Thursday, September 24, 2020

Butters, Jimmy Barr, Breonna Taylor

 The best of Butters.  I love Butters.  My favorite Butters episode of SOUTH PARK is probably when Cartman is obsessed with the paper device the girls have that predicts the future.  He must obtain the device.  So they stage Butters death and Butters shows up in school dressed like a girl and going by the name Marjorine.  Marjorine loves to get her "shnizz pounded."  And she goes to the slumber party worried that they're going to "lez out."  Poor Butters.  I also love the episode where Paris Hilton shows up and wants Butters to be her new pet.  :D


Now here's Jimmy Dore.



 Joe Biden is the nightmare.  Everything is these days including the outrageous verdict in the murder of Breonna Taylor.  CNN reports on the reaction:


Two Louisville police officers were shot Wednesday night as protesters marched following news that only one of the three officers involved in Breonna Taylor's death was indicted on first-degree wanton endangerment charges.

The other two officers who also fired shots during the botched March raid were not indicted, meaning no officer was charged with killing the 26-year-old Black emergency room technician and aspiring nurse.
Shortly before a 9 p.m. ET countywide curfew, there were reports of gunfire near one of the marches. Two of the responding officers were shot and had non-life-threatening wounds, Interim Police Chief Robert Schroeder told reporters. A suspect was in custody, he added.
One of the officers was in surgery, he said.


When people are repeatedly robbed of justice, they will react.  

This reaction is not a surprise.  All three officers involved in Breonna Taylor's murder should have been charged and should be facing jail time.


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

 Wednesday, September 23, 2020.  In the US the Ruth Bader Ginsburg press releases continue to pass for news (and for informed discussion), Iraq faces multiple crises, and much more.


The stupidity never ends.  Faux feminist Jill Filipovic wants you to know that if US President Donald Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court it will be an insult -- excuse me, an ultimate insult -- to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  

Ruth's dead, honey, she can't be insulted now.  She can't even sue for defamation -- nor can her family on her behalf -- that's what dead means, dear.

Maybe you should go back to posting your bikini pictures -- like you did back when everyone was protesting the Iraq War and your spoiled ass was off on an international vacation?  Most people finishing law school 'celebrate' by getting a job.  

Ruth's death has led to a lot of lunacy.

I guess we should be glad Jill cares about the feelings of dead women.  As she demonstrated as one woman after another came forward to speak of Joe Biden's uncomfortable touching and as she demonstrated when Tara Reade laid out her credible case that Joe assaulted her, Jill doesn't care about the feelings of women who are still alive.


Ruth is dead.  And from the grave we get a message via her granddaughter.  Clara Spera is in the media explaining what Ruth thought and wanted to BBC.  "My most fervent wish," she dictated to Clara who dutifully typed it up, "is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."


There is so much wrong with that statement.  Let's deal with most basic first.  So by her words, if Donald Trump is re-elected, a spot would remain vacant on the Court?  Donald Trump is the current president, he can't be a new president, even if he's re-elected.  Ruth's mind really was going at the end, wasn't it?


Clara also wants the world to know that Ruth is proud of her efforts to keep politics out of the Supreme Court.  Those efforts apparently are waived with a dying wish?  Actually, they were waived long before and that's what makes the centrist judge so very sad.  She has no ethics to point to.  She ignored Palestinians, she sided with killer cops over the families of their victims, she did so much that was so wrong.  But, hey, she gave us gals the right to vote!!! No, she was old, but not that old.  She gave women a place in the corporate world.  She didn't expand any rights beyond what corporate America was already doing in their businesses. 

But, Clara, your grandmother did talk about issues that were winding their way up the legal system, that she knew would arrive at the Supreme Court.  And that's called: a no-no.

She also felt the need to publicly weigh in on Donald Trump's presidential candidacy in 2015.  That's both a no-no and it is obvioulsy political.

Again, the brain was clearly going at the end.

She has no regrets, Clara wants you to know, regarding not stepping down when Barack Obama was president and could have appointed her successor.  


I believe she currently has no regrets about that because, again, she's dead.

We're not.

The American citizens are not dead.

And the wants and desires of RBG don't mean a thing and shouldn't.

Someone needs to tell Clara -- and any idiot clutching the pearls over Ruth's dying wishes -- that Ruth was a Supreme Court Justice, she was not the queen.  Meaning that seat was there before her and it will go on without her.  It was not her 'right' to serve, it was her privilege.  And dead or alive, she doesn't get to dictate who fills that seat.  She didn't own it.  She occupied it for a brief time and now it's going to be filled.


Should Donald Trump nominate someone to fill the spot?  According to RBG's earlier words, yes.  You don't need four-four decisions in the Court.  

He has the Constitutional right to nominate someone and I'm sure he will nominate someone (the press says by Friday he will nominate Barrett).  The Senate has to confirm the nominee.  Should they confirm her?  If they find her qualified, then, yes, they should.

That's how the system works.  You want to change it?  Let's have that conversation.  But stop the bulls**t about, "Bubbie wants . . .'  First off, every time you invoke that Yiddish word, it just reminds us that RGB was anti-Palestinian.  Not a good look.  Second, it's not about your dead grandmother.  It's about the nation.  Stop trying to personalize this with an idiot who was too stupid to step down and, according to her granddaughter, too stupid to realize at the end that she should have stepped down.

Stop making excuses for the powerful.  Poor women don't live as long as Ruth in the US -- a point we made in "Ruth Badger Ginsburg (Ava and C.I.)."  Her estimated wealth was over $25 million.  She was not One Of The People.  Stop pretending that she was.  She was denied certain opportunities as a young woman and her only cause was to make sure those opportunities she was denied would be open in the future.  Grasp that.  She was a reactionary.  She did not expand the rights of women beyond what she herself had experienced all those years ago.  


Sainted Ruth was a woman too stupid, when the latest round of cancer started in 2009, to resign.  Sainted Ruth's ego was too big then and too big at the end to admit she made a mistake.  In her final days, she offers a feeble plea for Donald not to appoint her successor.  She's a joke and she's a hypocrite.  It's the president job, as she herself noted when Barack was president, to nominate people to fill empty slots on the Court.  


She knew she made a mistake not retiring, that's why she made that idiotic (and unconstitutional) plea.


Everybody needs to grow the hell up and learn a hard lesson: We need a mandatory retirement for the Supreme Court.  Ruth demonstrates that they do not care enough about the American people to step down when they are clearly incapacitated.  We don't need to experience this again.  


Because of Ruth and her ego, we may get another Donald Trump appointee on the Court.  That's not something I'm happy about.  But it is what it is and the only thing we can do is learn from it.  The beatification of RBG has gone on long enough.  Serious critiques should have already been appearing.  Instead, we want to jolly her and make her one of the people.  If you're worth over $25 million, you're not one of the people.  She did a lousy job at the end creating all these new problems for the Court -- when some right winger on the Court is weighing on a Democratic Party presidential candidate, you better believe we on the left will be outraged.  And we shouldn't look the other way just because it's 'our' blessed Ruth.  

No where in the Constitution does it tell you that you get to have it your way.  That was a Burger King commercial, not a Constitutional amendment.  Even the Declaration of Independence only promises you "the pursuit of happiness."  

This isn't a good moment.  But denying reality is not going to make it a better one.  We need to learn from this and we need to demand that Justices stop dying of natural causes in office because they're egos are far too grand for them to contemplate doing the right thing and retiring.  


Had she stepped down in 2009, we would not be in the mess we are in.  This is on Ruth.


Margaret Kimberley Tweeted:

My thoughts on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She should have stepped down, Obama and the democratic establishment didn’t care about losing senate and assumption of Hillary victory created a debacle. Have a listen.



