Thursday, May 16, 2019

Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Nancy Wilson, Heart and Dionne Warwick

number 24


Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Prisoner de Blasio: Number 24."  This is the third night in a row that Isaiah's had a new comic.

Music?  So the rumor is that a Van Halen tour (with David Lee Roth) got put on hold because someone was very ill. If it's true, that's sad.  I don't like David Lee Roth (I am a Sammy Hagar fan) but it would be sad if it was him.  But, if it's true, I fear it would be Eddie Van Halen due to his past illness (tongue cancer). 

As I said, I'm a Sammy Hagar fan.  (I believe the greatest Van Halen album is 5150.)  Here's Sammy singing Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" with Heart's Nancy Wilson.





And while I'm noting covers, here's Nancy with Ann doing Led Zepplin's "Stairway To Heaven."

HAERT - Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart - Stairway To Heaven - LIVE - Kennedy Center - Full Version - Guests : Led Zeppelin a.m.o. -



And here's Dionne Warwick.



Her new album, SHE'S BACK, drops tomorrow.




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

 
Thursday, May 16, 2019.  Senator Elizabeth Warren gets the attention she so desperately wanted -- even if it's not the kind of attention she wanted, war with Iran appears to move closer and US House Rep Barbara Lee provides the joke for the day.




Yesterday Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Scream" went up, noting Senator Elizabeth Warren's latest attempt to get attention for her floundering campaign via a public tantrum.  The reactions to Princess Bubble's announcement that she wouldn't do a town hall on FOX NEWS have not been as kindly received as she may have hoped.  The editorial board of THE BOSTON HERALD points out:

Last week it was a bold call for impeachment, before that it was a wealth tax, and then there was reparations for slavery and then the Green New Deal and then universal healthcare and before that there was free childcare for all and free college for all and before that she was breaking up the big tech companies and then another wealth tax and weeks and weeks ago we were abolishing ICE.
Now this week’s Elizabeth Warren is telling last week’s impeachment-themed Elizabeth Warren to “Hold my beer,” as she one-ups herself with a new declaration: She’s boycotting Fox News.
[. . .]
Inspiring stuff from the senior senator from Massachusetts, who also represents more than a million Donald Trump voters who undoubtedly prefer Fox News. The toxicity will continue while Warren continues to underachieve in the race and next week will likely bring another bombastic display of desperation.


Desperation.  Well, she did seek the attention, too bad it hasn't resulted in the praise she was hoping for.  Editorial boards weren't the only ones weighing.  Cable news had thoughts as well.  Justin Baragona (THE DAILY BEAST) reports:

A day after Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren rejected Fox News’ offer to participate in one of the its town halls, calling the network a “hate-for-profit racket,” the crew at MSNBC’s Morning Joe criticized the Massachusetts senator’s decision while also suggesting she was right to claim the network peddles in bigotry and conspiracy theories.
Co-host Joe Scarborough kicked off the conversation Wednesday morning by asking if Warren would be able to reach out to swing voters by going on Fox News, especially since some of their anchors like Chris Wallace are “pretty darn straight.” 
This prompted Mika Brzezinski to concede that the network was “exactly as Elizabeth Warren describes it” as it has a “direct connection from a corrupt president who is a racist” before ultimately chastising Warren for rejecting the invitation.
“I would argue that a presidential candidate should be able to walk into any situation, walk into any fire, and have the confidence and the ability to put it out by spreading the democratic values and his or her beliefs,” Brzezinski declared. “I think they should go into Fox and do all the town halls they can do. Fox, you could argue, is smart to be doing these. That’s a sign of some sort of change.”

And on the broadcast networks?  Becket Adams (WASHINGTON EXAMINER) notes:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., threw out a hunk of red meat to the left wing this week when she announced she had turned down Fox News' offer to join them for a town hall event to discuss her 2020 campaign. But it does not look like the base is biting, if the reactions of the hosts of the generally Democratic-friendly talk show “The View” are any indicator.

“I think that it’s being very dismissive of so many Americans for her not to go on Fox News,” said host Sunny Hostin.
[. . .]
Her colleague, Joy Behar, sounded a note of agreement. Behar also pointed out that the president “never goes” on left-leaning networks like MSNBC or CNN, which, in this context, is not a comment that reflects well on Warren.

Yet another host, Whoopi Goldberg, added later, “If you can’t face the Fox audience, you can’t face the U.S. — it’s that simple.”

The topic will probably be a focus for many columns to come but already S.E. Cupp (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES) offers:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Trump. She’s a liberal policy wonk. Yet she’s similarly turned on by punishment politics. For all her talk of uniting the country, she sure seems hell bent on keep it divided.
This week, she turned down a Fox News invitation for a town hall and launched an angry tirade against the news outlet. “I won’t ask millions of Democratic primary voters to tune into an outlet that profits from racism and hate in order to see our candidates — especially when Fox will make even more money adding our valuable audience to their ratings numbers,” she wrote.

What she concedes in this protest, though, is that she doesn’t think the millions of Fox viewers — otherwise known as voters — are worth showing up for. If she has a message about the dangerous values Fox personalities are proliferating, where better to make the point than on Fox, where those viewers are watching. She’d be their president, too. But rather than trying bring them into the fold, she’d rather malign a news outlet she doesn’t like and its viewers — and that sounds a lot like Trump.

And Meagan Day (JACOBIN) explains:

When Sanders participated in the network’s town hall event, I explained why that was a good idea. Fox News is the most-watched cable news network in the country, and its viewers have the lowest average income of any major news network or outlet. Sanders’s campaign is centered around demands for ambitious redistributive reforms that will directly and materially improve life for all working-class people — some of whom, unfortunately, watch Fox News and currently vote for Republicans.
Sanders sees those viewers as part of the project of remaking society. Speaking directly to them about how the Right is pulling the wool over their eyes is therefore an important political task.

Sanders is familiar with basic socialist ideas: that the interests of workers are fundamentally opposed to the interest of capitalists, that workers have common cause across their differences, and that workers uniting en masse in pursuit of their common cause is the best way to exercise power, force concessions from elites, and make society more equal.
[. . .]
Even if Warren doesn’t really believe her own stated rationale, her abstention still demonstrates a myopia about mass politics that will not serve her well in either her campaign or her hypothetical presidency. Many of Warren’s best policy ideas involve taking on the power of the capitalist class directly. That can’t be accomplished by well-meaning progressive politicians alone; they need millions of people in motion to make it happen. This is the meaning of Bernie’s slogan “Not Me, Us.”
For those of us who prefer Sanders to Warren, this is the real sticking point: we think the power to change society rests with the working class itself, not with politicians who have its interests at heart. The major contest in society is between a handful of economic elites and everyone else who sells their labor for a wage in order to survive. Morally upstanding politicians are not the hero of the story. Working people are.
Politicians who understand this have a specific role to play: they have to use their campaigns and their offices as bully pulpits for a mass political perspective that unites working people against capitalists. And to do that, they must take every available opportunity to speak to every section of the working class about what they stand to gain from a Left agenda — and in many circumstances, what they have to lose by continuing to support the Right.

By refusing to go on Fox News, Warren has demonstrated that she doesn’t take this task as seriously as she ought to. As Sanders has plainly stated, the power of the capitalist class is so formidable that it will take a huge movement of millions of united workers to actually overcome it in reality. Warren’s policy ideas are frequently excellent, but without a fundamental orientation toward the very people who stand to benefit from them, they stand little chance of materializing.


Elizabeth Warren is getting the attention she so desperately sought -- it's just not favorable attention.  We should note that Chris Matthews praised Elizabeth's decision.  We should remind that this is the same Chris Matthews who used his show to pimp the Clintons as murders -- as Bob Somerby always reminds -- and did again just this week:

By the summer of 1999, press corps favorite Gennifer Flowers was deeply involved in peddling the Clinton Body Count through her pay-to-read, for-profit web site. In a complete and total accident, Chris Matthews invited her to appear on Hardball for a lengthy half-hour interview without having any awareness, knowledge or understanding of this unfortunate fact.

We should note that Senator Kamala Harris is joining Elizabeth Warren on the boycott.  She's a joiner, that Kamala.  As crazy and destructive as Elizabeth's decision is, at least Elizabeth led on it.


Turning to Iraq, Bill Van Auken (WSWS) reports:

Washington has ratcheted up war tensions in the Persian Gulf with an order to evacuate all non-essential US personnel from its embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Erbil, the de facto capital of the Iraqi Kurdish region.
A State Department spokesman said the drastic action had been taken in response to “the increased threat stream we are seeing in Iraq,” but refused to provide any details on the supposed danger.
The US has carried out a massive military buildup in the region on the pretext of a supposed threat from Iran or so-called Iranian “proxies” among various Shia militia, from those organized in the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) formed to fight ISIS in Iraq and now integrated into the Iraqi security forces, to those fighting ISIS in Syria, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
A State Department spokesman told CNN Wednesday that “any attacks by the Iranian regime or its proxies against US interests or citizens will be answered with a swift and decisive US response.”
Sources in Baghdad reported that all day Wednesday helicopters were ferrying US personnel from the embassy on the Tigris River—the largest such US facility in the world—to a US military base at the Baghdad airport. The last time such an evacuation was ordered was in 2014 after ISIS had captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and appeared poised to march on Baghdad.
In the midst of this dramatic US action, the top British general deployed as part of “Operation Inherent Resolve” (OIR), the US-dominated intervention in Iraq and Syria, told Pentagon reporters that there was no increased threat to Western forces from Iranian-backed militias.

“There’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” said Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, the deputy commander of OIR in charge of intelligence and operations. “There are a substantial number of militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and we don’t see any increased threat from many of them at this stage.” Officially, these militias are on the same side as the US and NATO forces in fighting to defeat ISIS. In reality, the US is keeping 5,000 troops in Iraq and roughly 2,000 in Syria for the purpose of countering Iranian influence in the region.


Trillions in debt over the current, never-ending wars and now there's a push for more.  Trillions in debt.  Grasp that.  Not trillions paid off.  These wars have not been paid for, they've been borrowed for.  The US government -- Republicans and Democrats -- have been unwise with the charge card and expect current and future generations to foot the bill for these wars of choice.  Now they want to add more wars to the bill.  There is not enough money to have these forever wars and to supply the American people with their basic needs.

A presidential candidate wants to unite the country, you can unite them on that.  Over on the left, we call this nonsense out.  On the right, they do as well.

"Iraq is going to be a two-month war, not an eight-year war" - Bill Kristol, March 29 2003 It is now 2019 and we are still in Iraq





This is throwing our future and our children's future, our country's future.  The costs keep mounting and, yes, this is how empires fall apart -- and it's one of the reasons the Soviet Union fell apart as well.

Senator Bernie Sanders' foreign policy advisor Tweets:

People who say we need to move past the Iraq war are wrong. When you really consider the scope of the disaster -- to the region, to its people, to our politics, to our military, and more -- we have barely started to talk about it.




This should be front and center for every presidential candidate's campaign yet only Bernie, US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard, former Senator Mike Gravel, former US House Rep Beto O'Rourke and Marianne Williamson seem aware of the ongoing wars.


Ray McGovern (ANTIWAR.COM) warns of a Gulf of Tonkin-like push:

Over the weekend, four vessels, including two Saudi oil tankers, were sabotaged near the Strait of Hormuz. Last evening The Wall Street Journal was the first to report an “initial US assessment” that Iran likely was behind the attacks, and quoted a “US official” to the effect that if confirmed, this would inflame military tensions in the Persian Gulf. The attacks came as the US deploys an aircraft carrier, bombers and an antimissile battery to the Gulf – supposedly to deter what the Trump administration said is the possibility of Iranian aggression.
On Tuesday, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, with whom Saudi Arabia has been fighting a bloody war for the past four years, launched a drone attack on a Saudi east-west pipeline that carries crude to the Red Sea. This is not the first such attack; a Houthi spokesman said the attack was a response to Saudi “aggression” and “genocide” in Yemen. The Saudis shut down the pipeline for repair.
Thus the dangers in and around the Strait of Hormuz increase apace with U.S.-Iran recriminations. This, too, is not new.
Tension in the Strait was very much on Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen’s mind as he prepared to retire on Sept. 30, 2011. Ten days before, he told the Armed Force Press Service of his deep concern over the fact that the US and Iran have had no formal communications since 1979:
“Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran. So we don’t understand each other. If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right, that there will be miscalculations.”
Now the potential for an incident has increased markedly. Adm. Mullen was primarily concerned about the various sides – Iran, the US, Israel – making hurried decisions with, you guessed it, “unintended consequences.”

With Pompeo and Bolton on the loose, the world may be well advised to worry even more about “intended consequences” from a false flag attack. The Israelis are masters at this. The tactic has been in the US clandestine toolkit for a long time, as well. In recent days, the Pentagon has reported tracking “anomalous naval activity” in the Persian Gulf, including loading small sailing vessels with missiles and other military hardware.


And to end on a note of hilarity, US House Rep Barbara Lee Tweeted the following



Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump are heading towards an ideologically driven war with Iran. We have seen these warning signs before with Iraq. Let me be clear: Congress has not authorized the use of military force against Iran and we won’t stand for this.





You won't stand for it, Barbara?  You were part of the Out of Iraq Caucus in the House when Bully Boy Bush was in the White House, remember?  And US troops are still in Iraq -- and still dying in Iraq, one just a few weeks ago.  What have you done?  What hearing have you held on Iraq?  On how the US gets out of Iraq?  You've done nothing on Iraq.  On Afghanistan?  You're even more of a joke.  Each year of Barack Obama's presidency, you swore that if US troops weren't out of Afghanistan by the next year, you were going to . . . What?  Put your shoes back on, march down to the Oval Office and blister Barack's bottom?  You never did a damn thing.  You are the queen of empty promises and empty threats.  If you want anyone to take you seriously, you'll have to start working to end the ongoing wars and you're not doing that and you haven't been doing that.


The following





  • Wednesday, May 15, 2019

    Dionne

    the scream

    That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Scream."

    Reminder, Dionne Warwick's new album is released this Friday.

    1. Chatting with the LEGEND! “She’s Back” her first studio album in 5 years is out this week but I got to talk backstage with Ms. Dionne Warwick herself; WATCH:
    2. Had the opportunity, honor, and the pleasure of sitting down with the iconic Ms. Dionne Warwick to talk about her legacy in music and her new album “She’s Back”. Interview coming soon ⚡️



    Dionne also has an event this coming Monday:

    WASHINGTON, May 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Press Club Events Team will host a special dinner and screening of "What the World Needs Now: Words by Hal David," a PBS documentary tribute to the man who wrote many of the most enduring songs in American popular music, at 6 p.m. Monday, May 20.
    Tickets are available to the public (with discounts for NPC members) and include dinner and the panel discussion. They can be purchased online.
    Joining the event for a post-screening discussion are special guests Dionne Warwick and noted songwriter Valerie Simpson ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough"), both of whom are featured in the film, along with the film's executive producers, John Paulson and Karen Sherry. The discussion will be moderated by Club President Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak.
    Hal David, in partnership with composer Burt Bacharach, dominated pop-music charts in the 1960s and early 70s, writing dozens of Top 40 hit recordings that continue to influence music today. Warwick's first recording, "Don't Make Me Over," "launched the decade-long explosion of musical creativity and chart-topping hits that encompass the Bacharach-David songbook," PBS said.
    With 56 of her singles making the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998 and 80 singles making all Billboard charts combined, Dionne Warwick is one of the rock era's greatest hitmakers (second only to Aretha Franklin in chart-topping songs). Her greatest hits include "What the World Needs Now," "Walk on By," "Say a Little Prayer," and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?"
    Along with her husband, Nicholas Ashford, Valerie Simpson wrote a series of Motown hits including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," and "Reach Out and Touch" for various star performers such as Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & The Supremes, and Quincy Jones.
    Don't miss this trip down memory lane as these two icons - Warwick and Simpson - share their very personal stories about one of the greatest eras in pop music history.
    John Paulson is an Emmy-award winning veteran of PBS documentaries and music specials. In addition to "What the World Needs Now: Words by Hal David," he most recently directed "Mister Rogers: It's You I Like" and "A Raisin in the Sun Revisited," an award-winning performance-documentary commissioned for PBS Arts Festival that celebrated the legacy of Lorraine Hansberry.
    Karen Sherry has produced music shows and events for over 30 years, and was a Senior Vice President for ASCAP, where she worked for 36 years until her retirement. She was responsible for producing many of their signature events, including the TV shows "An ASCAP Celebration of American Music at Wolf Trap;" "CBS-TV's Irving Berlin's 100th Birthday Celebration," which garnered an Emmy Award; and the songwriter segment for NBC-TV's "Night of 100 Stars." She also served as consulting producer for the Gershwin Prize presentation to Hal David and Burt Bacharach by President Obama at the White House, telecast on PBS.
    Schedule:
    • 5:30 PM: VIP Reception / Meet & Greet with Dionne Warwick and Valerie Simpson
    • 6:00 PM: Doors open and cash bar
    • 6:30 PM: Dinner
    • 7:15 PM (SHARP): Screening of film
    • 8:15 PM: Conversation with Special Guests
    PRESS CONTACT: Lindsay Underwood for the National Press Club, lunderwood@press.org, (202) 662-7561



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

     
    Wednesday, May 15, 2019.  Fears over the US government starting a war with Iran increase, Princess Bubble emerges as her campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination only gets more ridiculous.




    As Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Another Hat Tossed In The Ring" last night noted, Montana Governor Steve Bullock has entered the Democratic Party's presidential primary.  A centrist in the Joe Biden mode, Bullock might have gotten a bit more media attention were it not for the emergence of Princess Bubble.

    Elizabeth Warren, the US Senator who wants to be president, declared yesterday -- in a press statement and then on Twitter -- that she would not be doing a townhall on FOX NEWS because they were "a hate-for-profit racket."  She's been called a hothead, she's been called a loud mouth, she's been called a poser (she was a Republican not all that long ago), she's even falsely called herself a Native American but yesterday her true persona emerged: Princess Bubble.

    Daniel may have gone into the lion's den, Mother Teresa may have walked among the lepers but Princess Bubble is a WEST SIDE STORY song come to life, "Stick to your own kind, one of your own kind . . ."

    Much is being made -- and should be -- of what a stupid move this is for the general election.  If she gets the nomination or even gets on the ticket as a v.p. nominee, how is she going to woo voters -- outside of her protected bubble, of course?  She has just insulted FOX NEWS and that's an insult to FOX NEWS viewers -- they're either buyers of hate or too stupid to know what's going on, by Warren's attack on the news network.  Hillary Clinton shot herself in the foot in 2016 -- many times, but one of the more notable times was when she referred to some voters as "deplorable."  I'd argue this is much worse.

    It also makes her look like a coward -- a bullying coward but aren't most cowards bullies?  (Yes, they are.)  How can we expect a President (or Vice President) Warren to sit down with the leader of Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea or Vladimir Putin himself?  In the end, does she break like a little girl? Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit.  (Last two sentences are Bob Dylan's "Just Like A Woman," for any who missed it.)   Can you see the GOP ads if she's on the ticket now?

    This is awful for the general.

    It's not really good for the primary either.  It's another desperate move from a candidate who still hasn't gotten traction despite the fact that no other female candidate has received as much press for their campaign as she has -- not even Senator Kamala Harris has received as much attention as Warren.  But Warren just can't pull ahead.  So every week we get another desperate measure from her desperate campaign.  Please note, her staff laughs at the idea that she should address the ongoing wars.  They laugh at it, openly to the press, they laugh at it.

    "Our defense budget has increased out of all proportion to any military threat to the United States and to our domestic social, economic & environmental needs. The U.S. government must reduce our defense budget to half of its current size." ☮️ ☮️
     
     



    Elizabeth's got a lot of giveaways she's promising, she's practically Oprah.  And earlier in her campaign she would address the issue above.  Now?  No.  She's moved from reality to melodrama.

    She apparently can't compete on issues so she's resorting to attacks and tabloid moves in the hope that something -- anything -- hurl that kitchen sink, Elizabeth -- will finally stick and give her some traction.

    Who's in the lead right now?

    Former Vice President Joe Biden.

    Now he has huge name recognition -- more than any of the other 23 candidates.  That is true.  So he's going to be in the lead for that reason alone.  And that lead traditionally lasts through August or September and then it gets chipped away bit by bit.  (As Hillary discovered in 2008.)

    But Joe has something else besides name recognition.  He's got his public stances.  Democrats are aware that he gave Bully Boy Bush an award not that long ago, they're aware that he's always brown nosing Republicans, they're aware that he reaches so far across the aisle that he almost falls over.

    And yet he's in the lead currently -- among Democrats.

    What might that say?

    It might say that after the huge divisions of the last years, Democrats are looking for the nation to come together.  The negative spin on Joe is that he's a caver.  The positive spin on that same trait is that he's mature and willing to get things done.  Currently, how are Democrats seeing Joe's interactions with the GOP?  Apparently, they see it as his maturity and part of his ability to get things done.

    And here comes Princess Bubble.  She doesn't even have the nomination and already she's an obstructionist?  She doesn't even have the nomination and already she's a cry baby?  I ridiculed Bully Boy Bush in 2000 for his need to have his pillow on the campaign trail and how he had to be in his own bed more and more as his campaign went along.  Even though this site wasn't around then, I carried that criticism over to this site and made it repeatedly while he occupied the White House.  Because that's a baby move.  If you want to be president, get off your candy ass and get on the road meeting as many voters as you can.  In 2008, I praised Hillary for doing just that.  She wouldn't miss a stop, she'd add stops and events along the way.  In 2016, when apparently she thought she was going to be crowned, she pulled a Bully Boy Bush and she was tired of being on the road.  Tired of being on the road?  Sorry, you're running for president.  Yes, in the United States, we have a ridiculously long election cycle.  But everyone who declares their intent to run should already know that and be prepared.

    Princess Bubble is already crying.  Boo-hoo!  FOX NEWS is mean!  I won't go on their network.  Democrats watch FOX NEWS.  Sorry if that's a shock for Elizabeth.  (I don't watch FOX NEWS.  In all our time of reviewing programs -- 14 years and counting -- Ava and I never did FOX NEWS until earlier this year with "TV: Funny or not: SCHOOLED, Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld."  The only time I watched FOX NEWS by choice was after that when Bernie Sanders did his townhall. We watched that on a campus with students.)

    She's too pure for FOX NEWS.  What's next?  That really is the question, right?  As her campaign gets more and more desperate, what's she going to do next?

    I've said this before and I'll say it again, in a few more months, the candidates will not be able to define themselves.  The media will run the characterizations already established.  Elizabeth Warren is creating her own caricature through her own actions.  She's supposed to be a US Senator but she's carrying way too much drama.

    And doing so while addressing nothing.

    US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard addresses real issues, life and death issues, and does so in a mature way.  Senator Kirstin Gillibrand conducts herself professionally.  Senator Amy Klobuchar comes off like a functioning adult.  Marianne Williamson speaks to our better nature.  And then there's Liz.  Cranky Liz.  Hung over in the trailer park, screaming at everyone to turn down the music and get off her yard.

    If Elizabeth truly believes all FOX NEWS does is peddle hate, she should feel it is her civic duty to go on the air with a townhall on FOX NEWS just to offer their viewers an alternative.

    But, reality, hate can be peddled by all sides and Elizabeth's got a lot of hate seeping out of her pores.

    Elizabeth is demonstrating that she is not a good fit for the presidency but let's praise her for what a striking contrast she is to the other five women running and for proving that hotheads come in both genders.

    As noted in Monday's snapshot, the US Embassy in Baghdad kicked off this week by telling US citizens not to travel to Iraq due to safety concerns.  Today?  CNBC reports:

    Washington ordered the departure of non-emergency government employees from Iraq on Wednesday, after repeated U.S. expressions of concern about threats from Iranian-backed forces.
    The U.S. State Department has ordered the pullout of the employees from both the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Erbil, the embassy said in a statement.



    Is there really a threat?  Who knows?  It could be part of the effort to ramp up a war with Iran.


    Search results
    Trump officials are having a hard time persuading allies there is a new threat with Iran. British general contradicted US on Iran today. And Iraqi officials are skeptical, though State Dept. is about to evacuate some diplomats from Iraq. w/
     
     


    This is wild. CENTCOM just put out a press release calling out the UK's top general in the anti-ISIS Coalition after he stated that there was "no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria."
     
     
     






    Bill Van Auken (WSWS) explains:

    The threat of all-out war in the Middle East is greater today than at any time since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and the potential consequences are far graver.
    The report that the Pentagon has drawn up plans for dispatching 120,000 US soldiers and Marines to the region in preparation for a war of aggression against Iran must be taken with deadly seriousness by the working class. What is being prepared is a war for regime-change, an act of unmitigated criminality that threatens the lives of millions.
    While the New York Times cited half a dozen national security officials who were briefed on the plans, on Tuesday the report was described as “fake news” by US President Donald Trump, who said he is “absolutely” prepared to send troops against Iran, but insisted that “we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”
    The troop threat comes on the heels of a series of escalating acts of military intimidation against Iran, with the deployment off the Iranian coast of a battleship-carrier strike group, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln, and a bomber task force, including nuclear-capable B-52s. This has been followed by the dispatch to the region of the amphibious assault warship USS Arlington, carrying US Marines, warplanes and landing craft, as well a Patriot missile battery.
    The spark for an all-out conflict can come from any one of a number of incidents or staged provocations in a region where tensions have been brought to a fever pitch by decades of unending US aggression and a military buildup that has turned the southern coast of the Persian Gulf into an armed camp dominated by US air and naval bases.
    US military sources are already telling the corporate media—which serves as a contemptible instrument of war propaganda—that it has determined that the alleged sabotage of four vessels, including two Saudi oil tankers, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reported on Sunday was the work of Iran or “Iranian proxies.” No evidence whatsoever has been provided to substantiate this claim about an incident which itself remains murky, but the supposed culpability of Iran is nonetheless echoed as fact by the “embedded” news outlets.


    US Senator Bernie Sanders is also seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  Grace Segers (CBS NEWS) reports, "

    Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a sudden live video saying that war with Iran would be "many times worse than the Iraq War," in response to reporting by The New York Times saying that the Trump administration is reviewing a plan to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East. 
    The idea was reportedly spearheaded by John Bolton, the president's national security adviser, who served in the George W. Bush administration at the height of the conflict in Iraq.
    "Sixteen years ago, the U.S. committed one of the worst blunders in history of our country by attacking Iraq," Sanders said in a video recorded live on Periscope and posted to Twitter. He called out Bolton as one of the "leading advocates" of the war, which he called the "biggest foreign policy disaster" in modern U.S. history.


    He also addressed the issue with Anderson Cooper on CNN.


    "It would lead to endless wars...our kids and our grandchildren would never see a time when there would be peace." can't see a scenario where sending 120K troops to the Middle East - as part of a plan to counter Iran - would be justified.
    100K views
    0:09 / 4:45
     
     




    US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard is also calling out war on Iran.


    Trump says he doesn't want war with Iran, but that's exactly what he wants, because that's exactly what Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu, al-Qaeda, Bolton, Haley, and other NeoCons/NeoLibs want. That’s what he put first--not America.
    309K views
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    Ayad Allawi says a US official told him something.



    Iraqi Former vice president Iyad Allawi: A US official told me that the Israel intelligence got photos from the ground not only satellite images of Iranian ballistic missile platforms in directed towards the Gulf, this is why Mike Pompeo suddenly visited last week
    23.3K views
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    Well, a US official would never lie, right?  They didn't lie to you in November 2010 when they told you that The Erbil Agreement would be enforced, did they?  Oh, that's right, they did.  They got all of you to sign onto the agreement that gave Nouri a second term in exchange for him granting the concessions in the contract.  But even though then-President Barack Obama spoke to you personally on the phone and asked you to end your Parliament walkout (which you did), the contract was never enforced.







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