Oh Boy It Never Ends: Weekend box office

Above is Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Lorie Smith's Special Rights." Now for the weekend box office:

	(1)	Smile	Paramount Pi…	$18,461,772	-18%	3,659	+9	$5,046	$50,756,434	2
2	N	Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile	Sony Pictures	$11,401,182		4,350		$2,621	$11,401,182	1
3	N	Amsterdam	20th Century…	$6,444,896		3,005		$2,145	$6,444,896	1
4	(3)	The Woman King	Sony Pictures	$5,177,249	-24%	3,342	-162	$1,549	$54,006,888	4
5	(2)	Don’t Worry, Darling	Warner Bros.	$3,500,157	-49%	3,324	-797	$1,053	$38,475,892	3
6	(4)	Avatar	20th Century…	$2,731,476	-46%	2,040	+180	$1,339	$783,991,510	669
7	(7)	Barbarian	20th Century…	$2,193,022	-22%	2,160	-560	$1,015	$36,543,225	5
8	(5)	Bros	Universal	$2,159,115	-56%	3,356	+6	$643	$8,903,525	2
9	(10)	Top Gun: Maverick	Paramount Pi…	$805,242	-33%	1,127	-434	$715	$714,682,608	20
10	N	Terrifier 2	Bloody Disgu…	$805,000		886		$909	$1,208,900	1

BROS is now at $8.9 million. I hope it manages to stay in the top ten for at least three more weeks.

I saw this and marveled over how people write about things without ever knowing a darn thing:

Dottie, naturally, is the main role in the whole film, and so you needed a star to play Dottie for the film to work. Originally, that star was Debra Winger, the very successful movie star who had been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actress (and was a year away from her third Best Actress nomination).

Winger began training for three months with the Chicago Cubs so that she would appear authentic as a baseball player. Then she abruptly quit the movie because Marshall added a new cast member to the film - Madonna!

Madonna, of course, was one of the biggest pop musicians in the world at the time, but she had been trying to make it as an actor, as well, for years. She was so famous in the mid-1980s that she was given plenty of opportunities to make the transition to film stardom, but each of her starring projects flopped (from 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan to 1986's Shanghai Surprise, which Madonna starred in with her then-husband, Sean Penn, to 1987's Who's That Girl). She then had a supporting role in yet another flop, 1989's Bloodhounds of Broadway, before recovering a bit with a key supporting role in the hit comic film, Dick Tracy, in 1990 (singing a Stephen Sondheim-penned song, "Sooner or Later," that would win the Academy Award for Best Original Song).

So by 1992, things were tricky. Madonna was still very popular, but she didn't have much of a track record in film. Ultimately, her fame was considered a big enough asset for the film, so she was added to the film (along with her good friend, Rosie O'Donnell), as a pair of friends who make the team together...

When Winger heard the casting news, she quit the film. She later explained that she accused Marshall of trying to make an Elvis film with the casting. a reference to all the movies that were made over the years with Elvis Presley as an actor (whether Presley could act or not). She also noted, “The studio agreed with me because it was the only time I ever collected a pay-or-play on my contract. In other words, I collected my pay even though I did not play, and that’s very hard to get in a court.”

It's not that the above isn't truthful, it's that it's not complete. Debra Winger loathes Madonna (and I'm sure it's vice versa) and that has nothing to do with A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN but goes back to the 80s when Madonna ended up married to Sean Penn and Debra was married to Timothy Hutten and the two women had to interact. For a few weeks, they got along. And then? They became vicious enemies. They loathed one another.

That's a key part of the above story. It's not just that Madonna's a bad actress, it's also that, from Debra's 80s experience, she's a bad person who is a glory hog and all the other names Debra called her in the 80s. This was all known in the 80s when 'the battling Penns' couldn't make it a week without showing up in PEOPLE or on ET or whatever.

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

Monday, October 10, 2022. A year later, the UN suddenly frets over Iraq -- and let's get honest about ourselves with regards to our lack of support for Will Lehman and the film BROS.

