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."

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Truest statement of the week

San Francisco City College political scientist Rick Baum’s analysis of Federal Reserve Board data shows that the top one percent of the population has increased its share of the national wealth from 23.3% in 1989 to 31.1% in the first quarter of 2019 – a boost of over 33 percent in just a generation and a half. Meanwhile, beginning in 2014 under President Obama, the share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent dwindled to less than that amassed by the One Percent for the first time since 1989.
The neoliberal policies imposed by both halves of the corporate electoral duopoly over the last 30 years have been highly profitable to the top 1%, and especially to the billionaire class, whose ranks have increased from 55 in 1989 to 412 in 2012,the mid-point of Barack Obama’s presidency, to 609 in 2018 . Baum’s stats show the “average person in the top 1% holds net wealth that is worth 1,200 times the net wealth of an average person among the poorest 50% of the U.S. population.”
Possibly even more disturbing, is that the top one-tenth of one percent (.1%) of the population -- households making $2.757 million a year -- now number almost 200,000 families, a cohort big enough to create and inhabit a large and coherent social world of its own. From their rich enclaves in every state of the country, this formidable “base” of truly wealthy folks effectively dictate the politics of their regions for the benefit of themselves and the oligarchs at the top of the pyramid.

-- Glen Ford, "Why the rich want to bury Bernie, the not-really-Socialist" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).

Truest statement of the week II

A battle is looming. At midnight on September 14, one month from now, the four-year labor agreements covering 155,000 General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers in the United States will expire.
Autoworkers are determined to fight. They have endured decades of falling wages and attacks on benefits, which escalated following the 2008 crisis and the restructuring of the auto industry under Obama. The assault on workers has produced record profits for the auto companies and Wall Street investors.
The auto companies are determined to make US autoworkers bear the brunt of a new restructuring of the global auto industry that has already eliminated tens of thousands of jobs around the world. Amid growing signs of recession, the companies are intensifying their attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions. They are out to reduce workers to the status of contingent laborers totally at the mercy of the employers.
They have no intention of bowing to the demands of the workers. Instead, they intend to use the downturn to blackmail workers into accepting even more brutal concessions. GM reportedly wants temporary workers to make up half of its US factory workforce, while Ford wants to gut supposed “gold-plated” health benefits and end what Forbes calls the “last vestige of the quasi-socialism that dominated the US auto industry for 100 years.”
The conflict, however, is not between the companies and the United Auto Workers. That pro-company organization is mired in a corruption scandal that has sent top officials to jail for taking bribes from Chrysler to push through the sellout contract in 2015.
The battle is between autoworkers in the US and internationally on the one side and the transnational corporations and their corporatist “trade unions” on the other.

-- Jerry White, "US autoworkers on collision course with the companies" (WSWS).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Tuesday night.

Let's 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 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?

Truest statement of the week

Glen Ford gets another truest.

Truest statement of the week II

Jerry White gets a truest.

Editorial: You don't deport people into a war zone...

It should be obvious.

TV: Time for a rebirth?

Ava and C.I. take on the dead and dying.

10 best water additions

What do you add to your water?

From The TESR Test Kitchen

What's up with Oscar Meyer?

Hagtress Alyssa Milano needs to learn how to fade ...

Can't she just go away?

Tweet of the week

GG's right.

This edition's playlist

What we listened to while writing this edition.

Some Tweets from the Green Party

Green Party coverage.

Hawkins Becomes First Candidate To Endorse 350.org...

Green Party coverage.

A People of Color Bill of Rights

Green Party coverage.

Highlights

Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.

Peace,

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

Editorial: You don't deport people into a war zone

Iraq? The war drags on. War planes continue to drop bombs -- Turkish War Planes, US War Planes, etc. Last week, the Iraqi government did finally demand that any War Planes dropping bombs first get approval for the dropping from them. We'll see how that plays out. In addition, ISIS is rising. It never went away. It never went away because the conditions that created it never went away.

