Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills): Remember when CNN was considered the last word in news?

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Remember when CNN was considered the last word in news?

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "YOUTUBE Loves Hosting Registered Sex Offenders"

Did you see this:

CNN averaged only 56,000 viewers between ages 25-54 on June 17. The last time CNN had a smaller turnout among the critical category was July 10, 2000.
Friday was also CNN’s smallest weekday audience among total viewers since June 2014, as the network settled for only 283,000 average viewers. By comparison, Fox News averaged 1.4 million total viewers and 209,000 in the key demo. It was Fox News' largest advantage over CNN since August 6, 2015.

Reminded me to note Ava and C.I.'s "TV: There were never any standards:"

The thing about TV public affairs programs (and TV news) is that it just gets worse each year.

Last week, we were reminded of that when Don Lemon decided to insult guest Philip Mudd, a paid CNN analyst, on air. They disagreed about whether or not former US President Donald Trump could be successfully tried on treason. Don, not being a legal expert, was wrong. But Don, being Don, attacked the guest repeatedly. He dismissed the legal issues and he dismissed the way it would look in public He attacked the analyst ("You're wrong!").

In fact, Don did everything but shove his hands down the front of his own pants, rub it around his crotch, take his hand out and shove his fingers under Philip's nose.

Don doesn't do that . . . on TV.

We watched this on the 'new' CNN. The one that grown ups are supposed to be returning to.

Last week really wasn't the week for CNN. Ratings revealed that Brian Stelter hit a ratings low he hadn't seen since 2019. Suddenly, an asexual, rotund man with baby teeth was demonstrated to be as unappealing as we've always noted he was. TV is a visual medium, after all. Why CNN ever hired him to begin with is a mystery for the times. Mystery for "the times,'' not THE TIMES. He worked at THE NEW YORK TIMES where he typed up a lot of nonsense -- "said to" -- such and such network or streamer is "said to" be about to -- whatever VARIETY or THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER was reporting. He'd grab that and type it up with "said to." He wasn't much of a reporter for THE TIMES and he's been even worse at CNN.

Jim Acosta decided Saturday to make a bad week even worse. He brought on Henry Winkler. The Fonz. From that bad TV show. Henry's been fortunate to carve out a career via cameos and supporting roles. He's a working actor. He had TV stardom playing a character that is not any way recognizable as a human being. And then, when the toy he was for children grew old, and the children grew up, he was the new Adam West.

Jim Acosta brought him on to talk about Herschel Walker, the former football player who is running for public office on the Republican ticket. Walker had earlier declared:

I think some of the biggest problems going on in our country today [is] we have so many celebrities telling people that they can't do it. Telling a lot of people, 'Oh, well, you got to feel bad for yourself, feel sorry for yourself.' Which is sad to me. They've done it, but they're telling you you can't do it and it's like, you did it, why they can't do it? I think they tell all the kids they can't do it, making our kids feel sorry for themselves.

Honestly, what the hell does that mean?

It's incoherent. It says everything needed by making no real sense and requiring no rebuttal. A rebuttal is just going to draw more attention to it and rally a number of people around Walker.

But Henry Winkler had to rebut and he had to prove Walker right and where do the loony tunes go these days? Ask Fatty Patty: Twitter.

So Winkler Tweeted a response:

I need to repeat this again I am an American First with every right to an opinion . . . then I am an actor. Got that Mr. Walker . . . Mr famous Athlete.

What a tough guy! The only thing scary about the 76-year-old celebrity would be his eyebrows.

Again, Herschel Walker's incoherent ramble required no comment.

Most Americans wouldn't take it seriously.

But there was faded 70s star Henry Winkler Tweeting and making people scratch their heads and wonder, "Is Walker right?"

Where ever there is s**t to be stirred, there is Jim Acosta who decided to round out CNN's bad week by bringing Henry Walker on air to comment. Was ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY too occupied with real news?

This is the sort of garbage that makes CNN look so bad. It's supposed to be a new network. It's supposed to be. But instead it got caught up in a celebrity cat fight. There are real problems in this country and in this world and, instead of covering those, Jim Acosta is recasting himself as Miss Rona Barrett.

"Henry, don't help," we shouted and cringed as he spoke with Jim.

