"I love a gunfight." It appears that Stephen Bannon has no intention of leaving his powerful position without taking Jared Kushner down with him.

Courtesy of Axios:

After a series of high-level White House leaks portraying Steve Bannon as fed up with his job and ready to quit, Trump's chief strategist has told associates the stories are "100 percent nonsense" and he's playing for keeps.

The Bannonites believe the liberals staged a coup and will turn Trump into a conventional squish who betrays the very voters who brought him to power. The Jared wing thinks the Bannonites are clinically nuts. 

His staunchest ally is one of Trump's closest confidants — Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kellyanne Conway will go to the mat for him, as will policy advisor Stephen Miller. He's also built strong relationships with other cabinet secretaries including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In the end, though, family matters most and all but dad are done with Bannon and his politics.

"Steve has developed strong and important relationships with some of the most powerful right-leaning business leaders," said a close Bannon ally outside of the White House. "I see some bad press in [Jared's] future."

And as if to drive that point home, this happened:  

Breitbart.com, the pro-Trump propaganda outlet previously run by White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, is now being deployed against President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top White House staffer Jared Kushner as part of an internal power struggle. 

Over the past week -- as Kushner and Bannon have reportedly feuded -- the website has published articles highlighting Kushner’s meetings with the Russian ambassador, questioning the ethics of his business dealings, criticizing his “thin resume in diplomacy,” and speculating about whether he is leaking negative stories about Bannon. 

Those attacks represent a U-turn in the website’s coverage of the president’s family. Following Trump’s election and in the early days of his administration, Breitbart provided Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, with soft-focus celebrity coverage. The website chronicled their search for a home and synagogue in Washington, D.C., and lashed out at their critics.

Anybody who has even a passing understanding of how Breitbart works knows that Bannon uses the media outlet to trash the reputation of anybody who dares to criticize somebody he supports (Sarah Palin, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump, etc..) or interferes in a policy that he wants to go forward.

And if Breitbart goes for the jugular you can bet that others of their ilk, like The Gateway Pundit. Matt Drudge, and Info Wars will likely follow suit.

Apparently Bannon is unable to hide his contempt for Kushner even to his face.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:

Donald Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon has called the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner a “cuck” and a “globalist” during a time of high tension between the two top aides, several Trump administration officials told The Daily Beast. 

The fighting between Kushner and Bannon has been “nonstop” in recent weeks, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. It’s been an “open secret” that Bannon and Kushner often clash “face-to-face,” according to senior officials. 

One official said Bannon has lately complained about Kushner trying to “shiv him and push him out the door” and likened him to a fifth column in the White House.

Damn, those must be some interesting meetings.

All of this could mean that at some point Donald Trump will have to decide if he wants to be a Right Wing troll come to life in White House, as Stephen Bannon clearly wants him to be, or move a little more to the Left and start working with the Democrats as well as more moderate Republicans which seems to be the goal of his son-in-law and daughter Ivanka.

This could turn into the ugliest internal battle that the White House has ever seen.

Vladimir Putin prepares to pounce as America's power in the world diminishes.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The opportunities that Moscow is eager to seize beyond Russia’s border are openings or cracks in the world order. The ability to ferret out opportunity, developed during the 1980s and 1990s, is helping Moscow’s rulers detect such chances now. 

Both Ukraine and Syria, each one in its own way, are such cracks. They fall between “world orders” if we accept Henry Kissinger’s description of the evolving international orders as being American, European, Chinese and Islamic (see also an interesting piece by Niall Ferguson on the Russian Question.) 

The “imperial” power of the collective West is shrinking. Under the new administration, Washington is proclaiming out loud what had previously been implied or mentioned quietly to America’s allies: the U.S. is not willing to serve as the world’s preeminent “imperialist” power indefinitely. It wants to be paid for its services or it will withdraw. 

President Donald Trump’s proposed deep cuts in the State Department’s funding and sharp hikes in military spending could be taken as a plan to relinquish America’s remaining soft power and concentrate on its hard power to protect whatever interests it chooses to keep.

