Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Isn't it great that Fleetwood Mac's RUMOURS is back in the top ten!!!!!

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Wolf and Nancy" was one of two comics that went up Monday night by Isaiah.

Due to Tik-Tok having a video using Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," both that former number one single and the album it's from (RUMOURS) are back on the charts.

Isn't that good news!!!!

Richard e-mailed that.

No, it's actually not.

"Dreams" was written by Stevie Nicks. It's the only number one single the band has ever had.

I don't see this as good news because Stevie had Lindsey fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2019. That was already questionable -- she didn't like a look he made on stage. Men get away with firing bandmates. No one ever whines, "Mick Jagger had Brian Jones fired!" for example.

But Florence Ballard was putting on a lot of weight -- her belly sticking out of the Supremes' tight clothing. They were a break through act that was making MOTOWN and breaking color barriers. Berry Gordy could not afford that nonsense. Then you add in that she was repeatedly drunk onstage and sometimes too drunk to do a performance. It had to be addressed. She was warned. Then she was fired. For that firing, Diana Ross has been blamed for ever and a year.

That's what happens when you're a woman.

Now Lindsey's firing was nonsense, let's be honest.

Stevie deserves immense credit for the success of RUMOURS. She wrote the band's number one from that album, she sings lead vocal on it, her "Gold Dust Woman" remains a radio staple. She also wrote "I Don't Want To Know" on the album. Christine deserves immense credit as well. Christine McVie wrote the hits "You Make Loving Fun" and "Don't Stop" from the album. She also wrote the AOR ballad "Songbird." Those are important songs and important contributions to RUMOURS.

But the album came out in sexist 1977 and sexist critics gave Lindsey all the credit for the album.

He doesn't deserve it.

But I don't see the circle jerk doing a critical reappraisal.

So all the renewed success of the album will likely lead to is, "Yep, that was what they could do with Lindsey. And they fired him! Because of Stevie. And then, after he was fired, he had a heart attack or something!"

I don't see how this benefits the band. I do see how it stirs up defenders of Lindsey.

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

Tuesday, October 20, 2020. Joe Biden dictates to the press which gladly follows orders and Iraq's prime minister takes a stand briefly before fleeing the country to hide out in Europe for a few days.

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Everybody But Bo Erikson" which went up last night (along with "Wolf and Nancy"). The comic notes how Joe Biden growls and the press goes running. They don't get the facts, they don't pursue basic questions, they just cower.

Why has Joe never been asked about invading (harassing) girls and women? Oh, he taped an 'apology' for it and that made it okay and off limits to questions? Those incidents -- those disgusting incidents -- are on tape, you can find them all over YOUTUBE and, as we all know, the 'apology' was nothing -- it wasn't a real apology and days later he was making jokes about it to a gathering of union workers.

Any other candidate would have been asked about it.

Then there's Tara Reade.

We believe Tara Reade notes:

We are so thrilled that @nycforabortion
 is joining us alongside @tempest_mag
 in hosting A Conversation With Tara Reade on Sunday October 25th.

Registration is a sliding scale with all proceeds benefiting @ReadeAlexandra

http://bit.ly/believetara #IBelieveTaraReade

A Conversation with Tara Reade

Whoever you plan to vote for in November, Tara Reade still deserves to have her story heard.

Tara Reade remains credible. I believe her.

The media went out of their way to destroy her. What are you left with?

You're left with the argument that Tara Reade has a bad credit history therefore she couldn't be assaulted. 30% of Americans have bad or poor credit. So they can't be victims by the latest 'reasoning presented by the press.'

This is beyond nonsense. No victim who has come forward has had more supporting corroboration. That includes her mother calling into Larry King. And I've called Larry out before on this but let's note it one more time. For him to join in the attacks on Tara were disgusting.

He failed his audience. That's what happened. Tara's mother was someone who watched Larry King and she called in hoping he could provide help. He failed her. Listen to that segment, Larry's not trying to help or trying to seek information even; he's just trying to get her off the air.

And then years later, instead of apologizing for the way he let his audience down, Larry thinks he can attack Tara? I love Larry. I've defended him here when he's been attacked for being on RT. But what he did there was appalling. The only words he should have uttered on the subject of Tara Reade were an apology to her mother who sought help and/or advise and was left dangling in the wind.

Having failed her mother, Larry then thinks, years later, he can attack Tara?

Shame on you, Larry, shame on you.

Tara Reade did not get a hearing in the press. She was attacked and destroyed. It was outrageous. That's PBS as well -- their nonsense 'report' was an attack. The press does this every time with Joe. They have built the loser up. They cover for him, they protect him.

But it's getting real old.

Yes, there was wrong doing by Joe and Hunter Biden. Yes, it was unethical and unethical is wrong. Joe was a public servant. The standard, for vice president, is not just to avoid a conflict of interest but to avoid even the appearance of one. Joe didn't do that. Even the State Dept was worried about Hunter's actions when Joe was vice president.

And when you add in the rest of the family cashing in, it's not an isolated moment or event.

Yet Joe has not been asked about the corruption -- that's what it is, corruption.

Millions of Americans suffer each year because of a corrupt government. We regularly note how corrupt the Iraqi government (installed by the US) is. And it is corrupt. But so is a Congress that enriches itself and so is the Biden family that's done the same.

It's outrageous.

October 16th, THE NEW YORK POST published a story. The response has been outrageous and certainly not the standard for journalism.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, for example, runs an 'investigation' that's nothing but unsourced office gossip about one of their rivals -- conflict of interest. Not only do they do that, they do it in a matter of days.

Remember their mini-culpa on Iraq? That ran May 26, 2004. Over a year and two months after the Iraq War -- a war they sold with lies -- started. But to cover for Joe, the paper swings into immediate action?

As with the charges made by Tara Reade, the press is refusing to investigate what was revealed/alleged in/by THE POST. Instead, it's attack anyone who questions Joe Biden.

Conservative Rich Lowry (NEW YORK POST) argues:

Even the lowest common denominator of news — simply being interesting — has been tossed aside. Boring and uneventful is the new newsworthy. This presumably isn’t how they teach it in journalism school, but no one has had trouble adjusting.

The tendency reached a new level in the media’s handling of New York Post reports on e-mails obtained from a laptop that Hunter Biden reportedly left off at a Delaware repair shop.

Here was a story with enough mysteries and plotlines to keep a couple of newsrooms busy. Are the e-mails, putting Hunter Biden’s sleazy overseas business dealings in a more sinister light, legitimate? Did Hunter really take the laptop to the shop and forget about it? And, more important, what do the e-mails say about what Joe Biden knows or should have known about Hunter’s work that depended so heavily on proximity to the vice president?

Instead, the press has been uninterested at best and hostile at worst. It’s the opposite of a feeding frenzy. The media have deployed their bomb-disposal unit for fear that a potentially explosive story might detonate.

He's right but he's not even getting to the heart of it.

"She deserves to be heard.'' That was the official line from Joe Biden and his campaign about Tara Reade. And the press dutifully 'reported' that. At the same time? They refused to report that the Joe Biden campaign was actively feeding them opposition research and slander on Tara Reade. They let him appear high minded while he and his campaign were screaming at them to cover this or that about Tara Reade.

Tara's got bad credit. But Joe Biden's the one with the history of lying. Joe Biden's the one whose lies forced him to drop out of his first run for president. Joe Biden's the one who knows his first wife was most likely turned around and arguing with the kids in the backseat or trying to police some matter the kids were having and she lost control of the car and that's why the accident happened. Joe Biden's the one who knows that but has repeatedly lied to the American people -- in one event after another -- and slandered a man by claiming the truck driver was drunk. He was not drunk. Joe lied. We could go over Joe's lies forever and ever because there's a huge number of them.

Funny thing though, the press never did that. Instead, they attacked Tara Reade's character.

The Hunter Biden story has gone the same way.

One lie after another, all coming from the Biden campaign, has sought to steer the coverage and the press has allowed that to happen.

They were 'hacked' e-mails!!!!

No, they weren't. From Ava and my "Media: The Lies Never End:"

Hacked? That was the excuse FACEBOOK and TWITTER gave for censoring the story.

They shouldn't have censored to begin with but what made our blood boil was the lie that it was hacked.

Where did the lie come from? The Joe Biden presidential campaign. We can't believe anyone took that garbage seriously. These e-mails were not hacked and they were the property of the owner who turned them over to the FBI and a copy to Rudy G. They were his property.

We're not inventing case law. We're breaking down reality for you. The press refused to do so and ran with Joe Biden's claim of "hacking."

Let's say you've got a lamp and some other furniture you don't like but you don't want to toss out, okay? You don't have room for it. What do you do? You rent storage. And you put your items there. They are your items. Up until you stop paying for the storage. After you miss your payment, the storage company can -- and usually does -- auction off the contents of your storage unit.

The story on the laptop is that someone (Hunter Biden?) brought it in to be repaired. They were contacted about it. They never picked it up. A computer repair shop isn't a storage facility. If you fail to pick up your item -- and item you haven't paid for -- it's now the property of the store.

These were not hacked e-mails. The laptop was the legal property of the repair store. The owner did what he wanted to do with it -- as was his legal right.

We were enraged and appalled as 'hacked' e-mails were promoted not only by Joe Biden's campaign but also by the media. If you don't know the law, get an expert.

'The owner is pro-Trump!!!!' Who the hell cares? His partisan leaning does not impact the law. It's his shop, equipment was left there for repair, it was repaired, it was not picked up and it was not paid for. At that point, he owns the laptop. As the owner, he can do whatever he wants to and, yes, the includes handing a copy over to Rudy G.

As FACEBOOK and TWITTER are rightly under fire, news outlets need to stop offering the 'hacked' excuse. These e-mails were made public by the rightful owner. This is basic case law and everyone knows it. What's the phrase? All together now: "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."

They were not hacked. The owner of the computer (Hunter Biden or whomever) stopped being the owner when (a) they failed to pick the laptop up and (b) they failed to pay the bill. Just one of those would have resulted in the loss of ownership. A repair shop is not a storage building.

The e-mails were not hacked. The laptop's ownership had passed the store owner.

"Hacking" was a lie from the beginning and a sign of just how controlled and corrupt the US media now is. Who's going to issue the retraction on this lie?

Certainly not the disgusting Adam Schiff. Used to be, we could all have a chuckle over the lies of a member of Congress. But when we started this site, 2004, that was largely laughing at Republicans. How corrupt my party has become is clear by the never ending lies of Adam Schiff. He's the most dishonest member of Congress. He lied throughout the Russia-gate nonsense and the media acts like he didn't -- in part, because they lied too. Adam's immediate reaction to the Hunter story by THE POST?

It's a Russian disinformation scam! I know this because I've been briefed!

No, he hasn't. The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is on the record saying no to this crackpot claim.

This is nonsense. Jonathan Turley notes:

Recently, we discussed how House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff stated publicly that the recently disclosed laptop information from Hunter Biden was clearly part of a Russian intelligence operation. Schiff said that “we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.” This morning, John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence, stated categorically that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. What is most notable is that Ratcliffe has stated that Schiff and his Committee have not been given any intelligence to support Schiff’s conclusion. The incident has raised lingering criticism of Schiff who previously told the public that he had clear evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia after that allegation was rejected in repeated investigations, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Schiff never produced the incriminating evidence and later it was shown that the widely cited Steele dossier was based on a source who was considered to be a Russian agent.

Jonathan Turley analyzes the Biden campaign response here.

Meanwhile, professional liar Natasha Bertand (still waiting on the Don Jr. indictment that you 'reported' was coming any day now -- back in 2019) offers in POLITICO that the intel community is stating that it's ta disinformation campaign. Well . . . Not the community. It's a bunch of people who no longer are in the intel committee. A bunch of liars who regularly feed her garbage that she duly spits back up. (Even she can't swallow it -- much to the boys' regret.)

Let's call out Krystal Ball as well. Oh, she feels sorry for Hunter, oh.

What a load of s**t. She's deeply stupid if that's the case. Did Hunter have it hard in rehab? Most caught smoking crack would have gone to prison. Do you think those people had it easy? Do you think the people thrown in prison because of Joe Biden's legislation over the years had it easy? Your sympathies with the powerful are misplaced. A little candy ass who never achieved anything and couldn't pay child support (or admit the child was his) until court ordered doesn't deserve sympathy. He is the problem with our society. He had all the breaks in the world and a powerful father to cover for him repeatedly. My sympathies will be the real victims -- not with the spoiled rotten.

It's also amazing how the press has refused to cover the corruption of Hunter's 'service.' How he wasn't qualified but got in due to his father. They used the military to try to paper over Hunter's lack of accomplishments. Again, spoiled rotten and given a huge break, Hunter can't even complete two months because he's failing a drug test.

Turning to the Iraq disaster that Joe Biden helped create, Shelly Kittleson (AL-MONITOR) reports:

The specter of a return to sectarian bloodletting in Iraq after the latest killings in the southern part of Salahuddin province has raised alarms in the Sunni-majority province northwest of the capital.

Gruesome photos of the corpses of eight young men from a village in the Farhatiya district near Balad, hands bound behind their backs, appeared in WhatsApp chats and then on social media on the evening of Oct. 17. Twelve men had been kidnapped, but as of Monday morning, it was still unclear what happened to the other four.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi made a highly publicized visit to the area the following day and spoke to residents in an attempt to assure locals that there would be consequences for those who committed the crime.

Many noted, however, that progress has apparently not been made in the cases of several other assassinations of prominent figures in the country in recent months, such as that of well-known counterterrorism expert Hisham al-Hashimi in July, and expressed doubt that the perpetrators would be punished.

The young men killed were Sunnis. Locals immediately pointed the figure at Shiite-led “militias” operating in the area that are officially part of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

That's not quite what happened. Mustafa did make "a highly publicized visit to the area" -- it was a brief photo-op and Arabic social media is filled with comments about how he then quickly left and quickly left Iraq. (He's now in Europe.) His response is seen as both inadequate and cowardly.

Even THE BAGDAD POST is Tweeting about it:

PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi starts a European tour in #France, #UK and #Germany, 20 hours after the #Salahuddinmassacre committed by the Shiite Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq militia against Sunni children and their fathers

And here:

Why fake committees formed to investigate #massacres reach nothing?
Why PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi is reluctant on arresting the criminals, although he knows them quite well?

#BaghdadPost #Iraq

Meanwhile, Jane Arraf has a report for NPR on Iraqi refugees in Jordan which notes almost two-thirds of Iraqi Christians have fled their country since the start of the Iraq War.

New content at THIRD:

The following sites updated:

Monday, October 19, 2020

THE BIONIC WOMAN

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Everybody but Bo Erikson." And, if I'm not mistaken, the blond is a version of Lindsay Wagner's BIONIC WOMAN -- I remember that outfit. My niece had the doll. It came in a blue short sleeved suit or in the blue pants with the white top with red trim -- based on an outfit Lindsay wore in the first season of THE BIONIC WOMAN.

That show ran for three seasons and it was one of my favorite shows of the seventies. I really loved Jamie Sommers -- Lindsay's character. She was a positive person and it wasn't the usual violence. There was more of an effort at conflict resolution. You saw that in the action storylines but, now that I think about it, you also saw it in the classroom scenes (Jamie was a teacher when not being a spy).

When you turned the doll's head, it would make a clicking noise -- for the bionic ear. The Lee Majors doll had a bionic eye so they drilled a hole through the doll head and you could look through the hole.

I liked THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN but I really loved THE BIONIC WOMAN. And that last season was truly amazing -- right through to the episode that ended the show.

I really wanted to like the remake of the show but it was just not what Jamie was supposed to be. And it was insulting.

Lindsay's character was an adult. A former tennis pro, she becomes a spy because the government rebuilds her body with bionic parts -- a bionic ear, two bionic legs and one bionic arm. She had lived a life. The reboot made her a little chippy with no real life experience.

I wish the original show had stayed on ABC. The third season went to NBC and, as a result, no crossover with Lee Majors. They brought on a new boyfriend. He was good but he wasn't Lee's Steve Austin.

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

Monday, October 19, 2020. Moqtada on the ropes, Iraqis prepare to take the protests to another level, a detail I share with Rudy G, and much more.

Follow DSA's International Committee on social media and online: https://www.facebook.com/DSA.Intl.Com... https://twitter.com/DSA_Intl_Comm http://international.dsausa.org/

Saturday, the Democratic Socialist of America's International Committee held a teach-in on Iraq focusing on the year long protests that have been taking place. The protests are expected to grow more intense on October 25th. Sarhang Hamaseed of the United States Institute of Peace offers:

Many of the grievances propelling protesters into the streets last October have yet to be addressed and in some cases have become more complicated. While the movement has lost momentum in terms of number of protesters on the street and fragmented some, its spirit and key pressure factors remain. With considerable public support from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia cleric, the protest movement managed to make important, but provisional gains:

The protests signified a deep societal desire for change, primarily represented by youth. The youth took their peaceful resistance to the religious space during Shia religious ceremonies and rituals like Arabaeen, which commemorates the 40th day of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. These Iraqi youth are presenting themselves as representing Imam Hussein’s symbolism of standing up to oppression and injustice in an effort to supplant Islamic religious parties’ legitimacy.
The movement forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign last November, paving the way for Mustafa al-Kadhimi to become the new premier. Despite many obstacles and exasperation with the slow pace of change, Kadhimi has shown he is serious in wanting to address the grievances of the people and the international community.
Last fall, the Council of Representatives voted on a new election law, which was meant to break the control of the traditional powerholders. A key component of that law remains to be finished, requiring an annex that would set the electoral districts—a contentious issue in its own right. How those districts will be set up will have significant implications for the balance of power within and among Iraq’s communities, political parties, and beyond.
Judges have been appointed as commissioners in Iraq’s High Electoral Commission (IHEC) to replace the commission that was perceived as representing partisan and confessional interests. However, the IHEC’s bureaucracy has legacy issues and other concerns that are yet to be addressed.
Kadhimi has set June 6, 2021 as the date for early elections.

These changes have kept the international community engaged—even those who thought Iraq was a completely lost cause. Sistani met with the U.N. special representative in Iraq twice, and his most recent statement in September stressed, among other things, the importance of monitoring and supervision of the election in coordination with the U.N.

The protest movement is gearing up for a strong showing on October 25, a key anniversary date. However, there is skepticism that they will be able to muster up the kind of crowds that they had last year. That’s because of several factors: continued violence against the protesters and assassination of civic leaders; coronavirus restrictions; fragmentation among the protesters, some wanting to give the Kadhimi government a chance while others are skeptical that protests will yield results; and concerns that political parties and armed groups have infiltrated or coopted the movement or parts of it. Although there is a perception the movement has lost momentum, Iraq’s financial crises could once again ignite mass protests—and political parties may exploit them to undermine Kadhimi, if not fully aim to unseat him.

Alex MacDonald (MIDDLE EAST EYE) offers:

In the year since Iraqis took to the streets en masse to protest against unemployment, corruption, foreign interference and a creaking political system, the country has seen major upheavals and societal change - but not necessarily of the sort that the anti-government protesters were calling for.

The period since the beginning of the demonstrations on 1 October 2019 has seen the ousting of prime ministers and prime ministerial candidates, an international proxy conflict spilling over into assassinations, and the outbreak of a deadly pandemic which has pushed Iraq's healthcare system to the limit.

In all the chaos, there has been little attention paid to the demands put forward by Iraq's activists, who continue to demonstrate where they can despite being hobbled by the coronavirus and despite the deaths of more 600 of their number since the start of their campaign.

Ali Khrypt, a Baghdad-based activist who had already been involved in anti-government protests prior to October 2019, said there had been very little in the way of real political change in the last year.

"In my opinion, it did not achieve anything in terms of political reality," he told Middle East Eye.

"As for the street and the Iraqi youth, it had a great impact. In the past, a small group was rallying to the regime and the devastation that befell the country after the fall of [Saddam Hussein's] regime - but now every Iraqi home and every young woman and young man rejects and knows what the mistakes are and criticises the work of government."

THE GLOBE POST notes:

The nationwide demonstrations which broke out on October 1, 2019 spiraled into a decentralized movement slamming unemployment, poor public services, endemic corruption, and a political class more loyal to Iran or the US than to Iraqi citizens.

It led to the shock November 1 resignation of then-premier Adel Abdel Mahdi, succeeded after months of political deadlock by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi, who pledged to integrate protesters’ demands into his transitional government’s plans.

But on the ground, little has been achieved.

Kadhemi has set an early parliamentary vote for June 6, 2021, nearly a year ahead of schedule.

“Protesters wanted early elections and a new electoral law. We’re doing that,” Abdelhussein Hindawi, Kadhemi’s advisor on elections, told AFP.

But while parliament approved a new voting law in December, essential points including the size of electoral districts and whether candidates would run independently or on lists have yet to be agreed by lawmakers.

And despite repeated claims he has no political ambitions and would only serve as a transitional premier, Kadhemi himself appears to be preparing for an electoral fight.

Several MPs and members of rival parties told AFP the prime minister’s advisors are scouting candidates for the 2021 elections, hoping he could secure a new term in office.

Shi'ite cleric and one-time movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr lost his power and influence (beyond his cult) as a result of his inability to stick to one position or another with regards to the protesters. After supporting them for months, he turned on them and seemed shocked to discover that his word wasn't law. The protests remained popular. At which point, he said he supported them but had conditions -- including that males and female not protest together. The protesters responded by not just ignoring his edict but by mocking it. Moqtada blew his influence. He's just another Shi'ite cleric in a country with hundreds ARAB WEEKLY is one of the few outlets to note the waning of Moqtada:

Sadr had hesitated a lot before siding with the protest movement that began in October 2019. Activists said that the Sadrists, the moniker given to Sadr’s followers, did not join in the protests until they realised that they were overwhelming; so they jumped on the wagon of the protests for fear to see their place on the street disappear.

During the months-long series of demonstrations, the relationship between the protesters and the popular current affiliated with al-Sadr was erratic at best. The two parties converged repeatedly at some points but also diverted repeatedly at some others. This relationship, however, witnessed a clear turning point when the United States killed the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani, and the field commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a raid near Baghdad airport in early 2020.

While the protesters welcomed the US action and saw in it an opportunity to reduce Tehran’s dominance of political, security and economic decisions in Iraq, Sadr and his followers sided with Iran and participated in a partisan demonstration demanding the condemnation of the United States, before the representatives of the Shia cleric in the Iraqi parliament participated in drafting a resolution compelling the government to remove US troops out of the country.

As the Sadr current re-joined the mantle of Iran to be on the side of armed militia leaders who are challenging the state, Sadr’s name became anathema in the protest squares of central and southern Iraq’s Shia cities.

In a desperate effort to appear relevant, Moqtada issued a statement on Sunday. BASNEWS Tweets:

The Sadrist Movement, led by powerful Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said on Sunday that it would no longer support the anti-government protests.

Iraq: Sadrist Movement Says It Won't Support Anti-government Protests

Iraq: Sadrist Movement Says It Won't Support Anti-government Protests

Where are Moqtada's supporters? He has the cult. That's about all he has. One former supporter conveyed via e-mail last week that they were supposed to all Tweet "God supports Muqtada because he is a lover of peace." But look it up -- under Muqtada or Moqtada -- and you'll see six Tweets. Once upon a time, in fact, just a year ago, that would have been pages and pages of reTweets.

This week's podcast by THE ECONOMIST looks at Joe Biden, his 2020 campaign for president ("Hidin' Biden") and at his history with the Iraq War. Pay attention to the discussion of 'Democrats' who might defeat Republicans in the Senate -- like Lindsay Graham's opponent -- and how their success would only water down the Democrats in the Senate. Republican-lite may beat a Republican (it may not) but it will infect and water down Democrats in the Senate. That's a detail the cheerleaders for Jaime Harrison ignore. Also ignored are the Hunter Biden e-mails and the reaction to it. Branko Marcoetik (JACOBIN) offers:

On Wednesday, the New York Post published a major story about the Biden-Burisma affair (aka “Ukrainegate”), the still-developing controversy over Hunter Biden’s presence on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma at the same time that his father, then vice president, spearheaded anti-corruption efforts in the country and ultimately fired the prosecutor investigating the company.

The Post published e-mails purportedly drawn from a copied computer hard drive that belonged to the younger Biden, allegedly showing a Burisma executive thanking him for introducing him to the then–vice president, and imploring Hunter to “use your influence to convey a message/signal etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions” -- meaning the “one or more pretrial proceedings” the Ukrainian government had launched against the company.

The contents of the hard drive, passed on to the Post by Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, are clearly an attempt at one final, desperate “October surprise.” Trump’s shot at reelection certainly looks to have all but collapsed after an unhinged debate performance that was soon followed by the mass spread of coronavirus within the White House. He’s in desperate need of something to turn around what seems to be shaping up -- at least as far as the polls can be trusted -- as a landslide defeat.

While the e-mails, if authentic, are not great for Biden — they flatly contradict his implausible September 2019 claim that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” --they’re far from a game changer.

They mostly back up what basic common sense and closed-door testimony from Obama administration officials already told us: that Burisma’s hiring of Hunter, with his zero experience in either Ukraine or natural gas, was an obvious attempt to curry favor with the US government, and that it undermined the Obama administration’s anti-corruption messaging in the country. In fact, they shed absolutely no light on Trump’s actual central and still unproven charge against Biden in the whole affair: that he fired the Ukrainian prosecutor to shield his son from prosecution.

No, in many ways the bigger story here is the response to the story. Because seemingly every major scandal damaging to Biden and, therefore, beneficial to Trump’s reelection has, during this election, been simply labeled Russian disinformation and ruled out of bounds -- from his sexual assault allegation to this matter -- social media companies quickly leapt into action to do what they could to make sure no one would get to even read the story and judge it for themselves.

Shortly after the Post story went live, both Facebook and Twitter -- two of the several tech giants that are now more integral to the news publishing business than ever -- announced they were stepping in to prevent the story from spreading on their platforms. Facebook, wrote spokesperson Andrew Stone, was “reducing its distribution on our platform” until it could be fact-checked, while Twitter simply blocked users from posting the story at all, citing its “Distribution of hacked material policy.”

This rush to censorship is equal parts absurd and chilling.

I find Branko's take very disappointing.

But let's get to Rudy G. I was hoping to write about this topic. On THE ECONOMIST podcast, they talk about it "he somehow turned it over to Rudy" and that Rudy didn't turn it over to the FBI. Blah blah blah. The FBI already had it. Second, somehow?

Rudy G is not a friend of mine -- I've never even bothered to learn how to spell his last name. I don't care for him or for his trashy family (yes, his daughters are trashy). I have numerous reasons. Some would argue that one of the reasons is that Rudy and I are rivals.

From time to time, we are rivals. From time to time, we are both offered the same information. I prefer to purchase letters. I was not offered the Biden hardriver nor would I have been interested in it, frankly. But we have been opponents/rivals on other treasure troves of information.

How did Rudy G get the hard drive? Because he's a well known consumer of information. He pays very well for it.

I don't understand the skepticism of the information based on Rudy G. The press knows he buys information. He's far from the only one. We don't generally bid on the same things -- again, my preference is letters and journals. In 2007 and 2008, it was widely known that Rudy was buying up everything he could -- and it was widely assumed that he sat on most of the information he bought.

I don't doubt the e-mails because of the Rudy G connection -- in fact, that connection makes them more believable to me.

[Added: Before I'm accused of being coy, I buy other things. I do own the 'dead grandmother tape' as it's known in DC social circles and I did play it at many a DC party. That's the last recorded interview -- the only one -- dead grandmother gave about her grandson Barack.]

As for Branko's "they're far from a game changer"? That's so disappointing. The corporate press may cover for Joe but Branko shouldn't. Branko should be sharing and leading the outrage. Hunter made money off his father being a public servant. He offered access to his father -- that his father participated in. This is unethical and it's wrong.

Instead of addressing that, people want to offer nutty Russian conspiracies. David Swanson notes:

When the Democratic Party decided it preferred Trump to Bernie and would rather nominate to run against Trump a more corporate-friendly candidate who was polling more weakly against Trump, there were — in theory — at least two choices.

First, millions of people could have publicly announced that they would not vote for either rotten candidate but only someone who stood for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, public education through college, demilitarization, and massive taxation of corporations and billionaires — or at least one of those things. Either a candidate would have credibly changed or a message would have been sent very loudly to all future candidates. I tried promoting this plan, and a relative handful of people mumbled their agreement. Apart from the Green Party doing its thing, and a new party being started, there was no more organizing around this than there was to reject the Supreme Court handing George W. Bush the crown.

Second, people could vote for a lesser evil while organizing educational and activist campaigns to try to save the world from that evil. There’s a credible, though uncertain and muddy case, that the lesser evil is Joe Biden. Thousands of people have enthusiastically screamed this case at me at the top of their lungs, and accused me of racism, sexism, and working in the employ of the Russian government — even though my actual, real-world employment includes working for an organization pushing just this approach. I’ve pushed just this approach because it’s my second choice and my first choice above has gone nowhere. I’ve also maintained honesty about the rottenness of both candidates, which has angered and confused many supporters of both who believe that part of supporting a candidate is lying about him.

Now, when/if Biden loses or has the election stolen, I would like to point out just a few of the reasons that it’s not my fault or Russia’s or Ralph Nader’s or the Green Party’s.

1) There is no evidence that Russia has had any influence over the 2020 (or 2016) U.S. election. (But please do send me hundreds of angry evidence-free denunciations of the supposed lunacy of saying so.) (I would much rather you blame me than Russia because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.)

2) The Green Party got a teeny tiny bit of the vote and probably gained Biden as many votes in Maine and places that have ranked choice voting as it cost him elsewhere, and is the most likely party to challenge any of Trump’s election-related crimes.

3) I supported Bernie.

4) I didn’t advise campaigning on a promise to keep fracking. I didn’t even pretend that campaign was a mistake driven by ignorance of polling rather than subservience to funders.

5) I didn’t declare “The Party c’est moi!” and run screaming from every popular position.

6) I live in a non-swing state.

7) The notion that I decided the election through my failure to push scheme #2 above aggressively enough is exposed by my utter inability to advance scheme #1.

8) I didn’t create the electoral college — I’m trying to abolish it.

9) I don’t run the corporate media outlets that bow before Trump — I’m trying to break them up and regulate them.

10) I didn’t tolerate Trump’s hateful instigation of violence and intimidation. I’ve been trying to get him impeached, removed, and prosecuted for it since before his first inauguration — but a certain political party preferred a bunch of dangerous lies about Russia and a Ukraine story that made their own guy look bad.

11) I didn’t lie about voting by mail, strip names off rolls, create long lines, or utilize unverifiable machines and scanners. That was your elected officials.

12) I didn’t kneel down and let Trump put a George W. Bush election thief on the Supreme Court. I proposed impeaching Trump for a legitimate offense from the long list of indisputable public outrages, and forcing the Senate to deal with it.

Now, if you want to spend the next couple of weeks telling everyone for the 10 millionth time to vote for Biden, knock yourself out. I’ve had a job doing that for months. But let me offer three pieces of unsolicited and unwanted advice:

1) Bring back honesty as soon as possible. Every bit of bad news about your candidate is not false, is not created by Russia and therefore in need of being ignored regardless of whether it’s false, and is not an assertion of equivalence between your candidate and the other one. If you go into a Biden presidency believing your own BS about him, his presidency will turn out as putrid and disastrous as Clinton’s or Obama’s and lead straight to one as openly fascist as Bush’s or Trump’s.

2) Bring back understanding of activism as soon as possible. Restore remembrance of the nonviolent activist campaigns that created the right to vote, rights for various groups, fair treatment and humane policies and peace. Voting is an important tiny bit of civic duty that alone will never change the world.

3) Bring back politeness and respect as soon as possible. Stop all the screaming and denunciations and baseless accusations and xenophobic coldwarism so you can work with people to do the things actually needed to turn the U.S. government into what it’s nice but dangerous to imagine voting for one lousy candidate over another will do.

We're going to wind down with this that Ms. sent out yesterday (which means today, Monday, is the last day to get the masks):

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