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What a coincidence.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/31/politics/roseanne-barr-conspiracy-tweets/index.html
Q
Yesterday’s post was about the BBC’s MasterChef.
It could be argued that the 2018 amateur series was the best to date.
Today’s post has more about the winner and a few inside scoops on the show.
More on Kenny Tutt
The Sun has excellent photos of Kenny Tutt’s restaurant quality winning dishes.
When bank manager Tutt beat Dr Nawamin Pinpathomrat and pilot David Crichton in the final, he said:
This whole thing is for my dad. I know he’s looking down and been giving me support. It’s a special day.
The first quarter hour or so of the final programme presented a segment on each of the finalists’ personal lives. Kenny’s mother related that her husband and son died when Kenny was a young man. He was close to both, but she said that he and his father were ‘joined at the hip’.
Kenny is devoted to his mother, his wife and his two daughters.
Yet, to look at Kenny’s characteristically happy face — we dubbed him Mr Smiley — one would never think that he had had two traumatic deaths to make sense of:
I drew two lessons from this.
The first is that we never know what has happened to other people by looking at them. Although far from being as sunny as Kenny, years ago, someone once said to me, ‘Nothing bad has ever happened to you’. I was taken aback, thinking how utterly wrong that person was.
The second is that the resilience and positive attitude that Kenny displays are exemplary.
We also found out from his wife Lucy that he got up when it was still dark to practice his dishes and perfect his culinary techniques for the show.
The Radio Times reported:
Speaking about his plans after the competition, the chef said “he would love to get more young people cooking”, but that his “ultimate ambition would be to run a high-end gastro Pub”. Just save us a seat whenever you open, Kenny.
The Daily Mail told us:
He said: ‘I would love to get more young people cooking. I always love to get my girls involved in the kitchen, and my eldest Emily just loves to cook and taste the food. Cooking teaches so much, from science to maths, and allows children to be creative and proud.
‘I would also love to write about food and want to put together some great food events, be it supper clubs or private dining. The ultimate ambition would be to run a high-end gastro Pub/B&B.’
The dad-of-two lives happily in Worthing, West Sussex, with his wife Lucy as well as their two children three-year-old Emily and 10-year-old Grace.
The Mail explained how he became interested in cooking:
Kenny started his culinary craft at a young age as he always loved watching his mum cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
The bank manager developed an interest in food from different cultures thanks to his love of travelling across the globe.
The Sun told us what he said before the final:
He said: “My mum always said if you just put a bit of love into it, that generally will make the food taste better.
“I’m just going to give it my best shot, try and have a bit of fun and we’ll see what happens.”
He said his job with the bank was his first “proper” job – and he’s worked there for 15 years.
Kenny says he appeared on MasterChef because he wanted to try something different.
Of course, MasterChef finished filming long before it aired. As with similar televised contests, the winner has to keep the victory a secret until the whole series airs. Add on the six weeks it takes for the show to complete on television and that is a very long period of time.
Mirror TV managed to interview him afterwards:
Speaking to Mirror TV, dad Kenny said that he still “couldn’t quite believe” that he had won the competition and described it as “mind-blowing”.
“It’s an amazing achievement for me, my family and everyone. So yeah, I’m really happy,” he said.
Revealing that he managed to keep the result a secret from most of his family and friends, he admitted that he told his wife Lucy and mum the outcome.
“My wife thought I was joking!” he quipped.
Kenny, who is dad to Emily (3) and Grace (10 months) said that he couldn’t have done it without his wife’s support.
The Mirror asked about the trip to Peru during finals week:
One memorable moment saw a contestant attempt to recreate the Andes mountains out of corn, and another arrange piranha heads on a plate. But was it all work and no play?
“We went out and had a bite to eat, but generally there was a lot of us thinking about what we were going to do next,” he told us.
“But yeah, we managed to spend a few hours together here and there which was really time well spent.”
His MasterChef experience far exceeded his expectations. The contestants were decent people:
I thought it would be more like competition – dog-eat-dog with people trying to clamber over each other to win and the thing that made it really good was that there wasn’t any of that.
We were all the best of friends. And the time the bell rang for us to start cooking we were all in our own little worlds anyway.
Judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace:
were the same in real life as they were on screen: “A couple of great guys”.
One thing Kenny hadn’t bargained for was the camera and sound crews:
The thing you don’t see when you’re watching on TV is the things that go on around you when you’re filming like cameras and sound. I didn’t know about that – you don’t even think about it.
It is a bit weird but you quickly get used to it. Once I was used to it it was like they had always been there. They were all great actually – the production crew, camera guys – they all had a great sense of humour.
He also said there was:
a “great atmosphere” on set and said that “everyone was well looked after”.
As for his cheerfulness:
To be honest, that was just me – what you see is what you get and I do get a bit excited to be there. I was just a bit like an excited puppy and that comes across.
I mean, I am a pretty happy guy, I’ve got nothing to be upset about. So I think most people take that as a good thing, but you do get the odd person who is like, ‘God, why is he always smiling?’
Well, you know, I’m on a TV show and I’m doing alright, so I’m not not going to be happy about it.
And:
He also said that he hadn’t realised he was “quite so animated” from the facial expressions he pulled: “It is quite cringe when you watch it back”.
It was all good, Kenny.
He told the Mirror that he was looking forward to relaxing and enjoying the experience before launching into any culinary projects.
Judges’ tasting and food waste
Many MasterChef fans wonder if the judges have to taste the dishes cold. They are also interested in what happens to leftover or unused ingredients.
The Sun posted an article which explains everything. In 2012, Gregg Wallace revealed what happens to the unused food and the cooked food:
The raw food gets divided up by the youngsters in the crew — talented young people who’ve just begun their careers and aren’t necessarily earning very much.
The cooked food is devoured by the filming crew. A lot of them carry their own cutlery!
That said, contestants race the film crew to taste each other’s dishes:
Chetna Makan, from the 2014 series, told Digital Spy: “It’s not just the cameramen who swarm over the food, we (the other contestants) definitely do it too.
“We all run to the food made by whoever got the most compliments. Literally, everybody runs, nearly knocking each other over to have a taste.”
As for the judges’ tasting, the Sun cited former MasterChef: The Professionals semi-finalist Louisa Ellis, who told Birmingham Live:
The food stays there for a bit after you’ve finished so they can get good shots of it.
“So it can be cold by the time the judges get to it – especially if you’re last to be judged – but they take that into consideration.”
The judges are said to get round this by going round and tasting each contestant’s food straight from the pot, in scenes which are later edited out.
Narrator India Fisher
India Fisher breaks the mould with her sultry, intense narration of MasterChef. She narrates all of the various series except for the Celebrity editions.
The Sun profiled her on April 13:
The softly-spoken host gives a commentary on the dishes whipped up by the cooks – and always makes them sound as good as they look …
Others have admitted that they’d love India to narrate their lives and describe their cooking successes with equal vigour.
This can be problematic for viewers when she moves on to other projects, such as commercials:
Fans may have noticed that India’s voice is affiliated with a number of different brands.
She is the voice of Natwest and has presented a variety of different advertisement campaigns.
Amusingly, her voice has become so synonymous with the show, that fans find it hard to focus when she embarks on a new project.
She also does other voice work:
India is also a broadcasting star, providing voice work for Science Fiction audio dramas including Earthsearch Mindwarp and Doctor Who.
She has also appeared on BBC Radio 4 comedy series Elephants to Catch Eels and Dead Ringers.
As we never see her, the Sun has a photo of her at the top of the article. Mystery solved!
India has been with MasterChef since its relaunch in 2005. Yet, we know little about her. The Sun tells us:
The 43-year-old is an actress and presenter who was born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
She comes from a famous family, as her dad is former MP Mark Fisher.
India is also the step-sister of musician Crispin Hunt and actress Francesca Hunt.
The trophy
The MasterChef trophy and logo were updated in 2012 to reflect a 21st century look.
The Sun explains:
It is made of polished aluminium and mounted on a tiered aluminium base.
Makers of the award, Gaudio, say on their website: “The MasterChef trophy is instantly recognisable and is treasured by winners.”
The article also gives updated information on recent winners’ activities in the culinary world.
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Another series of MasterChef ended on Friday, April 13, 2018.
MasterChef, in all its incarnations — amateur, professional and celebrity — has comprised most of my BBC viewing. The only other programme I watch is Inside the Factory, which is also food oriented. As everything else is either politicised or revisionist, I avoid the rest of the BBC like the plague.
The last time I wrote about the amateur series of MasterChef was in 2013, when Londoner Natalie Coleman won. I was going to write about Ping Coombes in 2014, but a serious family matter intervened.
I remember well the original MasterChef, which Loyd Grossman — originally from Marblehead, Massachusetts — hosted in the 1990s. Grossman also hosted the British edition of Through the Keyhole for many years.
MasterChef underwent a revamp in 2005. The new studio was large (the current one huge), and the challenges became more involved. Chef and restaurateur John Torode and former greengrocer Gregg Wallace became the new co-hosts. Since then, many the winners have gone on to greatness, opening their own gastro-pubs and restaurants. Thomasina Miers, the 2005 winner, is probably the most successful of all the MasterChef winners. She founded and owns the Wahaca chain of restaurants featuring food you won’t find outside of Mexico.
Every series has some sort of controversy. 2017’s was about the proper pronunciation of chorizo. That year also saw the debut of the market, full of ingredients for the contestants to use. A physician from Watford won: Dr Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed, who now divides her time between hospital work and a cookery career. The doctor had stiff competition in Giovanna Ryan and Steve Kielty:
Now on to the 2018 edition of MasterChef.
The standard of cookery gets higher and higher every year, beginning with the first episode. Successful contestants make and plate restaurant quality dishes. Competent home cooks end up eliminated early on.
This was also the first year that the amateurs went to a foreign country during Finals Week. They spent time in Lima, Peru, cooking for two of the country’s top chefs.
The near diplomatic incident
In Knockout Week, Gregg Wallace nearly caused a diplomatic incident when he criticised a Malaysian contestant’s chicken rendang because the skin wasn’t crispy. On April 4, the London Evening Standard reported:
Wallace sparked a wave of criticism, including from Malaysia’s prime minister, after telling Malaysian-born Zaleha Kadir Olpin her chicken rendang dish needed a crispier skin.
“The skin isn’t crispy. It can’t be eaten but all the sauce is on the skin I can’t eat,” Wallace said on the BBC show.
