The site has some changes. That's not me.
We haven't changed that much here. Piss me off and you get benched.
Currently, THE VANGUARD is benched.
I don't plan on them being up any time next week.
I started to post a video and then made the mistake of listening.
Zac needs to control his ridiculous anger.
He was -- as usual -- attacking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He has nothing better to do. You would think he would try to temper his remarks if only because he and the program look so wrong.
I get it, Mr. Gavin and Mr. Zac are very young. I do get that. I
get that their knowledge of the world seems to have started in 2014.
But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running for president?
I am sorry he would most likely wipe the floor with Marianne "Kaneichiwa, girlfriend" Williamson.
Robert
F. Kennedy Sr. remains a legend to many. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a
politician means a lot to a lot of people. His father was assassinated
while running for president and his uncle was assassinated while he was
president.
The family's name and legacy still stand for something.
R.F.K. Jr. on his own?
Let me start with his anti-vaccine position.
All he has to do is state it is what he believes and . . .
Point
out that he has been attacked for that belief "but I never backed off.
I don't back off or cave when I believe in something and I believe in
fighting for you, the American people."
I think that
is a strong trait that a lot of people will respond to in a world where
too many cave at the slightest rebuff from a few people.
Now let me note some of his strengths:
From 1986 until 2017, Kennedy was a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit environmental organization. From 1984 until 2017, he was a board member and attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper.[5] Earlier
in his legal career, he served as assistant district attorney in New
York City. For over thirty years, Kennedy was an adjunct professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law.
Until August 2017, he held the post as supervising attorney and
co-director of Pace Law School's Environmental Litigation Clinic, which
he founded in 1987.[6] Kennedy's work on environmental law led him to be considered for the position of Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008.[7]
R.F.K. Jr. has serious concerns about vaccines.
He owns it.
Mr. Zac and Mr. Gavin, you cannot say the same about Ms. Williamson.
Oh, I am sorry, you did not know that, did you?
Ms. Williamson can also be called an anti-vaxer. Oops.
I
am sorry. I admire the energy you young men sports but you really need
to dig into some facts. I am not the one who should be telling you
that the candidate you are promoting has a history of anti-vax
statements -- going into the pandemic, in fact.
You are
using your show to promote her? Well it is your show. But you are
crapping on Mr. Kennedy for his view on vaccines and you do not even
know Ms. Williamson's long, long history (2012 to 2020) of anti-vax
statements?
The con artist that she is has nothing that
counters that. First off, she caved on it -- so did she ever believe
it or was it just some con on her part? Second, she has not done a
thing for the environment and that issue is going to be a bigger issue
after four years of President Joe Biden failing to address the climate
crisis.
There is an Eminem song and I got my title from it. I
thought he said, "Will the real Slim Shady please shut up, please shut
up." My grandson Jayson told me it was "please stand up, please stand
up." But I like my title for this post so I am leaving it.
And
I have tried to be very delicate about this because those young men
who host the show are young men and I often enjoy the program. But they
do not know Ms. Williamson's history or they would not have slammed Mr.
Kennedy the way they did. Ms. Williamson is a joke.
They so often do not know what they're talking about.
Ruth was right. And I don't think Ruth had to crawl out on a limb to realize that Robert entering the race was going to destroy Marianne.
Ruth's noted that they've tried to inflate Marianne's polling since RFK Jr. is now in the double digits and Marianne's still struggling at the same 8%.
It's just dishonesty.
I don't have time for it. But that's not what got them benched.
Some people are bothered by Friday's Iraq snapshot. That's your right, you don't have to like everything I put up here -- or like anything I put up here. That was a full Iraq snapshot. And some people were bothered by that because I didn't touch on LGBTQ+ issues or the illegitimate Supreme Court or the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination or how DISNEY is kicking Ron DeSantis' ass or . . .
First off, we're always going to have snapshots that solely cover Iraq. It's not every day. But they will pop up and they have. Second, Friday's snapshot? It was a scramble. Why?
THE VANGUARD. I almost posted a video from them. Then I streamed.
And I wrote a very long response that I put at the top of the video before deciding, no, I'm not posting that video here.
F**k them, honestly.
Now they were attacking Robert again over his vaccine stance -- a stance they do not know and do not grasp but I honestly don't care about that.
I care that Zac's zeal to attack Robert was so great that he belittled autism.
This is a cause I've worked on all my life.
