Day 797 Thursday March 14, 2019
599 Days to the 2020 election and 677 Days to Inauguration Day
Dissembling.
It’s more than a fifty cent word. I’d give it five bucks.
It’s a word I kind of know the meaning of, enough to be able to figure out that it’s not a good thing to do when I read a sentence where it is used. But I wouldn’t be able to use it in a sentence myself, until yesterday when I learned the definition.
Dissemble: (verb) to conceal one’s true motives, feelings, or beliefs.
– to disguise or conceal (a feeling or intention.)
The judge used the phrase “dissembling in this courtroom” in reference to Paul Manafort the other day in the Washington DC courtroom before sentencing him.
He appeared to act sheepishly before her. He said he was sorry. He said he was changing. He said his wife needed him and that he’d be seventy years old in a few weeks.
Aw. So sad.
What Paul Manafort and his legal team have been doing, and what Paul Manafort did for most of his life, is a reflection of our society for the rich and well connected.
What the judge said to him before sentencing is worth repeating and reflecting upon. The question to me is, “Is this how we want our society to conduct itself?” Is this what we have become? Is there no regard for truth, honesty, and social norms?
As I have studied history it has been abundantly clear that there are two levels of society, any society: the rich and powerful, and everybody else. Those in power will use whatever they have at their disposal to stay in power. They will lie. They will use religion. They will use the press, the army, the courts, whatever they are able to so do to be able to manipulate situations to stay in power.
The Roman Catholic church is full of sexual predators, but this is nothing new. It goes back centuries. There was a nun who used to have orgies. In Paraguay there are medicine men who are really scam artists who take what little people have and perform useless healing rituals. What do they do when they are sick? They go to the big city and see a doctor. The rich getting out of military service is another one. Remember in the Civil War you could buy your way out of service? Same thing throughout the ages.
It’s fascinating to me that on the day Manafort got sentenced a second time that a story broke about a bribery scandal that the rich were paying to get their kids into some top notch schools.
The other day I wrote about how a right wing (I mean “conservative” media outlet) The Hill attacked AOC and had glaring headlines denigrating* her, yet, when you actually listened to and watched the video none of what they claimed was in their evidence. The same thing happened in the lawyer’s comments after the Manafort hearing. In fact, it happened twice! At both trials. The judges in both cases went out of their way to say that their cases had nothing to do with Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign. Yet, this did not stop the lawyer each time saying after sentence was imposed that the judge affirmed there was no collusion. This was a lie, both times. Yet, they persisted in saying this lie, and they said it over and over again during the two trials.
* another $5 word.
Let’s review a few of the things the judge in the DC case did say:
She mentioned his “disregard for the facts”,
his “dissembling in this courtroom”,
“his belief that he had the right to manipulate these proceedings, and the Court orders and the rules didn’t apply to him”,
“a significant portion of his career has been spent gaming the system.”
That is what she said about Manafort’s character and behavior, as to his legal defense:
The judge said that Russian collusion had no bearing on this case and the repeated mentioning of it must have been intended for another audience. She said the no collusion refrain was repeated and unrelenting. As to the defense’s written plea in reference to that she said, “It’s hard to understand why and attorney would write that… with no citation.”
She went on to say the no-collusion mantra is simply a non-sequitur that doesn’t bear on the question before the Court. The question of collusion may or may not be applicable, but seeing as how the investigation is unfinished and no report has been issued it can not be determined.
She went on to say, “It is also not particularly persuasive to argue that an investigation hasn’t found anything when you lied to the investigators.”
She went on to say, “The question of whether there was or was not any coordination or conspiracy or collusion between anyone associated with the presidential campaign and anyone in Russia was not presented in this case. PERIOD. Therefore, it was not resolved one way or the other by the case.”
Just in case you missed the point here:
THE MANAFORT CASE WAS NOT ABOUT COLLUSION.
THE MANAFORT CASE WAS NOT ABOUT COLLUSION.
THE MANAFORT CASE WAS NOT ABOUT COLLUSION.
And in his earlier case in Virginia:
THE MANAFORT CASE WAS NOT ABOUT COLLUSION.
THE MANAFORT CASE WAS NOT ABOUT COLLUSION.
THE MANAFORT CASE WAS NOT ABOUT COLLUSION.
In the Virginia case the judge said the case about collusion was not considered because that was “not before the Court for anything to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election.”
In both cases the prosecution went out of their way to make it clear that Paul Manafort did not cooperate with the investigators. The DC judge said he deliberately lied about his connection to Konstantin Kilimnik who has been linked to Russian intelligence.
He also lied about giving detailed polling information about the Trump campaign to a Russian, which wasn’t revealed until prosecutors revealed it in court filings.
When the attorney for Manafort left the court he stated that the judge found no collusion. This brought catcalls from those assembled who yelled, “That’s not what she said.” (and she didn’t)
The cat caller then yelled, “You aren’t lawyers. You’re liars.”
This same lawyer told the same lie after the Virginia trial.
In fact, that was the only statement the lying lawyer said to those assembled both times.
Oh well, New York is after Paul now. Sixteen counts. Hey, eight of them are the same crimes that Michael Cohen is going to jail for. That’s the case where there’s an unindicted co-conspirator, one Donald J. Trump, president of the Untied States. Hum. lemme think If Mikey is going to jail for this crime and Paulie is up on charges for the same crime, which he has already plead guilty to in Federal court and Donnie is also listed as a co-conspirator than what does this mean for Donnie? I think it means he could be in trouble.
599 Days to the 2020 election and 677 Days to Inauguration Day
PS Saddle up cowboys! We’re going ridin’
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