Oh Boy It Never Ends: SECRET INVASION drops next week

Above is Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Tough Guy Tulsi The Parent Expert" which went up earlier tonight. Tulsi Gabbard is a bully and a hate merchant.

Next week, a show I've been waiting for and am excited about debuts on DISNEY+. Sydney Odman (THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER) notes:

If you’ve ever seen a Marvel film, you know Nick Fury. He’s the spy of all spies, the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D, the mastermind creator behind the Avengers and over the course of several films, he’s always managed to maintain a certain air of mystery. He’s played by the inimitable Samuel L. Jackson in a black, leather trench coat and trademark eyepatch, first appearing in Jon Favreau’s 2008 Iron Man.

Now, Jackson takes center stage in Disney+’s six-episode miniseries Secret Invasion. This time around, Fury forgoes the eyepatch, showing off his scarred eye, and according to Jackson, he’s not as unshakeable as he once was.

“[He’s] older, a little tired, not as confident as he used to be,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s Tuesday evening premiere. “You find out where he lives! Does he live in a condo? Is that a house?”

Set a few years after the Blip, Secret Invasion finds Nick Fury finally returned to Earth, after working for the U.S. government on a space station operation called S.A.B.E.R. With the looming threat of shapeshifting Skrulls threatening to infiltrate Earth’s highest positions of power, Fury comes back to finish what he started long ago.

“I think we’re very used to seeing Nick Fury who can handle anything and is always six steps ahead,” said executive producer Jonathan Schwartz. “He always knows what you’re thinking before you think it, and that’s not quite the Nick we’re gonna meet at the top of Secret Invasion.”

Good. It sounds so promising. I'm really excited. Even if it doesn't turn out to be good, it'll be worth watching just for Samuel L. Jackson.

On MARVEL . . .

Elizabeth Olsen. She's now making noises about being done with MARVEL -- a point Harry made a few days ago in an e-mail and now I've got about six more people raising the same issue in e-mails.

Guess what? I don't care if she comes back to the role of Wanda.

My favorite Avenger was Scarlet Witch. I read the comic book as a kid. It may have been my intro to MARVEL. And she stood out.

Elizabeth gave a pathetic performance in film after film. We kept waiting for Wanda to mature. Instead she started off as a weak little girl (her brother in the same Avengers movie wasn't a little boy so why was she acting like a little girl) and never got better. By the time of WANDAVISION, she was just an embarrassment.

So if Elizabeth is done with the role, I say good. Her bad acting and her sometime accent (even before she dropped it, Elizabeth slipped in and out of that accent) and her weak ass portrayal of Wanda? None of it will be missed. None.

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

Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Crazy is all around no matter where you look -- some of the left lying that Cornel West is about to be the Green Party's presidential candidate (they'll decide who to pick in the summer of 2024) compete with the crazies like Ron DeSantis, Lauren Boebert and others for the title of most dangerously unhinged.

Let's start with a needed laugh.

Now let's unpack the crazy.

Is there a more divisive figure than Cornel West in the last 24 hours? Maybe -- maybe the YOUTUBING whores who are pimping him.

They talk about MSNBC, don't they. They sneer and the idiot Ajuma Baraka is still calling CNN "The Clinton News Network" as though he just coined the phrase when it was a right-wing smear back in the 90s. He's old and he's gasping for air. Someone put the old man to bed before he staggers around anymore going "Cornel! Cornel! If I could get an erection anymore, I'd beat off to you Cornel."

I've held Krystal Ball accountable when she went screeching that everyone had to fall in line behind Marianne Williamson. No, that's not how you to talk to adults, that's not how you talk to people. You do not boss people around and tell them how they will vote and who they will vote for.

No one asked Krystal for that and she did real damage to Marianne's campaign when she pulled that stunt.

Now you've got Graham Elwood and others doing the same.

I'm not in the mood. Not in the damn mood.

Every few months, your new savior comes along and you try to baptise us. You don't get that we are not your flock. You better check yourself real damn quick.

Graham Elwood looks like a crazy man in his video yesterday. His eyes are popping and bulging and the left side of his mouth is a drooping snarl. Is that his pokerface? Is he having an orgasm as he blathers on about Cornel?

I have no idea.

It's amazing the lies that a Chrissy Lynn Hedges can promote. Again, he's very good at lying. Wasn't it his article on the front page of THE NEW YORK TIMES that the Bully Boy Bush administration was waiving around after 9/11 to insist on war on Iraq? They go on the talk shows and they'd insist that it wasn't just them saying it, it was THE NEW YORK TIMES!

THE NEW YORK TIMES!

See this is what happens with stupid people who don't bother to learn or don't care to. They have no idea the reality of Chrissy Lynne. They probably don't even know that Judith Miller, years before her war propaganda for THE NEW YORK TIMES, wrote for THE PROGRESSIVE.

These people are not your friends.

Your friends don't yell and scream at you to vote for someone. That's not a friend.

They also don't lie to you to try to force you to support someone.

Forget the garbage on YOUTUBE. Cornel does not have the nomination.

Could he get the nomination?

He could.

He's not going to be handed it.

I called a friend with Green Party leadership last night because there were e-mails coming in from people freaking out over this issue. People opposed to the Green Party doing what YOUTUBERS were insisting was happening: Naming Cornel their candidate for president.

And I thought I was seeing a ton of e-mails. Apparently nothing like what party leaders are seeing. After we got off the phone, three hours later, my friend called back because the complaints were streaming to leadership over and over as the hours went by.

The Green Party will have a nominee for president. And they will pick that nominee at their summer 2024 convention. They have rules in place, actual rules, that will be followed, rules that they voted on over a decade ago, rules that are in place.

So don't believe the lying YOUTUBERS.

Don't believe Chrissy Lynn Hedges.

MOTHER JONES, 2006, Jack Fairweather:

EIGHT WEEKS after September 11, a pair of Americans entered the gleaming marble lobby of Beirut’s Intercontinental Hotel La Vendome, where they were greeted by a group of Iraqi expatriates. The Americans were reporters—New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges, who’d just been put on the Al Qaeda beat, and Christopher Buchanan, an associate producer of PBS’s Frontline—there to meet a mysterious Iraqi defector with information about Saddam Hussein’s secret weapons program. Hedges and Buchanan were ushered to an elegant suite overlooking the Mediterranean, where they interviewed Jamal al-Ghurairy, an Iraqi lieutenant general who had fled Iraq. Ghurairy claimed to have witnessed foreign Islamic militants training to hijack airplanes at an Iraqi terrorist training camp.

Buchanan had been given the assignment just a few days earlier and knew very little about the interview’s subject. “It was all very hush-hush,” he says. “His life might be in danger. I didn’t know much else.” Buchanan recalls the general as thickset, “fierce looking,” and having a military bearing. “He looked the part,” he says. Hedges adds that the general “was definitely Iraqi and struck me as having spent a lot of time in the military.” The general’s entourage—including Nabeel Musawi, the political liaison of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which had arranged the interview—“were all wearing leather coats. They were slick and well organized,” says Buchanan. “Very well organized, very well set up,” Hedges concurs.

The general hadn’t been told he’d be filmed, and it took Musawi almost an hour to persuade him to go on camera. The general himself then spent several minutes making sure his face would be blacked out when the tape rolled. The resulting television interview, for which Musawi acted as translator, was stilted and brief. It would become only a small segment of the Frontline piece, which also featured an interview with another INC-provided defector, Sabah Khodada, a former Iraqi captain whose identity was not concealed. Buchanan recalls that “as soon as the lights and camera were switched off, the general began to talk.” He says the general then spent more than an hour with Hedges in an adjoining room of the suite while he left the hotel to transmit the tape via satellite uplink. When Buchanan eventually returned to the empty suite, he found coffee cups and saucers filled with cigarette butts that he felt indicated an intense conversation. Hedges says that after the interview was completed, he “spoke to the U.S. embassy in Turkey”—where the general had fled after leaving Iraq—“and asked if the general was credible. They confirmed he had recently been debriefed.”

Two days later the story that spun out on the front page of the New York Times was as shocking as it was convincing. Ghurairy claimed that as a senior intelligence official, he had witnessed foreign Arab fighters training to hijack airplanes at the Salman Pak military facility south of Baghdad. About 40 foreign nationals, Ghurairy said, were based there at any given time. “We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States,” the Times quoted Ghurairy as saying. Ghurairy also claimed a German scientist was working in a section of the base that produced biological agents. The report noted the role the INC had in setting up the interview, but no serious questions were raised about the general’s provenance.

Read the article in full. But grasp right now, Iraqis are dead because of Chris Hedges. They're not coming back from the dead. His writing helped lead to the Iraq War. So the next time his jaundice and bug-eyed face pops up telling you this or that, just stop a moment and remind yourself that he promoted the Iraq War, he promoted war on Iraq. He was stupid? I don't give a damn what his excuse is. I do give a damn that he has still not taken accountability all this time later. I do give a damn that the Iraqi people suffer to this day and he can't talk about them or write about them. I don't give a damn about the moralizing Chrissy Lynn Hedges who looks down on people who read whatever SHADES OF GREY. They're the ones he calls out in a book. But, understand, we're all supposed to look the other way about his role in starting the Iraq War.

He needs to get down on his knees in public and beg the forgiveness of the Iraqi people.

Not only has that not been demanded of him but a lot of whores promote him as our sainted Chrissy.

Not in the damn mood for that ever.

Again, the Iraqi people who have died? They aren't coming back and he needs to take accountability -- publicly -- for his role in that. He's fine being public about everything else. So take some damn accountability. And if you can't, just go away. No one needs to hear from you or see your blood soaked hands. You're disgusting and I'll say so. You know I've got no problem calling out those with the blood of the Iraqi people on their hands.

Cornel is the presidential candidate for the Green Party? No matter what Chrissy says, he's not. They will not decide that until they hold their convention in the summer of 2024.

Cornel tried to lie to Katie Halper -- and Katie was far too gullible -- but if you listen to his awful interview -- which will not go up here -- you hear that he had a talk with the Green Party.

Two people with the party told me last night about that conversation.

Cornel wanted to be handed the Green Party's presidential nomination and wanted to make that announcement this week.

He was told he could campaign for it, anyone can run for it. But, no, there are rules in place and the Green Party is not the Democratic Party. They aren't going to gift the nomination or rig the nomination.

Cornel was told that.

He was not happy about that. And we'll get to the why of that. But he knows the truth. So when people start coming around lying, they're cheap whores. You shouldn't trust them.

Up to the pandemic, I spent February 2003 forward speaking on campuses, speaking to feminist groups, speaking to labor groups about the Iraq War. In the early days, it was just about the Iraq War and whatever question or issue someone might raise. But it quickly became, due to our focus in the US on electoral politics, about elections.

You do not owe anyone your vote. It is your vote, you own it. The only wrong vote is a vote you don't feel good about when you're voting. Candidates do not own your votes, they have to earn it. Blah, blah, blah.

We planted that seed over and over. 48 to 50 weeks a year, year after year, as we went all over the country speaking on one campus after another.

Right now, the YOUTUBING whores want to tell you that oh, the Democratic Party's going to make everyone get behind Joe.

Don't say that when you're doing the same thing for Marianne or Cornel or whomever.

The reason we can't move forward is because these would-be leaders are f**king idiots. All they know to do is the very same thing that they slam the Democratic Party for.

That's going to lead to change?

Hell no.

When I realized that I was voting Democrat in this election -- barring an independent run by Robert -- I didn't hide it. I also have not advocated for anyone else to do the same. That's online, that's in my real life. But since that is my current plan, I did disclose it so people could factor that in when I'm writing about whatever.

You vote how you want to vote. Don't let anyone try to push you around. If they do, they are showing they have no respect for you.

If you're voting in 2024 -- or making the decision to vote by not voting (which is a valid use of your vote if that's what you want to do) -- you're an adult. You don't need anyone telling you who to vote for.