I had a cousin who was autistic. She was institutionalized. I was seven or eight when I met her. It was Christmas and everyone was downstairs. I was looking for something upstairs and found her in an upstairs bedroom with a plate of food. I had no idea who she was. She was about seven years older than me. I walked in and sat down on the bed beside her while she ate her Christmas meal.
Sometime later, I have no idea how long it was, a woman (her nurse) returned to the room and it was a big deal that I was there and adults were summoned.
What was the big deal?
She was kept away from the others -- in this rare time out of the institution -- because she was thought to be a danger to children. "She doesn't know her own strength," it was explained to me.
I don't know if she got out more often than just Christmas but I saw her on Christmas. After that, I always would look for her, find what room she was stashed away in, go into the room (if the nurse wasn't there, no problem, if she was I just ignored her and went in anyway) and I would talk to my cousin -- who had the sweetest smile. And sometimes she'd listen, sometimes she wouldn't, sometimes she'd register I was there and sometimes she wouldn't. But she was my cousin and she never hurt me and, over the years, she got to where she recognized me and, even if she didn't speak, she'd reach out her hand and we'd hold hands. That lasted throughout her life.
She didn't have a long life and I'm sorry about that but I'm even sorrier that the life she had was so awful. I can't imagine being locked away or not being able to play with your cousins or have physical contact or anything like that. Back then, it was a different world. Thanks to all the hard work that so many have put in on this issue, there is a greater understanding of autism and there are options and -- and still more work to be done.
I have discussed how I work on this issue -- many times here, I've discussed it -- and noted -- again many times over the years -- that I do not and I will not get involved in the issue of vaccines with regards to autism.
I am not part of either side of that battle. I will not choose sides and I will not insult people. The issue matters greatly to those with loved ones who are autistic. There are many families -- including one that donates a huge sum annually for autism research -- that have been torn apart by this issue. I'm not here to make anyone feel bad, I'm not here to judge anyone. I'm here to raise awareness and raise money for research. I do not take sides on that issue and will not. I know first hand the blame and the guilt that goes on when you end up with a loved one who has autism. I know first hand the struggles that a family faces in that situation.
So there's Zac, in the video, belittling autism -- you're not going to die from it or some such stupid remark.
And after I've dictated this long piece about it, I'm thinking, "Why the hell am I going to post this video of THE VANGUARD's? It goes against everything I believe."
So I didn't post it.
And now they're on the bench. I'm afraid to post any content they create right now without making time to stream it all.
Zac's intent, I'm sure, was not to belittle or mock autism. But that is what he did. His remarks were insulting and crass.
I don't care that he hates Robert. I do care that his hatred run so deep that he made the most disgusting remarks about autism and what families dealing with it have to face.
I also care that he still doesn't seem to grasp that his beloved Marianne Williamson can also be called a vax denier. That's by her public statements. That's also by conversations I've had with her.
Zac, don't piss me off on this again or I will go to my journals and start publishing my notes on conversations with Marianne going back to the early 90s.
(I know Marianne, I know Robert.)
Zac's having a meltdown because he was part of the pimp Marianne effort. And he didn't know anything because he's too young and apparently won't apply himself to learn. (Zac was the one I called out here after a friend called to say Zac was an idiot. I'd posted a video from THE VANGUARD where, among other things, Zac broke down the 'history' of McCarthyism -- but didn't know a damn thing he was talking about. I was kind and didn't name him or the program but that's who it was.)
Zac and Krystal and others thought they were going to be their own little cabal and carry Marianne to the nomination.
Zac can't deal with the fact that Robert's popular and, in fact, far more popular than Marianne.
So now he has meltdowns.
On Krystal, there was THE VANGUARD's ridiculous segment on Krystal's wedding. I know others in the community criticized another video about 'wedding coverage.' For me, the other video -- Katie Halper and BJG -- had other problems including not grasping that you can be an opinion journalist and still have to follow an ethical code. Saying, I'm an opinion journalist so I don't have to worry about conflict of interest?
I don't think you are a journalist, not if you make a statement like that. I don't think you know what a journalist actually is if you make a statement like that.
Anyway, Zac touched the issue that you don't do with me.
When certain people went after Trig Palin, I defended him and I defended Sarah Palin. Some disgusting people (Andrew Sullivan among them) thought you could attack Sarah for having a special needs child. One supposed feminist went on KPFK and insisted that Sarah, in 2008, should be at home and not running on a presidential ticket -- should be at home taking care of her special needs child. Interesting because (a) the woman speaking was supposed to be a feminist, (b) Sarah was married so why couldn't her husband take care of their child (I ask that as a feminist -- it's a rather obvious question for any feminist to raise) and (c) if she weren't on the ticket, she still wouldn't have been a stay-at-home mom because she was Governor of Alaska.
Andrew thought it was okay -- and the left refused to call him out for this -- to print lies and conspiracy talk claiming Trig wasn't actually Sarah's son.
That garbage that he pulled? It goes a long way towards explaining how so many people in America today are divorced from reality. Andrew lied and people went along with it, people popularized it -- on the left. (Andrew's not left. But the left was embracing him.)
This is not an issue I play around on.
Maybe if Zac would expand his own knowledge base or even the circle of people he interacts with, he might grasp just how offensive his comments were.
Again, this has nothing to do with his trashing of Robert (but he does need to grasp that what he trashes Robert for, others can trash Marianne for as well).
THE VANGUARD was a subject of an e-mail I saw this morning. I am accused of deleting a video I had posted -- one of their videos. Nope. Never happened. I did refuse to post the video from this week. Yes, I did.
But I did not delete a video I posted back in April.
April 5th, I posted a VANGUARD video. The only words were in the headline -- "RFK Jr is running for president, will challenge Biden as a Democrat."
The video is gone.
That's not me.
BLOGGER/BLOGSPOT is using some AI device that is reading all the posts and some posts end up behind a "warning" that makes you click before you can read it and some posts end up being unpublished.
I don't think this site is suffering from lack of content. Nor am I worried about the 'sanctity' of words I've used here and my permanence. Let's quote Joni Mitchell from "Hejira:"
Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of a hotel room
Others are entitled to their opinion on this issue. Others in the community have been very bothered by this happening to the posts that they wrote. That's fine. They've noted their upset and outrage at their sites over it. I don't have time to look back or worry about the past in terms of this site. So that's my approach. But when I was being balled out in the e-mail this morning, I thought, "Did Blogger maybe pull it?"
Yes, they did. They unpublished it and put it in the trash file. I've asked for a review of it so it may go back up -- I don't see how it could have "violated" their service rules -- again, the only words in the post were the headline -- which was the headline THE VANGUARD gave it. There are two videos that have been removed but not yet trashed and there's a post from 2006 and I think that's it. But I really don't care. I'm not deleting anything. There's a post here from 2005 where I completely misunderstand a word. The journalist I was calling out in that post e-mailed in real time to let me know I didn't understand the word and might want to change my sentence. An e-mail went back asking if he wanted to be credited for catching my mistake. He didn't. As he's noted in a 2020 e-mail, I still hadn't changed it. No, and I won't. I was wrong and people can read it and laugh. I laugh at it myself. I make mistakes all the time. To be clear, it doesn't need a correction because anyone should be able to tell, "Oh, she did not know what that word meant." Clearly. I don't care enough to go back and fix it so I don't look like an idiot. I can be an idiot. It doesn't bother me and, again, I laugh at it myself.
But if you're seeing stuff disappearing, take it up with Blogger/Blogspot because that's what's going on.
On Zac, if this is how he's handling the 2024 election, I'm scared to think of how much worse it's going to get for him. I mean this is the kind of high strung ranting you usually don't see until the actual election year.
I don't know who the nominee's going to be. And it is not my job to tell anyone who to vote for. I will be voting Democrat for president regardless of who the nominee is. That's what I'll be doing. Anyone reading this who will be voting as well is (or will be by November 2024) an adult. That means you own your vote and you vote how you want.
I do not plan on covering the election as we did in the past.
In the past, we covered all the candidates.
All.
Even if you had groped me against my will (hello, John Edwards), I covered you.
I'm not in the mood for it anymore.
And when I think of why it's because of Jill Stein. What a worthless person she is. She was a lousy candidate in 2012 and she was a lousy one in 2016. I'm not in the damn mood to cover lazy ass useless people who want to go whine about how the mainstream media won't cover them.
You stupid idiots.
You don't need corporate media. You can work Twitter and social media and all these other outlets. Your refusal to do so goes to the fact that you're not a real candidate.
Back in 2008, we were noting that your website was your online office. You need to run it as such.
I'm also sick of the Jill Steins who will attack the corporate media and then turn around and praise Amy Goodman.
