Ever notice that when Tulsi Gabbard gets viciously attacked, the people who screamed "sexism" re: Hillary never rush to her defense? Strange
Exactly.
And that needs to stop.
And we also need to stop the cries of 'sexism' when it's false.
C.I. takes on the nonsense of 'calling Hillary weak' warps girls/woman -- or whatever that idiot Tweeted.
I'm glad C.I. took on the idiot.
This nonsense has to stop.
Feminism does not wall Hillary off from criticism.
It does not mean that we can't call her a "weak candidate" when she was a weak one.
She was horrible in fact.
I also want to note this from WSWS:
Mass water shutoffs resumed this week in the city of Detroit. It is the fourth straight year that city officials have sanctioned the shutoffs, targeting the most vulnerable layers of the population in the Motor City, the poorest big city in the United States.
According to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), some 17,995 households are on its target list for service disconnection. Water shutoffs began Wednesday, and shutoff notices went out 10 days earlier.
The resumption of water shutoffs in Detroit is part of a broader annual spring offensive, the start of mass utility disconnections in metropolitan as well as rural communities across the US. Whether it is gas, water or electric service, the loss of utilities can have dire health consequences, particularly for children, the sick and the elderly.
The purpose of the mass shutoffs in Detroit are two-fold. City officials are determined to increase revenues, squeezing hard-pressed workers in the city for every loose dollar to bolster the finances of DWSD in advance of possible privatization. DWSD Director Gary Brown recently told the Detroit News that his office has collected some $57 million as a result of the program.
At the same time, the mass water shutoffs are aimed at effectively driving tens of thousands of impoverished residents out of the city to make way for upscale developments by billionaires such as Quicken Loan CEO Dan Gilbert, who is buying up properties in the city right and left. This is in line with plans for the “return” of Detroit based on gentrification. Upscale development in the city center is combined with the shutdown of entire working class neighborhoods that are deemed no longer viable. This entails the mass closure of schools and the denial of basic services like street repairs.
Since 2014, some 50,000 Detroit households have been disconnected from water service, and there are currently 10,000-20,000 Detroit homes still without water. The city, which is located next to the Great Lakes, the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, has seen recent double-digit increases in its water rates, which have doubled over the past decade.
Shannon Jones wrote that, by the way.
This is outrageous. It's the neoliberal scam to privatize our public goods.
It's the neoliberal scam against We The People.
This is disgusting and, as I've said since this began, Detroit is the test case.
If they can get away with it there, they will implement it everywhere.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:
Friday, April 21, 2017.
We're going to have to deal nonsense right off the bat.
We're going to have to deal nonsense right off the bat.
So some balding, pasty bitch is going to tell us all what to do based on her vaginal hiccups and anal seizures?
No f**king way.
Feminism is not Leah Balding McElrath's personal toy.
Feminism is a movement.
Feminism is about equality.
It's not about specialism.
I'm sick to f**k of trash like that bald idiot insisting Hillary was the most qualified candidate for president ever.
In 2007 and 2008 (long before I supported her), I would hear people scoff at the idea that she even had qualifications.
I would defend her.
And you can say she was qualified.
But you can't lie that she was the most qualified.
And I'm sorry Baldy McElrath if that bit of truth ripped off a butterfly's wing in some alternate universe. (Where your oversized forehead is, no doubt, worshiped).
As Ann noted earlier this week ("Hillary was not more qualified than Al Gore, JFK or LBJ"), we already imploded that myth at THIRD with "Hillary was not 'the most qualified candidate ever..." where we noted how LBJ, JFK and Al Gore were all more qualified than Hillary.
Maybe were she running for talk show host, she'd be the most qualified?
Maybe not.
But for President of the United States?
I struggled to list meaningful credits she possessed in 2008 in exchanges with cab drivers.
Because she really doesn't have any.
She had one complete term as a senator and two years of a second one when she became Secretary of State. Without even evaluating those two positions in terms of any accomplishments, that's really not that impressive.
First Lady doesn't count.
Now I counted it in 2008.
But I go by how people treat things.
Hillary doesn't think First Lady matters as evidenced by her sexist announcement that, were she elected, Bill would be over the economy.
He wouldn't, she assured us in this last run, be planning state dinners or picking out china.
Because it's too much to expect a male spouse of a president to do what we'd expect a woman to do?
Hillary's always been a troubling sort of feminist.
No, 2016 Hillary insisted, she, as president, would do that herself.
That's not feminism.
Nor is it practical.
Hillary was not the most qualified.
She was probably somewhere in the middle.
But that may be generous.
It's interesting that no one can criticize Hillary according to the balding "human rights activist" (means she supports LGBT rights, she doesn't speak out in favor of those destroyed by US wars), but she can -- and has -- slammed Jill Stein.
Slamming Jill Stein is okay?
That's a funny sort of feminism.
Again, as with Hillary, I judge people by the standards they apply to others.
Hillary Clinton was a lousy candidate.
Matthew Yglesias -- who I have no reason to defend now or ever -- calling Hillary "a weak candidate" does not, as Balding Leah McElrath insists, "commit psychological violence against women/girls."
To allow this bitch to get away with this is to destroy free speech.
She's a liar and she's a loon.
Hillary was an awful candidate, not weak, awful.
And feminism is about telling the truth.
Telling the truth about men, about women, about the whole system.
If Hillary's a lousy candidate -- and she was -- then you say so.
And it's not violence against anyone.
But a hagged old balding bitch wants to tell us that we can't speak freely and wants to presume that women and girls can't handle truth?
That we're too delicate for public discourse?
A presidential election is not a cover of 16 MAGAZINE.
Drop the hysteria.
But if she did, people could speak honestly and that's what Leah really fears.
Hillary was a lousy candidate.
In 2008, she did know how to campaign.
She lost it.
In 2016, she lost it.
And she was not the most qualified ever.
She wasn't even the most qualified in the Democratic primary.
"She persisted" is what Leah calls her Twitter feed.
Having read it, I think Leah should retitle it "She farted."
Or, possibly, she'd prefer "She quifed."
She's trying to blackmail people into silence. That's not feminism.
Let's reset with Tori.
This four-year-old girl doesn't even flinch at gunfire -- trapped in Mosul, Iraq, she's never known anything but war cnn.it/2pLFW9H
That's a reality.
It's a reality that 'human rights activists' (especially those who are Temple Love Slaves for War Hawk Hillary) will never face.
14 years and still going.
The Iraq War.
When does it end?
Molly Hennessy-Fiske and W.J. Hennigan (LOS ANGELES TIMES) report:
It also appears that the number of civilian casualties has risen in recent months as combat has shifted to densely populated west Mosul and the coalition has undertaken the heaviest bombing since the war began almost three years ago.
[. . .]
Raed Mohammed Hasan, 30, said he lost neighbors and relatives, including his 11-month-old daughter, Rania, in an airstrike in east Mosul on Jan. 21. He and other residents say 11 civilians died in that strike, which occurred during the months-long battle to oust Islamic State from Iraq’s second-largest city. Coalition records show a strike was carried out in Mosul that day, but officials say it is not being investigated for civilian deaths.
The report also contains numerous photos by Marcus Yam.
Day 185 of The Mosul Slog.
It never ends.
And it never ends because solutions are not sought.
Nouri al-Maliki was the mid-wife to the Islamic State.
His actions allowed them to rise.
That's on Bully Boy Bush and the Congress of the United States who all agreed to benchmarks for Iraq, remember that?
Congress was going to cut off support if Iraq did not show progress.
Congress was as full of it as was Bully Boy Bush (Democrats controlled both houses them).
But so was Nouri. He agreed to those 2007 benchmarks.
One of which was political reconciliation.
But he never pursued it, he never enacted it.
And then Barack comes along.
He doesn't make Nouri stop persecuting the Sunnis.
He doesn't demand that Nouri keep the reconciliation promise.
In fact, when Nouri loses the 2010 election (to Ayad Allawi), Barack goes out of his way to overturn the elections results (via the US-brokered Erbil Agreement) and give Nouri a second term that the Iraqi voters did not want.
And Nouri only got worse.
There is still no political reconciliation in Iraq.
And stop pretending that the US government has no power.
They've always had power.
And that has nothing to do with troops or war.
It has to do with Iraq's needs.
Currently, the Iraqi government defines needs as: More weapons.
And the US government's response: To whip it out on request, no conditions.
IANS reports, "The US State Department has approved arms sales worth $295 million to Iraq, the Pentagon confirmed."
There's a thing called "the diplomatic toolbox."
John Kerry couldn't find it because he was too busy, as Secretary of State, playing toy solider.
But now Donald Trump is in the White House and yet another administration will fork over everything to the Iraqi government (that the US installed and keeps in power) without any conditions.
Let's stop pretending that the never-ending Iraq War is seen as 'tragic' or even 'problematic' by the US government.
It doesn't want it to end.
If it did, it would follow textbook examples of diplomacy.
Three administration, over 14 years, and the war continues?
That's obviously the intent and the plan.
We're going to have to wrap up. Sorry so much was spent on an idiot but we cannot allow anyone to dictate what we can and cannot say.
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