The amount of nonsense that we're getting from YOUTUBERS -- including Katie's Roger Waters obsession -- note, she had to bring that into the interview with Cornel as well -- goes to how stupid they clearly think we are. "Don't worry, guys, I got this covered. I'm going to get them to vote for Cornell."

How about you just do your damn job. Which is some form of faux media, as clear as I can tell.

I compare what they do -- 'politics' -- to the Red Cross. They rush from one disaster to the next, never really accomplishing anything. But, in earlier decades, these people were called hitchhikers on the highway of causes as they flitted from one cause to another, never seeing any accomplishment because they couldn't stay focused.

The only intelligent discussion on Cornel wanting to be president is the one below.

Later today, Jared Ball will speak live with Cornel on BLACK POWER MEDIA. That might be an intelligent discussion. I hope it is.

But thus far, that's the only one.

People who know nothing about Cornel West are insisting you have to vote for him. Are telling you how great this is.

How is it great, Graham? Because the celebrity of it all has gripped you? I'm not hearing about issues. I'm not hearing about how it's going to improve even one life.

So how about you stop hyping and whoring and try to inform people instead of trying to order them around or trick them.

These YOUTUBERS don't want to educate the masses. They don't want to provide them with tools. They just want to be able to boss them around. Apparently, that's a built-in feature of the US political process.

I don't know why the hell anyone would want to tell other people how to vote. To try to boss them around in a free society.

I'm disgusted.

Let's get back to Cornel and reality.

Cornel wanted to make an announcement this week that he would be the Green Party's presidential nominee.

That is not happening.

But he needed it to.

Why?

Because he's an idiot on the world stage. People don't take him seriously as it is and now it's even worse.

How so?

He's not the People's Party nominee. He doesn't want to be because their racism, their sexism and everything else has come up since he was announced as their nominee.

Now to walk away from a political party that just made you their nominee a week ago? That's embarrassing.

It goes to how unserious you are. "Wait, you took the nomination without doing any work to research the party you were going to be representing?"

Yes.

Yes, that's exactly what he did.

He's that damn stupid and/or that damn vain.

And that goes to judgment and clearly he has none. He's not fit to be president.

'Uh, I didn't know, I didn't really understand them.'

Then why the hell did you announce you would be their presidential candidate?

In the world of YOUTUBE whoring, that goes unasked apparently. But you better believe that in the real world -- especially in the press -- Cornel West is now a joke.

He looks like the idiot supreme.

He wouldn't have looked a lot smarter if he could have announced he was the Green Party nominee but he would have had a 'happy ending' to his embarrassment and he could try to steer your focus to that and not to the fact that he, an African-American man, was fronting a racist political party.

YOUTUBERS need to find their spines and their brains and need to grasp that their role is to inform, not to tell anyone how to vote, to inform.

As I've said, I intend to vote in 2024 for the Democratic Party nominee -- whether it's Joe or Marianne or Robert. Or someone who hasn't announced yet. That's what I intend to do. I have my reasons and may share them later on. I may not. If Robert does an independent run, I will seriously consider voting for him. I know Robert and I know he's serious about this. I've known him for many, many years. I would be hesitant to vote for Marianne if she ran without the Democratic Party because I've also known her for many years. But Robert's character is such that I would consider supporting him if he ran as an independent. He also has the money to do so.

I am not opposed to voting third party or independent candidates. As I've noted, I voted Green in 2008 (Cynthia McKinney).

But you need to use your vote how you want to use your vote. It's not wasted if you're doing what you want. That includes if what you want is not to vote. That includes if you vote for someone I don't like -- even a hate merchant. November 2024 rolls around and you use your vote the way you want to, that's all you need to do.

B-b-but two months later!!!! Unless you're psychic, you can't predict the future. You can only determine how to use your vote with the knowledge you have leading up to the election.

Again, don't let people bully you. When they do that, when they use and misuse you, they are showing contempt for you.

They're just con artists. Grasp that. Grasp that any real journalist looking at Cornel West should be asking him: "WTF! You're a 70-year-old man who took the nomination from a political party you're now trying to run from because you're embarrassed that they're racists with a record of doing nothing except for sexually harassing women?" Instead, they're saying "Dr West" in hushed voices and bowed heads -- as though what has just happened before everyone's eyes did not take place. They're crazy.

The Emperor's got no clothes on
No clothes? That can't be; he's the Emperor
Take that child away
Don't let the people hear the words he has to say

One small voice
Speaking out in honesty
Silenced, but not for long
One small voice speaking with the values
we were taught as children

So you walk away and say, Isn't he divine?
Don't those clothes look fine on the Emperor?
And as you take your leave
You wonder why you're feeling so ill-at-ease
Don't you know?

Lies take your soul
You can't hide from yourself
Lies take their toll on you
And everyone else

One small voice speaking out in honesty
Silenced, but not for long
One small voice speaking with the values
we were taught as children
Tell the truth
You can change the world
But you'd better be strong

-- "One Small Voice," written by Carole King, first appears on her album SPEEDING TIME

In other news of crazy, US House Rep Laruen Boebert attempts to change the narrative -- away from the rumors that she was using drugs and "stripping and hooking" mere years ago -- by insisting something took place at Starbucks. Daniel Villarreal (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has spread a right-wing claim that Starbucks forced employees to take down Pride decorations. A Starbucks spokesperson denied the allegation and said the company encourages stores to celebrate Pride Month.

On Tuesday afternoon, Boebert re-tweeted the following message from Charlie Kirk, leader of the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ conservative group Turning Point USA: “Starbucks has banned Pride decorations in its stores halfway through Pride Month, the company’s workers union has revealed. Leftwing Trans activists claim this means Starbucks is ‘caving.’ Good! Keep the pressure on, folks.”

Kirk based his claim on a June 13 tweet from Starbucks Workers United (SWU), a group that seeks to unionize Starbucks employees. SWU said that workers had complained that the “company is no longer allowing Pride decorations in-store.”

Starbucks says none of this is true.

In a statement to LGBTQ Nation, the company wrote, “We’re deeply concerned by false information that is being spread especially as it relates to our inclusive store environments [and] our company culture.”

“There has been no change to any policy on this matter and we continue to encourage our store leaders to celebrate with their communities including for U.S. Pride month in June,” the company added. “Starbucks has a history that includes more than four decades of recognizing and celebrating our diverse partners and customers – including year-round support for the LGBTQIA2+ community.”

In related news, community member Sabina e-mailed to urge everyone -- who eats candy -- to be sure to get their Pride Month skittles at Wal-Mart and remember skittles will be donating a portion of your purchase price to Pride.

In fact, let's put in Skittles' announcement:

WE'VE GIVEN UP OUR RAINBOW SO THAT THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY CAN SHARE THEIRS.

This Pride Month, we're amplifying stories within the LGBTQ+ community for all to discover. We begin by showcasing the designs of five talented artists on our SKITTLES Pride Packs, each with their own story to tell.

OUR MISSION IS TO SUPPORT THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY BY AMPLIFYING AND CELEBRATING THEIR STORIES. THAT'S WHY WE'VE PARTNERED WITH GLAAD FOR THE FOURTH YEAR TO REWRITE THE SCRIPT FOR LGBTQ+ ACCEPTANCE.

We will donate $1 per every SKITTLES Pride pack sold to GLAAD in support of their ongoing efforts to work through media to combat anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.*

Very good for Skittles.

Thank you so much to Sabina who saw the display for Skittles and Pride at her local Wal-Mart in Dallas, Texas. And applause for Garth Brooks who is standing strong against bullies who try to tell him what he can or cannot stock at his bar.

The hate merchants need to be confronted. Their crazy and hateful words are impacting others. We have a very big mental health problem in this country and these hate merchants are inciting violence. Greg Owen (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Two days earlier, around noon, Abdullah began following the two men, 58 and 40 years old, near the intersection of 18th Street and Hartford in the Castro.

According to the district attorney, the victims say “the unknown male suspect was following them on foot while simultaneously aggressively shouting anti-LGBTQ language. The suspect then threw a glass object at them causing the 40-year-old male victim to sustain a non-life-threatening injury.”

The men called 911 and provided a description of Abdullah, who was spotted a short time later near Mission Dolores Park. After a foot chase, cops apprehended the assailant and booked him into county jail on two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of committing a hate crime and one of resisting arrest.

The hate merchants are poisoning our world. Which lets me note another song, Nanci Griffith's "It's A Hard Life Wherever You Go" (first appears on STORMS).

A cafeteria line in Chicago
The fat man in front of me
Is calling black people trash to his children
He's the only trash here I see
And I'm thinking this man wears a white hood
In the night when his children should sleep
But, they slip to their window and they see him
And they think that white hood's all they need

It's a hard life
It's a hard life
It's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go
If we poison our children with hatred
Then, the hard life is all that they'll know
And there ain't no place in (Belfast) for
These kids to go

I was a child in the sixties
Dreams could be held through TV
With Disney, and Cronkite, and Martin Luther
Oh, I believed, I believed, I believed
Now, I am the backseat driver from America
I am not at the wheel of control
I am guilty, I am war, I am the root of all evil
Lord, and I can't drive on the left side of the road

Hate merchant Tucker Carlson took a moment out from attacking LGBTQ+ members. Graeme Massie (INDEPENDENT) notes that Tucker's posted a new rant to Twitter where he's lying that the arrest and current charges against former US President Donald Trump are the result of Donald declaring -- before he became president -- that the Iraq War left the Middle East "destabilized."

TUCKER CARLSON: Seven years later, they have their revenge! Cheeto, my Cheeto! I am here for you and I will fellatiate you -- in a non-gay way -- in the town square because anything that will get me attention is what I'm about, especially now that I'm facing lawsuits and will really need money.

I'm sure it went something like that, I'm sure.

Let's wind down with the shrimp Doo-Doo Ron Ron Doo-Doo Ron.

Charles P. Pierce (ESQUIRE) notes:

DeSantis apparently has decided on a strategy to cope with the fact that, the more people know about him, the less they like him. The strategy consists of sucking up to every goober in America with sufficient enthusiasm that said goober doesn't notice how much he is coming to loathe Baby Huey Long. From the Charlotte News & Observer:

The presidential candidate was touting Republican successes in last year’s midterm elections in Florida, and in North Carolina, amid disappointing results in the rest of the country, when he brought up the recently renamed installation. “I also look forward to, as president, restoring the name of Fort Bragg,” DeSantis said to raucous cheers from the crowd. He added that he would “thank the people that have served there, and they’re proud of their service there.”

“It’s an iconic name and an iconic base, and we’re not going to let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,” DeSantis said as the crowd continued to cheer.

Sure, Bragg went to arms against the lawful government of the United States. Sure, he was one of the biggest boobs in the history of warfare. Sure, he shot his own men like partridges. Sure, he was such a complete incompetent that he enraged Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was no bowl of strawberries on his best day. The Butcher of Fort Pillow purportedly once threatened to serve up Bragg en brochette.

The editorial board of THE TAMPA BAY TIMES notes:

Braxton Bragg was a slave-owning racist and failed military leader, sometimes described as the worst general of the Civil War. The question should be, why would anyone name a military base after him in the first place? Nevertheless, Gov. Ron DeSantis is defending him.

The governor is upset that the U.S. military changed the name of North Carolina’s Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty earlier this month. He called it “political correctness run amok,” and said he would restore the name if voters elected him president.

But Braxton Bragg is no cancel culture martyr. The military base should never have been named in his honor, not when Camp Bragg opened in 1918, and certainly not now.

[. . .]

By definition, Bragg was a traitor to the United States. He was at best a middling military leader and, at worst, so inadequate that he helped cost the Confederacy the war. Celebrate his failures and treachery? How un-American.

In case the demonstration in Florida over the weekend confused you, racists and KKK types coming out to show their support for Little Ronnie DeSanits, that's what this is about. He panders to racists. Grasp also, the base is now named Fort Liberty. Of course Ron would be against that, he loathes liberty as much as he detests democracy.

The following sites updated: