I'm in a really good mood. I had PTO to burn so I did half a day at work today. The only thing better than a half-day Friday? Taking the full day off, of course.
That's her covering Rihanna's "Stay" -- and doing a great job with it.
Now I'm going to quickly note three science stories. First, a new planet discovered? MOTHER NATURE NEWS reports:
There's something strange about a newly discovered planet about 920 light-years from Earth.
The planet, described this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is Neptune-like — meaning it's a gaseous orb about three times the size of Earth and resembling the wind-swept blue marble from our own solar system. It also inhabits a region of space called the Neptunian Desert, where scientists were hoping to find exoplanets of roughly Neptune's size — although this is the first ever sighted there.
Sure, we've seen its kind before. But the real Neptune is the eighth planet from our sun, taking around 165 Earth years to saunter around our central star. This planet hotfoots it around its sun in just 1.34 days. That's because it's impossibly close to the its host — so close, in fact, that it shouldn't exist at all.
If that didn't blow your mind, the notion of commercial travel to the moon moves forward. SPACE.COM explains:
NASA will reveal its selection of the first commercial companies to deliver science experiments to the moon as part of the agency's Artemis lunar landing program, and you can watch it live online.
The space agency will announce its science selection at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) during a live broadcast of its NASA Science Live program, a monthly science show launched in February. The reveal is the latest in a series of contract announcements by NASA as the agency aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2024.
You can NASA's moon announcement live here, or directly from NASA TV here. NASA will also hold a teleconference at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), which will be streamed live online.
I missed the live announcement but it is archived at the links. So commercial flights to the Moon? Can pleasure flights be too far behind?
How does the world around us, the galaxy around us, influence us. That's a question SCI-NEWS is trying to answer:
Between 8 and 2 million years ago, cosmic-ray energy from one or more nearby supernovae reached Earth and pummeled the planet’s atmosphere, initiating an avalanche of electrons and setting off a chain of events that ended with bipedal hominins, according to a radical study published in the Journal of Geology.
“It is thought there was already some tendency for hominins to walk on two legs, even before this event. But they were mainly adapted for climbing around in trees,” said University of Kansas Professor Adrian Melott.
“After this conversion to savanna, they would much more often have to walk from one tree to another across the grassland, and so they become better at walking upright. They could see over the tops of grass and watch for predators.”
“It’s thought this conversion to savanna contributed to bipedalism as it became more and more dominant in human ancestors.”
Based on a ‘telltale’ layer of ancient seabed deposits of the radioactive isotope iron-60, Professor Melott and his colleague, Dr. Brian Thomas of Washburn University, have high confidence one or a series of supernovae exploded in Earth’s immediate cosmic neighborhood during the transition from the Pliocene epoch to the Ice Age.
So there we have it, three pretty amazing reports.
Now I'm officially starting my weekend!
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, May 31, 2019. A look at the history that got us to this point
and at how those who just follow orders are not going to become good
leaders -- but mainly we look at Joe Biden and hypocrisy.
This week, we've been talking about how the press works overtime to destroy anti-war candidates, how they rush to prop up the worst pro-war candidates. Right on time, here's Senator Tammy Baldwin with another poorly written column.
The Iraq War veterans goes for the drama -- she always does, she's John McCain for the 21st century -- by reminding everyone yet again that her helicopter was shot down.
John used his war issues to hide behind as well. It's strange because you look at someone like Robert Dole (Bob Dole) who actually is a war hero and he's never done that. He's never hidden behind that or used it as a "I'm an expert because!" And Bob Dole, like so many others who have served in the military, really did make a difference.
The only difference Tammy makes is increasing the number of dead and wounded.
Ten paragraphs of more after she's done recounting her 'glory days' (sing it, Bruce), Tammy finally gets around to today -- never forget that Tammy must be center of attention! -- and argues that the US military must stay in Iraq because . . . well the economy! And a host of other issues:
Excuse me, Genius Tammy, what the f**k does US troops on the ground have to do with job creation for young Iraqis. US troops, you War Hawk, have been on the ground for years in Iraq, that has never addressed the jobs for young Iraiqs. I gues sif you couldn't hide behind your helicopter crash, you'd be afraid others would challenge you on your f**ked up lies that you tell to continue the Iraq War.
As for the Iraqi forces? The US military has trained them. And retrained them. And retrained them. And at this point, we're still with Bully Boy Bush in the White House. But then Barack comes in and the constant training continues. More of it is supposed to take place after the 2011 December drawdown (not withdrawal) but the Iraqi government is saying they don't want that training. And, sure enough, as 2012 rolls around -- and as then-US House Rep Gary Ackerman repeatedly pointed out -- they refuse the training. They don't show up. This is now under the State Dept and as Gary and others on Committees note, the Sate Dept won't give straight answers. But, after it happens, months after, Congress is informed that the State Dept did turn over the training academy to the Iraqi government -- the one US taxpayers paid for and the one the State Dept was supposed to do training at -- because no one was showing up for training.
So from 2012 through most of 2014, no real training going on officially (in the fall of 2012, as Tim Arango reported for THE NEW YORK TIMES, Barack sent in a team of special-ops to help with training and other messy realities). Then Barack Obama sends in US troops to Iraq -- publicly for the country to realize he broke his promise to the people (while keeping his 2007 promise to Michael Gordon and THE NEW YORK TIMES -- he told them he'd do that, he'd send troops back in after a withdrawal if he became president, he kept his word, didn't he?).
So except for a very brief period of 2012 through June of 2014, US troops have repeatedly trained and re-trained Iraqi troops.
We have defended Iraqi troops here in this space when US trainers have slammed them as lazy or worse.
They're not lazy. They're there for a pay check. The Iraqi government is installed by the US, it does not reflect the Iraqi people. That's why, in early 2008, for example, so many Iraqi troops fled the battle in Basra -- the battle their supposed government sent them into. That's why, when ISIS began grabbing land in 2014, the Iraqi military repeatedly fled. They didn't fight.
What did they have to fight for? A puppet government put in place by the US government?
Tammy's a liar and she's a liar who hides behind "my helicopter crashed."
Tammy is a press stooge. In 2006, she ran for Congress and failed. Because to know Tammy is to strongly dislike her. But before the Congressional election, there was the primary. And the press -- big and small -- lied and pimped Tammy as an anti-war candidate, a peace candidate. She was nothing of the sort. One of the funnies moments of Laura Flanders' AIR AMERICA RADIO show (when she was in charge, before THE NATION took over and started dictating her guests) was when Laura was promoting the hell out of Tammy, live on air, yet again, only to have a guest say, wait, she's not progressive, she's not even the progressive Democrat in that primary, it's Christine Cegelis.
Laura was shocked. Laura was surprised. Laura said she didn't know. And with that show, the coverage ended. Now do we applaud Laura for that? Or do we maybe point out the fact that if she really was shocked and surprised, the right thing to do was to have Christine on her show the following weekend? This is when the show was live and on Saturday and Sunday nights. Long before THE NATION took over -- they dumped what's his face and gave Laura the show THE NATION had always done but with strings attached. Laura could have whomever she wanted on her show and did. Remember the guests (plural, yes) who appeared to explain that Hurricane Katrina wasn't that bad, that it was really bombs set up around New Orleans?
Laura hopes you don't remember and maybe you don't -- but me? I never forget.
The press sold Tammy as a progressive and there was Laura promoting her as such while ignoring the actual progressive in the race.
So Tammy loses but has so many friends in war places that she moves along, one scandal after another, and eventually fails upward into the Senate.
That's how it works if you're a War Hawk who will pimp war constantly.
And few swing a bigger dick than Tammy, right? She calls Donald Trump, President of the United States, "president bone spurs." She's mocking him because he didn't serve in Vietnam.
Now no one should have served in Vietnam. It was an illegal war and it was a destructive war and a war built on lies. Yeah, it was the early version of the Iraq War.
But for dick swingers like Tammy, Seth Moulton and Pete Buttigieg, it's time to mock someone if they didn't serve in that war.
Excuse me, that's not true.
Elaine pointed out the truth last night -- these dick swingers really only attack their enemies for not serving in Iraq.
See Elaine's "Wheezie Joe, who died when you didn't go?" and learn all about how Joe Biden avoided serving in Vietnam. First with 8 years of education deferments and then with the 'fact' that he had childhood asthma -- a condition that was so serious but somehow -- who knows how? -- still allowed him to play football and baseball in high school and football in college. Asthma, poor Joe.
Earlier this week, Seth Moulton, a member of the US Congress, went on cable TV to declare that Donald Trump was not a patriot because he used deferments to avoid serving in Iraq. Furthermore, Seth insisted that by using those deferments, Donald made some other man go and might have condemned that man to death in Vietnam. Strangely enough, despite Seth's own battles with PTS, he never offered that this allegedly condemned man could have come back to the US and suffered and taken his own life.
But apparently, when you swing your big dick like Seth, Tammy and Pete love to, all the blood rushes out of your big head into your little one.
So, Seth, when you calling out Wheezie Joe? When you going to point out -- as you try to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- that Wheezie Joe may have condemned someone to death by his eight years of education deferments and then by his signed statement about his childhood asthma?
I thought Seth's entire performance was pathetic and ahistorical. But that's the performance he took to the American people. It's the same one Tammy does as she ridicules Donald Trump repeatedly and Mayor Pete does it too.
So are you three whores just going to admit you're hypocrites or are you going to apply the same standard to Joe Biden?
Wheezie Joe refused to serve and by the dick swingers 'standards' that means he is not fit to be commander-in-chief -- that's what they learned from their Little Golden Books -- the last books they apparently ever picked up which would explain their cartoonish view of the world.
Joe Biden, always craven, always whorish, declared yesterday that John McCain was a War Hero -- that's a strange definition when McCain's record is actually examined and all the crashes he had -- and that he couldn't be criticized.
Joe's the best little whore, isn't he? John McCain went on to serve decades in the Congress and, sorry, Joe, he absolutely can (and should) be slammed for that.
I remember John best for his 'brave' refusal to support GI legislation for post-911 veterans -- even GI education benefits.
John was so happy -- War Hero!-- to send men and women into needless wars but he didn't want them to have any education after. Educated people are dangerous, sheep are so much easier to manage. That's what 'War Hero' John McCain believed.
Someone needs to inform Tammy that real heroes -- war or otherwise -- don't constnatly tell their own story over and over. Refusal to grasp that? Usually a sign of vanity and an admission that you've honestly never accomplished anything so you have to pull out your war story from 15 years ago.
And military service does not make you better than anyone (or worse than anyone) and does not make you fit for leadership.
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard served in the Iraq War. Is that why she would be a good president? No. It's the fact that she questions what the US government ordered that would make her a good president.
The military trains you to follow orders. That's not a leader. If you don't progress beyond that, if you're not able to reflect on your own actions and those of your government, you've not demonstrated leadership at all.
Nothing Tammy has done or said indicates that she can process an actual experience -- military or otherwise.
Seth and I are of the same mind when it comes to PTS (including using that term) and I applaud his work on that issue but, as popped up on his Twitter feed (check for yourself), when someone tries to enlarge the topic of PTS, Seth goes running out of the rooms, hands over his ears.
PTS exists in all areas. I'm sure that the children present at school shootings (and their parents) can suffer PTS just as rape survivors and others can.
But Seth cannot build on anything. He wants to be president but even on the topic of PTS he shows his repeated inability to analyze and assess. He's so big on PTS -- but just so long as it's about the military. He had PTS and he can only relate to those who had PTS the way he did from the same source he did.
That's not leadership. That's not someone who can reach out or who can make anything better. That's a little boy who can't grow up.
A few people are starting to notice the effort to turn the government into the military. I think it's a fad -- and it's far from over -- like the late 80s leading into the hideous "re-inventing government" promoted by many -- including Al Gore. That was not an answer. That is why Glass-Stegall was repealed.
There is so much talk about that but they never connect it to the doctrine it sprung from. Dems wanting to flirt with Big Business sold out the American people and did so with the argument that privatization of this or that was needed and that there was a 'middle way' that would allow business to succeed. See, government was bad, the arghument went, and privatization was good. And we needed to free business. Glass-Stegall was born of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. When the neoliberals pimping reinventing government (actually "decimating" government) did away with it, we ended up with the great recession of the last decade.
Joe Biden, strange how he's always there like Zelig but in all the bad moments of history, was a huge supporter of 'reinventing government.' He needs to answer for that. A press that was about informing the people would ensure that he was forced to answer. A press that is not a free press but just a tool of big business will look the other way.
And does.
We need to wrap this up.
Let's note first that Joe Biden, yesterday, as he seeks the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, tried to police Americans speech -- the same Joe Biden who can't police his own hands and keep them off little girls.
Let's note that Tammy, Seth and Pete live to mock Donald Trump for not serving in Vietnam but they look the other way on Wheezie Joe -- that's known as hypocrisy -- I'm not sure that topic was ever covered in a Little Golden Book.
America needs leaders, real leaders. A Tulsi Gabbard, a Bernie Sanders, in fact, a number of people running, have demonstrated that they can assess and analyze. And that's what we need, not the dumbing down of America but this time by Joe Biden!
One more thing, in e-mails I'm asked about this posting "Rep. Susan Davis Response to Mueller Statements on..."? No, I am not in favor of impeachment and we have real issues to focus on. But everything that goes up here does not have to be my opinion or in agreement with me. I'll make my argument, others can make their own. I'm opposed to impeachment. I believe Susan presented her own case and did so very well. But, no, I do not favor impeachment.
The following sites updated:
This week, we've been talking about how the press works overtime to destroy anti-war candidates, how they rush to prop up the worst pro-war candidates. Right on time, here's Senator Tammy Baldwin with another poorly written column.
The Iraq War veterans goes for the drama -- she always does, she's John McCain for the 21st century -- by reminding everyone yet again that her helicopter was shot down.
John used his war issues to hide behind as well. It's strange because you look at someone like Robert Dole (Bob Dole) who actually is a war hero and he's never done that. He's never hidden behind that or used it as a "I'm an expert because!" And Bob Dole, like so many others who have served in the military, really did make a difference.
The only difference Tammy makes is increasing the number of dead and wounded.
Ten paragraphs of more after she's done recounting her 'glory days' (sing it, Bruce), Tammy finally gets around to today -- never forget that Tammy must be center of attention! -- and argues that the US military must stay in Iraq because . . . well the economy! And a host of other issues:
Its younger generation is struggling, with too few jobs for the 800,000 young people trying to enter its workforce every year.
Its military appears ill-equipped to sustain itself whenever the U.S. stops writing checks.
It remains dangerously vulnerable to a resurgent Islamic State, or ISIS, a group that’s as insidious as ever.
Excuse me, Genius Tammy, what the f**k does US troops on the ground have to do with job creation for young Iraqis. US troops, you War Hawk, have been on the ground for years in Iraq, that has never addressed the jobs for young Iraiqs. I gues sif you couldn't hide behind your helicopter crash, you'd be afraid others would challenge you on your f**ked up lies that you tell to continue the Iraq War.
As for the Iraqi forces? The US military has trained them. And retrained them. And retrained them. And at this point, we're still with Bully Boy Bush in the White House. But then Barack comes in and the constant training continues. More of it is supposed to take place after the 2011 December drawdown (not withdrawal) but the Iraqi government is saying they don't want that training. And, sure enough, as 2012 rolls around -- and as then-US House Rep Gary Ackerman repeatedly pointed out -- they refuse the training. They don't show up. This is now under the State Dept and as Gary and others on Committees note, the Sate Dept won't give straight answers. But, after it happens, months after, Congress is informed that the State Dept did turn over the training academy to the Iraqi government -- the one US taxpayers paid for and the one the State Dept was supposed to do training at -- because no one was showing up for training.
So from 2012 through most of 2014, no real training going on officially (in the fall of 2012, as Tim Arango reported for THE NEW YORK TIMES, Barack sent in a team of special-ops to help with training and other messy realities). Then Barack Obama sends in US troops to Iraq -- publicly for the country to realize he broke his promise to the people (while keeping his 2007 promise to Michael Gordon and THE NEW YORK TIMES -- he told them he'd do that, he'd send troops back in after a withdrawal if he became president, he kept his word, didn't he?).
So except for a very brief period of 2012 through June of 2014, US troops have repeatedly trained and re-trained Iraqi troops.
We have defended Iraqi troops here in this space when US trainers have slammed them as lazy or worse.
They're not lazy. They're there for a pay check. The Iraqi government is installed by the US, it does not reflect the Iraqi people. That's why, in early 2008, for example, so many Iraqi troops fled the battle in Basra -- the battle their supposed government sent them into. That's why, when ISIS began grabbing land in 2014, the Iraqi military repeatedly fled. They didn't fight.
What did they have to fight for? A puppet government put in place by the US government?
Tammy's a liar and she's a liar who hides behind "my helicopter crashed."
Tammy is a press stooge. In 2006, she ran for Congress and failed. Because to know Tammy is to strongly dislike her. But before the Congressional election, there was the primary. And the press -- big and small -- lied and pimped Tammy as an anti-war candidate, a peace candidate. She was nothing of the sort. One of the funnies moments of Laura Flanders' AIR AMERICA RADIO show (when she was in charge, before THE NATION took over and started dictating her guests) was when Laura was promoting the hell out of Tammy, live on air, yet again, only to have a guest say, wait, she's not progressive, she's not even the progressive Democrat in that primary, it's Christine Cegelis.
Laura was shocked. Laura was surprised. Laura said she didn't know. And with that show, the coverage ended. Now do we applaud Laura for that? Or do we maybe point out the fact that if she really was shocked and surprised, the right thing to do was to have Christine on her show the following weekend? This is when the show was live and on Saturday and Sunday nights. Long before THE NATION took over -- they dumped what's his face and gave Laura the show THE NATION had always done but with strings attached. Laura could have whomever she wanted on her show and did. Remember the guests (plural, yes) who appeared to explain that Hurricane Katrina wasn't that bad, that it was really bombs set up around New Orleans?
Laura hopes you don't remember and maybe you don't -- but me? I never forget.
The press sold Tammy as a progressive and there was Laura promoting her as such while ignoring the actual progressive in the race.
So Tammy loses but has so many friends in war places that she moves along, one scandal after another, and eventually fails upward into the Senate.
That's how it works if you're a War Hawk who will pimp war constantly.
And few swing a bigger dick than Tammy, right? She calls Donald Trump, President of the United States, "president bone spurs." She's mocking him because he didn't serve in Vietnam.
Now no one should have served in Vietnam. It was an illegal war and it was a destructive war and a war built on lies. Yeah, it was the early version of the Iraq War.
But for dick swingers like Tammy, Seth Moulton and Pete Buttigieg, it's time to mock someone if they didn't serve in that war.
Excuse me, that's not true.
Elaine pointed out the truth last night -- these dick swingers really only attack their enemies for not serving in Iraq.
See Elaine's "Wheezie Joe, who died when you didn't go?" and learn all about how Joe Biden avoided serving in Vietnam. First with 8 years of education deferments and then with the 'fact' that he had childhood asthma -- a condition that was so serious but somehow -- who knows how? -- still allowed him to play football and baseball in high school and football in college. Asthma, poor Joe.
Earlier this week, Seth Moulton, a member of the US Congress, went on cable TV to declare that Donald Trump was not a patriot because he used deferments to avoid serving in Iraq. Furthermore, Seth insisted that by using those deferments, Donald made some other man go and might have condemned that man to death in Vietnam. Strangely enough, despite Seth's own battles with PTS, he never offered that this allegedly condemned man could have come back to the US and suffered and taken his own life.
But apparently, when you swing your big dick like Seth, Tammy and Pete love to, all the blood rushes out of your big head into your little one.
So, Seth, when you calling out Wheezie Joe? When you going to point out -- as you try to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- that Wheezie Joe may have condemned someone to death by his eight years of education deferments and then by his signed statement about his childhood asthma?
I thought Seth's entire performance was pathetic and ahistorical. But that's the performance he took to the American people. It's the same one Tammy does as she ridicules Donald Trump repeatedly and Mayor Pete does it too.
So are you three whores just going to admit you're hypocrites or are you going to apply the same standard to Joe Biden?
Wheezie Joe refused to serve and by the dick swingers 'standards' that means he is not fit to be commander-in-chief -- that's what they learned from their Little Golden Books -- the last books they apparently ever picked up which would explain their cartoonish view of the world.
Joe Biden, always craven, always whorish, declared yesterday that John McCain was a War Hero -- that's a strange definition when McCain's record is actually examined and all the crashes he had -- and that he couldn't be criticized.
Joe's the best little whore, isn't he? John McCain went on to serve decades in the Congress and, sorry, Joe, he absolutely can (and should) be slammed for that.
I remember John best for his 'brave' refusal to support GI legislation for post-911 veterans -- even GI education benefits.
John was so happy -- War Hero!-- to send men and women into needless wars but he didn't want them to have any education after. Educated people are dangerous, sheep are so much easier to manage. That's what 'War Hero' John McCain believed.
Someone needs to inform Tammy that real heroes -- war or otherwise -- don't constnatly tell their own story over and over. Refusal to grasp that? Usually a sign of vanity and an admission that you've honestly never accomplished anything so you have to pull out your war story from 15 years ago.
And military service does not make you better than anyone (or worse than anyone) and does not make you fit for leadership.
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard served in the Iraq War. Is that why she would be a good president? No. It's the fact that she questions what the US government ordered that would make her a good president.
The military trains you to follow orders. That's not a leader. If you don't progress beyond that, if you're not able to reflect on your own actions and those of your government, you've not demonstrated leadership at all.
Nothing Tammy has done or said indicates that she can process an actual experience -- military or otherwise.
Seth and I are of the same mind when it comes to PTS (including using that term) and I applaud his work on that issue but, as popped up on his Twitter feed (check for yourself), when someone tries to enlarge the topic of PTS, Seth goes running out of the rooms, hands over his ears.
PTS exists in all areas. I'm sure that the children present at school shootings (and their parents) can suffer PTS just as rape survivors and others can.
But Seth cannot build on anything. He wants to be president but even on the topic of PTS he shows his repeated inability to analyze and assess. He's so big on PTS -- but just so long as it's about the military. He had PTS and he can only relate to those who had PTS the way he did from the same source he did.
That's not leadership. That's not someone who can reach out or who can make anything better. That's a little boy who can't grow up.
A few people are starting to notice the effort to turn the government into the military. I think it's a fad -- and it's far from over -- like the late 80s leading into the hideous "re-inventing government" promoted by many -- including Al Gore. That was not an answer. That is why Glass-Stegall was repealed.
There is so much talk about that but they never connect it to the doctrine it sprung from. Dems wanting to flirt with Big Business sold out the American people and did so with the argument that privatization of this or that was needed and that there was a 'middle way' that would allow business to succeed. See, government was bad, the arghument went, and privatization was good. And we needed to free business. Glass-Stegall was born of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. When the neoliberals pimping reinventing government (actually "decimating" government) did away with it, we ended up with the great recession of the last decade.
Joe Biden, strange how he's always there like Zelig but in all the bad moments of history, was a huge supporter of 'reinventing government.' He needs to answer for that. A press that was about informing the people would ensure that he was forced to answer. A press that is not a free press but just a tool of big business will look the other way.
And does.
We need to wrap this up.
Let's note first that Joe Biden, yesterday, as he seeks the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, tried to police Americans speech -- the same Joe Biden who can't police his own hands and keep them off little girls.
Let's note that Tammy, Seth and Pete live to mock Donald Trump for not serving in Vietnam but they look the other way on Wheezie Joe -- that's known as hypocrisy -- I'm not sure that topic was ever covered in a Little Golden Book.
America needs leaders, real leaders. A Tulsi Gabbard, a Bernie Sanders, in fact, a number of people running, have demonstrated that they can assess and analyze. And that's what we need, not the dumbing down of America but this time by Joe Biden!
One more thing, in e-mails I'm asked about this posting "Rep. Susan Davis Response to Mueller Statements on..."? No, I am not in favor of impeachment and we have real issues to focus on. But everything that goes up here does not have to be my opinion or in agreement with me. I'll make my argument, others can make their own. I'm opposed to impeachment. I believe Susan presented her own case and did so very well. But, no, I do not favor impeachment.
The following sites updated:
NowThis