Shall we talk about that? Apparently not. In June of 2014, then-President Barack Obama talked about it. He noted that the underlying reasons for the rise of ISIS had to be addressed -- by the government of Iraq. That has never taken place. The persecution continues. There has been no serious attempt at national reconciliation (even though it was a 2007 benchmark created by the White House that year -- a conditional upon which continued funding depended).

The war continues, the persecution continues. The government remains corrupt. Human rights remain a problem as Human Rights Watch repeatedly notes.

And?

And the US government is deporting people to Iraq.

Did we shock you?

With the news?

Or maybe with our usage.

If you've heard about this, you've heard that Donald Trump is doing it.

Donald Trump is the president of the United States, the duly elected president.

But Donald Trump is not the US government. He is a part of the US government. He represents the executive branch. For those who need to brush up on their government studies, the US has three branches of government -- the executive, the legislative and the judicial.

Since May, members of the US Congress have made noise about doing something but they haven't done anything. They are part of the legislative branch. The judicial branch is made up of the courts and they have done nothing to stop the deportations.

The US government has failed -- all three branches.

We don't support the deportation efforts currently taking place at all. But we especially do not support deporting someone to a country at war. Not only do we not support that move, our nation's laws and customs do not support it either. It should not be happening. Donald Trump bears responsibility, absolutely. But he is not the only one responsible.

And while we're slicing and sharing from the blame pie, let's all of us in this country grab a piece. What's taking place is outrageous and we've gone along with it. Have we even mounted a pathetic Change.org petition? We're all guilty.

TV: Time for a rebirth?

The latest golden age of TV ended some time ago. INSTINCT was proof of just how scrape-the-bottom things had gotten so maybe the news last week that CBS had finally cancelled the show might portend a rebirth but we doubt it. There's still so much garbage wrongly applauded by the Water Cooler Set -- they don't know the damage they do.

Take HBO's SUCCESSION which is billed as a "black comedy" (really? with that all White cast, that was their word choice) and as "satire" and "comedy-drama" -- HBO has sold the show with those terms. It's not funny.

"Comedy-drama" might be best because it allows for drama which is all the show is -- bad melodrama. The only one giving a performance worth applauding is Jeremy Strong. Everyone else is overacting or barely acting. The show garnered an Emmy nomination a few weeks back -- for Outstanding Drama Series. Talk about unworthy.

It's especially sad because the show is trying to send up Rupert Murdoch and HBO already has a series that does that -- TRACEY ULLMAN'S SHOW. Now in it sixth season, Tracey plays model Jerry Hall and interacts with Rupert and his children. It's hilarious and she gets her point across in mere minutes while SUCCESSION meanders around for hours without ever arriving anywhere.

It doesn't help that SUCCESSION is yet another single-camera nightmare.

MODERN FAMILY's upcoming season has been announced to be its last. And it should be. It will be the show's 11th season. It's won 22 Emmys. And it is proof of why single-camera shows grow tired, stale and idiotic.

Idiotic?

A studio audience would have expressed misgivings during the filming of some of these episodes. They would have surely noted how so much -- especially in the last season -- is not funny. But more to the point, they would have noted that the writers-for-hire didn't know the characters and that the show was insulting the intelligence of its viewers.

Time and again, storylines have set up elements that later episodes have ignored. There is no one paying attention to continuity.

We'll give you two examples.

Spanking.

Season 9's episode 15 is "Spanks For The Memories." Poorly written by Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh, the episode revolves around Jay mishearing Gloria on the phone. She is speaking to a friend about their child Joe and how Joe keeps leaving his toys all over the place, "I'm telling you, it's a disaster in the bedroom. I don't know what to do. It's like he can't remember where things go. Eventually, I get so frustrated that I take care of it myself. Spanking? Well, yeah, I guess we could try that. Actually, now that you mention it, Javier and I tried it a long time ago. It was a game-changer."

Jay thinks Gloria wants them to try spanking in the bedroom.

The entire episode revolves around this.

What's the problem?

