Thursday, August 13, 2020

Parents should be outraged

 It is not safe to resume face-to-face school.  If you doubt me on that, read Sam Wayne and Usman Khan's piece at WSWS:

 

Many colleges, universities and K-12 schools across the United States have sent letters and emails to parents and students, requiring liability waivers be signed before students can return for in-person classes.

Some of the higher education institutions using such waivers include Bates College, the University of New Hampshire, Point Park University in Pittsburgh and St. Xavier University. Universities such as the University of Memphis and Ohio State University sent liability waivers to all student athletes but may extend these waivers to all students.

There are also a number of K-12 school districts using these waivers including Florida’s Volusia County, South Carolina’s Berkeley County, the Catholic schools and centers in St. Petersburg and Tampa under superintendent Chris Pastura, and St. Andrew’s Schools in Honolulu, Hawaii.


Requiring waivers to attend school?  That's your sure sign that, no, it is not safe.

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

 Wednesday, August 12, 2020.  Kamala Harris gets her moment (who remembers Tulsi?), Turkey continues to terrorize Iraq, and much more.


Starting in the US where Senator Kamala Harris has been selected as Joe Biden's running mate.  Kamala brings positives and negatives to the ticket.

On the positive side, she has energy and charisma.  She has held elected office -- District Attorney in San Francisco, Attorney General of California and US senator.  Her campaign for the presidential nomination created the K-Hive -- a group of supporters.  Those are all strengths.

On the negative side?  Her record as DA and AG could hurt the ticket.  Betty's "Kamala isn't Black" makes a solid point.  Kamala's father is Black and her mother is from India.  We've explained before that she doesn't use the term African-American.  She does use the term Black.  At other times, that might be fine.  But she is bi-racial and Betty's right that a message is sent by the Joe Bidens when the "Black" person they choose to embrace is actually bi-racial.  What message does that send to the Black community in this country?  There's not a lot Kamala can do about that. 

For some on the right wing, Kamala's work on the anti-lynching measure is a source of controversy because she embraced Jussie Smollett's lie and then had no real answer when asked about it after it imploded.  She looked at the camera and played dumb.  Some on the right insist she was 'in on it,' knew it was a hoax.  (No, I don't believe she knew it was a hoax, I'm talking about baggage she brings to the ticket.) 

For me, what the choice of Kamala drives home is . . . just how unimportant Tulsi Gabbard was and is.

For those who have forgotten, the last day of July saw one of two Democratic Party debates -- there were so many candidates that they had to divide them into two nights.  Kamala was on stage with Joe Biden and Tulsi Gabbard among others.  

Tulsi -- the fake ass anti-war candidate -- went after Kamala on her record of prosecutions.  She ripped her apart and got media attention because, hey, it's a cat fight and that feeds into the media's ingrained sexism.

Take on Joe and you will be held accountable by the media -- ask Cory Booker, ask Julian Castro -- even ask Kamala.  But if two women disagree, the media will run with it.

In this case, Tulsi did not disagree.  She walked up with a two-by-four and knocked Kamala across the face with it.  

The media loved it and Tulsi got a wave of attention. 

In that wave, she offered lies for Joe Biden about the Iraq War.

In real time, the morning after the debate, we noted that fake ass anti-war Tulsi was given two chances to call Joe out in that debate.  Jake Tapper set her up for it.  She didn't do it.  He then worked his way back to her and gave her a second chance and she took a pass.

Fake ass.

From the August 1, 2019 snapshot:

Joe was an embarrassment and we'll probably come back to him.

But let me now break a thousand and one fantasies and tick a lot of people off.

The other big loser?  Tulsi Gabbard.

Why was she on the stage?

Yes, she was rarely called on and had little time to speak.  That really doesn't make a difference because when she did speak, she repeatedly blew it.

Watching her, with a group of college students, was cringe worthy.  I kept my mouth shut during the debate and I waited until all the students had spoken before I shared my opinion.

The group was made up of people who were supporting Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard (one young man was supporting Mike Gravel).  No one was hostile towards her going into the debate.

No one was impressed with her after the debate -- not even her supporters -- one of which said that she performed like she thought Joe Biden was going to win the nomination and she was angling to be his running mate on the ticket.

She was bad.

How bad?

Jill Stein bad.  In 2012, Jill ran a hideous campaign.  One of the worst campaigns I've ever seen.  Ava and I noted that in our day-after-the-election piece ["Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.)"].  Marianne Williamson is ridiculed by some as a 'new age guru.'  That's nonsense.  She runs like a real candidate, she speaks to real issues.  Jill, however, ran in 2012 like a new age guru and I found Tulsi last night to be just as vapid.

When I shared a month or so ago that I hadn't decided who I'd support (I thought that was rather obvious by the statements I'd made all along but I guess it wasn't) e-mails poured in -- to the community e-mail, not the public one, these were community members, not drive-bys to the public account -- insisting that if I was against the wars, I had to support Tulsi because she was.

Tulsi speaks a lot of beliefs that I agree with.  In her interviews.  In some of her speeches.

But I'm not 19.  I've seen nonsense before.

And I saw it last night, repeatedly.

If people went to her website today demanding their donations back, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

She's polling slightly higher -- or was before the debate.  Just a tad higher.  And she needed to connect.  But whomever wore that white pantsuit on stage last night -- the real Tulsi or Tulsi on ambien -- didn't connect.

With Mike Gravel and Tulsi, we're told it's important that they're on the stage in the debates because they will raise real issues.  I know Mike and he will -- and did in 2008 when he was on the stage.  But Tulsi didn't.

She was supposed to be the anti-war voice.  She was on stage with the biggest War Hawk running for the nomination -- Joe Biden.

And she didn't touch him.

And she didn't call out the wars in any significant or meaningful manner.

And the wars were an actual issue.  Moderator Jake Tapper brought the topic up and Jake went to more than just two people on this issue.  We're using NBC transcript for this debate, by the way.



TAPPER: Thank you, Governor Inslee. I want to turn to foreign policy, if we can. Senator Booker, there are about 14,000 U.S. services members in Afghanistan right now. If elected, will they still be in Afghanistan by the end of your first year in office?

BOOKER: Well, first of all, I want to say very clearly that I will not do foreign policy by tweet as Donald Trump seems to do all the time. A guy that literally tweets out that we're pulling our troops out before his generals even know about it is creating a dangerous situation for our troops in places like Afghanistan.
And so I will bring our troops home and I will bring them home as quickly as possible, but I will not set during a campaign an artificial deadline. I will make sure we do it, we do it expeditiously, we do it safely, to not create a vacuum that's ultimately going to destabilize the Middle East and perhaps create the environment for terrorism and for extremism to threaten our nation.

TAPPER: Congresswoman Gabbard, you're the only veteran on this stage. Please respond.

GABBARD: This is real in a way that's very difficult to convey in words. I was deployed to Iraq in 2005 during the height of the war where I served in a field medical unit where every single day I saw the high cost of war. Just this past week, two more of our soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.
My cousin is deployed to Afghanistan right now. Nearly 300 of our Hawaii National Guard soldiers are deployed to Afghanistan, 14,000 servicemembers are deployed there. This is not about arbitrary deadlines. This is about leadership, the leadership I will bring to do the right thing to bring our troops home, within the first year in office, because they shouldn't have been there this long.
For too long, we've had leaders who have been arbitrating foreign policy from ivory towers in Washington without any idea about the cost and the consequence, the toll that it takes on our servicemembers, on their families. We have to do the right thing, end these wasteful regime change wars, and bring our troops home.

(APPLAUSE)

TAPPER: Thank you. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Mr. Yang, Iran has now breached the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal after President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal, and that puts Iran closer to building a nuclear weapon, the ability to do so, at the very least. You've said if Iran violates the agreement, the U.S. would need to respond, quote, "very strongly." So how would a President Yang respond right now?

YANG: I would move to de-escalate tensions in Iran, because they're responding to the fact that we pulled out of this agreement. And it wasn't just us and Iran. There were many other world powers that were part of that multinational agreement. We'd have to try and reenter that agreement, renegotiate the timelines, because the timelines now don't make as much sense.
But I've signed a pledge to end the forever wars. Right now, our strength abroad reflects our strength at home. What's happened, really? We've fallen apart at home, so we elected Donald Trump, and now we have this erratic and unpredictable relationship with even our longstanding partners and allies.
What we have to do is we have to start investing those resources to solve the problems right here at home. We've spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives in conflicts that have had unclear benefits. We've been in a constant state of war for 18 years. This is not what the American people want. I would bring the troops home, I would de-escalate tensions with Iran, and I would start investing our resources in our own communities.

(APPLAUSE)

TAPPER: Governor Inslee, your response?

INSLEE: Well, I think that these are matters of great and often difficult judgment. And there is no sort of primer for presidents to read. We have to determine whether a potential president has adequate judgment in these decisions.
I was only one of two members on this panel today who were called to make a judgment about the Iraq war. I was a relatively new member of Congress, and I made the right judgment, because it was obvious to me that George Bush was fanning the flames of war.
Now we face similar situations where we recognize we have a president who would be willing to beat the drums of war. We need a president who can stand up against the drums of war and make rational decisions. That was the right vote, and I believe it.

TAPPER: Thank you. Thank you, Governor. Vice President Biden, he was obviously suggesting that you made the wrong decision and had bad judgment when you voted to go to war in Iraq as a U.S. senator.

BIDEN: I did make a bad judgment, trusting the president saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in. From the moment "shock and awe" started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress and the administration.
Secondly, I was asked by the president in the first meeting we had on Iraq, he turned and said, Joe, get our combat troops out, in front of the entire national security team. One of the proudest moment of my life was to stand there in Al-Faw Palace and tell everyone that we're coming -- all our combat troops are coming home.

TAPPER: Thank you.

BIDEN: I opposed the surge in Afghanistan, this long overdue -- we should have not, in fact, gone into Afghanistan the way...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I want to bring in...

INSLEE: Mr. Vice President -- I'd like to comment.



That was Tulsi?

Her whole reason for being on the stage is supposed to be about ending the wars.  Get Tulsi on the stage, even her detractor David Swanson has argued, because she's going to be raising the real issues.

Well not only were her remarks above inadequate and, yes, flat out embarrassing -- John Kerry could have made the same remarks in 2004 -- but she blew it.

Not just then.  If it was just then, okay, she didn't think on her feet and realized a few seconds after that she should have spoken to the issues strongly.

Okay but Jay Inslee wanted to speak -- see above -- Jake instead went back to Tulsi, went back to her.

TAPPER: I would like to bring in the person on the stage who served in Iraq, Governor -- I'm sorry, Congresswoman Gabbard. Your response to what Vice President Biden just said.

GABBARD: We were all lied to. This is the betrayal. This is the betrayal to the American people, to me, to my fellow servicemembers. We were all lied to, told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was working with Al Qaida, and that this posed a threat to the American people.
So I enlisted after 9/11 to protect our country, to go after those who attacked us on that fateful day, who took the lives of thousands of Americans.
The problem is that this current president is continuing to betray us. We were supposed to be going after Al Qaida. But over years now, not only have we not gone after Al Qaida, who is stronger today than they were in 9/11, our president is supporting Al Qaida.

Oh, shut the f**k up, Tulsi.

Just reliving that moment is enough to piss me off.

Donald Trump is bad, Donald Trump is evil blah blah blah blah blah.

If you're honestly surprised by how Donald has been as a president, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.  Seriously, you are too damn stupid to be trusted with a ballot.  I'm opposed to Donald and I was before he announced he was running, long, long before.  

Joe Biden voted for the war, he sold the war.  He lied onstage and Tulsi safe little go to -- her bulls**t I'm-just-a-girl move -- was to talk about Donald Trump and al Qaeda.  WTF was that, you stupid idiot.  I'm furious.  We've noted her here.  We've reposted her Tweets on Sunday.  We've never noted much of her from her Congressional office because her press releases are infrequent and disappointing.  I think we've carried two of her Congressional press releases.

There's a reason for that.  And there's a reason that while I could applaud her earlier statements on the war, I did [not] buy a pass to the Tulsi train.

She betrayed everyone last night.  While I was working out this morning, I kept telling myself to be nice when I dictated this.  Sorry, that's out the window.

Joe Biden voted for the war, he supported it.  He used his position to silence dissent.  And it didn't end there, people.  He knew Nouri al-Maliki was a thug.  Unlike Hillary Clinton, he didn't have the guts to say it publicly, but he knew it.  Yet he betrayed democracy and the people of Iraq as vice president by arguing that the Iraqi people's 2010 vote didn't matter and that Nouri should have a second term even though they voted against that.

Joe is a disaster.

Mike Gravel would have called him out.

I'm-just-a-girl-standing-on-a-stage-wanting-Joe-Biden-to-like-me was full of s**t.

Did she choke or is that the real Tulsi?

If that''s the real Tulsi, get her off stage, we don't need her.  We've had enough liars pretending that the wars were wrong and needed to be ended -- hey, Nancy Pelosi, I'm looking at you -- to last a lifetime.  We don't need another.  

Jake Tapper specifically brought her back in after Joe lied about his record, and asked her about Joe's response and she's telling us about Donald Trump.  


Note that Tulsi went on, in her brief media wave after that debate, to lie for Joe.  

Are you among the many unhappy that Joe will most likely be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee?  Lay some blame at Tulsi's door.

She was more than happy to rip apart a woman for alleged wrongful imprisonments but she wouldn't touch the White man who is responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis (not to mention all the people in prison because of Joe's crime legislation).


People praised Tulsi for that debate -- people who should damn well have known better.  I'm being kind and not saying, "_____ what were you thinking when you used your radio program after that debate to hail her as 'anti-war'?"  But there was a whole host of people who made excuses for her.

Don't worry, we were told, at the next debate, Tulsi was going after Joe.

They lied to themselves about that.  And, of course, Tulsi's ass never made it on stage again.

She had one shot to call out a War Hawk who was responsbile for so many deaths and she didn't choke, she just refused to do it -- on stage at the debate, on camera with multiple outlets in the wave of attention after.  


About the only one with the guts to call Tulsi out in real time (other than us)?  Adam Kokesh.  He noted the myth of Tulsi, saw through it.  It's a shame others could not.  


When Tulsi dropped out and refused to endorse Bernie, people made excuses for her again.  She dropped out and, in her dropping out announcement, endorsed Joe Biden.  That was March 19th.  Stop pretending that piece of garbage is anti-war.


She is one of the strongest reasons that Joe is the nominee.  

The fools who supported her to the tiny end insisted that she destroyed Kamala.  They took comfort in that.  The Michael Traceys, for example, the sewer of the internet.

Well it's August 12, 2020 and who is destroyed?

Not Kamala.  She's on a presidential ticket.  Regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election, her profile has risen considerably and she is now, to the media, a rock star.

Fake Ass Gabbard?

She's not on a presidential ticket.  She's also not going to be in Congress much longer.  She couldn't win her own district.  The polling showed that.  So she tried to save face and declare that she wouldn't seek re-election.  Fake Ass' Congressional district wasn't about to re-elect her.  Had she not declared that, she would have been embarrassed in the midst of her pathetic presidential run by losing a Democratic primary.  What an endorsement that would have been.


Tulsi: I've been in the US Congress.  Now I'm running for president.  I just got primaried and lost.  My own district won't re-elect me but I'm asking you to make me president of the United States.  I'm Tulsi Gabbard and I fake ass this announcement.


Fake Ass Gabbard achieved nothing in her run and that's no one's fault but her own.  After she endorsed Biden, some people tried to say that at least she took out Kamala.  She never took out Kamala and we said that all along.  

The Iraq War continues -- not that Tulsi uses her Congressional seat to point that reality out.  Nor does she ever try to advocate for the Iraqi people who continue to suffer.  She doesn't speak of them and didn't even when she was posing as the anti-war candidate.  




AL-MONITOR notes:

A Turkish drone strike struck a military vehicle north of Erbil, killing two Iraqi border guard battalion commanders and their driver, the Iraqi military said Tuesday.

According to the Kurdish news outlet Rudaw, the strike in the Bradost area in northern Iraq targeted a meeting between border officials and fighters with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist group. Bradost Mayor Ihsan Chelebi told the Associated Press that the officers killed Tuesday had been setting up new posts in the area.


 The world -- including the US government -- has looked the other way as the brutal and repressive government of Turkey has violated Iraq's national sovereignty.  How much longer is that going to be allowed?  They terrorize the people in northern Iraq -- villagers, farmers -- by dropping bombs constantly.  They violate Iraq's borders by sending ground troops into Iraq.  How much longer are they going to get away with this?


Iraq cancelled a ministerial visit and summoned Turkey's ambassador on Wednesday as it blamed Ankara for a drone attack that killed two high-ranking Iraqi military officers. 

Iraqi officials called the attack a "blatant Turkish drone attack" in the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, where Turkey's military has for weeks raided positions of fighters it considers "terrorists".


Yesterday's snapshot noted reports of two attacks on US convoys.  Yesterday saw the US government denying both attacks.  Today?  They admit one took place.  AP reports:


An explosion targeted a U.S.-led coalition convoy in Iraq on Tuesday and caused no casualties, just hours after a newly formed Shiite militant group falsely claimed bombing a similar convoy at the Iraq-Kuwait border, the American military said.

The little-known Ashab al-Kahf group claimed in an overnight statement it destroyed “equipment and vehicles belonging to the American enemy” in a bombing targeting a border crossing south of the Iraqi city of Basra.





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