Saturday, May 30, 2020

Tiny Hayder's Plea


tiny hayder


From August 8, 2018, that's "Tiny Hayder's Plea."  C.I. noted:

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Tiny Hayder's Plea."  Iraq's prime minister Hayder al-Abadi declares, "Hey America.  It's me Little Hayder al-Abadi, your tiny shrimp in Iraq.  4 years of doing nothing and the Iraqi people want to toss me aside.  I need you to stay in power.  Sned more troops!  Many, many more troops!"  Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS. 


Robert Fisk champions Hayder al-Abadi which is why I stopped trusting Robert Fisk, by the way.

Over at THE COMMON ILLS today, Kat's "Kat's Korner: Ricky Martin re-emerges" went up so be sure to check that out.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, May 29, 2020.  ISIS remains active in Iraq (don't tell the Iraqi government spokesperson), Tara Reade's allegation remains credible, Michelle Goldberg sports classism and racism as though they are the new colors for the summer, and much more.

In the US, attacks on Tara Reade continue.  She is the woman who came forward to accuse Joe Biden of assault.  It's no longer just that the assault is not the issue the corporate whores won't address, it's no longer just the embrace of rape culture, it is now the stereotypes that they are re-enforcing.

Meet the Ultimate Karen: Michelle Goldberg.

The whore for THE NEW YORK TIMES participated in a podcast for the paper this week and we don't link to rape culture.  In that podcast, she put out a thought -- if you can call it that -- that is especially illuminating.

She's trying to run with pig boy Michael Tracey's attack which is that Tara Reade never should have been covered in the first place.  Michelle wants you to know that the press didn't do their job when the covered her without vetting her.

This really isn't an avenue that she or anyone else should pursue.

First, their goal is to elect Joe Biden.  All this argument does it remind everyone that blessed Beau Biden wasn't a saint either -- not even compared to hustler bro Hunter.  All it reminds people of is Larry Sinclair.  Larry claimed he did cocaine with Barack Obama, he claims they had sessions in limo where they performed oral sex.  He even wrote about it in a book entitled LARRY SINCLAIR AND BARACK OBAMA: COCAINE, SEX, LIES AND MURDER?

Whether you believed Sinclair or not, he was suddenly becoming interesting to the press when all the sudden he got arrested.  Why?  Trumped up charges by Beau Biden, who was the Attorney General of Delaware at the time.

The charges fell apart but not before Sinclair was arrested in DC for charges in Delaware and the press ran away from the story.

I have no idea whether Sinclair was telling the truth or not.  I didn't follow the story, it wasn't about assault or rape -- he was claiming a consensual relationship.  But even not following it, it was clear that Beau was abusing his powers of office to stop the press from covering the story.

So it's probably not a good idea to remind the American voters that the only member of the Biden family whose hands are considered clean are, in fact, probably dirty.

But for the media itself?

If you're a person of color and/or anyone who cares about fairness with regards to the treatment of all human people, then you do remember The Days Of The Missing Blonds.  Matt Lauer was one of those who made a career out of that genre.  To a lot of the country, it looked like every time a blond girl or woman went missing, the whole news industry came to a stop.  It was the sole focus day after day after damn day.  Now let a child of color go missing and it wouldn't make THE TODAY SHOW or GOOD MORNING AMERICA or . . .

The media has never owned up to what they did.  They have never taken accountability for it or made a pledge to pursue fairness.

So it's telling that Michelle Goldberg is re-enforcing that classist and racist standard.

Tara Reade, she insists, was allowed to speak without being vetted.

Why does she need to be vetted?  Because Joe Biden says so?  When does he get vetted?  His behaviors are well known -- even if Michelle's paper edits out a sentence on the Biden's campaign's behalf noting his history of harassing women.  Yes, boys and girls, sniffing hair, groping from behind, kissing women you don't know -- all of that is harassment.

Tara Reade doesn't deserve to tell her story -- Michelle Goldberg wants you to know.

That is the mentality of the press that led to the never-ending Days Of The Missing Blonds coverage.  Again, while they covered blond women and blond girls, they ignored children of color that went missing, African-American women that were killed.  It was only a certain group that the media felt had a right to tell their story.

Tara Reade has made a credible accusation and has what we have always considered corroborating evidence (her mother's 1993 call to LARRY KING LIVE, the 1996 court documents where her husband notes her harassment, people who remember her telling them about it in real time when it happened as well as years and years ago).  No one who has come forward to the people and the press has ever had that amount of corroborating evidence for a rape.

Those are the issues.  And those are the issues that the media runs from because they want to protect Joe Biden.  Good little whores, that's all they are.

