Celeveland.com has the article Ex-Rep. Dennis Kucinich discusses his latest trip to Syria and meeting with President Bashar al-Assad.

Kucinich made the trip with current U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat, their spouses, and representatives of Cleveland’s Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services, which paid for the visit.

The fact that Kucinich was also on the trip with Tulsi Gabbard should make it harder for the liars in Washington, D.C. to try to marginalize Tulsi Gabbard. She is one smart person, and one who knows how to fight the Washington bubble establishment.

The more well-known real progressives who band together, the more likely they are to be able to finally change things.

YouTube has the video Journalist Eva Bartlett: “I’m Back From Syria. The Media Is Lying To You!”

No matter which side of this story you choose to believe, if any, it seems clear that one side is telling lies that seem hard to imagine anyone having the nerve to tell.

Salon has the article Don’t think of a rampaging elephant: Linguist George Lakoff explains how the Democrats helped elect Trump.

This is an eye opening article even if you know about George Lakoff and have read some of his books.

I’ll pick out one point in this article to discuss here, but there is so much more to learn by reading the whole article. He is talking about how progressives should conduct their politics in the age of Trump.

how to talk about these things, how to frame their message and not make mistakes and not help the other side, and to do it always from the point of view of what’s positive. Not attacking Trump implicitly, but by saying what’s good for the public and why it’s good and then, by the way, this goes against everything that Trump is doing. But the main thing is to frame it in terms of public good.

This matches a lot of what I have been saying of late. Stop focusing on how bad Trump is, and start presenting a positive image of how you want to reshape the world. You can’t sell a political idea, or a politician, simply by focusing on what is wrong with the alternative. You have to have a positive vision to sell. The way I have put it is that you cannot beat a plan with no-plan of your own.

This may be a lesson I have learned from prior readings of Lakoff, or maybe it is something I have figured out. If you don’t like the other guy’s message, stop repeating it. This just reinforces the other guy’s message. Playing video clips of the other guy delivering his message in his own words is a self-defeating strategy. You have a limited amount of time when you manage to get someone’s attention. Don’t waste it by repeating the other guy’s message.

When you are presenting your own vision, you are using your time wisely. Let the viewer use her or his own time to compare your vision against what they know about the other guy’s vision. If they don’t know what the other guy’s vision is, why spend your time telling them?

One thing I learned from this article is the meaning of George Lakoff’s 2004 book, “Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate,” When I read it, I thought the elephant represented the Republican Party, or maybe the big object sitting in your midst that you were trying to ignore. Lakoff explained it in a way that I finally understood.

There is a YouTube video of CNN Exclusive: Rep. Gabbard on meeting with Assad.

Published on Jan 25, 2017

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard just returned from a secret trip to Syria and told Jake Tapper in a CNN Exclusive said any reconciliation would have to involve Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

Compare this to the deceptively edited version that CNN wants you to see in the clip mentioned in my previous post Tulsi Gabbard Knows More About Syria Than You Do.

The unedited version more closely corrresponds to the critique of the interview described in my previous post.

Newslogue has the article Tulsi Gabbard Knows More About Syria Than You Do (those are not my words). Here is the introduction to the article.

I have had just about enough of weak, sleazy, cowardly male pundits monologuing at war veteran and Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard about war and Syria. The western press has been completely absent from the conflict in Syria, probably as much out of cowardice as a need for plausible deniability when they get caught lying to to their audiences, so since there are no boots on the ground there doing the job that the press used to do, Gabbard went there herself to discover the truth about what’s happening. She is being rewarded for her selfless act of courage by being painted as a liar and a traitor by the pro-establishment American media, whose job she was generous enough to do.

I am sure Tulsi and many of the rest of us knew that the establishment would stop at nothing to silence her or get us to believe she is wrong and they are right. We also have to stop at nothing to prevent the corporate media from spreading lies for our government. We have to spread the truth 10 times as often as they spread the lies.

Here is the deceptively edited version from CNN, Gabbard says she met with Assad on Syria trip. See my subsequent post CNN Exclusive: Rep. Gabbard on meeting with Assad to see the whole interview, and judge for yourself.

Here is an interview with Gabbard and Tapper that Mox News published in December 2016.

The Independent has the article President Donald Trump to publish weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants.

The US President’s sweeping new executive order on immigration, which he signed on the fifth day of his presidency, includes a paragraph mandating the Secretary for Homeland Security to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens” in the US.

Maybe we can publish a weekly list of crimes committed by Donald Trump.

I was first introduced to this article by a Facebook Post from Steven D Grumbine.

Some of the commenters wanted to know what was wrong with trying to tell us about crimes that people commit. My response was the following:

He isn’t going to publish the level of crime among immigrants and compare it to the level of crime among non-immigrants. He is going to publish a one-sided story to convince you of something that is not true. That is what we are complaining about.

Some commenters want to know when we are going to stop people from coming to our house (country) and staying beyond their welcome. I had two responses to this general idea.

Don’t sign trade agreements, overthrow governments, and don’t encourage drug wars that encourage people to flee to the “safety” of the USA.

Also, I asked the following question:

How long are we going to continue destroying our neighbors’ homes so that they have to seek refuge with us?

Fortune has the article China Says It Will Lead the World Economy If Western Nations Stand Down.

A top Chinese diplomat has said that China is ready to lead the world economy if other nations should retreat from globalization.

That pretty much sums up the entire value of this Fortune article, For the rest of the article, Fortune manages to read between the lines on both sides of this story to misunderstand both sides. Here is just one example.

In Beijing, Zhang told reporters at the briefing that China would continue to pursue its own Asia-Pacific regional free trade deal independent of the TPP, reports the Journal. He also touted the country’s trillion-dollar One Belt, One Road trade initiative, which would connect China with countries along the ancient Silk Road trade route.

Is Fortune trying to imply that the TPP was something that China would have supported? One of our reasons for creating TPP was to fight with China. It certainly wasn’t going to be good for them, at the same time it managed not to be good for us 99%. Not all global trade policies are created equal. Depending on what is in the policy, it can either be good for the world, or it can be very bad for most people in the world. TPP fell into the second category. It would be better to have called it the rich people’s protection act (RPP).

Naked Capitalism has the article Johnson: Elites Eying the Exits Signals America’s Crisis.

In the introduction Yves Smith wrote the following:

Yves here. A former private equity partner mentioned the New Yorker story on 0.1% bunkering. He noticed how they focused on the private jet pilot as a point of vulnerability, that he might fly his family out and leave them stranded. So the approach is to assure him that his relatives get seats on the plane too.

I am light years away from the hedge fund managers, but some of what they are getting is starting to slop over on me. I may not be rich, but I am getting nervous about my “good fortune”.

Naked Capitalism has the article Bill Black: Not 4 Sale – Why the Corrupt, Worker-Hating New Democrats Must Be Purged.

Large corporations provided the bulk of PPI’s funding, but like the DLC it was also heavily funded by the Bradley Foundation. Harry Bradley, along with the Koch brothers’ father, was a charter member of the John Birch Society. That means they were off-the-charts looney and ultra-right wing. Mr. Bradley’s passion was his hatred for organized labor. He was a notorious for his employment discrimination against blacks and women. At the time the DLC and the PPI formed, the Bradley Foundation was the Nation’s most destructive funder of ultra-right wing efforts to influence policy. Today, it is the force behind Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s war against organized labor. The Nation’s most virulent and effective enemy of organized labor funded the New Democrats. The New Democrats knew what they were choosing to lie down with and they knew exactly what they were signaling to organized labor about their hostility to unions and disdain for the working class.

I used to laugh at the Tea Party members who did not realize that their organization was created with Koch Brothers’ funding. I guess I won’t be laughing anymore.

The article is too long to read it all, but I did notice one failure. I commented on the article with the following:

You keep mentioning Elizabeth Warren without mentioning that she is no longer a threat to the DLC nor the DNC. She has been bought out and completely gone over to the other side. How could you not notice what she did in support of Hillary Clinton? She is now supporting Trump’s cabinet nominees like Ben Carson for HUD. She says she would not want to stand in Carson’s way even knowing that he is totally incompetent to lead HUD. As if a vote from a Senate Democrat is needed for him to be approved.

I then read some of the other comments. I noticed that some of them had pointed out the same flaw in the article about claiming that Elizabeth Warren was still on our side.

Here is an email that I received from Tulsi Gabbard about her fact finding mission to Syria.

Here is a link to Tulsi Email for you to read outside the frame above.

This must be the official post of her comments,