From POLITICO:
The stunning fall of Democratic Rep. John Conyers — who resigned Tuesday amid a growing sexual-harassment scandal — has left confusion, anger, resentment and bewilderment inside the ranks of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group that Conyers helped found nearly four decades ago.
Many CBC members see a double standard at play. They won't say the treatment of Conyers is racist, necessarily — and all express strong support for his alleged victims — but they think white politicians accused of similar misconduct like Blake Farenthold, Al Franken, Roy Moore and Donald Trump get a "benefit of the doubt" that black politicians don't enjoy.
I'm going to agree with the perception here.
Take Roy Moore out of the equation -- he's on the ballot because he can't be taken off. If that wasn't the case, I believe (believe -- I could be wrong) that the GOP would've replaced him long ago.
As for Trump? Guilty. Blake Farenthold? Don't know him, sorry.
Al Franken? Guilty.
And Franken is the best example here.
Like Conyers, he's a Democrat. Like Conyers, he's a member of Congress (Franken's in the Senate).
More women have come out about Franken and we have the photo of him groping.
But he's not being kicked out.
He should be.
The Democratic Party can convince him -- for the good of the party -- to step down.
And that's what he needs to do.
I don't believe John Conyers was innocent.
I do believe he needed to step down.
But if you want this to look like all are treated equally, you need to look to how Franken's being treated. He's getting a pass.
Do nothing Franken is getting a pass.
While John Conyers, who did decades of service in Congress, admirable service, is getting kicked out.
Again, I believe the women accusing Conyers. I believe he had to go.
But as an African-American male, I do see it as 'the Black guy had to pay for the crime, the White guy walked.'
Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tuesday, December 5, 2017. Corrine Brown has been ordered to surrender
herself by January 8th to begin serving her five year prison term,
female veterans in the US continue to battle mistaken perceptions, the
VA tries to reassure with regards to their doctors, Donald Trump and
Emmanuel Macron talk Iraq, and more.
Starting in the United States:
Starting in the United States:
Judge said Carla Wiley of Virginia was the 'least culpable' of the three but that it was too serious a crime to get just probation because 'she helped herself to $82,000' out of the fake charity account. @FCN2go #CorrineBrownSentence
Judge Corrigan said #CorrineBrown victims were unlike most fraud victims. None were financially ruined or devastated by the lost donations. The motivation for donating was more about staying in Brown's good graces rather than benevolence. @fcn2go #CorrineBrownSentence
"Brazen barely describes it" said judge about #CorrineBrown not only taking money from the charity for personal use, but then filing for tax deductions claiming she'd given large sums TO the charity. @FCN2go #CorrineBrownSentence
After her conviction #CorrineBrown told @FCN2go in past interviews she is 100% innocent. Today, the judge said because the former Congresswoman is unrepentant, she doesn't get the same leniency as person who is full of remorse. #CorrineBrownSentence
Carla Wiley (charity director) sentence: 21 months in federal prison. 3 years of supervised release. #CorrineBrownSentence @FCN2go
Ronnie Simmons sentence: 48 months in federal prison.
#CorrineBrownSentence @FCN2go
Former Congresswoman Corrine Brown sentenced to federal prison for five years after being convicted of 18 counts of wire, tax and mail fraud. We're live right now outside the courthouse on @FCN2go ABC25 NBC12
MONDAY MORNING READ | Corrine Brown and her cohorts in fraud scheme to be sentenced Monday morning.
(Via FCN)
Corrupt Corrine Brown is going to prison. She's been ordered to surrender herself at the start of the new year.
How different life might have been for her if there were competency tests imposed upon members of Congress. Maybe, while in prison, she can apply herself and learn the English language?
What did Corrine in?
She was fleecing, she was stealing, she was moving along at a fast pace.
Might have gotten away with it a little longer or even forever.
But she decided that she and her wig hats deserved to be the lead Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Was she qualified?
Hell to the f**k of no.
But she wanted it.
Not because she was a fighter for veterans.
She spent the bulk of her time blaming veterans in Committee hearings.
It was their fault, she would insist, that they didn't get their education stipend, their fault that the check was supposed to have been issued in the fall and now, in the new year, they were still waiting.
Time and again, when the VA screwed up, Corrine would excuse the VA and blame the veterans.
Excuse me, after Bully Boy Bush was thankfully out of office, Corrine would excuse the VA and blame the veterans.
How different life might have been for her if, in the fall of 2014, she'd taken a damn hint.
Instead, she demanded that she be named the Democratic leader of the House Veterans Affairs Committee -- even if she couldn't quite pronounce those words -- and Nancy Pelosi sided with her.
From November 19, 2014, "Corrine Brown is not fit to serve:"
If Democrats want to hand Republicans the 2016 elections, there's no
better way to do that than making the ridiculous US House Rep Corrine
Brown the Chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Brown is not just a joke, she is an embarrassment for the party.
That doesn't start -- or end -- with her ugly wigs -- which are dirty and smell when you're close to her. That smell's not a surprise, they usually look like rats nests. They're often turned the wrong way as well.
A little while ago, an outlet rightly made fun of her ridiculous wigs and there was this effort to stop the criticism by whining "sexism."
Sexism is real and it exists.
You're wearing 30 different wigs in public in 9 months and wearing trashy wigs at that will result in people talking. And it has nothing to do with your gender.
People have made fun of Donald Trump's equally ridiculous wigs for years. Donald Trump, newsflash, is not a woman.
If she just wore one bad wig throughout, people would probably feel sorry for her. But she's basically ordered the entire Eva Gabor catalog and with all that wig purchasing, she should have been able to get one decent wig.
More to the point, how about one age appropriate wig?
Corrine's not going on tour with Rufus.
Everyone laughs at her wigs.
No one laughs at her speaking.
A member of Congress should conduct themselves as a professional. Corrine's been in Congress for two decades.
That's more than enough time to learn the English language.
Corrine is a special kind of stupid -- the kind where you could get by if you stuck to very simple words but Corrine wants to show off what she thinks she knows so she uses "words" that aren't words. The more syllables in a word, the greater chance Corrine's going to re-invent the word.
And when she's on a tear -- against Bully Boy Bush or whoring for Barack -- she starts speaking so fast and constants go from slurred to completely absent with her voice rising to a level that only certain dogs can hear but you know she's finally done speaking because she's got that moronic grin on her face like she made a contribution and an important point.
Veterans [know] that stupid grin.
They see it a lot in the last years as she repeatedly blames veterans in public hearings.
That's why veterans hate her.
I'm writing this piece because veterans can't stand her. I'll be at a veterans hearing later and I was comparing notes last night with veterans from three different VSOs and the issue of Brown was brought up.
I couldn't believe it because it seems like just yesterday we were all fighting to get Mike Michaud appointed as the Democratic leader on the House Veterans Affairs Committee -- Mike over Corrine.
And now we've got to do it again?
(Mike's retiring. Veterans support Tim Walz -- himself a veteran -- for the post.)
Corrine is infamous for flaunting her stupidity for the greater whoring.
So when veterans weren't getting their checks for college in the fall of 2009, to whore for the VA -- and Barack, let's not forget that's the only reason she whored -- Corrine blamed not the VA, she blamed veterans and then she tried to blame universities.
It was the VA.
And this would come out in a House hearing and Brown wouldn't bat an eye.
But grasp that when the government was screwing over the veterans (then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was told in February 2009 that his problem was going to happen and he refused to inform Congress or the American people, that's screwing over veterans -- when you know months ahead of time that this is going to happen and you say nothing and you do nothing, that's screwing over veterans), Corrine wanted to 'share' that the problem wasn't the VA, it was veterans.
I don't know if she's out clubbing or what, but she gets her 'information' at two and three in the morning while flipping through cable channels -- she brags about this repeatedly in Congressional hearings which doesn't make her look smart at all. As a member of Congress she should have better intelligence available to her but she drops basic cable the way some other members work in shout outs to the Washington Post or the New York Times.
She's an uninformed idiot and a member of Congress who needs to take speech classes but thinks so little of her position that she's okay with being a public joke.
If her district's okay with it, that's their business. Up until she tries to become the Democratic leader of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, that's her business.
But this member of Congress has spent the last six years, as the VA has been rocked by one scandal after another, covering the administration and blaming veterans.
We've called her out here for that repeatedly and sometimes an e-mail comes in from someone saying, "I read what she said, you are wrong."
No, you did not read what she said.
You read her prepared written remarks.
Corinne has difficulty reading them and often veers away from them.
In addition, because we have called her out repeatedly, in the last three years she's had these pro-veteran written statements that go completely against what she says in her so-called questioning.
They aren't questions.
They're attacks on veterans and lengthy defenses of the VA and the White House.
Veterans know this and that's why they oppose her.
Until she started attacking veterans, I didn't spend any time mocking her wigs or noting her inability to speak accurately (forget properly -- she uses words she doesn't know the meaning of and uses them wrongly). But when she began attacking veterans in public hearings, we called her out.
Even so, I still try to avoid her as much as possible and just ignore her when I'm reporting on hearings here.
If the Dems are stupid enough to make her their leader on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, I will be doing two reports on every HVAC hearing I attend -- the basic report and then the one chronicling the embarrassment that is Corrine.
And while the right may or may not join in, I will be the one doing the takedown because I've been at the hearings since 2006, all but the field hearings. And I have notes and I will easily point to how, for example, an issue mattered to her in 2006 (when a Republican occupied the White House) but with a Democrat in the White House, the issue doesn't just fail to matter to her, she now attacks veterans for it.
Corrine Brown has betrayed veterans repeatedly over the last six years which is why she does not have support from the veterans community.
In addition, she's an embarrassment to Congress with her inability to dress in a professional manner or to speak the English language. The party puts her in that chair and they become the laughing stock.
And she shoots off her idiotic mouth against veterans in the middle of a hearing as Ranking Member? You better believe the news media will have to cover it and the train wreck that's been largely hidden for two decades becomes very public with Americans wondering why the Democratic Party hates veterans?
That's already a possible them[e] for the GOP to run with thanks to the nonsense Nancy Pelosi just pulled on Tammy Duckworth.
Tim Walz is the choice of veterans, not Corrine Brown.
Brown has done nothing to earn a leadership role and she's done nothing for veterans in the last six years. Or actually ever. She's never led on a veterans issue her entire time in Congress.
To now put her in leadership of the Veterans Affairs Committee would be a slap in the face to veterans.
Again, I wasn't aware this was an issue until last night. A number of us lobbied last time around and knowing what her peers think of her, I thought it would never come up again. But she wants the spot and if the Democratic party's stupid enough to give it to her, everyone's going to suffer.
Including Corrine who just painted a bull's eye on her back. It's coming, Corrine, trouble's coming.
Brown is not just a joke, she is an embarrassment for the party.
That doesn't start -- or end -- with her ugly wigs -- which are dirty and smell when you're close to her. That smell's not a surprise, they usually look like rats nests. They're often turned the wrong way as well.
A little while ago, an outlet rightly made fun of her ridiculous wigs and there was this effort to stop the criticism by whining "sexism."
Sexism is real and it exists.
You're wearing 30 different wigs in public in 9 months and wearing trashy wigs at that will result in people talking. And it has nothing to do with your gender.
People have made fun of Donald Trump's equally ridiculous wigs for years. Donald Trump, newsflash, is not a woman.
If she just wore one bad wig throughout, people would probably feel sorry for her. But she's basically ordered the entire Eva Gabor catalog and with all that wig purchasing, she should have been able to get one decent wig.
More to the point, how about one age appropriate wig?
Corrine's not going on tour with Rufus.
Everyone laughs at her wigs.
No one laughs at her speaking.
A member of Congress should conduct themselves as a professional. Corrine's been in Congress for two decades.
That's more than enough time to learn the English language.
Corrine is a special kind of stupid -- the kind where you could get by if you stuck to very simple words but Corrine wants to show off what she thinks she knows so she uses "words" that aren't words. The more syllables in a word, the greater chance Corrine's going to re-invent the word.
And when she's on a tear -- against Bully Boy Bush or whoring for Barack -- she starts speaking so fast and constants go from slurred to completely absent with her voice rising to a level that only certain dogs can hear but you know she's finally done speaking because she's got that moronic grin on her face like she made a contribution and an important point.
Veterans [know] that stupid grin.
They see it a lot in the last years as she repeatedly blames veterans in public hearings.
That's why veterans hate her.
I'm writing this piece because veterans can't stand her. I'll be at a veterans hearing later and I was comparing notes last night with veterans from three different VSOs and the issue of Brown was brought up.
I couldn't believe it because it seems like just yesterday we were all fighting to get Mike Michaud appointed as the Democratic leader on the House Veterans Affairs Committee -- Mike over Corrine.
And now we've got to do it again?
(Mike's retiring. Veterans support Tim Walz -- himself a veteran -- for the post.)
Corrine is infamous for flaunting her stupidity for the greater whoring.
So when veterans weren't getting their checks for college in the fall of 2009, to whore for the VA -- and Barack, let's not forget that's the only reason she whored -- Corrine blamed not the VA, she blamed veterans and then she tried to blame universities.
It was the VA.
And this would come out in a House hearing and Brown wouldn't bat an eye.
But grasp that when the government was screwing over the veterans (then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was told in February 2009 that his problem was going to happen and he refused to inform Congress or the American people, that's screwing over veterans -- when you know months ahead of time that this is going to happen and you say nothing and you do nothing, that's screwing over veterans), Corrine wanted to 'share' that the problem wasn't the VA, it was veterans.
I don't know if she's out clubbing or what, but she gets her 'information' at two and three in the morning while flipping through cable channels -- she brags about this repeatedly in Congressional hearings which doesn't make her look smart at all. As a member of Congress she should have better intelligence available to her but she drops basic cable the way some other members work in shout outs to the Washington Post or the New York Times.
She's an uninformed idiot and a member of Congress who needs to take speech classes but thinks so little of her position that she's okay with being a public joke.
If her district's okay with it, that's their business. Up until she tries to become the Democratic leader of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, that's her business.
But this member of Congress has spent the last six years, as the VA has been rocked by one scandal after another, covering the administration and blaming veterans.
We've called her out here for that repeatedly and sometimes an e-mail comes in from someone saying, "I read what she said, you are wrong."
No, you did not read what she said.
You read her prepared written remarks.
Corinne has difficulty reading them and often veers away from them.
In addition, because we have called her out repeatedly, in the last three years she's had these pro-veteran written statements that go completely against what she says in her so-called questioning.
They aren't questions.
They're attacks on veterans and lengthy defenses of the VA and the White House.
Veterans know this and that's why they oppose her.
Until she started attacking veterans, I didn't spend any time mocking her wigs or noting her inability to speak accurately (forget properly -- she uses words she doesn't know the meaning of and uses them wrongly). But when she began attacking veterans in public hearings, we called her out.
Even so, I still try to avoid her as much as possible and just ignore her when I'm reporting on hearings here.
If the Dems are stupid enough to make her their leader on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, I will be doing two reports on every HVAC hearing I attend -- the basic report and then the one chronicling the embarrassment that is Corrine.
And while the right may or may not join in, I will be the one doing the takedown because I've been at the hearings since 2006, all but the field hearings. And I have notes and I will easily point to how, for example, an issue mattered to her in 2006 (when a Republican occupied the White House) but with a Democrat in the White House, the issue doesn't just fail to matter to her, she now attacks veterans for it.
Corrine Brown has betrayed veterans repeatedly over the last six years which is why she does not have support from the veterans community.
In addition, she's an embarrassment to Congress with her inability to dress in a professional manner or to speak the English language. The party puts her in that chair and they become the laughing stock.
And she shoots off her idiotic mouth against veterans in the middle of a hearing as Ranking Member? You better believe the news media will have to cover it and the train wreck that's been largely hidden for two decades becomes very public with Americans wondering why the Democratic Party hates veterans?
That's already a possible them[e] for the GOP to run with thanks to the nonsense Nancy Pelosi just pulled on Tammy Duckworth.
Tim Walz is the choice of veterans, not Corrine Brown.
Brown has done nothing to earn a leadership role and she's done nothing for veterans in the last six years. Or actually ever. She's never led on a veterans issue her entire time in Congress.
To now put her in leadership of the Veterans Affairs Committee would be a slap in the face to veterans.
Again, I wasn't aware this was an issue until last night. A number of us lobbied last time around and knowing what her peers think of her, I thought it would never come up again. But she wants the spot and if the Democratic party's stupid enough to give it to her, everyone's going to suffer.
Including Corrine who just painted a bull's eye on her back. It's coming, Corrine, trouble's coming.
Okay, so we printed the whole thing. But trouble was coming, she was warned. She painted that bull's eye on her back and now she's going to prison. Life could have been so much different for Corrine. She was basically Mel Brooks and Madeline Kahn in HIGH ANXIETY at the airport. Remember? They need to get through security. He's wanted for killing a man. So they talk really loud and are annoying. No one wants to deal with them or look at them, so they just get waived through. That's what it was with Corrine. No one wanted to talk to her, she just got waived through. And then she made the mistake of screwing over veterans.
Now it's off to prison for Corrine.
A felon. Convicted on multiple count.
She says she doesn't want that on her tombstone but it doesn't appear she's going to have a choice.
Staying with the topic of veterans, Chris Cassidy (BOSTON HERALD) reports:
Women are the fastest growing demographic among veterans, but the hospitals that treat them don’t have enough female doctors, perform enough outreach or offer sufficient counseling and addiction recovery services for them, women vets told the Herald.
“The female veterans I serve feel the VA is not doing enough to support female veterans,” said Roseann Mazzuchelli, the veterans agent in Winthrop and a 21-year Army veteran. “They do a great job, most of the time, at helping out the guys, but we’re all service members.”
Women made up just 6 percent of the veteran population in 2000, but that figure is expected to grow to 16 percent by 2040, according to a Department of Veterans Affairs report earlier this year.
Meanwhile, female veterans described to the Herald a VA culture that’s still woefully behind the times.
Page Policastro was seeking help with alcoholism but there were no female specific groups and, she explains, serving with men had meant showing no vulnerability or "weakness" as a form of self-preservation and survival. Another female veteran attempting to deal with addiction as well as trauma left the program "after being ridiculed by the men in the program." And on trauma, women who have been harassed and/or assaulted have attempted to get counseling only to be assigned a male counselor and told no female was available.
They also have to battle the perception that they are not veterans. This can be something as simple as not being believed at Dukin' Donuts on Veterans Day or being overlooked when donations come in for veterans ("Mach3 razors and Old Spice deodorant" lead the donations).
Perceptions are shaped by what we see. So it does matter, as Ava and I pointed out last month, when that crap-ass show THE PUNISHER (NETFLIX) shows 13 veterans and only one is a woman and she doesn't even have any lines.
Perceptions on VA medical care continue to be problematic with allegations that some doctors hired by the VA were hired after malpractice actions were taken against the doctors. Apparently to address issues of compentance, the Secretary of the VA Tweeted the following:
"Veterans and their families can learn where their health care professionals received their medical training and where they got their professional degrees." bit.ly/2mIke5Y via #VAntagePoint
Still on Tweets and the US government, Vice President Mike Pence Tweeted the following:
Important dialogue with Bashar Warda, the Archbishop of Erbil, about @POTUS' commitment to directly assist persecuted Christians & religious minorities in Iraq. I’m heading to the Middle East this month to discuss U.S. plans to accelerate funding those impacted in the region.
And yesterday, the White House issued the following:
For Immediate Release
December 04, 2017
Readout of President Donald J. Trump's Call with President Emmanuel Macron of France
President Donald J. Trump spoke today with President Emmanuel Macron
of France. The Presidents agreed on the need for the Iraqi government
and the Kurdistan Regional Government to resolve their differences
through dialogue. President Trump and President Macron also discussed
the path to peace in the Middle East. The conversation confirmed the
close relationship between the United States and France as allies
committed to stability in the Middle East and North Africa.
The conversation follows Macron's call over the weekend for the Shi'ite militias to be disbanded. It's a call Donald Trump has yet to make publicly.
Lastly, HRW's Kenneth Roth calls attention to justice concerns in Iraq:
Chaotic, haphazard trials of ISIS suspects in Iraq, beyond violating due process, are making justice for most serious suspects less likely: @HRW report. bit.ly/2BIWRgc
The following community sites -- plus Tavis Smiley and LATINO USA -- updated:
No comments:
Post a Comment