3) Diana Ross' THANK YOU.
4) Robbie Williams' XXV.
5) Diana Ross & The Supremes' MORE HITS.
6) Chase Rice's THE ALBUM.
7) George Ezra's GOLD RUSH KID.
9) The 1975's BEING FUNNY IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE.
10) Janet Jackson's UNBREAKABLE.
Monday, December 19, 2022
Monday, December 12, 2022
Truest statement of the week
To the editor: Clearly, graphic artist and web designer Lorie Smith is a card-carrying "cafeteria Christian." She loves dining at the Bible buffet where she can pick and choose the precepts to cite as reasons for not providing services, while ignoring others.
If she was true to her faith, she would also not create website messages for those sinning customers who wear clothing of wool and linen mixed together, or who’ve been divorced and remarried, or who perform any work on Sunday.
The list of offenders is endless, but were Smith to be consistent in her religious stance, her budding business would tank overnight. She is cherry-picking a few biblical passages to support her narrow belief toward one group while ignoring the offenses of others.
Truest statement of the week II
+ MAGA accusing Sebastian Gorka of being part of a Deep State cover up is the best thing to come out of Laptopgate. Well done, Matt Taibbi!
+ Taibbi, who once blamed the excesses of his own satirical writings in The eXile on his heroin usage, rummaging around in the pilfered files of a drug addict and claiming a major exposé, doesn’t demonstrate much addict-to-addict solidarity…
+ The eXile was one of the best magazines to emerge in the 90s. The problem wasn’t the satirical pieces–worthy of Paul Krassner–but Taibbi’s cowardly renouncement of them–and blaming his partner Mark Ames, all to curry favor with people he once rightly despised and ridiculed.
+ Instead of Hunter Thompson, Taibbi’s morphed into David Horowitz…
+ Taibbi likes to think of himself as a “muckraker,” but I can’t think of a single “muckraker” agreeing to secret conditions set by the richest tech mogul in the world to run a story based solely on documents given to him by the same tech lord to be run on that very tech lord’s site. It sure ain’t the way IF Stone did it.
-- Jeffrey St. Clair, "Roaming Charges: The Mask of Order" (COUNTERPUNCH).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Monday 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 Kitchen,
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.
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?
A letter to LAT gets a truest.
So does Jeffrey St. Clair.
We're covering an important moment and, note, a lot of your lefty YOUTUBERS couldn't make time for it. But don't worry, they care, they really care!!! about themselves.
Ava and C.I. covering . . . well, everything. A reality TV show, the Twitter dumps, the prisoner exchange, Bill Clinton and Israel, everything.
Oh, if only Aunty GiGi could do as much for Americans as a real hero like Amir does for Iraqis.
We didn't have an edition. Ava and C.I. wrote their piece Sunday and were going to post it all by itself tonight. I (Jim) said we didn't have anything and we didn't. Ava and C.I. said short features. Yeah, but what? They said build on Stan's great observation. So we did.
And we got Iraq scraps from C.I. that we fleshed out. (Scraps? They were supposed to go in snapshots but there was no room.)
What a vile and disgusting hate merchant.
And music!!!
Peace,
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Editorial: A historic moment
Last week, The Respect for Marriage Act passed. Is it everything we wish it were? Nope. But is it much better than what we have with regards to reproductive rights? Yes.
It passed on Thursday and US President Joe Biden released the following statement:
Today, Congress took a critical step to ensure that Americans have the right to marry the person they love. The House’s bipartisan passage of the Respect for Marriage Act—by a significant margin—will give peace of mind to millions of LGBTQI+ and interracial couples who are now guaranteed the rights and protections to which they and their children are entitled.
After the uncertainty caused by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Congress has restored a measure of security to millions of marriages and families. They have also provided hope and dignity to millions of young people across this country who can grow up knowing that their government will recognize and respect the families they build.
I want to once again thank the unwavering champions of this legislation in Congress—Representatives Nadler, Cicilline, and Davids in the House, and Senators Baldwin, Collins, Portman, Sinema, Tillis, and Feinstein in the Senate—who refused to be deterred and brought this vital bill over the finish line. Together, we showed that it’s possible for Democrats and Republicans to come together to safeguard our most fundamental rights.