Season six, episode eight's "Three Turkeys." Written by Jeffrey Richman, this is the episode where the family gathers at Jay and Gloria's for Thanksgiving because Jay and Gloria have gone to Mexico -- only Jay and Gloria haven't gone. They're hiding in the house. And this is the episode where Mitch and Cam go up to Gloria's closet to get dresses to wear to teach Lily a lesson. They are being overheard by Jay and Gloria as they talk about Lily. Gloria and Jay believe that the "she" being talked about is Gloria.

Cam: Maybe it was cute a few years ago, but she's just getting too old for this.

Mitch: You know what she needs is a good spank on the bottom.

Cam: No, that's your father's way.

Gloria (to Jay): You told them about that?

So in season nine, there's all this panic about sexual play in the bedroom over sexual play in the bedroom that's already taken place according to an episode three seasons prior.

Luke becomes Haley.

Season five, episode 11 "One To Grow On." Jeffrey Richman wrote this episode which finds everyone ending up at Jay and Gloria's where one lie after another has been exposed and it's Haley who fixes everything with lies. At the end of which, Claire and Phil marvel over their daughter's skill and "Did she learn that from us?" No, "it's a gift," one that "cannot be taught."

In season eight, episode 17 "Pig Moon Rising," bad writers Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh return for more lies -- and Haley again with parking tickets) to be fixed at Jay and Gloria's only this time by Luke. At the end, Claire and Phil marvel over Luke's skill

And why recycle (steal) once when you can do it multiple times.

The same "Pig Moon Rising" has Luke getting an e-mail from a college. He reads it out loud, "Welcome to Arizaon State -- Welcome to Arizona's admissions portal. We regret to inform you --" Phil and Claire moan in regret. Haley, however, just smiles and looks around, declaring, "Well don't leave us in suspense, what did they say?"

Now let's drop back to "Election Day" from season three (episode 19) written by Ben Karlin. In it, Alex reads, aloud, a letter to Haley from a college she applied to while Haley sits with Claire and Phil on the couch. "Dear Miss Dunphy, We regret to inform you --"

Alex stops there as Claire hugs Haley in sympathy.

But Haley's confused that Alex hasn't finished reading, "What! Don't leave me hanging!"

The recycling (theft) goes on and on. The ignoring storylines and plot points already created does as well.

While we're on writing, let's note that the anti-woman show has had very few women writers in its history. The season that just ended? 22 episodes. Only four were written or co-written by women. If you're not getting how appalling that figure is, let's do a contrast. Season one of THE BOB NEWHART SHOW, which kicked off in 1972, featured five episodes written or co-written by women. These are appalling figures and they've been appalling season after season.

The single-cam aspect, though, is what buried the show alive and allowed it to stiffen and stop growing.

Had the show been filmed in front of a live studio audience, they would have known this was a problem and could have fixed it on the spot. Instead, they just churn out meaningless episodes while everyone wishes the show had ceased production years ago.

The problem with the single-camera 'comedies' is they just aren't funny. They're like HAZEL and the other bad 'sitcoms' of the 60s that were single-cam or they're like the crap that returned single-cam 'comedies' to prime time, Larry Gelbert's hideous UNITED STATES

Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh's COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO PRIME TIME NETWORK AND CABLE SHOWS found UNITED STATES "tedious, boring and didactic" -- that pretty much summarizes them all.

10 best water additions

We all need to drink more water. (Well, some of us already drink over 90 ounces a day, but let's pretend otherwise.) Some times we need to spice it up a little to get the needed daily amount of water (64 ounces a day is recommended). So here are some suggestions to dress that room temperature water up.

1) Squirt some lemon juice in the water -- adds vitamin C.

2) Squirt some lime juice in the water -- also adds vitamin C.

3) Pour the water over ice to have a cool glass.

4) Add some cucumber slices (this is especially good if you add it to a pitcher of water and let the mixture set for at least an hour in the fridge)

5) Add some pineapple chunks. (And you can add these to a pitcher of water and also let set in the fridge for an hour.)

6) Add an orange or tangerine slice to the glass of water.

7) Add fresh mint leaves.

8) Drop some blue berries in the water.

