Linda
Lavin passed away yesterday. The actress was 87 years old and best
known for starring in the hit sitcom Alice on CBS. The sitcom was
hugely popular and based on the successful film Alice Doesn't Live Here
Anymore. The character in the film was played by Ellen Burstyn. Linda
brought her over to TV audiences -- and more people saw Linda play Alice
on TV than ever saw the film. AP notes:
The
series bounced around the CBS schedule during its first two seasons but
became a hit leading into “All in the Family” on Sunday nights in
October 1977. It was among primetime’s top 10 series in four of the next
five seasons. Variety magazine listed it among the all-time best
workplace comedies.
Lavin soon went on to win a Tony for best actress in a play for Neil Simon's “Broadway Bound” in 1987.
She
was working as recently as this month promoting a new Netflix series in
which she appears, “No Good Deed,” and filming a forthcoming Hulu
series, “Mid-Century Modern,” according to Deadline, which first reported her death.
The
first time I saw Lavin was on ABC's Barney Miller. She had a recurring
role on that right before she started Alice. She did a lot of stage
and television. Her next series role -- not guest star -- was in Mark
Feuerstein's Conrad Bloom on NBC. I liked her that and I liked the
show. I also enjoyed her on Sean Hayes' Sean Saves The World where she
played his mother.
She
was good on B Positive but that sitcom got cancelled by CBS when it
turned out the male lead couldn't stop assaulting women.
Whether
she was on The Muppets as a host or in The Muppets Take Manhattan
playing Kermit's doctor, she was always good. I loved her in the TV
movie Like Mom, Like Me where she was Kristy McNichol's mother and in
Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase. Linda had a presence that grabbed
you in every role.
She sang the theme song to her show Alice "There's A New Girl In Town."
Elon Musk on Sunday asked for "more positive" content to be posted to
the social media network he owns, resulting in some reminders about his
own negative attitude at times.
Musk, the richest man in the world and an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump, took to X to say, "Please post a bit more positive, beautiful or informative content on this platform."
Elon Musk admitted
that the H1-B visas are “broken” and floated a potential fix as he
sought to cool a raging civil war within the MAGA base over the
immigration program for highly skilled foreign workers.
Just
a day after vowing to “go to war on this issue” and telling detractors
to “F— yourself,” Musk, the world’s richest man, acknowledged some of
the criticisms of the program getting abused and argued that the US
should make it more costly to hire foreigners.
“Easily
fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly
cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to
hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk wrote on X late Saturday in
response to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire
low-wage programmers and developers.
If
you rested over the weekend and avoided the news, this may be new to
you. Here's some commentary that took place on the topic.
Did you notice? We are still over 24 days or so before Convicted
Felon Donald Chump is sworn in and reoccupies the White House and he is
floundering, staggering around like a dying corpse. Chump's betrothed
Elon Musk and maid of honor Vivek Ramaswamy have been in the news for
their insulting attacks on American workers and insisting that
immigrants need to be brought into this country because American workers
do not have the skills (Mr. Musk) and they watch the wrong T.V.
programs (Miss Ramaswamy). They are now being savaged by many MAGA
voters. Brad Reed (RAW STORY) reports:
MAGA influencer Laura Loomer appeared on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast on Friday to warn President-elect Donald Trump against letting X owner Elon Musk into his administration.
In
an interview with Bannon, Loomer charged that Musk had major conflicts
of interest and said that it could turn into a major scandal if Trump
keeps him in his inner circle.
"I am simply trying to warn the Trump administration about something
that is going to blow up in their face," she said. "And it actually has
the risked of getting President Trump impeached in his second term if
the Democrats take back the House and are able to spin and create a
narrative that... they are enriching themselves in the Trump
administration. I'm trying to warn them about a serious issue on the
horizon."
In a stream of posts on the alt-tech social platform Gettr, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon warned that billionaire Elon Musk's "true colors" are showing with the ongoing debate about the H-1B visa program.
"True
Colors Shining Through," Bannon captioned a post that included an Axios
article about how a "MAGA Civil War" has broken out "over race,
immigration and billionaires versus the working class."
[. . .]
Bannon has previously called Musk a "stone-cold liar" and said "his paymasters" are from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), referencing the billionaire's extensive business ties to the East Asian nation.
Bannon had also said that Tesla was Musk's only thing "of real value,"
adding that Musk "uses it for margin loans." Those criticisms came in
2023 before Musk was publicly a leading Trump supporter.
Former U.S. House Representative Joe Walsh has weighed in, "And you are right -- Musk & Ramaswamy are being eaten right now by
an intolerant, nationalistic mob that they played a large role in
helping to create. They both deserve to be eaten by their mob." So that is a non-MAGA Republican take.
Musk
exploded and raged on Twitter. Then someone emerged on Twitter to
defend him -- someone most believe was Musk himself trying to pretend to
be someone else. Most who believe that it was really Elon includes
Elon's daughter Vivian Wilson.
What makes someone trash? Maybe insulting their own country. Take this:
Entrepreneur
Vivek Ramaswamy, a close Donald Trump ally tasked with helping to
dismantle the federal government, is facing scorn from both sides of the
aisle for saying America has a culture problem —
it focuses on prom queens and sports over math and science — and that's
why tech companies hire more people from India and China.
Don't
remember hearing that kind of talk from him when he was trying to get
the Republican Party's presidential nomination. He lost. Now he's
going to let the country know what he really thinks of it.
He's upset, it turns out, because in the 90s America watched Saved By The Bell. Huh?
No,
it doesn't make sense but what also doesn't make sense is that I never
watched Saved By The Bell and I'm not the only one who didn't watch. It
was probably a popular show but it did not grip me.
He's
angry because -- look at him -- he can't do a single push up but
America, he insists, glorifies cheerleaders and football players.
Poor little nerd. Someone gave him an atomic wedgie and it traumatized him for life.
Vivek
Ramaswamy's stupidity saves him to a degree. It's hard to rage against
a hate merchant when they're also offering bad pop cultural references
that don't mean -- even on the most basic level -- what they claim. Or
does no one get that Ross was the Urkel of FRIENDS and Ross got Rachel
and well as good paying jobs?
Elon
Musk admitted that the H1-B visas are “broken” and floated a potential
fix as he sought to cool a raging civil war within the MAGA base over
the immigration program for highly skilled foreign workers.
Just
a day after vowing to “go to war on this issue” and telling detractors
to “F— yourself,” Musk, the world’s richest man, acknowledged some of
the criticisms of the program getting abused and argued that the US
should make it more costly to hire foreigners.
“Easily
fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly
cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to
hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk wrote on X late Saturday in
response to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire
low-wage programmers and developers.
Elon
has created a nightmare for Donald Chump. It's harming the brand, the
message and the cohesion. It's even left the professional liars at FOX
"NEWS" scrambling.Corbin Bolies (THE DAILY BEAST) notes:
The Fox & Friends Weekend hosts
tried their best on Sunday to make sense of the MAGA mess over H-1B
visas last week, but even they admitted Donald Trump’s flip-flop on the
program “left a lot of people confused.”
Hosts
Rachel Campos-Duffy, Charlie Hurt, and Will Cain reflected on the
online meltdown over the visas, which are backed by close Trump allies
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The issues, they said, were in abuses of
the system that prioritized cheaper labor over Musk-type prodigies.
Even
they couldn't make sense of him. But who could? The man who brought
hate merchants back to Twitter and allowed Tweets endorsing the lynching
of Black people and Tweets calling for the murder of gay people and
Tweets where Maga's proclaimed that they were going to go into Target
and shoot it up, this man or 'man' couldn't then handle when he was on
the receiving end of what he'd done to others. And did you notice? His
pep squad -- Matt Taibi, Glenneth Greenwald and the others -- didn't
object. It was censorship, they insisted, pre-Musk when Twitter banned
people for hate speech. Over the weekend as Musk banned people for
being critical, the fake asses said nothing. Not one word.
At a time when Donald Trump's inner circle
should be working on getting his Cabinet nominees primed for getting
Senate approval, now time is being spent tamping down on a foreign
worker controversy that has riled the president-elect's base forcing him to have to weigh in.
At
the center of the controversy are comments made by Trump advisors Vivek
Ramaswamy and Elon Musk about America needing more H-1B foreign
specialty workers which has erupted into a war with Trump's MAGA base
that had been promised "America First" policies.
He's not even sworn in and already Chump has to address one brewing scandal after the other. Let's wind down with this from Michael Albert (ZNET):
Donald, the idiot, the madman, the consummate cowardly thug is
preparing to unleash shock and awe to paint his agenda onto the American
and the world stage such as we have never seen before. Day one, two,
three…infinity. He will attempt to unleash the hounds of horror. Why?
To impose his horrendous agenda—of course. But what’s his rush? To
embrace MAGA ever more intimately and to draw those who inhabit its
fringes to its center. To instill well beyond MAGA’s fringes futility so
debilitating that we either shut up and hunker down to protect
ourselves or we kiss up and hope for a few goodies while others suffer.
You doubt this prognosis? Okay, suppose we get oil madness, high waters
rising, storms beyond measure, deportations beyond counting, gilded
billionaire enrichment, intensified austerity, gutted regulations,
fascist retooling of government, international mayhem, and vengeful
repressive violence not by shock and awe but by slow boiling in a
monstrous kettle. How different is that in the end?
What’s the alternative? Resistance. And what is that? It is saying no
by every effective means one can employ. It is no longer laughing and
winking. No longer denying what this thug is all about. No longer
shrugging it off. It is telling the truth to all in range, so all souls
can hear it, openly, loudly, no sugar coating—and trying to act on it.
When someone with the steering wheel of a gargantuan tank revs the
motor and hollers I am going to drive this wonderful magnificent machine
upside your head, does it make sense to assume that he doesn’t mean it?
That he is just joking? Is it sensible to predict that he won’t be able
to aim it? Is it wise to say that someone else, something else, is
going to stop him? Or to suppose he is just going to run over a
neighbor. For those reasons should we not read the news today and
instead return to dressing this morning, and tomorrow morning, and the
next and the next, preparing each day for familiar life and familiar
life only as if there is no tank? There is no emergency? Does it make
sense, even, to list reasons why others won’t resist and then proclaim
that because they’re not going to resist you won’t either? Maybe it does
make some limited kind of sense, but will it stop the tank?
Makes you wonder what we'll find out when our current crop passes away. I don't understand the closet, sorry. As I've noted before, I was in elementary school when I told my parents I was a lesbian.
But even if you had to be a closet case to become famous, most 'stars' have a leading career that really lasts about 10 to 15 minutes and then move into smaller parts or no roles at all. Coming out then could revive a career.
Worse? The Anthony Geary types. The former Luke of General Hospital is 77 years old and his affair -- long affair -- with Ron Glass of Barney Miller fame was pretty well known in the Black community but we still all have to pretend Tony Geary is straight.
Sad. Sad. Sad.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" and she notes Earl Holliman -- another gay man who went to his death playing I've got a secret:
Thursday, December 26, 2024. We can't afford fakery which means we can't afford Marianne Williamson.
Yesterday, at THIRD, "Raison d'être (Ava and C.I.)"
went up. I want to talk about it for a moment to explain the point of
this site as well and maybe also explain why certain things bother me --
and so we cover them -- and certain things do not bother me.
Truth and lies.
In
most cases, personal lies don't bother me. I've known far too many
survivors -- often burdened by survivors guilt -- to try to play lie
detector on your personal lives. I am friends with a very well known
couple who are marketed as the perfect couple. As marketed, they are.
Reality, he's asexual and she's got a very strong sex drive. They do
not have sex together. They never have. He really doesn't have sex at
all (other than with himself). But they do love each other and, very
early in their courtship, they figured out that they wanted to marry and
what their marriage would be. It's unconventional for some, but it's a
loving marriage and they support one another 100%. When one of them is
doing publicity for a project, I don't hear them speak and think,
"Liar!"
