Friday, June 9, 2017

Not Our President Kindle book on sale for 99 cents until June 16; falls from 2nd to 895th

In March, the Kindle book I wrote, Not Our President: The Movement against the Agenda of Tricky Don & Wingman Mike, rose to as high as second in one Amazon best-seller list and eighth on another.

But now the highest is 895th. Yikes! Guess it's true that fame is fleeting.

The book is now on sale for 99 cents until June 16, 2017. Get more details here.

If you live in the UK, the page is here. 

The book includes details on the Comey-Trump-Prince-Giuliani scam in which the three latter men reportedly conspired to force Comey to release the infamous email investigation letter about a week before the November election that helped get Trump in office. 

Erik Prince, a former CIA asset and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, was highly involved as were right-wing news site Breitbart, close Trump aide Rudy Giuliani, and Trump himself, according to reports. New York police officers and FBI agents working out of the Big Apple allegedly aided the plot. 

Comey was concerned that officers would leak that there were new emails that could be related to Clinton or aides found on the computer of discredited pol Anthony Weiner, and he would risk being accused of misleading Congress before an election in a way that unduly influenced the election. But by releasing the letter, Comey was accused by Clinton and others of throwing the election to Trump. So it appeared he was damned by one side if he did and damned by the other if he didn’t. 

This is what led to the scene we are now watching in which Comey and others are releasing damaging information about Trump's doings.  

Read about this and more in Not Our President.





Monday, May 29, 2017

Jackson Thoreau 10, Curt Schilling 0: That time I destroyed Republican wannabe senator Schilling on Twitter

Curt Schilling, the former MLB pitcher who was fired as a TV analyst with ESPN for his insensitive social media posts, has said he wants to run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in 2018. 
He better improve his debate skills, if a recent Twitter exchange is any indication.
Schilling, who was part of two Boston Red Sox teams that won the World Series, took offense to Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones saying that Red Sox fans yelled racist slurs at him during a game in Boston on May 1. Schilling has publicly said several times that he thinks Jones is lying, though he was not at the stadium that night and offers no proof. Jones, one of MLB’s stars who led the U.S. team to its first World Baseball Classic Gold Medal in March 2017, has been outspoken against racism and other issues.
About a week after the Jones incident, Schilling reiterated his Jones-is-a-liar stance by posting a link to a rant on the right-wing site, American Thinker. Schilling writes, “For all you liberal race baiters out there,” a term he uses to pretty much denigrate anyone who disagrees with Schilling that Jones is lying.  
The American Thinker ranter even writes, “Time after time over the last 30 years, national outrage has been stirred over an incident that proved white racism – only to turn out to be a lie.” He provides no evidence that occurred “time after time.” He mentioned the usual incidents that are mentioned by right-wingers, but provides no studies on the matter. An actual study by the Southern Poverty Law Center of hate incidents that occurred shortly after last November’s election found that 1 percent to 2 percent of people lied about the incidents.
Schilling pinned that tweet to the top of his Twitter feed, which usually means he thinks it is the most important one he has issued lately. If you want to get a response from someone like Schilling, it is best to respond to the pinned tweet rather than a recent one. Or do both, if you have time.
So after reading a story about the Portland incident in which two men who came to the aid of Muslim women being harassed were stabbed to death by the mentally-unstable assailant, I posted something on Schilling’s pinned tweet early Sunday. 
To read the entire exchange, go to the Daily Kos post on this here.

Speaking of the Portland incident, Schilling and others on the right claim that the accused killer is a supporter of Bernie Sanders. He is actually a virulently anti-Hillary Clinton, mentally unstable proclaimed “Nihilist” who was even kicked out of a Trump meeting. While tweeting some pro-Sanders stuff and liking Sanders’ page during the primaries , he more recently tweeted, “Thank God for Trump over Hillary. I take the fast poison over the slow." 
So he apparently likes Trump more than Hillary, because the former will destroy the country faster in his view. As a Nihilist, he wants to see the social order destroyed, which is similar to Trump senior adviser and Breitbart founding member Stephen Bannon’s views. The killer even liked Breitbart’s Facebook page at one point, as well as Sanders’ page. 
While he claimed to vote for Sanders in the primaries, if he is harassing Muslim women and stabbing people, he is not a real “Sanders lover.” Sanders advocated nonviolence and tolerance towards Muslims. So it’s debatable that he even voted for Sanders. If he did, it was as a protest vote or one to confuse people and mess with actual Sanders supporters, as well as register his opposition to Clinton.
If you study Nixon’s dirty tricks tactics, such diversions were a staple of CREEP’s campaigns. This is from my book, Not Our President, about Nixon’s dirty tricks:
[For the 1972 campaign,] Nixon and his team discussed kidnapping and beating protesters, donating to black Rep. Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972, to help cause dissension among Democrats, and wiretapping the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidates Edmund Muskie and George McGovern. They eventually only carried out the wiretaps and burglaries, while lobbying for tax audits of potential presidential opponents and others. The IRS reportedly targeted more than 1,000 liberal groups and 4,000 individuals.
In addition, Nixon’s team did other dubious acts to disrupt the campaign of Muskie, who Nixon reportedly feared the most as an opponent. Nixon’s campaign bribed Muskie’s chauffeur $1,000 a month to photograph key campaign documents and deliver copies. Surrogates produced ‘fake news’ releases on counterfeit Muskie stationery accusing Democratic candidates Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson of sexual scandals to make it appear like Muskie was planting the stories.
In Florida, they had a naked young woman run through Muskie’s hotel claiming to be in love with him. Nixon people posed as Muskie supporters to wake up voters in the middle of the night. Muskie ended up coming in a distant fourth in the Florida primary behind George Wallace, Humphrey, and Jackson. 
In Wisconsin, the Nixon dirty tricksters handed out fake fliers about a free lunch supposedly organized by Muskie in which they could meet Coretta Scott King. The potential supporters blamed Muskie after they showed up to find there was no lunch or King. Nixon’s squad even did petty things like steal and throw away the shoes that Muskie aides left in hotel hallways to be polished. McGovern won that primary with Muskie again a distant fourth.
With Muskie neutralized, Patrick Buchanan, a Nixon speechwriter and adviser who later ran for president as a Republican, recommended that Republicans focus on helping McGovern get the nomination since he was viewed as one of the weaker opponents. Once McGovern secured it, Buchanan advised that McGovern be labeled an extremist and the White House tapes burned. 

Nixon also focused on Edward Kennedy, who would not run for president until 1980, and urged plumbers to obtain more dirt, including tapes and photographs of Kennedy in sexually compromising positions. Nixon even ordered campaign literature from McGovern to be planted in the apartment of Arthur Bremer, who shot Wallace in May 1972, in an attempt to implicate the Democrats. Nixon also had the IRS investigate Wallace’s brother to pressure Wallace into running as a Democrat, rather than independent. 

 So you see, the Republicans have engaged in dirty tricks for a long time to discredit Democrats. “Fake news” was occurring at least as long ago as 1972, probably even back to the late 18th century campaigns in one form or another. While it goes the other way at times, the Dem tricks have not been as numerous or blatant in modern times. Some say this accused killer could have been paid by a right-wing benefactor to engage in such diversionary techniques and discredit Democrats. That is entirely possible.

Enter shills like Schilling, who picks up on the narrative that the accused Portland killer is another “racist liberal.” That fits in with Schilling’s agenda and, ultimately, the Republican far-right agenda. 

Monday, March 13, 2017

Resistance to Trump continues to grow

While many rightly deplore the current U.S. political leadership, it's really kind of exciting to live in these times. We're witnessing each day a movement that continues to grow against Trump, one that crosses traditional political boundaries. 

For instance, several key Republican senators have backed off from doing away with the ACA entirely. Why? Not because they suddenly saw the light that the act helps millions obtain needed health coverage. But because constituents are demanding they keep the act intact, while making a few revisions. Town hall meetings in a lot of Republican congressional districts have resembled World Wrestling events, with some cowardly representatives ducking out of the meetings, rather than taking the heat. 

Another interesting development is the growth of groups that have formed to resist Trump. I counted at least 50 new ones that have cropped up since last November, especially if you count Facebook groups, which largely operate online. If you are on Twitter, check out Trump Regrets, tweets from former supporters who rethink their approval.

The following are some of the more interesting Trump resistance sites and groups [I list a lot more in my new book, Not Our President, available on Amazon]:

Indivisible: A practical guide for resisting the Trump agenda
Washington, D.C.
Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen. Many techniques were carried out by the Tea Party movement. Can download copy free.

The Trump Survival Guide
New York City
www.thetrumpsurvivalguide.com
Book released in January 2017 by Gene Stone, author of The Bush Survival Bible, among others. Details steps to take around issues such as health care, civil rights, women’s rights, the environment, international affairs and more. Provides history and analysis of what Trump might do, with a plan of action and resources.

