Trina's Kitchen: What should be front page and top of the broadcast news

Jerry White (WSWS) reports:

A new report from the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 2014 and 2015 life expectancy fell in the US, the first time this has happened since 1993, at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Life expectancy at birth decreased 0.1 years, from 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.8 years in 2015. This leaves the United States behind Cuba and Costa Rica and well behind Japan, Germany, France and other industrialized countries where life expectancy is still on the rise.

In 2015, just over 2.7 million deaths were registered in the US—86,212, or 1.2 percent, more than in 2014. White males and females and black males experienced higher death rates last year.

After declining for years, deaths increased from heart disease and stroke, as well as from chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. Mortality also rose from kidney disease, unintentional injuries and suicide.

That's America.

It's not the one that the media wanted to probe during the election.

It's not one that the news wants to cover.

But it's reality.

And it's a damn shame that it matters so little to the news media.

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

Friday, December 9, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the Mosul slog continues, a KRG official tells the BBC that Iraq is a failed state, we revisit War Hawk Hillary and the 2008 primary, and much more.

You don't help women by repeating lies.

‏@Rosie

PRESIDENT CARTER - AMERICAN HERO #focus #DONTaddHIM

Larry Cooper @coopah

When Jimmy Carter was president, he gave up his self-built peanut farm and then was investigated dailykos.com…

20 replies74 retweets331 likes

Rosie O'Donnell already tanked NBC's broadcast -- which the execs feared and they were right -- of HAIRSPRAY this week so you'd think she'd be a little more careful.

But typhon Rosie just goes barreling away.

Self-built?

By Jimmy?

Shame on Rosie.

I'm not surprised some idiot who'd link to DAILY KOS wouldn't know reality.

And let me clarify that since some are too uninformed to grasp.

If you are in the Debra Messing-Rosie O'Donnell crowd and just can't stop loving that Hillary Clinton, you don't likn to KOS.

I get it, you're vapid and shallow and uninformed.

But 2008 was not that long ago.

KOS ran off the supporters of Hillary in 2008 -- believe he said Hillary didn't deserve fairness -- and your ignorance about that is really shocking.

Whether it was THE NEW YORK TIMES or THE ATLANTIC or VANITY FAIR, this was covered.

So your desire to embrace a site that trafficked in the worst attacks on Hillary -- including that she was calling for someone to assassinate Barack Obama -- is truly disgusting.

So the idiot didn't know better than and is also too much of an idiot to know that Jimmy's peanut farm was not self-made by Jimmy.

Rosalynn Carter has repeatedly noted that her marriage was a true partnership.

And that farm? While Jimmy was learning new ag techniques, Rosaylann was learning book keeping.

How sad that not one but two people -- Larry Cooper and Ro-Ro -- want to pretend they're celebrating Jimmy Carter but seem to only be able to do that by stripping Rosalynn of her share of the credit.

"His self-built peanut farm"?

Rosie, you're no better now than the sexist critics who slammed Rosalynn for sitting in on Cabinet meetings.

It's not that Rosie's not good for anything these days.

After all, she reTweeted this garbage.

‏@bannerite

This is how some of us feel. #TheResistance

44 replies506 retweets666 likes

By reTweeting it, she exposed it to a lot more people.

This is the schilling of big money.

It's not about resistance.

What are they resisting?

There are wars going on.

Are they calling out those?

Hell no.

Never.

But they are pimping the lie that Russia interfered with the election.

It did not.

To continue to repeat that lie means they are calling out Barack Obama.

Note how they blame the agencies that report to . . . Barack.

That's what they're saying only, as usual, they're too gutless to speak what they're implying.

I doubt there are many harsher critics of Barack Obama online and I wouldn't accuse them of what they're accusing him of (which, let's be clear, is treason).

These people need to grow up.

I get that they're wounded. Marcia spoke for many in "That idiot Susan J. Douglas:"

Debra Messing, you are a nut and a psycho.
But I can understand your feelings of outrage because I had them in 2008.
I was supporting Hillary.
And she lost (or 'lost') to Barack.
And the whole time we had to deal with sexism.
We had to deal with Hillary nut crackers, we had to deal with talk of her "pimp"ing out her daughter, we had men like Chris Matthews saying that when they heard her voice, they had to cross their legs, etc.
And some of us defended her.
I started this blog for that reason.
I used all my PTO days to go out and campaign for her in states that hadn't held their primaries yet.
And so few would call out the sexism.
Susan J. Douglas refused to call out the sexism.

We were upset.

But we didn't go around screaming that foreign governments had destroyed Hillary in the primary or any other such nonsense.

We did talk about the gross sexism. We called it out as it was happening and we refused to let it just fade away with by-gones-be-by-gones.

Because of those actions -- and that was not just the people in our community who have sites as well as Riverdaughter, and so many others -- Hillary didn't face the sexism that she did in 2008.

The actions thousands of us took in 2008 forced the media to finally acknowledge what had happened -- except for columnists Marie Cocco and Bonnie Erbe, the media ignored it during the primary -- and then we had Howard Dean playing dumb to THE NEW YORK TIMES about what went down.

I contrast that with the whimpering, cry baby crowd of today who rests their hopes on recounts, then on persuading the electors in the electoral college, then on . . .

It's insanity. It's even worse when you don't know what happened and link to KOS or Bill Moyers or whatever piece of crap.

From June of 2008, this is Ava and my "TV: Strength greeted with confusion, attacks & silence:"

Wednesday, Katie Couric opened her "Notebook" (CBS Evening News) and proved the old adage, "If every woman in the world told the truth at the same time, the world as we know it would change forever."

[12/916 Click here for where they've moved the video to since 2008.]

If you doubted it, you missed what followed Couric calling out sexism. An intense effort to play dumb, attack or stay silent. On Friday, The New York Times went with with the first tactic. In a long article that said very little (no women in broadcast or cable news were sought out for the story), Katharine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosman offer "Critics and News Executives Split Over Sexism in Clinton Coverage." Heavy on featuring men (all quotes on the front page are from men) and short on women. All women featured show up late in the story (and inside the paper where it continues). Among the tiny number featured is one our readers know very well, Dr. Kathy:

"Largely, the problem was on cable and in the blogosphere and on the Internet, and that's a relatively small audience," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "But while it was limited, it was limited to influential people."

Oh, Dr. Kathy, we try to be nice. We tried. But as Staci Lattisaw once suggested, "Nail It To The Wall." "It" would be your ass, Dr. Kathy. Dr. Kathy lied to The New York Times and let's deal with that 1first. "Relatively small audience," she insisted last week. Well, golly, what did she say in May?

"Secondly, we know something about how the electorate is using the new media environment," Dr. Kathy told Bill Moyers on May 2nd. "Meaning lots of cable channels that you have an option to go to, even when you're watching traditional, mainstream broadcast. People aren't watching 30 minutes of NBC or CBS or ABC anymore. There's a whole part of the electorate that is watching a segment of it. It gets what it needs of politics, and it starts to channel-surf to find other political information. And over a third of the electorate says, it's done that at least once or twice in this most recent viewing experience."

To the paper last week, she insisted "the problem" (what is it, vaginal odor -- she can't say "sexism"?) was exposed to a "very small audience." Yet last month, on PBS, she was stating one-third of the electorate (ONE THIRD!) was utilizing cable channels and the web for information. Dr. Kathy has always struggled to build a relationship with the truth. The two remain estranged.

During the primary campaign, Dr. Kathy was brought on frequently as an 'expert' by Bill Moyers (to his Bill Moyers Journal -- which airs on the non-cable PBS and has a very large audience). On one of those segments (January 9th), Senator Hillary Clinton 'crying' was addressed. Hillary didn't cry but Dr. Kathy felt the need to bring that moment up and, 'expert' that she is, she credits it with Hillary's success in New Hampshire despite the fact that late breaking voters identified their reasons for going with Clinton as the Saturday debate. From the transcript of the January 9th broadcast:

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: But that's not the whole story. In the Hillary moment, characterized very differently by people-
BILL MOYERS: The moisty moment?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Well, whatever adjective or adverb you use, Hillary Clinton has this moment in the diner.
BILL MOYERS: The national press was cynical. Clinton is hoping that showing that other side will bring women in particular to the polls, almost as if she had done it deliberate. We don't know whether she did or not. But the two significant newspapers in New Hampshire didn't cover the event at all. And local television coverage in New Hampshire was pretty matter of fact about it. It became a bigger national story than it did a local story.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Mm-hm. But what's also interesting to me is you're not sure whether she did it deliberately or not.

What's interesting to us is that 'expert' Dr. Kathy brought it up on her own, interjected it and didn't know what the hell she was talking about. What's interesting to us is that Bill Moyers calls it a 'moisty' moment -- oh, ha, ha, you are so very funny.

But along with trying to be funny, he also likes pranks. The same episode.

JESSE JACKSON, JR.: We saw a sensitivity factor…But there are a lot of issues for which we can be emotion on this campaign.

That's how the transcript 'plays' that moment. It is not how it played on TV. (And we called it out in real time.) The "..." was not used on PBS, Jackson's actual words (aired on MSNBC) were. Dr. Kathy wants to tell The New York Times it was the bad world of blogs and the bad world of cable. But Moyers played Jackson entire sexist attack on Hillary. (Watch the episode online if you doubt us.)

And Dr. Kathy? Not a word. Brought on as an 'expert.' Moyers plays the sexist attack on Hillary and Dr. Kathy responds?

BILL MOYERS: What do you think?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Much of the commentary about that moment is simply a Rorschach read on people's ideological relationship to Hillary Clinton. The question for the electorate at large is: Does it speak to her capacity to lead? It's the same question that one should ask of everything one sees of candidates.

Jackson has just falsely lied and attacked Clinton in sexist terms and Dr. Kathy doesn't address that. She doesn't point out that he's lying when he says she cried about her appearance and she certainly doesn't point out that he had a chunk of his intestines removed to lose fifty pounds -- so who is he to accuse anyone else of vanity?

Dr. Kathy just let it skirt on by. Dr. Kathy can insist it was 'cable, all cable!' But people like Bill Moyers amplified it by replaying on non-cable and Dr. Kathy was present for that. And it should be noted that journalists know the difference between primary and secondary sources. Meaning? Bill Moyers should explain why he REFUSED to play Clinton's moment but was happy to air an attack on that moment while pretending he wanted to address the moment. But Dr. Kathy was present and she didn't call out the lies or the sexism. She just called it a "Rorschach read." Dr. Kathy, you're an embarrassment.

Don't believe us? Check over her various visits 'explaining' what was what to Moyers. Dr. Kathy, even when Hillary won New Hampshire, never attempted to portray it as anything for women to take pride in or to connect it to the centuries old and ongoing women's movement. But golly, bi-racial Barack was to be connected to history.

Check out the babble from the January 4th broadcast, after Barack won Iowa, "echo of Martin Luther King, Jr." (Dr. Kathy), MLK and Moses (Moyers), "Civil Rights movement" (Dr. Kathy), "Selma and Montgomery" (Dr. Kathy), "father from Kenya" (Dr. Kathy), "transcend the racial divide" (Dr. Kathy), "unification" (Dr. Kathy), "Obama changes the metaphor; because King took his people to the mountain, Obama can take them somewhere else" (Moyers and, yes, it is racist as well as laughable since Barack's bi-racial and made no promises to America's Black community), and that's all from one appearance. In that appearance she also casts Hillary "as the establishment" -- Dr. Kathy would argue she said the press did but Dr. Kathy was brought on to 'see beyond' the press spin as Moyers stated ("Her calling is to mine the facts hidden in all the spin," Jan. 11th, BMJ)) and she didn't question and certainly didn't point out that Barack, first entering the Illinois state legislature in 1995, was no political virgin.

Speaking to The New York Times, Dr. Kathy left out the fact that whatever happens on cable is amplified elsewhere. She seemed to 'forget' Jackson's MSNBC attack was re-played by Moyers on PBS and that she was present for it and that she didn't call out. She forgets a lot.

Don't pretend that 2016 was rough for Hillary.

And don't pretend that she was an innocent.

She never should have used private e-mail and a private server.

That's only one of her problems.

She lost Marcia, Ava and myself (among others) because her remarks about her "mistake" on Iraq? She amplified them after her failed run. Her mistake? To think Bully Boy Bush would send enough troops to Iraq.

That was her mistake.

In 2008, she finally said "mistake," okay, maybe she can learn from her mistakes. We knew Barack was for the war (he told Elaine and I that at his Senate run fundraiser). The illegal war matters. If Hillary could learn from her mistake, we could support her.

But it was just more spin in 2008. We learned that when she was Secretary of State. And she did nothing to help Iraqi women -- even with own friends imploring her to help them. And she wanted war in Syria. And she advocated and got war on Libya.

She's a War Hawk.

Yesterday, wearing make up (which idiots will decide this 'new look' is a feminist statement?), she wanted to call out Fake News.

She wanted to.

That's right, her.

‏@CBSNews

Hillary Clinton: "Let me just mention one threat in particular that should concern all Americans... the epidemic of malicious fake news" 

802 replies733 retweets1,251 likes

As John Stauber notes:

John Stauber Retweeted

‏@JohnStauber

#Hillary sold the #WeaponsOfMassDeception. She OWNS #fakenews. 

POLITICO @politico

.@HillaryClinton decries fake news 'epidemic' politi.co/2gH9ayq via @eschor 

6 retweets9 likes

And he's not the only one.

K. ‏@kay_sesen 10 hours ago

The lies that led to the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea etc don't count however...

5 retweets

This is the reality of Hillary that her cult today refuses to own.

She has caused wars and destruction.

Was it a 'mistake' as she claimed?

If you make a mistake, you make up for it.

She did nothing as Secretary of State to help the Iraqi people.

‏@moonnor27

Graphic pics 
Massacre 
66Iraqi Sunni civilian killed today & 100 injured by Iraqi army airstrikes on Qaim 
#warcrimes 
#Iraq

8 replies350 retweets123 likes

And the Iraq War continues and, with it, all the abuses.

The operation to liberate or 'liberate' Mosul continues.

It's day 53.

Despite Barack calling, June 19, 2014, for a political solution, none has been reached -- or for that matter attempted.

From yesterday's State Dept press briefing moderated by spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau:

QUESTION: The – Masrour Barzani, the chancellor, of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, just gave a talk at the Wilson Center, and he said – he remarked that before there was ISIS there was al-Qaida in Iraq, and after ISIS there’s likely to be something else unless we get this right. What he said was that the root cause of this radicalism was a political failure in Iraq. What would be your comment on that observation? Would you tend to agree or you think it’s not --

MS TRUDEAU: I wouldn’t speak to the chancellor’s remarks. That would be for him to explain that. I would say that we continue to stand with the people of Iraq. We have been very supportive of the reforms that this government has continued to advance through their legislative process. We believe in a democratic, unified Iraq. We think that’s the future of the country.
I’d also note, though, too, that they have made enormous gains fighting [the Islamic State]. We never said that this would be an easy fight, but we are really seeing progress on the ground.

QUESTION: Because something else not only he, but others – many others have said is there’s been so much bloodshed and it’s still very immediate in people’s minds, in their hearts, that it’s impossible for people to go back to what existed before because they don’t trust – one element doesn’t trust another. Is that something you – you’re – a perspective you’re sympathetic to?

MS TRUDEAU: I think we’re sympathetic to the idea that the people of Iraq have certainly suffered. They’ve suffered under [the Islamic State]. They suffered under the range of violent extremism within their own country. However, we have faith in the people of Iraq. We continue to believe that they’re making significant progress.

[. . .]

QUESTION: Just a follow-up on that issue.

MS TRUDEAU: Sure.

QUESTION: I mean, you talked about the Iraqi people suffering from al-Qaida and ISIS and they – but they also suffered in the war and occupation and so on, and what was missing – I mean, I remember being there for so long – what was missing is national reconciliation. What is missing today in this dialogue is national reconciliation. After all, the current prime minister is of the same party as the former prime minister. What is being done? What is the United States and – or your Administration in its final weeks doing to sort of reignite a path for national reconciliation?

MS TRUDEAU: Well, I think we have seen progress. We have seen important steps taken on reform. We have seen efforts made across sectarian lines. We’re not saying the work is done. I don’t think for any of us in any of the countries, including my own, work is ever done on this. But we do recognize when progress has been made, Said.

All the money spent continuing the Iraq War and there's no progress at all.

The Islamic State came to power because of conditions in Iraq -- such as the persecution of the Sunnis. Having failed to address that issue, something else will surely follow the Islamic State -- if or when it's ever defeated.

Robert J. Barsocchini (COUNTERCURRENTS) observes:

Fake news propagated by the US government and collaborating organizations such as the New York Times and Washington Post helped create an environment in which the US was able to illegally invade Iraq in 2003, killing at least one million and possibly upwards of two million people, including the deaths of some 4,500 US soldiers, according to a meta-study by Nobel-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Just this November, nearly 6,000 people were killed in Iraq thanks to the conflicts that are still raging due to the invasion (which is ongoing), and it was not an atypical month – even more were killed in October.
Regarding the fake news that laid the groundwork for the US war of aggression, award-winning journalist Robert Parry notes that, for example, Judith Miller of NYT and Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt “repeatedly stated the ‘fact’ of Iraq’s hidden WMD as flat fact and mocked anyone who doubted the ‘group think.’”

Parry also traces the use of fake news by these outlets and the government to the present, raising interesting legal questions about whether and how the individuals who perpetrate fake news should be punished, and to what extent they are protected by the US first amendment.

Meanwhile, Iraq "has failed to be a fair governor for all." That's the call made by the Kurdistan Regional Government's Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani who appeared on today's BBC HARDTALK. We'll note this section of the interview.

Qubad Talabani : We have not been shy about talking to Iraq, talking to our partners in the west about our aspirations and about the aspirations of our people who, by and large, want to be independent. I think that's a natural right for the Kurds, it's a -- it's a historic right for the Kurds. And it's a historic injustice that today the Kurds do not have a state of their own. But the fact that we are talking to Baghdad about this issue, the fact that we will negotiate any independence process with Baghdad --

Stephen Sackur: Ah

Qubad Talabani (Con't): -- should allay the fears with any --

Stephen Sackur: Well --

Qubad Talabani (Con't): -- with any countries nearby or far away that could be concerned about that potential eventuality.

Stephen Sackur: -- Interesting. You use an elegant politician's device there of saying two different things. One you said talk to Baghdad and two you say end negotiations. You could talk to Baghdad

Qubad Talabani : It's a process

[cross-talk]

Qubad Talabani : It's a process. It's not a declaration --

Stephen Sackur: Isn't it?

Qubad Talabani :There will not be a unilateral declaration.

The following community sites updated: