Thursday, January 4, 2024

Family Guy

Last week, Ava, C.I. and my cousin Stan wrote "Two things on TV that need to go" at THIRD.  I meant to note this earlier.


One of the two things is Family Guy.  I sometimes enjoy the show -- it's an animated cartoon.  I like American Dad better and Bob's Burgers and The Simpsons.  But I can enjoy Family Guy from time to time.


That said, if it's a Star Wars spoof episode?  I immediately find something else to watch.  Those episodes aren't funny, they're embarrassing.


And I thought that was the worst that an episode of that show could be.


And then they added Sam Elliot as Mayor West after Adam West died in real life.


I can't take any episodes with the Mayor West character.


Those aren't funny.


And I like Sam Elliot.  He's a very good actor.  He's way too good to be doing this stupid voice role on Family Guy.  


So let me add my name to the assertion that the show would be better off without the new Mayor West.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Thursday, January 4, 2024.  Donald Trump's violation of the Constitution (not just the 14th Amendment but also Article II Section 1 and the 12th Amendment) calls for consequences, attacking the Iraqi 'militias' is the same thing as attacking the Iraqi military, Israel's plan to deport Palestinians is called out worldwide and the assault on Gaza continues.


We've got a lot to cover but we have to start with one topic.  First off, Donald Trump.  January 6, 2021.  A number of e-mails insist that I'm supposed to defend him and that various people are wrong to argue that he's be removed from the ballot.

Our position on insurrection was: This is a serious charge and based on what was known in the immediate aftermath, I was comfortable -- as someone who studied poli sci as an undergraduate and a graduate and who, as a graduate, emphasized especially revolutions and rebellions -- was comfortable with a rebellion.  At that time.  Little provided by Congress' nonsense (so-called investigation) persuaded me to change my mind.  One periodical that we highlight from time to time jumped the gun.  They may have had a 'feeling' but the evidence was not there for the immediate call.  We didn't highlight any articles from them in the first three months after January 6th that dealt with what happened for that reason.

We have since had many of Trump's cohorts flip on him.  And much more has been uncovered.


I am comfortable with the term "insurrection" being applied now.  This was a plot.  It was an effort to avoid a duly elected official from being sworn in.  The loser (Donald) plotted and lied and put the country at risk -- he put democracy at risk.  

Anyone grabbing the vapors, so sorry. Here's Ken Block at USA TODAY yesterday:


In November 2020, former President Donald Trump asserted that voter fraud had altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The day after the election, his campaign hired an expert in voter data to attempt to prove Trump’s allegations and put him back in the White House.

I am the expert who was hired by the Trump campaign.


The findings of my company’s in-depth analysis are detailed in the depositions taken by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The transcripts show that the campaign found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election. That message was communicated directly to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Our findings have also been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith’s federal investigation and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation in Georgia. Those emails and documents show that the voter data available to the campaign contained no evidence of large-scale voter fraud based on data mining and fraud analytics.


More important, claims of voter fraud made by others were verified as false, including proof of why those claims were disproven.


Donald lied repeatedly.  He attempted to steal the election.  He wanted a riot because that could provide a delay.  Go back to the archives, I stated repeatedly that once the electoral college voted, it was over.  Whether it was stolen or not, a presidential election ended with the electoral college vote.  There is no direct vote for president.  


He allowed a riot to take place, he did nothing to stop it.  He wanted it to take place and was to slide in his slate of fake electors.




A majority of Americans believe the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was an “assault on democracy that must not be forgotten,” as per a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released this week. The poll was conducted Dec. 14-18 and included 1,024 respondents. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

The poll indicates that 55 percent believe the riot was a stark assault on democratic principles, while 43 percent said “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.”

The ramifications of the riot have permeated political discourse and action, as seen in the bold move by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D), who decided to remove former President Trump from the state’s ballot, citing the 14th Amendment. Bellows said she had concluded the former president “over several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.”



What he did was outrageous and illegal.  And it was a direct threat to democracy.  Yes, he is legally liable for trying to steal the election.  If he wasn't, then nothing stops the next president who doesn't want to leave office from doing the same.

I'm taking Shenna Bellows at her word.  I believe her.  If she's telling the truth, she did her duty.

"Oh! It's going to hurt us!"

What?

Since when are we too chicken to enforce the law.

This is nothing minor.  This is huge.  A loser refuses to accept the outcome of an election, he plots to install a separate set of electors to vote in the electoral college, he stirs up his supporters with massive lies about his votes not being counted and the election being stolen, he encourages a crowd to come to DC to 'stop the steal,' he stirs them up with a speech and sends them off to Congress, a riot takes place.

In what damn world is that acceptable?

It's not an it was an insurrection and is it is violation of the Constitution -- and not just the 14th Amendment.  He violated Article II Section 1 as well as The Constitution's 12th Amendment (the sections on the electors which does not have the president lobbying for an alternate slate.) 

Again, some people rushed to conclusions based on the gut.  They may have been right, they may have been wrong.  We now know a lot more than we did in January of 2021.  Donald Trump violated the Constitution in numerous ways.  

You break the law, you need to suffer the consequences.  That's especially true when you committed a fraud upon the nation in an attempt to hold on to an office that you lost.  

He conspired to steal the presidency from the rightful winner, that's a serious crime.  

So all the ones wringing their hands now about what effect pulling him from a state's ballot might have?  I'm more concerned with the laws that were broken and how ignoring them normalizes Donald Trump's actions for future losers who don't want to leave the White House.  That is actually the more serious issue and the one that the government needs to address.  

I don't care about the hand wringers.  I also don't care about the liars like Jonathan Turley who keep claiming some bad precedent is being set via accountability.

No.  When you break the law you should be punished.  That's the rule of law.  He can lie and distort all he wants but that is how it works and, again, failure to do so would actually set a precedent -- a very bad one.  Jonathan's sick in the head and sick in the heart, don't let him deceive you.


As for his and his supporters nonsense of 'double jeopardy' or the issue having been addressed in Congress.  The House impeachment was seeking removal from office.  That's it.  He can face -- and should -- criminal charges and, no, this is  not double jeopardy.  And, please note, I thought both impeachments were nonsense.  I stand by that.  But that has nothing to do with facing charges in a criminal court.  

Had Nixon not resigned and been impeached that would only have removed from office.  Grasp that.  Grasp that he resigned to avoid impeachment and he would have faced -- and should have faced -- criminal charges but Gerald Ford pardoned him.  

Numerous GOP nominees currently say they will pardon him.  That's another reason not to vote for them.  That's another reason for me to vote for the Democratic Party nominee whomever it is.  (I'm really hoping we'll have a March 31st LBJ repeat but I'm voting Democratic regardless.  I've explained why.  I'm not telling you how to vote, I'm telling you how I'm voting.)


Donald Trump is not an anomaly and, believe it or not, when it comes to that crazed MAGA crowd, he's actually one of the milder ones.  Consequences have to be delivered to send a message to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and other insane crazies who have their own presidential aspirations. 



The sound of two explosions echoed through central Baghdad on Thursday morning, signaling what appeared to be the second attack in three days on Iran-linked militia officials.

The Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba group said that a deputy commander of operations in the Baghdad belt area, Mushtaq Talib Al-Saidi, was killed in a strike at a logistical support headquarters on Palestine Street. Major strikes on such a central location in Iraq’s capital have been exceedingly rare in recent years.

Washington’s support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has presented local militia groups with fresh incentive to try to dislodge U.S.-led coalition troops from Iraq and Syria, where they are stationed as part of a mission aimed at ensuring the lasting defeat of Islamic State forces.


I believe THE POST's pompous slogan is "Democracy Dies In Darkness."  And apparently "Truth Dies In The Bullpen."  Was that where their article died?  The truth init?

They go on to whine about attacks on US troops.  Whine.  And some may say, "How can these attacks happen!" These attacks happen in part because the US military is not attacking "local militia groups" -- they are attacking the Iraqi military.  I don't know why people want to lie and whore.  I don't know why you want to deceive the American public.  Day after day, we had to waste our time explaining what the deal Bully Boy Bush pushed through with Iraq on Thanksgiving Day of 2008.  That's because there were a lot liars in the press and it was a legal contract which many people don't know how to read.  We did that over and over starting that Thanksgiving Day in 2008.  And who was right?  Not the media outlets.  Not the partisans for Barack either.  We were right.  

Now this issue right here should not be as complicated. December 19, 2016, the law making the militias part of the Iraqi army was approved by Fuad Masum.  This is not in dispute and it wasn't done in private.  You can add on "linked to Iran" all you want.  It does not change the reality that the militias legally became part of the Iraqi military on that day and remain part of it to this day.  Maybe if you'd bothered to pay attention you'd be aware of that.

Call are growing -- even from Iraq's prime minister -- for US troops to leave Iraq.  Great.  They should have left years ago (actually never should have been sent in).  And tensions are high because the Iraqi government does know the history and rightly sees these attacks as attacks on their military, as violations of their national sovereignty.  

I don't know why US outlets need to lie about reality.  Every attack on the Iraqi 'militias' is an attack on the Iraqi military because they were folded into it over seven years ago.   This is not hard to understand but the US press is working overtime to distort reality.



 

A senior Education Department official resigned Wednesday, citing President Biden's response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Why it matters: Biden administration appointee Tariq Habash is at least the second official, and the first who's known to be of Palestinian origin, to resign in protest over the U.S. response to the war.

Driving the news: "As a Palestinian-American — in fact, the only Palestinian-American political appointee at the Department of Education — I bring a critical and underrepresented perspective to the ongoing work on equity and justice," said Habash, who worked as a volunteer on Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, in his resignation letter that he shared with media outlets.

  • "But now, the actions of the Biden-Harris Administration have put millions of innocent lives in danger, most immediately for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza who remain under continuous assault and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government," added Habash, whose work focused on student loan issues.
  • "I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government."


 His resignation is the latest sign of unease within the ranks of the Biden administration over the president's handling of a war that broke out Oct. 7 when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state. In November, more than 400 Biden administration officials wrote an open letter calling on Biden to insist on a cease-fire. The letter did not give their names.


The November letter?  There's now a new letter.  "17 Biden for President Staffers" is the signature to the letter that was posted yesterday on MEDIUM and which opens:


We write to you as the current staff of your re-election campaign. As we work to mobilize voters to cast their ballots for you in 2024, we must take a moment to acknowledge our tremendous grief, and the grief shared by countless other Americans, toward the violence occurring in Gaza.

We joined this campaign because the values that you — and we — share are ones worth fighting for. Justice, empathy, and our belief in the dignity of human life is the backbone of not only the Democratic Party, but of the country. However, your administration’s response to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza has been fundamentally antithetical to those values — and we believe it could cost you the 2024 election. Therefore, we join your 2020 campaign alumni in imploring you to:

  1. Publicly call for — and use financial and diplomatic leverage to bring about — an immediate, permanent ceasefire;
  2. Advocate for de-escalation in the region, including demanding that Hamas release all hostages and that Israel release the over 2,000 Palestinians in administrative detention being held without charge;
  3. End unconditional military aid to Israel;
  4. Investigate whether Israel’s actions in Gaza violate the Leahy Law, prohibiting U.S. military aid from funding foreign military units implicated in the commission of gross violations of human rights;
  5. Take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict.

His campaign and his support is cratering.  It's LBJ all over again in January of 1968.  If Joe doesn't want to make the March 31st speech about not seeking election, he better stop dithering.  Ramzy Baroud (COUNTERPUNCH) notes that "the vast majority of Gaza’s victims are civilians and, according to UNICEF, over 70 percent of all of those killed and wounded are women and children.  Moreover, due to the inhumane Israeli practices, Gaza survivors are now dealing with an actual famine, an unprecedented event in the modern history of Palestine."


Gaza remains under assault.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is now well over  20,000. NBC NEWS notes, "The vast majority of its 2.2 million people are displaced, and an estimated half face starvation amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis."   THE GUARDIAN notes, "A total of 22,313 Palestinians have been killed and 57,296 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement."  In addition to the dead and the injured, there are the missing.  AP notes, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  And the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."  Max Butterworth (NBC NEWS) adds, "Satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies on Sunday reveal three of the main hospitals in Gaza from above, surrounded by the rubble of destroyed buildings after weeks of intense bombing in the region by Israeli forces."


ALJAZEERA reports, "A growing chorus of international condemnation – including from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Netherlands – has been directed at Israeli ministers calling for Palestinians to leave Gaza to make room for Israeli settlers."  Let's note this from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!





AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, I want to ask you about your new piece for Mondoweiss headlined “The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.” Israeli news outlets report that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told a group of Israeli lawmakers last week, quote, “Regarding voluntary immigration … this is the direction we are going in,” Netanyahu said. Israel’s minister of national security, the man who’s been convicted of terrorism, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made similar comments.

ITAMAR BEN-GVIR: [translated] The solution of encouraging the residents of Gaza to emigrate is one that we must advance. It’s the right, just, moral and humane solution. I call on the prime minister and the new foreign minister, who I congratulate on his appointment: Now is the time to coordinate an emigration project, a project to encourage the residents of Gaza to emigrate to the countries of the world. Let’s be clear: We have partners around the world whose help we can use. There are people around the world with whom we can advance this idea. Encouraging their emigration will allow us to bring home the residents of the communities near the Gaza border and the residents of the Gush Katif settlements.

AMY GOODMAN: Those were the words of Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement rejecting Ben-Gvir’s comment, as well as those made by Bezalel Smotrich. Meanwhile, The Times of London reports Israeli officials have held secret talks with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and several other countries to take in Palestinians from Gaza. If you can talk about the history of this, Mouin? And also talk about when they refer to “voluntary migration” in Gaza. And also talk about Egypt and the pressure that’s being brought to bear on Egypt to open its borders to the Palestinians of Gaza.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes, and voluntary immigration is now, referencing that article you mentioned, being marketed as humanitarian emigration. In other words, we’re doing these people a favor by ethnically cleansing them.

I think the problem here is that many people associate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians with the Israeli extreme right, with people like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Netanyahu and so on. But the point I was seeking to make in that article, which is actually a lengthy Twitter thread that I then posted on Mondoweiss, is that ethnic cleansing, or what Zionists would call transfer, is intrinsic to Zionist and later Israeli policy towards the Palestinians from the very outset.

So, as early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary political Zionist movement, wrote that we need to “spirit the penniless population across the borders” and find employment for it in other lands. If you go to the period between the British Mandate and the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, you find that the Zionist movement set up a Transfer Committee, with very clear terms of reference, to ensure that refugees who were expelled would not be able to return to Palestine, to destroy their villages, and things of that sort. And the Gaza Strip, in fact, with a population that consists of more than three-quarters of Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed in 1948, has, since the 1950s, been a key target for depopulation by Israel, because it doesn’t want all these refugees living within sight, so to speak, of their former homes on its borders. And it has produced a number of proposals and initiatives over the years to achieve that goal, including even one in the late 1960s to send over some 60,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Paraguay, in return for which the Mossad would discover that it no longer had the resources to hunt Nazi fugitives being sheltered by the Stroessner regime.

So, my point was really to demonstrate that this is not a recent policy proposal by the extreme fringes of the Israeli political spectrum, but has been intrinsic to mainstream Zionism and later Israeli policy from the very outset.

AMY GOODMAN: You say at the end of your piece, Mouin Rabbani, “As importantly, the 1948 Nakba did not defeat the Palestinians, who initiated their struggle from the camps of exile, those in the Gaza Strip most prominently among them. It would take a Blinken level of foolishness to assume the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip would produce a different outcome.” Talk about Netanyahu’s goal to de-Hamasify Gaza, and what exactly that means, and the effect of the killing, at this point, of over 22,000 Palestinians.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes. Well, that takes me back to the second part of your previous question, which I had neglected to answer, which is that at the outset of the current war, Israel saw that it had unqualified, unconditional Western support from its U.S. and European sponsors, and resurrected this long-standing ambition to cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians.

And the proposal that was put front and center, literally on October 7th and onwards, was to move the population of the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Desert, to Egypt. And this was an idea that was very enthusiastically embraced by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And on his first trip to the region, he actually sought to market this to Washington’s Arab allies. And I think, you know, he is somewhat of a clueless airhead when it comes to the Middle East. And I think he was expecting to hear from U.S. allies, Arab allies, you know, “How can we help you help our Israeli friends?” And instead he was met with categorical refusal and rejection for this proposal, first and foremost by Egypt.

And the U.S. and European governments later came out with a position that they would oppose forced displacement from the Gaza Strip, leaving open the possibility of what we’re seeing now, an Israeli military campaign, a primary objective of which is to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation, and then the encouragement of voluntary, or what is now even being called humanitarian, emigration in order to achieve the ethnic cleansing. And I think the genocide that we’re now seeing in the Gaza Strip — and this is something, of course, that’s going to be adjudicated by the International Court of Justice in The Hague after South Africa recently made an application under the Genocide Convention — you know, all these things put together making the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, we’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you so much for being with us, Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadaliyya. We’ll link to your piece, “The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.”

Happy belated birthday to Dennis McCormick! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.




Volker Turk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, says he is “very disturbed” by statements made by Israeli ministers on transferring the population of Gaza to other countries.

“Eighty-five percent of people in Gaza are already internally displaced. They have the right to return to their homes,” Turk said in a post on X.

He also pointed out that international law bans “the forcible transfer of protected persons within or deportation from occupied territory”.

    •  







    Fourteen people were killed Thursday morning in a strike on Al-Mawasi on the coast of Gaza, west of Khan Younis, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza has said.

    The ministry said that nine children were among those killed by an Israeli air strike on a house in the area.

    CNN is unable to confirm details of what happened in the neighborhood and has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.

    Thousands of displaced people have moved to the area over the last few weeks as the conflict in Gaza has moved to central areas and Khan Younis.

    Separately, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PCRS) said at least one person was killed and six wounded in an Israeli strike that hit the fifth floor of its headquarters in Khan Younis.

     


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