Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): 4/3/22

Saturday, April 09, 2022

AS THE WORLD TURNS' Kathryn Hays has passed away

Sad news. Kathryn Hays has passed away. I was on the phone talking to my mom when I heard her sister all upset. My mom explained that Kathryn had died and that's why my aunt was so upset. I said, sadly, "Who?"

Kim Hughes on AS THE WORLD TURNS. From THE DAILY MAIL:

As the World Turns star Kathryn Hays has died aged 88.

The soap star passed away on 25th March but no cause of death has been revealed.

The actress - who worked on the long- running show for 38 years from 1972 to 2010 - began her career the 60s with roles on shows such as Hawaiian Eye, Dr Kildare, Route 66, Bonanza and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

She appeared in the Star Trek episode The Empath as Gem.

In 2010, Kathryn spoke about playing the now iconic role of Gem in the show: 'I've often thought that was an interesting role for me to play. I loved playing that. It was technically very interesting,' she said to We Love Soaps.

Adding: 'That show was fascinating to work on from a technical point of view. It was so different from a regular show.'

She went on to appear in shows in the 1960s and early 70's, including Bonanza, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Guiding Light and more.

In 1972, she was cast as Kim Sullivan Hughes on As The World Turns; her final episode as that character on September 17, 2010.

I came in on Kim as a child. She was with Nick and they ot married in Greece -- which was a big deal because they really went on location there as both my grandmother and my aunt told me.

I watched ALL MY CHILDREN as a kid and was into Jenny's storyline -- she'd run off to NYC after Liza did her part to destroy Jenny & Greg. And in NYC, she met her best friend: Jesse. Darnell Williams changed the face of soap operas. There were Black actors and actresses before then but Darnell was a star. And he won not one but two Emmys for playing Jesse. Debbi Morgan would join the cast as Angie and Jesse and Angie were the first Black super couple on daytime soaps.

But over on AS THE WORLD TURNS, they were trying to integrate young characters -- Liza, Greg and Jenny were all in high school together at Pine Valley High. So they had Kim and Nick as a couple and Nick's brother or cousin met up with Kim's step-daughter Betsy.

Who played Betsy?

Meg Ryan. She's do on to do an episode of CHARLES IN CHARGE and some CBS sitcom but then, in the blink of an eye, she'd become a film actress and, shortly after, a movie star.

Lisa - the Erica of AS THE WORLD TURNS (Erica meaning Susan Lucci's Erica Kane) -- bickered with Kim. Eventually, Kim would be replaced more or less by Barbara. Kim remained on the show but Barbara really did fill the role of the woman -- not girl -- who was the focus. Kim was kind of like Nancy by that point -- the matriarch that people spoke to -- as opposed to a character with an active storyline of her own. That's probably not a real challenge in terms of acting but role like that does require a charm on the part of the actor -- an ability to establish a relationship with the viewers. Otherwise, no one cares.

It's to Kathryn Hays' credit that she was able to carry that aspect of her role off for so long, viewers really loved Kim.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, April 8, 2022. We're staying brief to make one key point: NYT owes NYP an apology.

Do we ever learns? Or maybe the better question is: Do they ever learn>

As 2001 drew to a close, the US press began destroying their own reputations. It was one act of professional suicide after another. October 2001, for those who don't know, is when THE NEW YORK TIMES ran their first cover story linking -- falsely linking -- the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US to the government of Iraq.

There was no link.

Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq at the time. He did not allow al Qaeda to operate in Iraq. Had they operated there freely, they would have overthrown him because he was over a secular government and because they were sympathetic to those who were not in power in Saddam's Iraq.

But NYT, THE WASHINGTON POST, the broadcast networks, the cable networks, etc, etc repeated one lie after another to start that illegal war.

It's probably hard if you weren't there when it happened and if you weren't of an age to have grasped it as it happened -- hard to now understand what took place. Back then, the media could talk of nothing but Iraq. That's the same US media that ignores Iraq today that barely noted that the war hit the 19 year mark last month, that acts as though US troops are no longer in Iraq and that the US created (imposed) some wonderful government there.

They lied. They lied over and over.

Liars got rewarded.

Kevin Drum is at MOTHER JONES. No consequences. It's not just big media that rewarded liars, little media has done the same.

But they lied.

Oprah didn't suffer. She brought Judith Miller onto her daily program to lie and when an audience member challenged the lies Judith was spewing, Oprah attacked the audience member.

No one ever took accountability.

And the media suffered. In the aftermath, they wanted to pretend as though there was no reason for so many to distrust them and even now they act that way. Especially now. They don't mention Iraq and they hope everyone else has forgotten.

But that was a sea change for perception of the media.

It appears it was also a behavior shift because the media had not only done nothing to restore trust in their own profession, they have continued to present lies as fact and ignore reality while silencing any questioning.

The rolly polly and disgusting Brian Stelter of CNN was speaking this week about disinformation. No, he wasn't finally taking responsibility for his multitude of journalistic sins. The idiot really thought he had a soap box to stand upon and lecture others from. A conservative student commented with a list of the most recent appalling journalistic sins -- or some of them, there are far too many for one person to ever list unless they're delivering a 24 hour filibuster -- and Brian avoided the question and wanted to instead wanted to talk about Ukraine and how others worked with FOX NEWS there regarding a journalist and -- I'm sorry, we aren't that stupid.

And we're not whining, "Why can't you all work together!"

In fact, the problem has often been that you do work together -- right and left -- such as when you sold the illegal war on Iraq.

Working together is frequently the only work you ever do.

You're certainly not working for the public good.

You 'work' to advances causes and candidates.

You're not telling the truth. You're actively suppressing the truth.

Anne Applebaum, after disgracing herself as THE WASHINGTON POST for years (Bob Somerby long ago dubbed her Annie Apples_ wanted to tell people this week that there was no reason to cover Hunter Biden's laptop and the proof of corruption it contained.

Jonathan Turley explains:

It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all. According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.

Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference on Wednesday. The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst at Fox).

What an idiot and what a liar. She's at THE ATLANTIC now so she can probably lie more freely. But the country's not better off because of it.

Hunter Biden's laptop was a news story THE NEW YORK POST can claim credit for having broken in October 2020. I keep waiting for their triumphant column. If i'ts run, I haven't heard of it. To be honest I don't have time to comb through the web for it and depend on friends to keep me up to date.

So when one called last night and was reading from THE POST online, I was really sad. I thought it was Miranda Devine and I thought she was a better writer than what was being read. She is. It was by John Stossel. I loathe John and always have. He can argue he's been mis-portrayed by the media and that may be the case. I loathe him because he's an off-putting ass and that's from his on air personality when he used to be on 20/20.

Is he as big of an idiot as I've always thought?

Yes, he is.

I was going to destroy Mrianda for the column I thought she wrote. But it was John. Writing at THE NEW YORK POST, he wanted you to know how bad it was with the attacks on THE POST.

I'm tired of stupidity.

Ava and I covered the most important point regarding THE NY POST and the laptop and the media's response.

Do not offer that the report was dismissed.

That's not good enough.

If you're on some basic cable show, that might pass for informed.

You're not informed.

And only John could be so stupid to write for THE POST and to leave the most important detail out.

Yes, as we all know, the report was censored -- TWITTER and FACEBOOK. And as we all know, opinion columns insisted it wasn't true.

That's not the worst thing.

The worst thing? THE NEW YORK TIMES did a 'report' that they called an investigation and the 'report' centered on how supposedly people working at THE NEW YORK POST were furious with their paper over that story and did not feel it was accurate or truthful or even journalism.

NYT relied on no named source and most people in the kow say that NYT did a work of fiction (I believe that they did).

So grasp that NYT did not investigate the laptop but they did make time to 'report' on a rival paper, to attack the rival paper.

That's out of bounds. I twas out of bounds when it happened.

But that was part of the attack strategy to dismiss the story.

THE NEW YORK TIMES owes THE NEW YORK POST an apology because when they ran that article -- unsourced -- attacking the paper's integrity, they made it personal.

Again, they owe the paper an apology.

The following sites updated:

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Wednesday, April 06, 2022

Tiffany Cross is too stupid for TV -- even MSNBC

I really think MSNBC needs to remove Tiffany Cross from the airwaves because she's just too dense. She just doesn't get it. I saw the reports today about how, over the weekend, she declared that White people needed to stay out of the Will Smith attacks Chris Rock discussion. Really?

You know who's commented? C.I. and as a member of the Academy, which she is and which Tiffany Cross is not, C.I. could absolutely have written, "You're not members of the Academy, so stay out of this." She didn't write that. But she could have. Instead, she noted that this happened at her industry's events and was beamed into the homes of people around the world.

Tiffany Cross is just not very smart:

Cross then interjected, saying she would “try to put this in context for our white fellow countrymen as best I can.”

“In really, truly black America, there’s a commonality amongst us all,” she said.

“If we went to a white person’s home and it was their family dinner, we were sitting at the table, and the mother hauled off and slapped the father and everybody at the table has an opinion,” Cross added.

“If I weigh in as the guest in this home and say, ‘Yeah, you guys are terrible,’ everybody’s like, ‘I’m sorry. When did you get an opinion? This is our family table,’” she said.

This was not your family table, Tiff. This was the Oscars. Again, if you want to take that approach, fine, but it's C.I.'s family table. She's the member of the Academy, not you. Will went to an industry event and disgraced and outraged the industry. You need to stop being so dismissive to other people, Tiff. You also need to grasp that when violence takes place in public, everyone who witnesses it has every right to weigh in. You need to check your privilege and stop playing the conversation police.

And if you think that only certain people can participate, you probably need to take yourself off a generic news channel and go over to BET or another network that is geared for us.

I can't imagine anything more stupid. And if it's a 'Black thing,' then, as C.I. pointed out last week, the historical thing is that a Black man, Chris Rock, was attacked for supposedly insulting a woman's honor. There's a long history of that garbage and many have suffered (Emmett Till) due to that nonsense. It would appear Tiffany Cross is also lacking when it comes to history.

Again, MSNBC needs to remove her from the air waves. First of all, she clearly doesn't believe that the airwaves are equal for all. Second, she lacks basic understanding of history and how Black men have been targeted for violence throughout history. Third, she thinks a public event at an industry function is something she can comment on -- even though she's not a member of the film industry -- but that other people cannot comment on which goes to cognitive issues.

She also misses something that I missed as well. Ava and C.I. covered it in "Media: Theater of the Absurd " which is that Will Smith's behavior was triggering for Chris (who was assaulted and bullied as a child) and for others present for the ceremony. He should have been ejected immediately. People give a lot of lip service to caring about survivors but then, like Tiffany Cross, they just ignore the same people because it does not fit the bloviating they want to make. Again, good for Ava and C.I. for catching what others ignored and let me point out that C.I. lived with this all last week as I noted in "" -- people were coming by to talk about it constantly -- producers, wirters, directors, actors, agents and I think one costume designer. Again, this is an issue for that industry. Tiffany Cross was not a part of those conversations because she is not a part of that industry. It would have been very easy for C.I. to have written at any point that non-industry voices don't have a right to speak. She never did that. Tiffany Cross could learn a great deal from C.I.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, April 6, 2022. We live in a world that demands questions and should be demanding accountability.

Let's start with some truth from Christian Parenti at GRAY ZONE:

For two years the left has championed policies of surveillance and exclusion in the form of: punitive vaccine mandates, invasive vaccine passports, socially destructive lockdowns, and radically unaccountable censorship by large media and technology corporations. For the entire pandemic, leftists and liberals – call them the Lockdown Left – cheered on unprecedented levels of repression aimed primarily at the working class – those who could not afford private schools and could not comfortably telecommute from second homes.

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit. [1]

In Jacobin, a magazine claiming to support the working class in all its struggles, Branko Marcetic demanded the unvaccinated be barred from public transportation: “one obvious course of action is for Biden to make vaccines a requirement for mass transport.” [2] Journalist Doug Henwood has scolded the unvaccinated with: “Get over your own bloated sense of self-importance.” [3] But Henwood has championed shutting down all of society in the name of safety, while refusing to engage counter-arguments – a combination that suggests a bloated sense of self-importance of his own.

Other left intellectuals, like Benjamin Bratton, author of a Verso book on the pandemic called Return of the Real, are notable for hiding amidst academic blather: “the book’s argument is on behalf [of] a ‘positive biopolitics’ that may form the basis of viable social self-organization, but this is less a statement on behalf of ‘the political’ in some metaphysical sense than on behalf of a governmentality through which an inevitably planetary society can deliberately compose itself.” [4] This is, as the late Alex Cockburn once said, “what dumb people think smart people sound like.”

Even the American Civil Liberties Union – long a bastion of objective thinking and civil liberties absolutism – has supported the mandates, lockdowns, and censorship. David Cole, the group’s legal director, debased himself in the New York Times with a tortured op-ed explaining how everything the ACLU stood for over the last 100 years suddenly did not apply during the season of freakout and overreach. [5]

The pandemic brought out a lot of ugly in some people.

What we really needed was Michael Ratner to povide the voice of warning that he so foten did when rights and liberties were under attack, when the people were under attack. Naomi Wolf, who saw eye to eye with Michael on many civil liberty manners, tried to raise issues and was attacked and deplatformed for it.

There were serious conversations that should have taken place and because she dared to rasiet hem, she was attacked, her words distorted and the corporate press ridiculed her. I'm sure they would have tried something siilar with Michael but I would've hoped that he had enough frineds who were willing to step up and refuse to allow him to be disappeared from the conversation.

Whole rights were removed and people were attacked. All the while, I don't remember the people working to malign Naomi also taking the time to note the real crooks -- the ones making money off the pandemic.

Kevin Reed (WSWS) notes:

In the second year of the pandemic, the chief executives of the top US corporations are on track to set new compensation records while the wages of their workers were reduced. This is the conclusion drawn by several analyses of pay data submitted by a group of S&P 500 corporations to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of their annual filing requirements.

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that median pay for CEOs rose to $14.2 million last year, up from a record $13.4 million in 2020. The report said that half of the companies reported median wages for their workers increased in 2021 by 3.1 percent. However, this is less than half of last year’s inflation rate of 6.7 percent, and it means that these workers took an effective paycut.

The Journal report noted, “Most CEOs received a pay increase of 11 percent or more, and pay rose by at least 25 percent for nearly one-third of them.” It also reported that for one-third of the companies, median employee pay declined last year.

These figures are based on a review by the Journal of “pay data for more than half the index from MyLogIQ LLC.” MyLogIQ is a provider of SEC compliance services and has access to the government agency public filings database.

But Naomi Wolf, not these greedy opportunists, was the one villified?

I watched a NETFLIX special the other day -- or I tried to watch it. Ronny Chieng was funny in his previous special. So, with SPEAKEASY, I tried to endure it and hoped he'd turn it around. After eight minutes, I couldn't stomach anymore.

How brave he must feel to ridicule people. Not the powerful, of course. Cowards like him never ridicule the powerful. Instead he goes after We The People. A man with no science background wants to ridicule others for asking questions regarding science. A man raised under a totalitarian system has obviously instilled those lessons and feels no need to fight for democracy or free speech. He instead tries to shame We The People and tells people to shut up and go along with what they are told. How dare they ask questions, why, they are like the person who skips calass all semester and then shows up for the last day of the semester and is failing the final and screaming that it doesn't make sense and is just too stupid for words.

Do you ever have that dream, where you wake up and it's a final and somehow you managed to miss the entire semster of a class?

It's a nightmare I have repeatedly and that's, in part, because it did actually happen to me.

Because I wouldn't go along with what others had planned for me, I had to pay my own college costs (not the end of the world, many have to do the same). As a result, I always worked at least two jobs each semester in addition to classes. The last or the second to the last semester, I had 16 hours of classes and was working three jobs. I went to the first two weeks of a class and that was it. It was the second to the last semester. It was December when the final rolled around.

Sorry, Ronny, but I aced thefinal. I didn't scream or whine.

I guess that's how it happens in your world. Not in mine.

and in mine world, we don't attack people for daring to demand answers and acountability from tehir government. As you mock the so-called stupidity of others, I hope you grasp in a few years, just how stupid and pathetic and craven you sounded.

I don't care who is in the White House, people should always demand accountability, they should always question their government. That's what a democracy is about.

Children say inappropriate things. Especially when they're trying to be funny. That's why I don't supoprt anyone using the n-word. A seven-year-old watching Dave Chappelle (a great comedian and a friend) thinking he's cool and wanting to be like him just knows the laughs came when he said this or that. They copy it with no understanding of, for example, the historial harm of that term, the n-word. They don't get it, they don't have the history to understand it. They ust know that DAve's cool, Dave said it and it' got laughs. Huge laughs. So they mimic.

I bring that up because the post-Jon Stewart version of THE DAILY SHOW is pure and utter garbage. And Ronny has worked there. His squeals were apparently funny there. He'd squel about some Republcian and they'd love it. And, like a child, he didn't really understand what was getting the laughs. So now he makes a fool of himself in his NETFLIX special that is so undemocratic, it's practically a parody. It's the sort of thing you'd see some boot licker perform in the movie V FOR VENDDETTA with Natalie Portman. And because Ronny's high pitched squeals struck comic gold in the past, he assumes he knows how to make people laugh. He might be making some people laugh, but I worry about their state of mind.

People need to be held accountable. Jacob Crosse (WSWS) explains:

In recent days, a longstanding investigation by the Department of Justice (DoJ) into the taxes and financial affairs of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has become the subject of prominent news reports in the mainstream press. The reports, nearly all citing anonymous sources within the DoJ, confirm that the investigation, which began during the Trump administration but was not disclosed by Hunter Biden until December 2020, has broadened in scope.

As of this writing, no official charges have been made against Hunter Biden or any other member of the Biden family.

Prominent articles on the federal investigation into the younger Biden’s international business dealings began to appear in mid-March. On March 16, the New York Times reported that the president’s son recently paid off an outstanding tax liability of over $1 million. Nevertheless, “a grand jury continued to gather evidence in a wide-ranging examination of his international business dealings, according to people familiar with the case,” the newspaper wrote.

Subsequent reports, citing sources within the DoJ, confirmed that witnesses with close ties to Hunter Biden, including former business and romantic partners, are being interviewed by a federal grand jury located in Wilmington, Delaware. Among them is former business associate and fellow Yale University alumnus Devon Archer.

Archer was sentenced to 13 months imprisonment in February for his participation in a fraud scheme, following his conviction in 2018. The operation involved defrauding the Oglala Sioux tribe of roughly $60 million in bonds.

While Hunter Biden was not involved in Archer’s fraud case, the former friends and business partners both sat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, which, the DoJ has confirmed, is under investigation.

Hunter Biden was appointed to the Burisma board, despite having no experience in the field, during the period when his father, then vice president, served as the point-man for the Obama administration’s imperialist operations in Ukraine following the US-backed Maidan coup of February 2014.

Burisma paid Hunter Biden roughly $50,000 a month between 2014 and 2019. The money was wired to a Delaware-based corporation called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC, which was owned by Archer and registered by him on February 13, 2014. The company, according to a September 2020 report by Senate Republicans, acted as “a shell entity” to receive an estimated $3.5 million in payments from Burisma to Archer and Hunter Biden. In the same report, the Republicans detailed Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China.

People need tod emand answers.

It appears the Biden family, while pretending to be in public service, was trading on Joe's name and his public service for years. It ceratinly explains how a man who served on the public dime for his entire career ended up out of ofice with millions and millions of dollars. It's graft. It's corruption. And , in a democracy, politicians have to answer for that.

Ronny wants everyone to shut up and just go along. This as the US government is pimping another war. Andre Damon (WSWS) reports:

In yet another major effort to escalate NATO’s proxy war against Russia, the Biden administration is seizing upon claims by Ukrainian officials of a massacre by Russian forces in the Kiev suburb of Bucha to implement a new round of sanctions and undermine any effort at a peaceful settlement of the war.

“I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal,” US President Joe Biden said Monday. “Well, the truth of the matter, you saw what happened in Bucha. He is a war criminal.” Biden added, “We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need in order to fight.”

The American government, along with the media, proceeds according to the principle: first the conclusion, then the investigation. Biden, who more than one year after the January 6 coup attempt cannot make up his mind whether Trump is guilty of a crime, has already decided that Russian President Vladimir Putin is guilty of “war crimes” in Bucha.

The actual facts, however, do not prove the conclusion. Russian troops withdrew from Bucha right after the Kremlin promised to dramatically reduce its forces in the direction of Kiev in peace negotiations last Tuesday. For days, no significant civilian casualties were reported. On Saturday, Ukrainian forces—including members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion—entered the town, and a torrent of reports were unleashed in the Western press about alleged atrocities.

The images shown widely only indicate that bodies were found, but not who killed whom, when and under what circumstances. While video evidence has emerged of Ukrainian forces executing and torturing unarmed people, no similar evidence has emerged for Russian troops.

Given the systematic use by the United States of false allegations of atrocities to justify wars all over the world, and absent clear and convincing evidence, there is no reason to view the claims of a massacre in Bucha as anything other than war propaganda, aimed at enraging the population to justify military escalation.

Even if it were established that Russian troops fired on civilians—and that has not been established—that would not mean that they were acting under the instruction of the Russian government.

In the world Ronny promotes in his new special, you don't ask questions, you just go along.

Actually, that's the formula for a disaster -- as most people already know -- people far wiser than Ronny.

Sergeant Tim Gordon is home and I'm very glad of that. I'm also glad that Sgt Jake Pietsch, whom we noted earlier this week, is home as well.

I hope people who learn of those two returning from Iraq grasp that US troops remain on the ground there. And I hope that they grasp this is troop rotation, not a withdrawal. I hope they question why, all this time later, US troops are on the ground in Iraq and, maybe, they question why two members of the National Gaurd were there to begin with?

A lot of actions shold be raising questions but the Ronnys of the world are bothered by that. I'm bothered by the people who don't ask questions. Demadning accountability is more of a civic duty.

Some argue voting is a civic duty. At THE HILL, Kipp Jones reports:

A number of Democratic Party strategists spoke to The Hill seven months ahead of the November midterms. One of them concluded the party is doomed.

With record gas prices and four-decade high inflation pricing some Americans out of basic commodities, party insiders weighed in. The consensus was President Joe Biden and Democrats are in serious trouble.

Worried about not only losing a majority in the House, but also in the Senate, top strategists spoke of the issues Democrats face in convincing Americans to turn out and vote for them in the fall.

Bill Galston, who advised former President Bill Clinton, said Biden’s approval numbers can only go so high right now.

“My hypothesis is that, unless and until inflation comes down appreciably, that there’s going to be a ceiling on his job approval that’s a lot lower than the White House wants it to be,” Galston said.

Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones concurred. “High gas prices are one of the biggest anchors on presidential approval,” Jones said.

Biden’s approval rating is hovering at a round 40 percent. The RealClearPolitics average shows 41.0% approve of Biden’s job performance, while 53.8% disapprove.

The Biden administration has repeatedly attempted to attribute pain at the pump to Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. There was a consensus among experts that the message is not helping the president with voters.

When you fail to deliver, when inflation rises and your predecssor at least gave out toekn, tiny checks hwile you do nothing, when you have the nerave to try to normalize a possible food shortage in the us, maybe you've done enough harm to yourself and to your party.

We'll wind down with this.

INew content at THIRD:

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Tuesday, April 05, 2022

Real life Leah Chaney worse than she's portrayed in THE THING ABOUT PAM

Episode five of THE THING ABOUT PAM aired tonight. It is so great and I am really going to be sad when it wraps up (it's just a six episode series). I can't stand DA Leah. She's a crook and she should be in prison -- remember, this is based upon a real life story.

Last July, KSDK reported:

Former Lincoln County Prosecutor Leah Chaney says the worst thing that ever happened to her was winning a murder trial against Russ Faria for his wife’s 2011 stabbing death.

It set in motion a decade of public scrutiny, personal and professional allegations of misconduct against her, and now the threat of criminal charges related to how she handled the case, which has since led to an overturned conviction.

Now, a woman named Pam Hupp has been charged with the murder of Betsy Faria. Hupp has already been convicted of killing another man, Louis Gumpenberger — a man who was mentally disabled who Hupp tried to say Russ Faria sent to kidnap her.

The story – including Chaney’s handling of the case – has been the subject of national news coverage, a Dateline special and a movie is now in the making.

But for all this time, Chaney has remained silent – refusing to speak publicly about allegations that she unethically and even illegally prosecuted the case and what led her to so vigorously prosecute Russ Faria despite evidence pointing to Hupp as the killer.

Until now.

She has suffered!!! Poor Leah!!!! She;s the victim!!!!

No, she's a piece of garbage. Russ spent three years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. He spent three years in prison because of the lies Leah told in court. Leah went all in with Pam Hupp and would not allow the police to investigate her and when Russ was finally freed by another court, Leah ordered all the evidence destroyed to try to cover her tracks.

She's a monster.

Russ lost three years of his life and she's trying to pretend like she's the victim?

As bad as she comes off in the TV show, she's much, much worse.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, April 5, 2022. It's time for a specail counsel to be appointed for Hunter Biden, the Kurds do not have to sacrifice yet again to make the US government happy, and much more.

Starting with Jonathan Turley and his latest column at THE HILL:

“We absolutely stand by the president’s comment.” With those words, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield reaffirmed that President Biden maintains his son Hunter Biden did “nothing [that] was unethical” and never “made money” in China.

Those claims appear demonstrably false — and they make the positions of both the media and Attorney General Merrick Garland absolutely untenable.

For the media, the ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden by U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware has presented a growing danger of self-indictment over its prior coverage (or noncoverage). Weiss has called a long line of witnesses before a grand jury, and there is growing expectation of criminal charges against Hunter Biden.

Nothing concentrates the mind as much as a looming indictment.

Thus, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other media faced the embarrassing prospect of an indictment based on a story they previously suggested was either a nonstory or Russian disinformation. Suddenly, in recent days, they all rushed to declare the story legitimate, 18 months after the New York Post reported it in October 2020.

What quickly emerged, though, was a new narrative: None of this implicates President Biden. On CNN, White House correspondent John Harwood declared, “There is zero evidence that Vice President Biden, or President Biden, has done anything wrong in connection with what Hunter Biden has done.” Anchor Brianna Keilar then added for emphasis that Harwood was making “an important distinction.”

It was important, but not because it was true. While many media figures now willingly admit the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s abandoned-laptop story, they are avoiding what the emails found on that laptop actually contain. Hundreds of emails appear to detail a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling enterprise by the Biden family, including Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden.

An ongoing investigtation is taking place. Joe Biden and the White House are not at liberty to comment. IAs the head of the federal government, it is inappropriate for him to comment. From the beginning, the problem has not only been the lies from Joe on behalf of his son, it has also been that he doesn't grasp his role.

It is time for a speical prosecutor. One should have been appointed long ago but this behavior demonstrates that the rules are not being followedc and will not be followed. This is outrageous. Joe has created a standard for his son that is inappropriate and goes to how he is repeatedly attempting to steer the investigation with his comments as president of the United States.

He is not standing back. If this were his best friend, as president of the United States, he would not be able to comment. This is his son. We are seeing that Hunter means all ethics go out the window. Gee, wonder what message that passed on to Hunter growing up?

He has put himself into this conflict. He didn't have to speak. The appropriate response is "We do not have any comment at this time as a result of this being an ongoing investigation."

More to the point, this issue came up during the primaries and Joe lied repeatedly. His son did nothing wrong!!!! No, his sond id huge wrongs. These were ethical issues and they should have been addressed then. They weren't. But Joe ran for the nomination knowing this was out there.

He may have thought he could bully the press intos ilence on this matter foerever.

Well he bet wrong.

That's on him.

And now it is necessary for a special prosecutor to be appointed.

He has made it clear that he intends to put a thumb on the scales of justice, that he is unable to prevent himself from doing so.

And it's time for the press to stop coddling him and his crooked son. The editorial board of THE BOSTON HERALD notes:

Here’s how we see all this. A free press must remain vigilant and non-partisan while hunting for lies, crimes, abuse and neglect while calling out politicians and pundits who try to quash a good story just because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the prevailing political winds.

The New York Times and Washington Post can be great newspapers. They sometimes do meaningful work. They just need to get out of their own way.

The AP needs to stop trying to be the voice of America and just chase down the news. If a tweet or post somewhere in the cesspool of trolls and scam artists on the web does warrant coverage, then have at it. But a running feature of every little oddity that fires up TikTok is just a waste of time.

Joe Biden has become a portrait of hypocrisy. He's recently begun screaiming War Crimes at others. Richard Medhurst notes:

“Putin is a war criminal” — guy who pushed for Iraq war in the senate, and less than a year ago drone striked an entire Afghan family (the Ahmadi family), followed by a Pentagon cover up

6:35 AM · Apr 5, 2022

The World Can't Wait's Debra Sweet notes:

While the victims of U.S. wars are nameless, U.S. media is 24/7 on the tragic death Russia is bringing to Ukraine. Children, pregnant women, elderly have all died there, just as they have in Yemen by the Saudis with U.S. weapons, as they died in Libya by U.S./NATO forces.

People here are being led to cheer for a dangerous U.S. escalation, including a direct war with Russia that could ensue from a "no-fly zone," up to and including a nuclear exchange. Everyone should oppose Russia's aggression, but no one who understands what the U.S. empire has done across the globe should be cheering for U.S./NATO war on Russia.

Our WarCriminalsWatch.org site has a curated series of worthwhile background readings on this situation:

Russia’s Ukraine War Heightens Urgency Around Biden’s Nuclear Weapons Strategy
Sara Sirota, The Intercept

“Anti-Authoritarianism” as a “Cover” for Supporting U.S. Imperialism
Bob Avakian, Revcom.us

The Plank in Uncle Sam’s Eye: A Plea for Humility as War Pigs Move to “Close the Sky”
Paul Street, Counterpunch.org

Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’ Lets US Off the Hook
Bryce Greene, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

How the U.S. Started a Cold War with Russia and Left Ukraine to Fight It
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, CodePink.org

Time for the US to take the lead for peace in Ukraine: The US’s Aggressive Expansion of NATO Created This Horror; The US Can and Should End It
Dave Lindorff, This Can't Be Happening

'Let Them Kill as Many as Possible': The Roots of US Militarism in Russia and Around the World Brian Terrell, Common Dreams

OMG, War Is Kind of Horrible David Swanson, Let's Try Democracy

War Torn: Continental Drifters and the Nationless Nation Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch

On Iraq, at THE HILL, David Schenker offers nonsense:

For Washington and other supporters of a sovereign and prosperous Iraq, the October 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections were a success. Contrary to expectations, Iranian-backed Shiite Islamist parties and their militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or Hashd, were defeated at the ballot box. The Hashd lost not to Western-oriented candidates but to another credible local Shiite party whose leader’s hashtag, #NeitherEastnorWest, was an unambiguous call for an Iraq dominated by neither Tehran nor Washington. The election results mitigated toward the establishment of a new, majoritarian government — the first since the 2003 U.S. invasion — capable of pursuing better governance and an independent Iraq.

It’s cruel irony that this potential outcome, a longstanding U.S. aspiration for Iraq, appears to have been undermined in part by Washington’s best friends in Iraq: the Kurds.

The big winner in the electoral contest was Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose Sairoun political party won a plurality of the seats in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, Sadr’s “Mahdi army” emerged as a leading adversary of the U.S., and the firebrand was nearly targeted by U.S. forces. More recently, however, Sadr, an unabashed populist who tapped into the electorate’s resentment of Iranian overreach in Iraq, has developed into a somewhat more responsible politician.

How stupid do you have to be to write that garbage. Moqtada's cult turned out. Not in the numbers they have in previous elections -- he had a huge fall off. But they did turn out. He was not the clear winner. A clear winner would be someone who had enough seats to move forward without having to partner with anyone else. He had a few more seats. But coaltitions could have been cobbled together without his seats.

Does the idiot even understnad how it works in Iraq or how many MPs are needed to form a coalition?

What a lying moron.

ANd now he wants to? Blame the Kurds.

The Kurds are not the problem.

Yes, the KDP wants the presidency and yes the PUK wants the presidency. My take? The KDP got sigfinicantly more seats in the eleeciton so they should have the presidency. The PUK has consistently lost support -- a trend that no one wants to talk about in the US because it requires admitting facts that the US doesn't want to admit. Including? That every time there's a problem, the US government expects the Kurds to sacrifice their own goals and save the US government's ass by 'coming together' with some other side.

I don't think the PUK deserves the presidency.

That's my opinion.

That doesn't mean that they don't have the right to fight for it. That doesn't mean the KDP doesn't have the right to fight for it.

But, yet again, another American has emerged to insist that it is time for the Kurds to sacrifice for the 'good' of Iraq.

In other words, for the good of what the US government wants in Iraq.

Elections were held October 10th. There is no president still. That's not the Kurds fault. It is the fault of Moqtada al-Sadr who does not know how to assemble a governmentt.

Iraq had a poltiical stalemate in 2010 that lasted eight months. There the problem wasn't Nouri couldn't assemble a government. Back then, the problem was Nouri al-Maliki lost the election and refused to step down as prime minister. Eventually, Joe Biden led a negotiation resulting in The Erbil Agreement which named Nouri prime minister-desigante. Nouri imemediately put together a government.

This is the a six month political stalemate and it has lasted this long because Moqtada is incompetent.

That's where you start laying the blame, not at the Kurds.

The following sites updated: