YouTube has the video What Ilhan Omar Actually Said About 9/11 w/ Abby Martin.

Jimmy Dore finally shows the context of Ilhan Omar’s remarks that have been edited out of almost every new report I have seen. I have heard comments about the lack of context, but those people have never provided the context they knew was missing (I have a vague recollection of seeing that context somewhere, but that was before I realized its significance.)

Try to remember the location of this video for rebutting the next attempt to smear Ilhan Omar that you run across.

NBC News has the article How Russian trolls use Facebook to influence Americans.

Russian trolls are creating false personas on social media who accumulate followings of real people in order to stage protests and create chaos. Watch more of Richard Engel’s reporting when “On Assignment” airs tonight at 9pm ET on MSNBC.

So, I have to ask myself after all the Russia hysteria that NBC and MSNBC has foisted on us, and after how the unmasking of their propaganda has hurt their ratings, would they go this far out on a limb to double down on their bet?

Originally, I doubted whether tactics like those reported in this story could possibly work. Then I thought about the fact that the Koch brothers actually founded the Tea Party movement, but I doubt than many members of that movement had any idea who founded it. Then I thought about what seems like successes by the CIA to use tactics like this in their latest incarnation of dirty tricks in Syria and Venezuela. Which makes me think of how the USA bragged in private about doing this stuff in the Ukraine. Which reminds me of the Contras in Nicaragua we created. Or the overthrow of Allende in Chile. Or the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953.

Not only could the Russians have done this to us in 2016, but it is also possible that our own CIA with their own knowledge of such techniques could make up a story like this about the Russians. Our CIA could also make up the evidence to prove the case. With the willingness of NBC and MSNBC to go along with this fake story for so long, the CIA wouldn’t even have to work very hard to make up stuff that NBC could “report”.

It is so hard to know if anyone is telling the truth. That is why a very healthy dose of skepticism is warranted for everything you think you know.

April 15, 2019

I have had a few thoughts about this over the last few days.

There are frequent reports of how police efforts to stop attacks involve setting up fake personas to lure would be perpetrators into a trap. It must work, if there are so many reports of its success. All those news stories can’t all be lies.

Then there is the story of the organization that claimed to expose Russian bots creating their own bots that pretended to be Russian.

Even The Dreaded New York Times took notice in this article Fake News as ‘Moral Imperative’? Democrats’ Alabama Move Hints at Ugly 2020

The Jimmy Dore Show has the episode Obama Rips Progressives As Purists – Here’s Why.

Obama rips progressives and takes a trip down memory lane, our memory’s a little bit different

Watch Obama destroy what little political legacy he has left.

TYT has the video Tulsi Gabbard On Net Neutrality, Julian Assange, And Party Unity.

Tulsi Gabbard is back on The Young Turks! Cenk Uygur and Tulsi Gabbard, hosts of The Conversation, break it down.

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Tulsi Gabbard

Cast: Cenk Uygur, Tulsi Gabbard

This is a very issue oriented discussion that people need to hear. It saddens me to know that there are people who have closed their ears to Tulsi for one reason or another, Despite whatever she may have said that you don’t like, she has so much to say that is important. If we refuse to listen to serious people who have serious things to say to us, we really are in trouble as a nation.

Chris Horton is the major organizer of the Worcester For Bernie group. He wrote an excellent email to the group about classism. He has give me permission to publish his email here. The addressee, Bobbie, is not the issue, but I didn’t want to edit out any of Chris’s words.

Bobbie, if you experience the Clark neighborhood as dangerous, I won’t try to deny your reality, although I believe that our campaign must not be afraid to go wherever the people are. I’ll walk you to your car when I get the chance. But I want to say something about “classism”, because I think understanding it is essential to our success.

Rebecca Solnit, in her book “Hope in the Dark” p 25, wrote “imagine the world as a theater. The acts of the powerful and the official occupy center stage. … The limelights there are so bright they blind you to the shadowy spaces around you … from the places that you have been instructed to ignore or rendered unable to see come the stories that change the world …”

Those of us who grew up with class privilege, with the help, expectations and pressure that pushed us into success in school, the good first jobs that go to those with a degree as a Certified Public Gentleman or Lady, and indoctrination in a whole raft of beliefs, ideas, stories and selected facts meant to support the system of privilege and power, are often blind to the reality of the regular working people around us. Blind to the urgency of their lives and the insanity of the positions they find themselves in, and most of all blind to the pain of being a working person in America, what one author called the “hidden injuries of class”. The pain of being looked down on, of having your ideas and perceptions discounted and undervalued, of having your intelligence doubted and having doors closed in your face, of being mistreated and disrespected by officials and police, of working too long and hard, living in fear of job loss and unemployment, unable to take off when our families need us and having to swallow our feelings and jump when the boss says jump. If this sounds a lot like the experience of racism, it is. For Black working people, women, immigrants there’s overlays of discrimination that can be devastating. For white working folk there’s the bitterness of the judgment that because of their skin color they should have done better, that their condition must be due somehow to their own failure.

If you want to understand how so many working people stayed home when their votes could have stopped Trump, how some basically decent people could even vote for him, the answer is I believe in their experience of politicians telling us pretty lies but not even seeing the agonizing economic and social reality of our lives, politicians who won’t take on the fight for – in Bernie’s words – anything that will cost the billionaire class serious money. This manipulation and blindness triggers a lifetime of the pain of being overlooked and thought a lesser person.

These are the people – of all races, colors and nationalities, urban and rural, men and women of all gender identities – who most hunger for Bernie’s message, and those of us with a background of class privilege, with our skill and inclination to take charge, need to include them in our leadership and meet them where they are, with open hearts and minds and the humility of accepting that they may see the reality of our world far more clearly than we do.

I hope that helps.

Sharon and I attended the Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee 2019 Fundraiser.

The Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee held its annual fundraiser for scholarship and political action on April 12th. The well=attended event brought in local Democrats, politicians and Sturbridge residents to enjoy the food, drink and lively conversation. Generous contributions helped refuel our scholarship account which is used each year to provide scholarship monies to deserving Tantasqua seniors. Awards will be made on Class Night on May 30th