In many ways Trump is the perfect puppet for Putin. He is an unsophisticated megalomaniac who lacks the vision to understand what America means to the world at large, and instead only cares about those who will hold rallies celebrating his isolationist agenda.

With Trump distracted by shiny objects Putin, and others, are free to take advantage of the opportunities for power and influence that slip from between Cheeto Hitler's chubby orange fingers.

And the cost for this country, and for our allies, will be vast and potentially irreversible.

The Independent Network Charismatic is the new Moral Majority, and they have ties to Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump.

Courtesy of The Conversation:

INC Christianity is led by a network of popular independent religious entrepreneurs, often referred to as “apostles.” They have close ties, we found, to conservative U.S. politicians, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and more recently President Donald Trump. 

Charismatic Christians emphasize supernatural miracles and divine interventions, but INC Christianity is different from other charismatics – and other Christian denominations in general – in the following ways:

• It is not focused primarily on building congregations but rather on spreading beliefs and practices through media, conferences and ministry schools. 
• It is not so much about proselytizing to unbelievers as it is about transforming society through placing Christian believers in powerful positions in all sectors of society. 
• It is organized as a network of independent leaders rather than as formally organized denominations.

INC Christianity is the fastest-growing Christian group in America and possibly around the world. Over the 40 years from 1970 to 2010, the number of regular attenders of Protestant churches as a whole shrunk by an average of .05 percent per year, while independent neo-charismatic congregations (a category in which INC groups reside) grew by an average of 3.24 percent per year. 

Its impact, however, is much greater than can be measured in church attendance. This is because INC Christianity is not centrally concerned with building congregations, but spreading beliefs and practices.

Apparently this group has been making millions through seminars, web sales, book sales, music sales, and DVD sales.

And they have been using that money to spread influence.

Most Christian groups in America have seen the role of the church as connecting individuals to God through the saving grace of Jesus and building congregations that provide communities of meaning and belonging through worship services. They also believe in serving and providing for the needs their local communities. Such traditional Christian groups believe that although the world can be improved, it will not be restored to God’s original plan (until Jesus comes back again to rule the Earth).

INC beliefs, however, are different – their leaders are not content simply to connect individuals to God and grow congregations. Most INC Christian groups we studied seek to bring heaven or God’s intended perfect society to Earth by placing “kingdom-minded people” in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society. 

I will assume that at this point many of you are starting to get a familiar feeling as to where this is all going.

INC leaders have labeled them the “seven mountains of culture.” These include business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. In this form of “trickle-down Christianity,” they believe if Christians rise to the top of all seven “mountains,” society will be completely transformed.

Bingo!

If you are not yet familiar with the Seven Mountains mandate, then you must be new here as we have talked about it multiple times.

In short:

Seven Mountains dominionism seeks to place Christians in control over the seven forces that shape and control our culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion. The reason for this, as Lance Wallnau, the leading advocate for Seven Mountains theology, explained is that Jesus “doesn’t come back until He’s accomplished the dominion of nations.” And the way “dominion of nations” is accomplished is by having Christians gain control of these “seven mountains” in order to install a “virtual theocracy” overseen by “true apostles” who will fight Satan and his Antichrist agenda.

This same philosophy has turned up in a number of religious organizations, and was especially impactful during the Bush Administration.

Sarah Palin is of course an adherent as are many other highly placed politicians, many now it seems working for and with Donald Trump.

Now does the Muslim travel ban make a little more sense?

Currently we are seeing church attendance in America hitting all time lows, but this group does not care about congregations, their goal is to put true believers in positions of great power, and apparently they are succeeding.

So yes Sarah Palin maybe yesterday's news but those who helped to foist her upon us, are getting closer to their ultimate goal everyday.

White House policy adviser, Stephen Miller, states emphatically that Donald Trump's powers "will not be questioned."

Courtesy of Share Blue:  

Donald Trump senior policy advisor Stephen Miller’s debut on the Sunday shows was rife with troubling foreshadowing, with his high-volume repetition of Trump talking points and botched invocation of Trump’s “voter fraud” lie.

There was one moment, though, which stood out for its shocking audacity: Miller explicitly told Face the Nation’s John Dickerson that Trump’s power exceeds that of the judiciary, the people of the United States, the free press, or anyone else. 

Miller railed against a “supreme” judicial branch in other television appearances, but on CBS, he made Trump’s despotic ambitions explicit (emphasis added):

"The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial, and will not be questioned."

Just a reminder that Donald Trump did not run to be president.

He ran to be king.  And he will not suffer those he considers "less than" to dare question him, his authority, or his policies.

Even if they are wearing judicial robes and representing the third branch of the government.

By the way this beady eyed little shit weasel made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, and essentially repeated the same old talking points in each and every interview.

In fact in several of the interviews it appeared that he was reading the answers off of a teleprompter:

Is Stephen Miller reading a teleprompter on #thisweek. Is it me or is that weird? @GStephanopoulos

— Misti Richter (@MistiRichter) February 12, 2017

Senior Policy Advisor to Trump, Stephen Miller interview on abc this am. FRIGHTENING ROBOT clearly reading not discussing.

— Candace McLallen (@candarita) February 12, 2017

First time seeing Stephen Miller on #ThisWeek. He did not disappoint -- well, except that part about reading from cue cards. #unhinged

— Medium Rarely (@MediumRarely) February 12, 2017

Well good, then I wasn't just imagining it.

So gee look, yet another soulless, dead eyed, seemingly animatronic spokes-liar representing the Trump administration.

I wonder if they build these in a factory, or if they are the result of some frightening Nazi inspired biological experimentation?

The power of Hillary Clinton.

"Let's see whihc greedy multinational company should I bankrupt now?"

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Hillary Clinton may not be president, but she's moving the markets like she is one. For the second time in three weeks, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination wiped millions of dollars off the value of an industry with a single tweet. 

On Friday, private prison stocks dropped sharply after Clinton said the U.S. needed to “end the era of mass incarceration.” 

“We need to end private prisons. Protecting public safety...should never be outsourced or left to unaccountable corporations,” she said in a tweet drawn from comments she made during a speech on the criminal justice system in Atlanta. 

Corrections Corp. of America fell more than 6 percent, lopping off approximately $200 million in value, while GEO Group Inc. dropped 4.2 percent, losing about $100 million. 

Earlier this month, biotech stocks tanked after Clinton slammed Turing Pharmaceuticals for increasing the price of a drug by 50 fold. “Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” she tweeted at the time.

She is not even in the White House yet, and yet she already has huge corporations shaking in their boots that she might target them next.

I would imagine that the NRA, the folks behind the Keystone XL pipeline, and Exxon are all stuck in the fetal position over recent remarks by Hillary as well.

That is the kind of power I want to see running this country. And let's face it as much as we might like other candidates, NONE of them carry a stick this big.

In other news a recent poll shows that Hillary now leads Bernie by 20 points.

And considering that the Republicans are now eating their young right out in public I do not think there is much standing in Hillary's way at this point.

Franklin Graham to visit all 50 states in attempt to turn America into a theocracy. Well that's helpful.

Courtesy of Opposing Views: 

Rev. Franklin Graham recently announced his Decision America Tour, which will travel to all 50 states in 2016 to encourage Christians to vote for Christians, and to urge Christians to run for political positions on federal, state and local levels. 

In an op-ed penned for Charisma News, Graham recalled Nehemiah, from the Bible, who supervised the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in 52 days even though he faced opposition from Samaritans, Ammonites, Arabs and Philistines. 

Graham claimed: "America's walls of biblical morality are crumbling," and "Christianity and our religious freedoms are under siege. Progressives and secularists want to see God removed from everything and to burn every gate of protection." 

Graham didn't say which religious freedoms were "under siege," or name any progressives and secularists who wanted "God removed from everything."

You know usually these Fundamentalist asshats are a little more subtle, but apparently Graham is tired of pussy footing around. 

And who can blame him? With millennials turning away from the church in droves, and science answering more and more of the questions that were once considered unanswerable, Christians are seeing their power base crumbling all around them in this country.

So of course they are going to make an aggressive and clumsy grab for power.

However Franklin Graham is going to have to face the fact that he is a dinosaur, and his superstitions are no longer finding favor with many of the young people who will someday lead this country into the new enlightenment.

I only hope I can hang on long enough to see it fore myself.

Before everybody goes too gaga over the new Pope, keep this in mind.

Courtesy of the Catholic Herald from September of 2013:  

An Australian priest who supports the ordination of women has been excommunicated by Pope Francis. 

In the first such excommunication since the new pontiff took office Fr Greg Reynolds was dismissed in a letter from the Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart, which stated that “the decision by Pope Francis to dismiss Fr Reynolds from the clerical state and to declare his automatic excommunication has been made because of his public teaching on the ordination of women contrary to the teaching of the Church and his public celebration of the Eucharist when he did not hold faculties to act publicly as a priest.” 

Archbishop Hart also told other priests in the archdiocese by letter that Fr Reynolds’s excommunication was “because of his public teaching on the ordination of women”, which are grounds for automatic excommunication. 

Fr Reynolds is also a supporter of same-sex marriage and has attended rallies in favour of changing the definition of marriage. He has even reportedly presided at same-sex ceremonies. 

He told National Catholic Reporter: “I am very surprised that this order has come under his watch; it seems so inconsistent with everything else he has said and done.”

The Pope says all the right things it seems, and has breathed new life into the Catholic church, but don't forget that when it comes to women he is no less misogynistic than his predecessors, and has done NOTHING to positively impact existing church doctrine.

And the church in the US is still operating just the way it did before Pope Francis put on the pointy Pope hat and played with the golden Pope scepter.

This from the BBC:  

Roman Catholic Church official William Lynn has had his conviction for child endangerment reversed by a court in the US city of Philadelphia. 

Monsignor Lynn was the first US Church official to be convicted in a criminal court for covering up sex abuse claims. 

He was sentenced in 2012 to three to six years in prison but could now be released as early as Thursday. 

The court said it had not been proven Mr Lynn had acted with the "intent of promoting or facilitating the crime".

Yep Popes may come, Popes may go, but the Catholic Church will always be the Catholic Church, and with their monetary resources and access to power ultimately nothing changes. 

Your early morning thought of the day.

I don't usually post quotes from fictional characters, but when I do I go all in for Gandalf.

The more you read it, the more sense it makes.

Joe Miller's flunky, Russ Millette, out as Chairman of the Alaskan Republican Party. That splintering sound you hear are Joe Miller's chances of taking Mark Begich's Senate seat.

Yesterday there was a big meeting of the Republican muck -a-mucks concerning whether or not to let Russ Millete, the guy that was voted into the Chairmanship most though the support of Joe Miller and his Teabaggers, keep his job. This is how that meeting went down, courtesy of the Alaska Dispatch:

Questions have arisen about whether some party delegates were paid to attend the convention at which Millette won election. Charges were leveled that Millette, who has admitted he never talked to Murkowski as chairman-elect, was somehow involved in the raucous scene that led to both Murkowski and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., being booed when they appeared at the convention. 

Millette denied it. 

But he admitted, in response to questioning from executive committee member and Republican National Committeeman Ralph Seekins from Fairbanks, that his earlier claims about how the party wouldn't give him access to headquarters and accounts was pretty much bunk. Seekins asked Millette flat out if he'd ever been denied access to any party records. 

"No," Millette answered. 

That Millette hadn't done much, if anything, to help the party as chairman-elect was one among a bevy of charges against Millette that basically accused him of being unfit for office. The one that stuck was the claim he'd failed to do anything to raise funds for the party as state finance chair since his election in April. 

Millette conceded he hadn't done that job, came up with a bunch of excuses that largely blamed Ruedrich for not being helpful enough in setting up meetings with potential donors, and argued that the finance job was an appointed position, not an elected one. 

"Even if I failed to do the job of the state finance chair," he argued, "the removal procedure in the ARP (Alaska Republican Party) cannot be used to remove me from the chair position because I am not yet in that position." 

The executive committee saw it differently. 

After deliberating on Millette's fate, they emerged from behind close doors to announce that the job of the chairman-elect was to raise money as the finance chair, and noted that Millette flunked what could be considered an internship on the way to the chairman's post.

And just like that, the old guard of the Alaskan GOP took back their ball and told the new upstart to get the hell off of their playground.

Now this is a pretty big damn deal. For a number of reasons.

First off taking over the Alaska Republican party was four years in the making, and the plan to do so was first imagined by then Governor Sarah Palin. The only reason it did not happen back then is because Palin knew she was about to be tapped as John McCain's VP choice.

So four years later, Palin flunky Joe Miller implemented that plan. Whether or not Palin is still pulling Miller's strings, is a little murky right now, but the fact that this put Miller in the perfect position to launch his campaign to challenge Begich for his Senate seat is not.

You know I actually don't believe for an instant that the GOP bitch slapped Millette because he had failed to raise any campaign funds. I think that was just the excuse they used to kick his ass to the curb.

This is all about making sure that the REAL Republicans hold onto power in the state, and to send a message to Joe Miller that his hopes for a political career in Alaska just went up in smoke.

Joe Miller has been working for years to pull this off, but he just wasn't slick enough, and is now learning what a bug feels like when it gets ground under a boot heel. Squished.

Personally I don't believe that this move means in any way that the Alaska GOP is any less of a criminal enterprise, but I still have to say I really enjoy watching the vaguely bearded one get his ass handed to him!

"Wait! What in the hell just happened?"

By the way, according to recent polling, Miller did not stand much of a chance against Begich anyhow. (P.S. Neither did Sarah Palin!)

Forbes Magazine chooses the 100 MOST powerful women. Hmm, is somebody missing?

Angela Merkel, Forbes magazine's choice as the number one most powerful woman.

So I was read this list from Forbes, and I was fascinated with the diversity of the women represented by this list. Everything from politicians, to journalists, to entrepreneurs, to activists, and much more are represented on this list.

Hillary Clinton, Forbes magazines' choice as the SECOND most powerful woman.

Now Forbes magazine is generally considered to be a fairly conservative magazine, so you would think that it's choices would be comprised mostly of woman who shared their ideology, but I did not find that to be the case.

Michelle Obama, Forbes magazine's choice as the seventh most powerful woman.

In fact, along with the First Lady,  both Lady Gaga and Nancy Pelosi made the list, and I would certainly NOT consider them favorites among the conservative class.

However as I was going down the list, I could not help but notice that there was somebody, who you MIGHT expect to have a place on this list, missing.

I racked my brain but for the life of me I could not figure out who it was.

I mean it was right on the tip of my tongue but I just could not seem to figure out who was not represented on this list.

Ooooh, that's right.  Well isn't THAT interesting?

The 2008 VP nominee, queen of the Teabaggers, shill for Fox News, reality show mainstay, Sarah Palin is NOT represented anywhere in the list of the top 100 most powerful women in the world?

Awesome.

You know all I have ever wanted was to help make this imbecile irrelevant. Mission accomplished.

Now if I can only help do the same for the entire Republican party.

P.S. Do you know what might be the unkindest cut of all for the Grizzled Mama?

That the woman who she undoubtedly sees as her personal Fox News interviewer/facilitator/gopher was named the 94th most powerful woman in the world.

I am SO looking forward to their next interview together.