Third Estate Sunday Review

The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Truest statement of the week

Never in the history of the United States, has a President and Supreme Court Judge openly advocated the overthrow of a Presidential candidate. Never has the entire mass media engaged in a round-the-clock one-sided, propaganda war to discredit a Presidential candidate by systematically ignoring or distorting the central socio-economic issues of their opposition.
The call for the ouster of a freely elected candidate is nothing more or less than a coup d’état.
Leading television networks and columnists demand that the elections be annulled, following the lead of the President and prominent Republican and Democratic Congressional and Party leaders.
In other words, the political elite openly rejects democratic electoral processes in favor of authoritarian manipulation and deception. The authoritarian elite relies on magnifying tertiary, questionable personal judgement calls to mobilize coup backers.

They systematically avoid the core economic and political issues which candidate Trump has raised – and attracted mass support – which challenge fundamental policies backed by the two Party elites.

-- James Petras, "Can Coups Defeat Elected Governments?" (DISSIDENT VOICE).

Truest statement of the week II

The MSM has been on a propaganda spree against Donald Trump in the last few weeks and it is accelerating. According to Morell, Mr. Putin recruited Trump to work in the interests of Russia which is absolutely absurd. First in response to Morell’s article, Russia did not annex Crimea, the majority of the people of Crimea voted in a referendum to leave the Ukraine and become a part of Russia. The referendum took place on March 16th, 2014 where close to 96% of the population voted in favor to reunify “Crimea with Russia”. Let’s not forget that the majority of the population in Crimea speaks Russian and share a very similar culture with Russia. Crimea was transferred to the Ukraine due to administrative measures under the Soviet Union in 1954. Second, Russia is not going to nor were they ever planning to invade the Baltic States. However, NATO forces are stationed close to Russia’s borders and Europe is in the process of placing missile defense systems on behalf of Washington which threatens Russia’s security.
Michael Morell is continuing Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program also established in 1967 to influence the media to report stories that favor Washington’s agenda. Operation Mockingbird recruited American journalists and news organizations to report stories that represented views of the CIA on behalf of Washington and major corporations. The CIA also funded various news organizations, magazines (Time magazine) and influenced foreign media companies to report stories they deemed acceptable. Mr. Morell is now planting ridiculous stories or conspiracy theories within the MSM. The MSM is bought and paid for by the establishment and the CIA makes sure the stories they provide make it on the evening news. The MSM works for Washington and the CIA manages its content. The MSM do what they are told to do. In this case, Morell is planting a conspiracy theory against Donald Trump and Russia. What else can you possibly call what Morell wrote in the New York Times or said on PBS’s Charlie Rose?

-- Timothy Alexander Guzman, "Operation Mockingbird 2.0? Former CIA Director Planting Conspiracy Theories: Trump is an 'Unwitting' Russian Agent" (GLOBAL RESEARCH).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Sunday.

Let's thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, 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 K itchen,
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?

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Ava and C.I

Editorial: Can't wait for the media to obsess a week over Donald's latest remark!

‏@realDonaldTrump

ISIS gained tremendous strength during Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State. When will the dishonest media report the facts!

RETWEETS14,166
LIKES37,092

6:01 AM - 12 Aug 2016

14,166 retweets37,092 likes

So this is the editorial where we take on Donald Trump, right?

Wrong.

Donald's actually right.

And since the media has spent the last three weeks on two things he's said, we're sure they'll spend this week exploring the above statement, right?

Wrong.

They are a dishonest media.

MSNBC has allowed Andrea Mitchell to be in the tank for Hillary.

Now most MSNBC faces are jokes.

But Andrea pretends to be news when she appears on NBC NIGHTLY NEWS.

She's not.

Donald Trump is the GOP candidate for president and because of that the media feels they can rip him apart as they work overtime to avoid reporting the various misdeeds and scandals of Hillary Clinton.

This was all reviewed in last week's "Iraq snapshot:"

So Bully Boy Bush signed off on Nouri.

He was an awful prime minister.

Even in his first term, he was awful.

And Hillary noted that and called him a thug. It was her finest Iraq moment in 2008. (Not that there were many to choose from.)

In 2010, Iraq finally holds national elections. (They were supposed to take place in 2009.)

And the Iraqi people want?

Not Nouri.

He loses to Ayad Allawi, the head of Iraqiya -- an inclusive political group. Whether it was THE GUARDIAN, Emma Sky, NPR's Deborah Amos, US Gen Ray Odierno (then the top US commander in Iraq) or, yes, this site, there were many noting what a positive move that was.