What Do We Do Now
New York City
www.amazon.com/WHAT-WE-DO-NOW-Standing/dp/1612196594
Book released in January 2017, edited by Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians. Collection of essays by leading progressives like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Robert Reich, and Paul Krugman, divided into sections such as civil liberties, racial justice, immigration, climate change, religious freedom, and media.

Oh Crap! What Now? Survival Guide
Brea, CA
www.theworldisaterribleplace.com/ohcrap
Crowd-sourced, online collection of health, legal and safety plans and resources to help people combat and deal with the TrumPence regime.

Resistance Manual
www.resistancemanual.org
A Wiki-based collective resource that provides information to resist Trump’s agenda. Project of Stay Woke, which seeks to end police targeting of minorities and racism.

What Do I Do About Trump?
Volunteer team providing online resources and ways to get involved in opposing TrumPence. Founders have backgrounds in public policy, advocacy, education, nonprofit management, business, law, and information science, located nationwide.

Not Up For Grabs
Portland, OR
www.not-up-for-grabs.org
Political education and activism resistance site run by writer Carisa Miller.

Wall of Us
Offers four quick weekly acts of resistance via email. Founded by Amelia Miazad and Kara Ganter.

The Resistance Party
Toronto
www.theresistanceparty.org
Grassroots movement that aims to become the action arm of the Democratic Party. 

Facebook Resistance Sites
www.facebook.com/TrumpResistanceMovement
www.facebook.com/groups/ImpeachDonaldTrump
www.facebook.com/groups/869495886512301
Numerous Facebook pages have formed to build resistance against Trump. Here are a few.

Twitter Resistance Feeds
Twitter has also unearthed a legion of anti-Trump feeds.

Trump Regrets
twitter.com/trump_regrets
Great Twitter feed full of Trump voters who regret their choice. Don’t troll them, make them feel welcome to join the resistance against Trump.

Sleeping Giants
Targets advertisers of Breitbart with boycotts and letter campaigns. More than 300 companies have pulled ads.

Democratic Coalition Against Trump
Hoboken, N.J.
www.democraticcoalition.org
Previously Keep America Great PAC, switched to make Trump White House accountable. Includes an app that tells what companies to boycott.

Weekly Resistance
www.weekly-resistance.online
Provides weekly actions to resist Trump.

FearNothing and TheResistance Action Resources
Boynton Beach, FL
davidyankovich.com /2017/01/04/fearnothing-and-theresistance-action-resources
Good list of resources to take action by David Yankovich.

99 Ways to Fight Trump
Beaverton, OR
99waystofighttrump.com
Good ideas for action on this list.

Rogan’s List
Traverse City, MI
roganslist.blogspot.com
Retired librarian Susan Rogan provides updated list on actions to take.

Harry Potter’s Guide to Resisting Evil
San Diego
catholicmoraltheology.com/harry-potters-guide-to-resisting-evil
Tips from Emily Reimer-Barry, chair of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, based on the Harry Potter books.

Michael Moore
New York City
michaelmoore.com
The progressive filmmaker gives regular tips on his Facebook page on how to deal with Trump.

Robert Reich
Berkeley, CA
robertreich.org
The former U.S. Labor Secretary often includes tips on resisting Trump in his blog and other writings.  He also cofounded Inequality Media [www.inequalitymedia.org], a nonprofit film and video organization that highlights income and wealth inequality.

Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century
New Haven, CT
www.facebook.com/timothy.david.snyder/posts/1206636702716110
Yale history professor Timothy Snyder gives 20 tips on combating a rise in authoritarian regimes.

Not Our President: The Movement against the Agenda of Tricky Don & Wingman Mike
Washington, D.C.
jackthor44.blogspot.com
Book and blog that details what people are doing to resist the TrumPence administration by longtime progressive writer Jack Thor. Includes more ideas and tips to resist, resources.

It’s Time to Fight
San Francisco
itstimetofight.weebly.com
Site that provides information on current issues and plans of attack. Webmaster has worked in politics for 16 years.

ToppleBush.com
Howell, MI
www.topplebush.com
Started during Bush presidency, now focuses on resisting Trump. Keeping domain name due to the goodwill built since 2003.


Tuesday, February 28, 2017

New Book Details Resistance Movement against Trump; Publisher offers book free for five days starting March 1

When the Republicans stole the White House for at least the second time in 16 years in 2016, many more people rose up against this latest injustice than in 2000. They hit the streets in protests and rallies, organized social media opposition campaigns, wrote guides on how to effectively oppose Republicans at town hall meetings, and took similar actions.

Not Our President: The Movement against the Agenda of Tricky Don & Wingman Mike covers their story. The roughly 55,000-word book written by progressive journalist Jack Thor is being offered by Amazon Digital Services here for just $2.99. It will also be free for five days starting March 1.

The book details what people such as former congressional staffer Ezra Levin and librarian Rebecca McCorkindale are doing to oppose the harmful policies of Donald Trump and Michael Pence, and make a difference to restore confidence and integrity to the U.S. political system. It spins the story forward with recommendations on how readers can aid in this movement, including a list of about 300 resources to check.

“The development of a grassroots movement to oppose the Trump administration is a very important story,” said Jack Thor, 57, a journalist, photographer, and activist for more than three decades. “Many people who were not really involved in politics before have become involved, largely through social media. I know I stepped up my involvement again after the Republicans stole another election.

“This is just too much,” continued Thor. “I was mad as hell about how Bush and the Republicans stole the White House in 2000, but for them to do this again is really a travesty. This is not a petty burglary we’re talking about. This is the theft of one of the most cherished institutions our country has, done right before all of our own eyes once again. And we just let them get away with it. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Tom Paine, and others are probably still rolling over in their graves. If you can fix an election like this, you can fix almost anything.”

While many – including Trump − harped on the snafu at the Oscars in February 26 that named the wrong best picture, Thor was struck more by how much more care goes into making sure that the correct Academy Award winner was named than the correct U.S. president was named. A February 27 story in The Guardian details how PriceWaterhouseCoopers officials not only count votes of the 7,000 Academy members electronically, but they do paper and manual hand recounts.

Meanwhile, many states do not even have paper ballots to recount anymore for president. And, as Thor’s book shows, Republicans blocked hand recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania late in 2016, the same way they blocked hand recounts in Florida in 2000. “Americans care more about getting an overly glorified award right than they do about the president,” Thor charged. “There should be a law that every state in which the vote is within 3 percentage points has to go through a manual, hand recount. But even when there are legal challenges, Republicans block more careful recounts. More than 1 million votes were not even counted, due to Republican voter suppression tactics, in 2016. If it takes a few weeks to count these votes, we should do it. We should get the right damned president.”

Backed up with hundreds of footnotes and sources that are linked to Internet pages, Not Our President starts by outlining how Trump and the Republicans employed questionable actions to win key swing states. Those included purging legal voters from the rolls, using state offices for political purposes, giving voters misleading instructions, approving confusing ballots, questionable decisions that favored Republicans by partisan judges, hacking into Democrats’ email systems by Russians, the conspiracy by the FBI to release the “October Surprise,” and more.

The book goes on to detail what organizations like the ACLU, social media activists, and politicians like U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., are doing to restore confidence in the White House and U.S. electoral system. It includes recommendations for further action from people like Michael Moore, Robert Reich, Angela Davis, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr.

While the subject matter is serious, Thor injects humor throughout the book, such as his suggestion that Saturday Night Live portray Steve Bannon as Peter Pan and Trump as Tinker Bell since Bannon particularly relishes the darker portrayals. Some compare Trump to Hitler, which Thor believes is too dark. Nixon is a better comparison, thus the Tricky Don moniker. 

Jack Thor’s past books include Born to Cheat: How Bush, Cheney, Rove & Co. Broke the Rules - From the Sandlot to the White House [2007], The Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush & Other Things the Bush Administration Doesn’t Want You to Know [2004], and We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House [2002].

His essays and columns have appeared in numerous ezines and blogs, including Oped News, Daily Kos, Smirking Chimp, Democrats.com, American Politics Journal, Online Journal, Buzzflash, AlterNet, BushWatch, Liberal Slant, MikeHersh.com, Information Clearinghouse, Znet, Dream Forge, Moderate Independent, IndyMedia, America Held Hostile, Global Free Press, and Democratic Underground.

Conservative talk show host Rush “Fat Bastard” Limbaugh once called him a “liar” on his show, probably in reference to Thor calling Limbaugh “the biggest lying, Dominican Republic-underaged-girl-screwing sack of shit that ever got on the air.” Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once said he should suffer and initiated an investigation of him after he wrote about alleged homosexual activity of Trump’s energy czar. Thor once debated G. Gordon Liddy about the First Amendment and other issues on the Watergate crook’s radio show while driving his car 80 miles an hour through rural Tennessee.

Some stories he has broken include Dick Cheney continuing to live in his Texas home after he claimed to have moved to Wyoming and selling the home to a big Republican donor who already had a mansion in the same neighborhood. He was the last writer to interview Margie Schoedinger, a Texas woman who filed a sexual assault lawsuit against George W. Bush and died via a gunshot wound that was ruled a suicide a few months later.

When conservatives claimed that not even liberal types would defend actor Chevy Chase calling Bush a “dumb fuck” in public, Thor did just that, showing how Bush and Cheney had used profanity in public repeatedly. His reports on Arnold Schwarznegger – who he has come to actually admire in an odd way − and others were so revealing that the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and others called to follow up.

Thor has also strayed into political activism at times. In 2003, he organized a petition drive to oust former hard right-winger Tom DeLay from office and presented copies of the petition signed by several thousand fellow Americans to the offices of leaders of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Others did likewise, and the efforts helped lead to DeLay’s ouster and conviction.

In addition, Thor has had photographs and poetry published. After the latest Republican theft, he shortened his name from “Jackson Thoreau” to “Jack Thor” to make it flashier and more pointed. The name is a pseudonym taken from a combination of a late dog and one of his favorite writers.

“In this way, my dog still lives to do some noble, important deeds,” Thor said. “Thoreau was a writer who did a lot more than just write about problems in society in the 1800s; he worked for solutions. He helped start a school that did not practice corporal punishment and took students on field trips. He was active in the anti-slavery, transcendental, environmental, and other movements of his day. If Thoreau was alive today, I think he would have written books and columns like I have. I think he would be on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressors.”

The author can be contacted through email at jacksonthor@gmail.com . His twitter feed is twitter.com/jackthor44 and Facebook page is www.facebook.com/jackthor44.

Table of Contents of Not Our President

Introduction
Chapter One: How We Got Into This Mess
Chapter Two: What We Are Up Against
Chapter Three: ‘It’s Now or Never’
Chapter Four: The Battle on Social Media
Chapter Five: Inauguration Fireworks
Chapter Six: Nixon 2.0
Chapter Seven: Government by Extreme Executive Order
Chapter Eight: What We Can Continue To Do About It
Conclusion
Appendix: Notes, Resources, Acknowledgments, About the Author

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Trump as Tricky Don: Why it's better to compare Trump to Nixon than that German dictator

One aspect that makes Trump so difficult to combat is that he has little sense of ethics or fairness. While he is not book-smart and seems to have some type of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, he can be cunning to the point of cruel.

That was seen in his first week in office, when he signed a dozen orders or memorandas to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, allow the Dakota Access pipeline, curb abortion funding, eradicate environmental regulations, build the wall along Mexico, and expand the definition of who was a criminal who could be deported. He also ordered all federal employees to stop sending out information on social media and not speak with the media or Congress.

The flurry of executive orders and memos had opponents reeling to respond. Trump signed the order on abortion the day after the historic Women’s March, surrounded by only men in his office, in a show that seemed vindictive. His calls to study whether illegal immigrants voted in the millions against him appeared more targeted to divert much of the media’s attention away from the orders and the Russia scandal.

“What he’s going to do at a policy level is much, much worse than most liberals understand,” CNN commentator VanJones told Rolling Stone. “It's going to be a counter-revolution from above, against everything we care about – from climate to women's rights, to Social Security, to health care. At the same time, he will do a lot of things, optically, to throw the media off and to surprise people and delight people and entertain people. You're going to have a lot of bread-and-circuses from Trump.” 


It won’t do much good to try to portray Trump as a “cartoon character of…Hitleresque hatemonger,” Jones said. That “means that all he has to do is be slightly better than that and everybody's shocked.” He preferred to think of him as “Tricky Dick on steroids.” 


I know many compare Trump to the German dictator, and there are some similarities, especially when he calls for a Muslim ban and registry. But I still tend to agree with Jones that it's better to stick to the Nixon comparison. 


Call him Tricky Don.


Tricky Don works since Trump is slippery, even cunning to the point of being evil. But he hasn't gone Hitlerean evil yet, so bringing up the latter will just cause people who have reserves about Trump to automatically discount your criticism. The Nazi age is too dark to most people to contemplate, while the Nixon age was more a political crime, one more people are willing to consider. And it's important to get as many people questioning Trump's legitimacy as possible.


While some called Tricky Don’s war on the press worse than any modern-day president, he still had a ways to go to reach the level of Tricky Dick Nixon, wrote Stanford communications professor James T.Hamilton.  Nixon often bypassed reporters with live TV events and publicly criticized them as “biased elites” and “the enemy,” Hamilton wrote. But he went beyond that to use the IRS, CIA, and FBI against journalists, as well as other illegal tactics.


Nixon spent hours each day studying media reports and counseling aides on how to manipulate the press, wrote author and University of Maryland journalism professor MarkFeldstein in Poisoning the Press. He told aides it was “good politics for us to kick the press around.” Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler called all TV networks “anti-Nixon” and threatened they would “pay for that, sooner or later.”


Sound familiar?


Nixon and his henchmen went beyond verbal attacks. Federal prosecutors proposed a law making it a felony for reporters to use unauthorized sources in their stories. Nixon ordered aides to “pick the twenty most vicious Washington reporters” and leak false reports to make them look bad. “Just kill the sons of bitches,” he reportedly said. First on that list was columnist Jack Anderson, who took questionable actions himself like infer that Spiro Agnew’s son was gay to attack his father. The journalists were targeted with tax audits, lawsuits, and criminal prosecution, Feldstein wrote. Some experienced suspicious home burglaries in which nothing was stolen but their notes were reviewed. 


Nixon also approved illegal wiretaps to listen to their phone conversations, and his Justice Department took three TV networks to court on antitrust charges. In addition, Nixon requested that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover write “a run down on the homosexuals known and suspected in the Washington press corps,” so he could use that information against them. 


So look for such retaliation to occur against the press today. And be ready to support the media and call out Tricky Don and dirty-trickster plumbers like Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.


Like Tricky Don, Nixon could be bigoted himself, calling Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg “the Jew” and even aide Henry Kissinger “my Jew boy.” And like Trump, those who hoped that Nixon would temper his vindictiveness when he ascended to the White House were wrong.


Trump's campaign slogans were even similar to Nixon's, noted Jacob Thomas YantWhile Nixon said he was aligned with the "non-shouters and non-demonstrators," Trump often said in his campaign that “the silent majority stands with Trump." Nixon claimed to have a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War, similar to Trump’s hidden plan to “defeat ISIS.” Nixon’s “Bring Us Together” slogan in 1968 was similar to what Trump said when he continues to claim he is going to “bring our country together.”

Furthermore, Nixon began the “War on Drugs” in 1971 that led to African-Americans being incarcerated for minor drug offenses, while most whites were “given much more leniency for similar offenses,” Yant wrote. Trump seeks to pit groups against each other in a similar way as Nixon.

Eventually, we need to get in the public's mind that Trump is worse than Nixon and should be driven from office, as Nixon was. We have a nonviolent, legal blueprint to remove him from office since it was done some 43 years ago. We should use it to our advantage.





Monday, January 23, 2017

So now we know what those white areas were at Trump's inauguration

All right, Spicer, I admit you're right. There were more people at Trump's #inauguration than it looked. 

So this is what all those white areas were... 


#justtryingtohelp #AlternativeFacts #SpicerFacts #AltFacts #Trumpfacts

Women's March Largest Demonstration in U.S. History; Trump sets record for most rejections by women in one day

Just a day after Trump gave another campaign speech in front of a relatively sparse crowd on the National Mall, many more people flooded D.C. for the Women's March on Washington.

While organizers said about one million people were in D.C., another 3 million or so marched in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and smaller cities across the country. Then another roughly 2 million in other countries staged demonstrations against Trump, making it about 6 million participants worldwide. It was a record by far for a one-day protest in the United States.  

As some said, Trump also set a record for a man being rejected by the most women in a single day.

“This coordinated day of global action surpassed all of our expectations,” said Women’s March on Washington co-founder and co-chair Bob Bland. "Together, we demonstrated the capacity of women working together in unity to create transformational change."

Bland announced a 100-day action plan to work on issues such as civil rights, healthcare, and environmental justice. The campaign will announce timely actions in rolling fashion, such as sending postcards to representatives and helping participants build local action networks.

More details of the 100-day action are here.

The first action is to send postcards to Senators on important issues; printable cards can be found here. 


I attended the last part of the march in D.C. I had planned to take my daughter, who wanted to attend since her best friend went, but she wasn't feeling well. I also joined some protests the previous day in D.C., after running into anarchists who were smashing windows and confronting police, who responded by throwing flash grenades into the crowd. It was an.... interesting time, to say the least. I was sorry not to witness a masked anarchist type punch white nationalist Richard Spencer as he gave an interview in person; that even got play on Saturday Night Live.

My report on that day is both on Oped News here and Buzzfeed here [yes, the same outfit Trump called a "failing pile of garbage"]. 

Finally, I have to address Trump's claim that more than a million people were on the mall during his divisive campaign speech. I drove through D.C. both Friday and Saturday about the same time. Traffic was much worse Saturday, signifying more people in D.C. Photos of Trump's crowd showed it was significantly less than Obama's. I was at Obama's inauguration in 2009; we had to stand WAY past the Washington Monument near the WWII Memorial. There were still people behind us all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. Trump's crowd didn't even reach the Washington Monument before thinning out. #altfacts #alternativefacts #spicerfacts #trumpfacts

Look at these photos. The first was taken at the exact moment Obama spoke in 2009, the next when Trump spoke. You can see a lot of white spaces in Trump's. Obama's crowd is shown here going way beyond the Washington Monument.



Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Trump, Gingrich piss on First Amendment; Is this a step in a Trump-Putin plan to control the planet?

Trump and his aides like Gingrich are taking more steps to "break" the press by getting more right-wing bloggers and ilk from sites like Breitbart at those press conferences. This Media Matters story here lends more details on their campaign, which should concern all who care about the First Amendment.
Trump's alignment with Putin make crackdowns on the media more alarming than what Nixon, Reagan or Bush did against the press since the latter Republicans were not aligning themselves with a dictator who has imprisoned critics and seen numerous murders of journalists on his watch. A year ago, Trump maintained it was never proven that Putin was involved in those killings. Linda Qiu with PolitiFact wrote that it was true no one had proven Putin ordered assassinations of journalists and dissidents but stated, “Experts say the political climate in Russia is responsible for the high volume of journalist murders in the country.”
Moreover, Russia ranked 176th out of 199 countries worldwide in press freedom, according to an annual report released by D.C.-based Freedom House in 2016. Countries such as Zimbabwe, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and Venezuela rated higher. The U.S. was 28th, with nations like Costa Rica and New Zealand ahead. Norway rated first and North Korea last.
In 2015, Putin “expanded efforts to tightly control the news for domestic audiences and manipulate the information landscapes of several geopolitically significant neighbors, including Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic and Central Asian states,” reported Freedom House. “Domestically, the Russian government systemic control and prison terms for journalists reoriented the focus of its misinformation machine from Ukraine to Putin’s newest foreign exploit, the military intervention in Syria.” 
Putin also increasingly targeted online bloggers and accused the U.S. and European nation of worsening Russia’s economic woes, the report said. Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev said the media there was intimidated to the point that Putin’s press conferences mostly contained “softball questions,” besides one token critic who would be “drowned in a copious amount of bullshit.” Kovalev called U.S. journalists his “doomed colleagues” after Trump’s first press conference in months in January 2017 in which he berated CNN as “fake news” and fielded softball questions from the likes of Breitbart representatives.
Granted that Obama widely criticized Fox, though he steered clear from calling them "fake news" just because they presented something in a way he didn't appreciate. There is a difference in the tone and viciousness with how Trump and aides like Gingrich talk about how they need to "break" the press, compared to Obama's complaints. And there is a big difference in that Obama never aligned himself so closely with a dictator like Putin. Obama met with dictators, but he has criticized crackdowns on journalists in Asia, though many said he could be more forceful with such criticism. China is even worse than Russia in press freedom, ranking 186th.
The Trump-Putin alignment leads one to imagine all sorts of horrors down the road, including U.S. media conferences becoming like Russian ones and American journalists being killed suspiciously. It doesn't look good.
Here is a link to a petition to tell White House correspondents to stand up to Trump's media crackdowns.

Monday, January 16, 2017

A special MLK Day video for President Obama, comparison to Trump

Happy MLK Day! 
I did this video in honor of MLK Day and to remind us of what we are losing come Jan. 20. Attending the historic inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama in 2009 with my then-young kids, ex-wife, and a friend was one of the best experiences of my life.

There were some two million of us from all races and backgrounds crammed onto the National Mall, most watching on large screens. Despite the cold and being in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, caused by the Republicans, we were united in hope. We didn't feel the cold or the effects of the recession on that day. Obama gave us hope, and he has delivered despite being blocked by Republicans on almost everything.

Obama was not perfect, of course, but even many Trump supporters will one day see him as a far better president than their candidate. As he leaves and Trump takes over, we must continue to resist. We must remember what Dr. King once said, "Never be afraid to do what's right."

This video is on Facebook here and on YouTube here. It is only for personal use. Feel free to share.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The real facts on Obama's record

As President Obama gives his farewell address, let's look at some of the things he has done in his eight years:

1) Preserved Medicare and Social Security from Republicans who want to do away with those.

2) Implemented a flawed health care act that has resulted in millions obtaining insurance. It needs tweaking - such as doing away with the individual mandate penalty. But keep the act.

3) Led us out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Economy is booming, though not perfect. Unemployment is significantly down from 2009. And he has done that while spending at a slower rate than previous presidents, including both Bush’s, Clinton, Reagan and LBJ. See this Cato report.

4) Kept us out of a major war, though there are regional battles.

5) Caught Bin Laden. 

6) Answered his critics with skill and grace, despite having no help from Republicans in Congress who blocked most of his moves. 

7) To those who say Obama went on vacation too much – he was on vacation less than half the number of days that George W. Bush was. CBS Mark Knoller tracks this: Obama 217 vacation days, W. Bush 533 days, Clinton 174 days, Reagan 390.

8) To those who say Obama did nothing to stem illegal immigration, under his administration almost 3 million illegal immigrants have been deported. That’s almost 1 million more than the number during W. Bush’s eight years.

A survey by the Brookings Institute of presidential scholars - people who actually study the lives of the presidents rather than base their opinions on politics - rated Obama as the 18th best in history among 43 presidents. That’s slightly above average. 

Republicans thought that as soon as Obama stepped foot inside the White House he was going to take away their guns and other freedoms, declare martial law, put everyone in FEMA camps, bomb South Carolina, give African-Americans whatever they wanted, and turn the country into a socialist haven.

None of that has happened. Tell me, what rights did you enjoy under Bush that have been taken away by Obama? About the only thing that he took away that Bush didn't was Osama Bin Laden.

More on Obama’s record is at this FactCheck sitea nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It’s much more objective and truthful than all the hatred and lies being spread by the right-wing. 



More proof that Trump conspired with Putin to fix the 2016 election


Now we know more about why Trump is so aligned with Russia to the point of being compromised. For those saying Buzzfeed should not release this document, I say look at what Republican-friendly sites have released for decades. 

Remember all the mostly unsubstantiated reports about Bill Clinton? Remember how Trump made a career for four years hounding Obama about his birthplace using mostly unsubstantiated reports?
The allegation about Trump paying prostitutes to use the bathroom on a bed in Moscow where the Obamas once slept is receiving much of the media coverage and Twitter reaction. 
But there are other allegations even more of a concern than that, such as how the Trump team supposedly made a deal with the Russians to not talk about Russian intervention in the Ukraine during the campaign in exchange for leaking email messages about Clinton and the DNC. In other words, Trump and Putin did conspire to release those emails about Clinton and the DNC.

If you can't see the full report on Buzzfeed, I put the report on my own google drive here 

It's well worth reading.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Trump cares more about his old TV show than doing job in White House; list of inauguration protests planned

Less than two weeks to inauguration day, and Trump continues to care more about TV shows than preparing for his actual job in the White House:





This is an interesting tweet of Trump's from 2014 - he doesn't like Blackish, whose star won a Golden Globe Sunday:




Speaking of Trump’s inauguration day, several groups plan rallies and marches. The Answer Coalition is meeting as early as 7 a.m. on January 20 at Freedom Plaza, 1355 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. That is a few blocks from the White House. 
The D.C. Welcoming Committee, a collective of activists and out-of-work gravediggers, plans disruptive protests and other actions throughout inauguration day. Participants will meet as early as 9 a.m. at McPherson Square, 15th St. NW and K St.
Then on January 21, more marches in D.C., New York City, London, and other cities are planned to support equality and civil rights. In D.C., people are meeting near the U.S. Capitol for the Women’s March on Washington, where more than 200,000 people are expected. They are gathering near the United Nations headquarters for the Women’s March on New York City.
In San Francisco, participants plan to gather on the Golden Gate Bridge on January 20 for BridgeTogether Golden Gate. Occupy groups, which grew out of the progressive Occupy Wall Street movement that formed in 2011, plan rallies in Seattle, D.C.,Chicago, Boston, and other cities through inauguration weekend.
Marijuana activists plan to hand out some 4,200 joints in D.C. January 20 and light up 4 minutes and 20 seconds into Trump's speech. I'm not a pot smoker personally, but maybe this is a way to help bridge divisions between the political left and right. You can't argue too fiercely when you're toking, right? Just don't smoke and drive, kids.
The National Action Network, whose founders include Rev. Al Sharpton, is organizing a rally for civil rights and other issues in D.C. on January 14. The event is expected to be attended by thousands. In January 2001, Al Sharpton organized a “Shadow Inauguration” in D.C. Speakers included civil rights legends Walter Fauntroy and Dick Gregory.
If you attend any protests, especially on January 20, watch out for both uniformed and plainclothes police. During Bush’s 2001 inauguration, an army of police and legal roadblocks made it as hard as possible for protesters.