Saturday, February 15, 2020

Detaching, Diabetes, and brave Iraqi women

I feel for Marcia.  A few months back, we were talking on the phone and she started crying about a friend who was being told she was going to die because she wouldn't address the weight issue.  The kidneys were failing . . .

Marcia wrote about it last night in "I can't do this anymore -- an obesity story ."

I feel so bad because I didn't ask about it in the months that followed.  I should have.  I got distracted.  I apologize to Marcia publicly right here, I am so sorry.  (I also called her on the phone last night to apologize.)

Reading Marcia's post, I really feel how hard it has continued to be for her and I do understand about her needing to detach emotionally.

When you can't help someone because they won't help themselves, it rips you apart.

I think we can all relate to that in one way or another -- a friend, a family member, a former spouse.  We've all been there.

And at some point, you either assign yourself the role of the never-ending nag or you detach. 

On news of diet and health, my father's A1C score was the lowest its been so far, so, yea Dad!!!!!

He's been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, as I've noted here before.  And we talk on the phone about low carb eating.  I'm doing it with him to be supportive.  He had a sweet tooth and I got that from him.  So we're being low carb buddies on the phone.  I'm really proud of all the hard work he's put in. 




Yea for Iraqi women, too!  They've been taking part in the months long protest and demanding a better Iraq for all.  ALJAZEERA reports:

One result of women taking on leading roles, protesters say, is that Iraq's often conservative gender dynamics have started to shift as more women carve out a place for themselves in the country's public sphere.
"Society inside the square has changed," said one of the march organisers, 23-year-old Fatama Ramadan. "You can see there's a difference [in how women are perceived] between inside and outside [of Tahrir Square]."
In Iraq, where gender segregation is often the norm, protesters have challenged the country's conservative communities by sharing the same living quarters and ensuring the equal participation of both sexes.

"Taking into consideration that the challenges of violence [are] so great against them, but they have broken down all these tribal norms, the religious fatwa, the hegemony of male mentality against them. This is a new era we are living in," said 74-year-old Hanaa Edwar, an Iraqi civil rights activist.
"They are very much different from the old generation in this respect," said Edwar, who has been active in women's rights movements for more than 50 years.
Edwar praised Iraq's young women for their public expression of anger and confidence in taking on the long-standing patriarchal norms and challenging the recent attempts to exclude them from the country's popular uprising and the public sphere. This, she went on to say, is unique to today's women of Iraq.
"These young women, they are very much different from us," she said in reference to her own generation.
"They express confidence, they express the will and determination to be at the forefront of changing Iraq," she told Al Jazeera.


They are amazing.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, February 14, 2020.  Another day, another series of embarrassments for Joe Biden.



Starting in the US where the biggest train wreck remains Joe Biden.  The former vice president continues his campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and renders the rest of America rubber neckers.  Yesterday, it was ABC's THE VIEW.


. reacts to Rush Limbaugh questioning Pete Buttigieg’s electability because of his sexuality: “Pete and I are competitors, but this guy has honor, he has courage, he’s smart as hell.”
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I'm honestly surprised that they posted the clip.

It's not cute for Joe.  And it's not cute for them.  THE DAILY BEAST had already called this moment out.


"'We get it, we understand,' Goldberg said as the other co-hosts laughed nervously. Did they really?" writes





Joe stops himself in the midst of the homophobia and it's not funny and it's not cute.  But, hear him America, there are gays he likes. It reminds me so much of his remarks -- labeled racist in real time -- about "clean, articulate" Barack.  And shame on THE VIEW for their "we get it, we understand."


You're like Sara Gilbert, you ladies only know how to rip off and steal.  Barbara Walters created that program, not Whoopi Goldberg.  It's a program every network and syndication rip off.  Yet even when Barbara was healthy, 'the ladies' of THE VIEW were pushing her to the curb.

Over at THE DAILY MAIL, Ariel Zibler offers these bullet points on Joe's appearance on the show:

  • Former vice president appeared on The View on Thursday alongside his wife, Jill 
  • He defended son Hunter as a 'good' guy who 'has done nothing but good things' 
  • Hunter Biden agreed to pay child support to Lunden Roberts, a DC-area stripper 
  • Roberts gave birth a child out of wedlock which paternity tests say is Hunter's
  • Hunter Biden was named to board of Ukrainian gas firm when his father was VP
  • Trump and GOP are demanding investigations into alleged corruption by Bidens 
  • Joe Biden expressed regret over Senator Lindsey Graham's insistence on probes
  • Biden said he still considers Graham a 'friend' despite his position on Hunter 




Hunter's done nothing but good things?

Leaving his wife and kids to shack up with his brother's widow.  Hunter's life is a carny sideshow and Joe keeps pretending otherwise.  He left his wife and kids.  And then he couldn't even be faithful to the widow.  He was cheating on her -- which is how he ended up fathering a child with Lunden Roberts.  He destroyed his kids' family and for what reason?  It clearly wasn't love for the widow.

The whole Biden family is a carny sideshow.  Daniel GOlden, Chuck Neubauer and Matthew Malone (PROPUBLICA) report:


Jim Biden was in a bind. An investor had put up $1 million to help Jim and his nephew Hunter buy a hedge fund. Then it turned out that the fund’s assets were worth less than the Bidens had thought. Now the investor wanted its money back.
It was December 2006, not long before Jim’s older brother and Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, then a Delaware senator, would announce his second campaign for president.
Jim and Hunter Biden got a loan from a bank founded by one of Joe’s political backers — William Oldaker, an attorney for the senator’s presidential campaign and Hunter’s partner at a Washington law and lobbying firm.

Oldaker had strong ties to Joe Biden’s political operation, and at the time, the bank, WashingtonFirst, had nearly half a million dollars in deposits from a Joe Biden political committee Oldaker had helped set up.
But WashingtonFirst was less than three years old, and a $1 million loan was large for its size. The bank required that loans be well secured by borrowers’ assets. Jim Biden put up his house in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, as collateral, but he already had $1.5 million in three mortgages against the property, then roughly valued at just over $1.1 million. Hunter offered as security his recently purchased Washington home, for which he had borrowed almost the entire purchase price. Oldaker did not return phone calls, and a source close to Jim and Sara Biden said all of their loans were properly secured.
It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.

These transactions illuminate the well-synchronized tango that the Biden brothers have danced for half a century. They have pursued overlapping careers — one a presidential aspirant with an expansive network of well-heeled Democratic donors; the other an entrepreneur who helped his brother raise political money and cultivated the same network to help finance his own business deals.
Jim Biden, 70, has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

“My sense is that Jim really has been trying to peddle himself on the Biden name for some time,” said Curtis Wilkie, who covered the Bidens as a Delaware political reporter.


That's the opening to the long report of corruption and debt left in the Bidens wake.  A long history of unethical trading on Joe Biden's name -- with Joe cooperating.   That's what his brothers do, that's what Hunter did.  Mark Caputo (POLITICO) reports most Americans don't share Joe's innocent view of Hunter:


A majority of voters believe it was inappropriate for Joe Biden’s son to work for a Ukrainian gas company while his father led U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the country, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
The Biden-Ukraine affair ultimately led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Voters were split 47-47 percent on whether it was appropriate for the Senate last week to acquit Trump, the poll shows. 


In contrast, 52 percent of voters believe it was inappropriate for Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to take the job with the firm Burisma, while 18 percent said it was appropriate. Fifty-seven percent said it was a scandal while 19 percent said it wasn’t. 


Any pile up or wreck is going to attract onlookers and Joe has.  Ben Cohn and Ben Feuerherd (NEW YORK POST) report:


A handful of protesters chided Joe Biden as he walked out of a Manhattan fundraiser on Thursday, urging the one-time Democratic frontrunner to drop out of the 2020 presidential race.
About half a dozen protesters from New York Communities for Change yelled at Biden as he was leaving the Wayfarer restaurant on West 57th Street near Sixth Avenue soon after 8 p.m.
“Drop out Joe! Drop out Joe!” they chanted as he walked to a waiting car.
“Skip Nevada! Skip South Carolina! Go home early!” one of the demonstrators yelled.

“We’re here to mark the death of Joe Biden’s campaign. This is what happens when you stand up for policies that are regressive. We coined Wall Street Pete and now we’re doing the same to Joe,” Alice Nascimento of Communities for Change said.


Here are some Tweets from the group who held the protest.


We found at his 250 person Wall Street fundraiser. We had a message: DROP OUT JOE! You don’t have to do this Joe. You can skip Nevada. You can skip South Carolina. And go straight home to Deleware.
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A moving eulogy on ’s 2020 campaign.


They called the cops on our memorial service for ’s campaign.


We made it to ’s Wall Street fundraiser and brought a coffin to mourn the death of Biden’s campaign. They wouldn’t let us in, but we held a service in the lobby.


On our way to Biden’s Wall Street fundraiser to mourn the death of his 2020 campaign.



On Saturday, al-Sadr said it was immoral for men and women to mix at sit-in protest areas and said protesters were using drugs and alcohol. Gender separation was also recommended in the 18-point code of conduct the cleric issued on Sunday.
On Thursday, ahead of the protests, he again slammed the protests as being rife with "nudity, promiscuity, drunkenness, immorality, debauchery ... and non-believers." He also said Iraq must not turn into the US city of Chicago, which he cited as an example of loose morals.
The statements posted on Twitter quickly became a subject of ridicule on social media.
On Thursday, women protesters waved Iraqi flags and banners in English and Arabic, chanting slogans condemning a recent security crackdown against demonstrators.
Influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of Parliament’s Saeroon bloc, issued an 18-point code of conduct Sunday for protesters in which he cautioned against the mixing of men and women at sit-in areas.
In response on Thursday, women flooded the streets of Baghdad and the southern city of Nasiriyah.
“Whoever accuses women of being weak doesn’t understand Iraq,” said protester Baan Jaafar, 35. “We will continue to defend our rights through demonstrations and participate in the decision to build a new Iraq after the demonstrations.”
Iraqi women march against the likes of Moqtada Al-Sadr and against the backward system that has tried oppress and shun them for centuries. دومج حره و اصيله يالعراقيه


A million women marched today in as part of the ongoing protests against corruption in the country. The march came as a response against calls by Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr's for protests to be segregated.


After the demonstrators refused him, and the crimes of his criminal militia exposed the blue hats and his subordination to the militant Moqtada Al-Sadr, he describes the demonstrators as immorality, immorality, atheism and homosexuality and vows to defend religious val