9) Try fruit combos. For example, add lemon and lime together, or add them both with an orange slice, or add raspberry and lime, or try adding peach and pineapple.

10) Add some basil leaves for a surprising kick.

From The TESR Test Kitchen

Do you like sandwiches? Of course, we all do. They're quick. They're easy. You can put whatever you want on them. And most of us (not Jess) put meat on them. We've been having a problem as have many of you readers e-mailing. What is up with Oscar Meyer meat?

Regardless of the store, regardless of the location, have they stopped quality control? We would recommend no one buy the ham and turkey pack for multiple sandwiches. There's something wrong with those packages. One layer of meat -- out of every two -- will have a blister on it where the meat is jelly for a spot. It's disgusting.

And, staying with Oscar Meyer, if you buy the individual ham or the individual turkey, the thing stinks as soon as you open it. 15 of you complained about that (37 about the meat pack of ham and turkey). We sampled and you're right, they stink upon opening. They smell like they've been opened for days and they have filmy coating. It's disgusting. And someone should probably think about inspecting the Oscar Meyer plants.

We don't know what to tell you there.

Jess loves veggie sandwiches. We all love peanut butter sandwiches (especially with Chili Cheese Fritos on top of the peanut better). But for those of us who like meat? You can get deli meat at a grocer's deli if you're lucky enough to have a deli. (Didn't Wal-Mart grocers do away with the deli when those employees tried to unionize?) If you don't have a deli? You can try other sandwich meats available. But if you're not wanting to risk it on sandwich meats (who wants to throw away money), we'd make another suggestion. Yes, a suggestion in the Test Kitchen.

Try hot links. Pop one into the microwave and cook as desired. Then you can slice them lengthwise and put two on a piece of bread or you can slice them into tiny circles (how we like them) and fill a piece of bread with them. Put mayo or mustard or whatever on the other slice of bread. You can add lettuce and whatever as well.

Hagtress Alyssa Milano needs to learn how to fade away

Is egotism? Lack of even a basic education? Mental illness apparently amplified by the election of Donald Trump?

Who knows, but Alyssa Milano is an idiot and dangerous one.

The failed actress last saw success when she co-starred with two other women in CHARMED -- a show that ceased production in 2006. Thirteen years ago.

She's attempted success since but crashed and burned over and over. Now she grasps tightly onto a small, supporting role in a TV show about a high school teenager but goes around telling the press she's the star. She's pathetic.

She hits 47 later this year, hasn't worked with any real success since she was 34 but can't take a hint that she's a pathetic has-been whose husband has to call in favors to get VARIETY to even mention her?

We could simply ignore her if she wasn't so desperate for attention.

Alyssa Milano Retweeted

‏Verified account @WalshFreedom

Why did I write this piece? Two reasons: First, I wanted to make clear that Donald Trump is unfit to be President, and he MUST be challenged in the Republican primary.

And second, I wanted to apologize for the role I played in helping to put an unfit con man in the White House.

New York Times OpinionVerified account @nytopinion

Mr. Trump is ripe for a primary challenger from the right, writes @Walshfreedom" https://nyti.ms/31z8GkY 

8,158 replies15,751 retweets79,065 likes

Now there are people who could reTweet Joe Walsh and we wouldn't bat an eye. Patricia Heaton, for example, wouldn't shock us.

But Alyssa pretends to be on our side -- she's not on our side -- and plays Queen Woke. Reality is she's a trashy, uneducated whore. If whore seems too much, remember she was a producer of CHARMED -- a show set in San Francisco but producer Alyssa wasn't bothered by the lack of gay or lesbian characters -- a show set in the US but Alyssa wasn't interested in creating characters of color. Woke? She's a whore riding any wave someone else has made popular in her desperate need for attention.

MeToo? She didn't create it and don't take her seriously on it -- she refused to call out Leslie Moonves. Why? Because she's a whore. She was trying to sell a series starring herself and she needed his approval. She also fawns over the wives of predators like Harvey Weinstein's wife. Rose McGowan was right to call her out.

But here's our Fake Ass Woke Queen (self-appointed) reTweeting Joe Walsh.

