Day 554

Day 554 Friday July 27, 2018 1,024 Days to Go

This morning I saw Rudy Giuliani talking about Michael Cohen. He asked, “Which lie do you want to believe? The first one? The second one? The third one?” Be careful what you wish for Mr. Mayor.
I instead would like to flip the question and ask which truth do you want to believe? One or all of them?

Let’s start with hacking, and more than likely Russian hacking. There have been reports recently that it is more than likely that someone got into the voting machines in 2016 and changed votes. Why do I say this? There is a new report in the news fringe (typically this is where such things of this type are first reported than a few months later CNN or MSNBC or some other entity has a big BREAKING NEWS headline of this sort of thing.) The new report says there was a hack-a-thon and one of the hacks was a test to see if anyone could get into the voting machines used in U.S. elections. Not only did they get in, they got into everyone they tried. In some cases the states (Georgia was singled out as an example) the state keeps no paper record, therefore no audit is possible. Also, one particular kind of voting machine has an easily hackable password and it is the same for every one of their voting machines. One of the hackers was a teenager and he used Windows, a mouse, and a Word file to get into the voting machines. So I ask you, “What’s the possibility that a sophisticated Russian military operation could get into voting machines in the U.S. and do what they wanted?” Let’s put a number on it. Is it 0%, 10%, 99%, or 100%?
It turns out that our intelligence community knew about certain states being hacked and didn’t tell them until months after the election. To which I say WTF?
Last week there was evidence that hackers had gotten into computers that control our electric grid. Claire McCasgill has reported that Russian hackers tried to get into her computers this week. If they are trying to get into her computers, who else are they trying to hack into?

Let’s move onto Truth #2 – corruption. A Federal judge in Maryland has ruled on emoluments, specifically what they are, and surprise surprise, it’s what the dictionary defines them to mean. What does this mean for Donald Trump and his businesses? Well, it means that a lot of stuff falls under that category. In other words he’s in violation of the Constitution. Does it matter? Well, to be fair the right was jumping up and down about emoluments when Hillary Clinton had her picture taken with a donor to the Clinton Foundation and she was Secretary of State. So what if the guy was a head of state? Emoluments! The Constitution. Lock her up, etc. (Let’s not forget the shameful display of the Attorney General going along with the chant of Lock Her Up, by repeating it, earlier this week.)
So what’s Congress going to do? We’ll talk about that below, there’s more to get to here.

Michael Cohen – oh boy. Well, it turns out there aren’t a dozen tapes, there are hundreds. To corroborate the fact that Trump and Cohen discussed on the one tape released the payment method to the Playboy Bunny the Southern District prosecutors are pulling in Trump’s CFO. A man who has been with Trump since the 80s, and was with Trump’s father. He is reputed to know where all the money is and where it went. One commentator said today that when the cover is pulled back on Trump’s business dealings what we will find is decades of sleazy and possibly corrupt business practices.
Michael Cohen says he can link Trump Sr. to the infamous meeting that Trump Jr and son-in-law Jared and then Campaign Manager Manafort had with Russians in Trump Tower and that Sr. knew about it and approved of it before it happened. Why and how? Well, Michael says nothing went on in Trump Tower without Don Sr. knowing about it. Add to that that Trump Jr. reportedly runs and tells his dad everything. Sr. says he knew nothing about it because it was so unimportant that no one would bother telling him. Trump Jr. says that there’s nothing to tell because nothing came of it. That he forgot about it. When I heard that clip being replayed today it reminded me of the reporter who covered a wedding of a prominent family and didn’t file a report. When his editor asked him why he didn’t file a report the guy said the groom didn’t show up so there was nothing to report.

Truth #3 – What’s Congress doing? They’ve been busy. Yes sir. They filed impeachment papers against Rod Rosenstein. What happened to the concern about emoluments? What about presidential overreach? etc. etc. etc. All gone.
What about the Russians hacking our electric system, our election systems? No concern whatsoever.
What about the president being in league with or a pawn of the Russians? So what?

Meanwhile the Parkland kids are going around the country to districts that are represented by as they say “Sellouts to the NRA” and working to get more young people registered to vote.

Will it make a difference? I hope so. But it won’t if the Russians are hacking our voting machines and switching votes.

Hopefully, folks are getting pissed off and are willing to pay attention and stop trusting that “he has a plan.”
It’s way past time to get rid of this guy and his band of imbeciles, grifters, Russian agents, and crooks.

In other news one of Betsy DeVos’ family yachts was set adrift. It’s one of ten they own. It’s worth $40M. Damage was estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars. Thank god her family got that big tax break so they can repair that sucker.

1,024 Days to Go

PS Me with author Nancy MacLean who wrote Democracy in Chains that outlines the plan of the Koch brothers and others on the far right to enslave our democracy.