Friday, November 18, 2022. Corruption in Iraq, marriage equality and abortion in the US, Will Lehman, BROS and so much more.
Abortion and marriage equality. A number of e-mails have come in about those two topics which are related in many ways. Let's start with marriage equality.
There will be a floor vote in the Senate. Here's Senator Tammy Baldwin's statement on what took place this week:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) released the
following statement following the Senate vote, 62-37, to advance the Respect for Marriage Act.
“Today,
we took a step forward in our fight to give millions of loving couples
the certainty, dignity, and respect that they need and deserve. A
bipartisan coalition of Senators stood with the overwhelming majority of
Americans who support marriage equality. We came together to move the
Respect for Marriage Act forward and give the millions of Americans in
same-sex and interracial marriages the certainty that they will continue
to enjoy the freedoms, rights, and responsibilities afforded to all
other marriages,” said Senator Baldwin. “I am proud to
have worked across the aisle to earn broad, bipartisan support for this
legislation, and look forward to making marriage equality the law of the
land.”
And it should be the law of the land. But it's not yet. I'll celebrate when it is.
In the meantime we're getting garbage coverage.
So-called reporters printing lies. I've got four to choose from, they all go with the same lie, but we'll just use one. Playground honor will prevent us from identifying the author of the one we're using but Google will snitch on her if you copy and paste the paragraph below into a Google search:
If you’re wondering why protecting same-sex and interracial marriage is
even something that needs to be voted on in the year of our Lord 2022,
the legislation was prompted by comments from Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas, who recently said that
the Court should reconsider opinions protecting access to contraception
and same-sex and interracial marriages. (It’s worth noting that Thomas
is also in an interracial marriage, having been married to Virginia
“Ginni” Thomas since 1987.)
Do you see the problem? Three other outlets also can't get it right.
And worst of all, she thinks she's cute with her parenthetical.
No, Clarry Thomas did not bring up LOVING V VIRGINIA. That's the case that overturned bans on interracial marriage. He listed marriage equality, he listed sodomy and he listed birth control. LOVING is founded on the same due process aspect. But Clarry omitted it precisely because he is in an interracial marriage -- exposing himself as a hypocrite. Many of us called him out on it when his concurring opinion (what the reporter calls "comments") was issued -- that includes Samuel L. Jackson who was very vocal about the hypocrisy (I would praise anyone for speaking out but, disclosure, Samuel is a good friend of mine).
Now I hope it becomes the law of the land and we'll be thrilled here if it does. But, again, we'll celebrate then, we'll breathe easy then.
We thought ROE was the law of the land until a cabal conspired to shred precedent and overturn fifty years of settled court law.
And during those decades, we watched as Democrats chipped away at it. Our 'friend' Hillary, of course, was part of the attack on abortion rights in the immediate months after the 2004 election. You had a plan by the party -- by leaders in the party -- to push the Democrats away from abortion. They paid various little peons to write non-thought pieces on it. And you had various politicians come forward to move the party away from abortion rights. Hillary took part in that. THE NEW YORK TIMES documented it.
So let's step pretending that We the American People have any groups of friends in Congress when it comes to reproductive rights.
As Elaine noted, while people are listing Nancy Pelosi's supposed accomplishments as Speaker of the House, the reality is that she was Speaker of the House when women lost significant rights. Way to go, Nance.
We had ROE and we had years of chipping away at it. Poor women were, of course, the first to suffer. And we can blame men because men were in Congress and women really don't come into Congress in significant numbers until the 1992 genderquake (resulting largely from the country seeing the way the Senate demonized Anita Hill). But the reality is, ROE continued to be sliced and diced.
And when it wasn't being chipped away at, it was being used as a political football.
Codifying it not only would have saved reproductive rights, it would have pulled a get-out-the-vote tool from the Democratic Party not to mention a fundraising tool for the party.
And that, let's be honest, is why Nancy never led on codifying it and why Barack Obama broke his campaign promise that the first thing he would do as president was codify ROE.
If you supported ROE you were held hostage for years by the Democratic Party.
They didn't protect it by making it law, they didn't protect it by ensuring that all women had equal access.
They used it.
And some are e-mailing saying that I'm not celebrating our victory in the midterms.
I don't see it as a victory and I'll explain why.
But we did note WSWS's live coverage blog when they noted the victories in various states in this month's elections.
I've waited and waited -- in vain? -- for the Feminist Majority Foundation to put out some statement. Maybe they're not feeling it -- I'm not feeling it -- and maybe we're both wary for the same reason.
The American people turned out and supported the right to privacy. They did a great job.
But the people usually do.
It's the politicians that don't.
The Democrats lost the House. That's reality. They should have lost it by a bigger percentage, they should have lost the Senate.
Abortion is what saved them.
And as I write that I cringe because they don't have a history of standing up. They have a history of using and abusing.
I'll use an example from this century. As a party, they supported the Iraq War. After the people turned against it, the party began to find its voice. (There were members against the war who were in Congress, they did not steer the party.) Finally, in 2006, Nancy promised us that if the Dems could get control of just one house of Congress in the midterm vote, they could end the Iraq War.
The American people gave them control of both houses.
And they didn't end it.
They didn't end it because no one had expected control of both houses. Despite the fact that the public had turned against the war, the idiots leading the Democratic Party hadn't expected that turnout. So instead of ending it, it was decided to carry it over for at least two more years. If opposition to the war could get them control of both houses, it could also lead to control of the White House.
The dying didn't matter. The Iraqis dead and wounded didn't matter, the US troops dead and wounded didn't matter. The violations of international law didn't matter.
To the party, the Iraq War was nothing more than a get-out-the-vote tool.
And, to this day, we still have US troops stationed in Iraq.
Yes, abortion is probably the biggest reason that Dems were not wiped out in this month's mid-terms.
But why I'm not feeling a 'victory' here is because the party tends to use women and I can see very easily the Democratic Party refusing to address abortion by codifying it so that they can use the issue as a get-out-the-vote and fundraising tool for several more election cycles.
I hope that doesn't happen.
But already Joe Biden's declared this week that ROE won't be codified.
Really.
Because before the election, when he needed people to vote Democrat, he said what?
That he was fine with suspending the filibuster to codify abortion rights. Or does no one remember that?
And Dems may not control the House, but they have 212 seats to the Republicans 218 and there are still five more seats to be called. Let's say that they all went Republican. That would be 223. That's eleven seats.
Isn't Joe the reach across the aisle guy?
He can't get 11 votes in the House from the Republicans?
The Dems can't make deals that would garner the support of 11 Republicans.
Abortion is not a fringe issue, it has majority support.
There's no excuse for not putting this to a vote. There's no excuse for not demanding bipartisanship on this issue. It is what the American people support.
So this nonsense that Joe offered this week of how the results of the election mean nothing can be done is nonsense and garbage and too many of us have seen this over and over. So, yes, I fear abortion is an issue that they are going to string us along on for several election cycles unless we make it clear that we're not playing that game.
That means stop lying, stop spreading lies, stop being silent. It means that we stop pretending that backstabbers like Hillary Clinton are our friends. Again, she used the aftermath of the 2004 election to trash abortion rights -- even THE NEW YORK TIMES called her out on it.
The lines were drawn long ago and if you're not going for our right to privacy, you're not our friend and we're idiots if we pretend otherwise.
Sorry if I took the buzz off the victory. I was biting my tongue. Ahead of the elections and now. I'd planned to address that when we did the year-in-review here. But that is the reality of the way the party is with abortion. We have the numbers, we just don't have the representation in Congress. We would if we'd stop treating them like our wayward spouses and clucking over them and acting like it was okay that they forgot to take out the garbage and aren't they cute. They aren't our spouses. They are our public servants. And we need to remind them of that.
I am very hopeful that marriage equality will be the law of the land due to an act of Congress. And, if that happens, it will be something to celebrate. But I've watched the Democratic Party with ROE for too many years and Joe's remark this week indicates nothing has changed or been learned there.
In Iraq, the people also suffer under their government.
At THE FINANCIAL TIMES, Raya Jalabi notes the recent theft of 2.5 billion dollars that was discovered in October (it took place over the previous twelve months). That was the public's money and corrupt officials stole it. They now have a new prime minister (Mohammed Shia al-Sudani) but The Century Foundation's Sajad Jiyad states, "The fault and the liabilities go all the way to the top. It implicates a lot of high-level players, including ministers and ex-ministers, civil servants and well-connected businessmen. So this is a political issue -- we'll see how far Sudani can go."
Last month, two developments ended the paralysis that has gripped Iraqi politics since the general elections in October 2021.
One, the divide between the Kurds ended with the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP) reluctantly withdrawing its insistence on nominating the
country’s President and accepting the claim of its rival, the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), to put forward its own candidate, Abdul Latif Rashid.
Once
Mr. Rashid was approved as President with majority support in
Parliament on October 13, he nominated Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as Prime
Minister. On October 27, Mr. al-Sudani obtained parliamentary approval
for himself and his cabinet. Thus, after three years of care-taker
administrations, there is finally an elected government in Baghdad,
though few believe there will be peace in the country.
Less than a month after being inaugurated as Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia Al Sudani
is already reneging on promises he made to secure his governing
coalition. The longer these pledges go unmet, the longer Iraq’s
destabilizing political polarization will persist. Sunnis traded
their support for a promise that, once in power, the new prime minister
would withdraw pro-Iran Shia militias, known as Popular Mobilization
Units (PMU), from Sunni-dominated provinces in the northwest.
Al Sudani agreed, and also vowed to issue a general pardon that would open the door for the rehabilitation of the mostly-Sunni ISIS fighters.
Neither of these promises have been kept. Pro-Iran Shia lawmakers have obstructed measures that would undermine the PMUs without disbanding them.
Tensions between the two main Kurdish ruling parties in the Iraqi
Kurdistan region, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), are worsening in the aftermath of
the assassination of a counter-terrorism officer.
Hawkar Abdullah Rasoul, known as Hawkar Jaff, a former colonel in the ranks of PUK's Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG), was killed
in the capital city of Erbil on 7 October after a sticky bomb attached
to his vehicle detonated. The KDP accuses its rival party, the PUK, of
being behind the killing.
Bafl Talabani, PUK's president, during an interview with Rudaw Kurdish satellite channel
aired on Tuesday night, said that as a consequence of the killing
arrest warrants have been issued by an Erbil court against himself and
his brother, Qubad Talabani, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG).
The Biden administration has made it clear to Iraq's new prime
minister that it will not work with ministers and senior officials who
are affiliated with Shiite militias the U.S. has designated as terrorist
organizations, two sources briefed on the issue told me.
Why it matters: Mohammed
Shia al-Sudani became the prime minister after he was endorsed by the
pro-Iranian factions in the Iraqi parliament, known as the Coordination Framework. These factions include some Shiite militias on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.
- Still, the U.S. plans to largely work with and give the new Iraqi government and al-Sudani a chance, as Axios recently reported.
- Iraq
is a key partner for the Biden administration in the region, with many
U.S. security and economic interests that need to be preserved.
State of play: The
Biden administration has already decided it will not work with the
minister of higher education, Naim al-Aboudi, who is a member of Asa'ib
Ahl al-Haq (AAH), a Shiite militia that is funded by Iran and was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the two sources said.
- The U.S. is also concerned about Rabee Nader, who was appointed to head the Iraqi prime minister's press office. Nader worked
in the past for media outlets affiliated AAH and with the Kata’ib
Hezbollah — a Shiite militia designated by the U.S. as a terror group.
Behind the scenes: U.S.
ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski has met with al-Sudani five times
since he took office less than three weeks ago, according to the two
sources.
- The sources said Romanowski told al-Sudani the U.S.
policy regarding engagement with government ministers and officials who
are connected to militias. The same message was conveyed to the Iraqi
government by other Biden administration officials.
- The White House declined to comment on diplomatic engagements with the Iraqi government.
Turning to union news, we'll note this:
Fellow workers, Today I filed a federal lawsuit against the UAW and the court-appointed Monitor demanding swift action to guarantee the right to vote in the first-ever direct elections for international office. Just
9 percent of UAW members’ ballots have been received by the Monitor so
far because workers don’t know about the elections, and there are
widespread reports of workers not receiving ballots. My
lawsuit demands reasonable relief: extend all voting-related deadlines
by 30 days and take real action to inform the entire membership that the
election is taking place. The
entrenched UAW leadership is not taking real measures to inform members
of their right to vote or to provide them with ballots in a timely
manner because they don’t want workers to kick them out! This is a
blatant violation of our rights as rank-and-file members of the UAW. This case is about fighting for the rights of all UAW members. This election will not be legitimate unless we get a real voice Below,
I’m linking to the announcement of the lawsuit demanding the elections
deadlines be extended. I want to ask you to do three things: Share the statement about the lawsuit widely with your coworkers and on social media. Make sure other workers are informed of what’s at stake in these elections!
Demand
that the election deadlines be extended so that every worker can get a
ballot who wants one and can have their votes count.
Lastly,
I need your financial support. Filing this lawsuit costs money, as does
everything else I’m fighting to do to make workers aware of the
elections and my campaign’s call for rank-and-file power. I ask that
you donate whatever you can right away.
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| THU, NOV 17 On
Thursday, November 17, Will Lehman filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan demanding that the
UAW and the court-appointed Monitor overseeing the election delay all
voting-related deadlines by 30 days due to widespread reports that
workers are unaware of the election and that the mechanism for mailing
ballots has broken down. |
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Let's close with BROS -- and I told you they were going to move the DVD and BLURAY release up.
The following sites updated:
