Starting with Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Seth's Only 2% Fresh On Rotten Tomatoes" from Saturday.
How pathetic is Seth Meyers that he needs to go to the well over and over, in 2022, on Donald Trump? What a piece of tired nonsense.
Isaiah's also done "Biden's Last Remaining Supporter," "The Experts" and "21 DUMPSTER" last week.
Recently, National Public Radio’s Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg was widely criticized for a false story about Justice Neil Gorsuch allegedly refusing to wear a mask during oral arguments despite a threat to the health of his colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She also suggested that Sotomayor had to watch the oral arguments virtually due to his conduct. Gorsuch and Sotomayor issued a joint statement that called Totenberg’s story “false.” Now, Totenberg has made another bombshell report that “the leading theory” is that it was a conservative law clerk who leaked the opinion. While most of us have discussed this as one of the possible scenarios, Totenberg reports that it is now the “leading theory” in the investigation. Totenberg’s reporting, however, did not suggest that she has any factual basis or evidence to make that claim. She simply says that it is “the only one that makes sense.” It may be the only “sensible” choice for some, but it is hardly the “most likely” theory based on the available evidence.
Totenberg said on ABC’s “This Week” that the “leading theory” is that a conservative did this but added that she did not believe they would ever find the culprit:
There were those kinds of leaks but never an entire draft of a majority opinion, that has never, ever occurred before. And it can only, in all likelihood, have come from a justice, that I think is less likely, perhaps one of the clerks and the leading theory is a conservative clerk who was afraid that one of the conservatives might be persuaded by Chief Justice Roberts to join a much more moderate opinion, and then there’s another theory that it was an outraged liberal clerk.
But I think the only one that makes sense is that it came from somebody who was afraid that this majority might not hold, that Chief Justice Roberts might persuade one of the conservatives to come over to him in a much more moderate opinion.
However, Totenberg then added that “it’s very unlikely” that they will ever find the culprit. Hmmmm. So Totenberg is reporting that the leading theory is that a conservative did this but that, in the end, there is not likely to be sufficient evidence to establish who did it.
Didn't NPR used to have a rule about their reporters opining on these Sunday talk shows? I believe they did and I believe Nina is in violation of that rule. She's just one embarrassment after another.
"Media: A lot of content, very little truth" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):
The whole thing was as fake and as unneeded as Christine Pelosi last week. News of Samuel Alito's draft opinion for the Court that would overturn ROE V WADE has Christine surfacing to blame others. We guess it is too much to expect her to bite the hand that feeds her. After all, we're talking about a 55-year-old woman who never held a job her mommy didn't get her. Christine and Nancy have both mistaken matriarchy for feminism.
Nancy Pelosi, echoing Hillary Clinton in the '00s, has edged away from support for reproductive freedom and privacy rights for some time. Her 2017 public statements about how the party might be emphasizing abortion too much ("it shouldn't be a litmus test") was not the first time she'd expressed that sentiment and she is currently backing an anti-abortion candidate named Henry Cuellar.
Smart people would be holding the Democratic Party accountable. We're not surrounded by smart people. NOW issued a ridiculous statement which included:
The Supreme Court’s decision will jeopardize women’s lives—particularly the lives of young, Black, Latinas, Indigenous, and economically insecure women who are most at risk. Now, it’s up to us to vote for women’s lives.
We must get the Women’s Health Protection Act, which establishes a federal statutory right to access to abortion care, passed in Congress, and that means electing a Manchin-proof majority in the Senate and keeping control of the House. What’s more, we must break turnout predictions in the fall elections and flip control of state legislatures that are held by narrow margins.
We know that there’s a feminist majority
of voters who can change the course of history in the next election.
This is our mission. This is our time. We need your collective voice
and collective power so that we can defend Roe. We will not fail.
How
pathetic.. The Democratic Party needs pressure right now. Instead,
NOW is insisting that we vote Democrat regardless. We can't imagine
Betty Friedan being this pathetic. NOW could be calling for people to
take to the streets, to donate for services to cover women's travel to
other states for abortions should the Court strike down Roe, etc.
Instead, all NOW can envision is churning out the vote for the
Democratic Party -- it's time to take away their exempt status. They
are not independent, they are an arm of the Democratic Party. Contrast
NOW's nonsense with what Anne Rumberger offers in her column at JACOBIN.
We are in this position precisely because we have failed to make demands on Democrats.
Jeffrey St. Clair points out at COUNTERPUNCH:
+ Of course, Biden got there before Alito did, voting in 1981 to support a constitutional amendment that would allow states to overturn Roe v. Wade. Soon after the Roe ruling, Biden announced his opinion that the court had “gone too far” and that women shouldn’t have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body.”
+ The right to an abortion wasn’t “granted” by the Supreme Court, it was won through decades of organizing. Similarly, it wasn’t taken away by a “court” but by a decades long counter-revolution, often violent, cruel and vicious, that included clinic bombings, the assassinations of abortion providers, the harassment of women seeking abortions. The liberals never really fought back, even as over the past 20 years, clinics have steadily disappeared across the South and rural Midwest, leaving some states with only one or two clinics, meaning for all practical purposes only wealthy women had a “right” to an abortion, which is not a right at all.
+ Abortion as a constitutional right for all ended in 1976 with the passage of the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of abortions–a measure supported by many Democrats, including Biden. It meant only three years after Roe, instead of being a right, abortion had already become a mere privilege of those who could afford one. The erosion has been steady ever since. Now the price of abortions will be even higher and for many will include a plane ticket to the 15 states where abortions will remain legal until a national ban is passed, which is now likely than ever. After which, women will have to fly to places where abortion was once banned, like Ireland and Mexico, to legally get one…
+ The US already has the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrial world. Black women are especially vulnerable. Their risk of dying as a result of childbirth is three times higher than the already deplorable average in the US. This decision will drive that shameful statistic even higher…
+ There were 861 pregnancy-related deaths in the US in 2020, roughly 24 per 100,000 births. According to a statistical analysis in the Financial Times, in the past six years, there’s been an average of 4 abortion-related deaths, for a rate of 0.41 per 100,000 legal abortions. Abortion is roughly 60 times safer than pregnancy and birth.
+ Kathleen Belew: “One historian of abortion argues that abortion stays at pretty much the same rate per capita over time whether it’s legal or banned. What changes when you make it illegal is how many people die from it.”
+ But listen to what the second-ranking Democrat in the House, James Clyburn, had to say to the San Antonio Report, in defense of his support for the fanatically anti-abortion Rep. Henry Cuellar: “Does this issue carry more weight than voting [rights]? I don’t think so. I think restoring the Voting Rights Act is a much weightier issue than this.”
+ This moment has been coming for decades. For much of that time, the Dems have held complete control of Congress. At any time, they could have codified Roe. But they didn’t want to in large measure because the threat of Roe being overturned was a huge fundraising machine for them and one of the few reasons to vote for otherwise awful candidates. Now the inevitable has happened and the last rationale for supporting this pathetic bunch of neoliberal losers has vanished and with it a hard-won constitutional right that they used as a political gimmick. Shame on them.
+ After the Democrats lose the Senate and the House in the fall and Biden gets flattened by a ticket of Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2024, the Republicans will pass a national ban on abortion, even if they have to jettison the filibuster to get it through the Senate. It’s called playing for keeps.
+ No one Nancy Pelosi knows is poor enough to ever suffer because of this ruling and she knows her party will be able to raise tens of millions because of it, even though they’ll never do anything to overturn it…
A privacy law should have been passed by the US Congress long ago. If Democrats are now prepared to do so now, when they control both houses of Congress and the White House, when will they be? It's time for that party to put up or shut up. And it's time for larger issues about precedent to be addressed repeatedly by the press so that all of We The People can grasp what's at stake. Kathy Spillar (MS. MAGAZINE) notes, "In 1992, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe in Casey, it said it could not 'overrule [precedent] under fire.' Overturning Roe now would, whatever the Court intends or says, be perceived as rewarding anti-abortion extremists' violent acts and would undermine the rule of law. In Casey, the Court refused to overrule a landmark precedent under threat of violence. It should not do so now, a generation later, when even more anti-abortion violence has become an undeniable part of our nation’s history."
This is about abortion. This is about privacy. This is about truth.
As usual, another great column from Ava and C.I.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Monday, May 9, 2022. The suffering continues in Iraq -- even without visits from the US First Family.
How much is the life of a Kurd worth?
The world makes clear that the amount is zero. Kurdish lives do not matter at all. Which is why Turkey can bomb those areas, invade the areas with ground troops and set up bases in those areas -- bases on foreign soil. All these acts of war are ignored by the world.
Jared Szuba (AL-MONITOR) reports:
US military intelligence believes Iran-backed militias have been coordinating with Kurdish guerrillas to launch attacks on Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq, according to a Pentagon inspector general report released today.
Prominent Iran-backed militias have publicly slammed Turkey’s military operations targeting fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the mountains of northern Iraq, citing violations of Iraq's sovereignty.
The militias are also behind a small but increasing number of rocket attacks on Turkish forces in both Iraq and Syria in recent months, according to the declassified report. Some of the strikes in Iraq were carried out “in cooperation with the PKK,” the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported.
“Following Turkish airstrikes in February that targeted the PKK in northern Iraq, a new Iran-aligned militia group conducted a rocket attack against a Turkish expeditionary base north of Mosul,” the report read. The Turkish outpost near Zlikan, northeast of Mosul, has repeatedly come under rocket fire in the past year.
“The DIA assessed that the militias probably will continue to coordinate with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, in response to Turkish air and UAV strikes on PKK positions,” the report read.
Is it true?
Who knows?
But if it is true, then what does that say about the US?
The Kurds have been the strongest partner with the US government throughout this ongoing Iraq War and this is how the US government says thank you? By refusing to help the Kurds. By driving them into the arms of Iran. Why? So the us can reward Erdogan who, of course, attacked American citizens when he visited the US, physically attacked them. They were protesting and he had his guards attack them.
That's who we reward.
Don't see the First Lady jetting off to Kurdistan on Mother's Day to call out the deforesting of Kurdistan by Turkish troops. Don't see her landing in Kurdistan and speaking of the rights of the Kurdish people and their right to live freely. Thousands are pouring out of the region because of the terrorism that the Turkish government is carrying out but not a word from the White House.
Joe Biden's so-called friendship with the Kurds was always a one way street. As a US senator, as a vice president and now as a president, he did nothing to help or assist the Kurds. He constantly pressured them to make concessions 'for the greater good but he never did a damn thing for them and that continues to this day.
The Yazidis are in that territory as well.
Remember them? Barack Obama's excuse for sending more US troops into Iraq?
They're fleeing because of the Turkish bombings and assaults.
Joe Biden doesn't care about them either.
Turkey daily carries out attacks, violates Iraq's sovereignty and comits Acts of War and Joe Biden's too scared to call out Erdogan.
That tells you everything you need to know about pathetic Joe.
A question pops up on Twitter:
David McHutchon Tweets:
And the Kuridstan Solidarity Network Tweets:
In other news, the water buffalo are at risk.
Moving to another topic, let's note this from the CDC:
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is caused by infection with a tick-borne virus (Nairovirus) in the family Bunyaviridae. The disease was first characterized in the Crimea in 1944 and given the name Crimean hemorrhagic fever. It was then later recognized in 1969 as the cause of illness in the Congo, thus resulting in the current name of the disease.
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is found in Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union, throughout the Mediterranean, in northwestern China, central Asia, southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent.
The World Health Organization adds:
Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever is a viral haemorrhagic fever usually transmitted by ticks. It can also be contracted through contact with viraemic animal tissues (animal tissue where the virus has entered the bloodstream) during and immediately post-slaughter of animals. CCHF outbreaks constitute a threat to public health services as the virus can lead to epidemics, has a high case fatality ratio (10-40%), potentially results in hospital and health facility outbreaks, and is difficult to prevent and treat. CCHF is endemic in all of Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and in Asia.
The disease was first described in the Crimea in 1944 and given the name Crimean haemorrhagic fever. In 1969 it was recognized that the pathogen causing Crimean haemorrhagic fever was the same as that responsible for an illness identified in 1956 in the Congo. The linkage of the two place names resulted in the current name for the disease and the virus.
Why are we noting this? Because Iraqi is currently dealing with it. Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) reports:
Iraq is on high alert after an unusually high number of cases of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, which has killed eight people so far this year.
Authorities said one person died on Friday as cases of the virus spread to the country's north, AFP reported.
The virus, which has a death rate of up to 40 per cent, is primarily transmitted to humans through tick bites or infected livestock, said the World Health Organisation.
Human-to-human transmission can occur as a result of contact with the blood, organs, secretions or other bodily fluids of infected people, the WHO said.
There is no vaccine available for people or animals.
40 cases have been registered in Iraq so far this year with 23 in Dhi Qar. Symptoms may include:
* fever
*hemorrhage/bleeding
* fatique
* Dizziness
* aches in muscles, bones or joints
* nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
* "bleeding under the skin, in internal organs, or from the mouth, eyes or ears"
* nervous system malfunction
* coma
* delirium
* kidney failure
* liver and respiratory failure
AFP notes that the most recent death was a butcher and "People are generally infected through contact with the blood of infected animals, often after slaughtering livestock." THE NATIONAL notes that in response the disease, Iraq is spraying crops and livestock.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Seth's Only 2% Fresh On Rotten Tomatoes" went up Saturday and prior to that "Biden's Last Remaining Supporter," "The Experts" and "21 DUMPSTER" The following sites updated:
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