Iraqis were rejecting sectarianism and pushing for a national identity.

Nouri refused to step down.

He had US support from US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill, from Susan I Mispoke Rice and from The Problem From Hell Samantha Power.

Hillary stayed on the sidelines and made no preference known.

US Vice President Joe Biden believed that Ayad needed to become prime minister. Those were the results.

But Nouri refused to step down.

This put the country into a political stalemate that lasted over eight months.

Urged by Rice and Power (Chris Hill was already on his way out, finally having been fired as US Ambassador to Iraq), Barack decided to back the loser Nouri al-Maliki.

How do you get around an election>

He had the US broker THE ERBIL AGREEMENT -- a legal contract all the political leaders signed off on.

The other leaders granted Nouri a second term and he in turn granted them what they wanted.

On paper.

But Nouri used it to get what he wanted and then trashed it.

After he was installed to a second term via Barack's contract, Nouri declared it unconstitutional and refused to honor it.

Samantha Power was not promoted to US Ambassador to the United Nations.

She was demoted out of the inner circle because of this, Libya and other questionable calls that had Valerie Jarrett (to name one) insisting she but pushed out the door.

Why does the Islamic State have a toehold in Iraq to begin with?

Because of Nouri al-Maliki.

He persecuted everyone but he really went after the Sunnis.

They were rounded up without charges and disappeared into Iraqi jails, prisons and secret prisons. (Ned Parker's work for THE LOS ANGELES TIMES exposed Nouri's use of secret prisons and detention centers.)

Sunni women and girls were tortured and raped in Iraqi jails and prisons.

Sunni journalists were targeted by the government, pulled off the streets and tortured.

Sunni protesters were targeted. The most mild form of targeting was having Iraqi forces publicly follow them to their homes (intimidation). In the worst case?

The April 23, 2013 massacre of a sit-in in Hawija which resulted from Nouri's federal forces storming in. Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault. AFP reported the death toll eventually (as some wounded died) rose to 53 dead. UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured).

Where were you, MSNBC?

Where were you, Mika?

It's not Orlando, it's not Paris, so it didn't matter?

It didn't matter to Barack.

He wouldn't immediately insist that Nouri step down.

It would be over a year later before Barack would do that.

Then there was the targeting of the Sunni politicians.

During all of this, the Sunni people were persecuted.

After the 2010 elections, we noted that they tried the ballot box to be heard.

Then political leaders in Iraq tried to solve the crises -- Ayad Allawi, Moqtada al-Sadr, Ammar al-Hakim, Massoud Barzani and others -- by telling Nouri that he had to honor The Erbil Agreement or they would vote in Parliament to remove him.

We all know what happened there, right?

Oh, we don't.

Because actual news isn't important to MSNBC.

The US government (Vice President Joe Biden led the effort) pressured then-President of Iraq Jalal Talabani to stop the vote. So Talabani created a power that didn't exist and declared the petition for the vote invalid before rushing off to Germany less than 18 hours later and saying he had to have emergency surgery.

He had knee surgery.

He just didn't want to face the fallout.

Karma would kick Jalal in his ass when he suffered a series of major strokes (yes, it was a series) and had to be moved to Germany. He has still not recovered and he never will which is why he is still kept out of public sight.

So the ballot box has been tossed. The political leaders could do nothing.

The Iraqi people take to the street to protest and they get arrested and intimidated and killed.

What is left?

It's that vacuum that allows the Islamic State to get a toe hold in Iraq.

They tried everything. Even carrying signs proclaiming"Obama, if you Cannot Hear Us Can you Not See Us?"

Iraqis in Samarra with a message for the world (photo via Iraqi Spring MC).

That's March 15, 2013. One month later, the Hawija massacre would take place.

Barack was still pretending not to see or hear the cries of the targeted in Iraq.

The world was looking the other way.

Into this vacuum, the Islamic State could and did enter promoting themselves as a group that would defend the Sunni people.

And had they just stayed with their terrorist attacks, they'd probably be more of an influence today.

But somewhere they decided they could govern -- they couldn't.

But for many Sunnis, the Islamic State was seen as someone fighting the government and the government was seen as something hostile to the Sunni people.

So the view was let them fight it out, we don't have a stake in this.

That's what happens after the world let Nouri al-Maliki persecute the Sunnis for eight years and no one wanted to even voice a defense of the Sunnis.

So that's Barack's fault.

It's Hillary's fault too.

She can claim that as Secretary of State, she couldn't speak out.

Don't agree with that but she left that post in January 2013.

She did not go into hiding.

She went into one public event after another.

And never once called out what Nouri was doing to the Sunni people -- even though she'd publicly identified him as a thug in April 2008.

So that's on Hillary too.

Will the media go over and over and over the latest Trump statement?

Or in their never-ending quest to elect Hillary Clinton, will they again ignore reality?

TV: Charlie's Pose

Bonnie Raitt is click bait.

Not many other people could induce us to watch THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW by choice.

We quickly regretted we watched.

Bonnie was her usual intriguing self.

But has there been a more boring interview?

Was Rose asleep?

If he wanted anecdotes, he sure didn't pursue them.

And he clearly wasn't interested in having a conversation.

Explaining the background on her new album DIG IN DEEP, Bonnie was willing and able to discuss the deaths of her parents and brother but Charlie didn't seem interested.

In fact, the only time he seemed to snap out of his stupor was when he interrupted her to state that her father used to watch his show.

If only he felt the need to interrupt male guests.

Nicholas Burns "There's a political crisis where Prime Minister Abadi has actually not been able to form a cabinet."

That was last April (and it's been replayed since), Nicholas Burns -- Condi Rice's right hand during the Bully Boy Bush years.

Charlie could have stopped him.

Charlie should have stopped him.

US President Barack Obama installed Haider al-Abadi in the fall of 2014. At that point, Haider put forward cabinet nominees to Parliament which voted them into office.

Haider's decided all on his own -- with no Constitutional authority -- that he can strip his current Cabinet of their positions (he can't -- per the Iraqi Constitution, only the Parliament can) and replace them.

Charlie didn't address that.

He couldn't even handle minor errors.

"You'll remember Colin Powell citing the Pottery Barn rule if you break it, you own it?" Nicholas Burns pompously intoned.

This despite the fact that the 'rule' was "If you break it, you bought it."

This despite the fact that Senator Al Franken was on AIR AMERICA RADIO -- not in the US Senate -- all those years ago when he exposed that the Pottery Barn had no such rule.

And that's before we get into the larger picture: The US cannot and never will own Iraq.

Iraq is a foreign country.

It's neither a state of the United States nor a colony.

Hubris, the large elephant in the room no one ever wants to notice.

Charlie had on Burns and Michael O'Hanlon (Brookings Institution) and Jonathan Tepperman (Council on Foreign Relations) and we were repeatedly aware of how all three guests were calling for more US troops in Iraq and longer war in Iraq.

"Broad consensus" was a word the three guests and Charlie fell back on often.

Whose broad consensus?

Not the American people.

The American people are tired of endless war.

They were offered no spot on Charlie's program.

They were offered no representation.

The discussion had the premise of how do we continue the war.

In 2016, the same crap ass media that sold the illegal war on Iraq is still doing that.

And that's before you factor in last week when Charlie brought on gutter trash Mike Morell.

Morell, former CIA Director, insisted on air that it was time to make Iran pay.

Rose asked, "We make them pay the price by killing Russians?"

Morell grunted, "Yeah."

Rose than asked, "And killing Iranians?"

Morell grunted affirmative, the plan was to arm Syrians with so they would kill Russians and Iranians and "You don't tell the world about it. You don’t stand up at the Pentagon and say ‘we did this.’ But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran."

So you do this and you lie to everyone -- including the Pentagon.

Mr. Covert Criminal may have left the CIA but he never left his disregard for the US Constitution.

And Rose was okay with it.

Apparently, so is Hillary Clinton who's made no effort to distance herself from his remarks.

As Morell -- whose presented himself as a voice of maturity and ethics as he rushes to endorse War Criminal Hillary Clinton -- called for extrajudicial killings -- murder -- on air, Rose was okay with it.

We wonder why people are okay with THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW?

It moves further and further from reality and, despite airing on so-called public television, it alternates between flat out ignoring We The People and reviling them.

In fact, the Bonnie Raitt episode featured David Brooks, gas bag for THE NEW YORK TIMES.

And David Brooks was calling a segment of America's youth sanctimonious.

That's right, David Brooks, of all people, was calling other people sanctimonious.

And Charlie just nodded along.

Tweet of the week

‏@GreenPartyofPHL

Luckily, we have another choice! For millennial voters, Clinton vs. Trump ‘feels like a joke’ http://wpo.st/nmsr1  @DrJillStein

132 retweets216 likes

'Poverty' stricken Hillary

SEP2016 ‏@SEPCampaign2016 Aug 13

Tax return places #Clintons in the top 0.02 percent of Americans http://ow.ly/jfXR303cOb6 #LockHerUp #poverty

4 retweets1 like

Hillary Clinton refuses to release transcripts of her Wall Street speeches but she did finally release her tax returns last week.

It made a mockery of Hillary's recent claim of poverty.

Patrick Martin (WSWS) explained:

From 2007 through 2015, the Clintons reported making a total of $149 million over nine years, out of which they paid taxes totaling $48 million, and gave $16 million to charity (most of it to their own charitable entity, the Clinton Family Foundation).
That means they enjoyed after-tax income of some $85 million, the bulk of which they would have put into investment accounts. A fortune of, say, $75 million would place the Clintons in the top 20,000 US families in terms of total assets.

The release comes after more e-mails emerged -- see "She'll sell anything" and "THIS JUST IN! EVERYTHING'S FOR SALE!" -- and detailed how Hillary used her position as Secretary of State to pump more dollars into The Clinton Foundation.

The money grubbing foundation has frequently been in the news, as Glenn Greenwald reminded via his Twitter account.

‏@ggreenwald

Beyond its shameful history, Dem tactic of linking critics to Moscow is quite ironic https://theintercept.com/2016/08/08/dems-tactic-of-accusing-adversaries-of-kremlin-ties-and-russia-sympathies-has-long-history-in-us/ …

669 retweets772 likes

It's another scandal for supposedly ready for prime time Hillary and Dan Rea (Boston's WBZ) addressed it on Friday's show. HUE WIRE noted the talking points the Clinton campaign sent out to surrogates last week.

Stephen Lendmam (THE PEOPLE'S VOICE) observes:

While showing $10.6 million in joint income, down from $28 million in 2014, concealed was their real source of super-wealth - the Clinton Foundation, a tax-free international money-laundering scam masquerading as a charitable NGO.
Since its 2001 founding, it’s taken in around $2 billion from wealthy donors and foreign nations in return for favors dispensed worth much more to contributors.

Only 10% of funds received go for charitable purposes, the rest for other purposes including self-enrichment - what’s most important about their net worth left unexplained on their tax returns.

Where does the money go?

How does the foundation keep it's tax free status when only 10% of the 'donations' go to charity?

And those 'donations'?

Bill and Hillary donated to their own charity. The tax returns showed that. Larry Johnson (NO QUATER) reports:

99% of the Charitable contributions went to themselves.
Generous? Only to themselves. What a greedy, money grubbing despicable soul she is!!

Where is the media in reporting on this ultimate conflict of interest? Instead of actually feeding the hungry, healing the seek or clothing the poor, Hillary is gaming the tax man to give money to herself and take a big fat deduction in the process. Talk about a self-licking ice cream cone.

Hillary's as corrupt as they come.

10 Reasons to Love Cher

1) "If I Could Turn Back Time"

2) SILKWOOD

3) "You Better Sit Down Kids"

4) MOONSTRUCK

5) "We All Sleep Alone"

6) "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves"

7) COME BACK TO THE FIVE & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN

8) "Walking In Memphis"

9) THE SONNY & CHER SHOW (in all its variations)

10) WITCHES OF EASTWICK

Vote Hillary or Else?

Is that the 'strategy'?

The Democratic Party chose the right wing Hillary Clinton to be the nominee for the 2016 election.

The public appeared to consistently want Bernie Sanders but he wasn't right wing enough for the party itself.

Hillary went on to select the right wing, anti-choice Tim Kaine as her running mate -- easily the most right wing v.p. candidate the party has had -- he's even further to the right of Joe Lieberman.

Since stealing/securing the nomination, Hillary's moved even further right.

She now courts the Republicans.

Possibly because she'll never get the real left to support her.

But those of you who dabble in politics, say the Debra Messings of you, what exactly do you think you'll get in a Hillary presidency?

You've made no demands on her as a candidate.

You've allowed her to move further and further right during the campaign with no objections.

Do you really think, if elected, she's suddenly going to plunge let?

She's campaigning as a Republican.

You're letting her do that.

If she wins, don't come crying to us.

Lionel Richie

It's Peyton on Sunday morning?

Seriously, Lionel.

Do you need the money?

No.

But if you did, no one would begrudge you using "Running With The Night," "Dancing on the Ceiling" or "All Night Long."

But "Easy"?

Why didn't you just use "Penny Lover," "Ballerina Girl," "Say You Say Me" or "Three Times A Lady"?

Those songs and "Easy" are classics with meaning, not just hits.

And a funny commercial may make people laugh but those songs aren't jokes.

We're just saying.