Did dumb ass Alyssa think this was Joe Walsh of the Eagles?

Because it's not. It's Joe Walsh who was briefly in Congress, who screamed "You lie!" at Barack Obama during his State of the Union address, Joe who was most famous for his racism.

Here's a small listing:

Walsh has a history of making controversial statements.^[79]

On June 19, 2014, Walsh was removed from his radio show for using racially charged language. He was on air again the next day. WIND general manager Jeff Reisman commented: "During the segment Joe intended to cite several common racial slurs as examples. He did not in any way use them in a defamatory or derogatory manner, simply as examples. However, AM 560 The Answer did not allow them to go on the air. AM 560 The Answer has a policy of not using certain words on the air that are highly inflammatory and offensive even in the context of a discussion of why those words are offensive. We will continue that policy."^[80]^[81]

On July 7, 2016, the night of the 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers, Walsh wrote on Twitter, "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out Black Lives Matter punks. Real America is coming after you." These comments were interpreted by some as threats.^[82]^[83] After deleting the tweet (by his account it was deleted by Twitter), Walsh wrote later, "I wasn't calling for violence, against Obama or anyone. Obama's words and BLM's deeds have gotten cops killed. Time for us to defend our cops."^[84] The next morning, Walsh stated in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that Twitter suspended his account and deleted the tweet itself: "The pre-condition for me reopening my account was they had to delete that tweet." He said, "Of course I didn't mean 'let's go kill Obama and Black Lives Matter.' I was not trying to incite violence against Obama and Black Lives Matter. That's crazy and stupid and wrong. It would end my career and it's wrong."^[85]

On October 24, 2016, Walsh wrote on Twitter, "On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump. On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket. You in?"^[86] When Jake Tapper asked him what he meant, Walsh responded, "It means protesting. Participating in acts of civil disobedience. Doing what it takes to get our country back."^[87] The New York Post wrote that "some took his tweet as a call for violent insurrection."^[88]

On May 2, 2017, Walsh wrote on Twitter, "Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn't obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else's health care."^[89] in reference to a 13-minute monologue delivered by late night host Jimmy Kimmel discussing his son's congenital heart defect and his belief that covering pre-existing conditions is an important part of healthcare in the United States.^[90]^[91]

On September 23, 2017, Walsh described Stevie Wonder as "Another ungrateful black multi millionaire" after Wonder had taken a knee in at his concert in protest of police brutality.^[92]^[93]

On September 23, 2017, Walsh retweeted CNN anchor Jake Tapper's discussion of Saudi Arabia repealing its longstanding ban on women drivers, under the caption "Yes, this is Islam".^[94] Walsh received criticism for this tweet, with several respondents pointing out that most Muslim countries allow women to drive.^{[citation needed]}

This is who she is reTweeting.

She's so sick and so disgusting that we fear if Adolf Hitler has ever said something insulting about Donald Trump, Alyssa would be glorifying Hitler on her Twitter feed.

She's that sick.

She's that pathetic.

And she's that desperate.

Tweet of the week

‏Verified account @ggreenwald

Replying to @ninaturner @SusanSarandon @BernieSanders

It's honestly time to officially declare this sick fixation with Susan Sarandon that they have as a collective pathology. I know most humans have trouble accepting blame for their failures & thus need scapegoats, but this is so far beyond that that it's almost hard to believe.

69 replies270 retweets1,499 likes

This edition's playlist

1) Patti Smith's TWELVE.

2) Judy Garland's ALONE.

3) James Blake's ASSUME FORM.

4) Dionne Warwick's SHE'S BACK.

5) Sam Smith's THE THRILL OF IT ALL.

6) Chaka Khan's HELLO HAPPINESS.

7)  Cat Powers' WANDERER.

8)  Mavis Staples' WE GET BY.

9)  Ben Harper's CALL IT WHAT IT IS.

10)  Mavis Staples' LIVE IN LONDON.

9) The Mamas and The Papas' THE PAPAS AND THE MAMAS.

10) The Beatles' ABBEY ROAD.