In the Foreseeable future

Before this blog ends up on some snotty little right-wingish “fake news” list*, which will then be quoted like scripture by the terminally lazy who will not even bother to use Google or their own common sense, I thought I’d once again clarify the following:
this blog has never been a news source.  it is an opinion blog only.

In the coming days I will be, at long last, reviving this blog.  The Trump years are now long past and the media are starting to admit the truth about him, however unwillingly.  Because of this it is somewhat easier to find sources to back up my claims.

I’m going to try to keep the sillier subjects, such as the British Royals, on my makeup blog.  This blog will be about the preservation of our democracy in the U.S.  It’s that serious.

That thing about Harry and What’s-Her-Name

Even though I swore up and down I would never talk about Harry and what’s-her-name again (I’ve mentioned them a few times on Twitter), I guess that’ll be the first thing I do before I go off into more serious stuff in my revival of this blog.

Why? Because even here in the U.S., those two have been all over the place — and not in a good way. It started off as an insistent murmur in the last few years and at this point it’s a roar that you can’t help hearing, and it’s reached a crescendo since the Prince and Princess of Wales made a formal, elegant visit to the U.S. last week (one that was fascinating to the media here) to present some sort of award to someone, only to have the Duke and Duchess of Montecito try to upstage them by purchasing(?) an award from the Kennedy clan and attempting a glittering presentation of said award to themselves. The Montecitos’ stunt only seemed to succeed in two things: making the general public aware that they exist, and (2) making the general public wonder just how anyone can be so pathetic.

Another note in the crescendo is some sort of documentary the Montecitos produced for Netflix. I don’t have access to Netflix so can’t comment. But apparently it is about to cause the Montecitos a LOT of trouble with the Royals because…something. (Small update: I’ve now seen a clip from the documentary, I think. It’s of what’s-her-name making an exaggerated curtsy. All I could think while watching it was, “this woman is in her 40’s?”)

Some in the U.K., even in the media there, are terribly, terribly upset about what’s-her-name and Harry, and are talking about how it’s affecting the relationship between the two countries. I can assure you that it isn’t, at least not seriously. But it is getting extremely annoying as it is pushed in our faces more and more, with the wonky analysis that seems to come with it.

Before anyone shouts “RACISM!!!!” let me tell you this: I don’t see what’s-her-name as a black woman first and everything else second, simply because she seemed not to be mixed-race until it gave her an excuse to shout “RACISM!” in response to any criticism. (BTW lately there seems to be a shift from crying “RACISM” to crying “SEXISM” and railing on her podcast about being the “silenced woman.” Interesting, that.)

So what do I see her as? A malignant narcissist, an obsessed fan and a social climber (or at least a career climber). Those come in all colors.

I used to have a sister-in-law like that. The moment she married into the family she tried to separate my brother from the rest of us, and it just went downhill from there. During one visit she sat on a lawn chair alone in the back yard because she just couldn’t be in the house with her in-laws, (who I can say with some authority had done nothing to her).

Luckily the marriage only lasted 6 months…at which time she tried to lay claim to the house my brother had bought years prior to meeting her, and where she had refused to live because it was across the street from my parents’ house. She admitted somewhere along the way that she married only to have a baby (and a house). Of course she tried to claim pregnancy when the annulment papers came, but that was quickly disproven. So she ended the whole affair with no baby and no house.

I won’t go into that story any further, but let’s just look at what I’ve said and compare it to some of what’s-her-name’s actions. Maybe you’ll see what I am talking about.

First of all, what’s-her-name promptly separated Harry from his family and then started whining about how mean the family was (where have I seen this before?). A lot of her whines seem to be about titles, and a lot of her reported misbehavior and dissatisfaction seems to be about possessions — housing and jewelry and such — and how she’s been treated less royally than she feels she should be.

It all sounds a bit familiar; suffice it to say that I recognize what’s-her-name for what she is, and it ain’t the crusading do-gooder she’s pretending to be. Hell if that was all she wanted out of life, she could have done it far more effectively as a working member of the Royal Family.

Another moment that shone a light on her true nature: that time in an interview where she was apparently reminiscing about her life and announced loftily, “I’ve been a princess…” Uh..no dear you have not, unless you seriously want to call yourself “Princess Henry” — which I doubt.

More seriously, there was that time she wrote a letter about some kind of cause to a sitting U.S. Democratic Congresswoman, who — probably much to what’s-her-name’s consternation — turned around and publicly demanded to know who this person was who was signing herself “Duchess of Sussex” and what in the hell was said Congresswoman supposed to do with this letter? What a nightmare! Instead of fawning over what’s-her-name and giving WHN a photo op with a powerful person in the U.S. that could be splashed all over WHN’s blog or whatever other electronic thing she was using to promote herself at the moment, what’s-her-name got slapped in the face with this impertinent question about her own impertinence.

In short, that little caper didn’t go very well.

Then there was the time where she tried to insert herself into the grieving process after a school shooting and was told to go home, yet still managed to garner some positive publicity from the whole thing — the very result she wanted, but failed to accomplish, with some award the Kennedy family gives out. (Pro hint: many of the current Kennedys are downright useless; I’ve heard them referred to as “the best argument against royalty the U.S. has.” And there’s the lingering question about the Montecitos apparently buying their way into the award.)

On top of that are all the rumors that what’s-her-name was obsessed with Princess Diana and actually wanted to marry Harry’s older brother because that would make her Queen someday. This probably ties in with her obsession with calling herself a Princess when she is not in her own right. In addition, there’s the fact that most people in the U.S. have absolutely no idea what a duchess is, but they do know from Disney fairy-tales what a princess is. In other words, what’s-her-name is marketing herself.

And the latest item of exasperation is that apparently, eventually what’s-her-name will attempt to run for office in the U.S. If she does, she probably won’t get anywhere because Democrats are a bit less susceptible to the famous-in-other-fields than are the Republicans. But of course she does not see that. It’ll also be fun to see if she continues to style herself “Duchess of Sussex” while running (pro hint: that’s illegal for a U.S. citizen).

This brings me to the subject of self-delusion. As I said, what’s-her-name is not a princess in her own right. She is also not a major Hollywood star and never has been — yet for some reason many people in the U.K. seemed to think she was. I’m sure if we scratch the surface we’ll find a P.R. agent at work there, because the misapprehension was suspiciously widespread. I do recall seeing an avalanche of tweets about what’s-her-name’s wonderfulness around the time of the wedding, and I assumed that because I am old and gray I must have missed what’s-her-name’s status as a current cultural icon. But later I realized that I must have been reading a lot of bot-talk. Fact is, few people here in the U.S. knew anything about what’s-her-name at the time of the wedding, and they still don’t give a damn.

Also, apparently those Hollywood A-listers that she invited to her wedding (but who said later they’d never met her prior to the wedding), are shunning what’s-her-name and Harry out there in lovely Montecito. Hollywood is, after all, very hierarchical — kind of like the U.K.’s Royal Family. So much for her marriage transforming her career into that of a Hollywood superstar.

The painful reality is that what’s-her-name was and is a sort of D-list TV actor who probably saw that she was never going to get very far in her acting career and decided to take extreme measures to gain fame and influence. How better to do this than to present herself as a beleaguered Black person in the very white British Royal Family? And as she could nab one of her idol Diana’s sons in the process, so much the better. What a drama! Real-life reality TV every day of the week! Half of the U.S. and all of the U.K. closely watching her every move with worshipful respect — kind of like we did with Diana!

Before I go further, let me mention that what’s-her-name ain’t no Diana. Diana started off her public career in a massive lie born of centuries of cruel tradition, then found herself cheated on, then fell apart inside. But she never flagged in her concern for others and her good works, all of which came from a very big heart. That’s why she was loved. Yes her style and beauty were admired, but that wasn’t her entire substance — unlike with what’s-her-name for whom it is all window dressing with one selfish aim in mind.

So needless to say it’s not working, and an army of bots on Twitter isn’t going to make it work. Ultimately neither will shouting “racism” and/or “sexism” every time what’s-her-name does not get what she wants. Narcissists have a reality problem, and what’s-her-name has it in buckets. Anything that does not fit in with her fantasy is met with actor’s tears and a sort of emotional violence.

So what do I see in her future?

She and Harry will likely not be together forever. She’s the one who will walk, probably — sooner if Harry’s title, and by extension her own — is taken away (still questionable at this point); later if she just becomes bored or comes up with another scheme to become truly famous and adored. After that she will try to pretend to have political influence. She may do well in that career, as our media are obsessed with finding the least-qualified semi-famous people they can to become “commentators” whose job it is to appear on TV and mumble something every time something comes up, whether they have any expertise in it or not.

Then will come the book, which will flop. And then she will quietly disappear, probably living comfortably on hefty alimony, at which point we in the U.S. will breathe a relieved sigh of “‘bye Felicia.”

And I expect that one day in the distant future, one of her kids will write a book of their own.

Things that cannot happen anymore (and ways to stop them)

I’m jumping ahead in time here, but we’ve reached the point where we can see a world beyond Trump, Putin, Johnson, et al.  So I thought I’d write a little missive about what needs to go away in the next epoch we are about to enter, specifically in the U.S.

First of all, we need to vet candidates for president.  We’re not doing that right now.  Basic rules should be:

(1) You either release 10 years of tax returns or you’re out of the race.

(2) No entertainers, athletes, businessmen, or anyone else with zero experience in elected government posts.  Ideally this means you should at least serve a term in Congress before considering running.  This should also include military personnel — they should have to serve in elected government posts before running for President, although they could definitely ride the coattails of their military service into Congress to begin with.  Period.

(3) All candidates need to pass a test of knowledge of the Constitution.  This needs to be done in public, and the results need to be posted so everyone knows what they know.

(4) There needs to be a federal budget for Presidential campaigns, and every candidate should get the same amount of money from that budget, and no one should be allowed to use their own money.  No special interest groups should be allowed to donate.

Those are the very basics of what should be required of a presidential candidate.  I know there are more things to be considered, but the fact is, we’re not even doing that much right now.  And look what we’ve ended up with.

Second thing involves the MSM: they need to be penalized for promoting sensationalism vs. news.  For instance, right now we have them grabbing on to the “civil war” aspect of the Trump debacle and running with that, at the expense of reporting actual news.  It can’t continue.  Just the facts, ma’am (and sir).  Stop inventing worries that aren’t actually worries and then dwelling on them.  Realize that this affects the public, many of whom are now convinced that Trump has some secret army that’s going to attack everyone if he’s deposed.  Prior to this they’ve had most everyone convinced that Trump could unilaterally start WWIII.  FUCKING CUT IT OUT, ASSHOLES.

Third thing: dispense with polls.  The only poll that matters is in the voting booths on election day.  Most or all of the rest can be easily manipulated.  That’s to say that polls are fucking useless,and they feed into the false narratives such as the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Fourth thing: DO AWAY WITH THE FUCKING ELECTORAL COLLEGE.

Fifth thing: STOP TRUSTING PRESIDENTS.  All those “understood” ethics rules that Trump has trashed — for instance, sharing highly-classified intelligence just because a president can (not that s/he should) — need to be formalized into laws with real penalties for violations.  For example, maybe let’s decree that a president CANNOT share highly-classified information without going through numerous channels to get okays first, and violations will be punishable by imprisonment and removal from office.

Sixth thing: The same counts for the offices of Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House.  There need to be real rules applied to these offices, and real punishments for ignoring them.

Seventh thing: Make it clear that a sitting president CAN be prosecuted.  There is no law stating otherwise, only a memo written during the Nixon era — which has since been supplanted by another memo written during the Clinton era, which is now conveniently being ignored.  MAKE IT STATED LAW.

Eighth thing: Clarify “executive privilege” so no one can play with the term to suit their whims.

That’s all I can think of offhand, but it’s a start.  Thing is, we can’t go on as if Trump (and McConnell, and Ryan) never happened.  We need to do everything to make any future would-be despot’s lot not just difficult, but impossible.  That is all.

A tangled web

I wasn’t sure which blog to put this on, as it is sort of a random rant, and sort of not.   Anyway, it’s ending up here.  Depending on how it turns out, perhaps I’ll cross-post it on to my pop-culture shrug-rant site.  Actual life problems and plastic reality-tv woes are so intertwined these days that it has become impossible to place them in two different arenas and keep them where they should be — isolated from one another.

My belief is that the situation with Trump and his billionaire would-be cronies is unsustainable and their collapse is imminent, perhaps in the next 6 months or so.  But my predictions aren’t worth doodley-squat, so you can take that with a shrug.

What our news outlets are not telling us much about is that there are mass demonstrations in Russia, meaning Putin is under pressure.  The nuclear “accident” there probably isn’t helping him much.  I believe another nuclear accident decades ago had something to do with the end of a previous Russian leader, but I’m probably mistaken.

Thing is, when pushed to an extreme, Russians seem far more capable of getting rid of their leaders than we are here in the U.S.  And no one is invulnerable.

On the other hand, Karlov’s (a.k.a. Boris Johnson’s) stupid move in the U.K.  (suspending  Parliament, with the Queen’s approval), has brought Brits out into the streets there, and people are already discussing a “no confidence” vote that could eventually bring him down entirely.  I believe Karlov’s blunder had something to do with the increased focus on Prince Andrew’s history with Epstein — that is, it’s a distraction.  Probably the runaway hatred directed at the American TV actress Meghan Markle, currently doing a bad job of portraying a British “princess,” also has something to do with an attempt at distraction (although I also believe that Markle entered this whole marriage thing as part of a business deal with Disney and others).  It may be just coincidence that some are saying that Markle once worked on one of Epstein’s yachts.  If that’s true, it’s more than fascinating, but I emphasize that it’s little more than rumor at this point.

To be fair, it could also be that the Queen’s hands were tied — she has very little actual power, after all — and/or she knew that the fastest way to get rid of Karlov was to allow him to mess with Parliament in such a spectacular fashion.  It also could be that the trouble surrounding what’s said to be her favorite child (Prince Andrew) had her distracted to the point where she didn’t care what she signed.

So there it is: I believe that this situation with the Brit royal family, which as of this writing is more full of drama and despair as it has been at any point since the days of Diana, has something to do with Trump, Epstein, Boris Karlov (Johnson), at least 3 players in the middle east, and China as well.  That is to say that I believe it’s all connected, and that connection is made up of three things: a multi-national billionaire mob hell-bent on taking over the world, and international money-laundering and human trafficking (performed at the behest of the aforementioned mob).

I believe the money-laundering is masking an attempt by billionaires to buy governments around the world, particularly democracies, and enslave their politicians and their people so billionaires can become trillionaires.  What happens if they accomplish that is anybody’s guess because these people never seem to think beyond money.  If there is a planet somewhere made of money, let me know, because the way things are going at the billionaire-mob’s urging, there won’t be much left on Earth to enjoy once they’ve taken over.  Then again, some of them are suddenly fascinated with launching rockets into outer space, made with their own pocket change.  Maybe they think they can go somewhere else?

I believe the human trafficking is what naturally follows once people are enslaved.  And I believe Epstein was in some way connected to the disappearance of teenage girls from the concentration camps at the U.S. border.  (Note that there’s suddenly a plan to release some of the children to another country, just weeks after Epstein’s apparent suicide…but no further mention of where the teenage girls went.)

Yeah this all sounds pretty wild, but the fact is that it seems that some kind of Hollywood never-never land has taken over our everyday reality and we have to be prepared to believe anything (also, a lot of it fits together far more neatly if you think this way, rather than try to believe any “rational” attempt to explain it).  The fact that there was recently a Hollywood movie withdrawn from circulation because it was about hunting humans…well, that just tells me everything about who is behind this.  Why even think about making that kind of a movie in the present world?  Oh, yeah, I forgot — billionaires are creating our reality now.

Looking out from this tangled web, it’s easy to pine for the old days of actual real life being different from Hollywood reality.  But there you go.  It’s going to be a long fight to get our world back.  But as I said in the first paragraph, this present situation is not sustainable.  I see light somewhere.

Things as they stand

This is why I’ve been quiet recently: While the mass shootings are definitely an emergency, and so are the concentration camps, and so is climate change, we’ve been conditioned at every mention of North Korea or Iran to spend a few days biting our nails about war. And then there’s that business of proclaiming “we’re doomed!” about this or that (that may make the writer feel better for a minute, but it’s not helpful).

That’s not to mention all the other manufactured worries and outrages, including the EXACT same crap the Russublicans pulled on the Democrats in 2016 happening all over again, and no one in the media is really paying much attention to it because they’re too busy salivating over ratings. Yeah they’re businesses, but they’re also the “fourth estate,” so that’s NOT an excuse and let’s not hear it anymore.

Anyway, here’s a quote from Dan Rather that pretty much sums it up for me:

“The headlines are often very grim, not to mention one’s Twitter feed. We see crises that have been manufactured, exacerbated, even actively cheered by a president who seems hellbent on division. We see a culture of shameless and taunting corruption. When will it end?”

It will end, folks, when we end it. The trouble is that it needs to end sooner rather than later, and instead of that it seems to drag on and on while Washington plays parliamentary games. My hint for Washington is that you can’t slavishly follow the rules when you’re dealing with a bunch of people who are openly defying them. Okay?

Anyway, In the meantime we need to pay attention to the real matters out there, and North Korea and Iran, (among other things), are not among them. We also need to insist that the media stop giving a voice to various right-wing extremists like *name an Evangelical preacher* and the latest varmints to voice useless opinions, which as of this writing are Rick Santorum and the lieutenant governor of Texas.  I could plug two other names into those slots tomorrow, and it could go on and on and on, and still nothing they say would be true or worth our time.  To put it bluntly, ignore them and they go away.  They have no importance; stop giving it to them.

We need to insist that the media cover the important things, not the photo ops, the stupid sound bites, and the invented scandals and divisions. This will take some of the bite out of the Russublicans’ antics.

And somebody needs to twist Pelosi’s arm and get her to move before Trump just shrugs and has her put in jail, or else has her assassinated (while he probably can’t start a war, he can manage this much), and the media gets to merrily yammer for weeks about that and get such good ratings!

Okay? This isn’t a fucking game. We realize it. Our greedy media does not. Our Congress is a bunch of crooks ( #MoscowMitch ) and girl/boy scouts, and that doesn’t help, either.

But we are not doomed unless we choose to be. We are only helpless if we convince ourselves we are.  We have to change ourselves before we can change anything else, and we are capable of that.  That is the hard truth, but it is a necessary statement.  Get off your ass and stop falling for what is easy, cheap, and shiny.  Do it now.

On Media Complicity (#1 of many)

I had intended to make a spreadsheet naming media outlets (Politico comes to mind) and listing their transgressions against reality.  Alas, despite my meager software expertise, I could not figure out how to post it here.  As a result I have decided to post an ongoing series of articles that will appear whenever transgressions crop up — either alone and severe, or just tiring and widespread.

Call this one “tiring and widespread.”  It’s on the subject of unqualified people hired by CNN, MSNBC, and other legitimate cable and broadcast outlets.  All of them are reicht-wingers.  None of them makes one tiny bit of sense.  It’s just an extension of the old days when various news organizations would run to Jerry Falwell and/or Phyllis Shufly whenever the subject of women’s rights came up.

Fox News employees will be included in the list of employees and frequent guests of media outlets named here; it will not be included in future articles about the creation and/or slanting of actual news — because Fox News is not actual news.  It is merely the propaganda standard to which, for some reason, CNN and others seem to be aspiring.

So anyway, here we go.  Here’s a list of “why are they here” provocateurs and just plain old pains in the ass; it will be added to as we go along because there are so many of these people that I can’t possibly think of all of them at once:

Laura Ingraham
Sean Hannity
Rush Limbaugh
Meghan McCain
Rick Santorum
Jeannie Pirro
Tomi Lehren

And this list will be of actors/singers/Evangelical preachers/whatevers who are generally NOT hired by media outlets for their (lack of) political and current-events expertise, but end up getting lots of publicity for their worthless, inflammatory, and just plain obnoxious opinions nonetheless:

Roseanne Barr
Franklin Graham
Pat Robertson
Ann Coulter
Steve Bannon

 

 

Couple of things that need to be revisited

Trump is now using the abortion “issue” as his latest distraction attempt (before today, that is, when he had McConnell let it slip that Trump will sign the border deal, but at the same time declare a ‘national emergency’).

To explain how we got where we are on abortion, I submit this article.  I can almost guarantee you didn’t know about how abortion was pulled out of a hat to become an issue, when previously the evangelicals had (like their Jaysus) never said anything about it.  Nope, folks.  The real issue all along was racism.

Now on to the 2nd amendment, which Trump recently declared he just loves.  Watch this video, and be educated about the 2nd amendment.  Yep, Olbermann just said that: the 2nd amendment makes no mention of private gun ownership.  None.  The 1990’s Supreme Court misinterpretation seems to have been bought and paid for.  Sooner or later the truth will come out about it, but as for right now, know that the friggin’ 2nd amendment has nothing to do with gun ownership.  It is about gun control.

There are a 1000 other things that have become accepted as truth, but aren’t.  But these two are the major ones at the moment.  Do read the article, and do watch the video.

An unpopular opinion on a minor issue

Nancy Pelosi is being credited with staring Trump down on the shutdown matter, and it’s good that she’s being credited.  Don’t forget, however, that Mueller’s magnificent stunt of arresting Roger Stone — even before the entire case against him was ready — was the immediate cause of Trump’s collapse on the “wall” issue*.  Yes, Pelosi is a brilliant politician, but she had help in this matter.  She didn’t do it alone.

But that’s not the point here.  The point is the 10,000 memes, cartoons and other commentary this has generated on social media, which all seem to have to do with Pelosi emasculating Trump.

THINK about this for a minute.

This is the same sort of thinking that aided the Russians in attacking Hillary Clinton in 2016, folks.  Putin is, after all, terrified of Clinton.  So is Bannon.  So is Trump.  Probably so is Stephen Miller and any of a number of clowns in Congress (never forget Lindsey Graham, who is resurrecting the “but her emails” crap show as we speak).

This is all because she’s a woman.

For a long time I chose to believe that this was a flaw on their side only, but now I see that this is very deeply ingrained in almost everyone on both sides.  A woman simply isn’t supposed to get the better of a man.  If she does…well you see what’s happened: thousands of memes more or less making fun of Trump for being less than a manly man.

Yes the right wing tried to make an issue of Ann Coulter’s nagging of Trump, but the fact is, Coulter lost her glitter a long time ago and she never had any validity.  At the point her name came up, she was a fading neocon windbag begging for attention.  Then the rumors surfaced about her digging her pro-wall stiletto heels into Trump.  Remember that they tried to resurrect Rush Limbaugh along with her, and he faded right back into well-paid oblivion once the woman angle was played.  Not that I believe Coulter’s actually a woman, but have you heard anything about Limbaugh since about a week ago?  I’m sure he’s still out there somewhere with his flabby jowls flapping in the breeze, but no one’s listening who’s under 80.  That’s where he was before, and where he will remain.

Coulter’s last 15 seconds are almost gone now and it’s apparent that this whole thing was rigged either by her agent or by the Russians, or maybe both.  Which brings us back to Pelosi, who actually is someone.

Which brings us back to all these memes, cartoons, comments, etc.

Yeah it’s funny for about a nanosecond, but it’s not so funny when you examine what’s behind it.  I’d ask that everyone left of right stop and reconsider.  Let’s give Nancy Pelosi the credit she is due.  And never forget that she had help, but since that was from a male source, we’re hearing nothing about it.

Kind of tells you everything.

*there is a lot of controversy about this, but it sure did look like the arrest put a fire under Trump’s ass to open the government right away instead of dragging his heels a few more days.  The TSA strike at LaGuardia probably helped, too.

Of White Elephants, Kushner and (ultimately) Syria

According to a report by NBC News, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are looking at multiple efforts made by Kushner to obtain financing for the project from the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, but they were rejected. Later Qatar’s neighbors in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, began a blockade against Qatar, alleging that the state was a supporter of terrorism. As a Trump adviser on Middle East policy, Kushner, with close ties to Saudi Arabia, was a party to launching this blockade. This and other attempts to get financing for 666 Fifth from Russia, China, and Turkey have drawn the investigators to scrutinize what seem to be Kushner’s serious conflicts of interest.

— from The Curse of 666 Fifth Avenue, the Skyscraper That Could Sink the Kushners
Clive Irving
03.09.18 10:26 PM ET The Daily Beast

The preceding paragraph sums up the entire recent history of the 666 Fifth Avenue debacle better than I ever could, so please be sure to read it.  It explains most of what I’m about to say.

I’d also like to emphasize that all of this is merely my effort to connect the dots.  I am guessing based on publicly-available information.

Okay, here we go.  First of all, it is said that Jamal Khashoggi was researching the connection between the Saudis, the Qatar blockade, Kushner, and this stupid building.  I’m also guessing that Kushner spent much of 2017 flitting around the world selling and/or trading U.S. intelligence for various types of profit.

Those two things are connected, because it’s said that one of the names mentioned in some intelligence Kushner very generously gave the Saudis was Khashoggi — who already had been a thorn in their side anyway, and probably Kushner wasn’t a fan of his either, considering that he was allegedly researching Kushner’s financing irregularities.

Anyway, this likely led to Khashoggi’s horrific murder at the hands of the Saudis.  In Turkey.  The location of the murder is connected (Turkey).  Saudi Arabia is connected to Turkey.  They’re all connected to Putin.

As I’m writing this, Trump is trying to lie and say that Erdogan told him not to worry, he’d take care of ISIS for him.  (I guess later he’ll claim that this was the grand plan he had to eliminate ISIS minutes after he assumed the presidency — remember that campaign promise?)

Also remember that it’s a documented fact that the Saudis fund ISIS.  ISIS was well contained in Syria, as I understand, but without U.S. troops there they will go wild and probably conduct mass genocide against the Kurds.**  I don’t know what the Russian/Saudi/Turkish axis stands to gain from all of this; Syria is not terribly oil rich.  Nonetheless, it’s all connected.

All of which brings us to the Kushner connection to Trump’s sudden and stupid announcement that the U.S. would be withdrawing from Syria (he’s also now saying something about Afghanistan, but that’s a whole other bag of filthy corruption).  It all goes back to the Khashoggi murder and all the crap that event threatens to expose, should it ever be made totally public.  Remember, Trump is now saying that TURKEY is bailing us out of Syria.  He originally said it was Russia, but was probably quickly ordered by Putin to STFU, even as the Russian media were openly celebrating.

I’m guessing that a threat of exposure of Kushner actually being an accessory, however unwittingly, to the murder of a U.S. green card holder (and a journalist) is what pushed Trump to make this rash announcement.  And that threat came from Turkey.

No, it’s not Turkey turning on their buddies the Saudis and the Russians.  They’re all in it together; Erdogan is just trying to extract goodies from the evidence he has about the murder (and he does seem to have a lot — tapes?  really?  how the hell did that happen?). Being the kind of creature he is — and Trump, Mr. Bone Saw and Putin are — he doesn’t care who he embarrasses a bit while doing it, and his buddies in the axis don’t care, either.  To them, it’s all for show and profit.  The Russians certainly don’t care; apparently they’re doubling over with laughter as we speak.

You see, Russia is trying (and failing) to look as innocent in the whole affair of the 2016 election and all the goodies they’ve stolen since, as Saudi Arabia is trying to look innocent in the death of Khashoggi (and their financing of terrorists, etc., etc.).  Erdogan, (who as of right now has little to hide but the fact that his security guards beat up U.S. protestors on U.S. soil and Trump did nothing about it), got the Trump card in this caper, and he’s delivered Syria to the axis with it while allowing Russia and S.A. to claim they had nothing to do with it.  Never mind the glass houses.

Oh yes, there IS one glaring gem in Erdogan’s own glass house: the long-standing aggression of the Turks against the Kurds.  Forgot about that.  My bad.  It’s only the major piece of the puzzle here, after all.

Anyway, now Trump has lost his Secretary of Defense as a result of all of this (of course he’s trying to re-frame this by claiming that he fired Mattis).  In his brilliant resignation letter, Secretary Mattis stopped just short of calling Trump a traitor.  The letter was so deeply disturbing that members of Congress now want Mattis to testify about its contents.  Certainly it made Mr. Obstructionist, Mitch McConnell, blink — but I’m sure McConnell will have forgotten all about it by the time holiday recess is over.  Too much other havoc to wreak, I guess; McConnell is a political terrorist, after all.  He has his work to do.

So there you have it — my theory on what prompted Trump into this new and heightened display of stupidity.

To distract from it all he’s shut down a portion of the U.S. government, allegedly over his long-lost wall that Mexico was going to pay for, but now we’re supposed to.  A grifter even extracted several million dollars from Trump’s cult to build this wall before someone else realized out loud that private donations to the government can only be made to a general fund — meaning that it’s highly unlikely the money would be used to build a wall, and the donors would have no say in the matter.   Insert that old saw about a fool and his money here.*

And so the U.S. limps on, somehow unable to get rid of this parasite.  It’s now said that Russian interference in the 2016 election — their promotion of Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders — is what cost Hillary Clinton enough votes in swing states to win the Electoral College, even though she won the popular vote.  I have doubts about that; this seems like yet another media smokescreen designed to make us somehow forget that the Russians actually changed votes.  I say that because Trump’s margin of victory was equally tiny and unlikely in each state that was involved.  It’s charming that some in the media still want to protect us from “shock,” but vote-stealing seems to be a fact here, not a myth to be shoved off into the wilds of conspiracy theory.  (Keep in mind that the same entities have tried to tell us that the Russians accessed actual voting machines, but just snooped around and didn’t do anything.  Right.)

But I digress.  I do that a lot these days.  There is, after all, no one clear line in this saga.  However, to me, the connection between Kushner, Khashoggi, Syria and the axis is all too clear.  I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.

* P.S. I’m informed that the fraudulent GoFundMe campaign to fund Trump’s wall continues.  Since they won’t be able to give the money directly to any wall-funding account, I’m guessing one of three things will happen:
(1) they’ll be forced to give everyone refunds.  However, many people will never see their money again, or
(2) they’ll give the money to Trump’s campaign fund, where it will promptly disappear forever, or
(3) the grifter who started the whole thing will try to pocket all the money or else will try to extract an extra-large administrative fee.

** P.P.S. The Australians and several allied forces in Europe are still in Syria and will remain there.  This represents a miscalculation on Putin’s part; he seems to have assumed that once the U.S. was gone, the region will have been left without protection from ISIS.  Seems he forgot about everyone else.

 

So, what do you expect?

I think I said, perhaps longer than a year ago, that Trump was finished and we didn’t have a president anymore.  I still stand by that, now more than ever — but I do feel I was premature in a number of ways as he still did serve for a long time as a figurehead and a shield behind which people like Ryan, McConnell, and Putin could do whatever they wanted (or rather, Ryan and McConnell did and Putin thought he could).  Now, however, it is the simple truth: he’s finished.

I was watching the speculation on Twitter during the recent summit, and some of it was remarkably haywire — such as several people hijacking a thread to take guesses about whether Trump would defect to Russia.  Uh, people…

Even though I don’t believe for a minute that Putin and Trump are having an open-to-the-public schoolyard catfight (I do believe that all those cutsie pictures, and Russian media’s subsequent childish swipes at Trump and the U.S. , were and are mostly for the purpose of propaganda), I also don’t believe that Trump will find sanctuary in Russia.  In fact he may find death there, and he knows it.  After all, he failed to lift the sanctions against Russia, which was the entire point of this whole dizzy affair from the beginning.

As I’ve said before, Putin has little concept of what he’s dealing with in the U.S.  He probably continues to believe that Trump is as all-powerful as he himself is and that Trump is merely failing at his task because he’s…well, list the insults narcissists use here.  Yes, he is finished with Trump — but all this scowling at Trump and glad-handling Mister Bone Saw (while Trump looked on forlornly) were just for public show, fodder for the gullible and lazy media.  The real show is going on behind the scenes and is for now secret.

Russia’s only interest now is trying to appear innocent, at which they will be as lucky as Mister Bone Saw has been in distancing himself from the murder of Khashoggi.  In the end, they will fail.  Will they face consequences?  I believe they will, if only in increased sanctions and international isolation…until they rid themselves of Putin.  Putin will ultimately end up being the price Russia pays for putting up with Putin for so long.

Okay, so will Trump defect to Saudi Arabia?  That’s still a possibility, but I don’t think so.  I have no doubt that behind the scenes, an offer has been made.  But Saudi Arabia is in almost as fragile an international position as Russia.  They just don’t hold the bullying power they did when they caused an oil crisis in the 1970’s.  The world is moving on from oil, fast.  And once we achieve that goal, Saudi Arabia and Russia are finished — and they both know it.  Hence “Trump’s policies” against solar and wind energy, the environment, etc.  In fact, the day after I first published this, Trump announced a plan to end subsidies for electric cars and alternative energy.

Anyway, another thing I keep seeing on Twitter that amuses me is people continuing to whine “Pence is worse!”  I believe I’ve already addressed that in this blog, so I won’t further.  I’d just like one clear answer from these people, though: WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT TO DO, KEEP TRUMP?  (I really continue to believe that most of these whiners are bots, btw.)

And then in the next sentence they start listing all the terrible things Trump wants to do to the U.S.  People…it’s over.  It’s over.  He can’t.  The only person left with any power — and most of that, he’s usurped — is Mitch McConnell, and there are increasing rumblings about the Senate turning on him, along with a growing concentration on McConnell’s own considerable shadiness.  He is not invincible, and once he’s gone, the game is up.  And he will be gone.

Okay, so what can we expect?  A Trumpian explosion of alphabet soup on Twitter, for one thing.  Attempts to start “scandals” like the one where Trump said Obama was spying on him.  Blaming Obama.  Blaming Hillary.  Threats.  Whining.  Obstruction of justice.  Witness tampering.  Stuff like that.

And that’s all.

We are not helpless and we are not in any more danger than we already have been.  No one’s going to start a shooting WWIII (we already are, however, in another cold war).  No one’s even going to start a civil war.  That is to say, don’t let the Chicken-Little squad scare you, because that’s what they want to do.  Keep looking forward to a future without Trump and the Republicans and the Russians, kiddos, because it’s there.  Chin up.

 

And P.S. — don’t fall for any news stories about divisions or “weakness” among the Democrats, dears.  Those are coming from the Russians.

Way to go, Illinois

Here in Illinois, I know a lot of Dems (and probably more than a few Republicans) held their noses as they voted for J.B. Pritzker.  But consider this:

(1) He’s unlikely to hold up the state budget for 2 years and rack up billions of dollars in late-payment fees, trashing the state’s credit rating, while he throws a hissy fit about “financial responsibility.”

(2) He’s unlikely to spend 4 years and his entire re-election campaign blaming Mike Madigan (Speaker, IL House of Reps) for everything that goes wrong — and really, EVERYTHING went wrong for Rauner, including holding up the state budget for 2 years while he threw a hissy fit about “financial responsibility.”

(3) He’s REALLY unlikely to take 2 or 3 classes of Catholic school kids to the Vatican on the taxpayers’ dime (while holding up the state budget for 2 years while he throws a hissy fit about “financial responsibility”).

(4) He won’t, really won’t, try to reduce teachers’ pay to minimum wage and bust their union while holding up the state budget for 2 years while he throws a hissy fit about “financial responsibility.”

(5) If he is shocked by how differently a state is run than a business, Pritzker will keep it to himself — unlike Rauner, who whined very early in his term, “who knew that running a state and running a business were so different?”  This was while he was blaming Madigan for everything and was about to hold up the state budget for 2 years while he threw a hissy fit about “financial responsibility.”

All of the above are things Rauner actually did.  In the end, he beat himself with a big assist from an old-style machine Democrat (Pritzker), who after all had similar qualifications to Rauner.  Both are billionaire businessmen, so there goes Rauner’s claim to fame right there.  His only hope after Pritzker was nominated was to smear him with Blagojevich (see below); he had to know that even the nascent Republican vote-stealing machine in IL would be out of order this election after such an overwhelming display of ineptitude on his part.

I’ll add that Pritzker was not my first choice, either. Another friggin’ billionaire? Sheesh. But at least it took away Rauner’s claim about running the government like a successful businessman instead of a grifting politician.

Like I said, Pritzker’s also tainted by Blagojevich — which was the only dirt Rauner could come up with once the “successful businessman” angle was taken away. That and some voter intimidation and fraud by the Republicans cost Quinn the governor’s seat 4 years ago. But it didn’t work this time, thank God, and I think Pritzker had enough of a scare that he won’t again be pulling shit like the attempted deal with Blagojevich (who is still in prison).

All in all, even though we had to hold our noses to vote for Pritzker, he’s probably the only Dem who could have won as easily as he did, even with the Blagojevich stain. And again, even though the national media tried to portray this race as “close,” it never was. Rauner was gone the moment Pritzker won the primary and he knew it; that would not have been necessarily true with anyone else — even given Rauner’s fantastic gift for trashing himself.

Plus we got rid of the Russia twins Roskam and Hultgren in the U.S. House, hallelujah.

Not a bad night here in Illinois.