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.