So many Greens refuse to call out DEMOCRACY NOW! They will devote five shows in one week to coverage of the GOP convention and five shows in another week to coverage of the Democratic Party convention.
And?
If they're lucky, the Green Party's convention will get a one paragraph note in headlines for one day's episode of DEMOCRACY NOW!
I am not the Green Party and I'm not a Green Party member. I'm damn sick of defending that party when they won't even defend themselves.
And they repeatedly demonstrate that they don't want to be a real party. They'd rather be the kid sister of the Democratic Party than an actual political party. That's obvious from their actions.
That's Howie Hawkins. He was the Green Party's presidential nominee
in 2020 and he has spent every week since the election continuing to
build the Green Party and to raise Green issues and make sure we're part
of the national conversation.
The national Green Party
fails us. Two press releases -- that's what they've accomplished in
the last months -- one in March, one at the start of this month.
Neither dealt with Clarence Thomas, by the way. Didn't address that
issue at all. (Thank you to Betty for filling in for me here last night with "Crooked Clarence Thomas (Betty)".) We have nothing to say on that apparently.
We've said nothing on it from our national organization.
So when Ajamu Baraka gets on his high horse and starts insulting Howie, yeah, I get pissed.
They
sit on their asses and then, in a presidential election year, want to
pretend that they're a party. But they're all vacationing the rest of
the time.
Howie has rolled up his sleeves and put in the work required to build this part. As a Green, I say thank you to him.
If Howie's the Green Party nominee, we'll note them. Because Ann is right. Howie didn't run away or go on vacation. He's been there every week since the election focusing on Green issues and getting the word out on the Green Party.
I have no idea what Ajamu Baraka's problem with Howie is but I really don't care. We're talking about a political party in this case and no one but Howie has been on a national Green Party ticket and gone on to continue to work on building the party. Ajamu didn't. Jill certainly didn't. Love Cynthia McKinney but I don't think she's even a Green. If she is, she's done nothing to build the party since being their 2008 presidential nominee.
My time is limited. I'm tired of doing this website and I'm tired of wasting my time trying to cover campaigns that do nothing. Dario Hunter whines that the nomination was stolen from him. That's the same idiot that couldn't even do one Tweet a week when he was running for the nomination. I'm sick of these lazy asses who won't work for a vote. I'm sick of it. I spent more time looking for coverage and trying to create coverage for Dario than he as the candidate put into the campaign.
I'm tired of it.
I did it because I wanted to be fair and I wanted to support the right to be informed of all the choices we have. But my time is not going to be wasted anymore on lazy candidates who want coverage but can't issue a press release and can't Tweet but can show up months later on Cindy Sheehan's podcast and she will let them lie about how they were campaigning and she will let them offer crackpot conspiracy theories about how everything was rigged against them.
My time is limited. Friday morning, I was debating whether or not THE VANGUARD video should go up here and dictating a lengthy intro that would go up if it did. So when I did start dictating the snapshot, I was pressed for time more than usual. We focused solely on Iraq. We'll catch other things at other times.
Winding down . . .
Zac is a lousy face for Marianne's campaign. He's too busy gushing to help her. He could help by doing interviews unlike the one that went up Friday afternoon/evening. She needs to be pressed on issues. She's not talking about anything that's reaching out broadly. The tiny percentage she currently has is all she's going to have if she doesn't start listening to Peter Daou who has made clear to her that there are certain issues that she needs to be addressing that she's refusing. As an interviewer, Zac could have helped her by pressing her to comment on issues she's avoiding.
They're benched, THE VANGUARD, probably for a week or two.
I have no interest in Krystal at all. People have noted that I'm even noting Kyle here. And, on certain issues, I am. That's fine. Kyle wasn't the one who screamed that people needed to grow up and get on board with one candidate.
That was Krystal. And her comments are not comments needed in a democracy. She's a stupid idiot and unless she apologizes for those remarks, I really have no desire to note her. And BREAKING POINTS has turned into a homophobic and transphobic show. We'd already called out her co-host -- too unimportant for me to look up his name -- for his comments regarding Monkey Pox. And then this week, he paired with the ugly blond woman and they went full on transphobic.
If we call out, on the left, FOX "NEWS" for certain actions, we're going to have to apply that same standard to programs like BREAKING POINTS or else be hypocrites.
I plan to do an entry tonight. However, if I end up too tired I will use this as my excuse not to. E-mail address for this site is
common_ills@yahoo.com.
