From THE DAILY MAIL:
A criminal investigation has been opened into an FBI official suspected of 'altering' a document in the warrant application to surveil Trump campaign advisor Carter Page during the 2016 election, according to a new report.
The alleged document tampering was uncovered during Inspector General Michael Horowitz's probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, and subsequently referred to U.S. Attorney John Durham for criminal investigation, CNN reported on Thursday.
In October 2016, the FBI sought and was granted a FISA warrant to surveil Page's communications and access all of his stored emails and texts.
To obtain the warrant, the FBI had to convince a judge in a secret court that there was probable cause that Page was a foreign agent. The 90-day warrant was renewed three times, but Page has never been charged with any crime.
That was a gross abuse of the public trust and of the position the person held. Whomever it was? Lock him (or her) up. This is not a slap on the wrist moment. This is not a probation or parole moment. This is a serious abuse that requires the person do time, real time.
It must take place to send a message and to restore public trust.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, November 22, 2019. The mess that is the US media (big and small) and protests continue in Iraq.
We noted the debate in yesterday's snapshot, let's note it again.
Why does Branko Marcetic write? I have no idea. He wrote a piece of narrative about how awful MSNBC is recently. If he'd stuck to the data he could have made that point. If he'd known the network's history, he could have made that point. Instead he just embarrassed himself and now he's done so again. The new piece wants you to know that Bernie Sanders was treated poorly "at Last Night's Debate." But it focuses a large part on "the spin room" -- remarks made by talking heads before and after the debate.
It's all a huge mess and can anyone honestly defend this paragraph:
Despite the final result, at 40 minutes into the debate, the New York Times clocked Sanders at fourth from the bottom in terms of speaking time, with Booker, Harris, Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg far ahead of him. Thirteen minutes later, he had moved up slightly in the shuffle, with Klobuchar now at the very top. Nine minutes after that, he was again fourth from the bottom, with Klobuchar sitting at third. The moderators threw it to Klobuchar after an answer from billionaire Tom Steyer about special interest money and term limits that name-checked Sanders but didn’t mention her—breaking one of the express rules of the debate format.
For those not grasping the problem, that is the textbook definition of 'horse race coverage.' That says nothing. It turns the whole thing into a horse race. Who cares where he was at this point in the debate or that point in the debate? The final results are actually the issue if speaking time is your concern.
I went to IN THESE TIMES hoping that they'd have a good strong piece on Bernie's debate performance and we could highlight from that.
All they have is Branko's nonsense. He's such a stupid idiot. Do we really need to birth another John Nichols on the left?
The idiot's applauding Michael Moore at the end. Michael Moore. Serial liar Michael Moore. Sexist pig Michael Moore. Bumper sticker 'wisdom' passed off as analysis Michael Moore. He's craven and he's disgusting. That IN THESE TIMES feels the need to praise him does not speak well to them. Is there a bigger (not a fat joke) sheep herder than Michael Moore? I don't think so.
Everything Branko has written in the piece is useless garbage. One example:
MSNBC’s post-debate discussion returned to business as usual, with commentators once again covering for another poor Biden performance that saw the former vice president claim he had been picked as Obama’s running mate because “I come out of the black community, in terms of my support,” and that he had the endorsement of the “only” black woman senator in history, to which Kamala Harris laughed. (“I thought he did pretty well,” said panelist and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson).
Actually, she noted she was the other one -- the other Black woman elected to the US Senate. And if you're noting the above, you need to point out what followed -- no one gives a f**k about fat ass Eugene Robinson. (The joke at THE POST is: Is Eugene dead? No, it's just his writing that died.) No one cares about the f**king 'spin room.' The issue here is that Joe got it wrong yet again and what did he then do? He lied. He stood on the debate stage and insisted he said "the first."
If the spin room didn't address that, there's your case for how easy they went on Joe. However, Branko, you went easy on him too by failing to note that not only was Joe wrong, Joe then tried to lie to cover being wrong. On the debate stage. In front of everyone.
That is a big deal.
That does go to character.
That does go to how someone handles stress and crisis.
Here's more Branko nonsense:
Schmidt declared that “Mayor Pete had an exceptional night” with a “pretty flawless” performance and attacked Gabbard, who had criticized Buttigieg, as “just awful,” “spectacularly bad,” and “dishonest.” (Biden, meanwhile, had “probably his strongest debate performance,” according to Schmidt).
It sure is nice of Branko to repeat the attacks on Tulsi -- without ever noting what was actually going on. For example, Tulsi rightly called out Pete's recent announcement that he was willing to send troops, if he were president, into Mexico.
Branko's writing is awful. I don't get how he thinks he helps anyone by not noting Tulsi's criticism of Tiny Pete He's more than happy to repeat the insults the 'spin room' hurled at Tulsi. Does he think that's fair?
He's written a lunatic essay and he really needs to stop a minute, take a breath and look at the garbage he wrote. It helps no one. It doesn't address any issues -- big or small. It doesn't explain how Joe Biden gets caught in a lie onstage and then lies again. It doesn't raise the issues Tulsi did about Tiny Pete's use of the US military as a personal toy.
It reads like the journal entry of a Bernie fan boy who can't convey why he supports his candidate because policy's just too tough for him.
Is MSNBC awful? It's hideous. Guess what, Branko, so was your article.
Maybe Branko couldn't focus on issues because Bernie was so disappointing on them? Niles Niemuth (WSWS) finds Bernie's latest debate peformance pretty disappointing:
Wednesday night’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia was largely unremarkable save for the degree to which the candidates sought to submit themselves to President Barack Obama’s declaration last week that the party must distance itself from “revolutionary” proposals if it hopes to defeat Trump in the 2020 elections.
The word has been sent down for the candidates to knock off the funny stuff about Medicare for All and other pie in the sky reforms and to get down to business.
Senator Bernie Sanders led the way Wednesday night with regards to political cravenness, walking back his own rhetoric about waging “political revolution” and declaring that he agreed with Obama that it wasn’t necessary to “tear down the system and remake it.”
Sanders responded to a question from moderator Kristin Welker about his oft repeated and popular slogan for a “political revolution” by solidarizing himself with the president who oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history, deported millions of immigrants and waged war abroad for two full terms.
Niles is pretty harsh on everyone on the stage (read what he goes on to say about Tulsi, for example). And that's fine. He's not a fan boy. But Branko is and wants to steer you to Bernie but somehow thinks an article that focuses zero on Bernie's policies is going to do the trick. Branko wrote an angry I-LOVE-HIM! journal entry. He didn't write a political column.
And Niles' column slams Bernie. So a reader who missed the debate (or avoided it) is presented with Branko's emotional sobbing and Niles' addressing the debate itself. Which opinion are they more likely to see as reasoned? Branko hurts Bernie's cause with bad writing.
Who's getting the case out for Bernie? Not Branko. Not JACOBIN where Branko also writes. They've got nothing about the debate. THE PROGRESSIVE becomes a dirtier joke each year. It's not even aware that debates are going on. What a useless rag it's become. It was bad at the end of Matthew Rothschild's tenure. He was promising, for example, to cover Cindy Sheehan. He didn't. It was just like his lie to me that he was going to cover The Winter Soldier event and then he didn't. What a piece of garbage. Ruth Conniff only made the rag worse. And now it stands as what? The new YES! YES! survives due to government funding (yeah, I said it and, yeah, I may say more about our 'friend' YES!, the only magazine with state-sanctioned venereal disease). THE PROGRESSIVE's going to go under at this rate. And, here's the thing, no one's going to miss it. They've spent too many years making a case for just how worthless they can be.
At COMMON DREAMS, Jake Johnson notes:
"We're going to win," declared Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday in response to a new national Emerson poll showing the Vermont senator and former Vice President Joe Biden tied for the top spot in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.
Sanders and Biden are tied with 27% support, according to Emerson. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) polled in third place at 20%, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg trailed far behind at just 7%.
The polling goes to the fact that Bernie is electable. And if Branko wanted to write something of use, he could start typing a piece about how, despite media attacks and media blackouts, Bernie's doing that well so imagine how much better his numbers would be right now if the media just treated him fairly?
We noted the debate in yesterday's snapshot, let's note it again.
Why does Branko Marcetic write? I have no idea. He wrote a piece of narrative about how awful MSNBC is recently. If he'd stuck to the data he could have made that point. If he'd known the network's history, he could have made that point. Instead he just embarrassed himself and now he's done so again. The new piece wants you to know that Bernie Sanders was treated poorly "at Last Night's Debate." But it focuses a large part on "the spin room" -- remarks made by talking heads before and after the debate.
It's all a huge mess and can anyone honestly defend this paragraph:
Despite the final result, at 40 minutes into the debate, the New York Times clocked Sanders at fourth from the bottom in terms of speaking time, with Booker, Harris, Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg far ahead of him. Thirteen minutes later, he had moved up slightly in the shuffle, with Klobuchar now at the very top. Nine minutes after that, he was again fourth from the bottom, with Klobuchar sitting at third. The moderators threw it to Klobuchar after an answer from billionaire Tom Steyer about special interest money and term limits that name-checked Sanders but didn’t mention her—breaking one of the express rules of the debate format.
For those not grasping the problem, that is the textbook definition of 'horse race coverage.' That says nothing. It turns the whole thing into a horse race. Who cares where he was at this point in the debate or that point in the debate? The final results are actually the issue if speaking time is your concern.
I went to IN THESE TIMES hoping that they'd have a good strong piece on Bernie's debate performance and we could highlight from that.
All they have is Branko's nonsense. He's such a stupid idiot. Do we really need to birth another John Nichols on the left?
The idiot's applauding Michael Moore at the end. Michael Moore. Serial liar Michael Moore. Sexist pig Michael Moore. Bumper sticker 'wisdom' passed off as analysis Michael Moore. He's craven and he's disgusting. That IN THESE TIMES feels the need to praise him does not speak well to them. Is there a bigger (not a fat joke) sheep herder than Michael Moore? I don't think so.
Everything Branko has written in the piece is useless garbage. One example:
MSNBC’s post-debate discussion returned to business as usual, with commentators once again covering for another poor Biden performance that saw the former vice president claim he had been picked as Obama’s running mate because “I come out of the black community, in terms of my support,” and that he had the endorsement of the “only” black woman senator in history, to which Kamala Harris laughed. (“I thought he did pretty well,” said panelist and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson).
Actually, she noted she was the other one -- the other Black woman elected to the US Senate. And if you're noting the above, you need to point out what followed -- no one gives a f**k about fat ass Eugene Robinson. (The joke at THE POST is: Is Eugene dead? No, it's just his writing that died.) No one cares about the f**king 'spin room.' The issue here is that Joe got it wrong yet again and what did he then do? He lied. He stood on the debate stage and insisted he said "the first."
If the spin room didn't address that, there's your case for how easy they went on Joe. However, Branko, you went easy on him too by failing to note that not only was Joe wrong, Joe then tried to lie to cover being wrong. On the debate stage. In front of everyone.
That is a big deal.
That does go to character.
That does go to how someone handles stress and crisis.
Here's more Branko nonsense:
Schmidt declared that “Mayor Pete had an exceptional night” with a “pretty flawless” performance and attacked Gabbard, who had criticized Buttigieg, as “just awful,” “spectacularly bad,” and “dishonest.” (Biden, meanwhile, had “probably his strongest debate performance,” according to Schmidt).
It sure is nice of Branko to repeat the attacks on Tulsi -- without ever noting what was actually going on. For example, Tulsi rightly called out Pete's recent announcement that he was willing to send troops, if he were president, into Mexico.
Branko's writing is awful. I don't get how he thinks he helps anyone by not noting Tulsi's criticism of Tiny Pete He's more than happy to repeat the insults the 'spin room' hurled at Tulsi. Does he think that's fair?
He's written a lunatic essay and he really needs to stop a minute, take a breath and look at the garbage he wrote. It helps no one. It doesn't address any issues -- big or small. It doesn't explain how Joe Biden gets caught in a lie onstage and then lies again. It doesn't raise the issues Tulsi did about Tiny Pete's use of the US military as a personal toy.
It reads like the journal entry of a Bernie fan boy who can't convey why he supports his candidate because policy's just too tough for him.
Is MSNBC awful? It's hideous. Guess what, Branko, so was your article.
Maybe Branko couldn't focus on issues because Bernie was so disappointing on them? Niles Niemuth (WSWS) finds Bernie's latest debate peformance pretty disappointing:
Wednesday night’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia was largely unremarkable save for the degree to which the candidates sought to submit themselves to President Barack Obama’s declaration last week that the party must distance itself from “revolutionary” proposals if it hopes to defeat Trump in the 2020 elections.
The word has been sent down for the candidates to knock off the funny stuff about Medicare for All and other pie in the sky reforms and to get down to business.
Senator Bernie Sanders led the way Wednesday night with regards to political cravenness, walking back his own rhetoric about waging “political revolution” and declaring that he agreed with Obama that it wasn’t necessary to “tear down the system and remake it.”
Sanders responded to a question from moderator Kristin Welker about his oft repeated and popular slogan for a “political revolution” by solidarizing himself with the president who oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history, deported millions of immigrants and waged war abroad for two full terms.
Niles is pretty harsh on everyone on the stage (read what he goes on to say about Tulsi, for example). And that's fine. He's not a fan boy. But Branko is and wants to steer you to Bernie but somehow thinks an article that focuses zero on Bernie's policies is going to do the trick. Branko wrote an angry I-LOVE-HIM! journal entry. He didn't write a political column.
And Niles' column slams Bernie. So a reader who missed the debate (or avoided it) is presented with Branko's emotional sobbing and Niles' addressing the debate itself. Which opinion are they more likely to see as reasoned? Branko hurts Bernie's cause with bad writing.
Who's getting the case out for Bernie? Not Branko. Not JACOBIN where Branko also writes. They've got nothing about the debate. THE PROGRESSIVE becomes a dirtier joke each year. It's not even aware that debates are going on. What a useless rag it's become. It was bad at the end of Matthew Rothschild's tenure. He was promising, for example, to cover Cindy Sheehan. He didn't. It was just like his lie to me that he was going to cover The Winter Soldier event and then he didn't. What a piece of garbage. Ruth Conniff only made the rag worse. And now it stands as what? The new YES! YES! survives due to government funding (yeah, I said it and, yeah, I may say more about our 'friend' YES!, the only magazine with state-sanctioned venereal disease). THE PROGRESSIVE's going to go under at this rate. And, here's the thing, no one's going to miss it. They've spent too many years making a case for just how worthless they can be.
At COMMON DREAMS, Jake Johnson notes:
"We're going to win," declared Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday in response to a new national Emerson poll showing the Vermont senator and former Vice President Joe Biden tied for the top spot in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.
Sanders and Biden are tied with 27% support, according to Emerson. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) polled in third place at 20%, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg trailed far behind at just 7%.
The polling goes to the fact that Bernie is electable. And if Branko wanted to write something of use, he could start typing a piece about how, despite media attacks and media blackouts, Bernie's doing that well so imagine how much better his numbers would be right now if the media just treated him fairly?
Polls keep showing that voters see @BernieSanders as the most trustworthy candidate in the race. Why? Because he's not just been consistent for 40 years -- he's been getting a lot of things done, even with the congressional odds stacked against him.
At THE NATION, Joan Walsh thinks she's still writing for SALON and can get away with garbage. (Those of us in California are more apt to be familiar with Joan's long history of mistakes -- including when Kamala got elected Attorney General but Joan didn't know which office Kamala had run for.) So she churns out a piece on what a debate run by women looks like.
Idiot, that wasn't a debate run by women. That was a debate run by corporate suits -- and you include your beloved Rachel Maddow on that list of corporate suits.
Unlike bubble girl Joan, I get out in the real world. Based on women on campuses alone, I can tell you a debate run by women would have led with Medicare For All, would've moved on to the need to address climate change and would have then gone into these never-ending wars and these coups.
We didn't get that on MSNBC because -- pay attention, Joan -- the debate wasn't run by women. What a useless idiot Joan Walsh is.
And what a useless idiot some many outlets have become. WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER -- why do you exist? To cover yourself? Oh, look, a story on your report! Oh, look a story on your own gala! Where are the pieces about events going on, actual events? Where's anything on the historic year this was with so many women seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination?
Oh, don't worry, you can do an article on it 20 years from now and calling it "Looking Back."
Then there are the idiots at WOMEN'S ENEWS.
Celebrity chasing replaces covering the news.
So they have a big article on what a feminist Carrie Fisher was!!!
I knew Carrie. I liked Carrie.
Carrie was no feminist.
She savaged many women (I'd include Carly Simon on that list of women savaged based solely on her attacks on Carly and Carly's songwriting during the making of POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE -- the film). She was not a feminist.
It's hilarious to see her painted as such. I've made one negative comment about Carrie since she died -- I did it in a THIRD roundtable -- and I'd really like to leave it at that. But if this rewriting of Carrie and adulation passed off as critique continues, I'll be addressing the realities in depth.
In the meantime, what has WOMEN'S ENEWS accomplished with their worship of Carrie Fisher? Well, it's allowed them to avoid any real issues. Way to go!!!
Medicare For All. I don't care if you think Bernie Sanders stinks and has bad breath. Medicare For All -- all by itself -- is a reason to root for Bernie. And, yes, we can root for Bernie and root for Elizabeth and root for Dario Hunter and anyone else that is standing up for Medicare For All.
It's what the country needs and that greedy bastards refuse to grant this to the American citizens goes to how corrupt the system has become. It was bad before, but it's gotten so much worse.
This is a need, not a want.
Let's grasp that Bully Boy Bush gave it to the Iraqi people. When he destroyed Iraq, he didn't give them a for-profit health system. He knew they wouldn't stand for it.
Americans shouldn't stand for it either.
At COMMON DREAMS, Lindsay Koshgarian writes:
If you’re following the presidential race, you’ve heard plenty of sniping about Medicare for All and whether we can afford it. But when it comes to endless war or endless profits for Pentagon contractors, we’re told we simply must afford it—no questions asked.
According to one study, even if universal health insurance didn’t bring health care prices down—an unlikely worst-case scenario—we’d need an extra $300 billion a year beyond our current spending to provide full insurance for everyone.
Where can we find it? In a giant pot of money that’s already rampant with waste and abuse: the Pentagon.
Right now, only about one quarter of the $738 billion Pentagon budget goes to our troops. The rest is mainly three things: the cost of maintaining 800 military installations all over the world; lucrative Pentagon contracts, which account for nearly half of the entire Pentagon budget; and, of course, our never-ending wars in the Middle East.
According to my research, if we end those wars, shut down wasteful and failing weapons programs, and close unnecessary foreign bases, we could come up with an extra $350 billion to spend on Medicare for All—without sacrificing security.
Oh, look, a woman. And she's addressing healthcare and endless war.
Joan Walsh, put down the booze and look over here, that's what a debate led by women would look like.
In Iraq, the protests continue. And REUTERS reports that, already today, 2 protesters have been killed by security forces in Baghdad -- another twenty two were left injured.
#Iraq the military is shedding blood on the streets by attacking the people, probably by the govt's orders. How else do you explain it when there have been protests in other countries for months but not as much bloodshed as in Iraq.
Terrific #Iraqprotest piece by @SofiaBarbarani
Death on the bridge: The young lives cut short in Iraq's uprising @AJEnglish
Baghdad tunnel becomes a museum for Iraq's protest movement dlvr.it/RJrv0S
This morning, Mustafa Habib reports:
Today's speech was short, Sistani described the situation by saying: "the country is in big crisis"
Breaking: the senior cleric in #Iraq Ali #Sistani confirms again his solidarity with #IraqiProtests, & said that new electoral law must be passed, this law must reflect the real representation of voters, & an independent electoral commission must be established.
The following sites updated:
