Day 764

Day 764 Saturday February 9, 2019

632 Days to the 2020 election and 710 Days to Inauguration Day

I didn’t write a screed yesterday as I was otherwise involved. I was preparing a 20 minute talk for my niece’s first grade class. How exhausting; how rewarding. But I’m back at it today, and it seems there have been a number of HUGE things that have gone on. However, overhanging all of this is the question, “If Donald Trump is not a Russian asset than what is he?” The evidence seems overwhelming. I can argue that he is either knowingly or unknowingly doing their bidding. I suspect both. He is parroting the Russian propaganda lines that only come from Russia. In other words, you aren’t hearing what he’s saying anywhere else. Is this what Putin is mentioning to him in their hours long meetings? Is Trump so dumb that he is this easily led? (Yes, of course. He’s demonstrated that by referring to stuff as fact that are really only in a movie.) Is he knowingly doing the other stuff for the money? (Yes, again.) So I conclude that he is both knowingly (for the money) doing Putin’s bidding and unknowingly (via what Putin tells him and parroting it) doing The Kremlin’s bidding. 

Okay, topics for the last two days:

– Jeff Bezos reveals that The National Enquirer and its parent company AMI tried to use extort and bribe him,

– The House committees gear up,

– The mess in Virginia’s top Dems gets worse,

– John Dingle dies

– Jackie Robinson dies

– Lower tax returns are starting to hit home

Let’s start with Jeff Bezos, reputedly the richest man in the world. Putin may have more, but much of that is hidden from view. The National Enquirer ran a story a week or so ago saying that Bezos was having an affair. this led to the separation and upcoming divorce from his wife of twenty five years. Jeff hired investigators to find out how the Enquirer got the information. Then the Enquirer came to him and told him to stop his investigation or they would reveal more photos of a damaging and salacious nature. They put it in writing via an email. 

Jeff was having none of it. He turned down their offer and published what they had sent him. As I understand it he only published the descriptions of the photographs, as well as, the emails from the National Enquirer/AMI. One of the most striking things about the emails was AMI’s insistence that this was in no way political. Jeff therefore concluded that it was political, and he had evidence to show that it probably was. Mainly, the level of detail they had of his emails. Bezos doesn’t believe he was hacked as much as he thinks “a government entity” obtained his emails. Speculation is that it’s the Saudis. Newscasters are showing the cosy, yet unexplained, relationship between AMI and the Saudis, and – wait for it – Donald Trump. It was hard to understand why AMI put out a slick magazine puff piece on Saudi Arabia and MBS last year. It had to cost a lot to produce. Who paid for it? 

David Pecker, head of the National Enquirer, is a buddy of Trump’s and Pecker has been trying to make inroads into Saudi Arabia business-wise. It seems Trump may have introduced Pecker to MBS. 

Bezos owns The Washington Post and it’s no secret that the president and MBS don’t like the Post. 

To make matters weird, it turns out that the brother of the woman Bezos has been having the affair with is a friend of Roger Stone and Carter Paige. Nice. Was this all a set up?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Oh, and here’s the juicy stupid part. Pecker, The Enquirer, and AMI had signed a non-prosecution agreement with Mueller. In it they have to not only tell everything they know, but if they do any criminal activity for three years from the signing of the document then all bets are off and they are criminally liable. Wow. As one newscaster said, “They didn’t even make it a month.” (The agreement was signed in September and the Bezos stuff started shortly thereafter.)

But if you are the Enquirer this may not have seemed illegal, and it may not be, according to some legal folks. This seems to be the way the Enquirer does business. It may be more of an extortion racket than a “news” publication. I couldn’t understand why they would stay in business, because according to reports last year they lost a ton of money. Maybe, they make that back on their off-the-books extortions? Or maybe they are getting funded by large right wing conservative billionaires wanting to dig up dirt or make up stories about people they don’t like? We don’t have to go far to see all the terrible headlines they put out about Hillary over the course of the election, while doing none on Trump. Oh, that’s right, Pecker showed Trump the articles on Hillary before they ran and Trump approved them.

On to the House committees, there are so many. Elijah Cummings is doing something, I forget what exactly, but suffice it to say Trump won’t like it. The House Intelligence Committee turned over all their “official” transcripts to The Special Prosecutor. This will allow the Special Prosecutor to bring charges against people who lied to that committee. Apparently, many of them did. Stunning, I know. How do they know they lied, because the people on the committee had the intelligence communications! Stunning. One name that keeps popping up as lying is DT Jr.

On the Judicial Committee they had Matt Whittaker testify to them yesterday. I couldn’t watch it. Both due to my other commitments and to the “it will make my skin crawl” effect I thought it would have on me I stayed away. Apparently, Matty-boy did not disappoint. He stayed true to form. The one time I turned on the TV and they were interviewing a legal commentator who said, “Whittaker is way over his head.” I turned it off. The clip that was shown over and over again was Whittaker telling the chairman of the committee that his five minutes were up. Yeah, that’s right, the guy being questioned, was telling the chairman how to conduct his committee, and how he the chairman was out of line. The gall that takes is amazing. Even more amazing to me was when an roar went up from the gallery over that comment Whittaker looked around in dumbfounded surprise. He didn’t seem to understand, maybe it was just a show – of ignorance. Nadler, the chairman, just smiled. Not sure what happened next.

The consensus of people I listened to about the hearing described Whittaker as arrogant from the start, defensive,  weak, unprepared or lacking knowledge – take your pick, and he had a few tag lines he kept repeating: “I understand this is important to you”, “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” Rinse and repeat. 

When he was questioned about the children in cages he seemed out of his element. He was blank. No empathy, no understanding. 

On to the mess in Virginia: The governor has a picture on his med school yearbook page that shows a person in blackface and a person dressed up in a KKK costume. Northam says he did a Michael Jackson impersonation with some shoe polish on his face. Whether the person in the picture is Northam is unknown because he has both apologized for the picture and said it wasn’t him. Meanwhile, the Lieutenant Governor has been accused of sexual assault at the Democratic Convention, and the Attorney General, the next in line, says he dressed up in blackface once. While the various Democratic candidates were busy screwing themselves up in knots of righteousness about Northam and saying the Lieutenant Governor, a black man, should take over, it came out that said LG has been accused of rape in 2000 when he was at Duke.

The howls for the LG to step down are now deafening. What about Northam and the AG? Doesn’t seem so bad now. The problem for the Dems is that if they get rid of all three the next in line to be Governor is a Republican.

The real mess here seems to be that we, as a society, have not dealt with the issue of what goes on behind closed doors. There is no protocol, no etiquette, no set of manners for what is and is not acceptable. The blackface? Well, let he or she who has not done something when they were younger, which is now seen as stupid, throw the first stone.

John Dingle died. Served in Congress thirty terms. Won every election. Started when Eisenhower was President. Was a 14 year old page on the House floor when FDR gave his famous “Day of Infamy” speech.  Has tons of really good legislation attached to his name, and – I am told – had a wicked twitter feed.

Jackie Robinson – the man who broke the color barrier in baseball, both as a player and a manager died on the same day as John Dingle.

 

I hope we will see the likes of men like them again.

And perhaps the thing that may have the biggest political impact are the tax returns. The tax cut was billed as helping the middle class. The reality is quite different. It was a huge giveaway to the ultra rich and big corporations. There are all sorts of deductions that the average taxpayer was accustomed to taking. All those have been swept away, and folks are just starting to realize it as their refunds are smaller this year than in previous years. The Republicans to hide their dirty deeds changed the amount of withholding so folks wouldn’t realize how bad it was through the mid-terms. Now they are filling out their forms and learning that the deductions they took before are not allowed and they are seeing in black and white how much they owe. To add insult to injury their refund checks are being delayed. Turns out the IRS is so understaffed they don’t have enough people to do the actual work. One person reported that when his daughter asked a “When will I get my refund check?” she was told they’d get back to her in 12 weeks.

Typically, when you are going to screw people over like the Republicans did, you try to ease in slowly. They couldn’t do that because they gave away so much money they had to get it from somewhere – right away. 

Other little tidbits: Jeffery Epstein, the serial sexual predator who enlisted 14 year old girls in a sex services ring, who got off with a very light sentence? The guy who let him off is being investigated for malpractice or something like that. Donnie Deutsch related meeting Epstein once. They were talking over some kind of business deal. Epstein asked him, “What kind of girls do you like?” Apparently, this was part of Epstein’s modus operandi. Whether they can get Epstein on anything else is remote, but there are supposedly a lot of powerful men: Republican and Democrat, that may be ensnared.

Donald Trump, after his State of the Union, immediately went on the road holding rally after rally to sell his ideas and message to the country … Just kidding. He had no ideas to sell. He went back to the White House to watch TV and tweet.

632 Days to the 2020 election and 710 Days to Inauguration Day

PS “What are you looking at?” “Me? Nothing. Wanna play?”