Imagine that every awful thing that has been said about Tara is true.  For one minute, let's pretend that's true.

So what?

She can't be raped because a landlord doesn't like her or someone who claims to have been her friend didn't get back a set of law books?

Michelle Goldberg is not a feminist.  She's not about truth or journalism either.  She's just a little whore who is going to smear a woman because it's the thing the Joe Biden campaign needs her to do.  Twenty years from now, when she whispers, "I believe Tara Reade," people should throw food at her.  She's useless and she's a whore.

If she truly believed the lies she repeats, that would only be more reason for her to defend Tara Reade and to try to educate people on how there is no perfect victim.

Michelle is not about feminism and never will be.  She is the Ultimate Karen -- a white woman of a certain class (not a high class, mind you, she's still got dirty face pressed against the glass hoping to get in) looking down on everyone else as she pretends to be superior.



Fred Tippett (NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN) wonders if Joe Biden really wants to be elected president:

First of all, he gave voters a direct reason not to vote for him. Last week, in an MSNBC interview, Biden again denied Tara Reade’s, a Senate staffer for him in the 90s, allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, maintaining the stance his campaign has held since Reade’s accusation. But then, Biden kept talking.
The former Vice President said, “If they [voters] believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn’t vote for me,” and even went as far as to say, “I wouldn’t vote for me if I believed Tara Reade.” Now, first of all, I believe it was very honorable of Biden to acknowledge and state his understanding of the seriousness of this allegation to some voters. But from a political standpoint, this was a very strange choice. Reade’s allegation had already shaken Biden’s support from women and young people and Biden, rather than trying to win them back, opened the door for them to walk away. Not to say it would’ve been better for Biden to do the opposite and completely discredit Reade and those who believe her but … I don’t know — he just really put himself into a proper Catch 22 situation.
Secondly, there is, of course, the story of the week: Joe Biden’s interview with Charlamagne tha God on “The Breakfast Club.” On the show, as I’m sure you all know, Biden said, “I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black." The quote spread quickly, becoming the most viral comment from a bizarrely casual interview. Critique was swift but light. Most notably, Representative Clyburn of South Carolina said he cringed at Biden’s comment, while simultaneously reiterating his support of the former Vice President. It’s unclear how the comment will affect Biden’s support among Black voters, but I think it’s safe to say Biden will not get away with it without ruffling a few feathers.



The editorial board of AMERICAN MAGAZINE: THE JESUIT REVIEW argues:

Yet even if American voters do not have sufficient evidence to determine what Mr. Biden did or did not do in the past, there are standards by which the public can judge his present conduct. One such standard is whether Mr. Biden has made every effort to be transparent and to provide access to potentially relevant archival materials. Unlike in the hearings for Justice Kavanaugh's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, when Senate Republicans chose to press ahead to a vote as close as possible to their original schedule, there is still sufficient time to resolve the question of whether any documents relevant to the present case exist and to do so well in advance of the election.
The former vice president has asked the National Archives to search for any relevant documents or other evidence, and he has made a similar request of the U.S. Senate. But he has thus far not allowed access to his personal papers at the University of Delaware, saying that those archives do not contain personnel records.
That may be true, but Mr. Biden should open those archives anyway. He could commission an impartial, professional archivist or archival firm to conduct a narrow search for any material related to Ms. Reade’s allegations. This would go a long way toward proving to a wary electorate that he is taking every possible step to be transparent.

In other Biden news, Jacob Crosse (WSWS) reports:

In an attempt to reassure the Democratic Party establishment, the Biden campaign, and the corporate bosses they represent that she is a “team player,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Biden rival, ended any pretense last week of championing reform to the US health care system should she become vice president in a Joe Biden administration.
During a May 19 Zoom meeting hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Warren fielded softball questions from students and the host for nearly an hour. Responding to a query regarding the “receptivity” of a “universal or hybrid” health care system posed by David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic Party consultant and former senior adviser to Barack Obama, Warren replied, “I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system, and that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act.”