They do love each other and are committed to
one another. The fact that they don't -- and have never -- slept
together is not a detail that they make public for the press. Nor
should they have to. And when one of them speaks to the press and a
remark might portray their relationship different than it is, I'm not
bothered.
It's nobody's business.
I
also don't do dog piles. Except on politicians. They're public
servants so they need to be held to a higher standard. But I don't do
pile ons. When Britney Spears was being mocked by everyone in the '00s,
Ava and I didn't mock her. When she was suing to be responsible for
her own actions, an e-mail came into THIRD lumping us in with all the
people who had called her crazy and worse. Ty told us ab out the e-mail
and we said it never happened. Because it didn't. We considered a
comment of some kind only once, when she guest starred on a sitcom and
we chose to instead ignore the appearance. In the '00s, it was pile on
and attack young women.
We did write about that --
the pile ons and how they piled onto young women. We did note Lindsay
Lohan being attacked or this woman attacked or that.
And
you had a lot of outlets attacking. I'm not referring to TMZ or
whatever garbage outlet. I'm talking about THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, for
example. Young men and early middle aged men at TAP and other left
outlets attacked various female celebrities over and over. And largely
got away with it. But while Ana Kasparian was eager to be one of the
boys -- always -- and doing the same thing at TYT, some of us had
standards and didn't play that game.
And some of us
were actually interested in equality. When you see some media s**t
storm, the smartest thing you can ever do is take a step back and look
at the person involved. Did they bring it on themselves? Sometimes
people do -- you go to a prestigious industry function and you run up on
stage and punch (or in Will's case, slap, because that's the kind of
'man' he is), then you've brought it on yourself. You've done something
cowardly and embarrassing and no one's ever done that at the Academy
Awards before so you brought it on yourself.
But there
are more often media s**t storms show that if you take a step back and
look at it, you'll find that the person isn't doing anything that's very
important to the world and, most often, is being held to a different
standard. So a woman, for example, gets slammed for something that a
man would never be slammed for. Or a person of color gets slammed for
something that a White person gets a pass on.
Media
s**t storms often -- but not always -- are rooted in racism and sexism.
So I try to give people a pass and avoid pile ons. Again, I'm
referring to when the target is an average citizen, an entertainer, that
sort of thing. Not to a politician.
Mel Brooks lies about about
his relationship with Anne Bancroft and has for years. I'm not going to
go into that but I'm not going to pretend that I don't know reality.
I don't talk about it and I don't write about it.
Ava and my "Raison d'être (Ava and C.I.)"
has bothered a few people. Too damn bad. If you're a Mel Brooks fan,
you've already got some problems that I can't help you with. He is a
nasty person and if that's news to you, what world have you lived in?
He
was held accountable by Ava and myself and he should have been. He's a
nonstop liar and glory hog. So if you're putting him on camera -- as
the idiot who made the 'documentary' did -- you're responsible for what
you put on screen.
Ava and I focused on only two lies
in that short 'documentary' (I believe it was 38 minutes). He made a
big to do about SILENT MOVIE and how it was hard for him to sell it to
the studios. No, it wasn't. We didn't go into that lie but easily
could have. He pretends, on camera, that he sold the film on himself
and Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise and since most people never saw the
movie -- then or since -- he gets away with that lie. That's not what
got the film made.
Liza Minelli agreed to be in the
movie. This was a big news. She was coming off her Academy Award win
and the success of CABARET. Yes, LUCKY LADY bombed. That film was
released December 25, 1975. After SILENT MOVIE had been filmed (SILENT
MOVIE was released in June of 1976). He also had Paul Newman do a
part. That helped get the movie made. But what got the move made was
Burt Reynolds. He and Anne invited Burt to their home to beg him to
appear in the film and, not only that, to do a shower scene in the
film. Now, we'll be kind, and we won't note what was done to Burt in
that scene -- unless Mel Brooks wants to be known as the new Harvey
Weinstein. But that's what got the movie made. Burt was one of the
biggest box office stars at the time, his COSMO spread (nude but
privates covered) had been huge and all of his movies since involved
ways to get him shirtless and, when possible, in his jockey shorts
because he was considered to be sex on a stick.
For
reasons Mel Brooks should go into himself, Mel doesn't want to tell that
story. Instead, he decided to lie. Again, on camera. And a s**ty
'director' allowed it to go onscreen.
So you get Mel
telling this hugely convoluted story claiming that STAR WARS was a huge
success and because of that the studio had money to spend and because of
STAR WARS huge success Wall Street was suddenly interested in films and
buying up studios and SILENT MOVIE worked in commentary on that.
The only truth in the paragraph above? STAR WARS was a huge success.
We
detail, Ava and I, how he is wrong about the buyouts he's claiming took
place after STAR WARS success -- for example, GULF & WESTERN bought
PARAMOUNT around the same time they bought RKO from Lucille Ball back
in the sixties. And Wall Street was always involved in the film
business and is, in fact, the reason Louis B Mayer got fired from MGM in
the 50s -- despite Mel's lie that Mayer got to do whatever he wanted.
(Prior to Mayer being fired, Wall Street had imposed Dore Schary on him
in 1948 as vice president of production. We left Dore out of our piece
because that's a whole long story.)
But the biggest lie of all out of Mel's mouth was STAR WARS.
I've
never seen STAR WARS. At this point, I never will. It's such a shock
to some people I meet that I feel like I need to continue to not see
it. I wanted to see it and I planned to see it when it first came out.
But a family emergency meant I missed it at the last minute and I
honestly never got around to it.
But a lot of people
did see STAR WARS. Above, I noted Liza and how LUCKY LADY came out at
the end of 1975 while SILENT MOVIE came out six months later in June
1976. Liza was still a huge star when she was cast in SILENT MOVIE.
But
do those dates not make a point for you? STAR WARS came out in May
1977. Mel Brooks went on camera -- and dumb ass fool put it on the
screen -- and told a long, long story about how his crappy SILENT MOVIE
only got made because of the success of STAR WARS when, in fact, STAR
WARS was released 11 months after SILENT MOVIE opened.
He's
a damn liar. (And he also lied about inventing the term "high
anxiety," but read the piece, I didn't mean to go on this long about it
here.)
And now the lies are out there, on film, because idiots didn't think truth mattered.
There's
a YOUTUBER who started as a blogger and keeps his nose down and tries
to focus on serious matters. I like him. I like his work. But only
because he tries to focus on serious matters did I not rip him apart
when he repeated one lie after another about William Friedken. If
Sherry dies before this site goes dark, I'll be much more vocal about
that piece of crap person. But the YOUTUBER who researches everything
before writing or doing a video didn't research a damn thing on
Friedkin. Instead, he went with lies that Freidken had told and that
idiots -- Ben Mankowitz, I'm looking at you -- signed off on. (See Ava
and my "TV: Lies and more lies from The Water Cooler Set" from 2017.)
And
I love Sherry to death but we still called Friedken out. And I get so
damn tired of having to call out lies while others online just do
whatever they want to stay in a circle jerk. There is an actor who
hates me to this day for panning his show. We knew each other. He was
in a lousy show. We praised him -- because he was good in it -- and we
praised the female star because she was great in it. But he is
convinced that we got his show cancelled and his career destroyed. By
the same token, a friend praises us for getting his ABC show moved to a
different night when it was going to be cancelled instead. We do the
best we can to make real calls and not be part of some stupid circle
jerk. (That remark will make more sense when we get to a video later in
the snapshot.)
Another thing that ticks me off is when I do the work required and people want to argue in e-mails.
Thanksgiving
Day of 2008, Bully Boy Bush and Nouri al-Maliki pushed through the
SOFA. I read the entire damn thing and composed an analysis of it -- a
legal analysis. And what I got for at least two years was being
trashed. Because some people didn't want to believe it. Did they read
the SOFA? Obviously not. But they wanted to attack me for my analysis
and the only that finally stopped that was the actual events
demonstrated I had analyzed it correctly. But too many wanted to
worship Barack Obama and refuse to believe he would allow this to
happen.
Hysterical since both he and Joe Biden
campaigned on the 'fact' that they would not abide by any SOFA Bully Boy
Bush negotiated -- and they had senators like Dick Durbin saying the
same thing in the late summer and early fall of 2008.
So
right there, there rush to rescue Barack and insist I was lying about
what the SOFA said? They should have read that thing, that's first, and
second they should have noticed that Barack was allowing it to go
through and that, in fact, his campaign website immediately pulled the
promise that they would abide by no agreement Bully Boy Bush tried to
push through.
More recently, I've been attacked over "My Labor Day Weekend"
-- actually attacked twice. First, I got attacked by some when it went
up in 2022. I have to turn out a lot of copy to post daily, every
day. And I try to find new ways to discuss something. I have no idea
what I was trying to draw attention to news wise that day. But I had an
interesting personal story that I thought might result in more eyeballs
for whatever the issue was that day. A spoonful of sugar to get the
news down.
So I wrote about an actor who was in the
closet. I wrote about how I was asked to speak with him -- I barely
knew him -- and how I did. (Some attacked me for my comments about the
valley. I'm not driving in the valley, people, I have had serious eye
issues for the last few years.) I wrote about it and about him and
tried to give a sense of who he was. I noted the type of films he made,
an award, etc. Since he didn't want to come out, I didn't put his name
in it.
And got accused of making it up. And on and on it went for almost two years.
Then what happened? Stan wrote "Earl Holliman"
and the attacks began all over. I'm not calling out Stan or griping
about Stan. Earl Holliman passed away and suddenly the world knew he
was gay. And as Stan noted, I'd written about it two years prior. Now a
new group of whiners showed up to attack me for not naming him back in
2022. I thought I went way too close with what I wrote in 2022. I went
over some of this in this "Iraq snapshot"
last month. But while the ones who'd called me a liar in 2022 were
suddenly silent, a new group showed up to trash me for not naming Earl.
It wasn't my place to name him. He was sickly, he thought he was going
to die (he thought he only had a few months but ended up having two
years). We had met at a party many years prior and probably nodded to
one another a few times after that. It was not my place to speak for
him or to out him.
And it ticks me off because I do
real things in my writing. I offend friends, I tick people off. I
don't play favorites. And the other side of that is the circle jerk -- a
bunch of people getting together offline and coming up with the lie
that they're going to sell you while pretending their truth tellers and
brave YOUTUBERS and listen to them because they make the hard calls,
really, really they do!
I'd planned to write about Jill Stein this morning. Instead, the video below necessitated the above.
Out
of respect for people's religious beliefs, I do not use a religious
figure's name in vain. That's been the policy since this site started.
Were it not for that policy, this is where I would be using Ann
Romano's catch phrase from ONE DAY AT A TIME.
There are many things this country needs., Marianne Williamson is not one of them.
I
know Marianne. I've tried to be fair to her here and I've tried to be
honest. The honest side? Long before POLITICO and others discovered
that she was a nightmare to work for, I'd noted that here. Because she
is. I never had a problem because I didn't work for her. But I did see
people reduced to tears in a manner that, honestly, I've only ever seen
from people who worked for MT.
Marianne doesn't just attack them, she destroys them.
In
2020, I just covered the ones running and tried to stay out of it --
didn't endorse anyone -- and let them make their own mistakes. Marianne
made more than enough.
After even Marianne grasped her
campaign was a loser and over, she appeared on RISING with whispers
about how Krystal and her idiot co-host had no idea what really went
down. Do tell, Marianne. Well, she wouldn't. Not right now, she
insisted, but she'd be back on, after the election, to dish.
She
never did. And she was never held accountable. You want to imply that
all these awful things took place that would horrify voters? Then
talk.
Despite having run the third worst 2020
campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- yes,
there were two worse than her but remember there were nearly 30
candidates so there were a lot who did much better -- Marianne decides
she wants to run again.
There's no demand for this. People aren't asking for it.
Enter the Circle Jerk.
Marianne can't get supporters and can't get big media so she courts YOUTUBERS and goes to Kyle and Krystal's wedding.
Ignore the circle jerk, right?
It has no impact at all and certainly Krystal didn't recruit everyone she knew on YOUTUBE to then start pimping Marianne.
That
would be pretty questionable. And the only thing that would make it
worse is if she did a video with her gal pals and started screaming at
people -- viewers -- that they had to get on board with Marianne, that
Marianne was the only answer!
Oh, wait.
That did happen.
And
that's why we're ditching Jill Stein and every other topic to focus on
the hard truths and those who tell them as opposed to those in the
Circle Jerk who regularly lie to you and have their own motives that
they never reveal or acknowledge.
When Krystal was
pimping Marianne, she wasn't even being honest about how she knew
Marianne or that Marianne had just attended her wedding to Kyle.
You didn't 'deserve' to know that, in her mind. Which is why it took other people online to expose it.
That's a detail, a disclosure, that a journalist is supposed to make all on their own.
Instead, Krystal lied and got her gal pals Katie Halper and Bri-Bri and Jugs Needs A Bra, to lie to you as well.
And they continued to lie in the lead up to the primaries and after the primaries started.
And
they don't want to acknowledge it but some of these liars then went on
to promote Jill Stein -- as late as June and July, some of the whores on
YOUTUBE who pretend they're so honest were pimping Jill Stein. They
pray to God that you've forgotten.
The Democratic Party has many, many problems.
None of them will be fixed by Marianne.
She
has no leadership skills -- leadership is not leaving people in tears
running to cry in a bathroom. She has no
let's-get-in-touch-with-religion skills. She's a New Age charlatan
along the lines of Aimee Semple McPherson, And if you think the DNC
seems out of touch now, wait until a crackpot like Marianne gets
installed.
She's held no public office -- another Jill Stein -- and she runs lousy campaigns.
She was a joke in 2020.
She was an embarrassment in 2024.
I
said here in 2023 that I'd vote for the Democratic Party nominee for
president regardless of who it was because of the very clear threat that
Donald Trump represented to this country.
It was
obvious that Joe needed to step aside. Marianne crashed and burned
early. Then she decided she'd get back into the race. And please note
that she still floundered and that Uncommitted regularly got more votes
in the primaries Marianne ran in.
No one wants her.
She's a raving loon. She gets crazier with each year.
No one wanted her and she dropped out.
Then
Joe stepped aside and suddenly the dumb ____ is trying to demand the
nomination. No one ever wanted her. But there she was trashing Kamala
Harris, trashing the party , insisting we needed a primary!!!! Joe
announces he won't run for re-election on July 21st.
There is no time for a primary.
Idiot
YOUTUBERS never know history and just yack yack yack about the 'old
days' of 2016. You don't know history, you don't know a damn thing.
Primaries
wrap up by June for a reason. People are vested in their candidate.
They are angry if their candidate doesn't get the nomination. It takes
months for the party to then pull together.
The election is at the start of November and Joe announces at the end of July that he's stepping down.
There's
no time for primaries because that's not just about voting -- a vote
could have been done in a week -- it's also about people coming together
around the nominee. A vote could be done in a week but all the voters
whose nominee didn't win would be upset for several weeks.
And
then we had the issue of Marianne and her whining and her attacking the
DNC and stirring up s**t when the quack should have just shut her damn
mouth because no one wanted her.
Kamala was the natural
choice. She was on the ticket with Joe Biden. Joe was the nominee.
Joe was the president. Had Joe passed away in July, Kamala would have
become the president. By the same token, Joe stepping aside 29 days
before the start of the convention made his running mate Kamala the
obvious choice to be the nominee.
But there was
Marianne simpering on camera in that hideous voice of hers and attacking
Democrats and attacking the party and whining that she wasn't the
nominee. STFU.
This had never happened before. The
party got a chance at a do over. And we should have all rallied (many
of us did). Instead, you had nut jobs like Marianne Williamson working
to temper enthusiasm with their stupidity and her non-stop whines about
some long ago sleight where she was done wrong years ago. Non-stop
whines, please remember, that she took to FOX "NEWS" repeatedly.
Anything to be on camera, no matter how much it hurt the Democratic
Party, right, Marianne?
She hurt the nominee. She's part of the reason Chump's headed back to the White House.
That's reason one not to support her as chair of the DNC.
Reason
two, her constant 2020 attacks, after she dropped out of the race, on
the DNC and her whisper campaign against them. If she'd come out with
whatever big thing she just knew we were going to be shocked by, that
would be one thing. Instead she chose to tease and tease.
Reason three, she has no skills to head an organization.
Reason
four, she ran a sleuth campaign (poorly) for the nomination where she
and others concealed backroom deals and arrangements that resulted in
Krystal and others pimping her for 2024. That was deceitful and
dishonest.
Reason five, she's done nothing with her
life. She's over 70 and all she's got is some quack books that she
tried to pass off, in the 90s, as cures for AIDS and suffering from
AIDS.
Reason six, she's over 70 and supposedly we want new blood, fresh blood in the party.
Reason
seven, she's not a fighter. She dropped out of the 2020 race before it
ended. She dropped out of the 2024 race not once but twice. She
couldn't even stand up to Bill Maher when he trashed transgender
people.
For all these reasons and so many more, Marianne Williamson should not be even be running for the DNC char position.
Again,
that's not what I planned to cover today. We were going to talk about
Jill Stein and some court developments. But the Democratic Party cannot
afford Marianne or her nonsense or her cheerleaders like Krystal Ball.
We can't afford the dishonesty.
We'll wind down with this press release from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Merger of Big Drug Wholesaler,
Gastroenterology Service Provider Threatens Competition, Cost Increases,
and Health Risks to Patients
By allowing wholesalers to control
physician practices, wholesalers could pressure doctors to prescribe
medicine that is most profitable for them, even if it’s not in the best
interest of their patients
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) wrote to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan,
urging the agency to closely scrutinize pharmaceutical wholesaler
Cardinal Health’s $3.9 billion proposed acquisition of a majority stake
in GI Alliance, the country’s largest gastroenterology management
services organization.
“This deal threatens to limit competition by expanding Cardinal
Health’s control of physician practices, while giving Cardinal an
incentive to restrict those practices from contracting with Cardinal’s
rival wholesalers,” wrote Senator Warren.
Cardinal Health has a long history of leveraging its dominant market
power in a way that negatively impacts patients and health care
providers. The company controls 28% of the prescription drug wholesale
market, making it one of the three biggest wholesalers in the country.
Along the way, Cardinal has pursued an aggressive vertical acquisition
strategy, buying up companies to solidify its dominance in the
wholesaler market , including acquiring a Group Purchasing Organization
(GPO), a data analytics firm, medical device lines, specialty
pharmacies, and physician practices. These acquisitions are part of a
broader trend of health care conglomerates operating as both seller and
buyer of prescription drug services.
“Cardinal has consistently locked its customers into restrictive
contracts, blocked out rival wholesalers, and squeezed generic drug
manufacturers, leading to more frequent drug shortages, higher drug
costs, and poorer health outcomes,” wrote Senator Warren.
In October, Senator Warren sounded the alarm about
another one of Cardinal’s proposed acquisitions: Cardinal’s acquisition
of Integrated Oncology Network (ION), an MSO that oversees over 50
physician practices spanning 10 states. With this acquisition, Cardinal
would be able to force its affiliated practices to enter into
sole-source or prime vendor agreements, locking them in and effectively
blocking competing wholesalers from offering their services — while
introducing conflicts of interest that could raise drug costs. The FTC
did not act, and the acquisition was completed earlier this month. The
new Cardinal-GI Alliance deal is even larger in scope, posing a bigger
threat.
“In addition to the concerns I outlined in my October letter, the
acquisition of GI alliance introduces further opportunities for
self-dealing, as Cardinal serves as the primary supplier of
pharmaceutical products for Gastrologix GPO — the only
gastroenterology-focused GPO in the nation,” wrote Senator Warren. “Accordingly,
I urge FTC to closely scrutinize this deal, including under Section 7
of the Clayton Act, which prohibits any acquisition that may
substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.”
Senator Warren has long highlighted the negative consequences of
vertical integration in the health care industry on patients, providers,
and taxpayers. Senator Warren recently introduced her Patients Before Monopolies Act (PBM Act),
bipartisan and bicameral legislation to prohibit joint ownership of
PBMs and pharmacies, a gross conflict of interest that enables these
companies to enrich themselves at the expense of patients and
independent pharmacies.
Senator Warren has led efforts to use every tool available to the
government to lower drug prices and fight anticompetitive business
practices in the health care industry:
In October 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged the FTC to closely scrutinize the Novo Nordisk-Catalent merger and to block it if it violated antitrust law.
In September 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) wrote to
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra
asking him to lower the cost of vital weight-loss drugs by using the
agency’s existing legal authority to issue generic licenses for
semaglutide, a prescription drug sold under the names Ozempic and
Wegovy.
In August 2024, Senators Warren and King and Representative Doggett wrote to
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and
Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo reiterating their
agencies’ clear legal authority to use “march-in” rights under the
Bayh-Dole Act to lower drug prices for Americans.
In June 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) sent letters to
eight pharmaceutical companies urging them to voluntarily de-list over
100 patents that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has determined may
be improperly or inaccurately listed in the Food and Drug
Administration’s (FDA’s) Orange Book, which would open opportunity for
more competition and lower drug prices for Americans.
In May 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) sent a
letter to Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, and
Under Secretary Laurie Locascio, highlighting the lawmakers’ new review
of public comments on the agency’s Draft Interagency Guidance Framework
for Considering the Exercise of March-In Rights and urged them to
strengthen and finalize the guidance.
In May 2024, Senators Warren, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) wrote to
the Chamber of Commerce expressing concern and demanding an explanation
for the organization’s opposition to the Biden administration’s
proposal to boost competition and lower drug prices for American
families and businesses by allowing agencies to consider price when
deciding to exercise their “march-in rights” under the Bayh-Dole Act.
In April 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a
letter to the leadership of Novo Nordisk (Novo), slamming the company
for its decision to discontinue production of Levemir (detemir) insulin,
one of only three long-acting insulins on the market, and asked the
company to commit to continue producing Levemir until a biosimilar is
made available.
In March 2024, Senator Warren sent a
letter in response to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) discontinuing the
brand-name version of Flovent HFA, the go-to inhaler for children,
blasting the company for its price-gouging strategy that may cause
millions of children to lose access to one of the few drugs that is
appropriate to treat their asthma and allergies.
In February 2024, Senators Warren and Angus King (I-Maine) and U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) led 75 lawmakers in
sending a letter to the Biden administration in support of
strengthening and finalizing its draft guidance to protect taxpayers and
reduce prescription drug prices. The lawmakers submitted a public
comment supporting the “Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering
the Exercise of March-In Rights” and calling for changes to ensure
increased transparency, oversight, and accessibility of medical products
invented through taxpayer-funded research and development.
In February 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal announced that
three drug manufacturers pulled their sham patents after warnings, and
urged the FDA to continue fighting against Big Pharma’s patent abuse.
In December 2023, Senator Warren published an op-ed in
Newsweek commending the Biden administration’s announcement that price
can be considered in the government’s decision to march-in on a drug,
effectively lowering drug costs, and calling on Americans to fight back
against an industry that has been taking advantage of them for decades.
In December 2023, Senator Warren issued a statement after
the Biden administration announced it would issue guidance to federal
agencies that would allow the government to seize patents of certain
expensive drugs developed with taxpayer support to create more
competition and lower prices.
In December 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal sent letters to
the CEOs of 8 pharmaceutical companies urging them to voluntarily
remove sham patent claims improperly included in the FDA’s Orange Book
and end their unlawful practices that delay competition and drive up
costs for patients and taxpayers.
In December 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, legislation that would radically reduce drug prices through public manufacturing of prescription drugs.
In September 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal sent a
letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan urging the FTC to issue a policy
statement about the improper listing of drug-related patents in the
FDA’s Orange Book.
In August 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal sent a letter to
FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf, urging him to close loopholes
that pharmaceutical companies have exploited to block generics from
entering the market, keeping drug prices high and maximizing profits.
Monday, December 23, 2024. Chump and Musk suffer a very public
failure to achieve erection, JD Vance and Musk get their Nazi on,
apologists for Rashida Tlaib don't seem to know history or grasp that
it's over for Rashida, and much more.
Donald Chump and Elon Musk tried to bring the government to a shutdown. As Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes, they didn't get their way. Yes, there are evil geniuses but, as Chump and Musk prove, there are also evil dunces.
As part of a
discussion on MSNBC on Saturday morning, the former head of the
Republican National Committee suggested that Donald Trump is letting billionaire adviser Elon Musk call the shots because he's not the man he used to be.
During
a spirited debate over Musk leaning on GOP lawmakers to pass a budget
bill to his and Trump's liking –– while also noting they had some
disagreements about the debt limit –– MSNBC "The Weekend" co-host
Michael Steele pointed out that Musk was the most prominent critic of Republicans who had agreed to a compromise deal with Democrats.
With co-host Symone Sanders Townsend admitted she was surprising herself
by defending the president-elect, she insisted that the billionaire
Musk needs Trump more than Trump needs him.
He is
old and he is aging. Old Man Chump is 78 years old, grossly obese and
one clogged artery after another. He'll be lucky to make it
through four years in the White House without a stroke or a heart
attack. So last week, he and Elon tried to
impose a government showdown on the American people -- something that
would have cost the country millions and millions of dollars. Chump was
going to show the country how important he and his domestic partner
were but instead? They both came up short -- and stubby. Micro. The
two princes tiny meat.
Olivia Rosane (COMMON DREAMS) quotes US House Rep Pramila Jayapal (Democrat) stating, "We forced President-elect Trump and Shadow President Elon Musk to back
down from the 11th-hour demand to pass a suspension of the debt ceiling,
a move that would have paved the way for a Trump Tax Scam 2.0 that
would once again send trillions of dollars to the billionaires and giant
corporations while cutting Social Security and Medicare for working
people and poor people to pay for those tax cuts to the wealthiest. Democrats forced Republicans to back down and, when we
enter a Republican trifecta, it will be on Republicans to deliver all
the votes for such a scam. Democrats won’t bail them out—on that or any
of their policies that cater to the wealthiest in America at the expense
of working people and struggling Americans."
The
president-elect successfully pushed House Republicans to jettison some
spending, but he failed to achieve his central goal of raising the debt limit.
It demonstrated that despite his decisive election victory and frequent
promises of retribution, many members of his party are still willing to
openly defy him.
Trump’s decision to inject himself into the budget debate a month before
his inauguration also showed that he remains more adept at blowing up
deals than making them, and it foreshadowed that his second term will
likely be marked by the same infighting, chaos and brinksmanship that
characterized his first.
“Stay tuned. Buckle up. Strap in,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., a senior appropriator.
Be
interesting to see Chump and all of his stupidity and all of his
incompetence exposed. Over and over. For four years. If his heart
doesn't give out or if his stooges don't run him out of the White House with
pitchforks when they realize just how badly he conned them.
In a Saturday interview on MSNBC,
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) reminded host Ali Velshi and his
viewers that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) needed Democratic
support in order to prevent a shutdown. She added that "every single
[continuing resolution] has had to have Democrats provide the votes" as
dozens of members of Johnson's own conference routinely go against him
due to government spending concerns.
However,
Crockett said one of the more shocking moments of the past week for her
was an ultimately unsuccessful effort for Republicans to cut $190 million worth of funds
appropriated for pediatric cancer research. While senators ended up
unanimously re-inserting language into the final funding measure that
secured passage of the Gabriela Miller Kids First Reearch Act 2.0,
Crockett observed that Republicans were the ones to recommend axing it –
while keeping other money set aside for Trump's inauguration.
In other news . . .
From his article:
Elon
Musk, the richest man on Earth and the current daddy of the GOP,
tweeted an endorsement of the racist, anti-immigrant, pro-Nazi
Alternative for Germany (Afd) party.
Earlier today, Vice President JD Vance emerged from hiding to tweet what appears to be a defense of Musk and the AfD.
[. . .]
JD Vance has forgotten or doesn’t care he’s married to an Indian American woman and has bi-racial children who are seen as “invaders” seeking to “replace” Western, white civilization according
to the AfD and their right-wing supporters, which now includes a man
who gave $250 million to elect Donald Trump and feels emboldened to
target Republicans and torpedo a bipartisan spending deal.
This
is the modern Faustian bargain all Republicans must make to ascend to
political power and protect themselves from an increasingly violent,
belligerent base that lives on Earth 3 due to a 24-7 IV drip of
conspiracy theories fueled by cultural grievances and racism. Please
remember it was Vance who once referred to Trump as America’s Hitler.
I think Trump took it as a compliment. After all, Trump repeatedly
quotes Hitler’s attacks on Jews and immigrants and said he “did some
good things” according to his former Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly.
Both Vance and Trump aggressively promoted a Nazi conspiracy of Haitian
immigrants eating pets even after they were told it was a lie. Trump
said there were “very fine people” on “both sides” during the white
nationalist march in Charlottesville where people chanted Nazi talking
points.
AfD is vehemently anti-immigration,
particularly with regard to Muslims, calling for a “net zero” number of
immigrants entering Germany in the coming years. Leaders of the party
have repeatedly made racist and antisemitic statements, emphasizing a
need to return to a German “identity” and pushing other white
nationalist views; AfD leader Alexander Gauland, for example, has
described immigration to the country as an “invasion of foreigners” that he and his party intend to fight off.
The party has also called for changes to how Nazi Germany is depicted
in historical settings, such as monuments, schools and museums, with
Gauland once minimizing the country’s Nazi history as being no more than
“just a speck of bird’s muck.” Other AfD members have denied Nazi
wrongdoing, including by describing the Holocaust as a “myth.”
Musk’s public support for AfD is just the latest example of the
billionaire sharing reactionary viewpoints on X. Musk has, for example, called for the deportation of protesters utilizing the First Amendment to express views he disagrees with. He has also promoted antisemitic, anti-Muslim, transphobic and other bigoted content on his profile, and has shared content denying the Holocaust.
Novelist and political commentator Patrick S. Tomlinson has said that Musk’s support for AfD is illuminating.
“The AfD is Germany’s neo-Nazi party,” Tomlinson wrote on Bluesky.
“They are anti-immigration, anti-EU, and unapologetically pro-Putin.
The German courts have labeled the entire party extremist. Elon Musk has
gone fully mask off.”
Now let's deal with some stupidity from the left or 'left':
An AI image? Oh, I love crap-ass lying Socialists
because they make their stupidity so very obvious from the very start.
Lamentably Awake isn't using a photo either. He was apparently some
Twitter god for Elon Musk's social media once upon a time. And I'll
stick with he because he writes like either a "he" or a "man identifying
woman." And that latter term has nothing to do with a trans person.
It has everything to do with a queen bee who disowns her sisters to be
the sole woman in the room (see Gloria Steinem's REVOLUTION FROM WITHIN
if you're new to the queen bee).
La-La really needs to find a
lane and stay there. Veronica McDonald is a Democrat. She's talking
about a Democrat. And she's holding a Democrat accountable.
Now,
I get it, since US SOCIALIST WORKER went down in flames and accusations
and charges, it's been hard for the JACOBIN left and 'left' to educate
their followers but there's nothing right-wing about what Veronica
Tweeted. Or are we unaware of the Spanish Loyalist War? How damn
stupid is La-La?
I don't have time to educate the intentionally stupid.
Rashida Tlaib is Zell Miller
-- a Democrat who betrayed the party in a presidential election. She
made the decision to work to take down the party's presidential
nominee. In terms of party politics, she's a Benedict Arnold.
B-b-b-but Palestinians!!!
Palestinians didn't elect her to the Palestine Congress.
She
was elected to the US Congress and took an oath to uphold the
Constitution-- an oath she abandoned when she worked to support Chump's
campaign. With her sister, she worked to destroy Joe Biden and, when Joe
dropped out, she worked to destroy Kamala.
Gaza was
important to her than the Democratic Party or the American people or
immigrants in this country or addressing climate change. Suggesting
that she take her protected ass to Palestine and fight for the last
thing she supposedly believe in isn't a right-wing talking point. On
the left, it was often deployed against those in the US who favored the
military uprising in Spain -- the left suggested that right-wingers take
their safe little asses to Spain and fight for the fascism that they
rooted for.
Veronica Tweeted nothing that was offensive
unless you're a whiny ass cry baby outside the Democratic Party who
thinks you have a say in this. Because you really don't. This is a
party matter and we don't need nor do we want your input. She took
money from the DNC and would not have been re-elected without it. She
then turned and s**t on the Democratic Party. That was her choice.
She has to live with that choice now. We're not going to ignore her betrayal. We will laugh at her hypocrisy. Such as this:
In the crucial last month before President Joe Biden leaves
office, immigrants and allies on Tuesday urged the president to offer
protections for immigrant communities before Donald Trump is
inaugurated.
The president-elect has promised the
largest deportation in U.S. history, stoking fear and uncertainty among
undocumented immigrants and immigration advocates over a sweeping
platform that marked the core of Trump’s GOP presidential campaign.
Speaking
near the U.S. Capitol, the “Home is Here” campaign featured immigrant
youth, allies and advocates demanding Biden take executive action.
[. . .]
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib also voiced her concerns Tuesday over the president-elect’s immigration plans.
“We
cannot underestimate, as you all know, what will unfold the moment
Trump takes office in January, and we need as many people as possible
working to resist this hateful agenda,” the Michigan Democrat said.
Tlaib noted that Biden “still has power to take immediate executive action to protect our immigrant communities.”
She
also said “we must continue to work incredibly hard, not only to
outwork the hate, but to really promote love and justice within our
communities.”
Shut your lying mouth, just shut it.
You don't care about immigrants. No one who does would have ever voted
for Donald Chump. No one who cares for immigrants would have worked to
defeat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
You made
your decision and you'll have to live with it. And Home Is Here and
other organizations are going to have to learn that she's not going to
pull people over to the cause. No, she's as toxic now as, for example,
Cynthia McKinney was when they ran her out of Congress the first time.
That's not me endorsing the running out of Cynthia. That's me noting
reality that others try to ignore. Rashida's done. Her actions in 2024
have doomed many people in this country and no one's going to paper
over that to make it pretty. She has to be held accountable for her
part in putting Chump back in the White House. She has to be held
accountable for all that follows.
And her fan base of
uneducated Socialist -- not all Socialist are uneducated -- most are
highly educated -- though many DSA-ers are come off as home schooled --
can glom to her and try to protect her but that's not going to work. It
never has historically. She's done. Fork in her ass time. It's
over. Whatever national platform she once had is over. So much so that
I'm sure even Chump considers her more of a joke than a threat and she
won't make his enemies list.
If it helps any, I don't
think she was motivated just by her desire to put Chump back in the
White House. I also think Rashida was motivated by her hatred of Black
women.
And, one more thing, when you've actively done your part
to destroy the Democratic Party's presidential ticked in 2024 the way
Rashida did, you're a f**king hypocrite to think you can then make
demands on Joe Biden in the final days of his presidency. You're gall
is appalling.
