Monday, July 23, 2018

Truest statement of the week

The date October 21st was open at America's Mordor and we told him that we wanted to use the very same parking lot that the pro-war motorcycle group Rolling Thunder uses every Memorial Day for their grand celebration of carnage. So, if the PTB (powers that be) deny our permit for our right to "peaceably" gather in opposition to same carnage, it will demonstrate and expose the hypocrisy of the war machine.

-- Cindy Sheehan, "Women's March on the Pentagon Goes to America's Mordor (Progress!)" (CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX).


















Truest statement of the week II

Such anticommunism fits right in with the anti-Russian campaign, which is the principal theme of the Democratic Party in the 2018 elections. As the World Socialist Web Site has pointed out for many months, the real thrust of the Democratic Party campaign is demonstrated by its recruitment as congressional candidates of dozens of former CIA and military intelligence agents, combat commanders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war planners from the Pentagon, State Department and White House.
There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats’ making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a “left” cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left “comrades” agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict.


-- Patrick Martin, "Bernie Sanders embraces the anti-Russia campaign" (WSWS).













A note to our readers

Hey --

Early Monday morning.  And we're done.


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, 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?

Cindy Sheehan gets another truest.
Patrick Martin gets another truest.
Who's covering the protests?
Ava and C.I. cover a new show on NETFLIX and a new controversy for NETFLIX.
It's out of control and revealing the media bias.
Consider them to also be pedophile.
Seriously, did they?
No, this isn't from the book but with that title . . .
They say it all.
Continuing to highlight book coverage in the community.
What we listened to while writing this edition.
Repost of Burn Pits 360.
A look at the week's best.


See you next week.


Peace,





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







Editorial: Iraq

In case u missed it: Large scale protests have been going on in southern recently. This powerful sign sums up the demands of the demonstrators: Revolution of the poor. Electricity. Water. Bread.




Large scale protests.

And what you need to be asking is this: Is the media I consume providing me this story?  You need to ask that because (a) the Iraqi people are suffering, (b) Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi has turned the military on the protesters, (c) Hayder is using the training the US provided and the weapons the US provided to attack the Iraqi people, (d) this is in violation of the Leahy Amendment . . .

We could go on forever.

But what you need to ask is who is covering the protests?

NPR did a strong job last week with several reports.  THE WASHINGTON POST and CNBC have each done a strong report.

Where's the rest of the landscape?  And don't forget the begger media which has so many hours to kill.

Instead of covering the Iraqi people and the danger that they are in, it's endless chatter about 'treason' and other nonsense.

Watch throughout the week, see who bothers to cover these protests.  By their actions you will know if they are full of s**t.
















TV: Twittervist Alyssa learns the internet bites back

NETFLIX loves praise but can't stand criticism -- trust us, we hear from them.  So last week wasn't a good one for the streaming service.  There was the issue of the stock price falling (yes, we wrote "TV: Is NETFLIX the new DUPONT?" for a reason).  And then, when they had a new program to promote, they got caught up in Alyssa drama.

a new illst

If you missed it, self-proclaimed Judge of the Universe Alyssa Milano stepped into it but instead of taking accountability, she and her partners blamed others.  It's a factory feature of the spoiled brats assembled on TV network factory lines -- that and a strong sense of entitlement and a desperate addiction to mass attention.


Background, the show at issue is INSATIABLE.  Some reports refer to Alyssa as "a star" of the show.  She's not.  It's a teen show.

This is all so pathetic that, of course, it recalls a 30 ROCK episode, specifically "Black Light Attack!"  In that one, Jenna (Jane Krakowski) is convinced she's up for a lead role on the teen drama GOSSIP GIRL but, turns out, she's actually going to be playing the mother of one of the teen lead characters.

INSATIABLE is a new show for NETFLIX starring 25-year-old Debby Ryan as a high schooler Patty.  Also starring is Dallas Roberts who plays her attorney.  Dallas is attractive because director Andrew Fleming is one of the producers.  Somehow the cast also includes Christopher Gorman and his Herman Munster face.

At one point, Gorman and Alyssa joined the producers in trying to sell the series.  It being a teen-led show, THE CW was briefly interested.  They ordered a pilot.  Then they saw the results . . .

Which is why it will be appearing on NETFLIX.  Alyssa's been rushing the media for over a year now declaring herself a star of the show and insisting that she's the star of THE CW's HACKTIVIST -- based on her graphic novel -- and of LIFETIME's upcoming series ALYSSA MILANO FOR MAYOR.

