I'm Dreaming of an Orange Christmas

Christmas is Carnage!

Cohen's plea today, marked the first time that Trump and his private business dealings in Moscow were named in open court as part of Mueller's investigation into Russia's ties to the Trump campaign.
(I can’t wait to see what happens to Manafort now that he fucked himself over and broke his plea deal.)
Explains Donny's panic attack after a phone call while attending the WH Christmas Tree lighting ceremony last night.
 But word is that Whittaker may have tipped Trump off last night what was going to happen this morning.

This explains the manic tweets about the “Witch Hunt.” 
Stand by for the firing of Mueller during Christmas recess...
MSNBC  reported that Trump is now contradicting himself and saying he was allowed to do business during the campaign. Thus corroborating Cohen. Trump has previously said he had no business dealings during his campaign/presidency.
Considering how he was the RNC deputy finance chair and Hannity's lawyer, the entire right wing political sphere must be shitting their pants on what Cohen may have given up
I think tomorrow is shaping up to be a pretty big Friday. There has been so much so fast this week. Mueller was clearly waiting for Trump to submit his take home test before he started laying down the justice hammer.
100% guarantee Trump lied about Trump Tower Moscow in his written response
"What communication did you have with Michael D. Cohen, Felix Sater and others, including foreign nationals, about Russian real estate developments during the campaign?
President Trump was asked about the Trump Tower Moscow project among a list of written questions by special counsel Robert Mueller, sources familiar with the president’s responses tell @ABC News. 
No details about his response.
So we have;

Corsi admits to a bunch of stuff last night.

Deutsche Bank HQ got raided for the Panama Papers

Now Michael Cohen is pleading guilty to this and still cooperating with the Special Counsel?

What should not be forgotten is the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who died in a car bomb for publishing the Panama papers. 

Trump's tax lawyer in Chicago was raided today. 

Bad day for Trump.

I am writing on the fly, enjoy your evening. 

Wow, just wow.

Missionary Man

One of the most amazing and baffling things that happened over the Thanksgiving holiday was the news of a self-proclaimed adventurer, Jesus freak, John Chau and his delusional invasion of what he called "Satan's Last Stronghold" the North Sentinel Island, home to an indigenous tribe of people, which is off limits and illegal to enter, yet this did not stop John Chau.
The pathogens he could have exposed the people who lived on this island to, was of no concern to him. He offered gifts of scissors and safety pins and a soccer ball, along with his germs.
This seriously insane act, really was reminiscent of the Puritans and their pathogens wiping out Native American tribes and invading Native American land.
No one in Europe wanted these religious freaks. So what is the legacy of all this?
Someone like John Chau.
When I first heard about this selfish act, I went on John Chau's Instagram and his insta was pretty much a gold mine.
This dude lead an itinerant lifestyle, he lived in a cabin in Whiskeytown, California, on federal park land, which was probably pretty cheap, if not free. However, that avenue of an abode was cut off from him because of the Carr Fire. I don't know if not having this place to go back to made this guy go for broke, I do wonder if it was a factor?
John Chau was a graduate of Oral Roberts University. He majored in sports science. He was a volunteer and a director of a non-profit called More Than A Game, teaching soccer to refugee children in Tulsa Oklahoma.. (One of his 'gifts" to the Sentinelese was a soccer ball) I don't know where the money came from to teach refugee's soccer? But it was enough to send Chau on trips to Iraq and South Africa teaching Syrian and Iraq children the game.
That's just great, we ruin their countries with our senseless wars and then these christian non-profit's go in and play soccer with the kids who's lives have been destroyed.
So, it's little wonder to me that John Chau may have been trying to co-opt the Sentinelese people into some kind of 'Kingdom of Jesus" outreach program, (doesn't sound too much like Jim Jones, right?) where he could be director of sports or some such, for the Sentinelese soccer team he would develop. Because, Jesus said so.
What I tried to find out was, who was supporting this mission? Was there a branch of the Christian community providing financing and any other support for John Chau to take his bible and safety pins to Sentinel Island?
The only organization I could find was All Nations, a Kansas City based organization, who, "helped train Chau, discussed the risks with him and sent him on the mission, to support him in his "life's calling,"
The woman's name is Mary Ho, she is also responsible for this debacle and should be accountable. "He wanted to have a long-term relationship, and if possible, to be accepted by them and live amongst them," she said."
So, just to get this straight, the religious zealot named John Chau, was aided and abetted by Mary Ho and All Nations.
Yet no one has stepped up to say take responsibility in this senseless tragedy.
Why?
Why do these so-called Christian people who are all about sin and redemption, not take some responsibility for this, when they did everything they could to sustain and encourage this lunacy? These bible thumpers, who have taken over the US, with their restrictions on abortion and birth control, trying to dictate what people can and can't do with their lives. They have nothing to say about a dude who could have wiped out an entire tribe of indigenous people who wanted no part of this.
What I suspect, especially because of the silence from any Christian authority, is that had Chau succeeded with his plan to establish the "kingdom", that they would have co-opted the Sentinelese people into  a non profit, NGO scheme, as employment opportunities for people like Chau and his ilk, or exploit any resources they may have. This is what happens when we invade a country or an island in the name of religion or "democracy"

Notice the crosses on the peoples uniforms. 

But the Sentinelese people weren't having it. They had been exposed almost a century before, to a degenerate white dude named Portman, who treated them like specimens and was doing creepy things like measuring their penis.' They obviously remember this experience and want nothing to do with whitey or his Jesus bible B.S.
Just to be clear, Chau had been planning to take advantage of these people since 2016, it's all there in his Instagram and his trips to the Andaman Islands, which is where the fisherman he bribed to take him to North Sentinel Island, came from. This wasn't anything new. Now all kinds of resources are being used to get back Chau's remains. Probably more than anything to try and stop any pathogens from contaminating the people of Sentinel Island. All Nations should be charged for this and there should also be criminal charges.
The last I heard from the Boston Globe's Twitter feed is the Sentinelese are having a confrontation with authorities trying to recover Chau's body. I just hope this can be resolved peacefully.
Weirdly, over Thanksgiving, people were talking about this incident, but no one was making a connection to our own country and what happened to the Native American people living here. It's like no one even knows how Thanksgiving came to be? All they know is there's going to be turkey.
So it was with some surprise that I opened up The New York Times and read an article that had many similarities to the one I wrote on my blog years ago called Thankstaking
It was called Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving is wrong
Thanks for finally catching up. Maybe I am ahead of my time?
And just for some fun, here's the Eurythmics, Missionary Man;

My Grandpop and The Hundredth Anniversary of World War I

Cpl. James Greenlee
314th Inf., 79th Division

My grandfather, James Greenlee, fought in WWI.
 He served with distinction during the Meuse-Argonne campaign He was gassed during the Meuse action, he was commended as a runner. Running messages for his commanding officer.
Even though I knew my grandfather to be a brave man, who fought for his country,
I can't figure out with any kind of logic, why the US was involved in that war?
I don't think there are many Americans that know a damn thing about how we got into WWI, let  alone all the other wars we have fought.
We can pretty much say that World War I started the U.S Military Industrial Complex that has taken over our economy today.
If a war like WWI started today, I wonder if they could start a draft like the one we had then?
What I remember being taught about the first World War was that Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo.
That's right, some royal dude was murdered and we actually fought over that.
Makes perfect sense.. Not!
It seems that there was this telegram from the German Foreign Secretary to Mexico, offering to help Mexico get back some territory lost in the Mexican American War.
If Mexico would join up with Germany, against the U.S.
Then German U-boats started sinking U.S. ships.
After that we had to make "the world safe for democracy."
We still think we are good at that, I guess.
The wars continue.
Many countries at this time were resource poor and if they could invade and get other countries resources, so much the better.
One of  the direct consequence from WW1 was the carving up of the Middle East.
 People don't talk about it much, but it's true
It's all about oil, resources and it's still happening today.

My Grandpop, second from the left, crouching.

I doubt my Grandpop knew the insidious reasons the war even started, but I am sure he saw so many lives that were lost.
 I am also sure it affected him deeply.
World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars.
 It didn't.
The U.S., one hundred years later, still bombing, we are at war with at least seven countries.
Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Niger, Iraq, Syria, Yemen.
How did that even happen?
Did even one candidate running for office in this years midterm election even suggest stopping these wars, the American people have no say in?
I don't know of any candidates running on an anti war platform.
War has been normalized in this country, to the point that most people don't even think about it.
 If it's not on CNN or Fox News, then it doesn't exist.
There's nothing new there.
World War I was the first war that propaganda paid a real role.

Did my Grandpa see this?

Lucky for us, the pointy helmet Germans never made it to our shores.
I don't know what kind of a logistical nightmare it would have been?
 Weirdly enough, there was a plan to do exactly that in 1898. But they never had a Navy large enough to invade New York City or Boston,  no one took it seriously.
It was hypothetical, so that poster, is a bit off putting considering how unlikely it was.
I guess the best they could do was the telegram to try and get Mexico to join them and then sink some of our ships.
What's even stranger, is that Germany was so hell bent they were sinking boats, like the Housatonic (sounds Teutonic, but nevermind)
Anyway. the Housatonic stopped after 2 warning shots from the U-boat, The Captain from the Housatonic boarded the U-Boat and was told they were going to torpedo the boat anyway.
The sailors on board had 2 hours to abandon ship which they then got into lifeboats. They were towed by the German submarine until a British boat came along.
Really? This sounds like something out of a Peter Sellers movie. Bizarre.
 I guess my Grandpa would have known about this incident.
It's weird because they were attacking cruise ships and civilian cargo ships, it's not like they were engaging with war vessels. The Lusitania was carrying war munitions, also the Lusitania was advised to stay out of the way of the German U Boats, but ignored this advice.
It's like a  submarine going after a Carnival Cruise ship, carrying bombs and guns. I don't know what is worse?
I guess the crazy Keiser telling you to torpedo these non military ships wasn't enough to make anyone say, oh hell no!. But hey, looking at who we have for president. anything is possible.
War is so weird. I never understood it.

I am pretty sure my grandfather saw this poster.
He was one of seven children and my great grandfather was a baker.
They weren't wealthy and were probably poor.
So, he decided he'd go over there.
I was young when he passed away, on the night Kennedy was elected, he slipped on some ice and he passed away.
I have one memory of him on a ladder, painting my parents house. (He was a house painter after the war) He came down from that ladder and scooped me up in his arms.
I was only two years old, but I remember how much I adored him.
My Grandpop and his brother Charles, a paramedic in France. Both in a war that was supposed to end all wars.
They did their best and were good and honorable men.
I only wish the war they fought in really was the end of all war.
Peace.