Friday, May 15, 2020

It must hurt to be as stupid as Michael Tracey

Well internet idiot and avowed sexist Michael Tracey has finally published his 'big' scoop.  Limp dick has disappointed yet again. 

Or as I like to think of Mr. Tracey, Princess Tiny Meat. 

Princess Tiny Meat couldn't find a real outlet because no one would hire anyone so hateful -- Mr. Tracey cannot even work for THE YOUNG TURKS anymore. 

So Kelly Klett is his big source.  Tara Reade, who has accused Joe Biden of assault, rented a room from Ms. Klett for a brief time.  For some reason, Mr. Tracey does not think it is important to tell you for how long.  I will get back to that.

For now, let me just note that Ms. Reade does not owe her personal stories to anyone. 

And if Ms. Klett is as stupid as Mr. Tracey, I would not tell her anything either.

Mr. Tracey insists it is suspicious that Tara did not tell Ms. Klett --"made no mention of any rape or even discomfort, despite knowing Klett’s background in supporting domestic violence victims."


She rented a room from the woman.  They were not friends -- despite Mr. Tracey insisting that they were.  More to the point, idiot man, rape and domestic violence are not the same.

How stupid and ignorant do you have to be in order to equate the two.  That is like pretending that murder and rape are the same.  Domestic violence -- by the very nature of the definition -- has to take place between a couple.  Rape does not have to.  They are not the same thing and I do not know many women that would share a rape story with their landlord -- especially when they do not like the landlord.  Tara only lived there a brief time.  She decided to move out.  Clearly, she did not trust Ms. Klett.

Michael Tracey is a damn liar and a big fool.

He writes this garbage:

Kelly Klett, an attorney in Aptos Hills, California, said Reade rented a room at her boarding house for a short period beginning in May or June of 2018. Klett worked for the Santa Clara County government for 27 years and now operates a nonprofit animal rescue sanctuary. In private practice, she said she has represented pro bono many women dealing with domestic violence. ‘If I believed the story, and there was merit, and something needed to be exposed, I would be the person who would expose it,’ Klett told me of Reade’s allegation.
Upon arrival, Klett recalled, Reade portrayed herself as a former staffer for Joe Biden with experience helping animals in need, and claimed she was studying for the Bar exam (after having graduated with a law degree approximately 15 years earlier.) Klett said she felt an affinity for Reade, and lent her Bar exam study books. But over the course of the several months she occupied the room, Klett said she never saw Reade studying for the exam; Reade eventually began to ask for additional financial assistance, and, in Klett’s mind, misrepresent her circumstances in various ways. ‘I just felt like she was starting to manipulate and use me,’ Klett said. After a while, Klett gradually came to believe it would be better for Reade to move out, and Reade eventually did so soon on her own accord, claiming she found more affordable accommodations elsewhere. (Klett said the study books, valued in the hundreds of dollars, were never returned.)
Then after Reade began telling the initial non-sexualized version of her Biden story in April 2019, Klett said she received a call from her out of the blue. ‘I guess by now you’ve seen the complaint I’ve made against Joe Biden,’ Klett recalled Reade saying. As she told Klett over the phone about the non-sexualized version of her allegations — which at the time involved only allegedly inappropriate non-sexual touching by Biden — Klett said she inferred that Reade ‘was planting a story, hoping that I would be someone who would corroborate her. She left me feeling like she’s manipulating me, to drag me into this, to be some corroboration of her story — which I can’t corroborate and don’t believe.’
Did Little Bitch Klett infer that?

Ms. Klett damn well knows that no judge would allow her to infer what something meant.  Her testimony can only consist of what was said.  She is not allowed to mind read or to attribute motive.

She is only a witness to what was said to her.

And what was said to her?

She was not asked to plant a story or to corroborate her.  That Ms. Klett believes Tara was "manipulating me, to drag me into this" -- her belief does not matter.  As an attorney, Ms. Klett damn well knows that.

She lies about Tara and she has been attacking Tara online for some time as has Mr. Tracey's other 'witness.'


 Mr. Tracey should never again be allowed to write about a woman who states she was raped.  He clearly cannot handle that accusation and he clearly thinks the behavior that survivors of rape suffered in court for decades is something that needs to be brought back.

He is smearing Tara.  He is attacking the survivor.  He is not writing about the rape or anything else.  He is just trying to put her on trial.

He is an ass.  He is trash.  He is garbage and he is a sexist pig.

Thank goodness that C.I. called Mr. Tracey's sexism out months ago.

Please read the following:



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

 
Friday, May 15, 2020.  Joe Biden tells people not to vote for him (again, he tells them this), an old bully uses THE NATION to attack a Howie Hawkins supporter, and much more.


Sharon Delgado writes the editors of THE UNION to note:


Since Tara Reade is local, I need to say publicly here in my community, as a survivor of sexual assault myself, that I support her right to speak out and abhor the way she has been insulted, abused, and threatened.
Not only are these attacks traumatic for her and for other survivors, they have a chilling effect on anyone who might consider sharing similar stories — about Joe Biden or anyone else.
People who support a woman’s right to tell their stories must be careful not to turn it into a partisan issue. I don’t want Donald Trump to win reelection, but I also don’t want the Me Too Movement to lose ground. The movement was finally challenging the centuries-old narrative that women (and children) need to keep silence when sexually assaulted or be subject to questions and comments that imply that they are lying, all to cast doubt on their accusations and to protect the man.



Tara has accused Joe Biden of assault.  Many of us find Tara credible.  That number has only increased since she did her interview with Megyn Kelly which was posted on Megyn's YOUTUBE CHANNEL last Friday evening.




Though it has not yet been a full week (that'll be around 6:30 pm EST tonight), the interview already has over 851,000 streams on Megyn's channel alone.  In addition, it has aired on many TV outlets -- in part and in full.

Joe has been on TV.  On MORNING JOE, he insisted he didn't do anything -- as best he could recall.  Then he repeated that when GOOD MORNING AMERICA tossed a minor question at him.  On THE LAST WORD last night, he again issued a denial.  As Christo Avialis explains below, a majority of voters believe Tara.




On THE LAST WORD, Joe offered a solution, "If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me."  And while some will not vote for him because they believe Tara, others feel more can be done.




And many are also calling for an investigation.  Unlike the editorial board of THE NEW YORK TIMES, most aren't calling for the DNC to conduct the investigation.  Instead, many backing this avenue insist it should be an independent investigation.

Joe keeps insisting that Tara should be vetted but also insisting that vetting should not go on in his own papers stored at the University of Delaware.  He's always hidin', that Joe Biden.

In other political news, Clintonite Peter Dreier brings his old man smell to THE NATION where he types:

Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the provocative and popular socialist Jacobin magazine, tweeted last week that he intends to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in November. And yes, it matters. Jacobin has a considerable reach. It claims to have a paid print circulation of 50,000, while its website draws over 2 million visitors a month. Jacobin is particularly influential among young leftists, with more-radical-than-thou tendencies that reflect the idealism of recent recruits to left-wing ideas. It was near-messianic in its devotion to Bernie Sanders’s candidacy.
The danger here is obvious. It only takes a small number of votes in key swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, and Florida—where the margin of victory could be a few thousand or a few hundred votes, to hand Donald Trump a victory, as we saw in 2016. In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin over Clinton was 22,748 votes, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 31,072 votes. In Michigan, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein got 51,463 votes.

Who the hell cares you musty old man?

First, no one owns someone else's vote.  If a candidate wants a vote, they need to campaign for it.  If they're unable to reach the voter then a candidate has failed at their most important job: attracting voters.

Second, your vote is your vote and you are allowed to use it however you want.  You can -- I always encourage this -- vote for anyone who speaks to you.  You can also chose not to vote.  You can vote some form of protest vote.  And you can let someone bully you into voting for candidate X.

But it's your vote and how you choose to vote is your business.

Third, Bhaskar Sunara isn't a Democrat.  How dare elderly Peter Dreier try to shame him into voting for Biden.  This is a point that Dreier doesn't get from the nursing home of his mind, not everyone in this country is either a Democrat or a Republican.  As Ann likes to point out, her parents are Greens, she was raised a Green.  That's a hard reality for Peter Dreier to accept because he doesn't accept any events that happened after 1970.

Howie Hawkins is running for the Green Party's presidential nomination.  He doesn't have the nomination yet.  Dario Hunter is still in the race.  But Ann will vote Green because she is a Green.  Idiots like Dreier don't get that and think they can bully people like Ann into dropping their beliefs and their political party to vote for Joe Biden.  That's nonsense.  (In fairness, we should note that the disaster that was David Cobb's 2004 presidential campaign included Cobb urging voters not to vote for him if they lived in a 'swing' state.)

Bullies like Dreier need to be called out.

He has no business shaming anyone for their choice of who to vote for.  If you want to go after politicians (Dreier only goes after Republican politicians), that's fine.  But stop attacking We The People.  And stop attacking democracy and freedom.  That's what you do when you try to bully someone into voting your way.

It's a sign of just how weak a candidate Joe Biden is that his supporters have to resort to shaming and bullying to try to drum up support for their pathetic candidate.

Chris Hedges interviewed Howie Hawkins earlier this week.



I don't care who you vote for.  I'm not here, this site doesn't exist, to order you how to vote.  I do hope, however you vote or not vote, what you do is what you believe in.  If you believe in the way you use your vote then it is never wasted.

You can visit JACOBIN and read their arguments.  We've highlighted them before and will highlight them again.  David Sirota is someone we highlighted a great deal.  He is now working with JACOBIN and you can find his work there.

Site issue.  We're not doing Tweets here -- not a post full of Tweets.  If you use Google Chrome, it's not a problem.  But I'm tired of the people who don't use it e-mailing the public account to complain.  Martha and Shirley are the main ones working the public account and they have enough to do without having to explain that it is Twitter and their 'blue check' nonsense that causes a big black box on reposted Tweets if you're viewing this site through Firefox of something else.


In Iraq, the big news remains Mustafa Al-Kadhimi who became prime minister on May 7th.  Abdulrahman Al-Rashed (ARAB NEWS) offers:

Al-Kadhimi’s most difficult tasks will be to save Iraq from Tehran, which wants to control its neighbor, and to steer his country away from the dangers resulting from the US-Iran conflict. This escalated after Washington revealed Tehran’s intention to cause political and security chaos in Baghdad. Soon after, the US assassinated Soleimani, Iran’s most prominent military leader, and several militia leaders, which was followed by an escalation of protests against the American military presence in Iraq. This was the highest level of confrontation on Iraqi soil.

Soon after Al-Kadhimi was confirmed as prime minister, the US government announced that, as an exception to its sanctions, it had given Iraq permission to buy oil from Iran. The move was designed to encourage the Iranians to curb their disruptive activities in Iraq.

However, Al-Kadhimi inherits the same problems that faced his predecessors, Haider Abadi and Adel Abdul Mahdi. Iran has infiltrated Iraq’s security, military and religious institutions. Sectarian and regional rifts have grown and corruption has increased. Government fiscal deficits have multiplied as a result of the collapse in oil prices and the recent street protests, which could return at any time.

The new prime minister needs to build public confidence in the government and secure the cooperation of parliament to meet the demands of demonstrators. He will also have to quickly control the militias and “restore prestige to the military and security institutions,” as he himself said on Tuesday.



At GULF NEWS, Osama al-Sharif notes:


Kadhimi, a former journalist and a fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein, has never joined a political party and until his nomination held the important job of head of the National Intelligence Service.

Most importantly his nomination was backed by both Washington and Tehran; paving the way for breaking of the stalemate that derailed the nomination of two ideologically opposed predecessors; Mohammed Tawfik Alawi, a former communications minister, and Adnan Al-Zurfi, the governor of Najaf.
[. . .]
But while Kadhimi was able to navigate his way through a divided parliament — he picked mostly independents and technocrats as ministers although he followed the same ethno-sectarian quota system shunned by protesters — lawmakers had delayed approval of seven key portfolios, including foreign affairs and oil. This could turn to be his Achilles heel.

In his first address Kadhimi promised the Iraqi people to oversee early elections, contain the spread of the coronavirus, pass an “exceptional” budget law, stem out corruption, bringing armed groups under the control of the state, and repatriate the displaced.


The Atlantic Council had a discussion yesterday with Luay al-Khatteeb who, until the new prime minister formed his new cabinet, had been Iraq's Minister of Electricity.









We'll close with this short video from Amal Clooney.






The following sites updated: