I've spent the last 30 minutes marveling over this idiotic article. I can't believe it was published. I can't believe, forget a fact check, that an editor actually read it before it was published. It has one error after another, it distributes conclusions that are factually incorrect, it's a 100% embarrassment.
Worst of all, when I saw the byline, I was happy -- until I read it.
We've been covering Iraq here for some time. We've seen a lot of western reporters switch outlets, some disappear. There's the always useless such as Jane Arraf. There are those who came into their own in the midst of covering Iraq (Alissa J. Rubin, Damien Cave, Tim Arango) and there are a few who did some outstanding work throughout. Outstanding work was done by Deborah Amos, Deborah Haynes, Michael Ware, Sahar Issa, Ellen Knickmeyer, Leila Fadel, etc.
Michael Jensen.
She did outstanding work at THE IRISH TIMES. She wrote the hideous article that's left me slack jawed.
Often times, as the US media ignores Iraq, I really miss the people who did strong work and wonder what it would be like if they were covering Iraq today?
Michael Jensen's piece at GULF TIMES makes so very glad she's not covering Iraq anymore. She'd be miscovering it.
She spends several paragraphs on the state of the US and she doesn't know a damn thing (despite having lived in the US and being born in Michigan). The vote count in 2020 was X and the electoral college vote was Y. How can Donald Trump say he was cheated!!!!
She's either an idiot or she'll write any crap these days.
Trump's problem with the turnout, part of the public record, is that he felt there were undercount and overcounts.
Was he right or wrong?
No one's going to know for at least 20 years. Elections have little integrity. JFK's father ensured the mob turned out the 'dead' in Chicago. Nixon suspected it but it would be years before this would be seen as plausible. John F. Kerry believed a real recount of the 2004 tallies would show him to be the winner. Jimmy Carter feels Ronald Reagan's team crafted The October Surprise to harm him.
There is no election integrity.
That's the reality. And we all saw that in 2000 when the Supreme Court violated the Constitution and declared Bully Boy Bush the winner. When there is a conflict, the decision goes to Congress. That's what happened in 1876 (which led to horse trading favors among the two political parties) and that's what the Constitution dictates. But Sandra Day O'Connor, as her husband explained at a party on election night 2000, wanted to retire but couldn't if Al Gore became president. (She didn't want a Democrat to select her replacement.) Clarence Thomas' wife worked for Bully Boy Bush's campaign. The Supreme Court exists to establish precedent. But they declared their ruling in BUSH V GORE to be limited to that case only. That's now how the Court is supposed to work. Our institutions have been failing us for years.
Did the election get stolen from Donald?
I have no idea. I said all along that once the vote is certified by lawmakers, it's over.
And it is. It no longer matters after that. There is no do over. 3 million votes found on February 7, 2022 wouldn't have made a difference because the matter is now settled. The Constitution does not allow for a do over. If the wrong person had been sworn in, didn't matter, it was over. The check on the vote, the final check, is the Congress certifying the totals. After that, it's over.
Was the result right, was it wrong? It doesn't matter because once Congress certifies the totals, the election's over.
We have very real issues of election integrity to address. We have gerrymandering -- with both sides of the US duopoly being guilty.
We have piece of human trash like Marc Elias. Jonathan Turley writing back in February:
Now, Elias is leading election challenge efforts. One of those cases concern Democratic candidate Anthony Brindisi efforts against former Republican representative Claudia Tenney. Tenney now holds a 125-vote lead after weeks of rechecking by the 22nd Congressional District’s eight counties. Rowan Scarborough notes that Elias seems to be “taking a page out of the Donald Trump playbook” in arguing in court that “there is reason to believe that voting tabulation machines misread hundreds if not thousands of valid votes as undervotes, and that these tabulation machine errors disproportionately affected Brindisi.”
The tabulation machines are reportedly Dominion Voting machines and a spokeswoman for the Oswego County Board of Election insisted the Elias’ claims are meritless.
Jonathan Turley last week on Marc Elias:
Just as a reminder, Elias, a former partner at the firm Perkins Coie, has been accused of lying to conceal the campaign’s funding of the infamous Steele Dossier. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for violating election rules in hiding that funding. Elias has previously been sanctioned for his conduct in litigation and recently lost an effort to gerrymander the Maryland voting districts. The alleged Elias’ lies would ordinarily seem a professional liability for any attorney but they seem an actual professional attraction for Elias.
These are real issues. When Michael wants to lie and claim that Trump's the idiot who doesn't realize that the popular vote -- Shut the f**k up. The popular vote doesn't count.
That's why we need to do away with the electoral college. (Congress would still be responsible for certifying the final vote, even without the electoral college.)
That's why many of us have been screaming for years to do away with the electoral college. Does Jensen know a damn thing anymore?
Michael Jensen comes off like a cheap, lying whore. And it's shocking because, at THE IRISH TIMES, she delivered work worth praising.
Now it's one-sided lies, such as Joe Biden's facing Congressional gridlock -- a first! A first for any president!!!! What a dumb liar. Barack faced, it, Bill faced it, Reagan faced it, everyone faces it. Congressional gridlock is an eternal condition, not a new development in the 21st century.
And her lie that "the US, which claims to be the world’s first democracy"?
Athens, you f**king liar. Every educated American -- which does include members of the government -- even in Congress -- is aware that Athens was the world's first known democracy. No, the US does not claim to be the world's first democracy.
You'll just type whatever you want and you'll call it truth and reality. You should be ashamed of yourself. You embarrass yourself and everyone whoever worked with you.
She goes on and on, yammering uselessly.
I don't have time.
My eyes still hurt from surgery. They blur if used a few hours continuously to read.
I don't have time for her f**king s**t.
GULF TIMES is an idiot for publishing this column.
After paragraph and paragraph and more paragraphs on the US, she finally gets to Iraq.
Big surprise, she can't get that right either.
Moqtada al-Sadr's political "party" did not win 73 seats. She's mistaking a bloc for a political party -- and she does throughout her useless article. Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law is not a political party, you dumb ass. He is a member of Dawa (political party), he started State of Law during his first term as prime minister. You stupid, stupid, lying idiot.
I have praised Michael Jensen repeatedly -- I'm talking offline.
She's a hack. She's descended to hack level. Was she that desperate for money? I know no one bought WINDOWS ON INTERESTING TIMES (her 2019 book) so maybe she is that desperate for money. And I know she's 82 this year so maybe she's gone senile.
But what was once a strong reporter has become either a raving idiot or a raving hack.
Her mind has gone to rot.
Her characterization of Nouri as prime minister is -- I can't. Nouri is a thug. I'm having to be fair to Nouri because she's lying.
His actions did not force Sunnis in Iraq -- not in any significant numbers -- to join ISIS. Many of them did, because of what Nouri did to them, take the attitude of ISIS and Nouri were each other's problem.
She's a damn liar and her terminology for ISIS betrays her long standing roots in the Middle East. She writes like an American whore taking talking points from the US State Dept -- but even they would caution her about these lies about Iraq, telling her that the Middle East audience reading GULF TIMES would not fall for them.
This is disgusting and shameful.
She needs to either apologize for the article or stop writing period. She had a legacy of note. She's betrayed it and she will only degrade it further.
When I saw her byline, I was so thrilled. Then I read her garbage. What an embarrassing end to a journalistic career.
We'll note this Tweet from Assal Rad:
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