congress member's office is included by copying and pasting but there's no statement in that snapshot. For whatever reason, it was too wide. That meant that the links on the side were not showing. Due to that, I changed it to "2 posts" in Blogger/Blogspot. That took the Saturday posts but kept the snapshot off. I changed it to 3 when Kat was ready to post her music piece. I can't do that all the time, go in and change because the site's thrown off due to a post being too wide, but on the weekends, I can and should because a number of community members are using older computers and it helps them scroll if there's less there.
Ty: Whereas during the week they'd be using work computers.
C.I.: Correct.
Jim: And that Friday snapshot has two topics we want to develop further here for this edition. Though we may run out of time.
Ty: Richard e-mails to ask of Jess, "Have you really not listened to Joan Baez since she endorsed Barack Obama in the Democratic Party primary back in 2008?"
Jess: I've not listened to her. I have no interest in listening to her. Pick up the paper and you'll find her still praising the War Hawk. She's a fraud, a phony and a whore as far as I'm concerned. She can kiss my damn ass. She has refused to call out Barack for continuing the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War, she's refused to call him out for the Libyan War. I get it, I do, an elderly closeted lesbian wants to pretend she's sexually attracted to a man -- in this case, Barack -- so she can play the bi-sexual card instead of facing up to the reality that she's indeed a lesbian who has occassionaly gotten in bed with a man. At some point, the real story will emerge and people will understand both why Dylan broke up with her and that the fleeting relationship was never what Joan pretended it was. By that time, she'll still be hiding in the closet unless she's dead. I don't listen to War Hawks or their apologists. If I saw her onstage today -- and I wouldn't unless it was a music festival -- I'd throw stuff at the stage and boo non-stop. She's a fake.
Ty: Related note, Trisha asks, "When you write someone off, [do] you write them off for good?"
Jess: Me? Yeah. When I'm done with you, I'm done with you. With Kat, give her a few months or a year and she'll be willing to give you another chance.
Kat: Jess is referring to a musician who has an album due out October 18th that I may review but the last album I reviewed by them was awful and I hated it and swore I was done with them.
Jess: Right. And then there's C.I. who will give people second chances constantly but at a certain point, it's over and she's done with you. But me, I'm done when I'm done. If you mean Joan Baez, the minute she endorsed Barack Obama, I packed up all of her CDs and put them in a closet. I was offended because she was supposed to be anti-war and yet she's endorsing a man who praises war. I was willing to take them back out, the CDs, if she recanted. It's been three years, it's too late now, she can go f**k herself and I tossed the box with all of her CDs into the trash. And if you think I'm brutal, you should speak to my parents who were lifelong fans. Were.
Jim: "The killing of a video industry (Dona)" is the topic of Janelle's e-mail. Janelle writes to thank Dona for a "vivid piece of writing" and to explain that she's going through the same thing in attempting to lose her own pregnancy weight. She wonders how much more Dona has to go?
Dona: Actually, I'm at my weight I was before the pregnancy. And that may be as much a result of the heat as it is of working out. She is one of three people who e-mail this site that I had written about my pregnancy to. Janelle and I delivered within weeks of each other. She had morning sickness all nine months and the fact that I had it and had sickness other times of the day was a great relief to her. Janelle, I didn't see your e-mail. I will write you back personally.
Jim: The Libyan War. Is it over? No, but some feel it's winding down. Ava, how about you go into the hypothesis that it's winding down?
Ava: Well I'll do it briefly and then turn it over to Elaine and Mike who, along with C.I., have been covering the issue in the community. Due to the religious holiday that starts in August, it is thought -- rightly or wrongly -- that the Libyan War may be wrapping up. I have no opinion on the hypothesis because no real evidence has been offered to back it up. I'll wait and see. Elaine and Mike?
Mike: Like most Americans who are getting non-corporate news on Libya, I've depended on the coverage of Flashpoints Radio which has featured the reports of Mahdi Nazemroaya who is with the Centre for Research on Globalization. Mahdi is in Tripoli and unembedded. Most of what he's reported on has been that the claims of the so-called rebels winning this city or town is false and that the people have not turned on Gaddafi but, in fact, the US war on Libya has created a feeling of solidarity with Gaddafi. I was bothered that he wasn't on Thursday and wondered if that had to do with his revealing what he thought of certain mainstream reporters on Wednesday? He noted, for example, that two CNN reporters appeared to be working for the US government and not for the press. As Ava said, there's a theory that the holiday next month will mean the war wraps up. Mahdi's put forward that theory himself. I have no idea what's going to happen. Elaine?
Elaine: There are bombings going on today. Patrick Cockburn has an article published today noting that 1911 saw Libya bombed by an Italian airplane. It just never ends, does it? In the article, he notes, "In air wars, the first week is usually the best. By the end of it, the easiest targets will have been destroyed and the enemy will have learnt how to hide, disperse its forces and avoid presenting a target." Regardless of how much longer it lasts, it would appear NATO and the so-called rebels have lost.
Jim: If so, what does that mean?
Isaiah: Probably that Barack shouldn't shoot off his mouth so much. He's the one who insisted Gaddafi had to leave Libya. He looks like a bigger fool than he is already. And he's looking pretty foolish between losing the Libyan War and his battles with the Congress.
Ruth: And how about the news this morning? Germany loaning the so-called rebels $144 million? How does that happen? What did they use for collateral to secure that loan? Do not tell me they have a credit rating that good!
Trina: And it's just further proof that this is not a real revolution or real rebels. These are hand picked elements of the west, put in place to overthrow someone they've grown tired of. They've all played footsie with Gaddafi over the years, Barack's done it since he came into office. But whenever they start lusting after the oil a little more than usual, they start listing off Gaddafi's crimes -- real and imagined -- and talking about removing him from power.
Ann: I just want to add that when someone like Borzou Daragahi is stupid enough to pen "Captured Kadafi soldiers tell rebels they have doubts" -- as he did for The Los Angeles Times -- then there's really no point in even trying to follow the war in the MSM. You really can't be that stupid as to think that prisoners of war can speak freely.
Jim: And on that note, we're going to have to wrap it up. This is a rush transcript.