Last week, Tom O'Conner (NEWSWEEK) reported:

As U.S. officials roundly condemn the ongoing series of Iranian strikes against Kurdish rivals in northern Iraq, Washington has also expressed concern over a separate Turkish campaign against Kurdish forces in the same region.

[. . .]

"We have repeatedly expressed our concerns regarding Turkish operations in Iraq," a State Department spokesperson told Newsweek, "urging that the government of Turkey coordinate more closely with Iraqi authorities on cross-border military operations against terrorist targets."

Concerns. Concerns? Yeah.

According to RUDAW, the government of Turkey is admitting to the murder:

The Turkish ambassador to Iraq said Sunday that members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and associates of the group are Ankara’s targets in response to the recent assassination of a women’s rights activist in the city of Sulaimani.

Rights activist Nagihan Akarsel, who had ideological ties to the PKK, was shot multiple times and killed in Sulaimani on Tuesday by assailants in the city’s Bakhtiyari neighborhood. Her ties to the Kurdish armed group quickly led droves of people on social media to blame Turkey for her death.

“Those who are affiliated with the PKK are indeed our targets,” Turkish Ambassador Ali Riza Guney said in response to a question from Rudaw’s Payam Sarbast during a press conference in the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil.

It can't be used to promote war (the way a death in Iran has been), so Nagihan's murder doesn't get US press attention. NEWS.AM notes:

Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MİT), met with the Iraqi Turkmen Front earlier this week, raising questions from Iraqi opposition politicians over his visit in mid-September, Ahval writes.

Fidan's visit to the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, Erbil, on Oct. 4 coincided with the killing of Kurdish figure Nagihan Akarsel in a shootout in Sulaymaniyah province, the Kurdish website Medya News reported.

The Iraqi coordination structure, an opposition body made up of Shiite parties, has called for an investigation, and a member of the structure, Turki Sedan, said the visit was organized without notifying Iraq's central government.

Meanwhile, today is October 10th. A year ago, Iraq went to the polls and voted. Still no prime minister, still no president, still no cabinet of ministers.

Speaking to the United Nations last week, the US Deputy Rep to the UN, Ambassador Richard Mills, noted that climate change was one of the challenges Iraq is facing, "Complicated challenges face the next government -- including passing a budget, developing oil and gas legislation that is acceptable to the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government, improving the provision of electricity, combatting climate change, promoting private sector development and job growth, and increasing women’s participation in the workforce."

The next government? A year after the elections and they're still hoping it pull together to form a government.

If they paid attention, they wouldn't be surprised by how this all went down. Dropping back to the October 11, 2022 snapshot (the day after the election):

Starting with this from the BBC.

He opens with The October Revolution -- the protesters who are part of a movement that began in the fall of 2019.

Murad Shishani: They presented, sort of, a package of demands, as they told me. This package included an early election but the government, the authorities, they just only this one condition. They asked for fighting corruption. They asked for disarming the militias. They asked for political reform, more engagement for youth. Therefore, as the government, they didn't meet all these demands from the protesters, then the boycotting campaigns have been becoming more stronger, they are today in Iraq. And this is what we've noticed in a city like Mosul which has been liberated four years ago from the so-called Islamic State. But that devastation is still there so people were reluctant to go to the polling stations today.

It's interesting, isn't it? How he noted the protesters and their demands -- unmet -- that might lower voter turnout but, while noting them, never notes that the government response to them -- the physical response -- also depressed turnout because the physical response included attacking the protesters, kidnapping the protesters, disappearing the protesters and killing the protesters. AP notes it in most of their reports. For example, "Although authorities gave in and called the early elections, the death toll and the heavy-handed crackdown -- as well as a string of targeted assassinations -- prompted many who took part in the protests to later call for a boycott of the vote."

[. . .]

John Davidson and Ahmed Rasheed (REUTERS) report, "Iraq's parliamentary election on Sunday drew one of the smallest turnouts for years, electoral officials indicated, with the low participation suggesting dwindling trust in political leaders and the democratic system brought in by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion." The political leadership has been corrupt. With the billions in oil revenues that the government of Iraq takes in yearly, there is no reason why poverty should exist in Iraq. But not only does it exist, it is actually increasing. The corrupt leaders have taken public monies. That money, for example, has bought multiple sports cars and homes in Europe for Ahmed al-Maliki, son of forever thug and former prime minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki whose (mis)leadership and paranoia helped create ISIS and led to its seizure of Mosul and other areas in 2014. The corruption has continued and worsened. Long cited by Transparency International as one of the five most corrupt nations in the world, Iraq's governmental corruption is now so bad that President Saleh, addressing the United Nations last month, called it one of the greatest security threats to the country.

ALJAZEERA notes, "Two electoral commission officials said the nationwide turnout of eligible voters was 19 percent by midday. Turnout was 44.5 percent in the last election in 2018." Since 2018? The October Revolution. That movement of mainly Shi'ite protesters began in 2019 protesting the corruption, the lack of jobs, the lack of dependable public services (such as electricity and potable water). Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) observe:

In effect, Sunday’s election was a referendum on that system, and most Iraqis chose to stay home.

Despite a months-long campaign and millions of dollars spent by foreign governments including the United States to boost trust in the voting process, Iraq’s electoral commission said turnout by midday was only around 20 percent and that it had risen only slowly through the afternoon.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi came to office last year vowing early elections after mass protests ousted his predecessor, Adel Abdul Mahdi, in 2019. On Sunday, voters trickled to the polls through some of the streets where security forces had fired live ammunition into crowds and killed 600 during the months-long protests.

Realities were briefly noted by the bulk of the press in the immediate aftermath of the election and then they got to whoring. It was never a legitimate election but goodness how they whored cult leader Moqtada al-Sadr and pretended that he had some sort of mandate -- despite the very low turnout, despite the fact that his coalition achieved less than they had the previous election cycle.

They whored and whored some more.

The other parties and coalitions didn't have to go along with Moqtada because there were press claims but what trumped those claims was reality and Moqtada never had reality on his side. Were it not for the press whoring -- so-called reporting that read like slavish devotion to Moqtada -- I'm talking western press here -- maybe he would have realized sooner that not only was not a kingmaker (a term the press couldn't stop pimping) but that he wasn't even competent.

As the political stalemate continued and Moqtada's frustrations mounted, he began throwing tantrums.

One of the most infamous? If they didn't do what he wanted, he was pulling every member of his coalition out of Parliament! They would resign in mass!

The response was a yawn.

Idiot Moqtada then forced the resignations.

All that happened were the second place in those elections then got sworn in.

Moqtada had a bigger fit then -- he'd shut himself out of the process.

And efforts to get the courts to overturn this didn't work. Nor did his efforts to get the courts to dissolve the Parliament. He never should have believed his press. Through non-stop use of the term, they'd convinced him he was a "kingmaker."

He was -- and remains -- a pathetic nothing and he's been humored more than long enough. A brutal thug responsible for the deaths of many -- Iraqis and Americans -- got paid off by the US State Dept in August of 2021 to drop his opposition to the elections and urge his cult to show up and vote.

The whole thing's sickening -- including the US government treating him as someone worthy of US tax dollars.

It's a year later and there's no government.

AFP notes today, "A year since Iraq's last elections, it remains without not only a new government but a budget too, obstructing much-needed reforms and infrastructure projects in the oil-rich but war-ravaged country." Daniel Stewart (360 NEWS) runs with:

The United Nations warned Monday that "Iraq is running out of time" in the face of the serious political crisis rocking the country and called on all parties to "dialogue without preconditions" to form a government, one year after the holding of early parliamentary elections.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) has recalled that "one year ago, Iraqis went to the polls in the hope of charting a new future for the country" and stressed that the elections were called "under public pressure through nationwide protests in which hundreds of young Iraqis lost their lives and thousands were injured".

"Unfortunately, this reaffirmation of democracy was followed by a policy of division, generating bitter disillusionment among the population," the mission said in its communiqué, in which it stressed that "this long crisis is generating more instability".

"The latest developments are proof. Moreover, it threatens the livelihood of the people," it has warned, before stressing that "the approval of the Budgets for 2023 are imperative" and regretting that the "tireless efforts" to move towards stability have not borne fruit.

To which the world should respond, "Oh, shut up." It's been a year. Now you're worried? You've been a pathetic and useless presence in Iraq. And that's long before we factor in all the stroking of Moqtada, all the humoring of him.

You've disgraced yourselves. No one needs you to now hop on your pony, ride in circles and scream crisis.

The elections were a joke a year ago. Instead of admitting that reality, you pimped Moqtada as an answer. The only thing Moqtada is ever an answer to is the riddle: What won't flush down the toilet?

Various outlets are quoting UNAMI issuing this nonsense "The protracted crisis is breeding further instability, and recent events are a testament to that." And noting UNAMI now declares Iraq to be "running out of time."

Now. A year later.

The UN, like the police, always comes late if they come at all?

A year later and now the United Nations wants to play the hysteric.

It abandoned the people for 12 months now. Let's not pretend that they in anyway helped. They abandoned the people with their hopes that a government -- a bad one -- would be formed and they could return to ignoring the abuses that the Iraqi people live with daily. UNAMI has not helped the Iraqi people. It exist solely to provide cover for whatever monstrosity gets cobbled together and then they issue "We call on . . ." statements. They've done for the Iraqi people and today they stand exposed as the do-nothing that they are.

Now I've got a problem. Just found something in the spam folder. I don't mind putting it in here but it actually goes to a larger issue.

Brothers and sisters,

On October 17, in less than two weeks, ballots will begin going out for the first-ever direct elections of the leadership of the United Auto Workers. If you are a UAW member, I urge you to make sure your local has your current mailing address by tomorrow (Friday, October 7) so that you can receive your ballot as early as possible.

This is a historic opportunity for rank-and-file workers to express our opposition to the entire bureaucracy, which has sold us out for decades, rammed through contracts we opposed and defied the will of the membership.

For this reason, the UAW apparatus has done everything it can to keep workers in the dark about the election and the positions of the candidates. I have spoken to many workers who do not even know that an election is being held.

A week and a half ago, I participated in a debate among the candidates for UAW president. But the UAW apparatus has done virtually nothing to inform workers that there was a debate, and only about 1.5 percent of UAW workers and retirees have watched the video. The UAW doesn’t want anyone to watch the debate because it so thoroughly exposed incumbent President Ray Curry and Co. as pro-corporate enemies of the working class, who have as little connection to rank-and-file workers as the man on the moon.

My campaign is about establishing a new base of power through the building of rank-and-file committees of workers in every plant and workplace to fight for what we need, not what the UAW bureaucracy and the companies say is acceptable. We must assert our will and our interests. We must unite all workers in the UAW with workers throughout the country and around the world who are confronting the same issues and face the same enemies.

The election itself is a critical stage in this battle. The bureaucrats in the UAW want as little participation in this election by rank-and-file workers as possible. They opposed the referendum for direct elections because they know that the apparatus is universally despised by the rank and file.

The situation will not change unless we act. As workers, we have tremendous strength, but nobody is going to fight for what we need but ourselves. This is the purpose of my campaign, but I am not a miracle worker. You must make the decision to take up this fight.

This is why I am calling on you to form a rank-and-file election committee in your workplace.

These committees will accomplish the following:

Distribute information throughout your workplace on how to participate in the election, including what workers must do to ensure that they get a ballot and when they have to send it in. You can view and share frequently asked questions about the UAW elections on my website at willforuawpresident.org/uawelections.
Make sure that all workers watch the presidential candidates’ debate, which I have posted on my website here.
Organize meetings of workers in your plant or workplace to discuss the issues in the election and what demands we must fight for to secure our interests.
Set up informational pickets outside your workplace to distribute information and promote my rank-and-file campaign for UAW president.
Lay the foundation for the rank-and-file networks that are necessary to continue to fight for what we need once the election is over.
I am asking you today: write to my campaign at willforuawpresident@gmail.com or text (267) 225-6633 for assistance in setting up an election committee. Tell me where you work and what you think we must fight for in this election and beyond. I will do everything I can to assist you in setting up a committee at your workplace and to link your committee to similar committees that are being set up across the country.

Fellow rank-and-file workers: If we are going to fight for what we need, we cannot allow the initiative to remain in the hands of the apparatus. We must organize ourselves! Contact my campaign and build a rank-and-file election committee today!

Thank you,
Will Lehman

P.S. I want to do everything I can to make sure workers are informed—about the elections, about my campaign, and about the strikes and other struggles workers are launching. But to do that, I need your financial support. If you agree with what I’m fighting for, then donate as much as you can to my campaign today.

Donate

Okay, when are we ever going to work together? Here in the US, when are we going to drop the s**t and work together? In the abstract, a Socialist in charge of the UAW is something we on the left are supposed to be able to get on board with. So why the hell aren't we?

Seems like this campaign should be getting support.

And I was planning on not mentioning it today but you know I'm going there now: BROS.

Straight-allies, that's what we're supposed to be. But we're so pathetic we couldn't even buy a ticket to a hilarious comedy. That was beyond our politics. Beyond our abilities.

The best thing for the UAW would be to have a Socialist president at this point. But there's no push for him online from so-called left allies. And there was no real push with regards to BROS.

Yeah, I saw a few times, you might have seen it as well.

But there was no real push.

I think back, to ahead of DOBBS, when the LGBTQ community was supporting ROE V WADE. It didn't apply to most of them. As Ava and I noted when that awful NETFLIX special aired, unless someone got raped, they probably weren't going to need an abortion -- someone in the LGBTQ community. We thought the support from the community was great but we also thought that LGBTQ comedians should also be focusing on the issues impacting their community. I stand by that call because I'm not seeing a push by feminist leaders or by Planned Parenthood or anyone else to be an ally to the LGBTQ community right now.

I am seeing vicious hate online. I am seeing smears and attacks on gay people -- including Billy Eichner who's only 'crime' is making a wonderful film.

We want allies. We want support. But apparently, we can't give it. Rude, nasty things are being said about LGBTQs and conclusions are being drawn regarding BROS. We didn't support the movie and now right wingers are running with that because the message is straight allies aren't going to push back.

That's outrageous and we should be ashamed of ourselves. We've been pathetic and disgusting.

Most Americans -- even in this economy -- can afford to buy a ticket to a movie as a political act.

The failure of straight allies to support BROS is fueling a backlash.

And again, it's the same with Will Lehman. He's a Socialist. We should be on board. Yeah, put him in charge of the UAW, let's see if he can get something done.

That should be our attitude.

But when it's our turn to be allies, we tend to have other things to do. All you people -- and I'm referring to drive-byes more than the TCI community -- who claim to be left and then vote centrist politicians, this is where you could make a difference without doing that much at all -- you could support Will. Wouldn't have to stop praising Hillary or pretending that Nancy Pelosi was the height of left action. You could continue in your delusions and still support Will.

But you won't.

Just like you didn't support Billy and now want to pretend like the hideous being said online have nothing to do with you. They have everything to do with you and it is now time for you to figure out if you're life has any meaning or you just want to tick off the rest of your days being a useless piece of crap.

And on that happy note, the following sites updated:

Oh Boy It Never Ends

Monday, October 10, 2022

Weekend box office

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