Iraq converage 1

From THE COMMON ILLS:

 

Iraq

It's Memorial Day weekend.  US President Joe Biden decided to celebrate by lying yet again:

President Biden Friday again made an exaggeration about the number of times he's been to the Middle East, as he gave a commencement speech to U.S. Naval Academy graduates in Maryland. 

"I've been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan of over 40 I think 38 times," the president said. 

That number was incorrect, however. A spokesperson for Biden's National Security Council (NSC) said Friday the correct number of times Biden visited Iraq and Afghanistan is 21.

Joe's not the only liar in the news, there's also Amber Heard.  Jamie Burton (NEWSWEEK) reports:

A "disabled combat veteran" says that Amber Heard's PTSD score from her marriage to Johnny Depp is allegedly higher than his own.

The tweet, sent out by the account @KurtMyers1982, whose bio describes him as a "retired Army, homeschool dad" from Nebraska, went viral and caught the attention of thousands of people invested in the court case between Depp and Heard.

Depp and Heard are currently embroiled in a $50 million defamation suit which comes after Heard wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in 2018, stating that she was the survivor of domestic violence. Heard has countersued her ex-husband for $100 million.

"I am a disabled combat veteran that lost a close friend in Iraq in 2005," he tweeted on Thursday. "Amber Heard scored much higher than me on her PTSD test, according to Dr. Hughes. Evidently, being married to Johnny Depp is far more traumatic than the Iraq War." The popular hashtag #JusticeForJohnnyDepp was included in the tweet.

Remember, boys and girls, Amber has never been in combat -- it's age and drugs that make her face  look that way.

Meanwhile the government of Turkey continues its assault on Iraq.  MEHR NEWS notes:

According to "almaalomah" news website, the Secretary-General of Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) Qais al-Khazali made the comments in a meeting with tribal leaders in the holy city of Najaf.

"The Turks have long dreamed of 'Mosul province', which includes parts of Iraqi Kurdistan and Kirkuk. Turkey is trying to occupy part of Iraq in 2023, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the so-called Lausanne Treaty."

"Today, Turkish forces have about 66 military bases in Iraq, and Ankara uses PKK as a cover to conduct military action in Iraq. Turkish forces are advancing and establishing military positions in Iraq as the 100th anniversary of the end of the Lausanne Treaty, signed in 1923, approaches and it is preparing to occupy parts of Iraq in 2023," the Shia Iraq politician added.

ANHA adds:

Member of the Parliamentary Security and Defense Committee in Iraq, Ahmed Al-Moussawi, said in a press statement, on Saturday, that "the committee held urgent and intensive meetings during the past days in order to stop the Turkish incursion into the Iraqi depth," according to what Roj news reported.

He added, "The Turkish presence is rejected, and an urgent meeting will be held with the Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and security leaders in order to find a common formula to deal with the Turkish occupation."

Al-Moussawi explained that "the Turkish army penetrated more than 50 kilometers into the Iraqi depth and established several military bases under various pretexts, which is a clear occupation and a flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty."

Though Jeremy Corbyn has found his voice on this issue and called out the government of Turkey, most in the west just look the other way.  This as Turkey apparently intends to intensify their attacks.  NEWS AM reports:

Turkey has almost completed preparations for two military offensives into Syria and Iraq, the HaberTürk network reported, a day after the country's Security Council issued a statement stating the need for an invasion.

Preparations for the invasion of both countries are 90% complete, HaberTürk said, citing military officials, noting that offensive operations will be limited to the west of the Euphrates River.

Turkey continues terrorizing citizens, wounding them and murdering them while violating Iraq's sovereignty.  RUDAW noted Thursday:

Two children were killed in Duhok province’s Zewa village on Thursday during clashes between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkish army, according to sources. 

Birqi Omar, mukhtar (chieftain) of Zewa village in Amedi town, told Rudaw’s Hunar Rashid that people from nearby areas picnicked in the village but were targeted with bombs. 

“As far as we know, the PKK on Metina mountain targeted Turkish military base with three bombs. Then, Turkey bombed our families, killing two people, aged 10, and injuring another,” said the official.  

That's the government of Turkey, making the world 'safer' from children who picnic.

RUDAW also noted:

A village on the border of Duhok province’s Akre was bombarded by suspected Turkish warplanes on Tuesday without resulting in any casualties, local officials told Rudaw, presumably targeting positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the mountainous regions of the area as Turkey continues its operations against the Kurdish opposition group in the Kurdistan Region.

We'll wind down with this from Kevin Reed (WSWS):

The baby formula crisis that is threatening the lives of infants across the US deepened this week as the out-of-stock rate for baby formula on store shelves surged to 70 percent for the week ending May 22. The shortage rate during the previous week was 45 percent, according to the retail tracking firm Datasembly.

The supply shortage is so severe that there are now reports in some areas of the country of mothers attempting to purchase breast milk online from anonymous and independent sources such as Facebook and Craigslist. Pediatric nutritionists are warning that such measures are potentially very harmful to children.

The crisis of powdered formula supplies, 90 percent of which are produced by four monopolies that dominate the US pediatric nutrition industry, is not a mistake or a product of unforeseen circumstances. It is the outcome of a society run by a ruling elite that, in its singular preoccupation with increasing its wealth, is totally indifferent to the lives and well-being of children.

There has been a combination of criminal negligence, corporate profiteering, stock market manipulation and government complicity that have resulted in the shortage of the essential food needed by infants and toddlers, especially those from poor and working-class families.

The supply shortage began almost immediately following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020 when supply chains and transportation were disrupted internationally. During the initial days of the pandemic, families stockpiled the formula and emptied shelves. This was followed by a sharp fall in sales, and manufacturers cut back on production.

Now, with an uptick in births and a dramatic decline in breastfeeding rates among new mothers, demand has shot up again. The inability of the producers to adapt to fluctuations in demand is itself an expression of the anarchistic and unplanned nature of capitalist economics.

The following sites updated:

• 
  Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)

  Olivia Newton-John

  32 minutes ago
• 
  SICKOFITRADLZ

  The Blacklist

  1 hour ago
• 
  Like Maria Said Paz

  The Motels

  1 hour ago
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  Ruth's Report

  Bo Hopkins

  3 hours ago
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  Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude

  a so-so episode of 'dynasty'

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  Dissident Voice

  George W. Bush, Freudian Confessions and Foiled Assassinations

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  Like The Linda Lindas, this teen girl band in Benin makes you dance — and think

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  KBLA - Tavis Smiley's talk radio

  Deep-Dive Review: Dave and Matt Vans Lifestyle Vehicles

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  Antiwar.com Original

  Iraq Daily Roundup: Six Killed

  1 day ago
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  The Official Jody Watley Website

  JUST ANNOUNCED. Grammy Winning Artist Jody Watley To Headline Capital Pride Concert Washington D.C.

  1 day ago 

 

Turn Up The Sunshine - Diana Ross ft. Tame Impala from Minions: The Rise of Gru

THE POWER OF SAND! Storm in Iraq! Thousands of people needed help!

 

This edition's playlist

 

 

1)  Diana Ross' THANK YOU.

 

2) Chrissie Hynde's STOCKHOLM.   

 

3) Chase Rice's THE ALBUM. 

 

4) Adele's 30.

 

5) Stevie Nicks' STAND BACK.

 


6)  Cat Powers' WANDERER.

4) Dionne Warwick's SHE'S BACK.


5) Sam Smith's THE THRILL OF IT ALL.

6)  Sam Smith's THE THRILL OF IT ALL.

7) Harry Styles' HARRY'S HOUSE.

8) Bob Dylan's ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS. 

 


9) Judy Garland's ALONE.

 

 

10) Ben Harper's BOTH SIDES OF THE GUN.

 

 

 

 

Truest statement of the week

Twice in the month of April Barack Obama spoke about “disinformation.” First at the University of Chicago and then at Stanford University he claimed that democracy is at risk because of social media. Democracy is certainly at risk but not because of anyone’s tweets. His words were really meant to frighten Americans into accepting censorship should anyone dare to present a narrative that differs from the state’s. Of course, that isn’t what Obama said. He spoke of Trump’s claims of election fraud and racist posts and all sorts of things that liberals would support. But neither Trump nor anyone else on the right was his target. The left are his targets and the need to silence the public about Ukraine was the reason for his renewed efforts to address an issue concocted by the democratic establishment.

Less than one week after the Stanford speech the Department of Homeland Security announced the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board. (They needed Obama to lay the groundwork with his disinformation tour.) Of course only conservatives and those who are truly on the left saw the danger in what some called a Ministry of Truth, as described in George Orwell’s 1984.

While republicans deemed lesser lights and the butt of liberal jokes such as Representative Lauren Boebert spoke out against the very problematic entity, liberals said nothing at all.

Bernie Sanders, House members known as “the Squad” and others thought of as progressives or leftists were silent. While democrats go along with and defend every Biden administration policy, republican members of congress held a press conference to share their concerns. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other republicans are seeking to defund the Board. “The President’s Ministry of Truth is just an un-American abuse of power, which is a scheme conjured up by Washington Democrats to grant themselves the authority to control free speech.” Of course abuses of power are very American but McCarthy’s assessment of what Biden and the democrats want to do is correct.

 

-- Margaret Kimberley, "Liberals Drive State Censorship" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).

 

 

A note to our readers

Hey -- 

Tuesday.

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?

 

• Truest statement of the week

Margaret Kimberley gets another truest.

 

• Editorial: The signs are right in front of you

The effects are right there in front of our eyes.

• Media: We wonder, We wa wa wa wa wonder

Ava and C.I. may (or may not) go back and add links to this piece.

• Reality poops on Amber Heard

Team Johnny.

• The corruption runs deep in the Biden family

Why is there no special counsel?

• 10 bands we've never cared for

Jordan e-mailed the suggestion that we do this piece.  Thank you, Jordan.

• Tweet of the week

Ajamu Baraka.

• This edition's playlist

What we listened to while writing this.

• Highlights

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

 

 

Peace.

 

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

 

 

 

Editorial: The signs are right in front of you

 

 

Sandstorms increase in Iraq and we're just supposed to pretend it's not climate change?

 

 

 

Media: We wonder, We wa wa wa wa wonder

We wonder about things just like our readers.



Many wrote in about the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial sharing their thoughts on the outrageous moments and wondering if we found anything outrageous. First of all, one of us (C.I.) is a friend of Johnny's of several years and is on record that Amber is a liar and, check our archives, said in real time that it was a mistake (the marriage) that he would live to regret. She also said that to his face.

So we're not pro-Amber at all. We love the poop angle. When that came out -- was it last year? -- LOREAL parted ways with her as a result of all the complaints from their customers who felt the product needed a classier spokesperson than someone who poops in the bed. We were surprised she didn't whine about that in the trial. But we loved how she insisted it was dog poop -- she'd seen it! -- and how even though it was dog poop -- according to her -- she didn't feel the need to clean it up but just went ahead and slept there. Yeah, we're not seeing any cosmetic companies signing her up again. Maybe she can get niche work as a scat model?

For us, the biggest media moment was when Bea Arthur's ugly son showed up. Not Matthew or Daniel. They're both nice looking man. This one looked like dog put through the wringer and kept barking. Or maybe 'barkin'. Yeah, we're talking Ellen Barkin.

No one portrays toxic masculinity better. We noted that about her with regards to ANIMAL KINGDOM.

We've charted her downfall for years now. She's rude, she lies and blames on sets and she runs off audiences. This is why she ended up on USA, after all. Remember how we explained that? How the big four -- ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX -- wouldn't touch her THE NEW NORMAL could not survive Ellen. NBC asked her to stop Tweeting. But she kept on trashing the audience. And the audience took the hint and went walking. She was hated on the set and, more important to the networks, she was hated in the real world. Potential viewers made clear in survey after survey that they would not watch a show with her in it.

So she ended up on USA and did a great job playing toxic masculinity personified on ANIMAL KINGDOM.

But acting couldn't save her and she was fired.

She hit the ceiling when she found out that she was being killed off.

But the rest of the cast had grown tired of dealing with her antics and the show runner was tired of her bullying. She bullied one co-star so much that the woman said she wouldn't appear on the show anymore if Ellen was on that day's call list. Grasp that. It wasn't enough for the actress to be promised no scenes with Ellen, she didn't even want to be on the set if Ellen was.

You may have noticed no TV series snapped her up. And they won't. She runs off viewers and she's tot this need to antagonize people she works with.

You saw what she was like in her taped testimonial against Johnny.

They had a romantic relatio -- no. She stopped the description being applied. They had a sexual relationship, she insisted. There was no romance.

Sadly, we believe her. We believe her bitter life has never, ever had romance.

Over a few months as they had sex, she saw him drunk on red wine repeatedly. Had we been questioning her, we would have asked if that was common for her? Did all of her sex partners need some drink or drug to endure sex with her?

She was mad, even though it was not romantic, that he phased her out.

Most men have phased her out. And she's more or less mad at all of them. And she's bitter and angry and the poster girl for how to steal money from a spouse. She thinks she's considered classy in NYC because she robbed Ron Perelman in their divorce settlement. But NYC society does not see her as being part of them. They see her as a loud, ugly woman who drinks too much and never learned basic manners.

If you saw her on the stand, you know what they're talking about.

So for a few months in 1994, she slept with Johnny. Did he ever hit her? No. Did she see him hit a woman? No. Did she really have a purpose to be part of the hearing?

No.

But there she was -- looking a lot worse for wear -- whining about how yet another man had left her.

They all do. And for good reason. So that was our favorite part of last week's trial moments.

Conrad e-mailed this site to say too much was being made of the trial.

Too much of this trial? We're assuming Conrad is too young to remember the OJ trial.

We don't believe too much is being made of the trial. A woman has accused a man of abuse. We don't believe her. Her charges have hurt his ability to work. We think people need to be asking about Amber and why she gets with men. She used to hide the women she was involved with. She had a lot of physical altercations with those women.

One of us asked her when she married Johnny what was she after? She was going to be faithful to Johnny for the rest of her life? As expected, she couldn't even be faithful to him for the first year of marriage -- many men and many more women were involved with Amber.

She's an abuser and society struggles to grasp that men can be the victims of domestic abuse. They have the power -- some idiots insist -- some female idiots insist.

They mean the strength. And, yes, in many cases a man in a relationship with a woman is physically stronger.

For that reason, many men, when hit do not strike back.

There are many forms of power -- including Amber's gift of manipulation.

In a society that struggles -- sometimes refuses -- to see that men can be abused by women, we'd argue this is an important case.

"STREAM!" Louden wrote. Ty asked us if we knew what he meant? Nope. So Ty wrote back and turns out STREAM! is a print magazine.

Why?

That's our response to Louden. He thinks STREAM! is something we need to cover. We would agree if he was talking about THE STREAM -- put out by Cambridge students. But he's instead speaking of a glorified TV GUIDE but for streaming platforms.

The price is a little over ten dollars. At a time when existing magazines with a solid base, say VANITY FAIR, are struggling with a dying interest in print, we're having a hard time seeing who's going to buy this.

It's not needed. We flipped through the current issue and found nothing of value. We're not saying that to be mean or bitchy. We just didn't see anything that we don't already know from the e-mails NETFLIX sends us (we didn't sing up for them), HBO MAX sends us, PEACOCK sends us, HULU sends us, etc. We're not talking about the messages asking us to cover this or that, we're talking about the generic, mass mailing that they do. Point being, if you're subscribing to any of the streamers, you're getting those e-mails.

The magazine struck us as being nothing more than an assembly of all those mass mailings in our inboxes.

CLOSER is a newish periodical that's found an audience in print. It's geared toward 50 and older. Is STREAM! If so, maybe the thought is it'll reach out to all those people in the Progressive Insurance ads who are turning into their parents?

In the 90s, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY served a real purpose picking up after the blood bath at TV GUIDE where some amazing writing (including a profile on one of us) went beyond the norm and exposed warts. This resulted in many complaints from agents and a group of trail blazing journalists were either fired or reigned in. Some were part of the new EW. But overtime, EW stopped worrying about truth and just generated fluff. When they are hard hitting, it's on a topic that's old news.

The only reason to pick up EW today is for the photos -- the Nick Jonas issue in June of 2016, for example.

STREAM! is as dull as EW. They need a writer that stands out. The way US used to have Michaell Musto whose writing shocked and entertained -- read his review of Diana Ross' SWEPT AWAY, for example, which he wrote as a letter to Diana.

"You only support people you agree with" huffs Danielle and we have no idea what she's talking about. If she means we play favorites, no, not really.

We disagreed with Patricia Heaton's politics, with the insult she made of a friend while on THE TONIGHT SHOW, and we did not care for her acting. We called her out repeatedly over and over. However, then we saw her work in THE MIDDLE and we did praise her acting. She burrowed into that character and we were -- and remain -- impressed. We did not review her CBS show because we knew the problems -- nothing to do with Patricia but there was a predator in the midst. Had he not been there -- or had we not known of it -- we would have gladly watched it to see what she'd come up with.

Equally true, we have friends who hate what we've written about their shows. There's an actor who will still bring up what we said about his FOX sitcom and how we got it cancelled with our review because it was on the bubble and now a lot of people are out of work and we did that and we were supposed to be his friend and . . .

He will go on. And it was over a decade ago.

So, no, we don't play favorites and we do warn people when they ask us to cover their programs that they may not be happy with our evaluations.

Marci wrote in about "the purge" at THE CW. We agree it was a blood bath. 10 shows have gotten the axe. More to the point, THE CW is no longer what it was. No one seems to be counting on that. Two football shows? Hm. The DC shows are gone except for THE FLASH. Glossy soap operas are gone (RIVERDALE did not get cancelled but they were informed that next season is their final season). What is THE CW?

As THE WB, it was a network geared to the youth and especially to young females. Today, it's at a loss to describe itself in a single sentence and it doesn't appear to grasp how scattered they've become. We think it may be folded. The new owners clearly have no vision for the network and that would indicate that they're move is to shut it down. If so, they may sell it off.

What happens them? We would see it very likely that something like MYTV might make a move. MYTV was a disaster and is really no more. The real goal of that net-lette was to get eyeballs in large numbers during prime time so that they could push right wing talking points throughout the day and post-prime time. That's why Roger Ailes was attached.

However, their telanovas were a joke. FASHION HOUSE was probably the best of anything they aired and it was garbage. (Morgan Fairchild and Mike Begovich delivered in every scene they acted in. Sadly, the cast was huge and Morgan and Michael were but two members of it.) But we could see the right making a move to create their own network again.

The media is not fair to them. We won't disagree with them on that. Bad soap operas and Kirk Cameron have failed so they'd need to try something else. An animated show revolving around Greg Gutfeld?

Why haven't we ever covered, Jason Bailey wonders, the junior chef shows.

We seem to remember including Allison Hannigan's cupcake show in a piece we wrote. But other than that, no, not interested.

In fact, when we see the commercials for those shows, we always wonder why they aren't even tackier? "You've watched TEMPTATION ISLAND, not get ready for TEMPTATION AFTERSCHOOL -- day care kids interact and jealousies ensue as crushes develop!"

Larry takes us to task for not defending Roseanne Barr, "She was crucified and you never even called it out."

Hey, Larry. We think you're confused -- very confused. We've praised Roseanne Barr's accomplishments, her talents, how she changed television -- all before the reboot aired. We praised the reboot. As for Rosanne being fired? We were very vocal about how wrong that was. We were very vocal about how ABC stole her intellectual property. They forced Roseanne, a Socialist, to either sign over the rights to the characters she created or else they were going to shut the show down and the crew would lose their jobs.

We think Roseanne should sue ABC and state this was done under duress. We think she might prevail in court -- she may not -- but that it would force ABC to answer for what they did. It wasn't very DISNEY, after all. And while they tried to make her pariah, the reality was that her original series and the reboot season began airing too much acclaim on various outlets including COZI, CMT and TV LAND.

Roseanne is not a racist -- a point we've made repeatedly, Larry. She was burned at the stake by ABC who tried to attack her. Guess what? Her fans stayed with her.

She supported Donald Trump? So what? We didn't support Joe Biden in the primaries but we have friends who did. It's not the end of the world. Roseanne, as she notes in her new documentary airing on REELZ, doesn't take bulls**t. We aren't at all surprised that she supported Donald.

We didn't and we don't.

But, yes, it's understandable. You live in a bubble if you don't get it. The electorate is and was disgusted. The Obama years were not magical and if you think that, pop your bubble and come back to the real world. He had many broken promises. He was a weak president. But what may have been even more disgusting was the way the media sucked up to him.

For example? He promised publicly to end veterans homelessness and gave himself a date to do that by.

He didn't do it.

BROKEN PROMISES FROM BARACK was not the headline. Instead, we got stories about how he improved it. He didn't promise to improve it, he promised to end it. He failed.

That's reality.

And people who make excuses are people who are tilting the scales.

Donald was a businessman so he was read as smart (as we've noted before, he was never a great business mind). He was seen as an outsider. (The Trump family is not an outsider, they've had their roots in the country going back many years and they even have a Tesla connection.) He would shake things up.

Well, he did do the last one. Mainly because idiots obsessed over him and Russia or his Tweets or other nonsense while the non-hypocritical left focused on real issues like ending the Iraq War, Medicare For All, greater community control over the police, etc.

We didn't see him as a renegade but we could see how others would.

ABC didn't want Roseanne because of her politics and was using any excuse to get rid of her. A lawsuit would bring that out in the open. She was giving them their highest rated program and they were responding by attempting to kill the show. A lawsuit would be very revealing. Stock holders would certainly be paying attention. But it also goes to how they set out to attack her. Fatty Arbuckle was destroyed by the industry. He wasn't the only one. Roseanne was destroyed by the industry because of her politics.

Whoopi Goldberg made a very offensive comment regarding the victims of the Holocaust and got a slap on the wrist.

Roseanne made a comment she'd made many times but this time about Valerie Jarrett and they used it to claim that she was racist. They shut her up immediately by lying to her and saying they were dealing with it. They were dealing with it, feeding the industry trades to amplify the issue and pushing her out.

A law suit would get a lot of that out. She has every right to sue. DISNEY really doesn't want the attention. They might return the rights to her creations to her to avoid everything coming out -- there's a lot there and Channing's company e-mails are said to be very revealing.

 
Larry, we've stood by Roseanne. We don't scare easy. We stood by Helen Thomas as well -- whose politics were the oppositie of Roseanne's. We don't scare easy. When we did our review of Rachel Evan Wood's awful HBO documentary a lot of people e-mailed to slam us. Now some of you have e-mailed again to apologize because you've learned just how outrageous Evan Rachel Wood is and how far from the truth she has traveled.

We write in our own voice and we don't write to sooth.

That's what's allowed us to have so many wonderful readers (yes, even those who disagree with us are wonderful). We didn't become a propagandist for Bully Boy Bush, for Barack Obama, for Donald Trump or for Joe Biden. We're not here to aid the powerful. We have no desire to be members of the royal court. And we look at those who became court jesters (Ezzie Klein) and think how sad they are and how they're not just jesters, they are eunuchs.

\We wonder how they live with themselves.