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Day 640 Thursday October 18, 2018   941 Days to Go

Let’s talk dismemberment. Not of Kashoggi, well okay let’s start there. First they cut off his fingers. Then when the head of the Saudi consulate asked them to take it out of his office he was told to shut up unless he wanted to be killed when he returned to Saudi Arabia. The forensic doctor who had come along with the bone saw suggested that the other folks do as he does when doing such work and put on head phones and listen to some music, which he promptly did. I want to know what kind of music do you listen to while sawing up a body? Is it “Singing in the Rain” as was done in Clockwork Orange? Or would it be classical? So many questions.

Our president is hard at it. He is working closely with the Saudi royal family to come up with a plausible explanation. That’s teamwork. 

A recent set of articles has emerged saying that the Saudis offered to run a social media campaign to help get Donald elected. They spoke first to Rick Gates and then directly with Donald. Aside from being illegal there would be nothing wrong with that.

Speaking of illegal Senator Blumenthal has a court case proceeding against Trump on the grounds that he is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Remember when Trump and the Republicans were upset that Hillary had her picture taken with a donor to the Clinton Foundation? Oh boy. Now we’ve got a guy who has a bunch of hotels that were in trouble until the Saudis came in and rented a bunch of rooms. They also bought the 45^th floor of Trump Tower, but that was years ago. Why dig up that old stuff? Oh, because it might show a pattern? That maybe the president doesn’t have the country’s best interest at heart and is only looking out for himself? 

That seems to run in the family. I mean you can’t blame a person for looking out for themselves can you? Speaking of running in the family, bad real estate deals seem to be part of the family tendencies too. Jared bought a building and paid way too much for it. Not to worry, let’s try to get money from the Chinese, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany (well Russian money via Germany, which is the real reason Justice Kennedy stepped down so he wouldn’t have to possibly rule against his son, who while at Deutsche Bank gave Trump a big loan with money that came in from Russia.)

So the story of the Saudis and the social media deal seems a lot like the Russian hacking.

Has anything gone on about that? The Russian hacking? Not much, I mean a Treasury official has been criminally charged with leaking documents and Twitter has said that they were off in their assessment of how much the Russians had done via twitter during the 2016 election.

Originally, Twitter said there were 205 Russian accounts. Now? Over 9,000 Russian accounts linked to the building in Russia that did the hacking and they put out over 9 million tweets pro-Trump and anti-Hillary messages. 

Meanwhile the Senate is still going after Fusion GPS, trying to pull in the guy who got the data from Steele on some sort of charge. Yeah, our Senate after finding no reason to look into Russian interference has convened a fourth committee to get Glenn Simpson to say something they can nail him with. The right wing is going crazy because he pleaded the fifth to avoid their tactics. Meanwhile his lawyer confronted the Fox News person who has been covering the story. That lady has been trying to pick at little details as not being correct. The lawyer shut her down with a simple statement that the big picture is that a hostile foreign power interfered in our election, that the evidence is there, and this lady and the Senate want to say there is something incorrect on page 127 of a report.

So what is the White House doing. They are working closely with the Saudi royal family to come up with an explanation. Eric Swalwell of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees has said that as a prosecutor if it takes this long to come up with an explanation then they don’t need to bother because the truth is obvious. (I beg to differ on this point. We’ve only been given three different stories. I mean, come on, give a guy a chance.)

Besides the Saudis have allowed a Turkish investigative team inside their consulate in Istanbul to look around. I don’t know what they found. Well, yeah, there was lots of fresh paint, and there had been seen cleaners coming in days before with lots and lots of boxes of cleaning supplies. So what? Doesn’t prove anything, right?

Once again, journalists familiar with crime families and despots say the behavior of not only the Saudis but the White House resembles the machinations of a crime family more than a government.

So what are our representatives doing about this situation? Well, here’s a check list of what to expect:

– Statements that they are outraged.

– Statements that we must get to the bottom of this, that we must know the facts.

– Statements demonstrating their anguish and despair.

Then it will be time to move along.

Speaking of moving along, you may not know this but there’s an election soon. Republicans have been hard at work, trying wherever they can and by whatever means at their disposal to limit, restrict and impede the vote. Apparently, the group that sends out people to poor and minority neighborhoods to hover over voters in an attempt to intimidate them. Oh sorry, in a patriotic effort to make sure their is nothing untoward going on, has issued a dire warning and they are asking for money to help stop this radical left wing plot. Hundreds and thousands of people have submitted applications to vote and this group wants to stop that. Imagine what might happen? Fortunately, in Texas where this has been happening. The state government has a dozen people entering information by hand. They have 35,000 new applications and they’ve gotten through 10,000. Voting starts Monday. Gosh, they may not get them all done. Oh well, that’s democracy at work!

Speaking of early voting, there’s another plot afoot. Numbers in Georgia are showing three times the number of people are voting early in the first day of early voting compared to the last off  year election in that state. This despite Republican efforts to do all they can to slow it down. People had to wait in line for three hours to vote. You’d think they’d have better things to do. But no. They stayed there and voted. Maybe the officials can spoil the ballots. You gotta dream! The Republicans did call an old folks home and tell the old folks that they couldn’t come by bus to vote. Gotta be creative. Make stuff up. I mean – people are trying to vote! 

Oh sorry, I got distracted, back to dismemberment. This time lets talk about our government. Michael Lewis has a new book out that chronicles how the Trump administration has ignored much of the government and how they have put people in charge of agencies that have a vested interest in dismembering that self same agency. Like the guy from Acu-Weather in charge of the Weather Service. He wants to charge for weather information, therefore whatever he can do to keep the Weather Service from doing its job allows his company to do it and charge people. This is kind of like cutting off fingers don’t you think? Then we can bring out the bone saw and really go to work. 

941 Days to Go

PS The kid at Teotihucan

(Okay, I’m at the Field Museum in front of a picture of Teotihucan, but I’ll be there soon!)