His sharp assessment of the dish, which saw Ms Olphin crash out of the show, sparked a rebuke from Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak, who tweeted a picture of the curry dish along with the caption: “Does anyone eat chicken rendang ‘crispy’? #MalaysianFood”.
Wallace appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to explain:
I didn’t mean it should be fried, like a fried chicken. What I meant was, it wasn’t cooked. And it simply wasn’t cooked. It was white and flabby.
It did no good. A Facebook page went up in Malaysia with the title ‘Justice for Chicken Rendang’ and demands for apologies from judges Torode and Wallace:
One commenter, Jin Wee, wrote online: “As a Malaysian, if I could, I would personally go to the show and rendang their head. Uncultured swine, doesn’t know variety of cuisine and claims to be Masterchef?”
The British high commissioner also got involved:
Vicki Treadell, the British high commissioner to Malaysia who was born in the country, tweeted: “Rendang is an iconic Malaysian national dish … It is never crispy & should also not be confused with the fried chicken sometimes served with nasi lemak.”
Torode had the final say, with no apology:
I did a whole series on Malaysia. Malaysian food is fantastic. I absolutely love it. I said to her, it wasn’t cooked enough, that’s what I said.
The Radio Times has more on the incident, including tweets. The magazine gives Torode’s exact quote as he was judging the dish:
I think the chicken rendang on the side is a mistake. It hasn’t had enough time to cook down and become lovely and soft and fall apart. Instead the chicken itself is just tough and it’s not really flavoursome.
Chorizo pronunciation redux
Questions over the pronunciation of chorizo arose again with Portuguese-born Alex, who works in the fashion industry in London. On April 12, the Sun reported:
Alex claims she’s from Portugal but some viewers seemed doubtful due to how she pronounced Chorizo.
One tweeted: “Alex on MasterChef tells us she’s from Portugal but then she says ‘Choritso’…#suspicious.”
The Sun included the tweet:
Alex did not make the cut for the final, but as the fourth remaining contestant, did a great job throughout.
Finalists
The final three contestants this year were all men: bank manager Kenny Tutt, airline pilot David Crichton and another physician, Thai-born Dr Nawamin Pinpathomrat, who is currently studying for his PhD at Oxford.
The Radio Times has more on the finalists, including their style of cuisine.
The apple crumble moment
David Crichton made an outstanding crumble in Finals week:
David’s apple crumble mille-feuille – layers of puff pastry, filled with caramelised apple and cream custard, with a crumble topping and served with clotted cream ice-cream and a caramel sauce – almost reduced John Torode to tears. The judge called it “fabulous, fantastic and faultless”.
The Australian-born Torode speaks as he finds. This crumble brought out a side that viewers had not seen before. The Evening Standard carried the story, peppering the text with tweets.
Torode told David:
“Fabulous, fantastic and faultless,” he said as he came close to shedding a tear. “Like honestly, it makes me well up – that is sensational.
“That’s what this competition is about where you push yourself to the stage where you make your own puff pastry and take the risk.
“You make a crumble, you make an apple pie, an apple tart, an apple [mille-feuille] and you take it to dizzy heights where it stirs emotion. Restaurant quality absolutely and a credit to you David.”
Here are two of the tweets:
Kenny’s cauliflower
On April 12, the day before the final, Alex and the three men were tasked with reproducing intricate recipes served at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.
Chef director Ashley Palmer-Watts devised his takes on these historic dishes with the help of food historians and the team at Hampton Court Palace. Each recipe is 15 pages long.
The four contestants had five hours each to re-create four of the dishes to Palmer-Watts’s exacting standards. Each contestant was assigned a different dish. One of his sous-chefs was on hand to supervise and offer advice.
SpouseMouse and I really wanted Kenny to win. We think his bank branch is going to close, and he desperately needs another line of work.
We were furious to find that Palmer-Watts’s sous-chef allowed Kenny to leave his cauliflower garnish in the oven. We weren’t alone. Digital Spy reported:
People were fuming that poor Kenny wasn’t reminded about his cauliflower – especially when fellow contestant Alex had been given a helpful hint earlier…
For whatever reason, the sous-chef muttered:
His cauliflower’s still in the oven, so I’m not gonna tell him…
Representative tweets in Digital Spy‘s article follow:
Not only ‘could have’ but jolly well ‘should have’.
After a nail-biting round with Ashley Palmer-Watts joining John and Gregg in the judging, it was a relief to discover that Kenny was going through to the final.
Torode welled up once again:
Alex narrowly missed out on a spot in the final, but said that she was delighted with how well she’d done.
Judge John Torode got rather emotional when the time came to announce the results – and viewers were very quick to notice:
Alex is standing next to Kenny, awaiting the verdict:
The final
In an online poll, most MasterChef viewers did not expect Kenny Tutt to win the final.
However, win he did and in true style. Metro reported:
The 36-year-old father of two is the 14th amateur cook to claim the prize – beating 55 other hopefuls from the current series to the title after seven weeks of culinary challenges.
He ultimately fought off competition from fellow finalists Nawamin Pinpathomrat and David Crichton to take the title.
And he did it by impressing Gregg Wallace and John Torode with a three-course meal which was described by the judges as ‘restaurant-style perfection’ and ‘make-my-heart-thump fantastic’.
Kenny wanted to present the judges with three courses that showed techniques he had learned at the restaurants where he and the contestants cooked during the series to reflect his MasterChef journey:
Kenny kicked things off with roast scallops, smoked cauliflower, shimeji mushroom and pancetta.
His main course was a Squab pigeon breast and bon-bon, heritage beetroot, baby turnip, spiced cherries, bread sauce and game jus, followed by a bitter chocolate, ale ice-cream, malt tuile and smoked caramel.
The judges were impressed, to say the least:
‘Today we watched Kenny coming of age,’ Gregg said of his win.
‘We have just witnessed Kenny having his best round on MasterChef and he saved it for the final. His starter was a stunningly beautiful dish, it was quality restaurant-style perfection and his main course was even better.’
John said:
I think Kenny’s journey has been extraordinary. He has come a long way. His food has got more and more refined and his main course was make-my-heart-thump fantastic!
Kenny said:
I have put my heart and soul into it and it’s been an absolute pleasure. It’s up there with the happiest days of my life!
More on Kenny and MasterChef tomorrow. This series was so memorable in so many ways.
The American actress Roseanne Barr has long been an advocate for children. Having worked in Hollywood for so long, she knows that many young stars have been molested and drugged.
She wants it stopped, which is one of the reasons she supports President Donald Trump.
On Passover — Saturday, March 31 — she tweeted:
President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over this world. Hundreds each month. He has broken up trafficking rings in high places everywhere. notice that. I disagree on some things, but give him benefit of doubt-4 now.
I happened to read it hours after it was posted. She did catch flak for it, and tweeted about Passover being synonymous with freedom from slavery. Unfortunately, she has taken both tweets down and is now focussing on her newly revived eponymous sitcom.
That day, CNN reported about that and an older Barr tweet in which she wanted to hear from Q because she had information to give (emphases mine):
“The Storm,” as Newsweek, Mediaite and others have explained, alleges that high-profile Democrats and other famous people are involved in child sex-trafficking rings, and that Trump is breaking them up and arresting those involved in their operation. The theory has been traced to the online message board 4Chan, where an anonymous user known as “QAnon,” or simply “Q,” has propagated the theory.
Uh, keep up, CNN. Q has been on 8chan for some time now.
Anyway:
Twitter users concerned about Barr’s involvement in such theories quickly pointed to past tweets by her that would further explain her involvement in the theory. In November, Barr tweeted, “Who is Q?” The Daily Beast reported. The actress added hours later, “tell Qanon to DM me in the next 24 hours.”
Of course, many media outlets picked up on this, but Q provided the CNN link (message 1061):
Many headlines were identical. How does that happen organically? It can’t. I posted about Mockingbird last week, pointing out that someone researched the word for March 26, which was ‘gamble‘.
Someone on 8chan grabbed a screenshot from March 31:
Roseanne’s eponymous — and highly popular sitcom — originally ran from 1988 to 1997. Nearly everyone I knew watched it. I tried, but it wasn’t my cuppa. My late widowed mother never watched it, either.
For those living outside of the United States, these tweets give you an idea of the show and how happy millions of viewers are to see it return:
The new series premiered on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 with such phenomenal ratings that it was renewed for another series on March 30! In the meantime, Trump rang to congratulate her:
Think about how many Americans Roseanne reaches on television (and Twitter). Her returning character is a Trump supporter. Connecting the dots, we can see how many minds she can influence. As a Tablet magazine article pointed out:
… Roseanne is the first decent argument that Donald Trump has had in the culture business since he got elected. It’s even more powerful coming from a comedian like Roseanne who, bless her soul, may be the single most important feminist symbol in America, relevant because she belongs not to the moneyed and privileged chattering vanguards but to the working class. Roseanne herself knows Trump, and appears to personally dislike him.
Wrong:
Continuing with the article:
But she’s given him this arguably undeserved gift because she also agrees with him on several key issues, like trade and political correctness. She also understands that Trump plugs in to the frustrations of millions of Americans who’ve been getting shafted for nearly three decades now with neither Democrats nor traditional Republicans doing much to help them out.
Almost for certain, the success of the new season of Roseanne will lead many bien pensants to call the comedian a crackpot or worse …
Indeed:
Here’s the exchange between Roseanne and the New York Times (Roseanne’s responses in bold):
Considering that Trump opposes many of the principles that you and Roseanne Conner have stood for, how can you support him?
No, he doesn’t, I don’t think he does. I don’t think so at all. I think he voices them quite well.
I’m thinking of abortion rights, same-sex marriage rights, labor protections —
He doesn’t oppose same-sex marriage.
He doesn’t favor it. He has not come out in favor of it.
He does. Yes, he does. He has said it several times, you know, that he’s not homophobic at all.
What about labor union protections and blue collar workers, and
What do you mean, the — oh, let’s not get into this.
[A representative for Ms. Barr interjected: “You don’t have to get into it. We can move on.”]
Well, you know, it’s —
Yes, let’s do.
A question people wonder about.
Well, I think working-class people were pissed off about Clinton and NAFTA, so let’s start there. That’s what broke all the unions and we lost all our jobs, so I think that’s a large part of why they voted for Trump because they didn’t want to see it continue, where our jobs are shipped away. So, it’s more, why did people support shipping our jobs away?
Now, let’s take this one stage further.
Although she won’t tweet about Q anymore, Big Media have plastered it all over television and the internet that Roseanne Barr knows about Q.
How long before Q goes mainstream?
For that, we have the unwitting media and the very much plugged-in Roseanne Barr to thank.
Expect millions more red pills to be dispensed this year, which will make The Storm that much easier for many Americans to understand once it breaks.
In closing, here’s a great quote from an 8channer:
If you told me in 1989 that Donald Trump, Roseanne Barr, and James Woods would save the world with what I knew as (NES/Atari260) hooked up to the phone line and a color TV…. I’d tell you that you were nuts.
yet here we are.
Indeed we are!
In November 2017, I wrote about the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, which ran from the 1950s until the mid-1970s.
In principle, it’s over. However, as with so many other CIA programmes — e.g. MK-Ultra — it probably got another name. MK-Ultra was the name for mind conditioning between the 1950s and 1970s. The Church Committee put an end to both MK-Ultra and Mockingbird.
Does anyone think that the CIA really stopped both of those? Or did they end in name only?
On Tuesday, March 27, 2018, an eagle-eyed contributor to the Q-related Great Awakening board on Reddit put together that morning’s headlines (photo below, courtesy of michaelst2256):
The media allegedly receive their talking points at 4 a.m. Operation Mockingbird is so called because it is the only bird to sing at night, specifically bachelors looking for a mate.
Try this with headlines you see and news broadcasts you hear. Nearly every media outlet runs with the same set of stories and buzzwords each day. I’ve seen this for years. It was good of this man to put together an image as proof.
On Monday, February 12, 2018, Q posted on what he/they term The Inner Circle (message 740):
The Inner Circle.
Mika Brzezinski.
Background.
Family/careers.
McLean, Virginia.
The age of tech has hurt their ability to hide/control.
Majority today were ‘born in’ to the circle.
Investigate those in front of the camera who scream the loudest.
These people are really stupid.
End is near.
The media cleanse/JFK.
Q
This is what Mika’s dad, Zbigniew, wanted to see happen to the United States (image courtesy of CBTS_Stream):
The late Zbiegniew Brzezinski was an advisor to Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. He was very much a globalist and elitist. Look at the title: ‘Tactician for the Establishment’.
Reading past the first highlighted section, notice how he leaves ordinary people out of the equation:
“some of the recent upheavals have been led by people who increasingly will have no role to play in the new technocratic society”, the unrest being a mere reaction to becoming “historically obsolete” … “merely the death rattle of the historical irrelevants.”
The next highlighted bit discusses ‘the requisite “new international system”.
The next paragraph begins with Zbig saying that a problem arises in ‘generating the political will necessary’ to implement a change in the way people live, socially and politically. Even worse, he calls on the nation to ‘sacrifice’ (what they are used to)!
He says that a national sacrifice (of a prosperous way of life):
would contribute a great deal to the restoration of optimism, for sacrifice generates optimism. Indulgent, miasmic and passive behavior stimulate pessimism.
What a load of old hogwash. I don’t remember people being unhappy in the West in 1977. We were all hopeful for the future, one that never came.
Yet, it seems as if this has been happening not only in the United States but in other Western — ‘advanced’ societies.
Enter Donald Trump, who becomes the leader of the Free World, who campaigned against what he terms:
the false song of globalism.
He is upsetting the cynical plan of the elites — and the stupid — who want him out of office.
Zbig’s daughter Mika — currently the co-presenter of MSNBC’s Morning Joe — has been in television news for the length of her career. She has had every material blessing in life. I remember hearing her say that she really enjoyed seeing the world with her dad, who would take the family with him on his official trips.
Mika used to like Donald Trump. There was a YouTube compilation, now deleted, of Donald Trump’s appearances on her shows. She used to fawn over him as if she were a little girl.
Then she changed during the 2016 campaign. So did her Morning Joe co-presenter Joe Scarborough.
In 2017, the two started pushing the narrative that President Donald Trump is mentally ill. Rush Limbaugh’s transcript of June 29, 2017 has more. Excerpts follow (emphases mine):
… from TheHill.com: “Morning Joe cohost: Trump May Be Mentally Ill — MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said Thursday President Trump is ‘not well,’ and even possibly ‘mentally ill.’”
So this June 8th, roughly three weeks ago. Brzezinski said, “I think he’s such a narcissist, it’s possible that he is mentally ill in a way. He’s not well. At the very least he’s not well.”
“Brzezinski explained that Trump may be narcissistic because ‘he does not believe the rules apply to him,’ adding that this belief likely led to a sort of ‘ignorance’ and applied it to the 2005 Access Hollywood tape recording in which Trump made lewd comments about women.”
Mika Brzezinski three weeks ago said, “And he’s so narcissistic he does not believe the rules apply to him. That’s where the ignorance label may apply because this is a man who says he can grab women anywhere because he’s famous. The point is, he feels he can say or do things different from the norm because he’s famous, because he’s a celebrity, because he has power.”
“Brzezinski’s comments come the same day former FBI Director James Comey is set to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee about his investigation into Russia.” I don’t know if you know this or not, that when Brzezinski and Scarborough announced their engagement — and that was fairly recently — that Trump offered to officiate, and Brzezinski said (raspberry) no. (imitating Mika) “I mean, if Jimmy Carter were in the White House like when my dad was there, but no. No. No way.”
Last summer during the presidential campaign and even during 2015, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were salivating all over Donald Trump. Trump appeared regularly on PMSNBC in the morning, and they loved him and they were sucking up like you can’t believe, and it was like three great friends. Everybody was mad at Mika and Joe for not being objective and acting like they were best buds sucking up to Trump. So something has gone wrong in paradise.
Rush doesn’t know what happened. That said, read the whole transcript, because it is an insider look at not only Mika and Joe but also President Trump. Fascinating.
However, going back further to nearly a year ago — February 22, 2017 — Mika got into a Twitterstorm with people accusing her of telling Americans what to think. She hotly denied it.
RealClearPolitics has the story, along with tweets and a transcript. Mika was angry that the American president was expressing his opinions, which half the nation deeply appreciates:
The hosts of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ comment on President Trump’s efforts to “undermine the media.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski commented Wednesday morning that she is upset to see President Trump has moved in on the media’s turf when it comes to the area of mind control.
“He is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts,” she said about Trump. “And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think.”
“And that, that is our job,” she noted, referring to the media.
Never forget that. I’ve been wanting to write about her for a year but couldn’t quite figure out what context to put it in to make a standalone post.
Q’s now given me that context.
Think about what Mika said. She denied it — but it’s there in the transcript!
In November 2017, CBS dumped Charlie Rose from CBS This Morning and NBC sacked Matt Lauer from Today.
It’s ironic that two sex pests hosted breakfast shows — designed for family viewing.
Both Rose and Lauer were long-time media legends. As such, they came with a high price tag.
On January 5, Fox News reported that NBC has since found better breakfast broadcasting ratings for less money. NBC is leading ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA) since Hoda Kotb has moved into Lauer’s spot on Today and Savannah Guthrie co-hosts with her:
Kotb will make roughly $18 million per year less than her disgraced male predecessor — reportedly earning $7 million per year while Lauer pulled in $25 million, according to the New York Post.
In fact, Kotb’s co-anchor Savannah Guthrie also is believed to earn around $7 million per year …
The Fox article focussed on another highly-paid personality, ABC’s GMA host, George Stephanopolous. He makes between $15 million and $18 million per year. His co-host Robin Roberts reportedly earns the same salary.
The Fox article points out:
With “GMA” now trailing “Today” in viewership, ABC will be under increased pressure to justify its hosts’ exorbitant salaries to ABC’s notoriously parsimonious owner, Disney.
A media analyst agrees:
Media analyst Jeff McCall told Fox News that NBC’s success in recent week proves that the high-paid Lauer wasn’t necessarily the reason people tuned in to the “Today” show. In Kotb, NBC may have a more popular host while saving the network roughly $18 million per year.
“I think a similar case could be made now for George Stephanopoulos at ‘GMA.’ The show can be successful whether George is on the set or not,” McCall said. “’GMA’ is really not a serious news program anyway, and George’s supposed D.C. insider persona just isn’t that essential for a show that wants to focus on fads, entertainment and emotion.”
A network insider agrees:
“He doesn’t bring much to the table anymore,” said an ABC insider, who noted that “’GMA’ covers barely any news. It’s not clear why he’s sitting there.”
Another insider:
called Stephanopoulos “merely a fig leaf for the ugly truth that ABC no longer covers news.” The insider pointed not only to “GMA’s” soft focus, but also to “World News Tonight” frequently leading with weather stories, “20/20” rarely covering news and “Nightline” – increasingly the last bastion for news coverage at ABC – now occupying the graveyard shift at 12:35 a.m. “when nobody watches.”
McCall, the media analyst, says that no one will ever mistake Stephanopoulos for a journalist. Indeed. The man President Donald Trump dubbed ‘Little George’ — the GMA desk had to be modified for him — rose to fame as Bill Clinton’s White House Director of Communications and as his senior adviser.
Ultimately, McCall says:
ABC, and all the morning shows for that matter, should stop throwing huge money at personalities and simply find relatable anchors who have some journalistic instincts and a sense of the nation’s mood.
Indeed.
Even if he were to get bumped from GMA, Stephanopoulos still has his roles as ABC’s chief news anchor and host of the Sunday morning news show, This Week.
What astounds me is the high salaries these people get. Why not take early retirement and spend time with family instead? What about volunteer work? Oh, I forgot: that would put them in touch with ordinary Americans. Never mind.
This is the best — and most concise — analysis of CBS ever done.
It comes from a contributor to Free Republic. This is a work of genius. Please (click if necessary and) watch:
Wow, this is the red pill of the day.
In December 2016, BBC Two broadcast a fascinating animal documentary called Wild Tales from the Village.
I’m not much on animal documentaries, but this is a must-see. Children will enjoy it, too.
Filmed in the French village of Puycelsi, the hour-long documentary looks at the everyday life of squirrels, dormice, hedgehogs, pigeons and more, starting in winter and ending the following autumn. You see a year’s worth of activity beautifully filmed. Here’s a short clip of two squirrels. Their love life is traced through the seasons:
Wild Tales from the Village was made by the BBC Natural History Unit and is narrated by Tchéky Karyo from The Missing.
It’s witty, charming and gentle. It might be shown on PBS in the US. If so, do watch or record for later. Budding film-makers will appreciate the lush slow-motion close-ups. This film deserves an award.
Puycelsi is one of Most Beautiful Villages of France. Les Plus Beaux Villages de France is an official designation, not a mere soi-disant marketing slogan.
Puycelsi is located in the Tarn region in southwestern France. It has an interesting history of destruction and rebirth.
It had inhabitants well before the Celts lived there between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC. The Celts named the settlement Celto Dun, a wooden fortress on a hill. The Romans came and named it Podium Celsium, raised platform. Part of the road that the Romans built is still visible and ramparts can be found in the nearby Grésigne Forest. Puycelsi — originally Puycelci — is probably Occitan, which would have been spoken in that region many centuries ago.
Benedictine monks from Aurillac built an abbey in Puycelsi in the 10th century. The earliest document relating to the village dates from 1180, involving the sale of the land by Abbé (Abbot) Pierre to Raymond V, Count of Toulouse. Raymond V saw the strategic significance of Puycelsi and his successors built a fortress and a château.
Regional wars took place. The Counts of Toulouse were able to fend off their enemies from the city of Albi and the Montfort family. In 1229, Raymond VII signed the Treaty of Meaux-Paris with King Louis IX. The treaty stated that Puycelsi’s château and fortifications had to be destroyed.
They were later re-erected. Puycelsi was under siege by enemies from nearby noble families in 1363 and again during the Hundred Years War, when 450 English troops tried to capture it. Incredibly, all of the attacks on the village failed.
The ramparts from the 14th century are now among Puycelsi’s tourist attractions as is the château built in the 15th century. Other attractions include the many buildings — including St-Corneille Church — from the 15th and 16th centuries.
Between 1586 and 1652, Puycelsi had four plague epidemics. The villagers decided to erect a chapel — St-Roch — to fend off illness. The lack of roads to the town no doubt contained the epidemics. Until 1850, there were only mule trails leading to the village. In fact, during the 18th century, Puycelsi women who worked as embroiderers walked 25 to 30 kilometres on foot to markets to sell their products.
The other artisan industries in the village were wool spinning and glass making. However, those ended in 1850, when a coal mine opened in the town of Carmaux. The young and able moved there and Puycelsi entered into gradual economic decline.
This was further exacerbated during the Great War, during which 55 young men died in duty by 1918. Puycelsi went into a long decline after that. People died. Their houses were left to stagnate. It turned into a ghost town and remained that way until the 1960s, when French couples looking for a second property began buying the houses and refurbishing them.
Today, nearly all the houses have been restored and Puycelsi is a popular destination for tourists. The English have a particular fondness for it. There is plenty to see. Cafés and artisan businesses are thriving.
Someone at the BBC knew what they were doing when they chose Puycelsi as the location for Wild Tales from the Village. Perhaps that someone has a holiday home there.
Last week, a media frenzy ensued over President Donald Trump’s words about North Korea.
Here is MSNBC’s Brian Williams on the subject. From August 9, 2017:
He actually does say at the beginning of that segment:
Our job, actually, tonight, Malcolm, is to scare people to death.
For those who do not know, Williams has told some whopping lies in the past. In fact, they were so outrageous that he was suspended from his job as NBC news anchor in 2015. Before his suspension, he was the 23rd most trusted person in America. Afterwards, he plummeted to the 835th spot.
Unfortunately, he was given his own show on sister channel MSNBC, The 11th Hour. (The video above is from that programme.) In February 2017, Williams had the gall to devote an entire segment on his show to President Trump’s ‘lying’. Amazing.
I’m writing this post on Tuesday, August 15. This is what has happened recently between the US, North Korea and China. China holds much control over North Korea, particularly in terms of trade and labour.
It’s also worth noting that the Korean War never came to an official end (emphases mine below):
The United States has remained technically at war with North Korea since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. The past six decades have been punctuated by periodic rises in antagonism and rhetoric that have always stopped short of a resumption of active hostilities.
On August 8, CNBC News reported that China would pay a heavy price for abiding by UN sanctions against North Korea:
China will pay the biggest price from the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea because of its close economic relationship with the country, but will always enforce the resolutions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
The United Nations Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Saturday that could slash its $3 billion annual export revenue by a third …
China has repeatedly said it is committed to enforcing increasingly tough U.N. resolutions on North Korea, though it has also said what it terms “normal” trade and ordinary North Koreans should not be affected.
The latest U.N. resolution bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. It also prohibits countries from increasing the numbers of North Korean laborers currently working abroad, bans new joint ventures with North Korea and any new investment in current joint ventures …
China appreciated comments earlier this month by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the United States does not seek to topple the North Korean government and would like dialogue with Pyongyang at some point, Wang added.
The United States does not seek regime change, the collapse of the regime, an accelerated reunification of the peninsula or an excuse to send the U.S. military into North Korea, Tillerson said.
That same day, North Korea threatened to launch missiles at Guam, a strategic US territory. CNBC News reported:
North Korea said on Wednesday it is “carefully examining” a plan to strike the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam with missiles, just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United States would be met with “fire and fury”.
A spokesman for the Korean People’s Army, in a statement carried by the North’s state-run KCNA news agency, said the strike plan will be “put into practice in a multi-current and consecutive way any moment” once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision.
In another statement citing a different military spokesman, North Korea also said it could carry out a pre-emptive operation if the United States showed signs of provocation …
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump told reporters at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
On Sunday, August 13, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson posted an op-ed, ‘We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account’, lucidly explaining what the US is doing and why. An excerpt follows:
The object of our peaceful pressure campaign is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea. We do not seek an excuse to garrison U.S. troops north of the Demilitarized Zone. We have no desire to inflict harm on the long-suffering North Korean people, who are distinct from the hostile regime in Pyongyang.
Our diplomatic approach is shared by many nations supporting our goals, including China, which has dominant economic leverage over Pyongyang. China is North Korea’s neighbor, sole treaty ally and main commercial partner. Chinese entities are, in one way or another, involved with roughly 90% of North Korean trade. This affords China an unparalleled opportunity to assert its influence with the regime. Recent statements by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as well as other regional and global voices, have made clear the international community holds one view regarding North Korea’s provocative and dangerous actions: They must stop. Pyongyang must stand down on those actions.
China has a strong incentive to pursue the same goals as the U.S. The North Korean regime’s actions and the prospect of nuclear proliferation or conflict threaten the economic, political and military security China has worked to build over decades. North Korea’s behavior further threatens China’s long-term interest in regional peace and stability. If China wishes to play a more active role in securing regional peace and stability—from which all of us, especially China, derive such great benefit—it must make the decision to exercise its decisive diplomatic and economic leverage over North Korea …
This 2017 Brookings Institution paper written by Fu Ying, a Chinese lady who has been part of China’s government for many years, namely in foreign affairs and ambassadorships, backs up Tillerson’s words about China’s desire to secure regional peace and stability.
On Monday, August 14, President Trump took action on trade with China to level the playing field for the United States.
The first of the three actions relates to intellectual property rights:
The People’s Republic of China has implemented laws, policies, and practices and has taken actions related to intellectual property, innovation, and technology that encourage the transfer of American technology and intellectual property to enterprises in China and otherwise affect American economic interests. This restricts U.S. exports, deprives U.S. citizens of the right to fair remuneration for their innovation, contributes to our trade deficit with respect to China, and undermines efforts to strengthen American manufacturing, services, and innovation.
For example, U.S. companies can be required to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies if they want to do business in China, resulting in Chinese companies forcibly acquiring U.S. intellectual property. Americans are the world’s most prolific innovators, creating the greatest technologies, products, and companies. They should not be forced or coerced to turn over the fruits of their labor.
The President is also standing strong against the theft of American IP, including defense-related technologies. The costs of intellectual property theft alone to the U.S. economy are estimated to be as high as $600 billion a year. Such thefts not only damage American companies, they also threaten our national security.
Consequences of China’s reported actions may include: lost or reduced U.S. sales, exports, and jobs in key technology sectors; loss of intellectual property or proprietary technology to Chinese companies; loss of competitive position in the marketplace or in business negotiations; and network security costs, legal fees, and other costs.
The president then issued a memorandum for the US trade representative. This is Section 2, allowing him to authorise an investigation into China’s practices with regard to US trade:
The United States Trade Representative shall determine, consistent with section 302(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2412(b)), whether to investigate any of China’s laws, policies, practices, or actions that may be unreasonable or discriminatory and that may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation, or technology development.
The third action was the issuance of a fact sheet with regard to American intellectual property and China. This fact is worth noting:
According to the IP Commission Report, China is estimated to be responsible for between 50 percent and 80 percent of all IP theft costs that harm the United States economy.
These actions met with praise by a variety of people — retired military officers, heads of defence companies, think tank experts and others. One of them, Professor Stefan Halper of the University of Cambridge, stated:
Since China joined the WTO in 2001, 2.4 million U.S. jobs have been lost and 60,000 U.S. manufacturing firms have been forced out of business. Entire regions of the country have been hollowed out. Intellectual property theft–70% by China–now costs the U.S. some $600 billion a year. A thorough review of this problem, and a rebalancing of the trade relationship, is urgent. The Administration is to be commended for initiating that today.
Later that day, North Korea backed down for now on the threats to launch missiles. Surprisingly, CNBC News was effusive:
After a weekend filled with a series of conciliatory statements from China, some of them downright surprising, the situation with North Korea seems to be less tense right now, which could be construed as a major win for the Trump team …
While these developments do not fully constitute a real solution to the potential threats North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs pose to the region and the world, everyone’s nervous meter seems to have gone down several notches …
Now if these sanctions hold and North Korea simply halts its ICBM launch tests, what many saw as some kind of massive fumble by the Trump team could easily turn into the administration’s biggest triumph of the year.
It will be a very easy narrative for President Trump and his aides to pursue if they make the point that the president’s tougher talk—that so many of his domestic critics condemned—seems to have moved China to finally do something meaningful to rein in North Korea.
By replacing President Trump’s threatening rhetoric with the more conciliatory and reasoned statements of Mattis and Tillerson, the U.S. has given up nothing. But those words may have forced China’s hand at long last.
All of this stems from a classic miscalculation by both Beijing and Pyongyang …
And Big Media, who fuelled the fire.
When will they learn?
You can’t stump the Trump!
