The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

Friday, January 10, 2025

Iraq snapshot

Friday, January 10, 2025. Rudy G doesn't need a sick day from school after all, Donald Chump wants a woman who threatened a doctor's office to become a US ambassador, Elon Musk's father shows off the racism that is the hallmark of the Musk family, Senator Patty Murray has serious questions for Chump' IRS nominee and much more.

There's bad weather in parts of the United States, fires here in California and former President Jimmy Carter's memorial was this week so, for a number of reasons, people have been missing work. So it might be considered normal that West Virginia's House Delegate Brandon Steele (Republican) missed his swearing in Wednesday to the state legislature However, Amelia Ferrell Knisely (RAW STORY) explains there was a little more than that going on:

Two days before Christmas, the wife of a West Virginia lawmaker called 911 telling the operator she was concerned about him drunkenly handling assault rifles and screaming at people looking at Christmas lights in their neighborhood.

The report contains statements from Brandon Steele expressing concern about “possible threats regarding trials that he is working,” and concerns from Brianne Steele about her husband’s “paranoid” behavior and alcoholism.

And, kids, that's another reason we don't mix drinking and politics (see yesterday's snapshot). Leslie Rubin (WCHS) reports that, in fact, there were two phone calls to 911:

According to audio recordings sent anonymously to the media and House leaders, there were two separate 911 calls.

The first came from a child who reported someone was breaking into the home before Steele's wife got on the phone and said no one was trying to break in. She told the dispatcher her husband was "extremely drunk" and outside the home with rifles. "He's got the kids so scared and he says there's somebody who keeps driving by the house."

She abruptly hung up when the dispatcher asked if he was under the influence of alcohol, drugs or both.

After calling operators back, she said she had to hang up because her husband had come back inside the house.

The second call lasted more than 20 minutes while she stayed inside a bathroom with their three children waiting for police to arrive.

When the dispatcher asked her if she was safe, she said, "I don't know." She explained Steele was carrying "very dangerous" rifles and had access to many weapons. She could also be heard trying to comfort and calm the children.

Being an attorney and having a degree in criminal justice, you might think the 43-year-old would know better; however, the anti-abortion, coronavirus 'skeptic' (conspiracy nut -- even though he caught corona -- maybe he forgot and thought it was the case of beer in the garage?), anti-worker Republican clearly did not know better and so he took to terrorizing his family. But, hey, swear him in, right? Just another crook or kook in our government.

On the topic of violence and Republicans, Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports on the woman Donald Chump wants to be the US Ambassador to Swedene:

The president-elect tapped Christine Jack Toretti, a Pennsylvania-based GOP fundraiser, as the top diplomat to the Scandinavian nation after she was twice rejected by the Senate during Trump's last term as ambassador to Malta, reported Politico.

“Christine is an incredible businesswoman, philanthropist, public servant, and (Republican National) Committeewoman for the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Trump said in a statement posted on Truth Social.

She's a violent person who apparently prone to believing that threatening a doctor's office is a solid anger management tool:

Toretti at the time reportedly was under a restraining order filed against her by her ex-husband's doctor, who she blamed for the end of her marriage to former University of Arizona men's basketball coach Lute Olson.

The doctor alleged that Toretti came to his Tucson, Arizona, office and "behaved in a threatening manner" toward staff members and then came into his office and placed a bullet-riddled target practice sheet on his desk.

Speaking of political crooks, Rudy Giuliani. Ann covers Rudy G at her site (where her focus tends to be the crooks of politics) and has noted Rudy G this week in the following:

As Ann's noted this week, Rudy G continues attempting to evade the court and refuses to pay what he's been sentenced to pay. The new twist has been his claim that he's infirm and can't get on a plane and leave Florida. The judge asked for proof. 'Proof' was presented and the judge was talking travel ban for the 'sickly' Rudy G. Travel ban? B-b-b-but the love of his pathetic life, Donald Chump, is sworn in Monday January 20th!!!!

Faced with missing out on his man, Rudy G has done an about face as his bad tummy ache suddenly disappeared and he could get dressed to go to school after all. David Edwards (RAW STORY) reports, "Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani withdrew a request to appear virtually for an upcoming trial in New York after a judge ruled that he would also not be able travel to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration." Now Rudy can make the inauguration and, no doubt, sing "Stand By Your Man" to Donald in person.

THE VANGUARD continues to probe and explore what makes people grifters. We'll note two of the videos they did with Mahdi Hasan discussing the grift of MORNING JOE, TYT and Matt Taibi.

On the topic of the grifters of MORNING JOE, Yasmeen Hamadeh (DAILY BEAST) notes:

While discussing how Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, guest and NYU professor Scott Galloway told Brzezinski: “We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality. And the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is because, for the first time in our nation’s history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn’t doing as well as his or his or her parents were at 30.”

After their conversation ended, Brzezinski quickly corrected Galloway’s wording.

“I want to make a comment about a word that was used in this interview,” she told viewers. “Donald Trump was tried civilly and was found liable of sexual abuse, not rape. The judge in the case likened his actions to rape, but the liability was officially called ‘sexual abuse.’”

ABC News settled a defamation suit with Trump in December, after anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately said the president-elect was found “liable for rape” in E. Jean Carroll’s case against him during an on-air interview with Nancy Mace in March.

It was rape, per the judge. The conviction was sexual assault. There are differences in the wording but the popular understanding of sexual assault is rape. Chump objects to that. And yet . . . Jerry Lambe (LAW AND CRIME) notes:

Donald Trump implored a federal judge in Pennsylvania to toss out the defamation lawsuit filed against him by members of the Central Park Five over comments the president-elect made during last year’s presidential debate, claiming the falsely-accused quintet are portraying his “substantially true” comments out of context.

The 12-page reply motion seeking to have the suit dismissed was filed Wednesday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and reiterated many of Trump’s previous arguments about the case, mainly, claiming the plaintiffs rely on “misrepresentations of President-elect Trump’s arguments” that could only be defamatory if one were “reviewing the at-issue statements out of context.”

Unlike Chump, the Central Park Five are actually innocent. Chump has been lying about them for years. There is no popular understanding of "innocent" beyond being innocent. So he's bothered when the shapes are filled in on sexual assault but he feels he's free to demonize and lie without any responsibility?

Let's move over to Elon Musk. Nick Lampson (NEWSWEEK) reports:

The United States Air Force, Department of Defense, and other agencies are investigating Elon Musk and SpaceX for allegedly failing to disclose meetings with adversarial foreign leaders as required by federal law.

This is absolutely inexcusable. Musk's SpaceX has handled nearly 80 percent of U.S. government sponsored rocket launches this year, including critical national security missions. Yet Musk has reportedly met with China and Russia's top leaders numerous times; the Wall Street Journal reported that Vladimir Putin explicitly asked Musk to help Xi Jinping, the chairman of China's Central Military Commission, with a political matter. These communications may present a concern for the U.S. because China and Russia are America's top space rivals, and they are working together to challenge America's space dominance.

You know what else they should do? Revoke Musk's security clearance.

You can only ride one horse at a time.

You can only be dedicated to one country.

Elon Musk has citizenship from the country he grew up in and was raised in (and that his father hails from -- South Africa) from the country his mother was born in before she moved to South Africa (Canada) and, despite breaking the rules, managed to purchase US citizenship.

No.

A dual national would be suspicious enough. He has citizenship in three countries. Iraq, when they did their 2005 Constitution, rightly said hell no to that nonsense. You're not supposed to be able, for example, hold office in Iraq if you have dual citizenship.

He's got triple citizenship -- allowing him to flee if he wants -- and so these secret meetings with rivals/enemies/what-have-you are not acceptable.

Again, just on the citizenship issue, I would question his loyalties. But when you add on to that his secret meetings with two other governments -- neither of which is he a citizen of, as far as we know -- you've got a very big problem. He is a security risk. It's insane to pretend otherwise. He does not understand this country and he doesn't care about it enough to renounce his citizenship in two other countries. So we're not first on the list and, therefore, he can't be trusted with national security issues.

Repeating, Elon Musk is not an American. He was born in South Africa which is also his father's native country. Via his mother, he got Canadian citizenship. She moved to South Africa as a child and stayed until apartheid was falling. That's when the family flees. If you don't understand that, you don't understand Elon and his trashy family or the level of racism that he considers 'normal' and 'natural.' His ugly mother was White and tall so she got to be a minor model in South Africa. She's an idiot and is often in the news for her gross stupidity. Now Elon's father has made the news. No surprise, he's expressing racism.

Maira Butt (INDEPENDENT) explains:

Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid bluntly shut down the father of Elon Musk after he compared far-right leader Tommy Robinson to Nelson Mandela.

Musk, 53, has drawn widespread criticism for his alleged propagation of false claims about grooming gangs on social media, and was blamed for stoking the flames of riots sparked by murders in Southport last year.

[. . .]

Matters escalated when the father of the X/Twitter owner doubled down on his comparison between far-right leader Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon – and Nelson Mandela, before shifting to the issue of a Canadian referendum.

Reid called the comparison “utterly bizarre”, quickly shutting down the rant as she interjected: “Right, Errol, thank you very much indeed but I feel that we’re drifting slightly from the core issues for our audience.”

She then addressed viewers as she explained: “I think we slightly drifted away from how democracy works and the legal system in this country as well.”

Elon Musk, who bought his American 'citizenship' (and didn't follow the rules required for American citizenship), has been glorified by idiots in the US forever and a day. And I'm not talking about the MAGA fools that got on board with him more recently. I'm talking about 'progressives' and other idiots. I'm talking about THE SIMPSONS' cartoon. I'm talking about Alyssa Milano.. Last night, Stan noted ("3 actors (only one worth praising") the role FAMILY GUY has played in attempting to turn hate mongers into cuddly friends.

I offended people -- and on this issue and at this site, and I honestly don't care -- when I noted a popular actress who is from South Africa and I noted that I didn't trust her. She's White. She grew up under apartheid. She's never denounced it. As I explained, if you lived in South Africa during apartheid and you were White and did nothing to end apartheid, I don't trust you. Oh, I'm sure you'd smile to my face. And I'm just as sure you'd mock me or rip me apart as soon as I walked out of the room.

Apartheid was a destructive system that destroyed so many lives. And it took decades to end it. It took all of us around the world protesting and calling it out and calling out the filth that labeled Nelson Mandela a 'terrorist.' So, yeah, I am prejudiced against Whites who thrived under apartheid. I feel you owe the world an apology. And if you can't even denounce it today, I assume you miss it.

Everything about Elon goes to his being raised to believe that being White makes him superior to others.

And everything about him -- back when he was 'left' and today when he's moved over to the right -- testifies to someone who is a racist and believes in and supports racism.

And when THE SIMPSONS and others were glorifying him, whispers of NDAs where he was trying to silence victims of his racism were abundant.

So I never understood that.

But here's your chance to catch up if you got left behind due to the 'left' previously praising him. (I should probably say the White 'left.' But I hope that was already understood.)

His father went on TV and it wasn't fifty years ago and it wasn't thirty years ago. It was this week.

This White man was wealthy in South Africa thanks to his skin color and who was not at all troubled by the barriers constructed to prevent Black people from getting ahead or even just surviving.

And now, decades later, apartheid may have crumbled but he still clutches the hate and he goes on TV and calls Nelson Mandela a 'terrorist.'

This is not rare strand, this is the core of the Musk family.

Every time he does or says something, you need to grasp that apartheid is the filter to look through because he was raised in that system, he believes in that system and he's never denounced it.

Instead of addressing this, the corporate press and some on the 'left' turned him into some sort of a folk hero in the '10s and we're suffering today because of it.

If you never get how White the filter the US media looks through is, just grasp that a more diverse media would have been questioning Musk all along, not building him up, but studying to see if he was attempting to duplicate apartheid in his companies and via his companies.

Free speech is not making threats -- though Elon allows it. You can threaten Black people as a whole or an individual on Twitter. You could threaten to shoot up Target over the merchandise and Elon didn't take those down. (When reported to the authorities, some of the 'free speechers' took their Tweets down themselves.)

Free speech is not threatening violence against Black people. But too much of the media -- and the 'left' -- wanted to pretend it was. When you see those photos on Twitter where a White person is trying to hang a Black person, grasp that for Elon Musk this is natural and unoffensive.

Racism doesn't belong on social media. Hatred aimed at whole groups of people does not belong on social media.

Again, this is not a free speech issue. I support free speech. Doctored or AI images that are violent and denigrate Black people are defended by Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley but they don't call out book banning and they don't call out attacks on trans people at public events.

Freedom of speech, for them, just means free to be as racist and ugly as they can be. And if you've seen Jonathan or Glenneth, you know they are deeply, deeply ugly -- on the outside and the inside.

And the corporate media's not going to hold them accountable. NEWSWEEK, yesterday, did celebrity porn for Elon Musk because someone said Elon might be "best hope" for a development. Might be. That's the fawning corporate media always does. Kissing up like crazy. Regular people? They usually have to actually do something to get praise. NEWSWEEK too often mistakes ad copy for journalism.

From the sewer of Musk and Twitter to the sewer of Mark Suckerberg, Molly Sprayregen (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Erika Hilton, a Black trans member of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, has asked the U.N. to investigate Mark Zuckerberg’s revelation that Meta will end fact-checking and allow anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech to go unchecked on its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.

“Policy changes by large corporations like Meta continue to put the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals at risk,” Hilton wrote in a document sent to Nicolas Levrat, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on minority issues, as reported by InfoMoney.

She added that Meta’s new policies “can be considered complicit in the dissemination of practices that violate the rights of groups protected by Brazilian legislation.”

Suckerberg is a lying piece of trash who's about to have hell rain down on him. It's called karma. And he'll deserve every bit of it.

In other news, many are wondering where the Democrats have been of late? Not US House Rep Jasmine Crockett, mind you, but the many, many elected Dems in Congress who seem to have lost their voice in recent weeks. Is it a nasty cold? Ross Rosenfeld (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act, which would allow Homeland Security to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who have merely been charged—not convicted—of minor, nonviolent crimes. If the bill also prevails in the Senate, where it is expected to advance later this week, Donald Trump would sign it immediately upon taking office—at which point we could see people deported, without due process, simply because a cop alleges that they stole, say, a tube of toothpaste from CVS. It’s also easy to imagine how MAGA-friendly law enforcement and prosecutors could take advantage of such a law, exaggerating or even fabricating charges in the hopes of nabbing an “illegal.”

We’ve seen a similar tone from many other Democrats since Kamala Harris’s loss to Trump—and not just the usual moderates, but also progressive torchbearers like Bernie Sanders. He has been offering to work with Trump to cap credit card fees and raise the minimum wage (good luck with those). He told Business Insider last month that Elon Musk is a “very smart guy” whom he’d like to work with on cutting defense spending. Though he criticized Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiratorial thinking and views on vaccines, Sanders seemed eager to work with him on other health-related issues.

It’s as if Democrats have become accomplices in their perceived fait accompli. Many of them have taken it as a given that defaulting to an oppositional stance is antithetical to democratic principles, and that it is incumbent upon them following an election loss to find compromises with Republicans in order to achieve progress where possible. They’re ignoring, however, the actual dynamics of the situation—namely that, by helping Trump achieve victories, they will only increase his power and influence, and thereby advance Trumpism. This is the Trump paradox.

[. . .]

We might expect such rhetoric from a Democratic congressman in southwest Ohio, but even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that working-class pugilist from the Bronx, opined to Punchbowl, “The reason why I think oftentimes Democrats occasionally lose elections is because we’re too reflexively anti-Republican, and that we don’t lean into an ambitious vision for working-class Americans strongly enough.” It was the Democrats, mind you, who included $83 billion under Biden’s American Rescue Act to shore up pensions for American workers, including over a million Teamsters who then largely turned their back on Kamala Harris in November. As for her contention that Democrats are too reflexively anti-Republican, well, there’s much to reflexively oppose. Republicans are the party of bigotry, sophistry, and cruelty. And they’re certainly reflexively anti-Democratic (not to mention anti-democratic).

Ocasio-Cortez is not out of line with other New York pols, by the way: As Politico noted on Wednesday, Governor Kathy Hochul and numerous state legislators have backed away from confronting Trump, mistakenly calculating that voters will respect them more if only they cower and kowtow a bit more.

What a difference four years—and an election decided by fewer than two and a half million votes—can make. So long, #Resistance. Hello, #Surrender.

Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:

Long bragged about securing $3 million faulty refund, claimed “everybody qualifies” for credit, encouraged people to question accountants

“Borders on absurdity,” said external auditor about Long’s firm’s interpretation of ERTC eligibility

Podcast with Billy Long detailing his work pushing the ERTC mysteriously removed from online platforms last month

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Billy Long, President-elect Trump’s nominee for Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner, detailing her concerns with Long’s qualifications and requesting answers to his involvement in potential abuse of the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC).

“Although you bill yourself as a ‘Certified Business and Tax Adviser,’ this certification appears to only require a three-day training. Indeed, your lack of significant management or tax experience—and your promotion of credits that have been “magnet[s] for fraud”—raise serious questions about your qualifications to lead the IRS,” wrote Senator Warren.

After leaving Congress in 2023, Billy Long worked for Commerce Terrace Consulting and Lifetime Advisers, where he repeatedly pushed businesses to file for the ERTC, a refundable tax credit designed to support struggling businesses able to demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their bottom line and helped keep them afloat. Firms known as “ERTC mills” specialize in exploiting the credit’s eligibility criteria, opening the door for fraud and abuse — resulting in huge delays and harms to honest businesses trying to rightfully claim the credit.

Long himself has a troubling record of appearing to exploit the credit’s eligibility criteria for his clients’ — and his own — profit. Long publicly claimed that “everybody qualifies” for the credit and instructed his social media followers to “DM [him] to save 40% on [their] taxes.” Long bragged that he helped secure a $3.6 million ERTC payout for an organization, only for its chief executive to say that “it had ultimately dropped its claim after receiving advice that it may not qualify for the credit. Long also stated that businesses he’s worked with “have had the best two years of their life” during the pandemic, and urged people to question their accountants — and turn to him to produce an ERTC success story, instead. When Congress was considering shutting the program down due to rampant fraud, Long “traveled to Washington to try to persuade [his] former colleagues in Congress…not to follow through.”

“Your most significant tax experience has been your recent work promoting a fraud-ridden pandemic-era tax credit, which you have incorrectly claimed “everybody qualifies” for,” wrote Senator Warren.

Lifetime Advisors, the lawsuit-ridden firm that Long promoted, has been criticized for taking an “aggressive stance” on ERTC eligibility. Two accredited accountants reportedly left the company “after raising concerns about how the firm prepared taxes.” Meanwhile, Lifetime had a clear financial stake in pushing questionable ERTC claims – with one contract granting Lifetime 20% of a $300,000 ERTC credit in fees from a client. One nonprofit hired Lifetime but was later warned by an external auditor that Lifetime’s “expansive interpretation” of the ERTC eligibility criteria “borders on absurdity” – causing the nonprofit to return its refund to avoid a potential IRS audit (Lifetime refused to refund its fee).

“Given the widespread issues caused by ERTC mills, taxpayers deserve a better understanding of your role in this space,” wrote Senator Warren.

A podcast episode in which Billy Long detailed his work pushing the ERTC and potentially exploiting its eligibility criteria was mysteriously removed from online platforms last month.

“I am also troubled that shortly after the announcement of your nomination, with no explanation, and after press reports of your appearance on it, the podcast cited above was pulled down from multiple podcast platforms, including the Listen Notes website, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, raising questions about whether your full record on tax issues is being obscured in advance of your confirmation hearing,” concluded Senator Warren.

Senator Warren highlighted her concerns with Long's qualifications when his nomination was first announced, saying: “Billy Long’s nomination to lead the I.R.S. is bad news for middle-class taxpayers and a win for ultra-wealthy tax cheats...If he’s confirmed, taxpayers can expect longer wait times for customer service, a more complicated process to file taxes, and free rein for the rich and powerful to continue rigging the system at the expense of everyone else.”

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Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Cult Member? Yes. Sex Slave? No" went up yesterday. The following sites updated: