Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Tara Reade's credibility problems

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Alito Does Not Work For Ma Bell" went up a little while ago.


lilyalito


Tara Reade.  She started out human.  I assume.  She went to work for the Senate.  She said she cared about women.  She presented as a non-racist.  

Somewhere along the way it all changed.  She is now a raging homophobic racist and, from Russia, she reTweets her own kind, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Ms. Reade is very sad.  And, it must be said, very fat.  Does she qualify for heath insurance in Russia?  I am sure she is a diabetic by now -- with all that girth.  

I thought of Crazy Tara Reade while reading this from Philip Bump (WASHINGTON POST):


Earlier this month, there was a brief flurry of agitation on the right over what was presented as an effort to silence testimony from someone with information damaging to President Biden. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment against a man named Gal Luft, who, the government claims, had aided Chinese government interests and worked to evade sanctions on Iran as he served as a director at a D.C.-area think tank. Luft had previously been identified as a potential anti-Biden witness by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).


It’s not clear what evidence Luft was prepared to offer against Biden and his son Hunter, though New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, reporting about a videotaped statement from Luft, didn’t find much that was new. But still: Here was a potential witness against the government, facing criminal charges! Weaponization of the legal system … just like they’ve been doing to Donald Trump!

As you may by now be aware, this wasn’t actually the story. The Justice Department unsealed the charges this month, but the indictment had been handed down in November. Luft’s claims about Biden came to the attention of Comer and Devine, it seems, only after he’d been arrested on those charges earlier this year and began claiming that he was being targeted because of what he knew.


The argument from Comer and his allies was either misinformed or dishonest. But they appear not to have internalized any lessons from it.

On Sunday, Devine had a new report: In a letter, Devine said, the Justice Department was trying to imprison Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, before he could offer testimony to Comer’s committee on Monday.

“The DOJ is trying to arrest Devon Archer ahead of his bombshell testimony Monday about Joe Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s Ukraine business when he was VP,” Devine wrote on social media. The letter, she claimed, sought to send Archer “to jail immediately.”

Comer dutifully showed up on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday morning Fox News show, where the host asked him about the letter. (Bartiromo, like Devine, is often at the center of these discussions. It was to Bartiromo that Comer had in May admitted losing track of a witness — a witness who turned out to be Gal Luft and who had gone missing because he skipped bail on the charges that Comer earlier this month pretended were new.)

“The letter from the Department of Justice is trying to nudge the judge to go ahead and sentence Devon Archer for something unrelated than what we’re going to be talking to him about tomorrow,” Comer told Bartiromo. “It’s odd that it was issued on a Saturday and it’s odd that it’s right before he’s scheduled to come in to have an opportunity to speak in front of the House Oversight Committee and tell the American people the truth about what really went on with Burisma.” Burisma is a Ukrainian energy company that is at the center of a different allegation against the president and Hunter Biden from Comer and his allies.

“So I don’t know if this is a coincidence, Maria, or if this is another example of the weaponization of the Department of Justice,” he continued. “But I can tell you this: The lengths to which the Biden legal team has gone to try to intimidate our witnesses, to coordinate with the Department of Justice and to certainly coordinate with the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee to encourage people not to cooperate with our investigation … [is] very troubling, and I believe that this is another violation of the law, this is obstruction of justice.”

It is not.


You may remember Mr. Luft.  Ms. Reade probably hopes that you do not.  He was her best friend, to read her Twitter feed, and a truth teller like herself -- being targeted by the federal government!  Except for the fact that despite all Ms. Reade's rabid and deranged threats, he was not being targeted.

That one bit her in the ass -- a very large area on Ms. Reade.  But she learned nothing from it.  Which explains how she spent the weekend Tweeting about the latest witness being intimidated.  The one who was not intimidated.  Does Ms. Reade have any credibility left?




Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., acknowledged that the Republicans' widely-hyped witness in their probe of the Biden family's business dealings "didn't know anything" about unverified allegations that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden had accepted millions in bribes.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and fellow Republicans had hyped a closed-door session with former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer as part of their growing Biden probe that has yielded no actual proof.

Archer during the nearly five-hour testimony said that President Biden was not party to any of his son's business deals and that Hunter had merely tried to sell the illusion that he was providing access to his father, Democrats on the panel said according to The New York Times.




Archer also said President Biden met and spoke with his son's international business associates several times as Hunter Biden tried to boost his business but did not discuss any business. He said Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone to talk to business partners about 20 times over a decade, members of the panel told the Times.

Comer said that Archer testified that President Biden was put on the phone to sell the family "brand."


Poor Tara Reade, does not look like she is ever coming home to the United States.  How's your horse, Tara, how's your horse?




This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:


Tuesday, August 1, 2023.  What's the current state of US-Iraq relations, Turkey continues to assault Iraq, Ron DeSantis continues to burn through (other people's) money, Robert F. Kennedy Jr thinks it's "historic" to lie to Congress, and much more.



Atr OIL PRICE, Simon Watkins offers an analysis of the US and Iraq:


Ever since the U.S. officially ended its ‘combat mission’ in Iraq on 31 December 2021, it has been looking for a way back into the huge but still relatively untapped oil and gas regions of the country, as analysed in depth in my new book on the new global oil market order. Iraq knows this perfectly well and has sought since then to exploit this need for money from the U.S. whilst having no intention of allowing it to return in any meaningful way. Many analysts trace this reluctance back to the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 or to its continued military presence there until 2011, but although neither of these factors helped the U.S.’s ambitions in Iraq, neither of them put the final nail in their coffin either. This came with its unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – or colloquially, ‘the nuclear deal’ – with Iran in May 2018. Iran has wielded enormous power over Iraq for a very long time indeed through its various political, economic, and military proxies and the death knell of the deal with Iraq meant the same for any ambitions the U.S. had in Iraq. The game plays from Iraq and the U.S. around this starting position were seen again last week but, as in the end of Macbeth’s fleeting moment of glory, these threats and counter-threats are ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’: the game is already over, and the U.S. lost.

The last week or so has seen a series of statements from both the U.S. and Iraq surrounding Baghdad’s staggeringly omni-toxic idea that Iraq will pay with its own oil supplies for the gas and electricity that it has long been importing from Iran.

This is less of a slap in the face for Washington than a baseball bat in the crotch, as the U.S. has for years been giving Iraq tens of billions of dollars to help with its finances on the specific condition that the country reduces its imports of gas and electricity from Iran eventually to zero. For the U.S., the ending of Iraq’s reliance on Iran for around 40 percent of its power grid needs (through gas and electricity imports) would have provided an excellent starting point for American companies to move back into Iraq to begin a new commercially-based chapter in the two countries’ history. To encourage Iraq towards this end, the U.S. has granted waivers to it to continue to import gas and electricity from Iran to manage this transition away from dependence on its neighbour. Accompanying these waivers have been massive injections of U.S. funding into Iraq, usually following a visit to Washington in August or September each year by whoever was Iraq prime minister at the time to ask for money to bail out the Iraq budget. The principal reason why the Iraq budget needs bailing out every year is because of the industrial-scale corruption that lies at the heart of its oil sector administration, as also analysed in depth in my new book on the new global oil market order. This offensive manoeuvre from the Iraqi playbook is such a regular annual feature in Washington that for a long time, a very senior U.S. legal source closely connected to such discussions exclusively told OilPrice.com some years ago, it has been known as ‘the Baghdad Ballet’. 

Up until now, the most shocking betrayal of the U.S.’s optimistic trust in Iraq in this context came from the ultra-smooth Mustafa al-Kadhimi. He had danced the usual dance with the U.S. so well that in May 2020 Washington gave him even more money than before and the longest waiver ever given – 120 days – to keep importing gas and electricity from Iran, on the standard condition that Iraq stopped doing it soon. However, once the money had been banked and al-Kadhimi was safely back on home territory, Iraq signed a two-year contract – the longest period ever – with Iran to keep importing gas and electricity from it. Washington let the formidable then-State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, out of her room, and she let fly. Not only was the next waiver to Iraq the shortest ever – 30 days – but also at the press conference in which it was announced, Ortagus let it be known that the U.S. was hitting 20 Iran- and Iraq-based entities with swingeing new sanctions. She cited them as being instruments in the funnelling of money to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) elite Quds Force, which was entirely true. She added that the 20 entities were continuing to exploit Iraq’s dependence on Iran as an electricity and gas source by smuggling Iranian petroleum through the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr and money laundering through Iraqi front companies, which was also true. She also said that Washington was extremely concerned that Iraq was continuing to act as a conduit for Iranian oil and gas supplies to make their way out into the world’s major export markets. This was true as well, as additionally analysed in my new book on the new global oil market order.

On the topic of oil, IRAQI NEWS notes:

Iraq’s economy continued its oil-driven recovery after the sharp pandemic-induced recession in 2020, but non-oil sectors have stagnated, and growth constraints have reemerged. Despite a record oil windfall and a long-awaited new budget, Iraq nevertheless remains at risk of missing the opportunity to push ahead overdue reforms that are critical to boost private sector growth and create the millions of jobs needed in the next decade.

The Spring/Summer 2023 edition of the Iraq Economic Monitor, titled “Reemerging Pressures: Iraq’s Recovery at Risk “, finds that real gross domestic product (GDP) growth accelerated to 7.0 percent in 2022 driven by the oil sector, but fell to 2.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023. Consumer price inflation, which had moderated in 2022, ticked up in early 2023, fueled by the depreciation of the Iraqi dinar in the parallel market. 


Meanwhile Turkey continues to bomb and attack northern Iraq -- home to Iraq's Kurdish population.  They say this is to combat terrorism but combatting terrorism does not allow Turkey to go into Iraq on the ground, conduct attacks and set up military bases -- which it has done repeatedly while the world has looked the other way. The Stockholm Center for Freedom notes:


The UN Human Rights Council has received a formal complaint regarding Turkish airstrikes in Iraq, allegedly targeting a civilian hospital and resulting in the death of eight people, Turkish Minute reported on Monday, citing The Guardian.

The attack, which occurred on Aug. 17, 2021, destroyed the Sikeniye medical clinic in Sinjar and left more than 20 people injured.

This is the first case concerning Turkish airstrikes against the Yazidi people to be brought before the council.

The four claimants, comprising survivors and witnesses to the airstrikes, argue that the attack violated their right to life under international law, as guaranteed by Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.


Every now and then, an attack on a medical facility, a refugee camp or a resort will garner a bit of international press attention but that's about it.  Quickly, it's time for the press to move on and to ignore all the attacks on farms and villages that wound and kill so many every month.  And then we get garbate like this from ANTIWAR.COM, "Violence between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) left 17 guerrillas and four Turkish soldiers dead."  Did the press report that 17 'PKK were dead?  No.  That would mean an outlet verified the number and verified that the people killed were PKK.  From the beginning of Turkey's assault on Iraq -- that dates back to the days when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House -- we've had this same problem with ANTIWAR.COM -- Turkey issues a press release and that's treated as fact.  It's treated as fact by ANTIWAR.COM even when actual reporting reveals it was a farmer or a child.  For an outlet that calls itself "ANTIWAR," they sure are eager to identify with the aggressor.   Amberin Zaman (AL-MONITOR) reports:

Turkey’s military campaign against alleged Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in Syria and Iraq is continuing full blast with at least four fighters of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and four others from the outlawed PKK killed in drone strikes in northeast Syria and Kurdish-administered northern Iraq, Kurdish-led armed groups and Iraqi Kurdish security officials said. The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in North and Northeast Syria on Sunday denounced Russia and the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State (IS) in a statement over their silence in the face of the attacks.

The assaults continued throughout the weekend when three civilians were injured as a result of Turkish shelling that targeted a village located south of Tell Tamar in northeast Syria, Kurdish media reported. That attack came after Turkish forces carried out 40 artillery strikes against the Kurdish majority enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, which was occupied by Turkey in 2018, Kurdish media said. The claims could not be independently verified; however, a low-intensity conflict between the SDF and Turkish-allied groups has been bubbling since Turkey’s wresting of Afrin from the Syrian Kurds. Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have perished in Turkish drone and air strikes, as previously documented by Al-Monitor. 

The United States and Russia are guarantors of separate cease-fire agreements struck in the wake of Turkey’s 2019 Operation Peace Spring in which it occupied large chunks of SDF-controlled territory and permanently displaced over 200,000 civilians who continue to languish in ramshackle camps. Both wish to pull Turkey to their side as Russia’s war on Ukraine rages on. They have, in turn, grown even more hesitant to rebuke Ankara over its aggression toward PKK-linked Kurdish groups, least of all as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to weigh granting final approval to Sweden’s accession to NATO and despite the fact that Washington rejects Turkey’s characterization of the SDF as “terrorists."

Salih Muslim, co-chair of the Democratic Unity Party that shares power in the Autonomous Administration, said they had no contact with either Russia or the Syrian regime and that “our allies in the coalition say there is nothing they can do to stop Turkey’s attacks.”

“Their silence is nothing new, and we do not know what is going on behind closed doors,” Muslim told Al-Monitor.

 


Just weeks after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) promised a reset on his campaign, it definitely has entered a new phase: the death watch.

DeSantis apparently learned nothing from the humiliation of having to lay off staff this early in the campaign season. A large part of the $8 million he burned through in just six weeks was on travel, thanks to DeSantis and his wife, Casey, believing that they only deserve to fly on private jets. (Most candidates – other than Trump, who has his own plane – fly commercial to save money.)

So are Ron and Casey traveling with the masses to save money? As if you have to ask.

After debuting his “leaner” campaign, Ron hopped on a private jet to make multiple stops around Tennessee for fundraising. He broke out into CEO-speak to justify the expense.

“We do things based on R.O.I. [return on investment] and that’s on everything you do,” DeSantis said. “If it’s not a good R.O.I., then we try something else.” 

The problem that DeSantis is having is that donors are looking at their R.O.I. and deciding that DeSantis is not a good investment. A lot of big donors are sitting on the sidelines, and they don’t mind whispering to reporters about their concerns. Chief among them is whether DeSantis has told the entire truth about his campaign’s finances. A lot of big expenses seem to be missing from the first report, which suggests that things may be even worse than they already appear.

Then there is the other problem with the DeSantis campaign: DeSantis.

DeSantis (along with Casey, who is his primary adviser) seems to believe that the best way to defeat Trump for the nomination is to run as far to his right as possible. But Trump is selling a vibe, not ideas. He traffics in discontent, but he’s intentionally light on details.

DeSantis, on the other hand, is trying to prove himself with details, like his anti-woke curriculum, which describes how African Americans “benefited” from the trades they learned under slavery. When DeSantis was criticized for the sheer offensiveness of the curriculum, he doubled down to the point where he began to attack Black Republicans who dared to suggest in the mildest terms that perhaps the language was a bit off. 


I went to COUNTERPUNCH hoping for some real criticism like the above.  But unless it's Jeffrey St. Clair, no one seems aware that campaigning is going on at COUNTERPUNCH.  I see they have made time for yet another attack on BARBIE -- the doll and the film.  

That confuses me.

There have been three GI JOE films since 2009 and COUNTERPUNCH didn't feel the need to weigh in on one.  I don't remember Barbie promoting empire.  I don't remember Barbie killing people.  I don't remember Barbie treating war as a game.


I must have missed that.  Surely, if the great men of COUNTERPUNCH feel the need to near daily attack Barbie, surely she must be a war toy, right?  

No, this is sexism as usual.

Barbie is a doll and as such she's identified with females.  Now everyone plays with Barbie, it's not just little girls.  And some of the boys that play with Barbie are straight.  But when middle aged men can't get it up anymore and are frustrated they try to tear apart anything identified with the female.

Again, three GI JOE films since 2009 and not one damn word from COUNTERPUNCH.  But Barbie requires their male gaze -- their incessant -- and unwelcome -- male gaze?



Even as his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee circles the drain, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis can take pride in the fact that he is almost keeping pace with his chief rival in having embarrassing Nazi scandals. Earlier this week, in response to continuing lackluster polling, DeSantis fired 38 staffers. Axios noted that one of those staffers was Nate Hochman, a speechwriter who “secretly created and shared a pro-DeSantis video that featured the candidate at the center of a Sonnenrad, an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis and still used by some white supremacists.” Earlier, Hochman and other staffers stirred controversy by sharing a bizarre homophobic and transphobic pro-DeSantis ad (presented as a fan creation, even though evidence points to its being another in-house production). This follows hot on the heels of a June scandal when it turned out that Pedro Gonzalez, a pro-DeSantis influencer whose social media voice was being promoted by the Florida governor’s staff, had a record of anti-Semitic, racist, and fascist private direct messages.

Although he’s trying hard, DeSantis still lags behind front-runner Donald Trump—not just in the polls but also in shameless pandering to white nationalists. Trump of course has the advantage of a head start in this competition. His extensive record (crisply catalogued in a 2017 Slate article) includes his numerous sly uses of alt-right memes, his promotion of extremists like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, and his infamous “very fine people” response to the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. More recently, Trump dined last year with Adolf Hitler aficionado and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

But the GOP’s white nationalist problem extends beyond the Trump/DeSantis race. On Wednesday, Media Matters reported that Matteo Cina, a Fox News staffer and former writer for Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, repeatedly posted anti-Semitic messages on TikTok. One Cina post argued that “it is hard to talk about the Holocaust and rising anti semitism [sic] without discussing Jewish presence in banking.” Arizona Representative Paul Gosar has extensive ties to the racist far right. In 2021, he spoke at a white nationalist rally hosted by Fuentes. Earlier this year, Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo reported that Gosar’s digital director, Wade Searle, can be linked to an “extensive digital trail” on white supremacist websites, including those that support Fuentes. 

The mounting evidence that many prominent Republican politicians, including a former president, either have Nazi ties or are courting the Nazi vote is unsettling. Frequently, this fact leads to some form of denial or excuse-making—such as the claim that young Republicans are “too online” or just engaging in the familiar puerile prank of adopting rhetoric designed to shock liberals.

There is a smidgen of truth to this argument. Shock Jock mockery and malicious frat boy bigotry are familiar styles of right-wing comedy—a tradition that runs from The American Spectator to Rush Limbaugh to Donald Trump. 


As pathetic as Ron DeSantis?  Little Junior.  Little Robbie Jr.  The latest Team Kennedy missive insists it's found "RFK, Jr.'s Road to the White House 2024" -- and that's how they spelled it -- RFK-- comma-- Jr.  What year are they living in?  1993 or earlier -- that is when the style guidelines said to drop the comma.  Thirty years out of date, that's our Little Junior.

In the e-mail they insist:

Last week the censorship and attacks on RFK, Jr. reached a new low following his historic testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the weaponization of the federal government.

If you didn’t think things could get any worse than Democrat members of Congress trying to censor a presidential candidate, consider the fact that last week the Biden administration refused a routine request to provide Secret Service protection for RFK, Jr, whose father was assassinated during his 1968 presidential campaign.

While the Democratic Party is stirring up hate against Mr. Kennedy for running against President Biden, the Biden administration denied Mr. Kennedy's Secret Service protection. Yet, the Secret Service provides his own son, Hunter Biden, with protection.

Despite this bad faith from Democrats, Mr. Kennedy’s popularity keeps rising, as a new Harvard-Harris poll found that RFK, Jr. has the highest favorability rating of any candidate, including President Biden and former President Trump.



So it was "historic," was it?  The lies to Congress were historic.  Because the campaign says so?



Kennedy’s run is also getting plenty of financial support from the right. A super PAC supporting Kennedy’s presidential run, called Heal the Divide PAC, has deep ties to Republicans, F ederal Election Commission records show.

The committee’s address is listed in the care of RTA Strategy, a campaign consulting firm that has been paid for its work to help elect Republicans including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the former Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

The PAC’s treasurer, who works for RTA Strategy, is Jason Boles, a past donor to Trump and many other Republicans who includes “MAGA” and “AmericaFirst” in his bio on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Kennedy denied knowing Boles or the Heal the Divide PAC when it came up at the congressional hearing, saying, “I’ve never heard of Mr. Boles, and I’ve never heard of that super PAC.”

But video available online shows he was a guest speaker at a Heal the Divide event just two days earlier. The video features a “Heal the Divide 2024” logo with clips of him speaking at length about plans to back the U.S. dollar with bitcoin and precious metals.

Kennedy says that as president, he would fight for government honesty and transparency, heal the political divide, reverse economic decline, end war and preserve civil liberties. He has made freedom of speech a major part of his platform, arguing that the government’s communication with social media companies unfairly censors protected speech.

Kennedy's press office did not respond to several messages asking about his support from the far right.

It also did not respond to questions about whether his stance on bitcoin was at odds with being an environmentalist.

Kennedy lists the environment as one of six top priorities on his campaign website and has spent many years speaking against pollution and climate change as an environmental lawyer. Yet he has made supporting the energy-intensive cryptocurrency bitcoin a key part of his platform.

Bitcoin mining, the process of generating new coins, uses massive amounts of electricity — more than some entire countries use, said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group.

That’s because it works by tasking a network of supercomputers with solving complex mathematical puzzles — even as some other cryptocurrencies have adopted far more energy efficient mining methods.

“No one who claims to be an environmentalist could support a digital asset that needlessly consumes more electricity than all Americans use to power the lights in our homes,” Faber said. “In fact, bitcoin produces more climate pollution than any other digital asset.”


Oh, Little Junior.  Such a disappointment to everyone.  In her "Isaiah on the boomers and RFK Jr. lies so more," Elaine includes this:


“He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson, said of his cousin in an Instagram video earlier this month. “I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment.”



Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Pride of the Boomers, Pride of the Senate" went up last night.   The following sites updated:






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