On this day, Jill and I are thinking of the courageous couples and fiercely committed advocates who have fought for decades to secure nationwide marriage equality at the Supreme Court and in Congress. While we are one step closer on our long journey to build a more perfect union, we must never stop fighting for full equality for LGBTQI+ Americans and all Americans.
Alex Bollinger (LGBTQ NATION) reported on the House vote:
The House of Representatives has passed the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) in a 258-169 vote. The bill would require the federal government and state governments to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed by other states.
The bill originally passed the House in July and was then passed by the Senate on November 29. The Senate amended the bill to add some religious protections and to state that it doesn’t legalize polygamy, so the House had to pass it again with the amendment.
The bill now goes to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.
Of the vote, Fabiola ASantiago (MIAMI HERALD) observed that some of the Republicans in the House who swore, ahead of the midterm elections, that they would support the legislation ended up turning around and voting against it:
Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents increasingly right-wing and politically hysterical Coral Gables, and Mario Diaz-Balart, whose district spans from MAGA-red Hialeah-Miami Lakes into Naples, both switched prior Yes votes -- taken before the Nov. 8 midterms when they were up for re-election -- to No.
Shame on them.
The LGBTQ+ community should remember how easily these House members discarded their vital interests and refused to protect the sanctity of family life.
But I suppose we can at least be thankful that neither Salazar nor Diaz-Balart broke down on the House floor in weepy homophobic oratory against gay marriage like Missouri’s Rep. Vicky Hartzler did.
“This is yet another step toward the Democrats’ goal of dismantling the traditional family, silencing voices of faith and permanently undoing our country’s God-woven foundation,” Hartzler said before the vote.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
There are plenty of religious denominations that support gay marriage, just not hers. And if you believe this country was indeed “woven” by God, his beautiful creation also included gay people. It has been so since the beginning of human time.
Senator Tammy Baldwin was one of the leaders on this effort in the Senate. After the House vote, her office issued the following statement:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) released the following statement on the Respect for Marriage Act passing the House of Representatives by a bipartisan vote of 258-169:
“We are thrilled that the Respect for Marriage Act passed both the Senate and the House with robust bipartisan support. This commonsense legislation provides certainty to millions of loving couples in same-sex and interracial marriages, who will continue to enjoy the freedoms, rights, and responsibilities afforded to all other marriages. At the same time, our legislation fully respects and protects religious liberty and diverse beliefs about marriage. This is an important and historic step forward in ensuring dignity and respect for all Americans.”
Among those voting for the measure in the House? US House Rep Mark Takano. His office issued the following:
Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) released this statement following the House passage of the Respect for Marriage Act. This bill repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, enshrines marriage equality for federal law purposes and provides additional marriage protections at the state level.?The Respect for Marriage act now goes to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
“As the first openly gay Member of color elected in history, enactment of the Respect for Marriage Act means the world to me, to my loved ones, and to millions of Americans,” said Rep. Mark Takano. “Yet we cannot rest— the necessity of this legislation in response to extreme Supreme Court action is a stark call for our vigilance in the fight for human rights. We must rise to the challenge, and we will prevail.”
Press Contact
Taylor Doggett (202) 225-2305
asfd
TV: A wild and eventful media week
Last week was a pretty interesting one for the media.
Take the Twitter dump that quickly became plural.
It
started with one dump. This was supposedly huge information. If it
was huge, it required a reporter doing a report, not just adding one
Tweet after another.
In
addition, a deal was made ahead of the release with Elon Musk (new owner
of Twitter). What was the deal? It's apparently impolite to ask.
Yes,
someone claiming that they are a journalist has entered into a secret
deal. Now we don't like secret deals to begin with. We called out
Vince Warren's secret meeting with Barack Obama, for example. We stood
alone in objecting to the president of the Center for Constitutional
Rights having a meeting with the then-new president and refusing to
disclose what it was about. After all, CCR had spent the eight years
Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House insisting that secrecy was
wrong. Suddenly, it became right when they benefited (or thought that
they did -- Barack's remarks after meeting with Vinnie were bitchy
beyond anything he ever said to Samantha Power).
One thing that the Tweets did appear to prove? FBI involvement in destroying democracy.
In
April of 2019, Hunter Biden had a problem with a laptop. He took it to
a repair shop. He never picked it up. It became the property of the
repair shop owner as a result, John Paul Mac Isaac. He notified the FBI
after he was concerned by things he saw on the laptop and, in December
2019, the FBI seized the laptop.
Despite
having possession of the laptop in December 2019, the Tweets reveal
that the FBI approached Twitter execs and stated that Russian
disinformation could be on the way -- approached Twitter execs in the
fall of 2020 -- and that a computer hard drive might emerge and that
Twitter should suppress this information.
They
knew the computer was real, they knew the hard drive was real. They
knew it a year before they lied to social media outlets. They lied.
Their actions were not only outrageous, their actions were illegal.
If the reporter had written a report and not just taken a dump on Twitter, that would have been immediately obvious.
It
wasn't. And that led the White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre
to shoot off some stupid remarks early last week. Called out here at THE COMMON ILLS and, after which, Karine wouldn't touch the subject with
a ten foot pole. Why? Her remarks are potentially harmful in a
Congressional hearing or a court of law. As noted at TCI, the White
House attorneys would not be pleased with her remarks (and they
weren't). Karine speaks for the president. For Tweets to reveal the
flagrant abuse of power by the FBI and for Joe Biden's spokesperson to
dismiss the Tweets and call them unhelpful? Doesn't help Joe Biden if
the issue goes to court or to a Congressional investigation. In fact,
it looks like Joe's spokesperson was trying to cover up for the whole
thing.
What she did was so deeply stupid that she was informed another similar mishap and she'd be sent packing.
Joe needs to speak to the American people about the FBI abuse. We'll say that and then move on to another topic.
Like?
How
about the zealots trashing Joe Biden for a prisoner trade with Russia
that freed WNBA player Brittney Griner but not (or instead of) Paul
Whelan. There may be reasons to object to swapping arms trader Viktor
Bout for anyone but there's no point in objecting to Griner. She was in
a Russian prison over drugs (possession of cannabis oil). Paul Whelan
was imprisoned for spying. Generally, government swaps involving spies
are one spy for another.
If they swap at all.
What did Israel use on Barack Obama?
That's
the question many asked after Barack pardoned American spy Jonathan
Pollard (he spied for Israel but was not an Israeli citizen until after
he was convicted of spying). They ask that question because Bill
Clinton refused to pardon Pollard who received a life sentence.
Bill Clinton refused to pardon Pollard -- despite being blackmailed. In 2014, Rebecca Shimoni Stoil (TIMES OF ISRAEL) reported:
Israel attempted to use tapes of former US president Bill Clinton’s steamy conversations with intern Monica Lewinsky to leverage the release of Jonathan Pollard, a new book on the Clinton family’s political enterprises has claimed. In the book, titled “Clinton Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine,” author Daniel Halper relies on on-the-record interviews with former officials together with a close analysis of documents termed “the Monica Files” to paint a salacious – and uncomplimentary – picture of one of the most prominent political families in the United States.
Halper reviewed hundreds of pages of documents compiled as a contingency to use in case the former intern ever was involved in legal action against Clinton.
According to the author, the documents indicate that during the Wye Plantation talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, held in Maryland in 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled Bill Clinton aside to press for Pollard’s release.
[. . .]
Netanyahu’s
threat, according to Halper, spurred Clinton to consider action. Halper
claims that Clinton brought the request before CIA director George
Tenet. Tenet, however, threatened to resign his position if Pollard was
released, and Clinton backpedalled on the idea.
Halper
is not the first to claim that Israel illicitly taped the steamy
conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky and tried to leverage it to
its advantage. In 1999, UK author Gordon Thomas claimed that the Mossad
had collected some 30 hours’ worth of phone sex conversations between
Lewinsky and Clinton and was using them to blackmail the US or to
protect a deeply-embedded mole in the White House.
In Newsweek's most recent report on
Israeli espionage on the United States, the magazine claims that Israel
listened in on phone calls between former U.S. President Bill Clinton
and other leaders during critical stages of the Middle East peace talks
in 1999.
.
According to the report, which cites British-Israeli political scientist Aharon Bregman's upcoming book "Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories," Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on conversations between Clinton and the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.
Citing
transcriptions of the phone calls, the book also alleges Israel tapped
calls between Assad and Syria's foreign minister in the U.S., as well as
discussions between Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak.
Again,
rumors have swirled for years about what the Israeli government might
have used on Barack that led to Pollard being released. Michael Weiss (THE DAILY BEAST) noted, "After decades of trying in vain to get out of jail, Pollard will be released on
November 20 after serving 29 years in a federal prison. The timing,
coming so soon after the U.S. helped ink an arms control agreement with
Iran, has raised eyebrows not least because anonymous U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal last
week that the Obama administration was planning to release Pollard as a
salve to Israel to try to convince the Jewish state to tone down or
abandon its fierce criticism of the Iran deal."
There's a lot that goes into releasing someone convicted of spying.
Equally true, Griner is an American citizen.
So is Paul Whelan!!!!
No,
not really. He's a citizen of the US . . . and Ireland . . . and
Canada . . . and the United Kingdom. Seems he has plenty of options
when it comes to countries that could help him.
Well he's an American Marine!!!!
No, not really.
He
was an American Marine. But he was kicked
out of the Marines for grand larceny. He faced a court martial over
that. He got kicked out.
FOX
NEWS and others created this false portrait of him that took hold. He
was the brave Marine who served honorably and President Joe Biden forgot
him!!!!! He was the American citizen!!!!! Neglecting to note that he
wasn't born in the US (so very pro-immigrant and so very unlike FOX NEWS) and that
his parents weren't US citizens and that he had citizenship in three other
countries. They also neglected to note that his family forgot to shut
their traps after Whelan was arrested in Russia. From WIKIPEDIA:
According to the Russian news agency Rosbalt, Whelan was apprehended in his hotel room at the Metropol while concluding a long outing with a Russian citizen, who handed him a USB drive containing "a list of all the employees at a classified security agency". The independent Latvian-based publication Meduza reported that the wedding attendees all banded close together for the duration of the holiday, and were taken aback by Whelan's decision to spend the day alone.[23]
The BBC cited family members of Whelan, who said he previously bragged about knowing an agent of the FSB, and was privy to an unusual cache of personal details about his friend, including which intelligence training school he attended (biographical information typically reserved for a very close circle).[24]
Here are basic facts from BBC NEWS:
Mr Whelan is a citizen of four countries - the US, Canada, the UK and the Irish Republic.
From Novi, Michigan, he was born in Canada to British parents and moved to the US as a child.
Military records show he joined the US Marine Reserves in 1994, about six years after he had reportedly begun work as a police officer in Michigan.
[. . .]
But in 2008 Mr Whelan, who had achieved the rank of staff sergeant, was discharged from the marines for bad conduct.
The Pentagon, which released his records, said the charges related to larceny. CNN reports he was accused of using someone else's social security number, and "writing bad cheques".
FOX
NEWS was quick to let viewers know that Donald Trump did not approve of
the trade and insisted that Whelan should have been the person whose
freedom the US government secured. FOX NEWS, as usual, wasn't quick to
ask why, if it's now so damn important to Donald. Trump did nothing when
he was president -- Whelan was arrested December 28, 2018 meaning Trump
has two years of his presidency after Whelan's arrest to secure his
release. Saturday, on FOX NEWS' CAVUTO LIVE, David Whelan was allowed
to note, "My brother pleaded from his prison for President Trump to
Tweet about him during President Trump's term in office and President
Trump didn't."
Why are FOX
NEWS and elements of conservative media so obsessed with this story?
And why are they so quick to act as though a disgraced man drummed out
of the US Marines is a hero?
Because
Brittney Griner is a lesbian. An African-American lesbian -- the sort
of thing that makes FOX NEWS and Marjorie Taylor Greene tremble.
When
you know the world you live in, things start to make sense. These
things don't necessarily make you happy but they do help you navigate.
News of Jeff Lewis' FREEVEE show didn't make us happy.
HOLLYWOOD HOUSE LIFT brings the former BRAVO TV outsized personality back to the little screen.
FLIPPING
OUT was his previous show. To watch that eleven season nightmare was
to wonder where the labor board was? Jeff seemed to think being gay
gave him an excuse for everything. Like when he made his long suffering
housekeeper Zoila Chavez clean cat poop -- watery, liquid cat poop --
out of a bathtub without gloves. She requested gloves and she also
requested that she be allowed to use water in the tub first to get some
of it out. Jeff denied both and then bragged to the camera how her
getting poop between her fingers would teach her a lesson.
Jeff
thought he had a lot of wisdom to share. He would scream at Jenni
Pulos Nassos and Megan Weaver for anything. They were his employees
just as Zoila was and he couldn't get through a day without screaming at
one of them and telling them how lousy they were. Heaven forbid that
they defended themselves because then he'd really rage. "Mistakes
happen," Jenni made the mistake of saying once in the car when they
didn't have a client's phone number and he went to town on her.
He should have faced several law suits.
And someone should have told him that "training" is not raging at someone.
He's
back with HOLLYWOOD HOUSE LIFT which finds him now interacting with
various celebrities such as actor and musician Evan Ross. Is Jeff any
smarter? When Evan offers that something in the bedroom could be given
to his mother to make room for new items, we know who he's referring
to. We know Evan and, of course, we know his mother Diana Ross. If
Jeff does, there's never any indication. Melissa Rivers shows up --
we've noted her good manners before when covering reality TV. We'll
note them again and again give credit to the late Joan Rivers. Anthony
Anderson's segments weren't good when they were filmed and aren't good
now that they air. He talks about what he and his wife want. His
unseen wife. There's a reason for that. The divorce is back on.
Fortune Feimster and her wife Jax are wonderful -- but we do question
how the onscreen titles label the home Fortune's and their dog Fortune's
-- is Jeff unaware of California's community property laws? Mira
Sorvino comes off practical (Jeff not so -- he asks her husband if Mira
will explode when he's got bad news to deliver). Lamorne Morris knows
what he wants and has someone supervising it so he doesn't have to deal
with updates. Roselyn Sanchez seems out of her depth (why not insist
that the project ends before you're leaving the country when you know
you will be out of the country for months filming FANTASY ISLAND) and
someone needs to break it to Wilmer Valderrama that he doesn't have the
taste and sensibility in decorating that he believes he does.
Maybe that'll make you consider streaming?
Maybe it won't.
But,
if you do stream, you'll note that Jeff isn't as annoying as he once
was. Like his lips, his spirits now sag. He's almost down to earth.
Shane Douglas is his assistant now and let's give the formerly highly vain
Jeff credit for (a) removing his lip fillers and (b) willing to be on
camera with the very young Shane. He actually treats Shane with
respect.
It's
a huge change for Jeff (who's also married, become a parent and
divorced since he wrapped up FLIPPING OUT). Maybe growth is possible,
maybe dragons don't need to be slayed when they can be reformed? Like we
said at the top, last week was an interesting week for media -- with one
lesson after another.
We need more heroes like Amir Ashour
If you missed it, cult leader Moqtada al-Sadr has (again) declared war on Iraq's LGBTQ community.
Iraqi Parliament Speaker Al-Halbousi saying that Iraq will not legislate a law against the LGBT because Iraqi already has traditions and customs that reject this subject; T.V. presenter: Will we see a law banning homosexuality based on Sayyid Al-Sadr's wish soon? pic.twitter.com/vdKiT5uTds
— Iraqi Qahwa كهوة عراقية (@IraqiQahwa) December 9, 2022
No one on the left should have ever indulged him but they did.
“Sadr’s efforts to stigmatize and attack the #LGBT community are both serious and uneducated, especially in an environment where the #Iraqi LGBT community — including children — is suffering from an unprecedented level of violence, torture and harassment.https://t.co/jtqNYAoLYC
— Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) December 6, 2022
While little bitches like Glenn Greenwald play footsie with homophobes in the US, real heroes like Amir Asbour stand up bravely in Iraq.
"I want to dedicate this award to LGBT+ Iraqis."
— GAY TIMES (@gaytimes) November 26, 2022
Accepting the GAY TIMES Honour for International Community Trailblazer, it's @amirashour_, the founder of Iraq's first LGBTQ+ movement, @IraQueer 🇮🇶 #GTHonours pic.twitter.com/2nAIVF4svk
Aunty GiGi wants to sneer "identity politics." It's life itself to people like Amir. We need more people like Amir.
Timothee Chalamet is one ugly woman
As Stan noted last week in "Timothée Chalamet is box office poison," failed actor Timothee Chalamet is actually a dead ringer for an 80s TV star . . . Polly Draper.
Maybe stick boy can put on some pounds and try looking like a twenty-six-year-old man? Wouldn't make him a better actor (nothing will) but it would make him look less like Polly Draper.
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