And we'll note this Tweet from Ajamu Baraka:


People are being evicted, unemployment is ending and the Federal support in limbo and the issue is RBG and the court? This is why the democrats will lose.
6:16 PM · Sep 22, 2020


Turning to Iraq, Hardi Mohammed (RUDAW) reports:

Fourteen Kurdish political parties warned of continued efforts to revive Saddam Hussein era's Arabization policy in the disputed province of Kirkuk at a press conference on Sunday.

"Until now, we have not let one single span of territory be invaded in Kirkuk," Mohammed Osman, a top Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) official in Kirkuk, claimed to Rudaw on Sunday after a meeting between the parties. The official warned, however, that efforts to revive the notorious process are present in the province

The parties last met nine months ago, during which they set up a committee to report Arabization efforts, Osman said, adding that the president of Iraq was also party to the committee. He said the coronavirus pandemic forced them to suspend their work, but at Sunday's meeting, they decided to reactivate the committee.

A concerted effort under former President Saddam Hussein mostly between 1970 and 1978 brought Arabs from elsewhere in Iraq to the disputed areas of Kirkuk. After 2003, however, Iraq began a policy of de-Arabization to reverse the demographic changes.

Within the framework of Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, these lands were returned to the previous Kurdish inhabitants. But since the 2017 retaking of Kirkuk by the Iraqi forces, there have been reports of Arab settlers reclaiming these lands. 


Brookings used to talk about this issue and how Kirkuk was a hot spot.  They gave up long ago.  But the issue was supposed to have been resolved during Nouri al-Maliki's first term as prime minister.  The Iraqi Constitution mandated that it be resolved by 2007.  Nouri blew it off as did others.  It's 13 years after the Constitutional mandate and it has still not been resolved.  Kirkuk is rich with oil and that is one of the reasons that both the KRG and the Baghdad-based government in Iraq want to take control of it.

Iraq is facing many critical issues.  For example, like the rest of the world, Iraq is dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic.  ARAB WEEKLY notes one action the Iraqi government is taking as a result of the pandemic, "Iraq is to bar entry to religious pilgrims to the country, its government health committee said in a statement on Monday, just weeks ahead of a Shia Muslim pilgrimage which is the largest annual religious gathering in the world. Arbaeen, due in early October, usually draws millions of people to the holy city of Karbala."  The numbers continue to mount in Iraq.  Hiwa Shilani (KURDISTAN 24) reports, "Iraqi health officials announced 4,724 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday as well as 57 fatalities over the previous 24 hours."


Those are only two issues.  There are many more that need addressing.  Kira Walker (WORLD POLITICAL REVIEW) notes:


The many ongoing challenges in Iraq -- from political upheaval and COVID-19 to plummeting oil prices and the resurgence of the Islamic State -- often overshadow the precarious state of the country’s water resources, even though water shortages are exacerbating many of those very issues. Studies have shown that equitable access to water is vital to supporting post-conflict recovery, sustainable development and lasting peace in Iraq, because water underpins public health, food production, agricultural livelihoods and power generation. But fresh water in Iraq is becoming scarcer, fueling more social tensions.

Iraq’s population of 40 million is expected to double by 2050, while the impacts of climate change—decreased and erratic precipitation, higher temperatures, prolonged and more severe droughts—will further aggravate its water woes. Iraqi and international experts are warning that instability will continue in Iraq so long as its long-neglected water crisis is not addressed.

When anti-government protests erupted last October, Iraqis’ demands for political and economic reforms and an end to corruption and foreign influence were accompanied by calls for better basic services, like water and electricity. During the protests, Humat Dijlah, a local NGO working to protect Iraq’s natural heritage, set up a tent in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square to link the right to fresh water with the broader struggle for human rights. Salman Khairalla, the organization’s executive director, says he and his colleagues wanted to encourage people to reflect on what Iraq’s future could look like with good water management, less pollution and more green space.

Yet the demonstrators’ efforts to create a better future for Iraqis were met with violent repression. More than 600 people were killed by security forces from October through January, according to Amnesty International. Others were arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared. “All human rights activists are at risk, including those fighting to protect environment and water,” Khairalla says in an interview.


Back to the US, Joseph Kishore is the SEP's candidate for US president.  He has an upcoming event this Sunday.





The 2020 election is unlike any in American history.

Donald Trump, surrounded by fascist aides, is threatening to appeal to the military and neo-Nazi groups to keep himself in office by use of force, raising the specter of dictatorship. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, whose unofficial campaign slogan is "nothing will fundamentally change," are more fearful of social opposition than anything else and are hostile to mobilizing masses of people to fight fascism. Instead, they are running a right-wing campaign aimed at portraying Trump as insufficiently bellicose toward Russia and China. Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America fecklessly tag behind Biden.

The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has reached 200,000 in the US and nearly 1 million worldwide. The response of both parties in the US has been to force workers back to work and students back to school to fuel big business and boost Wall Street. Strikes and protests against unsafe conditions at workplaces and schools are growing, coalescing with opposition to the never ending spate of police murders that witnessed the largest nationwide demonstrations in decades.

The working class needs political leadership. Joseph Kishore and Norissa Santa Cruz launched their presidential campaign to fight to develop a revolutionary socialist leadership in the working class. For this reason, federal judges, Democratic and Republican alike, have denied them access to appear on the ballot. At Sunday's meeting, Kishore and Santa Cruz will address the current political crisis and lay out the programmatic response of the Socialist Equality Party.

Meet the Candidates
Joseph Kishore on Twitter
Norissa Santa Cruz on Twitter


The following sites updated:


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Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Stop persecuting Julian Assange

 As Julian Assange continues to be persecuted, Jonathan Cooke (DISSIDENT VOICE) explains:


Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States. Assange faces 175 years in a US super-max prison on the basis of claims by Donald Trump’s administration that his exposure of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to “espionage”.

The charges against Assange rewrite the meaning of “espionage” in unmistakably dangerous ways. Publishing evidence of state crimes, as Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has done, is covered by both free speech and public interest defences. Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check. Whistleblowers typically emerge in reaction to parts of the executive turning rogue, when the state itself starts breaking its own laws. That is why journalism is protected in the US by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society.

Aware that journalists might understand this threat and rally in solidarity with Assange, US officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the Wikileaks founder for journalism – in fact, they denied he was a journalist. That was why they preferred to charge him under the arcane, highly repressive Espionage Act of 1917. The goal was to isolate Assange and persuade other journalists that they would not share his fate.

Assange explained this US strategy way back in 2011, in a fascinating interview he gave to Australian journalist Mark Davis that has recently been made available. (The relevant section occurs from minute 24 to 43.) This was when the Obama administration first began seeking a way to distinguish Assange from liberal media organisations, such as the New York Times and Guardian that had been working with him, so that only he would be charged with espionage.

 

If you need video, here's Joe Lauria covering the trial.



And here's Joe Lauria and Elizabeth Vos doing a panel discussion with John Pilger and Daniel Ellsberg.



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

 

 Tuesday, September 22, 2020.  Another passing, professor Stephen F. Cohen, elections remain a mess in the US and in Iraq, and more.


Starting the US where Stephen F. Cohen passed away September 18th.  The professor was married to THE NATION's Katrina vanden Heuvel.  Katrina writes:


Through all our years together, Steve was my backbone, fortifying me for the battles Nation editors must wage (often with their own writers, sometimes including Steve!), and giving me the personal and political courage to do the right thing. But never more so than when we entered what might be called the “Russiagate era.”

While Steve liked to say it’s healthy to rethink, to have more questions than answers, there was a wise consistency to his political analysis. For example, as is clear from his many articles in The Nation in these last decades, he unwaveringly opposed American Cold War thinking both during the Cold War and since the end of the Soviet Union. He was consistent in his refusal to sermonize, lecture, or moralize about what Russia should do. He preferred to listen rather than preach, to analyze rather than demonize.

This stance was no recipe for popularity, which Steve professed to care little about. He was courageous and fearless in continuing to question the increasingly rigid orthodoxies about the Soviet Union and Russia. But in the last months, such criticism did take its toll on him. Along with others who sought to avert a new and more dangerous Cold War, Steve despaired that the public debate so desperately needed had become increasingly impossible in mainstream politics or media. Until his death he’d been working on a short article about what he saw as the “criminalization of détente.” The organization he established, the American Committee on East-West Accord, tried mightily to argue for a more sane US policy toward Russia.

He fared better than I often did confronting the controversies surrounding him since 2014, in reaction to his views on Ukraine, Putin, election interference, and more. Positions he took often elicited slurs and scurrilous attacks. How many times could he be labeled “Putin’s puppet”? “Putin’s No.1 American apologist”? Endlessly, it seemed. But Steve chose not to respond directly to the attacks, believing -- as he told me many times when I urged him to respond -- that they offered no truly substantive criticism of his arguments, but were merely ad hominem attacks. What he did write about -- he was increasingly concerned about the fate of a younger generation of scholars -- was the danger of smearing those who thought differently about US policy toward Russia, thereby silencing skeptics and contributing to the absence of a needed debate in our politics, media, and academy. 


Cohen called out the attempts to rebuild The Cold War and saw this taking place while Barack Obama was still president.  We spoke of this after Ed Snowden was in Russia trapped at the airport.  He was a strong voice and a great thinker.  At CONSORTIUM NEWS, Gilbert Doctorow notes:

A year ago, I reviewed his latest book, War With Russia? which drew upon the material of those programs and took this scholar turned journalist into a new and highly accessible genre of oral readings in print.  The narrative style may have been more relaxed, with simplified syntax, but the reasoning remained razor sharp. I urge those who are today paying tribute to Steve, to buy and read the book, which is his best legacy.

From start to finish, Stephen F. Cohen was among America’s best historians of his generation, putting aside the specific subject matter that he treated: Nikolai Bukharin, his dissertation topic and the material of his first and best known book; or, to put it more broadly, the history of Russia (U.S.S.R.) in the 20th century. 

He was one of the very rare cases of an historian deeply attentive to historiography, to causality and to logic.  I understood this when I read a book of his from the mid-1980s in which he explained why Russian (Soviet) history was no longer attracting young students of quality:  because there were no unanswered questions, because  we smugly assumed that we knew about that country all that there was to know. That was when our expert community told us with one voice that the U.S.S.R. was entrapped in totalitarianism without any prospect for the overthrow of its oppressive regime.

Caitlin Johnstone (ICH) observes, "In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding."  RT's CROSSTALK BULLHORNS addressed his legacy and the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.




And CONFLICTS OF INTEREST explore Cohen's legacy and peace activist Kevin Zeese's legacy.


In the US, the presidential election is weeks away.  Will Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden make it to the finish line?  THE NEXT NEWS NETWORK has some video that makes you wonder.




Grasp that this is after weeks of resting and, yes, hiding.  In Iraq, parliamentary elections are being floated for June 6th.  Over the weekend, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi met with Speaker of Parliament Mohamed al-Halbousi to stress the need to work towards getting an election law passed. Is everyone on board for elections?  Apparently not.   Hayder Tweets:


Tomorrow’s agenda for #Iraq's council of representatives. They are still stalling the finalization of the electoral law. The more they stall the tougher it will be to hold early elections. And it is almost impossible to have fair early elections now.
Image
12:37 PM · Sep 21, 2020


The stalling in Parliament comes as a ceremonial figure jumps into the conversation.  Mina Aldroubi (THE NATIONAL) reports:

Iraq needs reforms, security and stability before it can hold a free and fair election, President Barham Salih cautioned on Sunday after the government said it plans an early national poll.

The administration of Mustafa Al Kadhimi said in July that early elections will be held next June, a year before the current parliamentary term ends. It has been a key demand of many of the anti-government protesters on the streets since last October.

"Reforms requires political will and the holding of early, free and fair elections that will give priority to public opinion and demands and are away from the power of arms, fraud and interference," he said during a conference on combating violence against women. 


Is Salih afraid he won't hold on to power?  The new elections would mean someone being named prime minister and someone being named president.  Is Salih afraid he doesn't have the support to continue as president?  


Amsiiraq Tweets:

Observers: The political and economic environment in Iraq has not changed in favor of holding free, fair and transparent elections that result in political forces other than those dominating power, which employ money, weapons and intimidation to survive.
Image
4:13 PM · Sep 21, 2020


The following sites updated:






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Monday, September 21, 2020

Free Julian now!

 The persecution of Julian Assange continues.  And the bulk of the press is silent.  Jimmy Dore notes that 'defender' of the First Amendment Bob Woodard can't and won't defend Julian.




Oscar Grenfell (WSWS) reports:

The response of the corporate media over the eleven months since El Pais first revealed details of a vast spying operation against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, while he was a United Nations-recognised political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy, has been decidedly muted.

The initial El Pais article in October last year has been followed by a raft of damning information. This has established that the surveillance, conducted by the UC Global security company in charge of managing security at the embassy, included the illegal interception of Assange’s conversations with his lawyers, in a flagrant breach of attorney-client privilege, menacing probes into his partner and infant child, and discussions about the possibility of kidnapping or even poisoning the WikiLeaks founder.

The mechanisms of the surveillance, which likely involved the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have also become clearer. UC Global chief David Morales, it is alleged, entered into a secret agreement with emissaries of US intelligence to surveill Assange in 2015, and pass on all of the material gathered, in an operation that extended until March, 2018.

The statements of former UC Global employees, and documentary evidence, have indicated that the security company of Las Vegas casino mogul and leading Trump donor Sheldon Adelson served as the middle-man between Morales and US intelligence. The former Spanish navy marine turned mercenary was raided and arrested by Spanish police late last year, and faces the prospect of substantial criminal charges.

In other words, the apparent lack of media interest is not for want of information, or because the unprecedented surveillance of the world’s most famous persecuted journalist is not newsworthy. Rather, it is a continuation of the alignment of the corporate media with the US-led vendetta against Assange, bound up with their close ties to the intelligence agencies and the official political parties that have spearheaded his persecution, as well as their broader support for an agenda of militarism and authoritarianism.

This was given striking confirmation in an article published by investigative journalist Max Blumenthal on the Grayzone website last Friday. Blumenthal’s detailed report was based on the statements of an anonymous WikiLeaks source, along with extensive comments from Stefania Maurizi, an Italian journalist who has partnered with the media organisation for the past decade. Hitherto unpublished communications from Morales were also featured, further establishing his and UC Global’s secret collaboration with US authorities.

This is nonsense.  The court needs to call an end to the case and release Julian immediately.  He deserves his freedom and an apology.

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

 Monday, September 21, 2020.  The passing of a Supreme Court Justice should be the start of several different conversations. 


Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden just can't stop lying.  No, 200 million people around the world have not died from coronavirus.  If he meant in the US, that's even worse.  Yaron Steinbuch (NEW YORK POST) points out, ''As of early Monday, the US death toll from the coronavirus stands at 199,512. The total number of reported cases in the country is about 6.8 million, according to the latest figures."


Joe's dazed and confused -- over and over again.  Friday, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away following her long battle with cancer. Joe bungled things so badly, he was being mocked as "sleepy Joe" by Australia's SKY NEWS.



While Joe meandered in his befuddled manner, it was left to Jane Fonda to lay down a marker on Friday calling for Senate Democrats to fight back against any effort to replace RBG before the election.  Sunday, Joe spoke again and it was more lies.  Daniel Dale (CNN) explains:



Biden argued that it would be inappropriate for him to release a list of prospective Supreme Court nominees, as Trump did during the 2016 campaign and did again this month.
    Biden also claimed that the Trump campaign had not asked him to release such a list until after Ginsburg died.
    "We can't keep rewriting history, scrambling norms, ignoring our cherished system of checks and balances. That includes this whole business of releasing a list of potential nominees that I would put forward. They're now saying, after they -- after Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, they said, 'Biden should release his list.' It's no wonder the Trump campaign asked that I release the list only after she passed away. It's a game for them. It's a play to gin up emotions and anger," he said.
    Facts First: This is just wrong. The Trump campaign and Trump himself had repeatedly said prior to Ginsburg's death that Biden should release a list of prospective Supreme Court nominees.
    When Trump released his latest list on September 9, the Trump campaign's statement said in its title that "Biden must do the same." The campaign repeated the demand for a Biden list in a statement on September 17, the day before Ginsburg died.
    Trump had previously issued the same demand himself. In an August 24 speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump said, "I'm demanding, actually, a list: let Biden put up a list of the judges he's going to appoint." And in a June 22 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Trump said, "You ought to ask a guy like a Biden or ask his campaign: give a list of judges, see where they stand on pro-life, see where they stand on it."


    Dale also notes that Joe claimed the Court would have no session between now and election day.  Wrong.  The Court goes back into session on October 5th.  What's October 5th?  FIRST MONDAY IN OCTOBER -- you know, the title of the hit 1978 Broadway play that became a 1981 film starring Jill Clayburgh as the first female Supreme Court Justice.  She was Golden Globe nominated for the role and the film's title is such because, every year, that's when the Court kicks off its term -- on the first Monday of October.  Somehow, in all his years working in DC, Joe missed that fact?

    On RBG, she should have retired many years ago.  Her health was such that, no, she was not giving the job all that she could.  (I say that as someone battling cancer myself.)  And in the last four years, she did several things that cheapened her image and the Court's image.  As a sitting Justice, it is not her job to offer her personal opinions in interviews about issues that will come before the Court.  Nor was it her job to offer her take on a presidential candidate.

    She was indulged and coddled by a cult that found this behavior charming.  It was not charming.  It was damaging to the Court and when some future conservative Justice does the same, you can be sure that many who cheered RGB on with this nonsense will finally grasp why some things are just not done.  She set a precedent -- and not in a good way.

    She has also left the nation in chaos and that should not be forgotten either.  Time and again, the egos on these public servants is repulsive.  We need mandatory retirement -- we need it for the Court and we need it for the Senate.  (The two-year terms of House members allows the voters to have a quick response should they need to retire someone.)  She knew she had cancer.  She knew about this round of cancer when Barack Obama started his first term as president.  She should have retired then or in his second term.

    To have her granddaughter announce that RBG would want everyone to wait until after the election to select a new judge?  Who the hell cares what she wanted?  She didn't do what she was supposed to -- retire when she couldn't function at a high level.  

    See "Ruth Badger Ginsburg (Ava and C.I.)" for more on RBG's passing.  And note, she wasn't hit by a truck, she died of natural causes after a lengthy illness.  She should have retired years ago.

    Joe shouldn't be running for the presidency.  The editorial board of THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL notes Joe's latest flip-flop:


    Joe Biden needs to win Pennsylvania, so he’s changed his position on fracking.

    In late August, the Democratic presidential nominee emerged from his basement and traveled to the Keystone State. He sought to assure voters there that a Biden administration wouldn’t threaten the fracking industry. Fracking, which is a method of extracting oil and natural gas from shale rock, is a vital part of the state’s economy. A study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that outlawing fracking would eliminate 600,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.

    “I am not banning fracking,” Biden said. “Let me say that again: I am not banning fracking.”

    That’s a John Kerry-level flip flop from the position he took repeatedly during the Democratic primary. Many Democratic voters want to eliminate oil and natural gas production under the guise of addressing global warming. Mr. Biden repeatedly told those voters that he agreed with them.

    During a debate last year, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Mr. Biden if “there would be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?”

    “We would make sure it’s eliminated,” Mr. Biden said.


    He can't be trusted. Nor apparently can the prime minister of Iraq.  A former member of the press himself, Mustafa al-Kadhimi has been getting easy press in the last days for two arrests on corruption -- but they're minor arrests and they are meaningless.  If you're not grasping how meaningless, Deena Kamel (THE NATIONAL) reports:

    State-owned Trade Bank of Iraq (TBI) appointed Salem Chalabi as chairman and president as the lender proceeds with a three-year expansion plan to diversify its operations.

    Mr Chalabi, a Yale University graduate, will replace Faisal Al Haimus with immediate effect following the directive of Iraqi prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Trade Bank of Iraq said in a statement on Sunday.

    "I look forward to implementing a strategy that will allow TBI to achieve sustainable growth and continue building on the strong and solid foundations laid by the bank in the past years," Mr Chalabi said. "We will continue to ... develop the bank’s operations to support our country’s economic development."

    Mr Chalabi brings to the role years of experience in business development, strategic planning and forming Iraqi government policies, including involvement in drafting the new Iraqi constitution after 2003. He was appointed General Director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal for Crimes against Humanity in 2004 and worked as an adviser to former Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.


    Oh, Deena, there's more honesty in the opening paragraph of his WIKIPEDIA page:

    Salem Chalabi (aka "Sam Challabi") (born 1963, in Baghdad) is an Iraq-born, British- and American-educated lawyer. He was appointed as the first General Director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, set up in 2003 to try Saddam Hussein and other members of his regime for crimes against humanity. His appointment, by an order signed by Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation authority,[1] was widely criticized for perceived nepotism (his uncle, Ahmed Chalabi, was critically involved in the US-led war against Iraq and Hussein) and he himself lacked any significant trial experience (he was a corporate securities lawyer). He was ultimately dropped from the Tribunal after an arrest warrant was issued for investigation into his role in the murder of a director-general of the Iraqi Ministry of Finance who was investigating Chalabi family properties acquired in Iraq; the charge was ultimately dismissed citing lack of evidence. 


    More from WIKIPEDIA:

    Mr. Chalabi was a member, immediately before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, of the Department of State sponsored Future of Iraq project, to which he was appointed as rapporteur of the Transitional Justice Working Group.[3]

    Questions about conflicts of interest swirled around Sam Chalabi.[5] Returning to Iraq in April 2003 he founded the controversial Iraqi International Law Group. Chalabi set up this "marketing partnership" with L. Marc Zell, the former law partner of Douglas J. Feith, the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy. Zell was to help lead American and Russian clients interested in reconstruction to Sam Chalabi's firm, which would in turn help them to meet U.S. and Iraqi officials".[5] Zell, born in the United States, moved with his family to the Jewish settlement of Alon Shevut on the West Bank in 1988, at the start of the first Palestinian uprising, acquiring Israeli nationality. His Jerusalem based firm, whose staff produced the content of the Iraqi International Law Group's website, cites as one of its main activities assisting Israeli companies to do business abroad.[6]

    "In interviews, Sam Chalabi spoke of his daily contacts with his uncle [Ahmed Chalabi], and the fact that one of his 26 first cousins was the Iraqi minister of trade."[5] Sam Chalabi also played an important role in the new government: as an advisor on the writing of commercial laws and a national constitution, among other issues.

    After "an outpouring of publicity", Sam Chalabi disbanded the partnership, saying, "I have to be more careful about the appearance of a conflict of interest."".[5]

    Salem Chalabi was also appointed as counsel to newly founded security firm Erinys, which "won a plum $80 million contract to guard Iraqi oil installations, employing members of Chalabi's private militia for the purpose".[7]


    He just got put in charge.  And we're supposed to pretend Mustafa is addressing corruption?


    A half hour ago, Ruba Ali al-Hassani Tweeted:Kadhimi has assigned CTS to search for, and free, Sajjad al-Iraqi in Thi Qar as well as arrest his kidnappers. #Iraq


      Sajjad al-Iraqi is the latest activist to be targeted in Iraq:


    The kidnapping of the activist, Sajjad Al-Iraqi, at the entrance to Dhi Qar Governorate.
    Image
    2:27 PM · Sep 19, 2020



    Mustafa promised the activists his protection.  That promise appears weaker than ever.





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