In dropping any mention of her signature campaign proposal known as “Medicare for All,” Warren is demonstrating that there is no “pushing” the Democratic party, the oldest capitalist party in the world, to the left, nor is there a constituency in the ruling class for any “reforms” that might impact the profits of insurance companies or drug manufacturers.
Warren’s campaign pledge, which was a copy of the legislation she had previously cosponsored with Bernie Sanders, had already been dialed back by the senator last year in the face of open hostility from corporate America. Within three weeks after the release of her “bold” plan during the fall primary, Warren released a “backup” plan that still preserved the private insurance market, while offering the “option” of Medicare for people under 65.
In dropping her (by now largely rhetorical) support for universal health care coverage, Warren showed impeccable timing, since nearly 40 million workers have applied for unemployment benefits in the US as a result of coronavirus-related layoffs, and millions of those have lost, or are on the verge of losing, their employer-based health care coverage. The objective necessity for a universal health care system could not be posed more clearly, yet according to Warren, “people” aren’t yet “comfortable” with that.
The opposition to providing health care to all as a basic right is not, of course, the reluctance of the “people” to embrace such a plan, as Warren suggests. It is the ferocious, last-ditch opposition of the insurance companies, drug monopolies and for-profit hospital and health care corporations, which would lose billions, and the overall opposition of Wall Street, which reviles all forms of social spending as a deduction from profit.
Warren went on to articulate the kind of proposal one can expect from a self-proclaimed “capitalist to the bone.” Remarking that the pandemic had revealed who is “essential” in society, Warren floated legislation for an “essential workers bill of rights,” so limited that it would guarantee “hand sanitizer” and “if they get sick, full health care coverage.”

This is an insult to workers and their families that would do nothing to protect them from COVID-19. What good is hand sanitizer to a meatpacker forced to work with a contaminated mask or without personal protective equipment? Warren declined to elaborate what “full health care coverage” entailed, or what workers would be expected to pay for it but, given her full-throated endorsement of the Affordable Care Act, one can expect that the cost for workers will not be cheap.


Elizabeth Warren?  Supposedly, she's the only thing that can save Joe now.  Mike addressed that last night:

No, Joe's not getting the votes or providing any excitement. This is hilarious. The top of the ticket is not generating enough excitement and we're not screaming to replace him? Instead, we're trying to find the running mate that would provide 'excitement'? Tell me again about how electable Joe is. What a joke. Joe is a joke. He needs to be dumped before he takes down the whole ticket.

Give us anyone but Joe. Let us be excited and passionate. We can't get excited as we wait to see if his dentures are going to slip out again like they did in one debate or if a blood vessel in one eye is going to pop like happened in one debate. What exactly is Joe's slogan going to be? "I'm at death's door, vote for me"?

Dump him. He's not helping anyone but Donald Trump. We need a nominee that can serve a full term. One that could even run for a second term would be even better. We don't need Joe and we don't want Joe.

Can the DNC not buy a clue?  He's a loser.  We need better.  If you want to stop Donald Trump from having a second term, you need to be calling for Biden to step aside.

He's not up to the job.  He's senile.  He's a habitual liar.  He's a war monger.  He's a rapist.

This is our alternative to Donald Trump?



Even more ridiculous?  The press reports that Joe plans to drag this out -- vp choice -- until August 1st.  He has nothing else of interest to the press.  This is the most embarrassing campaign in our lifetime.



Let's turn to Iraq . . .




Last yesterday, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon offered an essay at NBC NEWS regarding the coronavirus and the Islamic State:

 "What you are witnessing these days are only signs of big changes in the region that’ll offer greater opportunities than we had previously in the past decade” read an online message on Thursday from new ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, translated by Hassan Hassan, director of the Non-State Actors in Fragile Environments Program at the Center for Global Policy and a co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror."
The message comes as those who have been fighting ISIS for more than a half-decade have spoken publicly and in plain terms about the group‘s increasing strength.
“The Islamic State group has been moving the fighting from Syria to Iraq ... (and) is strengthening, both financially and militarily,” said Lt. Col. Stein Grongstad, head of Norway’s forces in Iraq, there to advise and assist the Iraqi military. He called it a “paradox” that just as COVID-19 was weakening nations, ISIS was regaining strength.



And that's why, in yesterday's snapshot, we were calling out the Iraqi military spokesperson  Yahya Rasoul who was insisting that ISIS was "vanquished" and "no longer poses a threat to Iraq."  The biggest security threat to Iraq right now might just be the stupidity of  Yahya Rasoul.







The following sites updated:





Read on ...

Saturday, May 16, 2020

He crawls out from under his rock

moore

From June 3, 2008, that's "He crawls out from under his rock."  C.I. noted:

Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "He crawls out from under his rock."  Michael Moore declares, "Hey kids, it's me Michael Moore.  I haven't had a boner in over a decade so I'm real angry.  I haven't had a hit film since 2004.  When you're spending 9 million to shoot a movie you need to sell a lot of tickets.  I love Hillary now.  I didn't in 2008 or for most of 2016 but I am a whore.  Some people say I'm Janet Reno but while I do look more and more womanly each year, I know I'm not that cute."  Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS.

So, if you missed it, rape culture reigns in the press.  They're trying to rip apart Tara Reade by insisting she had money problems (oh no!) and that her landlords don't like her (horror!).  They're repeating and using tired lies and stereotypes to try to insist she wasn't raped.  They won't deal with the actual assault issue.  They'll just lie about her and smear her.  Please read these community posts on the topic:



  • Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


    Friday, May 15, 2020.  Joe Biden tells people not to vote for him (again, he tells them this), an old bully uses THE NATION to attack a Howie Hawkins supporter, and much more.


    Sharon Delgado writes the editors of THE UNION to note:


    Since Tara Reade is local, I need to say publicly here in my community, as a survivor of sexual assault myself, that I support her right to speak out and abhor the way she has been insulted, abused, and threatened.
    Not only are these attacks traumatic for her and for other survivors, they have a chilling effect on anyone who might consider sharing similar stories — about Joe Biden or anyone else.
    People who support a woman’s right to tell their stories must be careful not to turn it into a partisan issue. I don’t want Donald Trump to win reelection, but I also don’t want the Me Too Movement to lose ground. The movement was finally challenging the centuries-old narrative that women (and children) need to keep silence when sexually assaulted or be subject to questions and comments that imply that they are lying, all to cast doubt on their accusations and to protect the man.



    Tara has accused Joe Biden of assault.  Many of us find Tara credible.  That number has only increased since she did her interview with Megyn Kelly which was posted on Megyn's YOUTUBE CHANNEL last Friday evening.




    Though it has not yet been a full week (that'll be around 6:30 pm EST tonight), the interview already has over 851,000 streams on Megyn's channel alone.  In addition, it has aired on many TV outlets -- in part and in full.

    Joe has been on TV.  On MORNING JOE, he insisted he didn't do anything -- as best he could recall.  Then he repeated that when GOOD MORNING AMERICA tossed a minor question at him.  On THE LAST WORD last night, he again issued a denial.  As Christo Avialis explains below, a majority of voters believe Tara.




    On THE LAST WORD, Joe offered a solution, "If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me."  And while some will not vote for him because they believe Tara, others feel more can be done.




    And many are also calling for an investigation.  Unlike the editorial board of THE NEW YORK TIMES, most aren't calling for the DNC to conduct the investigation.  Instead, many backing this avenue insist it should be an independent investigation.

    Joe keeps insisting that Tara should be vetted but also insisting that vetting should not go on in his own papers stored at the University of Delaware.  He's always hidin', that Joe Biden.

    In other political news, Clintonite Peter Dreier brings his old man smell to THE NATION where he types:

    Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the provocative and popular socialist Jacobin magazine, tweeted last week that he intends to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in November. And yes, it matters. Jacobin has a considerable reach. It claims to have a paid print circulation of 50,000, while its website draws over 2 million visitors a month. Jacobin is particularly influential among young leftists, with more-radical-than-thou tendencies that reflect the idealism of recent recruits to left-wing ideas. It was near-messianic in its devotion to Bernie Sanders’s candidacy.
    The danger here is obvious. It only takes a small number of votes in key swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, and Florida—where the margin of victory could be a few thousand or a few hundred votes, to hand Donald Trump a victory, as we saw in 2016. In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin over Clinton was 22,748 votes, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 31,072 votes. In Michigan, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein got 51,463 votes.

    Who the hell cares you musty old man?

    First, no one owns someone else's vote.  If a candidate wants a vote, they need to campaign for it.  If they're unable to reach the voter then a candidate has failed at their most important job: attracting voters.

    Second, your vote is your vote and you are allowed to use it however you want.  You can -- I always encourage this -- vote for anyone who speaks to you.  You can also chose not to vote.  You can vote some form of protest vote.  And you can let someone bully you into voting for candidate X.

    But it's your vote and how you choose to vote is your business.

    Third, Bhaskar Sunara isn't a Democrat.  How dare elderly Peter Dreier try to shame him into voting for Biden.  This is a point that Dreier doesn't get from the nursing home of his mind, not everyone in this country is either a Democrat or a Republican.  As Ann likes to point out, her parents are Greens, she was raised a Green.  That's a hard reality for Peter Dreier to accept because he doesn't accept any events that happened after 1970.

    Howie Hawkins is running for the Green Party's presidential nomination.  He doesn't have the nomination yet.  Dario Hunter is still in the race.  But Ann will vote Green because she is a Green.  Idiots like Dreier don't get that and think they can bully people like Ann into dropping their beliefs and their political party to vote for Joe Biden.  That's nonsense.  (In fairness, we should note that the disaster that was David Cobb's 2004 presidential campaign included Cobb urging voters not to vote for him if they lived in a 'swing' state.)

    Bullies like Dreier need to be called out.

    He has no business shaming anyone for their choice of who to vote for.  If you want to go after politicians (Dreier only goes after Republican politicians), that's fine.  But stop attacking We The People.  And stop attacking democracy and freedom.  That's what you do when you try to bully someone into voting your way.

    It's a sign of just how weak a candidate Joe Biden is that his supporters have to resort to shaming and bullying to try to drum up support for their pathetic candidate.

    Chris Hedges interviewed Howie Hawkins earlier this week.



    I don't care who you vote for.  I'm not here, this site doesn't exist, to order you how to vote.  I do hope, however you vote or not vote, what you do is what you believe in.  If you believe in the way you use your vote then it is never wasted.

    You can visit JACOBIN and read their arguments.  We've highlighted them before and will highlight them again.  David Sirota is someone we highlighted a great deal.  He is now working with JACOBIN and you can find his work there.

    Site issue.  We're not doing Tweets here -- not a post full of Tweets.  If you use Google Chrome, it's not a problem.  But I'm tired of the people who don't use it e-mailing the public account to complain.  Martha and Shirley are the main ones working the public account and they have enough to do without having to explain that it is Twitter and their 'blue check' nonsense that causes a big black box on reposted Tweets if you're viewing this site through Firefox of something else.


    In Iraq, the big news remains Mustafa Al-Kadhimi who became prime minister on May 7th.  Abdulrahman Al-Rashed (ARAB NEWS) offers:

    Al-Kadhimi’s most difficult tasks will be to save Iraq from Tehran, which wants to control its neighbor, and to steer his country away from the dangers resulting from the US-Iran conflict. This escalated after Washington revealed Tehran’s intention to cause political and security chaos in Baghdad. Soon after, the US assassinated Soleimani, Iran’s most prominent military leader, and several militia leaders, which was followed by an escalation of protests against the American military presence in Iraq. This was the highest level of confrontation on Iraqi soil.

    Soon after Al-Kadhimi was confirmed as prime minister, the US government announced that, as an exception to its sanctions, it had given Iraq permission to buy oil from Iran. The move was designed to encourage the Iranians to curb their disruptive activities in Iraq.

    However, Al-Kadhimi inherits the same problems that faced his predecessors, Haider Abadi and Adel Abdul Mahdi. Iran has infiltrated Iraq’s security, military and religious institutions. Sectarian and regional rifts have grown and corruption has increased. Government fiscal deficits have multiplied as a result of the collapse in oil prices and the recent street protests, which could return at any time.

    The new prime minister needs to build public confidence in the government and secure the cooperation of parliament to meet the demands of demonstrators. He will also have to quickly control the militias and “restore prestige to the military and security institutions,” as he himself said on Tuesday.



    At GULF NEWS, Osama al-Sharif notes:


    Kadhimi, a former journalist and a fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein, has never joined a political party and until his nomination held the important job of head of the National Intelligence Service.

    Most importantly his nomination was backed by both Washington and Tehran; paving the way for breaking of the stalemate that derailed the nomination of two ideologically opposed predecessors; Mohammed Tawfik Alawi, a former communications minister, and Adnan Al-Zurfi, the governor of Najaf.
    [. . .]
    But while Kadhimi was able to navigate his way through a divided parliament — he picked mostly independents and technocrats as ministers although he followed the same ethno-sectarian quota system shunned by protesters — lawmakers had delayed approval of seven key portfolios, including foreign affairs and oil. This could turn to be his Achilles heel.

    In his first address Kadhimi promised the Iraqi people to oversee early elections, contain the spread of the coronavirus, pass an “exceptional” budget law, stem out corruption, bringing armed groups under the control of the state, and repatriate the displaced.


    The Atlantic Council had a discussion yesterday with Luay al-Khatteeb who, until the new prime minister formed his new cabinet, had been Iraq's Minister of Electricity.









    We'll close with this short video from Amal Clooney.






    The following sites updated:







    Read on ...

    Saturday, May 2, 2020

    The Ghosts of Films Past


    the ghosts of films past

    From May 27, 2018, that's "The Ghosts of Films Past."  C.I. noted:


    Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Ghosts of Films Past."  James Clapper lies, "Informer, not spy.  They did not use a spy on Trump."  The late Ruby Dee counters, "Fool.  The ghost of Ruby Dee knows an informer is already in the group like in UPTIGHT -- the film I starred in and co-wrote."  The ghost of John Ford notes, "Which was based on my film THE INFORMER.  The ghost of John Ford does not like liars, Clapper." Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS.

    I like that comic.  What I like is that I was able to enlarge film history with that comic.  Ruby Dee was a great actress  but she's also more than that and she co-wrote a film, UPTIGHT, that needs to be noted as often as John Ford's THE INFORMER.  John Ford is noted all the time.  With this comic, I got to draw attention to Ruby Dee and her screenwriting and I like that.  Also, Clapper's a damn liar.


    Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


    Friday, May 1, 2020.  Joe Biden speaks . . . unconvincingly.

    Starting with this from Alexis McGill Johnson, Acting President of Planned Parenthood Action Fund:


    “At Planned Parenthood Action Fund, we believe women. We know how important it is that survivors be supported and listened to – survivors of sexual violence not only seek care at Planned Parenthood health centers every day, they are also dedicated staff members and supporters.
    “We believe that survivors should be heard, listened to, taken seriously, and treated with respect and dignity. 
    “Saying we believe survivors doesn’t mean only when it’s politically convenient. This isn’t a fringe issue, it’s one that affects all of us. This crosses political party, race, gender, income level, and sexual orientation.
    Any person seeking elected office — and especially the highest office in the land — needs to address allegations of sexual assault and harassment seriously, both as a systemic problem and with a sense of personal responsibility. We all have much work to do to make our country a safer place, free of sexual violence. 

    “Vice President Biden must address this allegation directly. Our country is hungry for leadership on this issue. Now is the time to give it to them.”  

    As GOOGLE notes, that was issued at 8:40 EST last night.  In other words, after the story broke that Joe Biden would be addressing the topic on this morning's MORNING JOE on MSNBC.  In other words, after they know Joe is going to address it in twelve or so hours, they can take a position that Joe should address it.  They can't pressure him before that.  They can't publicly call for him to do anything before that.

    If Johnson had issued that call yesterday morning, it might mean something.  As it is, it was already known that Joe planned to address it this morning.  And, as it is, Tara's been trashed for about six weeks now while Planned Parenthood has never said a word.

    MSNBC teased out the Joe interview like it was going to be the Gettysburg Declaration [Address] while at the same time trying to make it clear that MORNING JOE was a frat house.  Their on airs are also explaining, ahead of time, that Joe needs to explain (their word) "that it never happened" and say that he doesn't have anything to add and move on.  That's what passes for 'news.'

    It's great that MSNBC is so impartial, right?  It's wonderful that this garbage passes for news.

    Why did Joe choose MORNING JOE?  What other talk show has a host who had a dead intern turn up in his office and got to pretend like he didn't need to answer questions about it?

    If you've assaulted a woman, Joe Scarborough is in your corner.

    Leading up to the interview, Joe and Little Willie had to talk football because, well, of course they had to.  It's all one big locker room for those pigs.  They let Mika provide the skirt ("It's just gonna be you and me") to hide behind.

    She asked him at the start "would you please go on the record" and he pretended to.  Not since Ronald Reagan hid behind "to the best of my recollection" has anyone repeatedly offered supposedly firm statements repeatedly couched in "that I'm aware of" and similar wording.

    At one point, he offered, "No, it is not true.  I am saying unequivocally it never, ever happened and it didn't."  Moments later?  "I don't remember any type of complaint that she may have made, it was 27 years ago. . . . And the fact is that I don't remember."

    Which is it?  It unequivocally never happened or to the best of your memory and recall -- your memory and recall -- that you don't believe it happened?  He was so reliant on weasel words that Mika wondered "are you preparing us for a complaint" to emerge?  No he insisted.  And "I-I-I-I'm not worried about it at all."  I-I-I-I?  That speech pattern in that reply would indicate otherwise.

    At another point, Mika asked if he had reached out to Tara Reade?  He snapped, "No, I have not reached out to her.  It was 27 years ago, this never happened."

    Mika noted the belief that an assault claim Tara may have filed could be in his papers stored at the University of Delaware.  Joe rejected that insisting that the a complaint would only be in the national archives.

    Mika falsely claimed NYT had conducted a thorough investigation.  No, they didn't.  It was Rich McHugh who broke the news on two women coming forward who remember Tara telling them of the assault in the 90s.  It was Ryan Grimm who reported on the call Tara's mother made in 1993 to LARRY KING LIVE.  There is so much that NYT did not cover.  Mika brought up Big Stacey Abrams but failed to note that Stacey was using the campaign's written talking points -- which BUZZFEED published earlier this week.  Mika failed to note that Big Stacey also insisted that NYT cleared Joe which even the paper has called a lie.

    Joe replied, "To the best of my knowledge, there have been no complaints made against me."

    To the best of my knowledge.  That's interesting phrasing.

    Mika asked if anyone has signed an NDA?  Joe replied, "There's no NDA signed -- I've never asked anyone to sign an NDA."  He later added, "Period. None."


    As he got more short tempered it was hilarious to watch Mika start crouching.  She hunched over to plead with him.   Joe just got more bellicose, "First of all, let's get this straight."


    He also insisted he wasn't going to attack Tara and "I'm not going to question this."  He immediately then declared,  "I don't know why after 27 years this is being raised."

    He growled, "I'm not suggesting she had no right to come forward" but that's exactly what you're saying.

    He insisted, "These claims are not true.  There's no corroborative -- they're not true."

    He stopped on corroborative evidence.  He didn't finish that.  And he didn't finish it because there is corroborative evidence.  That's what her brother, her friend she told when it happened, that's what they're offering.  That's what the two women who came forward this week to say Tara told them in the 90s are offering.  That's what the video of the phone call Tara's mother made in 1993 is.

    No woman in a he-said/she-said has ever had this much to offer.

    "There's so many inconsistencies in what has been said in this case," he insisted.

    Yes, but most of those inconsistencies are coming out of the mouth of Big Stacey.


    "I'm not aware" was a phrase Joe invoked often along with "to the best of my knowledge."  These are weasel words.

    Mika asked about the records at the University of Delaware and he pretended to be confused.  Why can't he call for those records to be released?  Why can't he ask that they be searched for any reference to Tara?

    Joe Biden: I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

    I loved the long silence during this discussion by the way, as both waited to see who would blink first.

     Joe Biden: Who-who does that search?

    Mika: The University of Delaware?

    While insisting that nothing at the University would support Tara, Joe refused to release those reports or to allow anyone to search them.

    Winding down, Mika asked, "If you could speak directly to Tara Reade about her claims," what would you say?

    What would he say to Tara?  "This never happened.  I don't know what's motivating her."

    That's what he would say.

    It was unconvincing and he came off guilty repeatedly.


    Jon Allsop (CJR) offers this on the interview:

    This morning, we finally heard from Biden, when he appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. To set him up, Mika Brzezinski, the cohost, outlined Reade’s allegation and addressed critiques that the press had botched coverage of it. She focused on the criticism that the immediate, vociferous coverage of assault claims against Brett Kavanaugh, when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, was evidence of a double standard, compared to the recent reporting on Biden. Brzezinski then played a lengthy reel of the show’s hosts insisting, in past episodes, that Kavanaugh was denied due process by the media. “We were strong on this,” she said afterward. “And honestly, very few others were.” Brzezinski also spent several minutes recounting, in detail, the many sexual-misconduct allegations against Trump.
    Shortly before coming on, Biden released a statement strongly refuting Reade’s allegation. “This never happened,” he said. He appeared on air shortly after 8am Eastern. “Did you sexually assault Tara Reade?,” Brzezinski asked. Biden reiterated his strong denial. Brzezinski then asked Biden whether any other staffer had ever complained about his behavior, and whether any such complaint had been hidden by a nondisclosure agreement. Biden said no on both counts. Brzezinski also pressed him repeatedly on remarks he made, during the Kavanaugh hearings, that women’s voices should be taken seriously. “Women have a right to be heard, and the press should rigorously investigate,” he replied. “Why is it real for Dr. Ford and not for Tara Reade?” Brzezinski asked, referring to Christine Blasey Ford, a survivor of one of Kavanaugh’s alleged attacks. Biden said that he wouldn’t question an accuser’s motives, but that the facts were on his side. When Brzezinski pushed him on what the facts were—and where they might be found—he spoke over her, then apologized. “The truth matters,” Biden said.
    What about Reade’s side of the story? We can now expect to hear from her on TV soon; BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray and Ruby Cramer reported yesterday that she’s been contacted by every major network. As far as Reade is concerned, though, the damage is already done. “I used to think that a Republican talking point was to call the mainstream media biased. So I used to think, Oh, that’s just a talking point for them,” Reade told BuzzFeed. “But now I’m living it [in] real time, and I see it—like, I see it for what it is.”

    The appearance comes as many start to find some sort of voice.  There was Planned Parenthood noted above.  Daniel Villarreal (NEWSWEEK) notes:

    Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a Wednesday radio interview that he believes Tara Reade's 1993 sexual assault allegation against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should be "investigated seriously" and that he thinks Biden will have to directly address the matter.
    Reade, who was a former aide for Biden when he served as Delaware's senator during the 1990s, claimed that he pushed her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers in 1993. She has also filed a criminal complaint with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department over the matter.
    "It's got to be taken seriously because this is a serious allegation raised by a serious individual and needs to be investigated seriously. We've probably got to hear from him [Biden] at some point directly," Jeffries said Wednesday on WNYC when asked about Reade's allegations.

    Another latecomer to the party?  The editorial board of THE LOS ANGELES TIMES who offered this yesterday evening:

    Unpleasant as it must be, the former vice president must be willing to answer questions about Reade’s accusations posed by reporters or members of the public. (He is expected to speak about the allegations in a television interview on Friday.)
    More important, his campaign should commission an independent investigation of Reade’s allegations by a lawyer or law firm without clear partisan leanings. Investigators should be given access to papers from his career that Biden donated to the University of Delaware, a potential source that journalists haven’t been allowed to inspect. And their report should be made public. It’s not guaranteed that such an investigation will resolve the contradictions, but it could dispel suspicions that important documents were being concealed.

    The message of the #MeToo movement was that an accusation of sexual impropriety by a powerful man should be taken seriously — including by the subject of the complaint. Even as he protests his innocence, Biden needs to honor that principle.


    Related, Chris Hayes is being attacked for covering the Tara Reade Story.  Branko Marcetic (JACOBIAN) reports:

    After being studiously ignored for weeks, Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is finally breaking through in earnest into mainstream news coverage. On cable news, her accusation got one of its most extended and sympathetic airings last night thanks to MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes’s brave decision to cover it.
    “There have been moments I think for many of us, all of us, where we have heard about accusations against someone that we find ourselves desperately wanting not to believe,” he said, opening the segment.
    But part of the difficult lesson of the MeToo era is not that every accusation is true and everything should be believed on its face, but that you do have to fight yourself when you feel that impulse. You have to do that in order to take seriously what is being alleged and what the evidence is and to evaluate it. And that is the case with the accusation by a woman named Tara Reade against Joe Biden.
    Hayes’s treatment wasn’t exhaustive. He left out that two people close to Reade had told reporters who broke her story that they recalled her telling them about it at the time; he didn’t mention the phone call her mother made to Larry King Live at the time about unnamed problems her daughter was having in a senator’s office; and he mentioned that Reade’s official paper complaint can’t be located, but didn’t explain that one potential location — Biden’s senatorial papers — will be locked to the public for years by the University of Delaware. (The Washington Post and others have called on Biden to release them).
    Nonetheless, Hayes informed MSNBC viewers about a pivotal new development in the case: that Reade’s former neighbor, a Biden supporter, has come forward to say Reade told her about the allegation in the mid-1990s. 




    Hayes invited on journalist Rebecca Traister, the author of an important new piece on what the allegations mean, who affirmed the story’s rising credibility and called on Biden himself to personally address it. And he pushed viewers to move past their own unconscious biases and to take the story seriously. The segment is worth watching — though as MSNBC mystifyingly hasn’t put clips of it up on either its official website or YouTube channel and a transcript isn’t yet available, you’ll have to do so in pieces.

    Why was this brave? After all, this is Hayes’s job. And if anything, coverage of Reade is still falling short of the woefully underplayed accusation last year against Trump by columnist E. Jean Carroll, who was quickly personally invited onto MSNBC then CNN in the days after her allegation went public. (At the time, Carroll’s allegation had the same level of corroboration as Reade’s; it now has far less. Reade has only appeared on TV on Hill.TV’s Rising and on Democracy Now!).

    We'll note this from DEMOCRACY NOW! today -- this interview aired this morning.

    Tara Reade's former neighbor says she clearly remembers Reade telling her about an alleged sexual assault by Joe Biden. "We were talking about violence, because I had experienced violence myself," says Lynda LaCasse. "She started telling me about Joe Biden and what he had done."
    Full screen
    110 views
    1:23 / 1:24


    --------------

    ADDED:

    That video was from the Tweet.  Here's the video clip from YOUTUBE.




    Click here for it at the DEMOCRACY NOW! website and here for Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez' interview with Tara Reade.

    ---------------------

    Turning to Iraq, Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) looks at violence in Iraq for the month of April.  Among other things, she notes:


    During April, at least 208 people were killed, and 185 were wounded. Last month, 128 people were killed, and 180 were wounded. The number of civilian casualties remained low, probably due to the coronavirus lockdowns. However, casualties among security personnel and militants ticked higher.
    At least 20 civilians, 48 security members, and 98 militants were killed. Another 38 civilians, 103 security personnel, and three militants were wounded. At least two protesters were killed, and 34 were wounded despite quarantine orders.

    Along the northern border, in the long-running conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K) and Turkey, at least 33 PKK members of the were killed, and four more were wounded. Two Turkish soldiers were killed, and three more were wounded. Three Iraqi civilians and two Iranian civilians were also killed. These casualties all occurred within Iraqi territory. 


    But remember, we're all supposed to believe that the war ended long ago.  And that all US troops came home.





    The following sites updated:








    Read on ...
    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.