The general premise has always bothered me. I always thought it was sow eird that so many people use this kind of tactic to say, 'Oh, you're on TV. You shouldn't say what you think.' And I think that's the thing -- craziest thing -- I've ever heard. And then when I saw Mr. Walker's Tweet, I thought to myself, first of all, we are, as a profession, we are uplifting. It's number one. Second, why wouldn't I have the same point of view to which he is entitled. He's a celebrity.

If Herschel Walker looked like an idiot with his statement, Henry Winkler came off like a bigger fool.

First off, Herny, you don't "have the same point of view to which he is entitled." You disagree with his point of view, you stupid idiot. Stop thinking you're smart enough to make up your own lines. Clearly, you need a writer.

What you meant was, "Second, why wouldn't I have the same right to share my viewpoint the way he feels he can?" That's what you meant. Learn to speak. Actually, at 76, it's too late for you to. You've been an idiot your whole life.

Second, stop taking him on. You prove his point that people like you are not smart enough to speak.

He's sharing his point of view, yes. But he's not just a celebrity at this moment. He's a candidate for the US Senate. That requires that he shares his opinions.

If Herschel was dumb and Henry was dumber, Jim Acosta was the dumbest of them all for delivering this segment on a supposed news channel at a time when the country suffers from inflation, when Iraq -- eight months after an election -- struggles to form a government, when the UK government announces that they're going to hand over journalist Julian Assange to the US government, at a time when Yellowstone Park is still recovering from flooding, at a time when . . . Go down the list And we're putting all of that on hold to bring on a 70s TV celebrity so that he can make inane and idiotic statements and we're going to call that "news."

CNN was once the most trusted voice in news. As they say, oh how the mighty have fallen.

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

Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange, Hillary Clinton continues to be annoying, climate change hits Iraq hard, and much more.

US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange.

In the video above, from Australia's ABC, Julian's brother Gabriel implores Joe to end the persecution.

Though the prime minister of Australia has stated previously that this persecution is wrong and needs to end, he shrinks on the world stage unable to defend one of his country's own citizens now that he's prime minister. Aden-Jay Wood (GBN) notes:

But the brother of Mr Assange, Gabriel Shipton, believes the case has “gone on too long” and “could be ended so easily.”

He added in an interview on GB News’ Mark Steyn: “Joe Biden could just drop these charges, move on, just let it go and Julian could walk free.”

AP notes, "The Australian government has been under mounting pressure to intervene since the British government last week ordered Assange's extradition to the United States on spying charges. [. . .] Albanese, who came to power at elections a month ago, declined to say whether he had spoken to President Joe Biden about the case."

This persecution of Julian is about silencing the press. Monday April 5, 2010, WIKILEAKS released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. That is when the persecution begins. It was an intimidation carried out by multiple presidents starting with Barack Obama, continuing with Donald Trump and now the baton for killing the press has been handed off to Joe Biden. This has had the effect of scaring off many traditional news outlets. They once partnered with Julian to report and now they act as though they've never heard of him. Saving their own asses? They may think that. If they do, they're dead wrong. An attack on Julian is an attack on all. And if the attack on Julian is not loudly and publicly rebuked, you can be sure that next up will be THE WASHINGTON POST or THE MIAMI HERALD or some other institution -- despite the US Constitution -- the same one that's being ignored in this attack on Julian. Branko Marcetik (JACOBIN) offers this exercise:

In the authoritarian political system that exists in Russia, it can be very hard to learn the truth about what the government is up to, let alone force it to change its behavior or obtain any sort of justice for its crimes. This makes government leaks, the whistleblowers who leak them, and the journalists and press outlets that publish them, all the more vital.

It also means all of those entities have a big target on their backs. So let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say Moscow has engaged in a years-long attempt to catch and imprison the man responsible for publishing a series of massive leaks that proved deeply embarrassing to the Kremlin.

Though he’s not a Russian national, has never lived in the country, nor was he there when he committed his supposed “crime,” the Russian government has taken the radical step of trying to have him extradited to its soil, so it can put him through a trial that’s a foregone conclusion and imprison him for god knows how long — effectively asserting the right to prosecute and jail any journalist anywhere in the world if they happen to publish something that displeases Russia’s ruling elite.

What was it that displeased them? One was the several tranches of secret documents he released about the various wars Moscow has fought in the twenty-first century, revealing war crimes we never knew about, a civilian death toll higher than we thought, and various cover-ups and behind-the-scenes subterfuge. Another was the decades worth of diplomatic cables that gave us unprecedented insight into the workings of Russian and other nations’ foreign policy.

But maybe his greatest crime in the minds of the country’s ruling class was publishing scandalous information about the corruption and political manipulation of one section of the political elite, embarrassing revelations almost certainly fed to him by an adversarial foreign power with its own particular motivations.

The Kremlin has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish these acts of truth-telling, and to deter any future ones. It pressured PayPal to cut off payments to him, gave immunity to a criminal and sex offender if he helped them catch him, and used its assets in the hacker world to attack a foreign government’s websites and create the pretext for its security services to enter the country he was staying in. It eventually forced him to spend seven years in a foreign embassy to avoid capture by Russian authorities, leading to the partial unravelling of his sanity. Once they finally caught him, they promptly imprisoned him without charge for the next three years, some of it spent in solitary confinement, a vicious form of torture. As a result of Moscow’s actions, when he finally showed up to his extradition trial, he struggled to say his name and age, and the extreme stress ultimately caused him to have a stroke.

All for the crime of exposing war crimes and corruption.

If you haven't caught on yet, the evil Russia above? It's not Russia. That's what the US government is doing to Julian.

The editorial board of THE HINDU observes:

Yet, the dogged pursuit of Mr. Assange has been renewed by the Biden administration. The only guarantee that it has provided is that it will not hold him in a maximum security prison, which has strict confinement rules, and that if convicted, he could serve his sentence in his native Australia if he requested it. Its position runs counter to its stated aim of bringing the U.S. back to the forefront of world democracies that promote values enshrined in the West as pivotal, such as freedom of expression accorded to the press. Subjecting Mr. Assange to trial will be a blow against media freedom in the U.S. and will also criminalise investigative journalism, particularly one that is pointed at the inner workings of the deep state. Mr. Assange’s representatives have filed an appeal before the British High Court. With the present Labor party-led Australian government — Mr. Assange remains an Australian citizen — also expressing its displeasure at the continued pursuit, the onus is on the British judiciary to do right by him.

Amnesty International has called out the move to extradite Julian:

Responding to the news that the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has certified Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act, Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General said:

“Allowing Julian Assange to be extradited to the US would put him at great risk and sends a chilling message to journalists the world over.”

“If the extradition proceeds, Amnesty International is extremely concerned that Assange faces a high risk of prolonged solitary confinement, which would violate the prohibition on torture or other ill treatment. Diplomatic assurances provided by the US that Assange will not be kept in solitary confinement cannot be taken on face value given previous history.”

“We call on the UK to refrain from extraditing Julian Assange, for the US to drop the charges, and for Assange to be freed.”

Julian Assange is likely to further appeal the extradition on separate grounds that it violates his right to freedom of expression.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:       

+44 20 7413 5566       

email: press@amnesty.org        

twitter: @amnestypress 

The world is watching, Joe Biden, as you terrorize Julian and as you try to burn the US Constitution.

The world is watching.

As people converse about Joe's advanced age and whether he would be up for the job of a second term, while Joy Behar hisses and stamps her feet and calls for the conversation to end because she doesn't like it, a really important point is being missed.

Joe can't run for office again.

Not unless we're going to have another pandemic.

That's the only reason he won last time.

When he was forced to be onstage, either his eye exploded, his dentures slipped loose, he made one stupid remark after another, he got angry and looked crazy? Are people forgetting the debates?

Are they forgetting that he had to hide in his basement?

Joe can't run, he can't campaign. He's too old. He's too cranky. And people don't like him. The polls make that clear right now, yes. But it's also true that on the campaign trail, people didn't like him He was constantly getting into fights with potential voters. And he couldn't draw crowds. People have better things to do then go see someone in mental decline offer excuses for why the working people of America are constantly being screwed over.

If 2024 demanded real campaigning, the type we've had for every campaign except 2020, Joe's not up to it. Before the pandemic hit, it was obvious he wasn't up for campaigning. Four years older, and he's going to be this time? All the 'energy shots' in the world won't manage to keep him up. They will keep him cranky, as they did in 2020. And someday that will be the big news. Historians will talk about it, how the campaign insisted upon 'energy shots' to keep Joe awake. It's like the shots JFK got for 'his back' that the press ignored in real time.

On elections, maybe it's time the press said enough to Hillary Clinton, told her to sit that fat ass down and maybe focus on that marriage with that husband who continues to stray?

Hillary wants you to vote. She wants the transgender community to disappear.

We've wanted Hillary to disappear for years but she's never taken a hint.

She wants to say that elections are important.

The press should hold her feet to the fire.

The obvious should be pointed out. She wants to whine about CNN or this person or that person promoting Donald Trump in 2016. We all know she and her campaign wanted that to happen and they promoted Donald. Underestimating just how much the American public loathed her, they were convinced she could win against Donald.

She was wrong.

If she wants to give advice now about how important elections are, the press should shoot back that maybe she should have realized that before she attempted to elevate who she perceived as the worst candidate in the bunch because she thought it would be an easy win.

Donald Trump got the nomination. Maybe he would have anyway. But let's not deny the reality that she and her campaign worked to get him that nomination.

Instead of begging the country's forgiveness, she wants to pretend like it didn't happen.

And she wants to tell others that they are harming elections.

Neither the transgender community nor anyone who advocates for their rights is harming the Democratic Party's chances in the next election. That's reality.

Hillary Clinton harmed the party's chances when she and her team came up with the strategy to get the media to elevate Donald so she could have an easy win.

Last night, "Editorial: Iraq and climate change" went up at THIRD and we'll note this section:

CNN gushed today over the finds in a newly emerged city. Not to rain on the parade but the reason we're seeing the ancient city is that the Tigris River has dried up so much that the city was visible again for the first time in centuries -- plural. That's not a good thing.

This is also the first year that Iraq's seen Lake Sawa dry up.

These are not good things for the Iraqi people.

And this is only going to get worse in the immediate future.

Another major sandstorm is predicted in the next few days. Iraq's seen these repeatedly this year. People have to go inside. Some that don't make it in time end up hospitalized. Iraq's always had sandstorms but they haven't been as frequent and as massive as the ones this year.

Temperatures are rising and the water is disappearing.

Back in March, Jason Beaubien (NPR) noted:

A report from the European Union Institute of Security Studies projects that the number of days when temperatures in Baghdad hit 120 degrees will go from roughly 14 per year to more than 40 over the next two decades.

The study forecasts that the Iraqi capital, which is already seeing longer heat waves each summer and higher peak temperatures, will be one of the places hardest hit by global warming.

Baghdad set a new record high of 125.2 degrees on July 28, 2020. The next day it cooled down to 124.

This morning, Aland Qaradaxi (RUDAW) reports, "The water flowing into the Alwan dam in Khanaqin has decreased sharply due to the presence of mud and silt, as well as Iran’s building of dams which has restricted the water flow, leading to only two cubic meters of water entering the dam daily." RUDAW also notes, "The level of Erbil’s underground water has decreased around 500 meters over the past two decades, the Kurdistan Region’s ministry of municipalities and tourism warned on Friday."

There are all these issues and yet Iraq, eight months after the October 10th elections, still can't name a prime minister or president.

Maybe it wouldn't matter if they could?

It's not like the previous governments in Iraq have ever done a damn thing.

AFP notes, "A cholera outbreak in Iraq has infected at least 13 people and scores more suspected cases have been sent for analysis, most from the northern Kurdistan region, health officials said on Sunday."

TELUGUSTOP.COM reminds, "Cholera is an extremely virulent disease, whose symptoms in its most severe form include a rapid onset of watery diarrhoea and dehydration that can lead to death.The disease is acquired by consuming food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae."

Today is June 21st. The first official day of summer in the US. What happens every summer at this site? We note the cholera outbreaks in Iraq. Sometimes it's a 'minor' summer. Sometimes, like 2015, it's major. But why are they happening? Why are they still happening?

Because one failed government after another has refused to ensure that the Iraqi people have potable water. The 13 diagnosed -- and the nearly 4,000 in the same province who have sought medical care at hospitals already this month -- have resulted in what? An ambitious project to finally bring Iraq's infrastructure up to date? No. The same public reminder to boil water and that you, the individual, not the government, are responsible for ensuring that your water is safe to drink -- by boiling it first.

It's not like Iraq's not dealing with other health crisis. IRAQI NEWS AGENCY reports 305 new cases of COVID in Iraq.

New content at THIRD: