I work, I have children, I'm married. If I have time to relax, I'm listening to music. If I'm reading, it's usually something to do with my field (psychology). I assume most of us are busy and take in what we can. So I have no problem noting that until this year, I had no idea that there even was a Senate parliamentarian.
Did you?
Since a lot of cry babies emerged in 2021, I now know a great deal about the woman who holds the office. But for the office itself, let's note Jonathan Turley:
In the Age of Rage, no institution or process appears inviolate. When the majority of the Supreme Court shifted right, liberal academics and members demanded court packing — a practice long denounced as anathema to the rule of law. When the Supreme Court commission voiced concerns over court packing, it was denounced by liberal groups and two of the few conservative members resigned during the outcry. Academics have been called to “redo” the First Amendment after it became an impediment to social justice efforts. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the same activists are now calling for the sacking of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. Her offense? She rendered a non-partisan judgment that Democrats could not push through the sweeping immigration reform package as part of the budget reconciliation process. Like the Supreme Court, the Parliamentarian was now an impediment to politics so she or her authority (or both) will have to go. Democratic members and staff are repeating the same menacing mantra that is now familiar in Washington of politics “by any means necessary.“
Democrats previously called for firing MacDonough when she ruled against them on a legislative issue. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) called for the the Senate to “replace the parliamentarian. What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.” Similar calls followed this decision. After all, what is the value of having a majority if you cannot do whatever you want in the way you want to do it?
That was the same question asked when the filibuster rule became an impediment rather than a benefit for members. For years, Democrats defended the rule as essential for the Senate in protecting minority rights. “God save us from that fate … [it] would change this fundamental understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about.” That included then Sen. Joe Biden and his colleagues, including then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and now-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). To their credit, the Republicans refused to kill the rule despite calls to do so from President Donald Trump when they had the majority. However, once the majority shifted, the filibuster rule became one more casualty of convenience.
Read on to find out more about the history of the office and about the attacks on it.
Let me also state the obvious: You don't change the rules mid-game.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Monday, December 20, 2021. Lies and more lies get exposed -- if you pay attention and don't let whores like Peter Cole misdirect you.
US President Joe Biden ended combat operations in Iraq, removed all combat troops. That's the lie, right?
It's certainly not the reality.
Iraqi security forces thwarted yet another attack against a convoy belonging to the US-led Global Coalition on Sunday, local media reported.
Security services detonated two roadside bombs located near al-Hillah on the highway leading to the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which were targeting a coalition convoy, a source in the security services told the Iraqi Shafaq News Agency.
Attacks on US-led convoys continue. But that's not combat. No, according to Joe Biden, that's just a big old, silly tickle fight.
Dler S. Mohammed (KURDISTAN 24) reports:
The so-called "Fateh Khaybar Brigade" on Sunday issued a statement declaring that it will start targeting US forces in Iraq with "painful" strikes.
“The American enemy, their allies, and agents don’t understand the language of dialogue and peace,” read the brigade’s statement, which was published on the Altahreer News website.
It went on to declare that force is therefore “the only way to deal with them.”
That Joe Biden, he brought peace to Iraq, right? He brought something. Lies mainly.
US government lies. Over the weekend, THE NEW YORK TIMES exposed some with Azmat Khan's "Hidden Petnagon Records Reveal Patterns Of Failure In Deadly Airstrikes:"
Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations
forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the
outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported
85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line,
where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime
sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.
In early 2017 in Iraq, an American war plane struck a dark-colored
vehicle, believed to be a car bomb, stopped at an intersection in the
Wadi Hajar neighborhood of West Mosul. Actually, the car had been
bearing not a bomb but a man named Majid Mahmoud Ahmed, his wife and
their two children, who were fleeing the fighting nearby. They and three
other civilians were killed.
In November 2015, after observing a man dragging an “unknown heavy
object” into an ISIS “defensive fighting position,” American forces
struck a building in Ramadi, Iraq. A military review found that the
object was actually “a person of small stature” — a child — who died in
the strike.
None of these deadly failures resulted in a finding of wrongdoing.
These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014.
The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of
more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York
Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed
intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of
thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the
American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and
precision bombs.
The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified
system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and
accountability have given way to opacity and impunity. In only a handful
of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided
includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action. Fewer than a
dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were
left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented
efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare.
The air campaign represents a fundamental transformation of warfare that
took shape in the final years of the Obama administration, amid the
deepening unpopularity of the forever wars that had claimed more than
6,000 American service members. The United States traded many of its
boots on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft directed by controllers
sitting at computers, often thousands of miles away. President Barack
Obama called it “the most precise air campaign in history.”
This was the promise: America’s “extraordinary technology” would allow
the military to kill the right people while taking the greatest possible
care not to harm the wrong ones.
Dog Eat Dog
On prime time crime the victim begs
Money is the road to justice
and power walks it on crooked legs
Prime Time Crime
Holy hope in the hands of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
and big wig financiers
Where the wealth's displayed
Thieves and sycophants parade
And where it's made
the slaves will be taken
Some are treated well
In these games of buy and sell
And some like poor beasts
Are burdened down to breaking
Dog Eat Dog
It's dog eat dog ain't it Flim Flam man
Dog eat dog you can lie cheat skim scam
Beat' em any way you can
Dog eat Dog
You'll do well in this land of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
You could get to be
a big wig financier
Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away
-- "Dog Eat Dog," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name
I'm reminded of the whores and the liars by whore and liar Peter Cole who just discovered NYT's report and feels the need to Tweet:
Peter Cole is a lying whore.
When we first covered NYT's report on Saturday, we noted:
Yeah, they covered it up. It was only new and surprising to you if you ever believed that these were precision strikes to begin with. And if you want to get honest with yourself, maybe you might ask if you believed that because you wanted to? Because it made it easier for you?
The government lied, no question. But a lot of us knew it real time. If you're just now catching up, maybe you need to take a look at yourself and wonder how that happened?
Civilians were murdered. That's what it was. It was 'quick' and it was 'cheap.' And that's all mattered to some.
Human life -- and respect for it -- never entered the picture.
Grasp that. And expand that enough to grasp that the Mosul Operation was never about saving the people of Mosul. It was about the US putting an end to a very visible and obvious failure that went to how bad the govenment that they installed in Iraq was.
ISIS taking over Mosul was an indictment of the ongoing US government actions in Iraq. And a lot of lies were told to cover that up or to kick the can backwards so that the problems were all in the past and caused solely by Bully Boy Bush. Bully Boy Bush is a War Criminal, no question. But the press sure was found of pretending everything after 2009 in Iraq was Bully Boy Bush's fault. They loved to whore for Barack. That's how ISIS gets pinned on Bully Boy by some. ISIS is the direct result of Barack and Joe Biden overruling the Iraqi voters -- who voted Nouri al-Maliki out in 2010 -- with The Erbil Agreement that gave thug Nouri a second term.
Peter Cole's a damn lying whore. Bully Boy Bush? We've long called him out. The NYT report has nothing to do with Bully Boy Bush. It's about what took place under Barack Obama. But Peter Cole wants to whore and distract because that's what whores do.
He can't run with and amplify information. No, he's got to raise the ghots of Bully Boy Bush because he can't admit the precious (Barack) was also a War Criminal and responsible for many, many deaths. He's a whore who whores for politicians.
Is there anything in the world lower than that? A whore for politicians? How sad.
The little whore, please note, is pimping war on Syria and is silent on Julian Assange. That's a whore, that's a big time whore.
Winding down, Rasha al-Aqeedi Tweets:
Rasha has started a GO FUND ME campaign for Maryam:
The
Iraqi girl, Maryam Al Rukabi, did not expect that her story would be
the talk of the media, after her life turned into a tragedy just because
she refused a marriage proposal by man, so her beautiful face was
burned with acid, to live with permanent suffering, while the
perpetrator remained unpunished, according to Iraqi media.
The
student of the College of Fine Arts in Iraq, Maryam, who is famous
among her friends as the “Princess”, won the sympathy of millions, after
she and her family appeared on a media station recounting her tragedy
that occurred 6 months ago.
A
young man asked the girl to marry him, but she refused due to his moral
character, so he decided to take revenge on her in a horrific way.
At night, he crept into her house in the Mansour district of Baghdad.
He poured acid on her face, and fled the scene.
The
media quoted Maryam’s father, as saying: “My mother and I were at work,
and Maryam, her brother and his wife were at home, when the criminal
entered the house and stole her phone, and poured the acid substance on
her while she was sleeping.”
He
pointed out that the perpetrator came at night, masked, despite passing
in front of security points, and passers-by on the street leading to
their house, but no one stopped him.
Rukabi’s
attacker had proposed marriage multiple times, but she had continued to
refuse. Her mother said the teenager wanted to complete her education
before getting married, and just saw the man as a friend.
“The
guy was calling us all the time, giving us his address, but we
continuously turned down his request to marry our daughter. He sent us
messages for months,” said Suham, Maryam’s mother. “Maryam's response to
him was, 'I do not want to marry'. She would always tell the guy ‘we
are just friends, I cannot accept you as a husband.’”
The perpetrator, said to be 19, reportedly attacked Maryam after learning she was home alone.
Around 80 percent of her face is burned beyond recognition, and she was hospitalized for months, fighting for her life.
Stepping out of the line of fire when people are rude
Cheap stuff made in China, someone calls it a sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
Beat down in the market, stoned to death in the plaza
Raped on the hillside under the gun from LA to Gaza
A house made of cardboard living close to the rail
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
And I feel the witch in my veins
I feel the mother in my shoe
I feel the scream in my soul
The blood as I sing the ancient blue
They burned in the millions
I still smell the fire in my grandma's hair
The war against women rages on
Beware of the fairytale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
The noise of elections, the promise of change
A grabbing of power at the top, a day at the rifle range
Somebody's in danger, somebody's for sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
The following sites updated:
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Amanda Shires wants out 'For Christmas'3 hours ago
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SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME2 days ago
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Jizzy Pants defense rests2 days ago
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