Sunday, June 21, 2015

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is airing new episodes on The CW. 

Thursday night's was the second episode of the season.

The same people who turned US soldier Vincent into part beast have turned a computer guy into a man who can shoot electricity out of his hands.

He also has a tumor and is trying to save himself and killing people in the process.

Vincent and Cat go after him and he escapes only to go after JT who has a shot that ElectroBoy thinks will save him.

With JT in trouble, Vincent and Cat head to the hospital to rescue him and they talk to Tess on the phone so she joins them.  (Tess and Cat are police officers and Tess is also JT's girlfriend.)

JT refuses to let ElectroBoy have the shot when the FBI agent needs it to stay alive.

ElectroBoy is about to kill JT when he and Vincent fight.

Cat talks them both down and ElectroBoy ends up having experimental surgery on his tumor.

Later Vincent asks her if she ever tires of talking him down (when he goes primal beast, it is not always easy for him to pull back to human form) and she says sometimes but -- flashing her engagement ring -- she notes this is for better or worse.

Meanwhile, Tess' brother plans to go out for captain of the police squad and JT tells her she should go out for it because she'd make a much better one.  She thinks about it and decides he's right (especially since her brother mocked her for the idea).

This season's overall plot is going to be about how Cat and Vincent were wrong to think they were free.  Whomever created Vincent is still out there creating/altering people.

My guess is that if the season ends with a wedding, the wedding won't take place and instead Cat will be kidnapped at the wedding.

A nice twist would be if the 'damsel' in distress was Vincent.

If he disappeared, it would play into a theme that's developing.

He's a little edgy about living with Cat.

That was true last episode.

This episode he was even 'beasting out' at times over the idea (he would develop a beast hand while moving his stuff into Cat's).

So if it was Vincent who got kidnapped, it would certainly make sense for Cat to assume he'd had a panic attack and bailed.



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

 
Saturday, June 20, 2015.  Chaos and violence continue, the refugee crisis continues, Susan Rice declares the Iraq War an "accomplishment" and much more.



Hillary Clinton is running for president for the year book photo.

Possessing only a blood lust for war, she has no plans to help people.

She also has no real record of success.

She can be elected to office, for example, but she accomplishes nothing of value once in office.

Her last non-campaign 'win' was probably, as Wally and Cedric pointed out, when she bested Barbara Bush in the cookie bake off.


So when it's time to spin success for Hillary, what do you do?

Go to America's biggest liar of all, the woman who lied on not one, not two, not three but four public affairs programs all on the same Sunday.

Yes, Susan I Love The Iraq War Rice.


Dirty Rice talked 'accomplishments' to Bloomberg's Mark Halperin:


MARK HALPERIN: What would you say are the three biggest accomplishments of Secretary Hillary Clinton when she was at State?

SUSAN RICE: Well, first of all, I think you would have to put them in context of the administration's accomplishments.

HALPERIN: Anything that she participated in a meaningful way.

RICE: She participated in everything that we did in the first term in a meaningful way.

First of all, in the first term, we were able to bring to conclusion two long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And she was very much involved in supporting those transitions. In the presidents first term also we initiated and now have sustained what we call, the re-balance to Asia, the Asia-Pacific.



There were at least 35 violent deaths in Iraq yesterday, according to Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com).

Barack is raising the number of US 'trainers' in Iraq to 3,500.

And Lie Face Susan Rice gives a televised interview where she claims as an accomplishment the Iraq War ended.

Only supreme liar Susan Rice could deliver that one with a straight face.

The Iraq War ended?

Who forgot to tell Iraq?

The US government involvement in the Iraq War ended?

Tell it to the State Dept, the Defense Dept, the White House, the US Embassy in Baghdad . . .

Susan Rice, she may go down as the biggest liar in the 21st century.


There's also the refugee crisis which effects Iraq two ways.


First up, there's the influx of refugees from Syria (both Syrians and returning Iraqis who earlier sought asylum in Iraq).





  1. There are almost 60 million refugees in the world, like the Syrians I met in Iraq with                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    



Near the end of last year, Refugees International noted:


As Syria’s civil war has dragged on, the direction of forced migration for many Iraqi refugees has reversed. Tens of thousands of Iraqis who sought refuge in Syria between 2003 and 2011 have returned home, joining about a million Iraqis who were already internally displaced. This year, the advance of the Islamic State group in central Iraq forced more than three-quarters of a million people from their homes, bringing the total number of Iraqi IDPs to roughly two million. 



And at the end of last month, the United Nations Refugee Agency Tweeted:


Iraq: We are deeply concerned about obstacles facing desperate people fleeing

But none of that exists in the world that Susan Rice lives.

In that world of lies, the Iraq War ended.

And it was an accomplishment, no less, according to Susan Rice.


The refugees haven't seen any accomplishment.

Reuters notes that "US and caolition forces targeted the Islamic State on Friday with 16 air strikes in Iraq."

Yet Susan Rice claims that the Iraq War is over and that this is an accomplishment that Barack and Hillary can share.





Lastly, David Bacon's latest book is The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration.  This is from "PICKING PEAS SHOULD BRING A BETTER LIFE," Rosalia Martinez, as told to David Bacon:


I'm Triqui, from Rio Venado in Oaxaca.  I've been here 7 years, working in the fields all the time.  Right now I'm picking peas.  Other times in the year I work in the broccoli.

The worst part about working in the peas is that you have to work on your knees. After a day on your knees they hurt a lot, and when you stop it's hard to extend your leg.  It hurts, even when they give you a break for 15 minutes every two hours.  I don't take pills for the pain, but I know many people who do.

Sometimes your knees break down.  That's happened to a lot of people.  Their knees go out permanently and they can't work anymore.

Another problem is the dust, which has chemicals in it.  Until two years ago they didn't give you glasses to keep the dust out.  Now they do, but by now most people who work in the peas have problems with their eyes.

What they pay us is not fair.  They want you to pick 130 pounds in ten hours, and the piece rate is 45¢, so we make very little.  The hourly wage is supposed to be $9.50 per hour, but when you're working on the piece rate it's less.  You can make $100 in a day sometimes, but other times it's $80 or $70.  It depends on how much you can pick.