Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Song I'm really loving right now

 

That's George Ezra's "Shotgun."  From WIKIPEDIA:

George Ezra Barnett (born 7 June 1993) is an English singer, songwriter and guitarist. After releasing two EPs, Did You Hear the Rain? in November 2013 and Cassy O' in March 2014, Ezra rose to prominence with the release of his hit single, "Budapest", which reached number one in several countries. His debut studio album, Wanted on Voyage, was released in June 2014, reaching number one in the UK and the top ten in seven other countries. It was also the third-best-selling album of 2014 in the UK.[2]

Ezra's second studio album, Staying at Tamara's, was released in March 2018 and reached number one in the UK and the top ten in eight other countries. The second single from the album, "Paradise", reached number two on the UK, while the next single, "Shotgun", reached number one, becoming Ezra's first chart-topping single in the UK, Ireland[3][4] and Australia.[5] In February 2019, he won the Brit Award for British Male Solo Artist. 


"Shotgun" is a great song.  I really love it.  Today, I listened to it about six times in a row.  


Marcia noted George last week and Elaine back in October so I made a point to listen.  I'm glad I did because I really do love "Shotgun." 



Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


 Tuesday, March 30, 2021.  The Squad remains suspect (as do those who rush to rescue The Squad from criticism), the US and Iraq gear up for talks next week and more.



If The Squad's  is not a fake ass unit, they're an incompetent one.



Daniel Luepker is correct, word salad served up, nothing of value.  And if they can't learn from their mistakes while they're in power, there's nothing that's going to get done.  Nothing of value.  And as we do Zoom talks with various groups, we hear over and over that Joe Biden didn't deliver on the stimulus promise.  And the people saying this aren't talking about the $2,000 -- clearly Joe failed there.  These are people who were willing to overlook his lie about $2,000 and acdcept the $1400.


You know, the $1400 that idiot Bernie Sanders wanted you to Tweet about -- what it meant to you?  We're hearing it meant s**t.  We're hearing that over and over because many people did not get $1400.  See THIRD's "Did Joe Biden just lose the mid-terms?" and grasp that if you had medical debt, student loan debt, whatever, you didn't get $1400.  


People are mad and angry and they have every right to be.  This will not bode well for the mid-terms.  And, if historical pattern holds, the House will flip due to the mid-terms.  Any chance of real change will have vanished.  Now was the time to push and to demand and The Squad did nothing.


By the way, numerous e-mails complain about BAD FAITH's program that we highlighted yesterday.  I didn't stream it.  I just posted it. But I hear you and that'll be strike two.  Strike one was bringing on a fake ass liar -- John Nichols -- recently.  John Nichols is a known liar.  He will lie and he will do so knowingly and convinced that he can fool you.


Samantha Power self-destructed in March of 2008 and we noted it in real time.  She had to leave Barack Obama's presidential campaign.  It wasn't for calling Hillary Clinton "a monster."  It was because of what followed -- something we covered in real time -- her BBC interview .  She dropped out of the campaign hours before the BBC started airing that interview -- the one where she explained that Barack's "promise'" of ending the Iraq War in ten months wasn't a promise and that he'd figure out what he would do and wouldn't do after he got elected.  That's why she had to walk away.


Barack was using the Iraq War to rip into Hillary -- his rival in 2008 for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- and now his top foreign policy advisor was saying Barack's words on Iraq were, to use Juan Gonzalez' phrase -- a lot of Barack-aloney.  That would have damaged him immensely at a time when the nomination could have gone either way.  So Samantha had to drop out.


Instead of focusing on that reality, John Nichols chose to write about the "monster" comment long after it really didn't matter.  Even worse, he felt the need to lie to you that Hillary and Samantha were besties.  No, they weren't.  They weren't friends but that's John Nichols serving up one lie after another.


Never forget that John Nichols held the powerful accountable for the Iraq War -- if by "the accountable" we mean Barbra Streisand.  That's who John targeted with one of his nonsense columns.  He couldn't call out the Dems in Congress that supported the war.  But he could blame Barbra (who, for the record, did not support the Iraq War).  So you've got the Iraq issues, you've got his lying for Barack about the talks regarding NAFTA with Canada (Barack decrying it in speeches on the campaign trail while his campaign staffer told Canadian officials that these were just words to win an election and he didn't mean them).  I don't know where we stop?  This is the same John Nichols who was part of the 2004 lie that Gen Wesley Clark was just a place holder and, at the convention, Hillary would declare herself a candidate.  He will spout any ridiculous lie over and over and over.


He is not to be trusted.  He offers nothing of value.  That BAD FAITH had him on as a guest is one strike against them.  Now they've gone after Eric London (WSWS) for his report that noteds:



On March 19, the Democratic Socialists of America’s magazine Democratic Left published an interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in which the Democratic congresswoman and DSA member combines the most lavish praise for the Democratic Party with vicious denunciations of socialism.

The DSA has treated the interview as an important political event. This is the first time their official magazine has interviewed the New York Congresswoman, and the interview was carefully prepared before publication. Though Democratic Left editorial board member Don McIntosh conducted the interview on January 26, it was only posted online seven weeks later. The choice of interviewer is also significant: McIntosh is a high-level operative in the AFL-CIO with close ties to the Democratic Party. He is listed as an author on the AFL-CIO’s press office website and is a long-time promoter of Democratic politicians and candidates at the NW Labor Press, which he edits.

In the interview, Ocasio-Cortez presents the Democratic Party as having been completely transformed into a working class party. She says the Biden administration and incumbent Democrats are “totally reinvent[ing] themselves in a far more progressive direction.” Pressure from the left has forced “almost a radical change” among entrenched Democratic leaders. What is needed, she says, is a turn deeper into Democratic Party electoral politics.


John Nichols doesn't do feet-to-the-fire.  He does justifications and minimizes the failures of politicians with a "D" after their name.  I'm very worried now that BAD FAITH plans to do the same.  They've got two strikes.  If April brings another, we're done with them.  I don't have time for fake asses.  Or, as Michelle Pfeiffer says in THE RUSSIA HOUSE, "I hope you're not being frivolous, Barley.  My life now only has room for truth." 


I don't believe Eric London's article needed correction, let alone clarification.  It did need amplifcation.  And BAD FAITH showed bad faith by the way they responded to it.


AOC has no real accomplishment -- and that's outside of Congress as well.  She graduated college?  Yeah, a bunch of people in the US can say that as well.  Doesn't mean they're ready for Congress.  She has an image that's not reality and never has been and Eric London, at WSWS) has a new article where he addresses that:


This milquetoast record posed a challenge to the creation of an image of Ocasio-Cortez as the champion of working people and icon of socialism. Therefore, the Democratic Party conjured up that meaningless label—“community organizer”—to present her as somehow connected to social struggles. This ploy was last used by the Democratic Party to provide Barack Obama, the drone warrior and deporter-in-chief with a mysterious background and connections to intelligence agencies, with street bona fides.

In the March 21 interview with Democratic Left, Ocasio-Cortez explained how she joined the DSA:

What initially drew me to DSA was the fact that they showed up everywhere that I showed up. I started my work as a community organizer before I even knew about the existence of DSA, and I was busy doing work in my community, working with children, working with families, advocating for educational equity.

This sheds light on the milieu in which the DSA operates. Since Ocasio-Cortez spent her post-college years in the orbit of the Democratic Party and corporate startup world, it is no wonder the DSA “showed up everywhere I showed up.”

The DSA, like Ocasio-Cortez, has no connection to the struggles of the working class, let alone socialism. Since the founding of its predecessor, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), in 1972 and the DSA in 1982, the organization has existed as a continuous presence within the Democratic Party. For fifty years, its operatives have attended Democratic National Conventions, worked as staff for Democratic Party politicians and trade unions, and fought for a “realignment” within the party.

Over this time period, the Democratic Party has turned further to the right, abandoning any pretense at social reform. All the while, the DSA has served as a left shield for the Democrats’ rightward maneuvers, assuring the population that the Democratic Party can be reformed as it launches imperialist wars across the world and eviscerates social programs and corporate regulations.

The DSA provides Ocasio-Cortez her “socialist” credentials

The DSA’s role in facilitating the rise of Ocasio-Cortez testifies to its function within the Democratic Party. In the absence of any association with social struggles, it was the DSA which provided the young Democrat and aspiring entrepreneur with a “socialist” imprimatur. This was necessary not only for Ocasio-Cortez’s “story,” it also allowed the Democratic Party to de-fang the word “socialism,” translate it into a byword for Democratic Party pressure politics, and orient workers and young people away from genuine socialism based in the working class.

Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges in the interview with Democratic Left that she joined “around the time when DSA was picketing one of the major camera companies in New York City, trying to call attention to the warehouse workers.” This is apparently a reference to DSA pickets of B&H Photo Video stores in Brooklyn that, according to DSA announcements, took place beginning in April 2017.


AOC has been made a hero when she's done nothing heroic in her life and nothing of any real value.

Turning to Iraq (a topic The Squad has been remarkably silent on), Karwan Faidhi Dri (RUDAW) reports:                                                                           


The third session of the strategic dialogue between Washington and Baghdad will begin on April 7, according to the US State Department, becoming the first such talks between the two countries since US President Joe Biden took office.

“The United States and the Republic of Iraq will hold Strategic Dialogue discussions via video teleconference on April 7th in accordance with the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement between our two countries,” said the Department’s Press Office for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in a tweet.  

The talks - aimed at bolstering bilateral relations in various sectors - were first held in June and then in August 2020, under the administration of Donald Trump. 

“The discussions will cover security and counterterrorism, economics and energy, political issues, and educational and cultural cooperation,” added the office. 


Mina Aldroubi (THE NATIONAL)offers:


US President Joe Biden’s administration will hold its first round of strategic dialogue with Iraq on April 7, the State Department said on Tuesday.

Last June, the administration of former president Donald Trump held a virtual meeting to clarify that the coalition forces are in Iraq for training and to advise Iraqi forces, so that ISIS remnants cannot make a comeback.

“The United States and the Republic of Iraq will hold Strategic Dialogue discussions via video teleconference on April 7 in accordance with the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement between our two countries,” the US State Department said.

The relationship between the US and Iraq, including its military presence in the country, is based on a strategic framework agreement signed in 2008. It called for close defence co-operation to deter threats to Iraq's “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity".

The talks, due to take place next Wednesday, will focus on security, counterterrorism, economics and energy, political issues, and educational and cultural co-operation.


At ANTIWAR.COM, Ted Galen Carpenter reflects on the 18th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.


 


The following sites updated:










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