October 7, 2019

Trump's goal is to do to the terms "impeachment" or "treason" what he did to "fake news."

Because "fake news" used to be a real thing. It used to be about false stories being spread via dubious fly-by-night websites over social media, which overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump and was heavily supported by foreign governments (i.e. Russia).

Then after he was elected, and knowing how he was elected and who was responsible for getting him elected, Trump began to use the "fake news" term not to describe any actual news that was fake, but instead towards any media outlets who dared not to paint him in the most flattering light.

Trump having run the term completely into the ground, it is now functionally meaningless to the public. It's now nothing more than a joke, a meme, a silly retort.

And now Trump is doing the same thing to the notion of "impeachment" and "treason."

Representative Schiff, Speaker Pelosi....even Republican Senator Mitt Romney must now be "impeached" for the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of criticizing Donald Trump. Their actions--in Schiff's case doing little more than paraphrasing the contents of a telephone call--constitute nothing less than "treason."

Never mind that members of Congress cannot be "impeached."

Never mind that the President of the United States should know that members of Congress cannot be "impeached" and certainly not for the mere "crime" of criticizing a sitting President, which is something that has taken place for over 230 years now and is a sign of a healthy democracy.

Trump's intent is to strip all terms of their actual meanings and turn them into cheap jokes. Nothing more and nothing less.

September 4, 2019

On open carry....

This past Saturday, while my area was still in the proverbial Cone of Death of a major hurricane, I went out to get some Chinese takeout at our local takeout establishment.

As I pulled into the left-hand turning lane and turned on my signal to pull into the plaza where the takeout place was located, I noticed a motorcycle travelling in the opposite direction. It slowed and moved into its right hand turning lane, meaning it was also headed towards the same plaza.

Figuring it had the right of way, I dutifully sat in the left hand turn lane and waited for the motorcycle to turn in. However, when it came for him to turn into the plaza, he instead came to a stop and sat there for a second or two.

Reminding him that he had the right of way, I waived my arm to tell him to turn in.

Still nothing. He just sat there for a couple more seconds like a bump on the log, seemingly oblivious to me.

Not wanting to lose any more time, I figured he had forfeited his right of way and I began to make my left turn in. And just as I did, the man on the motorcycle started to angrily gesture and wave his arm, only then realizing that I was there and turning in.

I pull into the plaza parking lot, and I notice that the man on the motorcycle is directly behind me and has also parked in the same parking lot.

Not one for awkward confrontations, I pray that he was heading towards one of the other two restaurants in the plaza, but as I walk towards the takeout place, I notice there he is, walking right behind me.

Now, I have been cut off many times in traffic. And typically I'll react with an angry wave of my hand, and I'll be upset for a grand total of maybe 3 seconds. 5 seconds, tops. And by then it's ancient history. But I have no guarantee how others might react.

I open the door, and the motorcycle man is literally 5 feet behind me. As I open the door, the lady at the counter announces, "Next person!"

I don't have a second to say a word to her before the motorcycle man immediately barges in front of me and asks for his order, without any regard for the fact that I was technically the next person in line.

Whatever. If he feels I somehow cut him off earlier, let him take my place in line and get his order. As long as he doesn't say anything to me.

And yet, just as he finishes his order, he turns directly to me and says to me in a thick New York/New Jersey accent--not in a shouting manner, but very bluntly--"If you ever pull that stunt on me ever again, I guarantee you that you won't be coming out in one piece."

Now, I'm a pacifist by nature. I've never gotten into a fistfight in my life, and have no plans to do so. Still, I'm forever situationally aware of things and if I ever am forced to defend myself, I will.

So I assess him up. He's at least 20 years older than me, probably in his 60s, and a foot shorter than me. So I feel reasonably confident about my situation if it were to come to blows.

I simply shake my head at him.

"Chill out, man," I tell him. "You're going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep acting like this. Besides, you ended up taking my place in line, so consider things square between us."

"Oh, my heart just bleeds for you," he responds sarcastically, seemingly not aware of my honest peace offering.

Without saying anything else he takes his food and leaves the store. I approach the lady at the counter--who is a familiar face--and she just has an expression on her face like, "What the hell was that about?"

"Must be the stress from the hurricane," I say.

She's clearly sympathetic towards me and tells me not to worry about it, people yell at her on a daily basis. I thank her and take my food.

Thinking about this in retrospect, I have to wonder how the situation might have played out if it were not simply an angry old man spewing empty threats, but someone with a gun displayed at his side.

The dynamic of the situation would have changed considerably.

How would I have reacted differently?

How would the lady behind the counter reacted differently?

We're told by the gun apologists, "An armed society is a polite society," but such a case, I can't see the outcome being any more polite or civilized.

April 18, 2019

These facts are not in dispute:

1. Russia actively worked to get the presidential candidate of its choosing elected president.
2. That candidate and his campaign was actively aware of these efforts by Russia and--at a bare minimum--did nothing to dissuade or stop these efforts.
3. When an investigation about these efforts from Russia was taken up, the candidate--now President--undertook multiple efforts in an attempt to impede the investigation.

Those are things that neither side can deny as being fact at this point.

This is not a political problem. This is a goddamn national security problem and it needs to be addressed with the seriousness it demands.

Balls to the wall.

February 27, 2019

SCENE: Jay Sekulow's office, this morning.

SEKULOW (thinking to himself): Dammit, Cohen just implicated me in obstruction of justice. What the hell am I going to do? I think I'm going to need....another lawyer.

SEKULOW grabs rolodex on his desk, starts furiously scrolling through it until he finds a section titled "Other Lawyers". He pulls out a card.

It reads, "Michael Cohen"

SEKULOW: Shit!

SEKULOW continues to scroll. There is only one other card. He pulls it out.

It reads, "Rudy Giuliani."

SEKULOW: Mother fu---

END SCENE.

January 29, 2019

Shout out to Bill Christeson, a.k.a. the "Sign Guy."

He is truly the personification of the voice of the American conscience against treason in its midst.








May you have many more signs to make in this coming year, Bill.



https://twitter.com/BillChristeson

January 29, 2019

We need a running betting pool on the date Roger Stone's bail gets revoked.

Because you just know that asshole isn't going to abide by the judge's instructions not to contact potential witnesses in this case.

So when does Roger go back to jail?

(To make it interesting, winner will be based on the closest to the date that the Prosecution or court moves to revoke bail, not the actual date of the revocation hearing)

Winner gets your standard Ten Bucks or a Toyota.

December 20, 2018

A word to Roger Stone: Your life is about to be completely turned upside down.

I don't mean that in the sense that an embarrassing joke photo of you from years ago might surface, or that there might be a few vague, unsubstantiated claims that you grabbed women's rears while posing for photos with them. While that might be enough to derail a career, we're looking at something a little more serious than that.

No...while that might be your idea of having one's "turn in the barrel" to you, what awaits you in the next weeks....months....and years....is actually going to be much, much, much worse than that.

What we're talking about is the indignities of your arrest, arraignment, court appearance after court appearance after mind-numbing court appearance, and--since we know you think somehow think you'll be able to beat it all--a very public trial.

And you won't beat it. You think you will because you are a haughty, narcissistic vain asshole of the highest degree, but Robert Mueller cleaned the clock of your old business partner Paul Manafort, and he's going to do the same with you.

You're going to lose it all, Roger. That home on the ocean in Florida--gone. Your assets--seized. Those outrageous outfits you like to wear--traded for prison scrubs. Social media accounts.....please. They'll be gone.

Even those dumb ass Panama Jack hats you like to wear will be a thing of the past, Roger. They're not coming with you.

You might think you'll end up with three years, like Michael Cohen, and sure, you think, you can handle that.

But you're not getting three years, Roger. Sure, Michael Cohen was a weak little coward who mistakenly thought that being one of Donald Trump's goons would somehow give his life purpose and meaning. And of course, it didn't, and he realized that all after the fact and after the search warrant.

But you're far worse than him, Roger. You're a pathological piece of shit. Your track record over the decades--the lives you've ruined, the injustices you've caused--underscores that fact.

So no, Roger, you won't be getting away with three years. You're going to be doing some hard, hard time.

And here's the thing, Roger--you're not exactly a spring chicken there. You're already 66 years old. Time's a'ticking.

You will die in prison, Roger. When you die, it won't be surrounded by your wife or your son or your grandkids in your bed or even at some hospital or nursing home. It will be at an infirmary at some Federal Correctional Facility out in the middle of BFE.

And you--the great political fixer Roger Stone--will die all alone.

And when you die, after the fact, they'll shove your remains into a plastic bag for your loved ones to claim, like you are piece of dry cleaning or lost luggage at the airport.

And that is how it will end for you, Roger.

You'll be known as Roger Stone, the fixer and dirty political trickster who sold out his country and died in prison.

I hope it was all worth it, Roger. That living the way Roy Cohn taught you--tearing people apart, always lying, always spinning, never admitting the truth--was somehow the way you wanted to live.

If not....well, too bad, so sad.

Welcome to the Barrel, Roger Stone.

December 19, 2018

Regarding speculation as to the "mystery candidate" who received hacked docs from Russia.

Back in July, the Special Counsel's office indicted multiple Russian military intelligence (GRU) officers for various hacking related offenses during the 2016 election season.

In the middle of the indictment, Mueller drops an interesting little tidbit:



The conspirators--aka GRU--set up the Guccifer 2.0 account and communicated with several individuals known to associate with political figures. This includes the ever lovely Roger Stone (any chance we get an indictment of him before the new year?) as well as a Florida based blogger and political consultant by the name of Aaron Nevins.

Based on the timing and the Nevins connection, it's believed that the alleged leak by Guccifer 2.0 to the mystery candidate means the candidate requesting that info was from Florida. Here's a story from Politico that lays it out:

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2018/07/13/florida-republicans-play-starring-roles-in-russia-hacking-indictment-510037

The big question of course is....who is the candidate?

A lot of speculation has centered on Rep. Brian Mast, who was elected the representative of Florida's 18th District in 2016. The reason is obvious--Nevins acted as a political consultant for Mast during his 2016 campaign. So it immediately creates the specter of motive and opportunity.

I'm a little bit skeptical Mast is the man, however. Mast is essentially a run-of-the-mill, boring, typical back bencher Republican congressman. Besides from having an admittedly sympathetic military resume, there's nothing really remarkable about Mast's behavior either before or after he was elected that suggests he was one to engage in--shall we call it--light treason. Unlike, say, Dana Rohrabacher, there's no major red flags about Mast that suggest he is one to conspire with Russian military intelligence. If he's hiding those sort of sentiments, he's been hiding them pretty well.

Other Florida-based congressional candidates who've been bandied about as suspects include Rep. Matt Gaetz of the 1st District and the now Governor-elect but then representative of the 6th District, Ron DeSantis. And opposed to Mast, some of their behavior since 2016 and their attitudes towards the Mueller investigation have been a little bit more suspect.

But I think we still are forgetting another suspect, one who I think has both strong motive, opportunity and red flags galore.

That would be Tim Canova, who was Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's primary opponent in 2016. What makes me suspect Canova is things in the indictment that might be overlooked.

Notably, the indictment says the person was a "candidate." There's no mention whatsoever that the person was actually elected to office in the end. Moreover, there's nothing that says that the candidate was seeking information for the purposes of the general election. And with that in mind, the information was released on August 15th, which was roughly two weeks before the Florida primary elections. People assume it was a Republican seeking information for the general election and that Republican was the ultimate victor. That's not necessarily the case.

Why else Canova? Because he has multiple red flags and motive to seek that information:

1. The release came just a couple weeks after Guccifer 2.0's leak right before the DNC convention. That leak created a huge embarrassment for DWS, so much so that she was forced to step down as chair of the DNC before the convention started. So DWS was certainly in the crosshairs for the Russian hackers. And who would benefit most from another hack that involved DWS but DWS's own primary opponent, that being Tim Canova.

2. Canova acted in ways that were rather unconventional for what you might expect a Democrat from Broward County to act. For example, on more than one occasion, he appeared on the radio show of Joyce Kaufman, a right-wing extremist who was almost named the congressional chief of staff for one-term Tea Party firebrand Allen West.

3. Throwing the race for the congressional seat of the one-time DNC chair into chaos and creating division amongst Democratic voters (in order to suppress turnout) is the typical MO of Russian interference actions in elections.

4. Canova is based in Broward County, where Nevins (and his father, Buddy Nevins) have made a well-known name for themselves in political circles. And while Roger Stone has a more national footprint, he too is based out of Broward. So both of Guccifer 2.0's contacts had close ties to Broward.

4. Since that election, Tim Canova has quit the Democratic party.

5. Since that election, Tim Canova has heavily criticized the Mueller investigation and explicitly expressed doubt that it was Russia who hacked the DNC, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

6. Since that election, Tim Canova has engaged in spreading wild conspiracy theories similar to the ones being spread over social media by Russian propagandists, such as the claim that the DNC and the Clintons were behind the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

And yes, on the day of the apparent release (August 15, 2016), Tim Canova did get a few very interesting messages from followers on Twitter.







Now, as tantalizing as this might seem, it's not quite a smoking (or smocking) gun for Canova. Delivering materials via a Twitter post is a rather public way that leaves the risk of exposure if it were indeed a response for a request for hacked materials. Furthermore, the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress link doesn't actually contain any materials related to the DWS-Canova race (District 23). (For that matter, it doesn't contain any info on the race for Gaetz or DeSantis' district, either, although it does contain info on the race for Mast's district.)

So more likely than not this was just a coincidence and just some zealous followers of Guccifer 2.0 wanted to pass on this material to Canova (which is still very, very odd, don't you think?). But there's nothing in the Indictment that says the materials sent to the mystery candidate were part of the WordPress post; it's possible and likely they were sent using more encrypted means.

That all being said, with DWS already being in Guccifer 2.0's crosshairs before these documents were leaked, with Canova's curious subersive and disruptive behavior both before and after the leaks, and the various connections to Broward County, I think a further inquiry into the possibility that Tim Canova was the mystery candidate is warranted.

December 17, 2018

"And when you die, all anyone will say is, 'Better that he had never lived at all.'"

That's a quote from the HBO Miniseries "Angels in America," based on the Tony Kushner play of the same name.

It comes at a point where the infamous fixer/lawyer/McCarthy figure Roy Cohn lies dying of AIDS--a disease Cohn never wanted to admit having--in his hospital bed. He is "visited" by a vision of Ethel Rosenberg, a woman whose execution (aided by numerous dirty tricks and maneuverings on Cohn's part) Cohn considers the absolute pinnacle of his professional career.

The most devastating part about Rosenberg's quote to Cohn is how absolutely true it was, and still is. Not only did Cohn die a disgrace--disbarred and inflicted with a disease that was a testament to his utter hypocrisy--but Cohn's reputation has actually gotten worse over time, not better. When some high profile figures with controversial pasts die, we naturally attempt to find the silver linings and find good accomplishments and attributes amongst the bad.

Any attempt to rehabilitate Cohn, however, would be absolutely futile. He lived and died the nasty, corrupt, contemptible son-of-a-bitch that he was, and like the fictional Rosenberg apparition declared, there was no good that could be gleaned from his life. It was a total waste, never to be celebrated, and too broken to be rehabilitated.

But even after his death in 1986, Cohn was the curse that kept on cursing, and we are still dealing with his impact to this very day. Because it was Cohn who took people like Donald Trump and Roger Stone under his fetid wing and encouraged their public, brash, thoroughly corrupt and unapologetic pugnacious styles. In turn, Trump attempted to mold his own attorney Michael Cohen directly after Cohn. While it worked for years, we are now seeing a reckoning for Trump for his unequivocal embrace of Cohn's mantras.

Aided no doubt in good part by a search warrant of his apartment that shook like an earthquake, Cohen decided (probably in his own best interest more than anything else) that he didn't want to have the legacy of Roy Cohn, Donald Trump and Roger Stone to be his dying legacy. He didn't want people saying about him, "Better that he never lived at all."

For Donald Trump, however, that quote from Rosenberg to Cohn will ultimately follow him to the grave. His life will be viewed as a complete waste. He will die one of the greatest villains to America that this nation has ever known, a man complete without redemption. He will die as someone who was so eager to enrich and empower and promote himself that nothing would ever stop him, not even the pause of thought as to whether one should commit treason just to get one self elected the most powerful man in the world.

Like the Roy Cohn that Kushner imagined, Donald Trump is now being haunted by the legacy of his own mentor, and in a brutal twist of irony it is none other than Roy Cohn himself. In the end, a man who helped fuel a Red scare as to others' supposed collaboration with the enemy helped in an indirect fashion to bring on the most infamous case of such treason the country will have ever known.

And in the end, when Trump draw his last, it will be he who people will say, "Better that he had never lived at all."
____________________________________________________________________________________________

In case anyone wanted to see the scene with Cohn and Rosenberg from Angels in America, here it is:



Al Pacino and Meryl Streep do an absolutely phenomenal job in their respective parts. Streep's simple rendition of "Tumbalalaika" is utterly haunting.

December 13, 2018

Former ABC reporter Brian Ross appears to have been vindicated.

When the Flynn story broke last year, Ross had reported that Flynn had contacts with the Russian ambassador both before and after the election.

However, there was a huge outcry because it was insisted that we only knew that Flynn had met with the ambassador only after the election, not before.

Trump threw a fit, Ross was suspended and then ultimately fired.

But it appears he was indeed right.

And I think he deserves an apology.

Flashback to January 6, 2018. Trump blames Ross for tanking the stock market.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949610896241946626