The Aunt Jemima Backstory

With the ongoing protests about the insane level of police violence and racial injustice in the USA, suddenly Aunt Jemima is back in the news. A false meme instantly began pushing a complete BS story about Nancy Green all over social media.  Then I received the same meme in an email.

You can imagine that I, your humble fact-checking and “backstories” writer, just had to make this post.

What’s REALLY In The Mueller Report?

OK, so the Mueller Report is finally completed.  Will we see it?  Will Congress?  Or are we supposed to just take the word of an extreme right-wing political hack expressly placed into office by tRump to protect himself? “Coverup General” Barr “auditioned” for the roll by stating on record that a President could not, by definition, obstruct justice.  Because he IS the law?  What?  Nixon said something similar, and we know how that worked out.

At least 16 members of the tRump campaign have had over 100 contacts with at least one  hostile government who has hacked into our voting machines, electric grid, and voter rolls: Russia.  Mueller’s investigation led to the indictments of 34 people thus far, including eight Americans affiliated with the tRump campaign or administration, and three Russian companies.

And, with the Mercer family’s Cambridge Analytica sharing the most confidential and prized stolen Facebook data and polling information with the Russians — so the Russians could maximize their influence and install tRump — we can suspect that he was placed into our White House as an asset.  Yet, magically, Barr says “no collusion”.

Trump Team Russian Connections

UPDATE Mar 3 2017.  Washington Post lists the Trump people in the Russia web.

So many of Trump’s close inner circle of advisers and appointees have close ties with Russia, have met with Russian operatives and/or ambassador, or have lucrative business deals with Russian oligarchs, real estate or Rosnift (the Russian state owned oil company) that it’s becoming complex to keep score.  Below is an informal list, with very brief descriptions of each player.  (Strike-throughs indicate that this person has already resigned or been removed from their position.)  This list is expected to get longer as more information is revealed about the Trump camp.

The Matryoshka

I started doing this intense research for my next post, and came across this most excellent blog. You must read this to get a feel for all the Russia ties to tRump.

This American Carnage

This is merely a consolidation of other’s investigative work.  All credit to @Khanoisseur, @20committee, @Funder, @LouiseMensch, @pwnallthethings, the infamous Jester, and James S Henry.

A matryoshka doll ,  also known as a Russian nesting doll, or Russian doll, is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another.

Six degrees of separation is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world is six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare.

When attempting to navigate the web of Donald Trump’s business dealings and relationships with the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, and…

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Conscious Resistance

Thich Nhat Hanh has some good insights into conscious resistance.

“Mindfulness must be engaged  Once we see that something needs to be done, we must take action. Seeing and action go together. Otherwise, what is the point in seeing?”

“Nonviolence is not a set of techniques that you can learn with your intellect,” he goes on to say. “Nonviolent action arises from the compassion, lucidity and understanding you have within.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, At Home in the World

I AM Part of the Resistance (by Thomas J. Gray)

UPDATE: I’ve received notification by Thomas J. Gray that he is the author of this piece.  By the time I had seen it on facebook, it had been added to – so I am updating this post to more accurately reflect the original wording.  I liked much of what had been added, and I understand that in the passion of those first horrible days, many felt similar feelings and simply added their own parts.   This phrase was added:

The survival of our democracy and our way of life demands that we stand and resist. So I will Resist. I AM part of the Resistance, and I AM proud of it.

Here is the original, by Thomas J. Gray:

How GW Bush Stole the 2000 Election

Democratic elections have always been messy; democracy itself is inherently messy.  And there have probably always been shenanigans to be found in the process.  But the “election” of George W. Bush was probably one of the most egregious election scams we’d seen up until that time.  Bush lost the popular vote by 540,000 votes.  But things got really strange in Florida, where George’s brother, Jeb was Governor.

GOP Voter Suppression in Florida

Governor Jeb Bush instructed his Secretary of State Katherine Harris to purge the voting rolls of thousands of voters.

12,000 eligible voters – a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore – were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state’s electorate but 41 percent of those purged.. Rolling Stone

But that didn’t stop the voter suppression efforts.  The fact that voter suppression had been used to successfully “elect” a United States president was not lost on the Republican party.

Why Putin Wanted to Elect Trump

Hidden beneath all the chaos of the first three weeks of the Trump administration — the  questionably legal Executive Orders, the inept wording and rollout of the Muslim ban, the tweet ravings against actors and department stores, the insults against our intelligence community and our allies, the provocation of China, the assault on our environment,  and the laughable outright lies uttered by spokespeople — there continues the quietly rowing scandal of the Trump team’s close ties with Russia.

We can presently recognize several reasons why Putin wanted Trump as US President, but since the Director of the CIA has been replaced with a Trump loyalist, the investigation has probably officially been stopped and silenced.   However, many in the intelligence community do not trust the Trump administration because of their many ties to Russia,  and these agencies are providing the United States media information via internal leaks which may help us save democracy.  

17 different intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia manipulated our election to place Trump in the White House.  But why?

Our first rule always applies: Follow The Money.

But let’s dig deeper…initially, there appear to be three reasons: Territory, Oil Money & Sanctions, and Influence over & Disruption of the United States.

So for now, lets start by taking a brief look at the backstory of the USSR and it’s empire.

Trump Now Needs An Attack On US Soil

Donald Trump, a man who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 MILLION voters and yet has been installed in the White House, is a very unpopular person, both in the United States and world-wide.  There are huge protests at his radical executive orders,  massive resistance to his fringe far-right ideology, and challenges to his lies and policies in the public and in the courts.  This man is desperate to “win” rather than govern.  And he needs something to help him “win”.

Donald Trump needs a distraction, a way to unite people behind him, and a way to consolidate his power.  Donald Trump and the GOP NEED a terrorist attack on the United States.

Increasingly, more people are echoing the fear that this administration will orchestrate ( or allow) some type of “terrorist attack”.  We all certainly hope one does not happen; innocent people should not pay the ultimate price in an authoritarian regime’s grab for power.   There are known steps usually taken by authoritarian and fascist regimes to maximize their control in  any “event.”  So before such an event happens, we need to communicate these to as many people as we can:

• Be ready for the administration to call for arrest or internment of  certain people.
• Be aware of manipulation. Don’t fall for their political theater and hyper-patriotic rhetoric.
• Do your best to think critically and rationally. They’ll be counting on people to be frightened and angry.
• We’re going to need to stand together in unity.  The administration will try to divide us and turn us against one another.  Don’t let them.  We’ll need to be skeptical, caring, and level headed… and #Resist the power grab that would follow such an attack.

What benefit would this administration get from an attack?

Dominionists

Over the years I’ve written quite a few posts referencing Dominionists and the danger they pose to a secular, free democracy.

Many of these posts remained as “Drafts” unpublished.

Recently I posted one of these older drafts, entitled simply  “Dominionists” – but changed the title to be more specific.  Some of you have reported that links you’ve followed gave a 404.  Sorry about that!

That article is now located here.