Rick Kinnaird

Day 768 Wednesday February 13, 2019

628 Days to the 2020 election and 706 Days to Inauguration Day

The other day Nick Ackerman was on one of the news shows. He, btw, was a prosecutor during Watergate. He was asked about a little something that Mueller’s lead prosecutor revealed to a judge. That being that something was at the heart of the Mueller investigation. That something being a meeting between Trump people and Russians. 

The question being posed to Ackerman was, if this is a question of collusion, “Is there a quid pro quo?” In order for there to be “a favor for a favor” one would have to ask what each side wanted. Trump wanted to win the election and people around him were busily trying to ask or get help from the Russians to do that. Something the Russians were more than willing to do. But what did the Russians want? Putin had invaded the Ukraine and Congress had passed The Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012 and came before the Ukrainian invasion. It said that the U.S. could freeze the assets of those that committed human rights abuses. Putin retaliated by not allowing Russian children with disabilities from being adopted by U.S citizens who wanted them and could give them aid and comfort that Russia did not have the capabilities to do. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 President Obama imposed stiffer sanctions on Russia.

See if you can figure out what Russia might possibly want from a president Trump and his administration. Here is what Ackerman outlined, in part:

There were five known meetings between Russians and Trump people. 

Meeting 1 – topic: sanctions,

Meeting 2 – topic: sanctions,

Meeting 3 – topic: sanctions,

Meeting 4 – topic: sanctions,

Meeting 5 – topic: sanctions.

There were numerous Trump advisors who met with Russians, including Michael Flynn who has pled guilty and is going to jail for lying to the FBI. What did he lie about? 

Sanctions.

There is a long line of communication before and after these meetings with various Trump people. What was the topic they discussed?

Sanctions.

The well known Trump Tower meeting (#3 above) was ostensibly about adoptions, which is true, in that the discussion was “Hey Bubby, You lift sanctions we let you adopt, good deal? Yes?”

So what was it that the Russians wanted? Can you take a guess? 

Former CIA chief John Brennan was on yesterday and he was asked why all these Trump officials were lying about sanctions. That is – lying about meeting with Russians, and discussing sanctions with Russians.

I’ve come to really like John Brennan. Try this piece of Brennan logic on:

“Well, people typically lie to hide the truth.”*

It’s obvious, once someone says it. But he didn’t stop there.

“And the truth is that they probably did something illegal, or what they thought was illegal, and therefore they wanted to lie to cover up what they did.”*

* I am paraphrasing here. This is my recollection of what he said.

Hum, so if Ackerman and Brennan are right then the Trump people knowingly participated in quid pro quo scheme which on the one side was to help Trump get elected and on the other was to help the Russians get the sanctions lifted. While talking with the Russians about lifting the sanctions may or may not have been a crime, lying to the FBI certainly is and for that one person has been sentenced.

Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee has wrapped up their inquiry into Russian meddling and both the Democrat and Republican chairmen have made statements that they did not find “direct evidence” of Trump or his people colluding with Russians in the 2016 election.

While some Trump supporters may be crowing that this exonerates him, nothing could be farther from the truth. What numerous commentators have said is:

– that it is not the Senate committee’s job to discover if there is “direct evidence” of Trump or his associates guilt or criminal behavior. 

– The Senate committee’s job is to discover if there was meddling in our election system and to recommend what to do to protect our election system(s). They are to issue a report on that, which may take six or seven months to write. (Slow writers? I dunno.)

– prosecutorial commentators pointed out repeatedly that in collusion cases there is rarely or never “direct evidence.” If there was such evidence there would be little reason for a trial.  Typically, what you have is a series of meetings and communications that all center around a known objective, even if that objective is not stated. Why state the objective when everyone already understands that?

– It has been pointed out that Benedict Arnold was found guilty of passing secrets to the British by the fact that he was in the same room as a British general. There was no direct evidence. He was hung none the less.

So, I dunno. Prosecutors say they don’t believe in coincidence. There seems to be a lot of coincidence in plain sight. The only argument that I can see that can be made is, “Hey, it’s not a crime because we were doing it where everyone could watch – in plain sight.”

Moving on:

There were rallies in El Paso last night. One held by Trump and one by Beto O’Rourke. One person reported that Trump said he had 30,000 people and Beto 300. The actual numbers seem to be slightly different. O’Rourke had 7,000 – 8,000; Trump had 6,500 in his arena and another number outside (maybe 7-10,000? I’m not sure. I’ve heard various estimates.) 

One reporter at the Trump rally was attacked for being in the media. Don’t you love it when Roger Stone is upset by Nazi like tactics when he is arrested yet Trump and his supporters find it okay to attack people trying to cover their events? 

According to Trump he’s built lots of wall, and now we need to “Finish the Wall,” which he will do, with or without Congress’ help. 

The reality is that he has built no wall, zero, while in office. I guess that’s why we aren’t going to the wall to look at the big beautiful wall that he’s built, because it doesn’t exist? Meanwhile, Congress has worked out a way to not shutdown the government and Sean Hannity isn’t happy about the deal. Of course, he hasn’t seen the deal, but he’s not happy about it. Not that it matters what he thinks. We are still waiting, as far as I know, for the real negotiator in chief to weigh in, and that’s Ann Coulter. Mark Meadows, now being touted as the head of The Freedom Caucus (what happened to Jimmy Jordan? I thought he was the head? Oh well.) the deal stinks. Both Sean and Mark say there isn’t enough money in the bill to build the wall. Trump says he’s not happy, but he’ll do other things to finish the wall. Okay. Great. We aren’t happy, but the president will continue to finish his wall. There are fools who can’t see the wall, but if I were the president I’d send some people to the closest Home Depot to the wall where for five bucks you can get an HD pail. Get some illegal immigrants to haul those pails to the border, one in each hand. I mean when you send them back there’s no reason they should walk back empty handed after hauling all that marijuana over the border, besides they have those cantaloupe sized calves! Once they get to where the fence is not, they can take out that concrete that no one can see and slap it up on that wall that doesn’t exist, making sure they are on the Mexico side as the finish the task.

Where would we get the first batch of illegals to do that work? Well, I suggest we start at the Trump golf courses. The ones that have been hiring illegals for years. Wouldn’t that be a great place to start?

I’d like to see Congress pass a law that says if any person is caught working illegally here, before they are deported they have to be paid the legitimate wage a U.S. citizen would have been paid for that job. This could be touted as a way to discourage employers from hiring illegals and paying them less. The excuse of “We didn’t know!” Too bad, ignorance is no excuse. You know like when you try to tell the police officer you didn’t see the speed limit sign? Same thing. “Oh you thought those phony papers you helped that person get as a fig leaf was going to save your ass?” Naturally, we couldn’t send those illegals back right away, we’d have to keep them here to testify. What’s it costing us to keep those kids in cages? $800 to $1,000 a day per person? I think that’s right. While we are waiting for the illegals to testify I think the companies should be forced to pay that amount that to said illegals while they wait to testify at the same rate it costs us to incarcerate those kids. It’s too bad our courts are so backed up. It might be months before a case gets heard. Oh well, that’s the way it would go. 

Oh yes, don’t you love how the right wing reporters want to call Beto by his baptized name, even though he’s been called Beto since he was a kid? Let’s not forget Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Okay, fair is fair – president Drumpf.  

Now they are going after AOC and her Green New Deal. Never mind that it is a resolution, not a law. Never mind that it is describes as “aspirational” in other words, something to strive for. Never mind that there are general statements and not specifics, that it is outlining goals to work toward. It is touted as socialist, unworkable, and that she is dangerous. (As dangerous as Lenin!) Wait. Huh? Oh I don’t get it? It’s all a plot for her and Elizabeth Warren (gotta throw her in here too) to use as a power grab? Boy, I don’t remember the Republicans being upset about wonder boy Ryan’s first “aspirational” budget. I mean it must have been aspirational because it contained no specifics (like numbers) but only vague things he wanted to see happen.

Speaking of Paul Ryan, they are replaying clips of his saying how people were already seeing the great effects of the Republican tax cuts because their withholdings were less. Do you think he knew he’d be out of office when those self same supposedly happy having to pay less in withholding people were told they owed more money at tax time? Or that they were getting less money back as a refund? Or that the tax cuts didn’t cut their taxes, or boost the economy, or shrink the debt? I think a committee ought to haul Paulie’s ass back in to explain. Where is Henry Waxman? We need a pince-nez glasses guy like Waxman to hold Ryan’s feet to the fire. I don’t want those feet held there for long. Only til they are burned to the knees.

628 Days to the 2020 election and 706 Days to Inauguration Day

PS Koh Ker Temple, Cambodia

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?”

Day 762 Thursday February 7, 2019

634 Days to the 2020 election and 712 Days to Inauguration Day

Oh boy. The president’s most memorable comment from his speech last night was a threat in the form of a bumper sticker “No Legislation if there’s an Investigation.”

I guess there will be no legislation. 

Because boy oh boy are we gearing up for a doozy of a year of investigations. There’s Mueller and the feds in New York. Now there’s Maria Butina’s alleged boyfriend. I say “alleged” because we know from intercepted communications she complained to her Russian handlers about having to be intimate or even around this guy. I don’t know why she would feel that way. Was it that she’s in her twenties and he’s in his fifties? Is it that she’s quite attractive and he looks like a complete doofus? Or is it that he’s been making money by scamming people for his adult life? Yeah, that just came out in the indictments against him. The scams all followed the same pattern: send a form letter, ask for money, promise a lot, cash the check, move on. Three scams were mentioned in the indictments: wheelchairs, old folk health care, Bakken oil field real estate. Said boyfriend has been mentioned as an operator in Republican circles in North Dakota. But local Republicans also call him a big phony. Yeah, but they still took his money.

Okay, that’s all the known and small stuff. Hey, one guy indicted on a bunch of stuff that’s a Republican. Not a bad day for the Grand Old Party. Oh wait, there’s more.

Adam Schiff is now in charge of the House Intelligence Committee. He’s a Democrat, a former prosecutor and he’s chairman of the aforesaid committee. For some reason he wasn’t happy about the way the Republicans handled their investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election. I guess closing your eyes and putting your head in the sand and then saying you saw nothing is not his style. 

His reconstituted investigation is more broadly defined than before and he has outlined five “threads” of investigation:

1. The scope and scale of the Russian government’s operations to influence the U.S. political process, and the U.S. government’s response, during and since the 2016 election.

2. The extent of any links and/or coordination between the Russian government, or related foreign actors, and individuals associated with Donald Trump’s campaign, transition, administration, or business interests, in furtherance of the Russian government’s interests.

3. Whether any foreign actor has sought to compromise or holds leverage, financial or otherwise,  over Donald Trump, his family, his business, or his associates.

4. Whether president Trump, his family, or his associates are or were at any time at heightened risk of, or vulnerable to, foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion, or have sought to influence U.S. government policy in service of foreign interests.

5. Whether any actors — foreign or domestic — sought or are seeking to impede, obstruct, and/or mislead authorized investigations into these matters, including those in the Congress.

Let me translate this to more simplified terms:

1. Did Russian interfere in our election?

2. Collusion

3. Bribery

4. Blackmail

5. Obstruction

To think the president is named as a target and also his friends, family, and associates, and members of Congress shows how deep this corruption may go. 

While the Democrats are tying themselves in knots over whether a person wore blackface thirty some odd years ago at least one is keeping his eye on the many balls of things that have, and can, really hurt our democracy.

(Note: I copied the five threads directly from The Rachel Maddow Show’s broadcast of last night. I wonder if Fox thought to report any of this?)

634 Days to the 2020 election and 712 Days to Inauguration Day

PS “In the jungle, the mighty jungle …” 

Day 761 Wednesday February 6, 2019

635 Days to the 2020 election and 713 Days to Inauguration Day

My reaction to the State of the Union address, while it was going on, was, “Is he still talking?”

Not being able to listen to his voice for more than a few seconds at a time we tuned in every so often. He seemed to go on forever. When he was done the commentators really didn’t know what to say. They were left scrambling to describe what they had just heard. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put her finger on the most important thing about it and that was that she heard nothing specific. There was no policy, no detail. 

Then there were the absurd things. We can’t have partisan investigations. Right. Tell that to Hillary who had to endure how many investigations into something she had nothing to really do with what happened at Benghazi? Or tell it to Bill, who was being investigated for, along with Hillary, a land deal that went bust that had nothing to do with the illegal stuff their partner did years later. Ot tell that to Hillary who kept a private email server and was only discovered because it hadn’t been hacked like the one at the State Department, and all the while the people doing the investigating were using private email servers.

Okay, no partisan investigations, just oversight and letting the wheels of justice do what they are supposed to do – bring crooks to justice. Oh wait, what if there is a partisan investigation? There will be no legislation? Is that a threat? 

Same old, same old, from the school yard bully.

Stacy Abrams gave a wonderful rebuttal. She brought up every day working people’s issues. She brought up founding principles. She, like Ocasio-Cortez, is a breath of fresh air in a stale and roomful of mostly vapid vain people.

635 Days to the 2020 election and 713 Days to Inauguration Day

PS Nothing Need be Said (it’s obvious)