Like Maria Said Paz

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Isaiah, Jonathan Turley, Ava and C.I.

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Family Get Togethers" went up early Monday morning.

That's Rebecca, by the way. Isaiah loved her post two weeks back -- the quotes come from it -- and asked her if it was okay to turn it into a comic.

Okay, sad news from Jonathan Turley:

After the conviction of Jussie Smollett, many in politics and the media admitted that the evidence against the actor was overwhelming despite the early coverage lionizing Smollett. Indeed, while Smollett garnered overwhelming coverage as a courageous victim, some have now objected to the coverage of the verdict as excessive. Some cable hosts simply ignored the conviction while CNN and MSNBC downplayed the verdict. Black Lives Matters stood with Smollett even though he accused two black witnesses of lying and hurt legitimate victims of racism. However, Cal State Pan-African Studies Department professor Melina Abdullah has gone further and declared that it does not matter what the evidence is: you must stand with Smollett and refuse to believe anything the police has to say on the matter.

Academics are often passionate and opinionated on public controversies. However, most professors feel that intellectual honesty demands acknowledgement of undeniable facts like videotapes supported by text messages, eye witness testimony, and frankly simply logic. Not Abdullah. The Black Lives Matter (LA) founder said on Tuesday “we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett.”

I don't have a lot of respect for people who can't be honest. Jussie Smollett lied. He lied and he made it worse for himself after Kim Foxx gave him an easy out (one he didn't deserve). Instead of leaving it alone, he decided to declare himself innocent. He was not innocent. That was the whole point of the minor slap on his wrist regarding community service served and his not getting his bail money back.

He lied and that's all there is too it. If you can't be honest at this point, you really shouldn't be in public conversations.

"TV: Coming out kind of- Colton" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):

Unless the point is that season two is going to be the second coming out.

Frequently, a man has to come out as gay. And then there's the second coming out.

That's the subtext of season one of COLTON COMING OUT. It's the story in the background.

Colton is now dating Jordan C. Brown. We found that out from friends we discussed the series with a few weeks back. Friday and Saturday, they called to say, "You were right! You picked up on what no one noticed!"

We find it hard to believe that no one else noticed it -- even if our friends didn't notice it.

Colton's next coming out is as a bottom -- if he's honest.

No one really asks that about women. Well, Richard Avery on KNOTS LANDING did ask "who's the man?" when he accused his wife Laura (Constance McCashin) of having an affair with CJ (Lisa Hartman). But most people -- even what you might call the de-volved -- can grasp how women interact with one another sexually. It's only when it's two men that so many feign shock and surprise.

We grasped Colton was a sub or bottom early on.

There's a conversation where Gus is asking him about his ideal man. Colton's looking down, looking to the side, looking all over before he uncomfortably cites 'wisdom' and Gus correctly notes that Colton wants a "daddy." It's said briefly and then immediately disappeared.

But that's what he wanted -- and with Jordan C. Brown, it's what he's gotten.

We get how this is uncomfortable for Colton. He's a former professional football player, he's someone desperate for his father's approval. He's also a guy who wants to be penetrated and we're still not at a point in our society where everyone's comfortable with that.

I really loved their piece this week and I think Ava and C.I. have done a great job addressing LGBTQ issues from day one, all those years ago (January 2005) at THIRD.

"Iraq snapshot'' (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, December 13, 2021. The persecution of Julian Assange intensifies as many look the other way (looking at you Heidi Boghosian and Micahel Smith), a case on the vote in Iraq continues, and much more.

Verner Verass Tweets:

A war crime is not a classifiable document. Julian Assange simply alerted the world to the killing of eleven people by the air crew of a U.S. Apache hellicopter in Iraq in 2007. Two of those people were International journalists. #thedrum

1:40 AM · Dec 13, 2021

The US government continues to persecute Julian Assange, the publisher of WIKILEAKS. Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs. And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own. For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:

A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.

Earlier this year, Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) reported:

Under the leadership of then-Director Mike Pompeo, the CIA in 2017 reportedly plotted to kidnap—and discussed plans to assassinate—WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, who is currently imprisoned in London as he fights the Biden administration's efforts to extradite him to the United States.

Citing conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials, Yahoo News reported Sunday that "discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred 'at the highest levels' of the Trump administration."

According to Yahoo:

The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency's multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.
While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks' ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as "Vault 7," which the agency ultimately concluded represented "the largest data loss in CIA history."
President Trump's newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied. Pompeo and other top agency leaders "were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7," said a former Trump national security official. "They were seeing blood."

Yahoo's reporting makes clear that Assange is not the only journalist U.S. officials have attempted to target in recent years. During the Obama presidency, according to Yahoo, "top intelligence officials lobbied the White House to redefine WikiLeaks—and some high-profile journalists—as 'information brokers,' which would have opened up the use of more investigative tools against them, potentially paving the way for their prosecution."

"Among the journalists some U.S. officials wanted to designate as 'information brokers' were Glenn Greenwald, then a columnist for The Guardian, and Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, who had both been instrumental in publishing documents provided by [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden," Yahoo reported.

PRESSENZA added:

According to the Yahoo! News investigation, the agency’s plans for Assange and WikiLeaks – which would have begun as early as Barack Obama’s tenure with the definition of some of the website’s journalists, including Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, as “information agents” – allegedly led to fierce debates over their legality and some officials were so concerned that they felt the need to brief members of Congress on the former service director’s suggestions.

It adds that it was a campaign that “bent important legal constraints, potentially jeopardized the Justice Department’s work to prosecute Assange and risked a damaging episode in the UK, America’s closest ally”.

That's where things once stood. Last week, a decision was made to hand Julian over to the US government. Glenn Greenwald (SUBSTACK) reports:

In a London courtroom on Friday morning, Julian Assange suffered a devastating blow to his quest for freedom. A two-judge appellate panel of the United Kingdom's High Court ruled that the U.S.'s request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is legally valid.

As a result, that extradition request will now be sent to British Home Secretary Prita Patel, who technically must approve all extradition requests but, given the U.K. Government's long-time subservience to the U.S. security state, is all but certain to rubber-stamp it. Assange's representatives, including his fiancee Stella Morris, have vowed to appeal the ruling, but today's victory for the U.S. means that Assange's freedom, if it ever comes, is further away than ever: not months but years even under the best of circumstances.

In endorsing the U.S. extradition request, the High Court overturned a lower court's ruling from January which had concluded that the conditions of U.S. prison — particularly for those accused of national security crimes — are so harsh and oppressive that there is a high likelihood that Assange would commit suicide. In January's ruling, Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected all of Assange's arguments that the U.S. was seeking to punish him not for crimes but for political offenses. But in rejecting the extradition request, she cited the numerous attestations from Assange's doctors that his physical and mental health had deteriorated greatly after seven years of confinement in the small Ecuadorian Embassy where he had obtained asylum, followed by his indefinite incarceration in the U.K.

In response to that January victory for Assange, the Biden DOJ appealed the ruling and convinced Judge Baraitser to deny Assange bail and ordered him imprisoned pending appeal. The U.S. then offered multiple assurances that Assange would be treated "humanely" in U.S. prison once he was extradited and convicted. They guaranteed that he would not be held in the most repressive "supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado — whose conditions are so repressive that it has been condemned and declared illegal by numerous human rights groups around the world — nor, vowed U.S. prosecutors, would he be subjected to the most extreme regimen of restrictions and isolation called Special Administrative Measures ("SAMs”) unless subsequent behavior by Assange justified it. American prosecutors also agreed that they would consent to any request from Assange that, once convicted, he could serve his prison term in his home country of Australia rather than the U.S. Those guarantees, ruled the High Court this morning, rendered the U.S. extradition request legal under British law.

What makes the High Court's faith in these guarantees from the U.S. Government particularly striking is that it comes less than two months after Yahoo News reported that the CIA and other U.S. security state agencies hate Assange so much that they plotted to kidnap or even assassinate him during the time he had asylum protection from Ecuador. Despite all that, Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde announced today that “the court is satisfied that these assurances” will serve to protect Assange's physical and mental health.

The effective detention by the U.S. and British governments of Assange is just months shy of a full decade. Ecuador granted Assange asylum in August 2012 on the ground that his human rights were imperiled by U.S. attempts to imprison him for his journalism. For the next seven years, Assange remained in that embassy — which is really a tiny apartment in central London — with no outdoor space other than a tiny balcony, which he typically feared using due to the possibility of assassination. Ecuador withdrew its asylum in 2019 after its sovereignty-protective president Rafael Correa was succeeded in office by the meek and submissive Lenin Moreno. Trump officials led by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador Richard Grenell persuaded and coerced the new Ecuadorian president to withdraw Assange's asylum protection, clearing the way for London police to enter the building and arrest him on April 11, 2019. Ever since, Assange has been imprisoned in the high-security Belmarsh prison, described in the BBC in 2004 as “Britain's Guantanamo Bay.” He has thus spent close to seven years inside the embassy and two years and eight months inside Belmarsh: just five months shy of a decade with no freedom.

British MP Richard Burgon Tweets:

Julian Assange is being targeted for exposing US war crimes - in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
 
Extradition to the US is not only an attempt to silence him - but to stop all journalists from speaking truth to power.

We must continue to oppose his extradition to the US.

5:17 AM · Dec 10, 2021

Where's LAW AND DISORDER RADIO? Head up their asses again? They used to do so much, now they can't cover the law correctly instead bringing on idiots from the MONTHLY REVIEW who are so stupid that they don't even know the law or, for that matter, that 68-year-old men don't look 'cute' in Peter Pan bangs.

Don't worry, Heidi and Michael, you just managed to waste another week -- like you've basically done all year long. And I've looked the other way and held my tongue but we both know, damn well, that if Michael Ratner were still alive, Julian would be the sole focus of this week's show. Shameful, just shameful.

Meanwhile Aaron Mate Tweets:

“Progressive” radio host  @ianmastersmedia
:

“Does anyone know when” Assange “became essentially a whore for the Russians?”

Russiagate fan fiction writer James Risen of The “fearless and adversarial” Intercept: 

“You know that’s a great question.”

2:31 PM · Dec 12, 2021

Oh, this one calls for a music video.

In the never forgotten words of another one of your friends
In the never forgotten words of another one of your friends, baby

When you hang up that phone
Well you cease to exist
Welcome to the room Sara
Welcome
Welcome to the room everyone

-- "Welcome To The Room, Sara," written by Stevie Nicks, first appears on Fleetwood Mac's TANGO IN THE NIGHT

Normally, we'd highlight an official recording but, as most people grasp, Stevie Nicks' songs on TANGO IN THE NIGHT were destroyed by Lindsay Buckingham, not enhanced.

And let's say, "Wecome to the room, Aaron." Ian's a problem, is he? Those of us who've called him out since 2008 could've used some support years ago. But you were silent until now. Maybe learn something from it, if you can. Ian's KPFK stunt in 2008 should have gotten him kicked off all PACIFICA stations. That it didn't goes to both the incestuous nature of PACIFICA and how partisianship trumps truth on the radio network.

Ian's a problem for you now, is he? Well, Aaron, welcome to the room. Finally.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following:

New York, December 10, 2021–The Committee to Protect Journalists today expressed deep disappointment at a British court’s decision to uphold the United States Justice Department’s appeal to extradite Julian Assange, which allows the U.S. to continue pursuing the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder, according to news reports.

“On the same day the Nobel Peace Prize honors journalists, a UK court ruled that the United States can extradite Julian Assange, a move that seriously damages journalism,” said CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney. “The U.S. Justice Department’s dogged pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder has set a harmful legal precedent for prosecuting reporters simply for interacting with their sources. The Biden administration pledged at its Summit for Democracy this week to support journalism. It could start by removing the threat of prosecution under the Espionage Act now hanging over the heads of investigative journalists everywhere.”

If extradited and convicted in the United States, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison on 18 charges under both the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, CPJ has documented.

The insane Rocky Mountain Mike Tweets:

We sent 5,000 Americans to their graves so Iraq wouldn’t be run by either an authoritarian thug or religious extremists. Meanwhile, we’re one election away from America being run by an authoritarian thug and religious extremists.

12:59 PM · Dec 12, 2021

He's a stupid idiot who wants to flaunt his stupidity. The US government backed authoritarian thugs in Iraq after the 2003 invasion -- and they were and are religious extremists -- and did so to destroy and control Iraq. Sopt beingso damn stupid. I get it, old man, you're a damn idiot who never learned to think and sold your soul to the Democratic Party so you'd never have to make your own decisions again. Fine. That's your sorry life. And I don't comment on it or all the lies it involves until you try to drag Iraq into it. Like you just did.

Iraqi women have had to push back against 'their' government over and over since the 2003 invasion as their rights have been under attack. I get it, you don't give a crap about Iraqi women or, for that matter, the people of Iraq. So just shut your damn mouth about them. Keep "Iraq" out of your whorish mouth and you can write all the garbage you want and Tweet all the lies you need to in order to make your pathetic and empty life seem meaningful. But throw out these lies and we're going to call your ass out.

In 2010, the Iraqi people went to the polls in huge numbers and did so to (a) toss Nouri al-Maliki out and (b) return to a national identity. Not sects, but a national identity -- that is what the winner, Iraqiya, represented -- an Iraq for all. Instead of supporting that election and those results, then US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden overturned the results to give Nouri a second term. They did so via The Erbil Agreement. Election turnout has decreased ever since but the west doesn't want to talk about that -- about how they imparted the lesson that voting does not matter by overturning the 2010 vote with a legal contract. When this was done, it was already known that thug Nouri was running secret prisons and torture chambers. That didn't matter to Samantha Power and company. The Iraqi people didn't matter to them. The lessons and examples of democracy didn't matter. All that mattered was keeping their thug in charge.

The rise of ISIS in Iraq happens because Nouri al-Maliki gets a second term. A lot of liars still can't get honest about that. But those of us who didn't pledge alliegence to a political party or some political dream boy saw it -- and, here, we documented it -- in real time.

Take your whorish, trashy mouth out of the Iraq discussion. Go play your partisan b.s. and pretend you're being political all you want but do it away from Iraq, you disgusting piece of trash.

Digusting piece of trash? Wow, we're back to the western media. Multiple e-mails came into the public account 'correcting' me when I said the western press was wrong. The official count by the electoral commission was no the official count. I said that. I said that the judiciary has to certify the results -- only then is the vote official. I also noted that there were still court cases to settle before that could happen.

"Liar" was the response in a few drive-bys.

No, truth teller. And maybe you can grasp reality this morning with AFP reporting the following:

Judge Jassem Mohamed Aboud, whose court must rule on the complaint before final results are ratified and a new parliament is inaugurated, adjourned the case until December 22 after a procedural hearing.

Shiite Muslim firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr was declared on November 30 as the biggest winner of the election.

Sadr's movement won nearly a fifth of the seats -- 73 out of the assembly's total 329, well ahead of the Fatah (Conquest) Alliance, the political arm of the pro-Iran Hashed.

Hashed leaders have rejected the result -- sharply down from their 48 seats in the outgoing assembly -- as a "fraud".

To those sending drive-by e-mails to the public account, who lied? Not me. The western press that you wrongly trusted lied to you. And, honestly, all these years after lying the world into the Iraq War, your trusting them is really on you.

New content at THIRD:

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Dianne Next In Line" and "Family Get Togethers" went up earlier this morning.

The following sites updated:

Friday, December 10, 2021

The hoax

Jonathan Turley has a column about Jussie Smollett:

After all, Smollett followed a similar strategy successfully in the media for months. He knew that “facts” are whatever people want them to be. Some of us expressed skepticism over Smollett’s initial account: two Trump supporters coming upon him around 2 a.m. in Chicago on a freezing night in January 2019, and then allegedly beating him, putting a noose around his neck, pouring a chemical on him and declaring — perhaps for the first time in history — that Chicago is “MAGA country.” Making this even more bizarre was that the spontaneous attack occurred shortly after Smollett was the target of a racist letter threatening to lynch him — a letter that prosecutors believe he wrote.

None of that mattered, though, because Smollett knew his audience. Vice President Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator, denounced what happened as an “attempted modern-day lynching.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it was a “homophobic attack and an affront to our humanity.” In a fawning interview, ABC’s Robin Roberts described Smollett as “bruised but not broken” and breathlessly concluded the segment with “Beautiful, thank you, Jussie.”

Even when evidence mounted that this was a hoax, some media figures lashed out at Smollett’s doubters. ABC’s “The Talk” host Sara Gilbert was irate: “I find so personally offensive that a gay Black man is targeted and then suddenly he becomes the victim of people’s disbelief.”

Smollett’s attack was simply one of those “facts too good to check.” It made more sense to assume there are roaming bands of MAGA-hatted Trump supporters attacking Black people on Chicago’s streets.

The verdict came in after the column went up. Stan covered it with "The verdict is in." Smollett has been found guilty. All that's left now is the sentencing.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, December 9, 2021. A lot of boos and hisses to offer but Joe Biden does get some praise.

Margaret Kimberley has a reTweeted a video of Hillary Clinton. As ususal, Hillary has nothing to offer. Among other things, she's being her whiney self and she's offering this crap, "If you don't want to support Democrats then go somewhere else." Youre not your husband, Hillary. You don't know how to get votes. Which is why you never made it into the White House and now you never will.

Going into the mid-terms, Democrats are going to need all the votes they can get. That's based on current polling, yes. It's also based on history. And this is how she's helping the Democratic Party?

Maybe it's time 'the Goldwarter girl' went somewhere else? Having lied over and over about Russia-gate. Having lied about her campaign's connection to the made up Steele dossier. She has no shame. She should be getting honest with the American people.

But she can't get honest and, honestly, it's really too late. Or to put it into language she would understand: "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

None. She's a loser. Mike Dukakis and other losers knew to go away. Hillary doesn't know how to.

Margaret also notes Hillarys teaching a 'master class.'

In what?

How to be a doormat with a spouse who never stops cheating on you? How to lie to the world for him? How to hate yourself so much that you will trash the women he sleeps with but never him?

She's pathetic and she's a loser. She's not a face of strength. Shes not a face of feminism.

Not only did she choose that for her personal life, she encouraged it in her work life. One man after another was rewarded by her for his bad behaviors.

She's just an embarrassment. Remember her podcast? YOU AND ME BOTH? She's on hiatus. Does that mean no one was listening? She couldn't even do one every month when she was making the podcast. But she wants you to know, season two is just around the corner.

She's annoying, she's polarizing and she lied to the Amreican people over and over about Russia-gate.

Why?

Because she can't accept the fact that she lost. Because she can't accept just how ugly she is to the American people.

She's the racist, after all, who tried to derail Barack Obama's ascension to the top. That's how she allowed herself to be portrayed in 2008 and then, eight years later, she thinks she can win the presidency?

Bernie Sanders didnt hurt her in 2016. She hurt herself by not running a real race. She wanted to be Barack -- to outdo him -- and make it all about celebrity. And it didn't work. And her being too lazy to drag her fat ass to needed states is why she lost. As is her failure, over eight years, to do anything to dispeal the charges of racism that Barack's campaign made about her over and over throughout 2008.

What she needed in 2016? Votes that she didn't get.

And now the same idiot is on video declaring, ahead of the mid-terms, "If you don't want to support Democrats than go somewhere else."

She is an idiot when it comes to turning out the vote and now she's harming others with her statements. She needs to go away. America's had enough of her. She had a failed run for the presidency -- she lost to Donal Trump who had no political experience which goes to what a failure Hillary was in 2016. ANd she wanted to run against him, which goes how to stupid she is.

She has no wisdom to share. I get it, she can't just hang around the house, waiting for Bill to show up after he's had sex with this or that woman.

And on that, why are we paying Secret Service members to Break the law.

Now in Bill's case, as far as I know, they's just covering up for his affairs. But we know from e-mails that Hunter Biden's detail was aware of Hunter's drug use and of his use of prositutes.

Why did our tax dollars go to hiding his crimes?

The Secret Service became accomplices to prostitution and drug purchases. That shouldn't be allowed and should promotE an investigation into how the Secret Service is really used.

It's disgusting. Our tasx dollars are paying the Secret Service to take part in breaking the law. Disgusting.

In her latest column at BLACK AGENDA REPORT, Margaret Kimberley notes:

“What about the Supreme Court?” Those words are used to thwart any discussion which questions support for the Democratic Party. The democrats maintain their hold on voters who would otherwise be rid of them by dredging up the fear of the federal judiciary falling under Republican Party control. The legal right to abortion is one of the issues used to keep millions of people from leaving the democrats once and for all.

After decades of democrats’ corruption, inaction, and lies, the right to abortion is indeed at risk. The majority of Supreme Court justices are republican appointees. They may uphold a Mississippi law which severely restricts abortion access or even overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which declared a constitutional right to abortion. The boogeyman of right wing judicial control is now real and the democrats have only themselves to blame. Unfortunately, most of their voters still go along with their faux outrage when they should be questioning the whole rotten apparatus.

The democratic party is called a “big tent” which includes corporate interests, wealthy funders, well funded think tanks, elite academia, and left leaning voters. Black people are the constituency they depend upon the most, although one would never know that by looking at the policies the democrats hold near and dear.

Black voters in particular are caught in a trap, seeing themselves as powerless to do anything except keep republicans out of office. The openly white supremacist nature of the republicans is not met with any opposition by the party that fails to fight for them. Instead fear mongering and betrayal of their most loyal voters are their favorite means of getting support. The political duopoly are like fake heroes and fake villains in professional wrestling. The differences are all for show.

The bloom was off the rose in 2016 after the hope and change promised by Barack Obama was revealed to be nothing more than neo-liberal business as usual. Many democrats were disgusted when the primaries were rigged against Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton’s “pied piper strategy” amplified Donald Trump, and the combination of miscalculation and hubris gave him the electoral college votes needed to win and to make lifetime judicial appointments.

Hillary Clinton was so sure she would defeat Trump that she chose senator Tim Kaine as her running mate. Kaine is one who straddles the fence claiming he is personally opposed to abortion because he is a Catholic while claiming he would defend Roe v. Wade. Clinton herself foolishly sought to portray herself as being ambivalent about abortion, thinking she would get support from some conservative voters. Of course real conservatives were in love with Donald Trump. So-called moderate republicans voted for him too. Hillary’s efforts to be as slick as Bill Clinton were laughable and her sad attempt at Clintonian triangulation led to Trump’s victory.

Democrats don’t like to mention that Ruth Bader Ginsburg should have stepped down when Barack Obama asked her. He also didn’t fight for his nominee Merrick Garland because he assumed that a president Hillary Clinton would have her choices. The miscalculations are guarded like a shameful family secret lest left leaning democrats question the cult leadership and head for the exits.

Hillary supported the Iraq War. And when pressed on it in her 2008 and 2016's campaigns, she barked and snarled and never took accountability.

As Secretary of State, she ignored friends who begged her to help Iraqi women. She refused to even note their suffering. She gave a major speech about women all over the world and gave examples from one country after another but ignored Iraq -- refused to include it even when a friend of 40 years begged her to do so. That's Hillary Clinton. That's the real Hillary.

Reality is in short supply. In fact, liars are having a hard time keeping their lies straight.

Such as? How about the Iraqi government (and the media)?

ALJAZEERA does a better job than most by noting the claims as claims:

The United States-led coalition’s combat mission countering ISIL (ISIS) in Iraq has officially ended, according to Iraq’s national security adviser.

The announcement on Thursday by Qassim al-Araji followed the final round of technical talks in Iraq’s capital to formally transition the combat mission to an advisory mission to assist Iraqi forces.

[. . .]

The US did not immediately confirm the end of the combat mission, although Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that Washington would “uphold our commitments, including that there will be no US forces with a combat role by the end of the year”.

Did it end or didn't it?

According to Caitlin Doornbos (STARS AND STRIPES), it iddn't end:

The U.S. is expected to carry out its commitment to end its combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

President Joe Biden in July pledged to remove all U.S. troops with a combat role from Iraq by 2022 as part of an agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. At the time, there were about 2,500 troops in Iraq targeting Islamic State fighters.

It's just semantic. They're back to pretending that combat isn't combat. But they can't even get their lies straight. Of course, the media's never felt the need to be bound by truth when covering Iraq.

Joe Biden could pull all US troops out of Iraq. He's not doing that and he most likely won't.

But he does keep the war industry happy. Sarah Lazare (IN THESE TIMES) reports:

A weapons industry trade group that represents companies including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon is thrilled about President Joe Biden’s nominee for the role of lead weapons buyer for the U.S. military. In a statement released November 30, Arnold Punaro, board chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), which calls itself a trade association for the “defense industrial base,” proclaimed that the president “made the superb choice of nominating Dr. Bill LaPlante to be the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment.”

LaPlante is being poached directly from the military industry that is praising him, which he entered after serving in an acquisitions role under the Obama administration, where he was known for shepherding through major (and controversial) programs, such as the acquisition of the F‑35 fighter jet.

By moving from government to industry, then back to government (should the Senate confirm him), all while the weapons industry cheers, LaPlante has spun through a well-trodden revolving door — a career trajectory that is entirely routine, but nonetheless scandalous.

In a November 30 White House statement, President Biden praised LaPlante as a “seasoned national security leader with nearly four decades of experience in acquisition, technology, sustainment and the defense industrial base.” The president is nominating LaPlante for the role of Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment at the Department of Defense, which has been vacant since Ellen Lord stepped down from the position in January.

LaPlante is currently the president and chief executive officer of Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, a contractor for the U.S. military, where he has served since 2020. As recently as November 2, the company announced that it “has been selected by the U.S. Air Force as one of 55 contractors on a digital engineering contract that aims to increase the service’s ability to work on digital designs of its future platforms.” The price tag is massive, potentially amounting to $46 billion over 11 years, according to the company.

This is just one of numerous contracts with the U.S. military held by Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. The most recent one was announced just 13 days before Biden announced the nomination of LaPlante.

I thought I was going to have some kind words for Joe Biden in today's snapshot and maybe I can still. It's the news of one of his nominees. She's CIA and that's depressing as hell. To me -- to others, it may be a reason to be thrilled. But she's a she.

This is not 'Rally around the women!' This is not 'gender trumps all.' I would have preferred a female nominee with a different background. But I don't want to act like Joe's nomination of Alina Romanowski is nothing. She's been the Ambassador to Kenya so she's an easy sail through the nomination process. Again, I don't care for her background.

But I will give Joe credit. And I don't mean that in a backhanded way or in a "I guess . . ."

This is significant and I will say it's a good move.

We've been noting for years now the symoblic value and its meaning in Iraq.. The US destroyed women's rights in Iraq. A woman in a position of power in Iraq helps Iraqi women. I don't mean that Alina Romanowski will improve the lives of women with her actions. I have no idea whether she will or not -- her background does not make me hopeful.

But women in Iraq have had their opportunities and rights reversed thanks to the US government -- both due to the US led war and due to the people the US put in charge. Iraqi women have fought back and showed great strength.

A woman in a leadership role is something that forces Iraqis who do not believe in equality to deal with women, a woman in a leadership role shows the children of Iraq that everyone can be a leader.

Again, she's not my choice. She will most likely be confirmed (if you've been confirmed for a previous post and not had a scandal, you generally sail through the process) and hopefully she'll do a fine job and prove me wrong to have been concrned. But whether she does or not, the fact that a woman is in that post has symbolic value.

Joe deserves credit for this.

As noted before Barack became president, we met with the incoming administration -- Ava and I -- to argue for a woman to be named US Ambassador to Iraq. It did not happen. Barack nominated six people for the post in his eight years (five were confirmed). He couldn't -- in his mind -- find a qualified woman. Joe's the first one since the 2003 invasion to be able to find a woman he thought was qualified. (I did not lobby JJoe on this or anyone in his administration. I'd honestly given up hope that it would happen.) So he deserves credit for that.

It was a good move and I will applaud Joe for making it.

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