Russian dictator  Vladimir Putin, the former KGB operative, knows how to deal with dissent. He crushes it either through rigged elections or using the State apparatus.

Alexei Navalny courageously returned to Russia after his near fatal poisoning with a nerve agent. An attack which most observers was done at the direction of Putin.

Putin will put down the dissent by any means necessary. No wonder the deposed Trump likes Putin. These are tactics the ex-President employed, ultimately without success, in his futile attempt to stay in power.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 1.23.2021

Police have rounded up more than 3,000 people at rallies across the country in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Over 1,000 people were detained in Moscow alone.

Protests demanding the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny erupted in cities across Russia on Saturday, with a demonstration in Moscow extending into the evening.

More than 3,000 people, including a politician, have been detained, according to the OVD-Info protest monitor. Around 90 rallies took place in over 60 cities across the country.

Of those, at least 1,167 people were detained in the capital Moscow and over 460 in St Petersburg.

Ahead of the demonstrations, police warned that they would be “immediately suppressed.”

Navalny was arrested on his return to Russia from Germany on January 17, following a near-fatal poisoning with a nerve agent.

He was handed a 30-day jail term for violating the terms of a suspended sentence he was given in 2014 on fraud charges. The 44-year-old says the charges are politically motivated.

Thousands of people gathered in central Moscow to march from central Pushkin Square to the Kremlin. The Interior Ministry estimated 4,000 people attended. Several news agencies reported much higher figures, putting the total number of protesters between 20,000 and 40,000.

DW’s Russia correspondent Emily Sherwin reported that despite the arrests, protesters in Moscow remained on the streets well into the evening.

“They’re calling for Navalny to be freed and chanting ‘We are the power here!’ — determined in the face of riot police,” she said.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-police-detain-thousands-at-pro-navalny-protests/a-56321592

Threatening to assassinate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a US Capitol Police officer in support of the deposed Trump.

We know one who should be in jail. Trump.

To rephrase Trump’s campaign slogan of 2016 with the correct gender, “Lock him up!!”

CNN 1.23.2021

The Justice Department revealed new charges against a Texas man who allegedly participated in the Capitol attack and posted online death threats against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a US Capitol Police officer.

Clint Broden, a lawyer for Garrett Miller, told CNN Saturday that his client “certainly regrets what he did.”

“He did it in support of former President (Donald) Trump, but regrets his actions. He has the support of his family, and a lot of the comments, as viewed in context, are really sort of misguided political hyperbole. Given the political divide these days, there is a lot of hyperbole,” Broden said.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1359541/download

Lauren Boebert is the 34 year old Congresswoman from Rifle, Colorado who got her claim to fame when she was featured on Nightline in 2014.

When the newly minted Congresswoman entered the House this month she wanted to bring her Glock onto the floor of the Chamber. Predictably, Boebert is one of the 140 Republicans who would not certify President Biden as the winner following the aborted Coup D’Etat on January 6.

The attached video is mind boggling, disturbing and, in a perverse way Entertaining

It’s about time these nihilist Neo Nazi insurrectionists are brought to heel.

This subversion of the rule of law began with the Klan after the Civil War.

These extreme Neo Nazis have run amok for decades with no legal consequences 

The ex President actively encouraged and abetted the Neo Nazi mobs for years culminating in the foiled Coup D’etat.

The real threat comes from the Neo Nazis and their chief enabler. Trump

Excerpted from The New  York Times 1.22.2021

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Friday ordered the director of national intelligence to work with the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the threat from domestic violent extremism, a sign of how seriously the new administration is taking the issue in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The new order on domestic extremism, and growing interest on Capitol Hill, could also push the intelligence agencies and law enforcement to look for ways to work more closely on tracking and countering extremist groups in the country.

The growing concern about these groups is also reflected in the tough stances judges have taken with those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.

“Far-right, white supremacist extremism, nurtured on online platforms, has become one of the most dangerous threats to our nation,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The request comes only days after Avril D. Haines, the newly installed director of national intelligence, pledged to members of Congress during her confirmation hearing that she would help with just such an assessment.

The new intelligence work began as people charged in the mob attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump continued to appear in court. On Friday, a federal magistrate judge in Dayton, Ohio ordered Donovan Crowl, an accused rioter linked to the far-right group the Oath Keepers, detained until his trial, citing the safety of the community.

Mr. Crowl, the suspect denied bail in Ohio, was part of a group dressed in paramilitary equipment that approached the Capitol “in an organized and practiced fashion” to move their way to the front of the crowd, according to court papers.

In a New Yorker article about the riot, Mr. Crowl, a 50-year-old Ohio resident, acknowledged that he had entered the Capitol but claimed that he had traveled to Washington to “do security” for “V.I.P.s” whom he did not name and that his intentions had been peaceful. But court filings made clear that prosecutors did not believe that.

“This defendant, through force and violence, attempted to disrupt the process that our country’s been engaged in for over 200 years,” said the prosecutor, Nicholas Dingeldein, during the hearing on Friday. “He’s been preparing for literal war because that’s what this organization, the Oath Keepers, has told him he has to do.”

The judge, Sharon L. Ovington, noted that Mr. Crowl had a criminal record and said she saw “clear and convincing evidence” that there were no conditions that would reasonably assure Mr. Crowl’s appearance in court or the safety of the community.

Domestic terrorism and violent groups are a thorny issue for intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., which are limited to tracking attempts by foreign governments or organizations to influence extremist groups in America. The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security have more leeway to investigate domestic groups and homegrown terrorism.

The New York congresswoman put the inane Texas blowhard Ted Cruz in his place.

This is the guy who had the nerve to show up at the inaugural after spinning the lies which proceeded the failed January 6 Coup D’Etat. After the Coup was smashed he still voted to deny President Biden his election victory.

Daily Beast 1.21.2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Nice tweet Sen. Cruz! Quick question: do you also believe the Geneva Convention was about the views of the citizens of Geneva?”

After months of vomiting up falsehoods about election fraud to please Donald Trump, it might have been a good idea for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to just quieten down for a little while. But, true to form, he’s bumbled into the Biden era with some fresh nonsense. In a clueless attack on President Joe Biden’s decision to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement—the flagship international treaty to tackle the climate crisis—Cruz failed to wrap his head around why Biden backs a deal signed in France. Paraphrasing an old Trump line, he wrote: “By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.” His misunderstanding, whether it was wilful or not, has been treated with the derision it deserves.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-brutally-mocks-ted-cruz-for-searingly-dumb-paris-climate-agreement-tweet?ref=home?ref=home

Now that Trump is gone in disgrace serious attention will be given to the vicious mindless insurrectionists who led the aborted January 6, 2021 Coup D’Etat. For decades these Fascist Neo Nazi type groups have been permitted to grow and prosper.

Either out of ignorance or fear of conservative blowback the Feds have tended to look the other way.  The aborted Coup has finally shown what these dead ender nihilists true goal has been all along. Destroy Democracy.

Aided and abetted by Trump these deplorable people reached the point where they were able to mount a serious assault on the American government.

It is time to crush them all. The scores of arrests by the FBI since January 6 are a step in the right direction. The pursuit and smashing of these insurrectionists must continue aggressively by any means necessary.

Daily Beast 1.20.2021

President Joe Biden’s new Director of National Intelligence who now oversees 18 U.S. intelligence agencies anticipates producing a public assessment of the threat from QAnon, she testified at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Avril Haines, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avril_Haines whom Biden tapped as the next director of national intelligence, told Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) that she would provide him with such an assessment, which Heinrich requested last month in a letter.

In one of the indications of how the Jan. 6 insurrection is shaping the context of Biden’s impending presidency, Haines seemed to reject putting the intelligence agencies in the lead on “an issue such as solely domestic terrorism.” She instead told the Senate intelligence committee that she wanted to provide “critical support” to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, which will play that leading role. But she did not specify what such support would precisely be.

Instead, Haines indicated she views the intelligence agency’s work with regard to far-right terror—Haines used the phrase “white nationalism”—as a matter of identifying connections to foreign actors and disinformation. The coalescing of globalizing white nationalist and far-right violence is increasingly a focus of the incoming Biden team. Russ Travers, a former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center who was recently tapped as Biden’s deputy homeland-security adviser at the White House, has written that the U.S. is increasingly an exporter of such violence and drew connections to the 2019 mosque murders in Christchurch, New Zealand.

But an intelligence focus on QAnon will inevitably stoke controversy. Even after the FBI warned in 2019 that QAnon posed a domestic-terror threat, at least two QAnon boosters, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), have been elected to Congress. Efforts a decade ago to study far-right terror resulted in the Obama administration ending a DHS analytic entity that did so following a conservative outcry.

Speaking to the veteran presence at the Capitol insurrection, Biden’s nominee for secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, pledged on Tuesday to “rid our ranks of racists and extremists” at his own confirmation hearing.

Notably, Haines did not during testimony request any additional authorities for the intelligence agencies with regard to right-wing extremism, an effort that has some support from liberals.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bidens-intelligence-nominee-pledges-threat-assessment-on-qanon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAe02qarUFkThe new era in Washington is best exemplified by three women.  Oakland born Kamala Harris is the first woman to be sworn in as Vice President.

Lady Gaga whose musical fame is known worldwide gave a stirring rendition of the Star Spangled Banner to those assembled at the Capitol and a worldwide audience.

Amanda Gorman, 22, is the first Youth Poet Laureate in American history. Her presentation at the inaugural was stunning.

Following are three clips.

Kamala Harris being sworn in as Vice President

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/20/kamala-harris-inauguration-swearing-in-vpx.cnn

Excerpted from Billboard Magzine 1.20.2021

Former senator and two-term vice president Joe Biden stepped into history on Wednesday (Jan. 20) alongside his historic Vice President Sen. Kamala Harris as they were inaugurated on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. And while some of the usual pomp and circumstance — not to mention the typically huge crowds — were curtailed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and security concerns in the age of the violent assault on the Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump on Jan. 6, Lady Gaga was on hand to ensure that the event felt like a proper celebration.

The singer took center stage just before noon to sing The National Anthem in a striking, billowing floor-length red skirt and long-sleeved black top accented with an oversized gold peace dove brooch and black leather gloves, accompanied by the President’s United States Marine Band. After greeting Biden and Harris, Gaga composed herself, grabbed a gold-colored microphone and belted out a powerful rendition of the notoriously difficult “Star-Spangled Banner” with her typical theatrical panache, ending with her hand over her heart and nods to Biden, Harris and former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama on her way back to hear seat.

The stirring performance came one day after Gaga sent her Little Monsters a message of hope to usher in the new administration. “I pray tomorrow will be a day of peace for all Americans,” Gaga tweeted. “A day for love, not hatred. A day for acceptance not fear. A day for dreaming of our future joy as a country. A dream that is non-violent, a dream that provides safety for our souls. Love, from the Capitol.”

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/trump-presidency-ends/index.html

Amanda Gorman – Youth Poet Laureate Delivers at Presidential Inaugural

https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2021/jan/20/youth-poet-laureate-amanda-gorman-recital-at-biden-inauguration-video

I am shocked. You never know who is going to step up and do the right thing.

Wall Street Journal 1.19.2021

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said that President Trump provoked the mob that attacked the Capitol earlier this month.

“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

On this the 92nd anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birth it is well to remember  he was more than a civil rights leader. Dr. King had sound ideas about the distribution of wealth in America.

Wall Street has done very well during four years of Trump while the rest of the country has grappled to keep afloat. 

America is in the depths of a Pandemic and an economic crisis. The economic, physical and psychological health of the country is at risk. Four years of Trump and his Give it to the Rich and culminating with a Pandemic during which he has been missing in action.

Finally, Trump’s is a failed administration which will forever live with the stain of an aborted Coup D’Etat.  In short, Trump has been a disaster from Day One.

Radical action by President Biden is required beginning on January 20.

Excerpted from The Nation 1.18.2021 – John Nichols

Dr. King taught us that direct cash payments are a smart response to poverty and mass unemployment. In this crisis, we need to heed that call.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s posthumous message to America came in a Look magazine article published shortly after the civil rights leader’s assassination, on April 4, 1968. In it, King wrote, “We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work. Some people are too young, some are too old, some are physically disabled, and yet in order to live, they need income.”

King was not the first to propose an economic bill of rights—President Franklin Roosevelt had done so almost a quarter-century earlier in his 1944 State of the Union Address.

Nor was he the first to speak of the role guaranteed basic income might play in addressing poverty, inequality, and mass unemployment. But the pastor’s merging of these proposals as part of a call to “end poverty, to extirpate prejudice, to free a tormented conscience, to make a tomorrow of justice, fair play and creativity” was a vital contribution to the national debate, as was his recognition that the United States of more than 50 years ago had an “opportunity to avoid a national disaster and create a new spirit of class and racial harmony.”

Unfortunately, it did not happen. Political leaders of the late 1960s and early 1970s, from Richard Nixon to George McGovern, explored the prospect of using direct cash payments and guaranteed income initiatives to alleviate economic pain and address the often devastating consequences of social and technological change.

President-elect Biden has recognized that insufficiency and responded with a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan that includes a proposal for a workaround that gets the payment figure up to $2,000 —by adding an additional $1,400 to the already agreed-upon $600 figure.

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is reasonably ambitious. In addition to providing needed funding for health care and building a robust vaccination program, it promises extended unemployment benefits, rent relief, food assistance, aid to small businesses, support for schools and state and local government, and a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour. At the heart of the plan is an understanding on the part of the president-elect that “$600 is simply not enough when you have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table. We need $2,000 stimulus checks.”

Nor, however, should there be any question that more $2,000 checks will be needed in the months to come—as the pandemic continues, unemployment remains high, millions go hungry, and families are losing their homes.

Bernie Sanders, the incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee, calls Biden’s proposal “a very strong first installment of an emergency relief plan that will begin to provide desperately needed assistance to tens of millions of working families facing economic hardship during the pandemic.” But additional installments will be required.

That’s why Representative Ro Khanna of California, is right when he says, “Let’s not just give ordinary Americans a one-time $2,000 check. With our new majority and a worsening crisis, let’s meet the need: $2,000/month, every month, until this crisis is over.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/mlk-covid-biden-plan/

Top photo – Dr. King speaks at March on Washington – August 28, 1963

“I grew up thinking America is a beacon of light.  Not realizing it is a very hypocritcal nation,” Sam Pollard Director MLK/FBI

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 92nd birthday a documentary recounting the vicious political and personal assault by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI has been released.

In painstaking detail the film shows the extreme measures the FBI used in its attempt to discredit Dr. King.  The documentary provides an easy to understand look at how and why Federal law enforcement attacked the leader of the American Civil Rights movement.

Dr. King speaks at March on Washington – August 28, 1963.

The FBI assault on Dr. King reached its conclusion when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.

Following are two links.

First –  Christine Amanpour’s interview with the Director.

Second –  Trailer for the film MLK/FBI which is now available on streaming services.

https://theindependent.com/news/world/why-the-fbi-tried-to-take-down-martin-luther-king-jr/video_e7c7c390-58cf-56d5-84b9-10f703ff2a22.html

Top photo – Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy in Memphis shortly before Dr. King’s assassination.