Reality on that nonsense.  She's not the star of INSATIABLE.  Reality on HACKTIVIST, a year later, THE CW's still not interested in airing it.  More to the point, it's not "her" graphic novel. The four isues were written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly while Marcus To did the illustrations.  Which brings us to the series ALYSSA MILANO FOR MAYOR which is currently not happening but there is talk of a possible LIFETIME TV movie which, of course, is a whole other thing.  Most actresses -- name actresses -- now avoid LIEFTIME TV movies -- rightly or wrongly -- because the movies are seen as a cheap joke (and LIFETIME's found that stars don't really matter to their genre, just the basic plotline).


It's a year later and life is less rosy for the personality who never honed her craft.  Limited skills (and faded looks) means limited options.

Maybe that's why she's dug in so hard on INSATIABLE?

The trailer was released last week and an immediate backlash was the response.  Patty, the lead character, spends the summer with her jaw wired and loses a lot of weight.  Newly slim, the trailer tells you, she can now take on her bullies.

Newly slim, the trailer tells you, she can now take on her bullies.

Alyssa, for those who've forgotten, loves to scream at others -- not just Jay Mohr -- for 'fat shaming.'  And now the online 'activist' is finding that she too can be targeted.


Nick Bond (NEWS.COM) explains:

Insatiable tells the story of Patty (Debby Ryan), an overweight high-schooler and social reject who’s dubbed “Fatty Patty” and teased mercilessly by her school mates.
Until, that is, Patty, has her jaw wired shut over her summer holidays, loses a lot of weight and returns to school conventionally “hot.” Suddenly popular, Patty uses her new-found social standing to seek revenge on the teens who used to make her life hell.
The trailer’s earliest scenes — showing Ryan shuffling around in a less-than-convincing fat suit, grimly shovelling food into her mouth — have sparked a backlash from viewers, many of whom have asked why Hollywood is still putting thin actors in fat suits, some 17 years after Gwyneth Paltrow got cheap laughs playing a morbidly obese woman in Shallow Hal.
Others have expressed disappointment at the series’ apparent depiction of drastic, enforced weight loss as a path to success and popularity.

SHALLOW HAL?

How about Stockard Channing in the Joan Rivers-penned THE GIRL MOST LIKELY TO . . .?  That's really what this is more like.  But, hey, intelligence is always in short supply.

Alyssa is part of the stupidity.  Having no real career, she took to Twitter in the last years to try give the appearance of one.  And from Twitter, she's hectored everyone while acting as though she was  morally superior to everybody else.  Turns out, she's just another cheap hustler.

Currently, the CHANGE.ORG petition calling for NETFLIX to shelve the show has over 87,000 signatures.


Alyssa has tried the 'it's just a trailer excuse.'  But of course, 'just a trailer' didn't stop her and her kindred from attacking the reboot of CHARMED.  The back story there?  Up until March of this year, there was a chance that Alyssa would star in the reboot.  The reboot might be a TV show or a TV movie.  When it became a TV show and a new show with new actresses, she was pissed.  She'd spent over a year talking up a reboot.

But, again, it was fine for Alyssa and her kindred to slam CHARMED, the new CHARMED, based on a trailer.

They only backed off when they realized a pack of middle-aged White women attacking young women of color wasn't playing  well before the public.

Now Alyssa's again the target of internet rage.

As one NETFLIX suit told us, "This isn't helping the show or the company."  But he did allow that at least the negative press on INSATIABLE was drowning out the negative press about NETFLIX's stock slump.


But it wasn't helping them draw attention to a series they just added, SECRET CITY.

This six episode series they just added stars Anna Torv of FRINGE fame.

It's not a NETFLIX series, it's an Australian series which just completed filming its second series.

SECRET CITY is the most involving series NETFLIX has offered since the first season of STRANGER THINGS.  The show revolves around reporter Harriet (Torv) whose ex-husband is now a woman (Damon Herriman as Kim) who is a secret intelligence analyst.  Harriet stumbles across attacks on Chinese dissidents.  This is part of a larger struggle taking place between China and Australia.  Everyone is amazing in the cast, especially Torv and Herriman as well as Daniel Wyllie and Mekhi Phifer.  We almost forgot Jacki Weaver who plays the Attorney-General of Australia with more than a few nods to Hillary Clinton.

Each episode unravels another detail.  Again, no show NETFLIX has aired or created has grabbed a viewer this strongly since the first season of STRANGER THINGS.  But to grab a lot of viewers, people would need to be aware of the show and Alyssa and her self-created drama tends to suck all the air out of the room -- which hasn't endeared her to the suits of NETFLIX.

In fairness to Alyssa, we pointed out to NETFLIX suits that they hadn't done a good job themselves.  They should be promoting SECRET CITY and not some show about the interior of homes.  More to the point, MINDHUNTER.  How did they promote that show -- and they did promote it -- without noting that Anna Torv was one of the stars?

FRINGE was huge on NETFLIX.  Anna Torv inspires interest.  She's not the overly exposed Alyssa Milano out there hawking this product and that and boring (and angering) the world with her every thought and half-baked opinion.  Anna  doesn't have huge negatives associated with her.  Or the desperation factor.  She also doesn't have the sad need to try to look like a teenager which is what Alyssa continues to strive for as she nears 46 -- either that or she's addicted to clown make up.  Again, Alyssa comes with a lot of drama.





That Russia Hysteria

Watergate was covered with more fairness.

We all grasp that, don't we?


And this witch hunt against Donald Trump, the President of the United States, we get that there's still no proof that he did nothing wrong?  Or that he colluded with Russia?


Where's the evidence?




Justin Raimondo noted that in February of last year and it remains true, there's no evidence.  Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) rightly points out:

Robert Mueller is no different from his prosecutor colleagues across the country. They lie. They over charge and force innocent people to plead guilty. They “squeeze” defendants with threats of draconian sentences and get them to turn on other people or even to tell lies themselves.
Mueller’s indictments of Russian officials is akin to the shady doings that he and the rest of his profession always engage in. After more than one year of investigation Mueller succeeded only in proving that Paul Manafort is a crook and that Donald Trump, Jr. is stupid. The charges against Manafort and Trump attorney Michael Cohen have nothing to do with the Russian collusion story at all. The indictments make a political rather than a criminal case and are a weak effort to prove that the year-long charade was worth carrying out at all.


It's disgusting.

There's no proof.  There's no evidence.  Yet the 'impartial' media has led a cry to call him a crook and a traitor.


We're not all stupid trash like Katrina vanden Heuvel who went on DEMOCRACY NOW last week and talked up the hysteria while doing her ineffectual best to do otherwise.  She's just stupid and ineffecutal (and a lousy wife since she was lashing at all of the hard work her husband had done) and more concerned that she be invited on MSNBC than that she speak truth.


Truth would require that you note the reality that there is no proof, all this time later.  Joe Lauria (CONSORTIUM NEWS) explains:


The indictments did not include any members of Trump’s campaign team for “colluding” with the alleged Russian hacking effort, which has been a core allegation throughout the two years of the so-called Russia-gate scandal. Those allegations are routinely reported in U.S. media as established fact, though there is still no evidence of collusion.
Trump emphasised that point in the press conference. “There was no collusion at all,” he said forcefully. “Everybody knows it.”
On this point corporate media has been more deluded than normal as they clutch for straws to prove the collusion theory. As one example of many across the media with the same theme, a New York Times story on Friday, headlined, “Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton. Were They Listening?,” said Russia may have absurdly responded to Trump’s call at 10:30 a.m. on July 27, 2016 to hack Clinton’s private email server because it was “on or about” that day that Russia allegedly first made an attempt to hack Clinton’s personal emails, according to the indictment, which makes no connection between the two events.
If Russia is indeed guilty of remotely hacking the emails it would have had no evident need of assistance from anyone on the Trump team, let alone a public call from Trump on national TV to commence the operation.

More importantly, as Twitter handle “Representative Press” pointed out: “Trump’s July 27, 2016 call to find the missing 30,000 emails could not be a ‘call to hack Clinton’s server’ because at that point it was no longer online. Long before Trump’s statement, Clinton had already turned over her email server to the U.S. Department of Justice.” Either the indictment was talking about different servers or it is being intentionally misleading when it says “on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.”


Why won't the Democrats turn over the server?  The one they claimed was hacked?  If it was hacked, turn it over.  That would be the perfect evidence proving Russia hacked the server and turned John Podesta's e-mails over to WIKILEAKS.


There's a disconnect between what so many political and media elites *say* is going on right now -- a treason plot of such extraordinary proportions that it has literally uprooted the foundations of American governance -- and their solution: "elect Democrats"



No proof.

All this time later and no proof.

All this wasted money on an investigation -- that continues when it should be wrapped up.  Instead, the media spends non-stop hours on amping up the hysteria and adding 'treason' cries.  This is not a functioning media, it is not impartial media.


Bill Van Auken (WSWS) took on THE NEW YORK TIMES playtoy Peter Baker and others last week:

This paranoid style is finding undeniable echoes from within the Democratic Party and the Times itself. Just two days earlier, the newspaper’s ineffable foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman described Trump as “an asset of Russian intelligence,” and issued a similar call to arms: “My fellow Americans, we are in trouble and we have some big decisions to make today.” Last year, the same Friedman used his column to address an open letter appealing to the military officers in the Trump administration to remove the president by means of a palace coup.
The chief authority cited by Baker for his treason article is John Brennan, the former director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, whom he describes as “one of Trump’s most vocal critics.” Brennan denounced Trump’s behavior in Helsinki as “nothing short of treasonous.”
The idea that Trump is an agent of the Kremlin has as much credibility as similar charges leveled more than half a century ago by the likes of McCarthy, Stormer and the John Birch Society against Eisenhower and Kennedy.
The fact that the Democratic Party is resurrecting a narrative associated with the most right-wing elements of the American political spectrum has ominous implications. It can only serve to sow political disorientation among the US population and lay the groundwork for an extremely reactionary and dangerous turn by the American capitalist state.
What is the content of Trump’s “treason”? What is the charge endlessly repeated by the television anchors and talking heads in tones of shock and outrage—the same media stooges who either pass over in near silence or provide justifications for the Trump administration’s torture of child refugees on the US-Mexican border, its war crimes in Syria and Iraq and its support for a genocidal war against the people of Yemen?
It is that Trump has failed to accept the word of the American intelligence agencies. Brought forward as authorities on this supposed “high crime” are a trio of ex-intelligence chiefs who are now fattening their bank accounts as “security and intelligence analysts” for the television networks: John Brennan, Michael Hayden and James Clapper.

What unlikely guardians of the truth! As directors of the CIA or director of national intelligence, all of them oversaw torture, “black sites,” “extraordinary rendition” and drone assassinations, as well as other crimes carried out behind the backs of the American people.



Again, Watergate was covered more fairly than this.  All these months later and no proof.  Hysteria fueled by the media.





The Burden Of Proof Is On The Russiagaters "Whether you’re talking about law, philosophy or debate, the burden of proof is always on the party making the claim."






xx

When Debra Messing and others reTweet a pedophile are they confessiong to child exploitation?

Kurt Eichenwald is embraced by Debra Messing and so many others.  Despite being a pedophile.  Apparently, Debra Messing is a-okay with child exploitation.

We've called out Kurt repeatedly.

But we didn't know Margaret Kimberley had as well.  Margaret linked to a report by Debbie Nathan (COUNTERPUNCH) that we'd also missed.  Nathan breaks it down very basically about what happened between Eichenwald and the underage Justin Berry.




1. Eichenwald used the $1,184 PayPal payments he paid Justin Berry to buy photos from Justin. Was Eichenwald’s editor or anyone else at the Times aware that Eichenwald was engaged in business transactions with Justin in 2005 around the time of the buying of photos?
2. Eichenwald told Berry during this time that he could help him with ideas to make more money. Is this something the Times was aware of?
3. Hours after Eichenwald paid Justin Berry $2,000 on June 8, 2005, Berry produced a video of a 14-year-old boy masturbating. Was the Times aware of this?
4. Images of the 14-year old masturbating were uploaded a few days later to a heretofore dormant gay porn website run by Berry. During this period, Eichenwald became a member of the same website. Was the Times aware he was a member?
5. Eichenwald was not merely a member of the illegal site mentioned above. He also had administrative privileges to enter it, involving a special password available only to those managing the site. He used the password more than 20 times in late June, 2005 to sign onto the site. Was the Times aware of this?


It's really past time that the pampered aireheads like Debra Messing were informed that it is not okay to reTweet a pedophile and that if they continue to do so we will see that as their confession that they are also pedophiles.






Did they make a stamp for this?

trump lives here


We've seen currency in the last two weeks with this stamp at least five times.

Did they make a stamp for this?






An excerpt from THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING

bill clinton

Excerpt:


First Lady Hillary Clinton raged as she stormed to the Oval Office in search of President Bill Clinton.

But he wasn't there.

She searched the private study.

But he wasn't there.

Yelling a vulgar curse, she headed off to the second floor while, in the hallway by the study, Monica Lewinsky and the president . . .







Tweet of the week



  1.   Retweeted
    BREAKING: Newly declassified FISA application on Carter Page reveals FBI never told the court that its main source -- Steele -- was paid through the Clinton campaign. It merely says he was hired by a "business associate" and a "law firm," which it never ID's as Clinton/DNC lawyer
  2.   Retweeted
    BREAKING: Over and over, the newly released FISA app on Carter Page reveals the FBI cited liberal media articles, along with the Clinton-paid political dossier, as EVIDENCE to support the warrant to spy on Page, and by extension, the Trump campaign
  3.   Retweeted
    BREAKING: Newly released FISA application shows Strzok did in fact use Carter Page's Sept. 2016 letter to Comey as a “pretext” to open investigation on him, as Strzok suggested in email to Page in Sept re "Crossfire FISA." Yet Strzok just swore he had nothing to do with Page FISA
  4.   Retweeted
    BREAKING: "Source #1 [Steele] has been compensated [blank] by the FBI," according to newly released FISA applications to spy on Trump advisor Carter Page











Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
 
Poll1 { display:none; }