Oh Boy It Never Ends: TV

Is it the pandemic or is it TV? I just haven't found a lot to get excited over. ANIMAL KINGDOM was clearly the best thing on TV in recent months. A close second? FX's IMPEACHMENET.is a close second.

But so much is just disappointing. That includes FAMILY GUY which should be able to manage entertaining but it's as though we get one good episode and then three or four that outright suck. Is it me?

There's so little that interests me that's new lately. THE BLACKLIST should have been cancelled the minute Liz was killed. It is dull and boring without her.

I mainly watch old shows these days. Like? THE NEW ADVENTURES OF OLD CHRISTINE, THE BIG BANG THEORY, AMERICAN DAD (episodes I've already seen many, many times over) and KEEPING UP APPEARANCES.

So much that's being offered just leaves me blah.

Am I burned out from the pandemic?

One show I can watch now is BIG SKY. I was not interested in watching three women be terrorized and sold. This year, the bad guys are drug runners. I can handle that.

Talking about TV . . . C.I. pointed out something to me weeks ago, GRACE AND FRANKIE did not wrap up a few months back. Those episodes were part of the finale season but there is a second set that will drop in the new year that will be the actual wrap up. PIVOTING is a show I've mentioned before. It will have the wonderful Elia Coupe who played Jane on HAPPY ENDINGS in it. I've seen two short spots for the show. It looks funny. It debuts January 9th.

Be sure to read Ava and C.I.'s "TV: You can learn a lot from documentaries -- more...." I love their writing. I wish I could do what they do. Even when I do write a long piece -- maybe one every eight months -- it's not as detailed as what they do. And they do it every week. For 16 years. Sometimes more than one piece a week. I really could not do that and I don't think most people could. I may do a post this week highlighting some of my favorites of their writing.

Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, November 23, 2021. The facts in a legal case continue to be twisted and/or ignored, in Iraq, students are protesting but where is the western media?

Starting in the US, with Jimmy Dore.

And now from THE HILL.

Betty, Marcia, Ava and I shared our take on the media malpractice in "We didn't know Al Sharpton had gone into labor (Be..." and Ann just posted last night "Whoopi can't let go of the crazy."

I've got to make one more comment.

Across state lines? I didn't know Kyle Rittenhouse was being accused of violating The Mann Act. Do these raving lunatics get how idiotic they sound. Whoopi Goldberg, you're just an argument for ABC to cancel THE VIEW at this point. You're uninformed and you have no legal knowledge to argue. Nor can you admit that you have gotten this case wrong from the beginning. That 'brave' man that you're mourning went up to a kid and hit him with a skateboard. You don't know anything and yet you babble on. The media is guilty of malpractice yet again. And it's really past time that accountability came to bear.

Here is what Betty, Marcia, Ava and I noted of the young man Whoopi is mourning:

Anthony Huber looks like smart mouth trash in every photo we see of him. Doesn't mean he deserved to be shot. He was shot by Kyle while he had a skateboard in one hand and was reaching for Kyle's gun with the other. His girlfriend wants the world to know that he was intelligent. Nope. He was a f**king idiot. What a sense of White entitlement to think you could grab a gun out of someone's hands. You didn't catch any African-Americans playing the fool.

The law is the law. And you're bitching and whining that you weren't able to twist and turn it to fit your desires is really embarrassing. Self-defense was always going o prevail, the video evidence was going to ensure that. Apparently, most of the chattering heads either didn't watch the videos or chose to ignore them because the evidence didn't fit with their desires to froth at the mouth.

An actual legal expert, Jonathan Turley, covered the case repeatedly and wisely. This is from his latest:

The aftermath of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict is a lesson in unrequited rage. After a jury of 12 citizens in Kenosha, Wis., acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges, politicians and media figures lashed out at the judge, the jury and the entire legal system.

Like our politics and our media, the legal system has become a vehicle for collective rage; there is no room for doubt or deviation from our predispositions. Yet in denouncing “vigilante justice,” pundits and politicians seem to be advocating for a form of mob justice.

The difference between vigilante and mob justice? Perspective and numbers.

For some, Rittenhouse running down Sheridan Road in Kenosha with his AR-15 is a vigilante. For Rittenhouse, people chasing him with guns and chains is a mob. Neither involves actual justice, which is what juries mete out through the dispassionate application of law and facts.

Most of us — including his defense counsel, following the verdict — were critical of Rittenhouse and his decision to take his AR-15 to a riot. However, the trial revealed key facts that sharply diverged from past media reports. For the first time, the public was not reading facts filtered and framed by the media. In a great demonstration of the value of cameras in courtrooms, the public could reach its own conclusions.

It turned out that Rittenhouse was not an “outsider” but someone with long, close ties to Kenosha. He spent much of that fateful day in Kenosha cleaning graffiti from the walls of the high school and was asked by a business owner to protect his property that night. He did not chase down his victims and shoot one, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, in the back as Rosenbaum attempted to flee. Instead, he was attacked by all three men he shot, including one who pointed a gun at his head. Rosenbaum, a convicted child molester with a history of mental illness, threatened to kill him and others earlier.

Yet the “white supremacist” narrative was a “fact too good to check” by the media, which almost uniformly failed to report on facts supporting the claim of self-defense.

Within days of the shootings, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden referenced Rittenhouse as a “white supremacist” despite no evidence supporting that widely repeated claim.

Likewise, when the judge ruled on motions for Rittenhouse, he was declared a racist. When the jurors ruled for Rittenhouse, they — including a black juror — were declared to be racists, too. When Rittenhouse was allowed to go free, the entire legal system was denounced as racist.

Even after grudgingly stating that we “must abide” by the verdict, President Biden added that the verdict left “many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included.”

Read the entir column and grasp how those who should be taking accountability are refusing to do so.

You have painted yourself into a corner. I don't ever do that. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I don't double down and make it worse by telling lies. You distorted reality and you tried to incite a mob. I really think a large number of pundits should be off the air over this. The verdict was not surprising at all given the evidence. That grown ups who are allowed to host programs got it so wrong and are now refusing to own up to their mistakes argues that the networks have chosen very poorly when selecting hosts.

Supposedly, we want truth and not disinformation. Well THE VIEW is nothing but propaganda at this point and should come with a warning label. It's far from the only one that requires a sticker.

Now before we go further, Saturday's "No, US forces most likely are not leaving Iraq at the end of 2021" noted the following:

On things that go up here . . .

I'm asked by a certain writer why we're not noting him here?

Does he cover Iraq? No. So it would be doing him a favor. I was fine with that in the past.

I've noted that my eyes are in serious decline. I see two different eye surgeons and have had multiple surgeries since 2020 on my eyes. I'm not here to put myself out to do you a damn favor when you start sneaking the f-word into your writing -- your lo-o-o-ng writing. I don't have the time to through and change every f-word into "f**k" so it will be safe to post here.

That's how you get banned. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. And I just don't give a f**k. Do you, who use that term without "**" over and over, grasp that?

I have better things to do with my time. Again, I don't work for you. I also don't owe you a damn thing. You pushed yourself off this site.

A video panel? Four panelists. It was on Iraq. It didn't get noted despite two panelists asking it be noted. I don't have to agree with something for it to go up here. But the first panelist to speak was a complete liar and I'm just not in the mood. If he'd been the third or the fourth, it would have been fine. But as the first to speak, he's all most would have listened to and I would've heard about all the e-mails asking why I highlighted a known liar and what was I thinking and . . .

If the panel had opened with a proper introduction, for example, I might have posted it. But it opens with this one man already in the midst of making an argument and he doesn't know what he's talking about and his claims are insensitive to the Iraqi people.

I don't have to like you for you to go up here. I don't even have to agree with you. But there are some things that aren't going to go up here.

If I can't use the f-word in full here, you can't either. If you want to misrepresent (and insult) the Iraqi people, I'm not interested.

If you're trying to get something you did noted at this site, you need to grasp what's needed to go up at this site and you need to grasp that it's not my job to rewrite you, to edit you, to clean up your copy, whatever.

To me, the above was clear. To the writer? Apparently not which is why yesterday evening he submitted another piece, this one contained f**king in the opening sentence -- but without "**". You're now blocked. You'll go to spam automatically. I consider your submissions to be harassment. I've made clear that this has to be work safe. I've made clear -- several times this year -- that my sight is going. Injections aren't helping. Laser isn't helping. Surgery isn't helping. I don't have time to do your work for you and what kind of a jerk are you that you would expect me to in the first place?

I don't care that everybody's banned you. You got yourself banned here because you couldn't follow the most basic of policies. I don't agree with your viewpoints. But I did share them over and over. Until you started with the f-word.

I'm not going to disrespect the community here. We had to go work safe because a community member -- who worked for a Catholic Church, got written up for reading a WASHINGTON POST article in which Dick Cheney was using the f-word and the article didn't censor the f-word.

That policy, that we have to be work safe, has been in place for the life of this site. We aren't changing it for you.

You're not being censored here because of your political speech. You're being censored because I am not your editor, I don't work for you and don't drop your crap at my door and expect me to fix it for you.

I've been more than kind to you over the years, noting everything you sent in. You never noted us because, let's face it, that's how men like you are. You expect everyone to do for you.

Well I'm not your Mommy. Clean up your own mess. You will go to the spam folder from now on and everyone checking the public e-mail account has been informed to delete you without opening your e-mails. Go away.

Protests continue in Iraq. TASNIM reports:

University students from across the Iraqi Kurdistan Region staged protests for the third day in a row, demanding that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) resume issuing their monthly stipends.

Security forces used tear gas and rubber bullets on Tuesday as thousands of university students stormed the streets of Sulaymaniyah for the third day in a row calling on the government to reinstate their student allowances, which have been cut since 2014.

The students initially blocked the main Kirkuk- Sulaymaniyah road before heading towards the center of the city, where they were faced with a significant number of security forces.

Just meters away from the headquarters of Sulaymaniyah's ruling party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), located in the city’s Salim street, the protesting students were confronted by an extra number of security forces firing rubber bullets, teargas, and using water cannons to stop them from proceeding further.

Dilan Sirwan (RUDAW) reports:

Security forces used tear gas and rubber bullets on Tuesday as thousands of university students stormed the streets of Sulaimani for the third day in a row calling on the government to reinstate their student allowances, which have been cut since 2014.

The students initially blocked the main Kirkuk-Sulaimani road before heading towards the center of the city, where they were faced with a significant number of security forces.

Just meters away from the headquarters of Sulaimani's ruling party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), located in the city’s Salim street, the protesting students were confronted by an extra number of security forces firing rubber bullets, teargas, and using water cannons to stop them from proceeding further.

Rudaw video footage showed protesting students responding to security forces with stones, and a few students picking up teargas canisters and throwing them back at the forces.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) told Rudaw English that protestors were heading to the city center when they were confronted by security forces.

Warrior0028 Tweets:

Student protests have taken place in Sulaimani for the third day in a row, alongside protests today in Erbil, Koya, Halabja, Rania, and Kalar. Across the Kurdistan Region, students are calling for the restoration of a government study allowance, which has been cut since 2014.

7:25 AM · Nov 23, 2021

NRT Tweets:

Gunfire reported as students carry on protesting in Sulaimani #NRTnews #Sulaimani #Protest

nrttv.com

Gunfire reported as students carry on protesting in Sulaimani

nrttv

7:15 AM · Nov 23, 2021

That's an impressive turnout. Ruwayda notes:

Students protest in Sulaimani and other areas today. Proud of your spirit and determination in making your democratic voice heard. #Kurdistan

3:40 AM · Nov 23, 2021

NRT reports:

New Generation Movement (NGM) President Shaswar Abdulwahid issued separate statements on Monday (November 22) on student protests to authorities in the Kurdistan Region and the demonstrating students.

Abdulwahid said in his statement to the authorities that the NGM had sent water and supplies to residents of the Sulaimani University residents but the donations were not allowed to reach the students.

"If you are not serving these students, let others do so,” the NGM president said in his statement to the authorities.

Abdulwahid said students are seen internationally as resources for their country and their calls should be answered.

Speaking to the protestors, the NGM president said, "You students are the revolution and change of hand in every country. We are with you and support you with our media and parliamentarians. Don’t give up.”

Sheelen notes last night in a Tweet:

University students protested in #Sulaimani on Monday, calling for restoration of a government study allowance. The protest turned violent with police using force, electric batons, and tear gas. #twitterkurds #Kurdistan #السليمانية_تقمع

5:44 PM · Nov 22, 2021

While Mazin H. Sulaiman appeals to a NEW YORK TIMES reporter to please cover these protests (protests the western press is ignoring):

Hello madam @MaggieAstor
, please talk about Kurdish students ,
Student protests have taken place in Kurdistan region for the third day in a row .
Across the Kurdistan Region, students are calling for the restoration of a government study allowance, which has been cut since 2014.