Part of the reason I ended up falling in love with the show no longer matters.
I loved Samar (Mozhan Marno) and Tom (Ryan Eggold). Both are now off the show. Samar was an Israeli agent (Mossad) who worked with the F.B.I. Aram (Amir Arison) liked her and the two finally got together. Then she was hurt in an operation and we later learned the damage was worse than known. Her memory was going to go. As a result, the Mossad wanted to kill her because she might reveal -- unknowingly -- key details of their operations. Aram was sure he could protect her and they could make it work. She went to Reddington (James Spader) and he helped her disappear. I have high hopes that when the show does end, the last episode will reunite Samar and Aram. Tom? He was Elizabeth's husband. He was bad and he was good. And he was always interesting. He got a spin-off but that only ran one season and then he came back only to be killed. I miss him still. (The actor now stars in NBC's NEW AMSTERDAM.)
I miss Samar and Tom but there were other characters I loved. Reddington was not one of them. It was probably season three or four when I really started to love Reddington -- he is a criminal who is an informant for the F.B.I.
Harold Cooper runs the F.B.I. unit and he is played by Harry Lennix. I loved Harold from the start. He is knowing without being a know it all and in charge without being insulting. And, best of all, he is played by Mr. Lennix. He is probably one of the most appealing and likable actors working today and you may know him from DOLLHOUSE (FOX TV show starring Eliza Dushku) or the film classic THE FIVE HEARTBEATS or the films STATE OF PLAY, CHI-RAQ and RAY. This could be a minor character with the wrong actor. Harold has got a wife and I can remember one episode where they were worrying about her safety. That is it. The character needs a strong and warm actor to add layers because the scripts really do not add for Harold the way they do for the other characters.
Let me jump to Agent Donald. Diego Klattenhoff plays the character. On this week's episode, he was again ignoring calls from his brother. (If that was his brother. There are times when Donald is not fully honest.) But that is a detail that they give Donald and others but never give to Harold. Donald always strikes me as too straight-laced. I am referring to the character here, not the actor. There are moments when he actually appears to enjoy pain. I often wonder if he needs to be the sub in some S&M relationship. You sort of get the feeling that the only time he can lose control is when he is pain. My granddaughter Tracey says Mr. Klattenhoff needs to recreate his briefs scene from MEAN GIRLS but as Agent Donald Ressler.
Megan Boone plays Elizabeth, F.B.I. agent who never knows what is going on. I like Liz, she is probably my favorite character after Harold. But she never knows. She did not know her own husband. She has spent so much time thinking Reddington is her father and now he is not. He is someone named Ilya who was her mother's boyfriend. Her dead mother? Liz found out she was alive. Then Liz helped her stage her own death this season. Liz never knows. If tomorrow, she found out that Agnes was not her daughter, I would not be at all surprised.
This week's episode? The main storyline took them to Alaska with new character Alina Park (Laura Sohn) encountering hostility because -- as Liz already knew -- Alina broke the rules when she worked in Alaska. Alina ended up grabbed by bad guys and locked away with her dead mother's ex-boyfriend. Alina had to face the fact that he may have gotten her mother hooked on drugs but that she was the one who killed her mother (as a child she injected her mother with heroin -- at her mother's request/begging).
The other big story was Aram. After Samar left, he was adrift. But he ended up falling for a married woman. They were thrown together on a case where first her husband was victimized and then she was. Her husband was basically bed ridden and she and Aram began having adventures -- such as breaking into some stranger's home and having sex there. They grew closer and closer and Aram was in love. He understood that she could not leave her husband out of loyalty. Then he died and it appeared they could be together. However, Aram learned that there was a pre-nup between her husband and her. She had told him there was not one. And he has been investigating since. This episode he is able to prove that she set him up in their original meetings and that she killed her husband. He arrests her at the end of the episode.
Demby is a character I did not note above. I like Demby. He is played by Hisham Tawfiq. He is Reddington's everything -- friend, bodyguard, assistant, savior. I appreciate that when push came to shove, Demby told Liz the truth even though it meant going against Reddington.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, April 10, 2020. The betrayal. The lies that surround it. How
these lies destroy us as a person, as a country. Bernie betrayed us --
stop covering for him.
In the US, Bernie Sanders' betrayal is still fresh. Jeffrey St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) offers the following bullet points:
+ Alexis Isabel pretty much sums up our current political predicament…
+ Coming Soon in Odorama: Scratch and Sniff: the Joe Biden Story. (When select theaters reopen.)
+ Did Sanders consult the Sandernistas on his surrender to the babbling racist neoliberal in the basement? Or did he make the call on his own, as he did during the 2016 convention, blindsiding his most devoted troops once more…
+ There’s always been some inexplicable mutual affection between Bernie and Biden that I’ve never really understood. It sure wasn’t there with Hillary, who he chastised and scolded to the convention. Perhaps they bonded through their obscene votes for the Clinton Crime Bill. That kind of transgression tends to bring even the most unlikely co-conspirators together…
+ Sanders on Biden: “He’s not going to adopt my platform. I got that, alright? But if he can move in that direction, I think people will say you know what, this is a guy I think who we should support and would support.”
+ Sanders confirmed to Chris Hayes on MSDNC, what many of us suspected, that it was Obama who played the role negotiator, smooth-talking Sanders into disarming, walking away from his movement with his hands above his head and coming back in from the cold…
Laurie Dobson (COUNTERPUNCH) provides so much context on the betrayal:
In the end, this campaign was all about Bernie. This may not sound very charitable. I could not believe however, that there were no admissions of any missteps in his concession speech. No mention that he could have done more to address the concerns of many people.
For instance, although he said he was inclusive, he did not pay any particular regard to those not in the minority segments or youth age brackets that he was trying to romance. He would not stray from the talking points hammered into our brains, trying to burn a legacy into place, to make the case that he was the originator of these ideas, and, in my view, trying a little too hard to rewrite history.
His last speech as a contender showed him once more taking credit for these ideas becoming mainstream. Although he clearly was a defender, or at least a constant repeater of these ideas, was he helping “build a movement” by stamping his brand all over them? The progressive ideas that he embraced did not belong to him. Occupy was involved in income inequality long before Bernie hitched his wagon to that star.
Bernie did not come up with a tax on speculation on Wall Street (an idea that I supported in my run as an Independent from Maine for US Senate in 2008). It actually came from James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Prize. Tobin originated the concept of the STT (Securities Transaction Tax), which would be an optimal way to fight back against the tax breaks and cuts that Congress has showered on the rich for several decades. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1981/press-release/]
The fight for minimum wage has been a progressive effort since I was young, hardly a new idea. Not a Sanders idea, although to be fair, he has strongly endorsed the idea for a long time. The same goes for single payer, or healthcare for all. Others, notably Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) have fought these fights on behalf of the progressive cause.
Bernie adopted those ideas into the progressive platform he ran on. The need was evident, but the ideas are not new and are not his alone. Maybe he has fought for these things in the Senate, and as an Independent from Vermont, which would be a reasonable thing to do to stay in power, since they are among the most popular ideas for change in the country.
I am not impressed that Bernie could not summon the willpower to respond to the efforts of those who wanted him to go to battle. I wrote many columns trying to appeal to him to suit up. I attended ten of his campaign events in New Hampshire this time out and wrote and made videos to support his efforts from the beginning of this second campaign. I have tried to reach the campaign to no avail, to urge them to heighten their response and sharpen their attack on substandard candidates’ ideas.
Bernie was staggeringly passive; he let one opportunity after another go whizzing past with weak responses, if any, in the face of a growing Democratic resurgence determined to destroy him. His silences emboldened the corporate centrists, and confused supporters, who thought he would take the huge advantage they gave him and surge forth, brandishing fury and determination. Instead, he endlessly equivocated.
I have to own my part in this: I was stunned in 2016 when he said Hillary was right and that nobody cares about her damn emails. From the beginning I saw him back down. Everything since then has been consistent: he never went full tilt. He wanted to be loved more than being right at all costs. He was able to be loved again, and forgiven again, and able to let us down again. Yet I went along with it; I still worked on his behalf.
Despite his recent abdication (and, for some of us, his serial betrayal) Bernie Sanders will be remembered fondly, and he will likely be forgiven by the majority of his followers. Jacobin Magazine has written an article entitled “Thank You, Bernie,” making the case that Sanders two campaigns have made it possible to talk about socialism in America. It’s now okay apparently that he will be endorsing and campaigning for Joe Biden, who shamed Anita Hill and is now shaming Tara Reade. I have lived to witness the day this has happened. It is not a joke.
We'll note this Tweet:
My daughter is a 4th grade teacher with significant student debt working 3 jobs to survive but somehow managed to donate to
several times. Having him ‘suspend’ while #Biden is failing and 1/2 the states (including hers) yet to vote, is a HUGE GUT-PUNCH. Betrayal?
And this one:
Your inability to fight is proof that you were never truly committed to implementing the political revolution you have been talking about.
You signed the corporate welfare bill, stabbing progressives in the back.
This is the worst betrayal in American history!
It's a betrayal. I'll let others grade it on where it falls historically. But Bernie's actions are a betrayal. But it's not the only betrayal going on. COMMON DREAMS? They're still running garbage hailing Bernie -- the latest from Laura Flanders but she's is a craven liar.
There are too many liars. Let's start with Laura. She's unable to tell the truth. She whores and pretties it up to keep a corrupt system going while insisting all along that we need to be informed and active. Then stop lying.
We never fell for Russia-gate here and, in fact, we called out the demonizing of Russia back when it really went into effect and that was while Barack was president. That was in 2014. That's when it came out in the open. So when 2016 rolled around, we weren't part of the nonsense.
Russia didn't steal the election from Hillary. These were all lies.
And we noted it in real time. And we noted a lot of writers who sent their stuff in to get it included here. Some of these writers are lying now. And I'm thinking of their e-mails to me which went much further than anything they published.
I'm thinking what a bunch of liars or fools you are.
The whole point of the Russia lie was so the DNC could evade responsibility for how they blew the 2016 election.
And shame on Neera and every other whore who tried to spin a lie instead of getting accountable and working to fix the problems.
Now if Aaron Mate (I'm using him for an example because he never e-mailed this site) is going to rail about how the autopsy on the failure was never done because people were vested in lies regarding the 2016 election, he's a hypocrite or he's blind to reality if he can't see that that's what's needed right now. Aaron is writing goofball Tweets about Bernie and how wonderful he is and praise be Bernie.
F**k the hell off.
Truly.
Bernie betrayed everyone.
That's reality.
Stop rallying around him like Neera did Hillary.
If you want people to wake up and if you want them to be powerful and informed, stop lying.
We need to learn from the betrayal. Unless we want to be engaged in a cycle of betrayals.
These lies about all Bernie has done for us -- he didn't do s**t.
He rode a movement in place based on needs of the people and, in the end, he sold them out.
That's reality, Aaron Mate.
And maybe you want to be beaten every day and spend all your spare time in the ER but the rest of us don't live to be battered by politicians.
We were betrayed. If you can't be honest about that, there's no point in any of it. You're as bad as Neera. If you can't get honest about what happened so that a real and needed conversation can take place, you're as bad as Neera.
Politicians aren't my heroes. They work for us. I don't spend my time glorifying them. And I certainly don't fall in love with politicians -- I'm not that depraved.
It's time for honesty.
Let's talk about one issue -- Bernie's refusal to fight. It's why he dropped out, yes. But in debate after debate, we saw him make nice with Joe Biden.
People said things online in real time, "Oh, get active, Bernie oh do this that blah blah blah blah blah."
It was nonsense.
Here's reality. Next time we support a candidate who won't fight? We make it clear that we're not their follower, we're their boss.
We call for a donation boycott until the candidate seriously fights on the debate stage.
That's the sort of thing we need to be talking about right now.
Can you imagine if we'd sent the message to Bernie early on that we were his boss? Can you imagine the fear that he would have had if, even for two days, we stopped all donations? He would have been crapping his pants. He needed that haul to look like a real candidate. Even two days of a boycott on donations would have scared him. And should have.
We need to stop -- pay attention Aaron Mate, you clearly have Daddy issues -- looking up to our 'gods' who are false gods and we need to realize that they should be glorifying us, not the other way around. They're not Daddy and you're not a child, grow the hell up.
People can't grow up -- not honestly -- if they don't know the facts and this b.s. pretense that Bernie was our savior and our hero and we owe him so much?
He betrayed us, we don't owe him a damn thing. We never did.
Aaron Mate's current nonsense not only robs citizens of their agency, it puts them into a powerless and victim status and tells them that they don't deserve what they need.
I'm tired of the nonsesne.
When Tulsi Gabbard betrayed her supposed beliefs, we called her out. We led on it here. We didn't do a day or two after -- like one asshole I was kind enough to give credit to -- we did it the night of and for days and days after. We weren't little babies and we didn't tiptoe around like the asshole did who after I gave him credit here for his weakass nonsense, he went and credited a dead man for a piece from a year ago.
No, you stupid f**k, the issue was not, "Oh, look who was Psychic Sue and predicted everything a year ago!"
I don't need your crystal visions, you're not Stevie Nicks.
I don't care about your predictions of Tulsi. When you made your prediction, you were guessing.
The issue was the last night of July found Tulsi on stage with War Hawk Joe Biden and she gave him a pass -- not once (as asshole wrote in his most recent piece) but twice.
That's when you call out Tulsi.
But they didn't, did they. Glen Ford, after that debate, for example, did a segment on BLACK AGENDA RADIO where he praised Tulsi for being anti-war.
Huh?
Glen, you want to explain that?
Now Michael Tracey and Aaron Mate and all of the Tulsi Boobies wanted to spend weks and months after that debate avoiding reality.
Who the f**k did that help?
You Tulsi Boobies are the same people calling out Neera for her refusal to get honest and you couldn't get honest that Tulsi betrayed every one of her beliefs in that debate as well as her stated reason for running in the first place.
We need to stop lying and we need to stop defending politicians. They make choices and if they know we're going to run around after they betray us, that we're going to run around going, "Oh, I'm just so thankful that for a few months someone pretended to care about me"? Then they're never going to change.
Bernie needs to be held accountable.
He betrayed everyone.
What his supporters wanted was real and we're not going to get that by sitting on our asses and waiting four more years for another candidate we can hero worship.
We're only going to get that if we demand it. We're only going to get that if we demand our public servants start working for us. We're only going to get that if future presidential nominees get right now that we're not going airbrush out truth and pretend that it's okay that we got betrayed.
I'm not going to live in fear and I'm not going to live in denial.
We are constantly screwed because we waste our time running defense for politicians.
We need to stop that. From 2009 to 2016, the so-called 'independent' press (THE NATION, et al) was more concerned with painting this week's GOP Horror Creature each week than it was with holding Barack Obama accountable. Week after week, the powers of the president were ignored so we could focus on this minor Republican or that one. Barack was the president. He was in charge. But instead of holding him accountable, they distracted from what was taking place each week by offering b.s. nonsense about some minor player.
This happens over and over.
I like Elizabeth Holtzman but she's an idiot who lies to people. We could have had real amnesty for draft evaders and AWOLs who went to Canada. But there was Elizabeth, right after Jimmy Carter was elected, going on THE NEWSHOUR (PBS) and explaining that the evaders would be dealt with now and surely the AWOLs would be addressed later.
No, Liz, they never were.
And your prediction wasn't just false, it also gave everyone a sense of "Oh, we don't need to press on this issue anymore."
You did real damage and you did it to prop up a politician (Jimmy Carter) and to make life a little easier for him. Why?
He got health care for life. He gets a retirement fund for life. He's set for life.
And we're footing the bills.
There was no need to make life 'comfortable' for him. He should have been working and he should have been feeling real heat and real pressure.
The people we should have been defending, Liz? The poor American citizens sent into a war on lies and betrayed by their country who self-checked out and went to Canada. Jimmy was set for life after being president. The same was never true for the war resisters.
We harm ourselves -- and our world -- over and over by defending these idiots. We have an ongoing Iraq War -- that most of you want to ignore (I think I'll let rip on that in Monday's snapshot) -- because people wanted to defend their politicians. They should have been voted out of office. Instead, some idiots tried to justify the way their hero-politician voted. "Well he wouldn't been re-elected . . ."
You have not put the fear of God into your elected officials. Until you do, they will betray you and not give it a second thought because where else are you going to go -- that is their attitude.
It's time for these self-appointed voices of the people in independent media to either grow up or go away.
The fact that Joe Biden is going to be the nominee (unless he's pushed out for 'health' as a current effort is attempting) goes to how disgusting we are. Not him.
Oh, he's a nightmare. But we know he's a nightmare and have known that for years.
We're disgusting because we haven't made it clear to the Democratic Party that we're not slaves to them.
In 2004, the national ticket was John Kerry and John Edwards who both voted for the Iraq War. In 2008, the national ticket was Barack and Joe with Joe having voted for the Iraq War (Barack wasn't in the Senate but in interviews after the fact did allow that he probably would have voted for the illegal war), in 2012 again Barack and Joe, in 2016 Hillary headed the ticket and she voted for the Iraq War. Now in 2020, it's going to be Joe.
The biggest foreign policy disaster (and a war crime) in our modern history and yet every presidential election cycle since the war began in 2003 has found the Democratic Party's national ticket having at least one person who voted for the disaster, who supported it, who caused it. This will be the fifth presidential election cycle and -- barring an upset at the convention -- this will be the fifth time the Democratic Party has put someone who voted for the Iraq War on the national ticket.
That's on us. That's how disgusting we are. The Iraq War is an ongoing crime. The people of this country turned against the war in 2006. Fourteen years later, the DNC still thinks it's okay to put someone who helped start that war on the national ticket.
We have spent too much defending politicians and justifying their actions and too little time acting like responsible -- and outraged -- citizens in a democracy.
Keep on lying for politicians and we'll be in the exact same spot in four more years.
The following sites updated:
In the US, Bernie Sanders' betrayal is still fresh. Jeffrey St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) offers the following bullet points:
+ Alexis Isabel pretty much sums up our current political predicament…
+ Coming Soon in Odorama: Scratch and Sniff: the Joe Biden Story. (When select theaters reopen.)
+ Did Sanders consult the Sandernistas on his surrender to the babbling racist neoliberal in the basement? Or did he make the call on his own, as he did during the 2016 convention, blindsiding his most devoted troops once more…
+ There’s always been some inexplicable mutual affection between Bernie and Biden that I’ve never really understood. It sure wasn’t there with Hillary, who he chastised and scolded to the convention. Perhaps they bonded through their obscene votes for the Clinton Crime Bill. That kind of transgression tends to bring even the most unlikely co-conspirators together…
+ Sanders on Biden: “He’s not going to adopt my platform. I got that, alright? But if he can move in that direction, I think people will say you know what, this is a guy I think who we should support and would support.”
You say you want a Revolution©, well ya know
That isn’t what I really meant
You say you want to end student debt
Put that $18 contribution toward your rent
You say you want free health care
Ain’t gonna to happen any more
But if you go carrying pix of Creepy Joe
We can do it over again in 2024
+ Sanders confirmed to Chris Hayes on MSDNC, what many of us suspected, that it was Obama who played the role negotiator, smooth-talking Sanders into disarming, walking away from his movement with his hands above his head and coming back in from the cold…
Laurie Dobson (COUNTERPUNCH) provides so much context on the betrayal:
In the end, this campaign was all about Bernie. This may not sound very charitable. I could not believe however, that there were no admissions of any missteps in his concession speech. No mention that he could have done more to address the concerns of many people.
For instance, although he said he was inclusive, he did not pay any particular regard to those not in the minority segments or youth age brackets that he was trying to romance. He would not stray from the talking points hammered into our brains, trying to burn a legacy into place, to make the case that he was the originator of these ideas, and, in my view, trying a little too hard to rewrite history.
His last speech as a contender showed him once more taking credit for these ideas becoming mainstream. Although he clearly was a defender, or at least a constant repeater of these ideas, was he helping “build a movement” by stamping his brand all over them? The progressive ideas that he embraced did not belong to him. Occupy was involved in income inequality long before Bernie hitched his wagon to that star.
Bernie did not come up with a tax on speculation on Wall Street (an idea that I supported in my run as an Independent from Maine for US Senate in 2008). It actually came from James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Prize. Tobin originated the concept of the STT (Securities Transaction Tax), which would be an optimal way to fight back against the tax breaks and cuts that Congress has showered on the rich for several decades. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1981/press-release/]
The fight for minimum wage has been a progressive effort since I was young, hardly a new idea. Not a Sanders idea, although to be fair, he has strongly endorsed the idea for a long time. The same goes for single payer, or healthcare for all. Others, notably Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) have fought these fights on behalf of the progressive cause.
Bernie adopted those ideas into the progressive platform he ran on. The need was evident, but the ideas are not new and are not his alone. Maybe he has fought for these things in the Senate, and as an Independent from Vermont, which would be a reasonable thing to do to stay in power, since they are among the most popular ideas for change in the country.
I am not impressed that Bernie could not summon the willpower to respond to the efforts of those who wanted him to go to battle. I wrote many columns trying to appeal to him to suit up. I attended ten of his campaign events in New Hampshire this time out and wrote and made videos to support his efforts from the beginning of this second campaign. I have tried to reach the campaign to no avail, to urge them to heighten their response and sharpen their attack on substandard candidates’ ideas.
Bernie was staggeringly passive; he let one opportunity after another go whizzing past with weak responses, if any, in the face of a growing Democratic resurgence determined to destroy him. His silences emboldened the corporate centrists, and confused supporters, who thought he would take the huge advantage they gave him and surge forth, brandishing fury and determination. Instead, he endlessly equivocated.
I have to own my part in this: I was stunned in 2016 when he said Hillary was right and that nobody cares about her damn emails. From the beginning I saw him back down. Everything since then has been consistent: he never went full tilt. He wanted to be loved more than being right at all costs. He was able to be loved again, and forgiven again, and able to let us down again. Yet I went along with it; I still worked on his behalf.
Despite his recent abdication (and, for some of us, his serial betrayal) Bernie Sanders will be remembered fondly, and he will likely be forgiven by the majority of his followers. Jacobin Magazine has written an article entitled “Thank You, Bernie,” making the case that Sanders two campaigns have made it possible to talk about socialism in America. It’s now okay apparently that he will be endorsing and campaigning for Joe Biden, who shamed Anita Hill and is now shaming Tara Reade. I have lived to witness the day this has happened. It is not a joke.
We'll note this Tweet:
My daughter is a 4th grade teacher with significant student debt working 3 jobs to survive but somehow managed to donate to
several times. Having him ‘suspend’ while #Biden is failing and 1/2 the states (including hers) yet to vote, is a HUGE GUT-PUNCH. Betrayal?
And this one:
Your inability to fight is proof that you were never truly committed to implementing the political revolution you have been talking about.
You signed the corporate welfare bill, stabbing progressives in the back.
This is the worst betrayal in American history!
It's a betrayal. I'll let others grade it on where it falls historically. But Bernie's actions are a betrayal. But it's not the only betrayal going on. COMMON DREAMS? They're still running garbage hailing Bernie -- the latest from Laura Flanders but she's is a craven liar.
There are too many liars. Let's start with Laura. She's unable to tell the truth. She whores and pretties it up to keep a corrupt system going while insisting all along that we need to be informed and active. Then stop lying.
We never fell for Russia-gate here and, in fact, we called out the demonizing of Russia back when it really went into effect and that was while Barack was president. That was in 2014. That's when it came out in the open. So when 2016 rolled around, we weren't part of the nonsense.
Russia didn't steal the election from Hillary. These were all lies.
And we noted it in real time. And we noted a lot of writers who sent their stuff in to get it included here. Some of these writers are lying now. And I'm thinking of their e-mails to me which went much further than anything they published.
I'm thinking what a bunch of liars or fools you are.
The whole point of the Russia lie was so the DNC could evade responsibility for how they blew the 2016 election.
And shame on Neera and every other whore who tried to spin a lie instead of getting accountable and working to fix the problems.
Now if Aaron Mate (I'm using him for an example because he never e-mailed this site) is going to rail about how the autopsy on the failure was never done because people were vested in lies regarding the 2016 election, he's a hypocrite or he's blind to reality if he can't see that that's what's needed right now. Aaron is writing goofball Tweets about Bernie and how wonderful he is and praise be Bernie.
F**k the hell off.
Truly.
Bernie betrayed everyone.
That's reality.
Stop rallying around him like Neera did Hillary.
If you want people to wake up and if you want them to be powerful and informed, stop lying.
We need to learn from the betrayal. Unless we want to be engaged in a cycle of betrayals.
These lies about all Bernie has done for us -- he didn't do s**t.
He rode a movement in place based on needs of the people and, in the end, he sold them out.
That's reality, Aaron Mate.
And maybe you want to be beaten every day and spend all your spare time in the ER but the rest of us don't live to be battered by politicians.
We were betrayed. If you can't be honest about that, there's no point in any of it. You're as bad as Neera. If you can't get honest about what happened so that a real and needed conversation can take place, you're as bad as Neera.
Politicians aren't my heroes. They work for us. I don't spend my time glorifying them. And I certainly don't fall in love with politicians -- I'm not that depraved.
It's time for honesty.
Let's talk about one issue -- Bernie's refusal to fight. It's why he dropped out, yes. But in debate after debate, we saw him make nice with Joe Biden.
People said things online in real time, "Oh, get active, Bernie oh do this that blah blah blah blah blah."
It was nonsense.
Here's reality. Next time we support a candidate who won't fight? We make it clear that we're not their follower, we're their boss.
We call for a donation boycott until the candidate seriously fights on the debate stage.
That's the sort of thing we need to be talking about right now.
Can you imagine if we'd sent the message to Bernie early on that we were his boss? Can you imagine the fear that he would have had if, even for two days, we stopped all donations? He would have been crapping his pants. He needed that haul to look like a real candidate. Even two days of a boycott on donations would have scared him. And should have.
We need to stop -- pay attention Aaron Mate, you clearly have Daddy issues -- looking up to our 'gods' who are false gods and we need to realize that they should be glorifying us, not the other way around. They're not Daddy and you're not a child, grow the hell up.
People can't grow up -- not honestly -- if they don't know the facts and this b.s. pretense that Bernie was our savior and our hero and we owe him so much?
He betrayed us, we don't owe him a damn thing. We never did.
Aaron Mate's current nonsense not only robs citizens of their agency, it puts them into a powerless and victim status and tells them that they don't deserve what they need.
I'm tired of the nonsesne.
When Tulsi Gabbard betrayed her supposed beliefs, we called her out. We led on it here. We didn't do a day or two after -- like one asshole I was kind enough to give credit to -- we did it the night of and for days and days after. We weren't little babies and we didn't tiptoe around like the asshole did who after I gave him credit here for his weakass nonsense, he went and credited a dead man for a piece from a year ago.
No, you stupid f**k, the issue was not, "Oh, look who was Psychic Sue and predicted everything a year ago!"
I don't need your crystal visions, you're not Stevie Nicks.
I don't care about your predictions of Tulsi. When you made your prediction, you were guessing.
The issue was the last night of July found Tulsi on stage with War Hawk Joe Biden and she gave him a pass -- not once (as asshole wrote in his most recent piece) but twice.
That's when you call out Tulsi.
But they didn't, did they. Glen Ford, after that debate, for example, did a segment on BLACK AGENDA RADIO where he praised Tulsi for being anti-war.
Huh?
Glen, you want to explain that?
Now Michael Tracey and Aaron Mate and all of the Tulsi Boobies wanted to spend weks and months after that debate avoiding reality.
Who the f**k did that help?
You Tulsi Boobies are the same people calling out Neera for her refusal to get honest and you couldn't get honest that Tulsi betrayed every one of her beliefs in that debate as well as her stated reason for running in the first place.
We need to stop lying and we need to stop defending politicians. They make choices and if they know we're going to run around after they betray us, that we're going to run around going, "Oh, I'm just so thankful that for a few months someone pretended to care about me"? Then they're never going to change.
Bernie needs to be held accountable.
He betrayed everyone.
What his supporters wanted was real and we're not going to get that by sitting on our asses and waiting four more years for another candidate we can hero worship.
We're only going to get that if we demand it. We're only going to get that if we demand our public servants start working for us. We're only going to get that if future presidential nominees get right now that we're not going airbrush out truth and pretend that it's okay that we got betrayed.
I'm not going to live in fear and I'm not going to live in denial.
We are constantly screwed because we waste our time running defense for politicians.
We need to stop that. From 2009 to 2016, the so-called 'independent' press (THE NATION, et al) was more concerned with painting this week's GOP Horror Creature each week than it was with holding Barack Obama accountable. Week after week, the powers of the president were ignored so we could focus on this minor Republican or that one. Barack was the president. He was in charge. But instead of holding him accountable, they distracted from what was taking place each week by offering b.s. nonsense about some minor player.
This happens over and over.
I like Elizabeth Holtzman but she's an idiot who lies to people. We could have had real amnesty for draft evaders and AWOLs who went to Canada. But there was Elizabeth, right after Jimmy Carter was elected, going on THE NEWSHOUR (PBS) and explaining that the evaders would be dealt with now and surely the AWOLs would be addressed later.
No, Liz, they never were.
And your prediction wasn't just false, it also gave everyone a sense of "Oh, we don't need to press on this issue anymore."
You did real damage and you did it to prop up a politician (Jimmy Carter) and to make life a little easier for him. Why?
He got health care for life. He gets a retirement fund for life. He's set for life.
And we're footing the bills.
There was no need to make life 'comfortable' for him. He should have been working and he should have been feeling real heat and real pressure.
The people we should have been defending, Liz? The poor American citizens sent into a war on lies and betrayed by their country who self-checked out and went to Canada. Jimmy was set for life after being president. The same was never true for the war resisters.
We harm ourselves -- and our world -- over and over by defending these idiots. We have an ongoing Iraq War -- that most of you want to ignore (I think I'll let rip on that in Monday's snapshot) -- because people wanted to defend their politicians. They should have been voted out of office. Instead, some idiots tried to justify the way their hero-politician voted. "Well he wouldn't been re-elected . . ."
You have not put the fear of God into your elected officials. Until you do, they will betray you and not give it a second thought because where else are you going to go -- that is their attitude.
It's time for these self-appointed voices of the people in independent media to either grow up or go away.
The fact that Joe Biden is going to be the nominee (unless he's pushed out for 'health' as a current effort is attempting) goes to how disgusting we are. Not him.
Oh, he's a nightmare. But we know he's a nightmare and have known that for years.
We're disgusting because we haven't made it clear to the Democratic Party that we're not slaves to them.
In 2004, the national ticket was John Kerry and John Edwards who both voted for the Iraq War. In 2008, the national ticket was Barack and Joe with Joe having voted for the Iraq War (Barack wasn't in the Senate but in interviews after the fact did allow that he probably would have voted for the illegal war), in 2012 again Barack and Joe, in 2016 Hillary headed the ticket and she voted for the Iraq War. Now in 2020, it's going to be Joe.
The biggest foreign policy disaster (and a war crime) in our modern history and yet every presidential election cycle since the war began in 2003 has found the Democratic Party's national ticket having at least one person who voted for the disaster, who supported it, who caused it. This will be the fifth presidential election cycle and -- barring an upset at the convention -- this will be the fifth time the Democratic Party has put someone who voted for the Iraq War on the national ticket.
That's on us. That's how disgusting we are. The Iraq War is an ongoing crime. The people of this country turned against the war in 2006. Fourteen years later, the DNC still thinks it's okay to put someone who helped start that war on the national ticket.
We have spent too much defending politicians and justifying their actions and too little time acting like responsible -- and outraged -- citizens in a democracy.
Keep on lying for politicians and we'll be in the exact same spot in four more years.
The following sites updated:
