Iraqi authorities often report lower estimates for the number of victims
of attacks for unclear reasons but April's toll is still the highest
since the beginning of the year.
-- Raheem Kareem, Suadad al-Salhy, Isabel Coles and Angus MacSwan, "April bloodiest month in Iraq since 2008 - UN" (Reuters) on the United Nations figure of 712 violent deaths in Iraq for the month of April when compared to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior claim that only 245 people died from violence last month.
Sunday, May 05, 2013
Truest statement of the week II
Keith
Ellison, the Black U.S. House member from Minneapolis who is co-chair
of the Progressive Caucus, says the U.S. should push for a no-fly zone
over rebel-held areas in Syria. Ellison, who is also one of only two
Muslim members of Congress, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press”
on Sunday, as did Republican Arizona Senator John McCain. It is a
measure of how far to the right the Democratic Party has come under
President Obama, that McCain,
the war monger who likes to sing about bombing Iran, and Ellison, who
claims to be a progressive, are in basic agreement over Syria. Both
McCain and Ellison want no-fly zones, and both claim to prefer that
there be no U.S. “boots on the ground” in country. Both are raving
American imperialists who believe that the U.S. has not merely the
right, but the obligation to intervene in the internal affairs of other
countries. As Ellison, the phony progressive, puts it, “I
don’t think the world’s greatest superpower, the United States, can
stand by and do nothing” – which is, essentially, John McCain’s
position.
-- Glen Ford, "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Personification of the Phony, Pro-War 'Progressive'" (Black Agenda Report).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
That's what we came up with on time. We had two more features that another hour (I believe) would have made them postable but the rest of the gang says it's time to call it a 'night' and get some sleep.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Added: Ann calls out Women's Media Center and Lauren War ...
Ann's just got added to the list of pieces.
Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Reuters noting that the Iraqi government reports an undercount.
Glen Ford calling out the faux progressive.
Our Iraq piece this edition.
If you don't get the title I (Jim) gave to Ava and C.I.'s piece, you must not know your Janet Jackson. Go listen to "What Have You Done For Me Lately." They're covering One Life To Live which started back up last week online (and on TV in Canada) after getting the axe from ABC some time ago.
We roundtable on Guantanamo, Iraq, Pritzker and TV.
Isaiah's editorial cartoon featuring a drawing of Nouri's ass is offensive and must be restricted, according to Flickr? Have they seen what's up at their own site?
Ava and C.I. tackle sexism -- in part because it was needed and in part because they wanted the edition finished early.
A short piece.
Repost from Workers World.
ETAN calls attention.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
That's what we came up with on time. We had two more features that another hour (I believe) would have made them postable but the rest of the gang says it's time to call it a 'night' and get some sleep.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Added: Ann calls out Women's Media Center and Lauren War ...
Ann's just got added to the list of pieces.
Editorial: How a massacre happens
Iraqis have been protesting since December 21st and they've repeatedly asked for the world's support and wondered, "Obama, If you Cannot Hear Us Can you Not See Us?" (photo via Iraqi Spring MC).
Tuesday, April 23rd, Nouri al-Maliki's federal forces stormed a sit-in in Hawija, Kirkuk. Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault. Saturday, UNICEF informed the world that 8 of the dead were children and twelve more children were left injured.
If they'd be seen and heard before April 23rd by most Americans, would Nouri al-Maliki have dared send in forces to slaughter the peaceful protesters?
Some are paying attention. Last week, Nussaibah Younis argued "Why Maliki must go" (New York Times). Younis isn't the only one to make the argument still the US government continues to supply Nouri with weapons (that he uses on the Iraqi people). Last week, Jim Fuquay (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) noted, "Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth will keep building F-16s a bit longer, thanks to an $839 million contract to suppy 18 of the jeft fighters to Iraq. According to the announcement this week from the Air Force, the contract is expected to run through April 30, 2014."
The head of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq, wrote a column for UPI which noted:
Angered at critics in the press who have highlighted the spiraling violence and human rights abuse in Iraq, Maliki has banned al-Jazeera and nine Iraqi TV channels, eight of which are Sunni. Without licenses, news crews from the banned channels will be arrested if they attempt to operate in Iraq. Iraq's descent into another sectarian civil war, prompted by Maliki's determined efforts to marginalize the Sunni population, has become an embarrassment to the United States, which regard the Iraqi prime minister as their adopted son. U.S. State Department assertions that they were leaving behind a "functioning democracy," following the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, now have a hollow ring. Mass demonstrations against Maliki have been going on in six of Iraq's provinces and most of the major cities for the past four months. Hundreds of thousands of protesters are pouring onto the streets, particularly following Friday prayers, to demand an end to sectarian oppression, human rights abuse and arbitrary executions.
But instead of supporting the protesters, the US government has repeatedly supported Nouri.
Which is how a massacre like the one on April 23rd happens in the first place.
TV: Soap Opera again says you've got One Life To Live
What a week for TV.
Jeffrey: The blogs are going to go nuts. "The American public are a bunch of idiots who can't be trusted to spell their own names."
Viki: Okay, you cannot print that. Well not without confirmation.
Jeffrey: Well she said it to you, right?
Viki: Yes, she did. But there were other --
Jeffrey: This is huge. Dorian buried those flight manifests for months.
Viki: Not according to her. She claims she gave it to Conan Ashford immediately.
Jeffrey: Who cares? Somebody sat on it. The point is: Are there black sites or not and now we've got these guys by the balls.
Viki: In what sense?
Jeffrey: They have to investigate. And our story made that happen.
Viki: But is it right for us to make Dorian collateral damage?
Jeffrey: Don't get soft on me, boss.
Viki: Oh, Jeffrey, wait a minute. This is a very big story and I have to make sure that we are above reproach. So just as you had to confirm the manifests sources --
Jeffrey: A US Senator squashes information about illegal torture sites and then calls Americans morons for not understanding the way things really work and you want to let that slide?
Thank goodness someone on TV cares about the torture sites, right?
Well . . . not TV.
It used to be on TV but ABC axed it. Last week, One Life To Live returned online with all new episodes. Monday through Thursday, four new episodes. Friday a recap with cast members. Hulu's carrying it and it's immensely popular there (as is All My Children which ABC also axed). Viki is Victoria Lord played by Erika Slezak who has won six Daytime Emmy Awards for her One Life To Live role(s) (Viki - Niki, don't ask us to explain). And the scene above is with Corbin Bleu's Jeffrey King.
Slezak and Bleu are the reason to watch the show. Both for the fireworks between the two actors and the storyline. Let's deal with the fireworks first.
Viki's a woman, Jason's a man. On most shows, that means get them into bed. That's not what great chemistry's meant on One Life To Live. Though, for example, Todd Manning has his freaky fans, the reality is One Life To Life never had a super couple. The closest they came were attempts to revive the Jacqueline Courtney and Robin Strasser rivalry from NBC's Another World. The actresses became famous as rivals Alice Frame and Rachel Davis in scenes largely written by Agnes Nixon. Nixon would go on to create One Life To Live and both actresses would end up on the show, frequently pitted against one another. We'll come back to it.
But One Life To Live, for all the efforts at star-crossed lovers, repeatedly failed. Edwina was a damp noodle with Mario or Marco. Bo Buchanan (Robert S. Woods) had (and has) about as much sex appeal as the generic TV dad of prime time. Asa? Does anyone remember Dorian Lopinto paired with Phil Carey? When they did have a super couple building -- Fish and Kyle -- ABC decided to stroke its inner homophobe and the story was dropped so quickly that actors Scott Evans and Brett Claywell had no clue it was coming.
So when chemistry worked on the show it was the chemistry of friendship. Viki's friendship with Karen (Judith Light). A nothing scene where Viki goes to Waldorf hotel to visit her friend Karen who's left Dr. Larry Wolek and returned to prostitution. Viki carries board games her sons wanted Karen to have. Karen doesn't tell her this is actually an elaborate sting operation. She can't. The two talk but talk about nothing while the silences say everything and the audience just wants the day to come when Karen can tell Viki the truth and the friendship can go back to normal.
There were other variables over the years but when the show works, it works because you believe the characters on the screen deeply care about one another. They're not just actors reciting lines.
And that's why you care about Viki and Jeffrey. Jeffrey's brand new to the show. Slezak's grimace at his use of "balls" in the exchange above is perfect for Viki, it shows her offense and disgust but also shows 'this is someone I care about, I am moving beyond it.' This could be the most important relationship for the show this year. You can see Jeffrey going after stories and getting burned. Maybe he's ordered to reveal his source and he refuses due to ethics. You can see Viki visiting him in jail and telling him, as a journalist, she appreciates what he's doing but, as a friend, a part of her wishes he'd give up the source.
Erika Slezak has held her own for years. She's worked with very talented actors before. She's worked with many hacks. She's worked with Andrea Evans who is a force that goes somewhere beyond acting. (We mean that as a compliment.) Slezak always gives a scene as much as she can. But when she's got an actor that she can really connect with, there's an extra spark to the scenes and that's present in her work with Bleu.
All My Children is finding its way and we'll give it its own review within a month or two. Julia Barr back as Brooke is reason enough to cheer. But the reality is that One Life To Live is the crowd pleaser right now.
Agnes Nixon, remember her?
She created One Life To Live and All My Children. The shows made an impact for being about the world we live in. Interracial romance hit daytime TV with One Life To Live. All My Children tackled Vietnam. Abortion, equal rights, same-sex relations, spousal abuse, the world we live in was reflected on daytime TV.
With the story about the torture sites and Viki Lord and Jeffrey pursuing it for the Llanview Banner, the show's exactly where it should be. It's a topical and attention-getting storyline, amazingly well acted, that can pull an audience new to the characters and keep the audience long enough for them to get to know all the players.
Dorian Lord. Robin Strasser has her own Emmy for playing this part. Too often, Dorian's over-the-top for no reason. The battles with Pat Ashley, for example, in the early 80s were laughable. She and Courtney vested a great deal into the dialogue but who really cared?
The Pat Ashley Show features a discussion on Asa's dead wife and Dorian, who owns the station, storms in to berate Pat for "cheap and vulgar sensationalism" and accuse Pat of being "a bit unhinged" only to have Pat respond, "Dorian, what you know about friendship could fit on a postage stamp!"? The actresses had you applauding even as you realized you were watching filler and that, in the end, this scene didn't matter one bit to the storyline.
Too often, the show's used Strasser's strong acting chops as an excuse to poorly write storylines and scenes for Dorian. So how great that Senator Dorian Lord is now in a real crisis.
As David (Tuc Watkins) puts it, "For the first time in her life, Dorian Lord committed the crime of being naïve." And he wasn't referring to what they did to her at the beauty salon ("I've got Michelle's bangs, Pelosi's lips!" Dorian announced). Dorian worked with others on the Senate Intelligence Committee to bury evidence of the government's role in torture. And the senior senators are more than happy to let the junior senator from Pennsylvania take the fall. As longtime viewers know, the best Dorian storylines are always the ones where Dorian's fighting to keep hold of whatever's she's managed to grab.
And that's the storyline that can pull people in to find out what's going to happen to Rama (Shenaz Treasury) and Vimal Patel (Nick Choksi) and their discussions about starting an open marriage. They'll nod in agreement when Blair (Kassie DePaiva) tells Todd (Roger Howarth) that he is "useless as a husband and a lover and you're even more pathetic as a father." Hopefully, they'll be thrilled Victor Jr. (Trevor St. John) is alive. And that he's back with Tea (Florencia Lozano) and back with rage at Todd (just look what he does to the stuffed giraffe after Tea catches him up on the lost baby and all he missed after Todd shot him).
These are characters you care about. Passions, more than anything else, destroyed daytime dramas. It took the nonsense of the Ice Princess and other crap General Hospital (and others) churned out during a writers strike, these idiotic, over-the-top plots and soon you've got Days of Our Lives having Marlena (Deidre Hall) possessed by the devil. How do you top that?
The real question is: Why would you?
Soaps don't have to go that over-the-top. At their best, they're about conflict between characters you know. There's the one you can't stand, there's the one you root for and, somehow, they're all part of the same show. And many of the characters have a history which not only rewards longterm viewing but also gives audiences a sense of permanency in what is a very juxtaposed and changing world.
"You're going to regret printing those lies about me. I'll be exonerated and I will bring you down," Dorian vows to Viki. And that carries more punch than all the elderly ladies and their wooden talking dolls Passions could ever muster.
Jeffrey: The blogs are going to go nuts. "The American public are a bunch of idiots who can't be trusted to spell their own names."
Viki: Okay, you cannot print that. Well not without confirmation.
Jeffrey: Well she said it to you, right?
Viki: Yes, she did. But there were other --
Jeffrey: This is huge. Dorian buried those flight manifests for months.
Viki: Not according to her. She claims she gave it to Conan Ashford immediately.
Jeffrey: Who cares? Somebody sat on it. The point is: Are there black sites or not and now we've got these guys by the balls.
Viki: In what sense?
Jeffrey: They have to investigate. And our story made that happen.
Viki: But is it right for us to make Dorian collateral damage?
Jeffrey: Don't get soft on me, boss.
Viki: Oh, Jeffrey, wait a minute. This is a very big story and I have to make sure that we are above reproach. So just as you had to confirm the manifests sources --
Jeffrey: A US Senator squashes information about illegal torture sites and then calls Americans morons for not understanding the way things really work and you want to let that slide?
Thank goodness someone on TV cares about the torture sites, right?
Well . . . not TV.
It used to be on TV but ABC axed it. Last week, One Life To Live returned online with all new episodes. Monday through Thursday, four new episodes. Friday a recap with cast members. Hulu's carrying it and it's immensely popular there (as is All My Children which ABC also axed). Viki is Victoria Lord played by Erika Slezak who has won six Daytime Emmy Awards for her One Life To Live role(s) (Viki - Niki, don't ask us to explain). And the scene above is with Corbin Bleu's Jeffrey King.
Slezak and Bleu are the reason to watch the show. Both for the fireworks between the two actors and the storyline. Let's deal with the fireworks first.
Viki's a woman, Jason's a man. On most shows, that means get them into bed. That's not what great chemistry's meant on One Life To Live. Though, for example, Todd Manning has his freaky fans, the reality is One Life To Life never had a super couple. The closest they came were attempts to revive the Jacqueline Courtney and Robin Strasser rivalry from NBC's Another World. The actresses became famous as rivals Alice Frame and Rachel Davis in scenes largely written by Agnes Nixon. Nixon would go on to create One Life To Live and both actresses would end up on the show, frequently pitted against one another. We'll come back to it.
But One Life To Live, for all the efforts at star-crossed lovers, repeatedly failed. Edwina was a damp noodle with Mario or Marco. Bo Buchanan (Robert S. Woods) had (and has) about as much sex appeal as the generic TV dad of prime time. Asa? Does anyone remember Dorian Lopinto paired with Phil Carey? When they did have a super couple building -- Fish and Kyle -- ABC decided to stroke its inner homophobe and the story was dropped so quickly that actors Scott Evans and Brett Claywell had no clue it was coming.
So when chemistry worked on the show it was the chemistry of friendship. Viki's friendship with Karen (Judith Light). A nothing scene where Viki goes to Waldorf hotel to visit her friend Karen who's left Dr. Larry Wolek and returned to prostitution. Viki carries board games her sons wanted Karen to have. Karen doesn't tell her this is actually an elaborate sting operation. She can't. The two talk but talk about nothing while the silences say everything and the audience just wants the day to come when Karen can tell Viki the truth and the friendship can go back to normal.
There were other variables over the years but when the show works, it works because you believe the characters on the screen deeply care about one another. They're not just actors reciting lines.
And that's why you care about Viki and Jeffrey. Jeffrey's brand new to the show. Slezak's grimace at his use of "balls" in the exchange above is perfect for Viki, it shows her offense and disgust but also shows 'this is someone I care about, I am moving beyond it.' This could be the most important relationship for the show this year. You can see Jeffrey going after stories and getting burned. Maybe he's ordered to reveal his source and he refuses due to ethics. You can see Viki visiting him in jail and telling him, as a journalist, she appreciates what he's doing but, as a friend, a part of her wishes he'd give up the source.
Erika Slezak has held her own for years. She's worked with very talented actors before. She's worked with many hacks. She's worked with Andrea Evans who is a force that goes somewhere beyond acting. (We mean that as a compliment.) Slezak always gives a scene as much as she can. But when she's got an actor that she can really connect with, there's an extra spark to the scenes and that's present in her work with Bleu.
All My Children is finding its way and we'll give it its own review within a month or two. Julia Barr back as Brooke is reason enough to cheer. But the reality is that One Life To Live is the crowd pleaser right now.
Agnes Nixon, remember her?
She created One Life To Live and All My Children. The shows made an impact for being about the world we live in. Interracial romance hit daytime TV with One Life To Live. All My Children tackled Vietnam. Abortion, equal rights, same-sex relations, spousal abuse, the world we live in was reflected on daytime TV.
With the story about the torture sites and Viki Lord and Jeffrey pursuing it for the Llanview Banner, the show's exactly where it should be. It's a topical and attention-getting storyline, amazingly well acted, that can pull an audience new to the characters and keep the audience long enough for them to get to know all the players.
Dorian Lord. Robin Strasser has her own Emmy for playing this part. Too often, Dorian's over-the-top for no reason. The battles with Pat Ashley, for example, in the early 80s were laughable. She and Courtney vested a great deal into the dialogue but who really cared?
The Pat Ashley Show features a discussion on Asa's dead wife and Dorian, who owns the station, storms in to berate Pat for "cheap and vulgar sensationalism" and accuse Pat of being "a bit unhinged" only to have Pat respond, "Dorian, what you know about friendship could fit on a postage stamp!"? The actresses had you applauding even as you realized you were watching filler and that, in the end, this scene didn't matter one bit to the storyline.
Too often, the show's used Strasser's strong acting chops as an excuse to poorly write storylines and scenes for Dorian. So how great that Senator Dorian Lord is now in a real crisis.
As David (Tuc Watkins) puts it, "For the first time in her life, Dorian Lord committed the crime of being naïve." And he wasn't referring to what they did to her at the beauty salon ("I've got Michelle's bangs, Pelosi's lips!" Dorian announced). Dorian worked with others on the Senate Intelligence Committee to bury evidence of the government's role in torture. And the senior senators are more than happy to let the junior senator from Pennsylvania take the fall. As longtime viewers know, the best Dorian storylines are always the ones where Dorian's fighting to keep hold of whatever's she's managed to grab.
And that's the storyline that can pull people in to find out what's going to happen to Rama (Shenaz Treasury) and Vimal Patel (Nick Choksi) and their discussions about starting an open marriage. They'll nod in agreement when Blair (Kassie DePaiva) tells Todd (Roger Howarth) that he is "useless as a husband and a lover and you're even more pathetic as a father." Hopefully, they'll be thrilled Victor Jr. (Trevor St. John) is alive. And that he's back with Tea (Florencia Lozano) and back with rage at Todd (just look what he does to the stuffed giraffe after Tea catches him up on the lost baby and all he missed after Todd shot him).
These are characters you care about. Passions, more than anything else, destroyed daytime dramas. It took the nonsense of the Ice Princess and other crap General Hospital (and others) churned out during a writers strike, these idiotic, over-the-top plots and soon you've got Days of Our Lives having Marlena (Deidre Hall) possessed by the devil. How do you top that?
The real question is: Why would you?
Soaps don't have to go that over-the-top. At their best, they're about conflict between characters you know. There's the one you can't stand, there's the one you root for and, somehow, they're all part of the same show. And many of the characters have a history which not only rewards longterm viewing but also gives audiences a sense of permanency in what is a very juxtaposed and changing world.
"You're going to regret printing those lies about me. I'll be exonerated and I will bring you down," Dorian vows to Viki. And that carries more punch than all the elderly ladies and their wooden talking dolls Passions could ever muster.
Roundtable
Jim: It's roundtable time. Topics we hope to include are Guantanamo, censorship, Cabinet nominees and more -- including TV. Remember our new e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
Please note that is a change. Participating our roundtable are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report; Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the
illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.
Jim (Con't): Let's start with Guantanamo. In the community, C.I. offered "The American Concentration Camp," Ann offered "Time of death for the rule of law?" and "The ACLU comes off like a trained seal," and Kat offered "Guantanamo." In addition, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights both issued statements. Let's start there because, Ann, you weren't impressed with the ACLU. Why?
Jim (Con't): Let's start with Guantanamo. In the community, C.I. offered "The American Concentration Camp," Ann offered "Time of death for the rule of law?" and "The ACLU comes off like a trained seal," and Kat offered "Guantanamo." In addition, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights both issued statements. Let's start there because, Ann, you weren't impressed with the ACLU. Why?
Ann: A few remarks from Barack Obama and the ACLU's willing to forget that he promised to close Guantanamo when he was campaigning for president in 2008 and made it through the first term -- when the second wasn't guaranteed -- never closing it. Did Barack announce that he was closing Guantanamo? No. He just said it should be. Yeah, no disagreement there Barack so why the hell don't you do it. I'm not the mood for the ACLU acting like loaves of bread just fell from heaven. Kat wrote on a related topic Friday.
Kat: Alan MacLeod's "Is Obama's Gitmo Statement Merely a PR Stunt?" went up at CounterPunch Thursday -- or Friday, see my post -- and the attitude in the piece is similar to Ann's and also C.I.'s earlier in the week. Which is? Words are easy, actions matter. Why are we applauding Mr. Pretty Words for yet more words when action should have been taken long ago? It's an important point. I read Ann's piece about the ACLU being a trained seal at the start of the week and that's so correct. You close it or you don't. And those goes to C.I.'s point and Barack and Bush and their supporters. Finger pointing and whining it's the others fault. Like C.I., I don't give a damn, I don't want to hear the squabbles. Barack's run it for four years, it's his problem too, it's his crime too and it needs to be shut down immediately. People have been destroyed in that prison. And it destroys us all as well. It destroys what we stand for, how we see ourselves and sinks us further down, pulling the rest of the world down lower with us, that was point C.I. was making and I support that 100%.
Ann: Which, and I'm sorry, I know we're all planning to move quickly to try to address a number of topics, but which is why you don't pull an ACLU and go, "Wow thank you , Barack! Love you! You're so wonderful to say those words!" Empty words. The country and the world have suffered enough.
Jim: But, his supporters insist, Congress blocks him.
Jess: Bulls**t. As The Miami Herald's Carole Rosenberg pointed out on NPR's Morning Edition, Congress said anyone could leave, Barack just has to get the Secretary of Defense to sign off on it. In the meantime, Congress spends $900,000 of US taxpayer dollars on each prisoner, each year. At a time when we're supposed to be 'fiscal' and Barack's trying to gut the safety net, you'd think the money issue would sway a few people.
Jim: Alright. So there really are no excuses. I didn't think so either, I was just playing devil's advocate. C.I. covers Iraq every day. In addition to that, last week in the community we saw the following posts at community sites: "Good for Reuters," "Where are the left publications?," "The slaughter in Hawija," "Iraq gets worse (so does Women's Media Center)," "Iraq," "Why can't Policy Mic handle the topic of rape?," "He needs to be voted out of office," "Why does Christian Sciene Monitor keep lying about Iraq?," "What's the aversion to discussing rape?," "Remember who kicked off the violence," "Oh, Phyllis Bennis, are you really that dumb? Really?," "I'm sick of Daniel Ellsberg lying," "The violence never ends," "A film, violence in Iraq, etc" and "Iraq, Isaiah, Kat, Kim." This echos last week where we saw something similar. Betty. you're among those who've started blogging about Iraq several times a week. What's going on?
Betty: Nouri al-Maliki is a thug and a tyrant who is turning on the Iraqi people. Two weeks ago, you've got Nouri's forces attacking a sit-in. Killing at least 50 people, wounding 110 more. Now UNICEF informs us that 8 of the dead were children. Let me repeat it, 8 of the dead were children. That thug needs to go. The US government needs to stop supporting him, needs to stop providing him with weapons and needs to demand some change takes place. This is ridiculous. And Elaine wrote about this a few weeks back before the sit-in. About how we all let C.I. do all the heavy work. And she can. And she manages to. But if we're not thrilled with the US media silence about Iraq, either we do something different or we're as bad as they are. Ruth?
Ruth: Thank you. Betty and I started talking about this after Elaine's piece went up a few weeks back. We noticed a real shift when it wasn't just C.I. calling out the press on a lie but it was Elaine and Mike as well. Betty, C.I. and I are supporting a line from Reuters on Friday for a Truest. It is about how the ministries in Iraq, government ministries, repeatedly give an undercount. C.I. has made that point forever. And she is right. But if Mike and Elaine hadn't joined her in hitting hard on that last month would it have been noted this month? I have never seen the press admit that the ministries give an undercount. So Betty and I were talking about effects like that and we both agreed that we could do what Elaine had said she was going to do, make at least one post a week about Iraq. In addition to C.I.'s work, we all work on an article about Iraq here and between that and all of us resposting the Iraq snapshot, I think we sometimes have an attitude of, "It is covered." And that would be true, if the US media was still covering Iraq. But they are not.
Betty: Right. It is Ned Parker of The Los Angeles Times, who I have been highlighting at my site, Tim Arango of The New York Times, Mohammed Tawfeeq for CNN and the AP. Those are the entire US news outlets reporting on Iraq. With all the channels and all the papers and the websites, that is it.
Jim: Elaine, I had planned to bring you in on another topic but you keep getting mentioned for this one.
Elaine: Sure, I can jump in. Last week, I called out Phyllis Bennis and Mike called out Daniel Ellsberg. These are supposedly strong left voices. But they're two cowards who need to shut up if they don't have something truthful to say. Both lied on broadcasts that all US troops were out of Iraq. No. All US troops never left Iraq. I chose Bennis because, if you look at some of her 2012 writing, you will find her admitting that. Sometimes she tells the truth, sometimes she doesn't. C.I. doesn't have that option. She has to tell the truth and every time someone like Phyllis Bennis or Daniel Ellsberg lies or whores, it makes it that much harder for the real truth tellers. Last week, C.I. made a point to quote from the US Congressional Research Service report by Kenneth Katzman "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights." She shouldn't have had to. She quoted Katzman, in his report to the US Congress, explaining about US troops still in Iraq. She quoted him explaining The Erbil Agreement. These are two of things that she has to repeatedly go over -- in depth -- because people will insist she's lying. 'There are no US troops still in Iraq!' Or 'Nouri wouldn't be prime minister if he didn't get elected to a second term!' Well, in fact, C.I.'s told you the truth repeatedly. It's the whores who've lied. So read the report by Katzman and grasp it's Daniel Ellsberg who's lying, it's Phyllis Bennis who's lying. I think by grabbing Iraq once a week, we can take a lot of pressure off C.I. because she's the truth teller and she stands all alone. She takes all the heat for it and, yes, all the hate for it. She is America's Cassandra.
Jim: Cassandra, the Greek beauty who had the gift of prophecy but was cursed by Apollo never to be believed. Okay, Isaiah, I want to bring you in as well. You did "The Bride of Iran" -- any idea how controversial it would become?
Isaiah: Not a bit. My only goal there was to hold Nouri's feet to the fire and for many of the reasons that Betty, Ruth and Elaine have already spoken of. The Hawija massacre is something that the world should have stopped. Having failed to do so, the world owed to the dead to at least pay attention. As for the flack I got? I can live with it.
Jim: And we've got an article on that elsewhere in the edition, so I'll move on. Penny Pritzker. The corporate crook has just been nominated by Barack for Secretary of Commerce. In "Americans lost their homes because of her," "THIS JUST IN! CORPORTAE WELFARE FOR SUBPRIME LOAN QUEEN!" and "Foreclosure Queen Penny buys a Cabinet seat," Cedric, Wally and Mike covered the nomination.
Wally: Right and Cedric and I noted Ruth's "Bad Penny Pritzker" from Februrary 2011.
Jim: Right. Trina's a part of this discussion. Elaine was supposed to be but I pulled her out for Iraq. Trina, tell us about Penny.
Trina: I think the article in The Chicago Tribune Thursday told us about Penny. Her hometown newspaper delicately put it, "Pritzker is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions. Her nomination, which still needs Senate confirmation, also could bring up questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family." Rocky relationships with labor. And she's going to be commerce secretary? Before we get in to the issue of the subprime or even the scandals from Hyatt's nursing homes, that's troubling enough.
Dona: And if I can jump in, no one needed NOW issuing their crappy statement "NOW to President Obama: Penny Pritzker Appointment is Good, But Still Not Good Enough; More Women Should be in the Cabinet." Women are workers. If you're not a friend to labor, you're not a friend to women workers. NOW has embarrassed itself yet again. It's getting as bad as it was in Kim Gandy's final years.
Cedric: Wally and I decided to do something different. I want to use my time to read this into the record. It's from Greg Palast's "Billionaire Bankster Penny Pritzker Breaks into Obama's Cabinet:"
Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.
Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.
Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.
Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better - an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.
Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.
Wally: Cedric and I talked about this and if the topic was late in the roundtable, we agreed that instead of a discussion, we'd each just read something into the record. This is George N. Schmidt reporting on Penny Pritzker last July at Substance News:
The story manages to leave out the main work Penny Pritzker has been doing to bust unions during the past 14 months. Given how much can be accumulated by any reporter using Google, it's a tour de force that Jodi Kantor and Hicholas Confessore manage to leave out Penny's role in pushing Rahm Emanuel's agenda against the largest teacher union between the east and west coasts — and the strike that is now looming!
A "news" story in The New York Times discusses problems between Penny Pritzker and "labor" and leaves out the biggest confrontation of all between Penny Pritzker and unions in Chicago: her role as one of seven voting members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel one year ago, or her ongoing role in the teacher bashing and union busting agenda of the former White House Chief of Staff that will come to a major confrontation in the next eight weeks. Yet that lengthy New York Times story manages to miss the elephant farting in the Times's pup ten: Chicago Public Schools and the Pritzker agenda against real public schools, and on behalf of massive privatization, union busting, charter schools, and vastly expanded outsourcing, including in public education administration.
Penny Pritzker's role as one of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education has been prominent since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her in May 2011. As one of her first acts on the school board, she spoke in favor of the controversial (and since proved mendacious) decision by the Board of Education to vote that it was facing a "fiscal crisis" and therefore did not have to honor the fifth year of the labor contract with the school system's unions. That vote rescinded the four percent raise that the unions had negotiated four years earlier with the previous school board. Two months after that vote, Pritzker voted quietly to transfer an additional $70 million to the City of Chicago for police services in the schools, a scandal that has lately been exposed by researchers (including this reporter) at the Chicago Teachers Union. The school system had a valid contract with the city requiring it to pay $8 million per year for police services, but after breaking the unions' contracts, the members of the Board voted to transfer the additional money to Rahm Emanuel's city budget. As with most decisions of the Board since Pritzker became a member, the action was taken in August 2011 without discussion or debate.
Jim: Alright, that's fine. We have Rebecca, Marcia, Mike, Stan and Ty still to go -- maybe Ava and C.I. as well. And the topic is TV. Rebecca, you cover three shows. As the season ends, your thoughts on them?
Rebcca: I cover Scandal and Revenge on ABC and Community on NBC. The breakout hit of this season has been Scandal. If you miss it, you're missing out on the conversation because this is a "I didn't see that coming!" next day kind of show. In fact, it's what Revenge was last season. Revenge isn't what it was. Firing the show runner was the smartest thing ABC did but it took too damn long.
Jim: What was the problem?
Rebecca: The first season was about Amanda Clarke posing as Emily Thorne and returning to the Hamptons to get revenge for the liars who framed her father for terrorism and destroyed his life. That especially includes Victoria Grayson who was having an affair with David Clarke, would have his daughter, Charlotte, but turned on David to back her husband Conrad Grayson. Season two? There have been episodes where Victoria had one scene. Instead of us following Emily's storyling, we spent far too much time on brand new character Aidan and his trashy sister that we never saw before and didn't care about. It was Aiden, Aiden, Aiden. Now the show runner, he may have fallen in love with Aiden. But America didn't, the fans complained and the ratings sank. While Revenge imploded, Community came back with its finest season. This was a great season and I would hope NBC would renew it based on that. I've argued at my blog that it should be paired with Whitney because both shows cover stories -- unlike the Parks and Recreation shows which are spoof shows of a documentary being made about the show.
Marcia: I could see that. The two got strong ratings when they shared a night before. They really are the only two on the schedule that match up. Go On, the Matthew Perry show, is another one of NBC's sitcoms for people who don't like sitcoms.
Jim: Revolution?
Marcia: Airs on NBC. Most improved show of the season. I'm into sci-fi so I watched from the start. The show never lived up to what it promised. Then, as Christmas season approached, it took a lengthy hiatus. When it came back on? Boom-boom-boom. The show moves so quickly and it is everything you could want it to be. It's just this huge improvement. I actually tried to stop blogging about it at one point. But the readers wouldn't let me. And back then, before the hiatus, it was a real struggle to watch. Now I can't wait for each new episode.
Jim: Stan, you've got two shows.
Stan: Three.
Jim: Sorry, three.
Stan: The Good Wife. I don't ever worry about that show getting the axe. It has an audience. I never check for news about it -- with the exception of the start of this season when they started trying to put Kalinda into that masochistic relationship. But that's really it. For example, last Monday when I wrote about the show, I didn't note it was the season finale because I didn't know it was. I only learned that after people e-mailed me to tell me it. Body of Proof. ABC. Awful show. They've gotten rid of three cast members, they've reduced Ethan and Curtis to the point where they do nothing. They decided we wanted to spend time with Mark Valley and brought him on and shoved him down our throats. And Megan's just a pain in the ass. Dana Delaney's character. It's really a tired show.
Ty: I think the point here is one Ty made last month which is when the highest rated episode of the season is the one that revolves around Jeri Ryan's character and not Dana Delaney's, that's the tip that the audience is tired of Megan Hunt.
Stan: Thank you. The third show is Arrow. Ava and C.I. told me I would like that show. I wasn't going to watch. I love the super hero shows but they always get the axe. Like The Cape, I loved The Cape. But Ava and C.I. said I'd like it and they were right. The only thing I don't like is Roy. In the comics, the teeny bopper becomes Speedy -- Kid Arrow! Who needs it? He drags the show down and not just because he can't keep his shirt on.
Jim: And Arrow was The CW's hit for this season. Mike, you cover Nikita on The CW.
Mike: There are two more new episodes left before the season wraps up, airs Fridays on The CW. It's a great show, the season has been wonderful. You really don't want to miss it. Division is no more. Amanda's teamed with The Shop. Things are going crazy. A great show.
Jim: For five years, you blogged about a show on Fox. And that show wrapped up this season.
Mike: Right. Fringe. I miss it. I actually like Touch, I know some people don't. If Touch were on another night, I'd blog about it. But it's on Fridays and I'm already blogging on Saturdays to cover Nikita. But Fringe is a show that's truly missed. Stan noted it was on Netflix. Got to be honest here, I've already seen every episode, blogged about them in real time. After I read Stan, I went to Netflix and started streaming. Fringe was a great show -- just first four seasons at Netflix. Need to add that so no one gets mad and says, "Why didn't you tell me they didn't have season five!"
Jim: Okay, we're wrapping up but there was an e-mail late Saturday wondering why C.I. would be tired after she and Ava had done the research work for their TV piece this edition? "So they watched five episodes and called people with the show and who left the show, that's really going to wear you out?" That was the question from Walter.
Ava: I'll grab. Saturday, we flew across the country. On the plane back, we were going through a ton of things and also talking about a piece we're writing -- besides the TV piece --and outlining that. We were reviewing things for our TV piece because we hadn't decided yet and there are always people asking us to note their project. We get back and immediately launch into an article about censorship. Everyone worked on that and we got it through two drafts. We also spent 30 minutes debating the images that would run with it and how to present them. Forget that C.I.'s already written every day at The Common Ills. Her being tired wasn't surprising.
Jim: I agree. C.I. what sort of other things did you review?
C.I.: Honestly, we cover One Life To Live. That wasn't planned. That was sold to us and the pitch was the best pitch to appeal to us. Once we heard the pitch, we were hooked. Prior to that? We were considering All My Children, Sarah Chalke's new sitcom, a SyFy show, a documentary on aborigines in Australia which was a really great one that included discussions of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the poet who is also known as Kath Walker. It talked about the 1967 vote on aborigines rights, the May 27, 1967 vote and how it was possible, some argued, because Australia was doing so great economically at that time and felt proud of itself. Which would make you wonder the implications of when a country's not doing well economically. And we discussed how that could be paired with Making Contact, a public radio program, and a recent discussion on empathy. There was the book discussion on Great Gatsby that the Leonard Lopate Show will broadcast tomorrow. I believe they're broadcasting it Monday. All of those things are things that Ava and I went through on Saturday before we decided on One Life To Live and watched the first five episodes. And that's how it goes every week.
Ava: Long gone are the early days when Sunday rolled around and we'd say, "What do you want to write about?" There are people who plead for reviews for their show even if it's going to be negative because it gets the show out there.
Jim: Okay. Well that's going to wrap it up. This is a rush transcript.
Betty: Nouri al-Maliki is a thug and a tyrant who is turning on the Iraqi people. Two weeks ago, you've got Nouri's forces attacking a sit-in. Killing at least 50 people, wounding 110 more. Now UNICEF informs us that 8 of the dead were children. Let me repeat it, 8 of the dead were children. That thug needs to go. The US government needs to stop supporting him, needs to stop providing him with weapons and needs to demand some change takes place. This is ridiculous. And Elaine wrote about this a few weeks back before the sit-in. About how we all let C.I. do all the heavy work. And she can. And she manages to. But if we're not thrilled with the US media silence about Iraq, either we do something different or we're as bad as they are. Ruth?
Ruth: Thank you. Betty and I started talking about this after Elaine's piece went up a few weeks back. We noticed a real shift when it wasn't just C.I. calling out the press on a lie but it was Elaine and Mike as well. Betty, C.I. and I are supporting a line from Reuters on Friday for a Truest. It is about how the ministries in Iraq, government ministries, repeatedly give an undercount. C.I. has made that point forever. And she is right. But if Mike and Elaine hadn't joined her in hitting hard on that last month would it have been noted this month? I have never seen the press admit that the ministries give an undercount. So Betty and I were talking about effects like that and we both agreed that we could do what Elaine had said she was going to do, make at least one post a week about Iraq. In addition to C.I.'s work, we all work on an article about Iraq here and between that and all of us resposting the Iraq snapshot, I think we sometimes have an attitude of, "It is covered." And that would be true, if the US media was still covering Iraq. But they are not.
Betty: Right. It is Ned Parker of The Los Angeles Times, who I have been highlighting at my site, Tim Arango of The New York Times, Mohammed Tawfeeq for CNN and the AP. Those are the entire US news outlets reporting on Iraq. With all the channels and all the papers and the websites, that is it.
Jim: Elaine, I had planned to bring you in on another topic but you keep getting mentioned for this one.
Elaine: Sure, I can jump in. Last week, I called out Phyllis Bennis and Mike called out Daniel Ellsberg. These are supposedly strong left voices. But they're two cowards who need to shut up if they don't have something truthful to say. Both lied on broadcasts that all US troops were out of Iraq. No. All US troops never left Iraq. I chose Bennis because, if you look at some of her 2012 writing, you will find her admitting that. Sometimes she tells the truth, sometimes she doesn't. C.I. doesn't have that option. She has to tell the truth and every time someone like Phyllis Bennis or Daniel Ellsberg lies or whores, it makes it that much harder for the real truth tellers. Last week, C.I. made a point to quote from the US Congressional Research Service report by Kenneth Katzman "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights." She shouldn't have had to. She quoted Katzman, in his report to the US Congress, explaining about US troops still in Iraq. She quoted him explaining The Erbil Agreement. These are two of things that she has to repeatedly go over -- in depth -- because people will insist she's lying. 'There are no US troops still in Iraq!' Or 'Nouri wouldn't be prime minister if he didn't get elected to a second term!' Well, in fact, C.I.'s told you the truth repeatedly. It's the whores who've lied. So read the report by Katzman and grasp it's Daniel Ellsberg who's lying, it's Phyllis Bennis who's lying. I think by grabbing Iraq once a week, we can take a lot of pressure off C.I. because she's the truth teller and she stands all alone. She takes all the heat for it and, yes, all the hate for it. She is America's Cassandra.
Jim: Cassandra, the Greek beauty who had the gift of prophecy but was cursed by Apollo never to be believed. Okay, Isaiah, I want to bring you in as well. You did "The Bride of Iran" -- any idea how controversial it would become?
Isaiah: Not a bit. My only goal there was to hold Nouri's feet to the fire and for many of the reasons that Betty, Ruth and Elaine have already spoken of. The Hawija massacre is something that the world should have stopped. Having failed to do so, the world owed to the dead to at least pay attention. As for the flack I got? I can live with it.
Jim: And we've got an article on that elsewhere in the edition, so I'll move on. Penny Pritzker. The corporate crook has just been nominated by Barack for Secretary of Commerce. In "Americans lost their homes because of her," "THIS JUST IN! CORPORTAE WELFARE FOR SUBPRIME LOAN QUEEN!" and "Foreclosure Queen Penny buys a Cabinet seat," Cedric, Wally and Mike covered the nomination.
Wally: Right and Cedric and I noted Ruth's "Bad Penny Pritzker" from Februrary 2011.
Jim: Right. Trina's a part of this discussion. Elaine was supposed to be but I pulled her out for Iraq. Trina, tell us about Penny.
Trina: I think the article in The Chicago Tribune Thursday told us about Penny. Her hometown newspaper delicately put it, "Pritzker is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions. Her nomination, which still needs Senate confirmation, also could bring up questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family." Rocky relationships with labor. And she's going to be commerce secretary? Before we get in to the issue of the subprime or even the scandals from Hyatt's nursing homes, that's troubling enough.
Dona: And if I can jump in, no one needed NOW issuing their crappy statement "NOW to President Obama: Penny Pritzker Appointment is Good, But Still Not Good Enough; More Women Should be in the Cabinet." Women are workers. If you're not a friend to labor, you're not a friend to women workers. NOW has embarrassed itself yet again. It's getting as bad as it was in Kim Gandy's final years.
Cedric: Wally and I decided to do something different. I want to use my time to read this into the record. It's from Greg Palast's "Billionaire Bankster Penny Pritzker Breaks into Obama's Cabinet:"
Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.
Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.
Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.
Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better - an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.
Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.
Wally: Cedric and I talked about this and if the topic was late in the roundtable, we agreed that instead of a discussion, we'd each just read something into the record. This is George N. Schmidt reporting on Penny Pritzker last July at Substance News:
The story manages to leave out the main work Penny Pritzker has been doing to bust unions during the past 14 months. Given how much can be accumulated by any reporter using Google, it's a tour de force that Jodi Kantor and Hicholas Confessore manage to leave out Penny's role in pushing Rahm Emanuel's agenda against the largest teacher union between the east and west coasts — and the strike that is now looming!
A "news" story in The New York Times discusses problems between Penny Pritzker and "labor" and leaves out the biggest confrontation of all between Penny Pritzker and unions in Chicago: her role as one of seven voting members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel one year ago, or her ongoing role in the teacher bashing and union busting agenda of the former White House Chief of Staff that will come to a major confrontation in the next eight weeks. Yet that lengthy New York Times story manages to miss the elephant farting in the Times's pup ten: Chicago Public Schools and the Pritzker agenda against real public schools, and on behalf of massive privatization, union busting, charter schools, and vastly expanded outsourcing, including in public education administration.
Penny Pritzker's role as one of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education has been prominent since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her in May 2011. As one of her first acts on the school board, she spoke in favor of the controversial (and since proved mendacious) decision by the Board of Education to vote that it was facing a "fiscal crisis" and therefore did not have to honor the fifth year of the labor contract with the school system's unions. That vote rescinded the four percent raise that the unions had negotiated four years earlier with the previous school board. Two months after that vote, Pritzker voted quietly to transfer an additional $70 million to the City of Chicago for police services in the schools, a scandal that has lately been exposed by researchers (including this reporter) at the Chicago Teachers Union. The school system had a valid contract with the city requiring it to pay $8 million per year for police services, but after breaking the unions' contracts, the members of the Board voted to transfer the additional money to Rahm Emanuel's city budget. As with most decisions of the Board since Pritzker became a member, the action was taken in August 2011 without discussion or debate.
Jim: Alright, that's fine. We have Rebecca, Marcia, Mike, Stan and Ty still to go -- maybe Ava and C.I. as well. And the topic is TV. Rebecca, you cover three shows. As the season ends, your thoughts on them?
Rebcca: I cover Scandal and Revenge on ABC and Community on NBC. The breakout hit of this season has been Scandal. If you miss it, you're missing out on the conversation because this is a "I didn't see that coming!" next day kind of show. In fact, it's what Revenge was last season. Revenge isn't what it was. Firing the show runner was the smartest thing ABC did but it took too damn long.
Jim: What was the problem?
Rebecca: The first season was about Amanda Clarke posing as Emily Thorne and returning to the Hamptons to get revenge for the liars who framed her father for terrorism and destroyed his life. That especially includes Victoria Grayson who was having an affair with David Clarke, would have his daughter, Charlotte, but turned on David to back her husband Conrad Grayson. Season two? There have been episodes where Victoria had one scene. Instead of us following Emily's storyling, we spent far too much time on brand new character Aidan and his trashy sister that we never saw before and didn't care about. It was Aiden, Aiden, Aiden. Now the show runner, he may have fallen in love with Aiden. But America didn't, the fans complained and the ratings sank. While Revenge imploded, Community came back with its finest season. This was a great season and I would hope NBC would renew it based on that. I've argued at my blog that it should be paired with Whitney because both shows cover stories -- unlike the Parks and Recreation shows which are spoof shows of a documentary being made about the show.
Marcia: I could see that. The two got strong ratings when they shared a night before. They really are the only two on the schedule that match up. Go On, the Matthew Perry show, is another one of NBC's sitcoms for people who don't like sitcoms.
Jim: Revolution?
Marcia: Airs on NBC. Most improved show of the season. I'm into sci-fi so I watched from the start. The show never lived up to what it promised. Then, as Christmas season approached, it took a lengthy hiatus. When it came back on? Boom-boom-boom. The show moves so quickly and it is everything you could want it to be. It's just this huge improvement. I actually tried to stop blogging about it at one point. But the readers wouldn't let me. And back then, before the hiatus, it was a real struggle to watch. Now I can't wait for each new episode.
Jim: Stan, you've got two shows.
Stan: Three.
Jim: Sorry, three.
Stan: The Good Wife. I don't ever worry about that show getting the axe. It has an audience. I never check for news about it -- with the exception of the start of this season when they started trying to put Kalinda into that masochistic relationship. But that's really it. For example, last Monday when I wrote about the show, I didn't note it was the season finale because I didn't know it was. I only learned that after people e-mailed me to tell me it. Body of Proof. ABC. Awful show. They've gotten rid of three cast members, they've reduced Ethan and Curtis to the point where they do nothing. They decided we wanted to spend time with Mark Valley and brought him on and shoved him down our throats. And Megan's just a pain in the ass. Dana Delaney's character. It's really a tired show.
Ty: I think the point here is one Ty made last month which is when the highest rated episode of the season is the one that revolves around Jeri Ryan's character and not Dana Delaney's, that's the tip that the audience is tired of Megan Hunt.
Stan: Thank you. The third show is Arrow. Ava and C.I. told me I would like that show. I wasn't going to watch. I love the super hero shows but they always get the axe. Like The Cape, I loved The Cape. But Ava and C.I. said I'd like it and they were right. The only thing I don't like is Roy. In the comics, the teeny bopper becomes Speedy -- Kid Arrow! Who needs it? He drags the show down and not just because he can't keep his shirt on.
Jim: And Arrow was The CW's hit for this season. Mike, you cover Nikita on The CW.
Mike: There are two more new episodes left before the season wraps up, airs Fridays on The CW. It's a great show, the season has been wonderful. You really don't want to miss it. Division is no more. Amanda's teamed with The Shop. Things are going crazy. A great show.
Jim: For five years, you blogged about a show on Fox. And that show wrapped up this season.
Mike: Right. Fringe. I miss it. I actually like Touch, I know some people don't. If Touch were on another night, I'd blog about it. But it's on Fridays and I'm already blogging on Saturdays to cover Nikita. But Fringe is a show that's truly missed. Stan noted it was on Netflix. Got to be honest here, I've already seen every episode, blogged about them in real time. After I read Stan, I went to Netflix and started streaming. Fringe was a great show -- just first four seasons at Netflix. Need to add that so no one gets mad and says, "Why didn't you tell me they didn't have season five!"
Jim: Okay, we're wrapping up but there was an e-mail late Saturday wondering why C.I. would be tired after she and Ava had done the research work for their TV piece this edition? "So they watched five episodes and called people with the show and who left the show, that's really going to wear you out?" That was the question from Walter.
Ava: I'll grab. Saturday, we flew across the country. On the plane back, we were going through a ton of things and also talking about a piece we're writing -- besides the TV piece --and outlining that. We were reviewing things for our TV piece because we hadn't decided yet and there are always people asking us to note their project. We get back and immediately launch into an article about censorship. Everyone worked on that and we got it through two drafts. We also spent 30 minutes debating the images that would run with it and how to present them. Forget that C.I.'s already written every day at The Common Ills. Her being tired wasn't surprising.
Jim: I agree. C.I. what sort of other things did you review?
C.I.: Honestly, we cover One Life To Live. That wasn't planned. That was sold to us and the pitch was the best pitch to appeal to us. Once we heard the pitch, we were hooked. Prior to that? We were considering All My Children, Sarah Chalke's new sitcom, a SyFy show, a documentary on aborigines in Australia which was a really great one that included discussions of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the poet who is also known as Kath Walker. It talked about the 1967 vote on aborigines rights, the May 27, 1967 vote and how it was possible, some argued, because Australia was doing so great economically at that time and felt proud of itself. Which would make you wonder the implications of when a country's not doing well economically. And we discussed how that could be paired with Making Contact, a public radio program, and a recent discussion on empathy. There was the book discussion on Great Gatsby that the Leonard Lopate Show will broadcast tomorrow. I believe they're broadcasting it Monday. All of those things are things that Ava and I went through on Saturday before we decided on One Life To Live and watched the first five episodes. And that's how it goes every week.
Ava: Long gone are the early days when Sunday rolled around and we'd say, "What do you want to write about?" There are people who plead for reviews for their show even if it's going to be negative because it gets the show out there.
Jim: Okay. Well that's going to wrap it up. This is a rush transcript.
Porn Site Flickr -- Vaginas, Cocks and Kidde Porn, Looks Like It's All There
It started innocently enough. Or so Isaiah thought last Sunday.
In response to Nouri al-Maliki's slaughter of a sit-in in Hawija Tuesday, April 23rd, which Alsumaria noted, left 50 dead and 110 injured according to Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) and to claims that Nouri ordered in the assault on the request of the Iranian government, Isaiah drew "The Bride of Iran."
Hosted on Fotki
"No peen, no vag, no insertion," Isaiah notes and so he felt that the comic would be fine. No doubt, Emily Post would rule it vulgar but it was an editorial cartoon that followed the limits.
So imagine the surprise when, at first, the image completely disappeared from Flickr after it was posted to The Common Ills. As Ruth observed at her site, "I am so glad Isaiah did that comic. Flick is not. Tough."
In an e-mail reply to C.I., Flickr noted "the government" asked that the image be taken down. When C.I. responded with a lengthy e-mail about First Amendment rights, the image was back up and a e-mail reply stated that the first Flickr response (citing "the government") had been mistaken so disregard.
That was strange but could have been the end of it.
However people clicking on the comic at The Common Ills to go to Flickr were then told they had to sign in to see the image.
What was going on now?
The image was "offensive," Flickr informed in an e-mail. Offensive to whom was not stated. But Flickr noted a supposed policy they had in place. They sent the policy to Third Estate Sunday Review as well as to The Common Ills. C.I. had been the one in contact with them but the image was part of The Third Estate Sunday Review Flickr set.
Maybe if we hadn't earlier been told that "the government" had complained about the image and that's why Flickr took it down we'd have been less upset.
But it's a mild editorial cartoon. As Isaiah noted, "No peen, no vag, no insertion."
Ty and C.I. had been dealing with Flickr up to now. At this point, Rebecca got involved.
Rebecca, "Ty and I had been working on something personal, a thing for a family, when he mentioned what was going on. I said, 'Read that rule to me'."
He did. Flickr wrote Third: "A good rule of thumb is, bare breasts and bottoms are 'moderate.' Full frontal nudity is 'restricted'."
They were saying that the comic above was "moderate" and that people looking for it on Flickr would have to sign in to see it. Below is the message an attempt to view "The Bride of Iran" would be met with.
Rebecca, "I said, 'Woah-woah-woah! T, my friend, just told me Monday about these Flickr images a lady had pulled up at T's beauty salon. They had all been shocked. And they didn't need to sign in to Flickr to see them. So that's when I got involved."
Ty, C.I. and Rebecca tested what T had seen and found it to be true. You can find anything on Flickr that's not been made "moderate" or "restricted."
We found images of butts, for example, like the piece of art below.
We've used the "eraser" function in Windows Paint to cover the penis and testicles. 'Well that's art!' Who gets to judge art and say that's art and an editorial cartoon (which does not show penis or testicles) is outrageous? An editorial cartoon by its very nature is political speech which is the most legally protected form of speech in the United States.
So we looked further and found many images of butts including these three.
The first two may pass for art or 'art' but the third photo isn't and on that third one, if you look to the side with really good eyes you'll be able to see a completely nude stripper is part of public collection. It's so small that we're not going to use the eraser.
The same will not be done on the next one with photos to the side.
We've used the eraser to cover -- in the first two -- vagina entrances -- and in the next two -- erect penises.
Keep it classy, Flickr.
We found so much more.
That wasn't all we found. We found beastiality. We found what looks like kiddie porn.
And none of this was flagged, none of this was under "moderate" or "restricted" guidance. You could see it all.
But an editorial cartoon they wanted to censor?
Kiddie porn?
Yeah. On that, we've notified the authorities.
Rebecca found it first and sent it to Ty and C.I. and said, "Am I wrong or is she under 18?"
They agreed she looked to be.
At this point, they were all contacting Flickr.
But Flickr stopped replying to Rebecca and C.I. once they both raised the issue of kiddie porn.
They were still replying to Ty. At least up until he e-mailed them the following:
You have refused to answer any question.
I believe you were informed by Rebecca Winter that not only are photos of vaginas on Flickr currently but so is what appears to be kiddie porn.
With or without your statement, we will be publishing an article.
We will demonstrate that you are censoring political content while displaying vaginas, penises and apparently kiddie porn on Flickr.
Your failure to address this issue properly with us will be noted in the article.
As will be noted how easy it is to find porn on Flickr and how Flickr has no excuse for not knowing it was up.
Ty
A silence followed. The next day, more e-mails from Flickr.
These did not address the issue and Ty noted that in his replies and noted that it was very interesting that, when informed they had possible kiddie porn up at their site, their response was not ask for a URL but to instead return to the issue of the cartoon and then to announce their decision to mark the entire Third Estate Sunday Review Flickr folder as "moderate."
Flickr has no excuse for not knowing that the above images are up and available for all to see. Rebecca, Ty and C.I. found them by using "nude" as the search label for the sets and using "nudity." In other words, if Flickr even bother to police their site in the most rudimentary way, the above images would all have easily been found by them. (As well as the possible kiddie porn.)
Was Isaiah's cartoon originally pulled because of a complaint from "the government" as one Flickr employee noted? (For the record, that's the only Flickr employee who ever signed an e-mail. He signed that e-mail and the one where he retracted the claim.)
We'll never know.
But look at the above screen snaps of what Flickr does allow up with no restrictions and ask yourself why Isaiah's editorial cartoon caused any problem?
In response to Nouri al-Maliki's slaughter of a sit-in in Hawija Tuesday, April 23rd, which Alsumaria noted, left 50 dead and 110 injured according to Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) and to claims that Nouri ordered in the assault on the request of the Iranian government, Isaiah drew "The Bride of Iran."
Hosted on Fotki
"No peen, no vag, no insertion," Isaiah notes and so he felt that the comic would be fine. No doubt, Emily Post would rule it vulgar but it was an editorial cartoon that followed the limits.
So imagine the surprise when, at first, the image completely disappeared from Flickr after it was posted to The Common Ills. As Ruth observed at her site, "I am so glad Isaiah did that comic. Flick is not. Tough."
In an e-mail reply to C.I., Flickr noted "the government" asked that the image be taken down. When C.I. responded with a lengthy e-mail about First Amendment rights, the image was back up and a e-mail reply stated that the first Flickr response (citing "the government") had been mistaken so disregard.
That was strange but could have been the end of it.
However people clicking on the comic at The Common Ills to go to Flickr were then told they had to sign in to see the image.
What was going on now?
The image was "offensive," Flickr informed in an e-mail. Offensive to whom was not stated. But Flickr noted a supposed policy they had in place. They sent the policy to Third Estate Sunday Review as well as to The Common Ills. C.I. had been the one in contact with them but the image was part of The Third Estate Sunday Review Flickr set.
Maybe if we hadn't earlier been told that "the government" had complained about the image and that's why Flickr took it down we'd have been less upset.
But it's a mild editorial cartoon. As Isaiah noted, "No peen, no vag, no insertion."
Ty and C.I. had been dealing with Flickr up to now. At this point, Rebecca got involved.
Rebecca, "Ty and I had been working on something personal, a thing for a family, when he mentioned what was going on. I said, 'Read that rule to me'."
He did. Flickr wrote Third: "A good rule of thumb is, bare breasts and bottoms are 'moderate.' Full frontal nudity is 'restricted'."
They were saying that the comic above was "moderate" and that people looking for it on Flickr would have to sign in to see it. Below is the message an attempt to view "The Bride of Iran" would be met with.
Rebecca, "I said, 'Woah-woah-woah! T, my friend, just told me Monday about these Flickr images a lady had pulled up at T's beauty salon. They had all been shocked. And they didn't need to sign in to Flickr to see them. So that's when I got involved."
Ty, C.I. and Rebecca tested what T had seen and found it to be true. You can find anything on Flickr that's not been made "moderate" or "restricted."
We found images of butts, for example, like the piece of art below.
We've used the "eraser" function in Windows Paint to cover the penis and testicles. 'Well that's art!' Who gets to judge art and say that's art and an editorial cartoon (which does not show penis or testicles) is outrageous? An editorial cartoon by its very nature is political speech which is the most legally protected form of speech in the United States.
So we looked further and found many images of butts including these three.
The first two may pass for art or 'art' but the third photo isn't and on that third one, if you look to the side with really good eyes you'll be able to see a completely nude stripper is part of public collection. It's so small that we're not going to use the eraser.
The same will not be done on the next one with photos to the side.
We've used the eraser to cover -- in the first two -- vagina entrances -- and in the next two -- erect penises.
Keep it classy, Flickr.
We found so much more.
That wasn't all we found. We found beastiality. We found what looks like kiddie porn.
And none of this was flagged, none of this was under "moderate" or "restricted" guidance. You could see it all.
But an editorial cartoon they wanted to censor?
Kiddie porn?
Yeah. On that, we've notified the authorities.
Rebecca found it first and sent it to Ty and C.I. and said, "Am I wrong or is she under 18?"
They agreed she looked to be.
At this point, they were all contacting Flickr.
But Flickr stopped replying to Rebecca and C.I. once they both raised the issue of kiddie porn.
They were still replying to Ty. At least up until he e-mailed them the following:
You have refused to answer any question.
I believe you were informed by Rebecca Winter that not only are photos of vaginas on Flickr currently but so is what appears to be kiddie porn.
With or without your statement, we will be publishing an article.
We will demonstrate that you are censoring political content while displaying vaginas, penises and apparently kiddie porn on Flickr.
Your failure to address this issue properly with us will be noted in the article.
As will be noted how easy it is to find porn on Flickr and how Flickr has no excuse for not knowing it was up.
Ty
A silence followed. The next day, more e-mails from Flickr.
These did not address the issue and Ty noted that in his replies and noted that it was very interesting that, when informed they had possible kiddie porn up at their site, their response was not ask for a URL but to instead return to the issue of the cartoon and then to announce their decision to mark the entire Third Estate Sunday Review Flickr folder as "moderate."
Flickr has no excuse for not knowing that the above images are up and available for all to see. Rebecca, Ty and C.I. found them by using "nude" as the search label for the sets and using "nudity." In other words, if Flickr even bother to police their site in the most rudimentary way, the above images would all have easily been found by them. (As well as the possible kiddie porn.)
Was Isaiah's cartoon originally pulled because of a complaint from "the government" as one Flickr employee noted? (For the record, that's the only Flickr employee who ever signed an e-mail. He signed that e-mail and the one where he retracted the claim.)
We'll never know.
But look at the above screen snaps of what Flickr does allow up with no restrictions and ask yourself why Isaiah's editorial cartoon caused any problem?
The different standard for women (Ava and C.I.)
Sexism. These days it appears to fuel everything but the failed economy.
As we watch Senator Kelly Ayotte be targeted non-stop, we're reminded of just how sexist the left can be. With Ayotte, it started last fall when she dared to question the Benghazi story. She was correct to question it and questions still remain. There are those who insists that's not the case, from their easy recliners, sipping from their Hope 'N Change mugs. But we were at the House hearings and the Senate hearings on Benghazi. We've heard it all.
Ayotte, if you've forgotten, was dumb or racist or really dumb or any number of things because she questioned the official line on Benghazi. That resulted in the first round of bashings. The second round only recently started. If you missed it, April 17th, one of the gun control bills went down in flames -- in a 54 to 46 vote. (60 votes were needed for it to pass because, Ted Barrett and Tom Cohen of CNN explain, "Due to procedural steps agreed to by both sides, all the amendments considered Wednesday required 60 votes to pass in the 100-member chamber, meaning Democrats and their independent allies who hold 55 seats needed support from some GOP senators to push through the Manchin-Toomey proposal.") Five Democrats voted against it (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid only after it was clear it didn't have 60 votes). Most Republicans also voted against it. Kelly Ayotte is a Republican.
Our impression of Senator Ayotte wasn't formed last fall. Our impression came as a result of her work in Senate Committee hearings. A November 10, 2011 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing resulted in Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Portions."
Ayotte is not a joke in that comic because she's not a joke in the hearings. (The idiot insisting that veterans' remains weren't put in landfills "these were portions" is a joke -- a very sad and sick joke and he is Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Norton Schwartz..) She's not an idiot. She's not an airhead. You may or may not agree with a vote she casts, but she is a smart person. She was a prosecutor and she was also New Hampshire's Attorney General.
She was one of 46 senators to vote against the gun control bill.
She somehow ended up the only one targeted.
Last week Cedric's "Was she lost? Did she cross state lines accidentally?" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! BAG LADY WITH 100 CATS OR ACTIVIST?" (joint-post) offended some. It didn't offend us. Erica Lafferty is not a resident of New Hampshire. Ayotte held a town hall for constituents. Lafferty, whose mother died in the Sandy Hook massacre showed up to hector Ayotte about her vote. Cedric and Wally were right. It was a stunt.
If Lafferty wants to interrupt a fundraiser, if she wants to occupy Ayotte's office, we're fine with that. But town halls are for residents. Our representative in the House? She doesn't do them anymore. They got a little too real for Nancy Pelosi. If she were to do some again and we had someone from outside our district asking questions, we'd be offended. Town halls are for constituents. Take your stunts somewhere else.
Ayotte has faced questions about her vote on that bill from her constituents including at town halls. Cedric and Wally didn't criticize that nor do we. But Lafferty needs to grasp that her mourning does not trump everything in the whole wide world nor does it allow her to be a resident of all fifty states. She needs to learn to work with her own senators and her own representative.
Watching the coverage of Lafferty's nonsense, we were reminded of just how ugly the left can be. It was all so much like 2007 and 2008 when CODEPINK was 'bird-dogging.'
You may remember that they were going to bird-dog pro-war senators. Somehow that just came down to Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama voted for funding the war over and over but CODEPINK couldn't protest him (of course not, Jodi was a bundler for Barack -- a detail she 'forgot' to reveal when CODEPINK announced their bird dogging campaign). They also avoided John Edwards who did vote for the authorization.
They went after Hillary. And did so pretending to be feminists.
But feminists don't start hunger strikes in a country filled with young girls and women with eating disorders. Nor do feminists hold Hillary to a standard higher than the one that have for Barack, John Edwards or any other Democratic male.
It's sort of like the current Ayotte standard. Though four Democrats voted against it (five if you count Reid but, again, he only voted "no" after the votes were known and supposedly so that the measure could come for a vote again), Republican Ayotte was the one targeted. Though the Senate is overwhelmingly male, Ayotte is the senator targeted.
Bernard. a Libertarian who's been a reader of this site for five years, e-mailed Ty "MSNBC Has A Kelly Ayotte Obsession" -- an article by Jeff Poor for The Daily Caller. Bernard asked in his e-mail, "Am I wrong to be bothered by what MSNBC is doing?" Over a 24 hour period, Poor counted 11 segments on Ayotte's vote where she was hectored by the likes of Melissa Lie Face Lacewell Harris Perry, the woman who Princeton dropped after Perry went on various TV programs in 2008 claiming to be an independent analysts when in fact she'd been volunteering for the Barack Obama presidential campaign since 2007. The failure to make that disclosure is a huge ethical lapse and why she's no longer at an ivy league school. (We documented it all in real time. Far too many times to note in this. Check the archives or Google her name and "lie face.")
No, Bernard, you're not wrong to be upset. 11 segments?
And how many did they have on Iraq? Where over 700 people died from violence last month, according to the United Nations, the highest death toll in five years. Where Nouri al-Maliki attacked a sit-in in Hawija. How many segments did they do on Iraq?
See, it's all the same, it's Hillary all over again.
The left likes to pretend it's not sexist but sexism is all that drives it most days. So they glom on a woman and try to destroy her. Last fall was about trying to turn Ayotte into a village idiot. You may remember Katha Pollitt was impressed with Sarah Palin's 2008 GOP Convention speech, she even said so on Journo-list. But when it came to write about it for the public, Katha took part in the non-stop attacks on Palin. Katha wasn't alone. And last fall was all about trying to do to Ayotte what they did to Palin.
That didn't work.
But they're not done with her yet. Since their attempts to make her an idiot didn't work, they're now trying to destroy her character.
11 segments in 24 hours? It's an echo chamber. And you can find it all over the place because when a woman is attacked, there are always people rushing to join in. (See "Media: The allure of Bash The Bitch.")
Now women can be criticized and in many forms and ways. And that doesn't mean sexism.
But 46 senators voted against the gun bill -- including Democrats -- and yet the person the 'movement' is focusing on is a woman? That's your first hint that it's all about sexism.
You're second is the CODEPINK style attempts at stunt publicity.
CODEPINK isn't about feminism and their (mis)leader Medea Benjamin reminded the country of that as April drew to a close (see Trina's "F**k Medea Benajmin -- Rape is not "Sex," you stupid b**ch" and Ann's "This rape victim says CODEPINK is no friend of women"). There was Medea writing about a man facing charges of rape but she termed it "sex allegations."
That's not feminism.
In the past, we've noted Bob Somerby's sexism. There have been many e-mails since the last time we called him out for it. Ty counted 115 thanking us because, in his rush to prove us wrong, Somerby (briefly) found a woman other than long dead Laura Ingalls Wilder that he could praise.
Sexism is ingrained with Bob Somerby so you knew he wouldn't be able to resist for long. Sure enough, Wednesday kicked off the 'fun.' Here, here, here, here and here -- five time from Wednesday to Friday, five posts -- he attacked Maureen Dowd.
Goodness, what had Maureen just done to prompt five posts in three days from Somerby? She wrote a column that was published . . . April 21st. Are we the only ones who wonder if Bob Somerby is a really slow reader and that's why he spends so many days and posts on the same topic?
And this column, what was its problem? In it, Dowd wrote of the failure of the gun control bill, "The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in The American President. Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling."
Somerby just knew he was right because, after all, sexist pig Kevin Drum was also calling out Maureen Dowd. And calling out Dana Milbanks and "Fourniers" (we have no idea). Really? Because the piece we enjoyed the most about Barack's leadership problems was Lara Brown's "Sorry Honey, I Shrunk the Presidency" (US News and World Reports).
Actually, Maureen was right. The idiots were Somerby and Drum. We'll slide Barack over to the category of "liar." Here's how Barack presented Maureen's column as last month's White House Correspondents Dinner:
Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in The American President. And I know Michael is here tonight. Michael, what's your secret, man? Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy? Might that have something to do with it?
That got a lot of easy laughs . . . from a lot of stupid people. And Somerby grabbed that lie and ran with it, Dowd didn't know the difference between a movie and real life!!!!!
But what Dowd wrote was, "The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in The American President. Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling."
The war room she's speaking of? Not a Sorkin fantasy. You count the votes and you re-count them and you don't consider it over until after the vote is called as LBJ repeatedly stressed back in the day. If Barack's administration is doing what they should be doing, they're not doing it very well. Dowd's column, after the section we're quoting, also includes this:
Instead of the pit-bull legislative aides in Aaron Sorkin’s movie, Obama has Miguel Rodriguez, an arm-twister so genteel that The Washington Post's Philip Rucker wrote recently that no one in Congress even knows who he is.
The president was oblivious to red-state Democrats facing tough elections. Bring the Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich to the White House residence, hand him a drink, and say, "How can we make this a bill you can vote for and defend?"
Yeah, Maureen Dowd has a point.
And that's what always brings the sexist out in Somerby. He just can't stand a woman being right.
So he offers "Why we lumped Collins in with Dowd: The New York Times has two female columnists. Each seems to think it's 1955 and that she has been hired to write standard old piddle for the old 'women's pages.' Why does this seem to make sense at the Times? We hate to be the tattletales here, but it’s part of their throwback culture." There is truth in that when it comes to Gail Colllins. There's no truth at all in that when it comes to Maureen Dowd.
Collins is forever trying to think of a joke and then, mistakenly thinking she's found it (the Romney dog and the car roof), writes one column after another riffing on it. That doesn't distract from her flaccid nature or lifeless prose. By contrast, whether you agree with Dowd's points or not, she can write. She earned her Pulitzer. That doesn't mean everything she writes is a winner and we've called her out on many things in the past (and we have praised her as well).
But Dowd re-invented the column. Bob Somerby acknowledges that with his 'creeping Dowdism' fears. He thinks she did it in a bad way. He thinks she's destroyed writing. But whatever the impact you think she's having, if you agree that the world of columns changes with Dowd you can't honestly compare her to the "women's pages" of the fifties.
Somerby makes the comparison because it's a sexist insult.
He likes to make sexist insults.
In his five posts last week, he made time to call out Maureen for likening Barack to a debutante. That's so wrong, he wants you to know, so, so wrong. He praised Clark Hoyt yet again for calling Maureen out.
He can never shut up about that, although usually he uses Al Gore lactating as his example.
But thing is: Lord Dowdinpantz.
What is that?
It's the name he has for Dana Milbank. Dana is a man who writes for The Washington Post.
And for Bob Somerby, the best way to insult this man is to call him "Lord Dowd In Pants."
Are you grasping it?
Dana Milbank is so stupid, Somerby insists, that he's Maureen Dowd in pants.
But it's wrong for Maureen to compare Barack to a debutante?
It's okay for Somerby to insult a man by calling him a woman in pants but it's wrong for Maureen to compare Barack to a debutante?
For eight years now, we've been tracking sexism for this site. If there's a level playing field out there, we've yet to spot it.
As we watch Senator Kelly Ayotte be targeted non-stop, we're reminded of just how sexist the left can be. With Ayotte, it started last fall when she dared to question the Benghazi story. She was correct to question it and questions still remain. There are those who insists that's not the case, from their easy recliners, sipping from their Hope 'N Change mugs. But we were at the House hearings and the Senate hearings on Benghazi. We've heard it all.
Ayotte, if you've forgotten, was dumb or racist or really dumb or any number of things because she questioned the official line on Benghazi. That resulted in the first round of bashings. The second round only recently started. If you missed it, April 17th, one of the gun control bills went down in flames -- in a 54 to 46 vote. (60 votes were needed for it to pass because, Ted Barrett and Tom Cohen of CNN explain, "Due to procedural steps agreed to by both sides, all the amendments considered Wednesday required 60 votes to pass in the 100-member chamber, meaning Democrats and their independent allies who hold 55 seats needed support from some GOP senators to push through the Manchin-Toomey proposal.") Five Democrats voted against it (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid only after it was clear it didn't have 60 votes). Most Republicans also voted against it. Kelly Ayotte is a Republican.
Our impression of Senator Ayotte wasn't formed last fall. Our impression came as a result of her work in Senate Committee hearings. A November 10, 2011 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing resulted in Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Portions."
Ayotte is not a joke in that comic because she's not a joke in the hearings. (The idiot insisting that veterans' remains weren't put in landfills "these were portions" is a joke -- a very sad and sick joke and he is Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Norton Schwartz..) She's not an idiot. She's not an airhead. You may or may not agree with a vote she casts, but she is a smart person. She was a prosecutor and she was also New Hampshire's Attorney General.
She was one of 46 senators to vote against the gun control bill.
She somehow ended up the only one targeted.
Last week Cedric's "Was she lost? Did she cross state lines accidentally?" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! BAG LADY WITH 100 CATS OR ACTIVIST?" (joint-post) offended some. It didn't offend us. Erica Lafferty is not a resident of New Hampshire. Ayotte held a town hall for constituents. Lafferty, whose mother died in the Sandy Hook massacre showed up to hector Ayotte about her vote. Cedric and Wally were right. It was a stunt.
If Lafferty wants to interrupt a fundraiser, if she wants to occupy Ayotte's office, we're fine with that. But town halls are for residents. Our representative in the House? She doesn't do them anymore. They got a little too real for Nancy Pelosi. If she were to do some again and we had someone from outside our district asking questions, we'd be offended. Town halls are for constituents. Take your stunts somewhere else.
Ayotte has faced questions about her vote on that bill from her constituents including at town halls. Cedric and Wally didn't criticize that nor do we. But Lafferty needs to grasp that her mourning does not trump everything in the whole wide world nor does it allow her to be a resident of all fifty states. She needs to learn to work with her own senators and her own representative.
Watching the coverage of Lafferty's nonsense, we were reminded of just how ugly the left can be. It was all so much like 2007 and 2008 when CODEPINK was 'bird-dogging.'
You may remember that they were going to bird-dog pro-war senators. Somehow that just came down to Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama voted for funding the war over and over but CODEPINK couldn't protest him (of course not, Jodi was a bundler for Barack -- a detail she 'forgot' to reveal when CODEPINK announced their bird dogging campaign). They also avoided John Edwards who did vote for the authorization.
They went after Hillary. And did so pretending to be feminists.
But feminists don't start hunger strikes in a country filled with young girls and women with eating disorders. Nor do feminists hold Hillary to a standard higher than the one that have for Barack, John Edwards or any other Democratic male.
It's sort of like the current Ayotte standard. Though four Democrats voted against it (five if you count Reid but, again, he only voted "no" after the votes were known and supposedly so that the measure could come for a vote again), Republican Ayotte was the one targeted. Though the Senate is overwhelmingly male, Ayotte is the senator targeted.
Bernard. a Libertarian who's been a reader of this site for five years, e-mailed Ty "MSNBC Has A Kelly Ayotte Obsession" -- an article by Jeff Poor for The Daily Caller. Bernard asked in his e-mail, "Am I wrong to be bothered by what MSNBC is doing?" Over a 24 hour period, Poor counted 11 segments on Ayotte's vote where she was hectored by the likes of Melissa Lie Face Lacewell Harris Perry, the woman who Princeton dropped after Perry went on various TV programs in 2008 claiming to be an independent analysts when in fact she'd been volunteering for the Barack Obama presidential campaign since 2007. The failure to make that disclosure is a huge ethical lapse and why she's no longer at an ivy league school. (We documented it all in real time. Far too many times to note in this. Check the archives or Google her name and "lie face.")
No, Bernard, you're not wrong to be upset. 11 segments?
And how many did they have on Iraq? Where over 700 people died from violence last month, according to the United Nations, the highest death toll in five years. Where Nouri al-Maliki attacked a sit-in in Hawija. How many segments did they do on Iraq?
See, it's all the same, it's Hillary all over again.
The left likes to pretend it's not sexist but sexism is all that drives it most days. So they glom on a woman and try to destroy her. Last fall was about trying to turn Ayotte into a village idiot. You may remember Katha Pollitt was impressed with Sarah Palin's 2008 GOP Convention speech, she even said so on Journo-list. But when it came to write about it for the public, Katha took part in the non-stop attacks on Palin. Katha wasn't alone. And last fall was all about trying to do to Ayotte what they did to Palin.
That didn't work.
But they're not done with her yet. Since their attempts to make her an idiot didn't work, they're now trying to destroy her character.
11 segments in 24 hours? It's an echo chamber. And you can find it all over the place because when a woman is attacked, there are always people rushing to join in. (See "Media: The allure of Bash The Bitch.")
Now women can be criticized and in many forms and ways. And that doesn't mean sexism.
But 46 senators voted against the gun bill -- including Democrats -- and yet the person the 'movement' is focusing on is a woman? That's your first hint that it's all about sexism.
You're second is the CODEPINK style attempts at stunt publicity.
CODEPINK isn't about feminism and their (mis)leader Medea Benjamin reminded the country of that as April drew to a close (see Trina's "F**k Medea Benajmin -- Rape is not "Sex," you stupid b**ch" and Ann's "This rape victim says CODEPINK is no friend of women"). There was Medea writing about a man facing charges of rape but she termed it "sex allegations."
That's not feminism.
In the past, we've noted Bob Somerby's sexism. There have been many e-mails since the last time we called him out for it. Ty counted 115 thanking us because, in his rush to prove us wrong, Somerby (briefly) found a woman other than long dead Laura Ingalls Wilder that he could praise.
Sexism is ingrained with Bob Somerby so you knew he wouldn't be able to resist for long. Sure enough, Wednesday kicked off the 'fun.' Here, here, here, here and here -- five time from Wednesday to Friday, five posts -- he attacked Maureen Dowd.
Goodness, what had Maureen just done to prompt five posts in three days from Somerby? She wrote a column that was published . . . April 21st. Are we the only ones who wonder if Bob Somerby is a really slow reader and that's why he spends so many days and posts on the same topic?
And this column, what was its problem? In it, Dowd wrote of the failure of the gun control bill, "The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in The American President. Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling."
Somerby just knew he was right because, after all, sexist pig Kevin Drum was also calling out Maureen Dowd. And calling out Dana Milbanks and "Fourniers" (we have no idea). Really? Because the piece we enjoyed the most about Barack's leadership problems was Lara Brown's "Sorry Honey, I Shrunk the Presidency" (US News and World Reports).
Actually, Maureen was right. The idiots were Somerby and Drum. We'll slide Barack over to the category of "liar." Here's how Barack presented Maureen's column as last month's White House Correspondents Dinner:
Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in The American President. And I know Michael is here tonight. Michael, what's your secret, man? Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy? Might that have something to do with it?
That got a lot of easy laughs . . . from a lot of stupid people. And Somerby grabbed that lie and ran with it, Dowd didn't know the difference between a movie and real life!!!!!
But what Dowd wrote was, "The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in The American President. Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling."
The war room she's speaking of? Not a Sorkin fantasy. You count the votes and you re-count them and you don't consider it over until after the vote is called as LBJ repeatedly stressed back in the day. If Barack's administration is doing what they should be doing, they're not doing it very well. Dowd's column, after the section we're quoting, also includes this:
Instead of the pit-bull legislative aides in Aaron Sorkin’s movie, Obama has Miguel Rodriguez, an arm-twister so genteel that The Washington Post's Philip Rucker wrote recently that no one in Congress even knows who he is.
The president was oblivious to red-state Democrats facing tough elections. Bring the Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich to the White House residence, hand him a drink, and say, "How can we make this a bill you can vote for and defend?"
Yeah, Maureen Dowd has a point.
And that's what always brings the sexist out in Somerby. He just can't stand a woman being right.
So he offers "Why we lumped Collins in with Dowd: The New York Times has two female columnists. Each seems to think it's 1955 and that she has been hired to write standard old piddle for the old 'women's pages.' Why does this seem to make sense at the Times? We hate to be the tattletales here, but it’s part of their throwback culture." There is truth in that when it comes to Gail Colllins. There's no truth at all in that when it comes to Maureen Dowd.
Collins is forever trying to think of a joke and then, mistakenly thinking she's found it (the Romney dog and the car roof), writes one column after another riffing on it. That doesn't distract from her flaccid nature or lifeless prose. By contrast, whether you agree with Dowd's points or not, she can write. She earned her Pulitzer. That doesn't mean everything she writes is a winner and we've called her out on many things in the past (and we have praised her as well).
But Dowd re-invented the column. Bob Somerby acknowledges that with his 'creeping Dowdism' fears. He thinks she did it in a bad way. He thinks she's destroyed writing. But whatever the impact you think she's having, if you agree that the world of columns changes with Dowd you can't honestly compare her to the "women's pages" of the fifties.
Somerby makes the comparison because it's a sexist insult.
He likes to make sexist insults.
In his five posts last week, he made time to call out Maureen for likening Barack to a debutante. That's so wrong, he wants you to know, so, so wrong. He praised Clark Hoyt yet again for calling Maureen out.
He can never shut up about that, although usually he uses Al Gore lactating as his example.
But thing is: Lord Dowdinpantz.
What is that?
It's the name he has for Dana Milbank. Dana is a man who writes for The Washington Post.
And for Bob Somerby, the best way to insult this man is to call him "Lord Dowd In Pants."
Are you grasping it?
Dana Milbank is so stupid, Somerby insists, that he's Maureen Dowd in pants.
But it's wrong for Maureen to compare Barack to a debutante?
It's okay for Somerby to insult a man by calling him a woman in pants but it's wrong for Maureen to compare Barack to a debutante?
For eight years now, we've been tracking sexism for this site. If there's a level playing field out there, we've yet to spot it.
Ann calls out Women's Media Center and Lauren War Wolfe
Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda should answer as to why they're featuring the 'reporting' of Lauren Wolfe on Syria. Wolfe's not in Syria, has one-sided sources and whips up a war frenzy.
Considering the black eye feminism took for the Afghanistan War -- due in large part to the actions of Gloria and Robin, among others -- the women should damn well know you don't cheerlead a war. But that's what they're doing as they underwrite the 'reporting' of Wolfe and feature it at Women's Media Center.
Ann called the nonsense out early Saturday morning and we're posting it here because WMC has refused to allow Ann's comment to go up at their site. I know Robin, Gloria and Jane and I find that offensive. Elaine weighed in at her site and featured Ann's comments. Isaiah just mentioned them to me on the phone (I hadn't read Elaine's post yet, sorry). So we're adding this to Third. And where's the link to the WMC story? We'll worry about a link here when WMC posts Ann's comments.
-- C.I.
His skin does not travel well
That's a photo by Pete Souza of "President Barack Obama and President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico share a toast prior to a working dinner at Los Pinos, Mexico City, Mexico, May 2, 2013." And our big question: Is the climate or the stress? What accounts for the outbreaks of bumps on Barack's face?
The Drone War (Minnie Bruce Pratt, Workers World)
Repost from Workers World:
Speakers at the conference and the rally included Marilyn Levin of UNAC, Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative NonViolence, Col. Ann Wright of Occupy DC and Elliott Adams of Veterans for Peace.
Articles copyright 1995-2013 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved
Upstate New York protests drone warfare
By Minnie Bruce Pratt on May 2, 2013 » Add the second comment.
Resistance
to U.S. drone warfare intensified in upstate New York on April 28 as
more than 250 people rallied at the gates of Hancock Air Base in
Syracuse. The rally was organized by the Upstate Coalition to Ground the
Drones and End the Wars. Thirty-one people were arrested in the action.
Pilots at the base operate unmanned, armed Reaper drones,
bombing people in Afghanistan. Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The base
houses the 174th Attack Wing, New York Air National Guard, and is a hub
for U.S. military drones.
Local activists have been arrested and sent to jail for
repeatedly mounting “civil resistance” against the drones for more than a
year. On April 24, four activists were sentenced to 15 days in jail for
an action at the base in October. (upstatedroneaction.org)
Military and local authorities have stepped up measures to
limit anti-drone actions. Local judges granted an “order of protection”
to a drone group commander against demonstrators. Local police have
severely limited public areas allowed for protests, and local courts
have imposed unusually high bail requirements on protesters.
Significant military spending for drone warfare is
projected for Central New York. A recent Pentagon budget earmarks $40
billion for the purchase and development of drones over the next 10
years. (peacecouncil.net)
The April 28 action aiming to accelerate anti-drone
organizing was the culmination of a three-day conference, “Resisting
Drones, Global War and Empire: A Convergence to Action.” The conference
was sponsored by more than 70 regional and national organizations,
including the Syracuse Peace Council, the United National Antiwar
Committee and Veterans for Peace. Regional sponsors ranged from Ithaca
Catholic Worker to the Buffalo International Action Center to Occupy
Albany.
Speakers at the conference and the rally included Marilyn Levin of UNAC, Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative NonViolence, Col. Ann Wright of Occupy DC and Elliott Adams of Veterans for Peace.
Articles copyright 1995-2013 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved