Collusion?

That was Trey Gowdy who was saying they should get the Mueller investigation over.  He was the guy who ran the House investigation of Benghazi which went on for two and a half years, twice as long as the Mueller investigation has gone on for, and came up with nothing.  No indictments, no nothing.  The Mueller investigation has come up with a lot of indictments and a lot of information.

If Trump is not guilty of collusion with the Russkies what does he have to worry about?  If he is guilty isn't that something we should know about?  If Putin isn't pulling his strings, why is Trump consistently championing him?  Is it because he is a big fucking idiot?  Is it because he is a shrewd operator and realizes, unlike everybody else. that Putin is a swell guy?

And this just in, Trump doesn't want any Americans to be present when he has his one on one with Putin.  There will be Russian translators I assume, but no Americans.  Geez why is that do you wonder?

A lot of pundits think it will be the death of a thousand cuts for abortion, where all the state laws that make it impossible for clinics to operate will be approved, so that there will no abortions in the red states, but I don't think that will be enough for the conservatives and I think they will push to repeal it.  Of course the lawsuit is already being prepared, and I believe they can skip the lower courts and take the case directly to the supremes.  The supremes don't have to take the case, but loaded with conservative judges who doubts that they wouldn't?

I remember during the battle for gay marriage Beagles maintaining that if gays were allowed to marry it would hurt his marriage, which didn't make any sense to me, and later Beagles said it didn't hurt his marriage after all, and in fact I don't see that it has hurt anything.  Why do you want to hurt these people who have done nothing to you?  Is it because they are doing something you don't like so you feel that they should be punished?

If Beagles is going to send links to stories and have us read through them, I think it should behoove him to read past the headline and see if the story says what he thinks it does.


That Kennedy thing sounded a little strange but it didn't seem like it led anywhere.  Not like Trump meeting with the Russkies and no Americans allowed in the room.

The thing about NATO is not that the Europeans don't pay into some specific fund, the requirement is that they pay a certain percentage of their gross national product into defense which they haven't been keeping up with, but as Old Dog points out, they are paying more than Russia or China.  Does Trump hate NATO because he thinks they are cheapskates or because the raison de etre of NATO is to hold back the Russkies?  I leave it to reasonable people to decide.

This intellectual dark web that Old Dog speaks of, isn't The Institute part of that?

Those Pesky Russians

I started to read the Wiki article on the Russian thing, and a lot of it sounded familiar.  That's probably because it's been repeated so often in the news for the last year and a half.  Funny that we never heard about it before the election though.  The hoopla about Hillary's emails, on the other hand, was mostly before the election, although I seem to remember that it recently cropped up in the news again.  Maybe they are just using it as a filler on slow news days.  Personally, I lost interest in both subjects a long time ago.  It's the same thing over and over again with no end in sight.  I caught something on the TV news the other day that pretty well sums it up for me.  I tuned in right at the end, so I'm not sure, but it looked like some kind of congressional hearing.  What I heard was this guy say to another guy, "Whatever it is that you're doing, I wish you would get it the hell over with."

Naturally I would be happy to see Roe v Wade overturned, but I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon.  First somebody would have to file a lawsuit, then it would have to work its way through the courts, which could take years.  I don't think the Supremes can short cut the process and intervene at some point and, even if they can, that doesn't mean that they will.  It would please me even more to see that gay marriage thing overturned, but that would be an even tougher row to hoe.  What would they do about the gays that are already married?  I don't think the government can un-marry people against the will of both parties.  Be that as it may, I'm glad to see the courts are taking a conservative tack for a change.  For most of my life, I have maintained that the courts have too much power.  I'll have to remember not to say that in the near future.

I looked over that article about Trudeau again, and I can't find where it says, in so many words, that Canada is willing to take all those asylum seekers off our hands.  I must have gotten that impression from the headline of the article I saw on Face Book.  When I tried to find something about it the next day, my personal assistant Cortana assembled several articles on the subject for me.  I scanned the headlines and clicked on the one I told you about.  Because it says "Trudeau forced to back down...", I assumed it was more current than the Face Book article.  I'm sure that more can be found on the subject if anybody is interested.

And stay out

It looks like some of the conspiracy theorists are having fun with the recent resignation of Justice Kennedy.  Kennedy's son used to work at Deutsche Bank, the only bank that was willing to lend Trump any money for a while.  Many millions of dollars were involved and a reasonable person may wonder if it was ever paid back.  I don't think the young Kennedy had anything to do with any loans but it is an interesting coincidence.  Money, and lots of it, seems to be the common denominator of all the current investigations which is somewhat of a relief to me.  It would be very different if state secrets or nuclear launch codes were involved.  Although none of my business, I'd like to see how much the Trump Organization owes, and to whom.  Can Trump be squeezed to affect foreign or domestic policy?

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I've read that the Russian annexation of Crimea had little to do with the Russian-speaking population but with the strategic value of the Black Sea port at Sevastopol.  Russia sorely lacks ports that don't freeze over in the winter and Sevastopol might be the only way out to deep water during the winter.  They still have to get through the Mediterranean, though, which may not be an easy task.

We've all heard Trump bitch about NATO and how the member nations aren't paying their way and the US is getting screwed.  Maybe so, but I've read (or heard) that, collectively, Europe spends more on defense than either Russia or China.  You can't say they are sitting on their hands and forcing the US to do everything, and it would really be something if the Europeans decided to throw the US out of NATO before Trump has a chance to threaten withdrawal.  Close all the bases, evacuate all the troops, and take your tariffs and shove 'em up your ass, you damn Yankees!  They can nationalize all the Trump properties while there at it, too.

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The influence of social media is well known but there is more to it than the familiar short forms like Facebook and Twitter.  A long form is emerging, based on blogs and YouTube videos, jokingly referred to as the Intellectual Dark Web.  These forays are usually long (some over three hours) conversations between (usually) reasonable people about all sorts of topics.  But they can drag on but since there is no editing you can get a good sense of what they mean; no tidy news bites here and the conversations develop and wander naturally.  Kind of like My Dinner with Andre (which I haven't seen yet) but without the dinner.  This article sums it up.

The Fourth

I didn't read the whole thing, but I didn't see where it said that Canada was willing to take all our asylum seekers.

How did the Russkies interfere with our elections?  I don't have all day so I asked wiki and here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections

Who even reads that crap anyway?  Lots of people,  The latest scam I've noticed is people posting patriotic photos and then saying that fb doesn't allow those kinds of photos, so then why is the photo up there?  I don't think Beagles watches fb much.  I think he goes there once a week and looks to see if there is anything involving his family and to give me a like on my Monday painting post (thank you),  which seems reasonable.  Myself I am probably on it too much, but since I am an esteemed colleague of the Institute, I don't pay the crap much mind. 

I remember when Twitter first came out the thing that struck me was how it limited the post to 140 characters and I thought how can you say anything of import in so few characters, and I thought it would never catch on, but I was wrong about that.  I don't get it,

If you don't give a political party any money, and I admit I hardly ever do, than you are leaving the influence to those who have a lot of money and want to push a particular issue,  They make a big deal out of where the candidates' money comes from, and if it comes from a lot of small donations it is seen as the candidate having a lot of popular support, whereas if it comes from a few sources who don't reveal their donors it means the guy is in somebody's pocket, but then that money leads to popular support.

Does anybody believe that appointing someone from Trump's list won't lead to the overturn of Roe vs Wade?

Okay I am heading down to Champaign this morning to spend the Fourth with my beer drinking Champaign buddies,  Will be returning Thursday, so I won't be posting again until Friday at the earliest.  Carry on Beaglestonians.

The Canadian Connection

I saw something on Face Book Saturday night that seemed to imply that Canada was willing to take all those asylum seekers off our hands.  I didn't click on it at the time, but I got to thinking later that, if this is true, it might be a way to resolve the issue.  Last night I went searching for the article, and this is what I found:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/25/justin-trudeau-forced-to-backtrack-on-open-invitation-to-refugees

I still don't understand what is the big deal about those Russians.  Near as I can tell, all they did was run a bunch of fake ads on Face Book.  Is that illegal?  Who even reads that crap anyway?  Another thing that puzzles me is all the stuff Trump, and now Trudeau, has been putting on Twitter.  Is this the wave of the future?  I thought that the only people who read Twitter were teenagers, most of whom are too young to vote in the first place.

Although political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, it seems like they would fall under the protection of the First Amendment's freedom of speech and assembly.  Furthermore, if you could abolish them by legislation, I'm pretty sure you would have to abolish them all, not just the ones you don't like.  One way to get rid of them, or at least reduce their influence, would be if people just quit giving them money.  I'm already doing my part in that respect, all you've got to do is convince everybody else to do the same.

politicians without parties???

The White House sez those reports of Lil' Kim renuclearizing are so much bushwa.  Of course nobody knows exactly who The White House is.  It's not Trump because then it would be Trump sez, it's Kelly or that Sanders woman, or who knows?  And of course whoever it is will have to take back what they said if Trump tweets something else in the next few hours.  If they had Trumpian powers they would be able to say that they never said what they said before, but so far Trump has not extended those powers to any mortals.

He is getting pissed at his sword dancing buddies, because he thinks they told him they would cut their oil prices, but they said they didn't.  That's the trouble with being a pal to the prez, you can fall out of favor just like that, he always needs a target.

I think everybody in Washington including that mysterious entity The White House agrees that the Russkies played us, it's only the prez who thinks they didn't, because Putin told him they didn't.

Of course the founding fathers abhorred political parties, but that only lasted until old Beechwood Bicuspids left office. 

Following up on Old Dog's thought experiment, well I'm not sure about that first step.  All the same guys remain in office, but the party coffers are emptied between the office holders with I imagine the senators getting more than the reps, getting more than the alderman, so what happens different since you have the same guys and they are going to be as liberal or conservative as before?  It seems to me that the parties are the people, not some document filed somewhere or the party platform.

Har, the party platform.  As Beagles notes, the only time that subject ever comes up is at the political conventions where it is hotly fought over and then promptly ignored by everybody.  I guess I think the parties should be stronger with the platform printed on their foreheads like the ingredients on a cereal box, and they would be bound to follow it so that you would know what you were getting.  That's as far as I am taking this thought experiment and I will leave to the dawgs to take it further.


Are the Tarians! back?  They had a vogue just before the tea party I believe.  The Tea Party gave the Tarians! some lip service, but it was mostly just a way to say they didn't want to pay any taxes and they wanted to sound intellectual rather than cheap about it so they pretended to be Tarians! though they only kept the right wing part of the platform.  Anymore there are still some who mouth the term, I think Paul Ryan is one, but of course what is truer to them than anything written on paper is the latest tweet which they hem and haw a bit about the most outrageous ones, but in the end, they never fail to pay homage to that great man.

It seems like a couple elections ago the Tarians! ran an obscure but actual politician and last time they ran those two clowns.  I don't know where they are today.

I think Vietnam is doing quite well these days, much better than that rump of corruption South Vietnam ever did.  Right now Trump is tossing our allies under the bus by pulling out of trade agreements allowing the Chinese to dominate trade.

None of the above

And the worm turns, again.  Shortly after the Singapore Summit our fearless leader was effusive in his praise of Little Kim and denuclearization was all but a done deal.  And yet, it has been recently reported that North Korea is increasing its production of nuclear fuel.  Is this supposed to have been a good deal for the US?  I now understand why Trump is always moaning about fake news; he is living in a fake reality.

And to add more ingredients to the political shit stew, Putin and Trump will be meeting in Helsinki in a couple of weeks and I'm sure they will have a lot to talk about.  There is also an upcoming trip to Great Britain but I don't know if that's part of the Helsinki trip.  The optics of these trips are interesting.  Diplomatically speaking, it seems to me that Trump acts more as a supplicant than an equal or superior.  He thinks he is acting from a position of strength but he isn't, really, not as long as he flips positions so quickly and refutes what he has said days earlier.  I can't imagine any foreign leader trusting him, for any reason.

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It would me nice if folks in Washington would just admit that Russia has played us, doing a much better job of propaganda and manipulation of social media than we have done to them.  In hindsight it is fair to say that our security sucked and their capabilities were vastly underrated.  Okay, let's admit it, fix the flaws, and move one. But it's also likely that intelligence assets of the CIA, NSA, and other alphabet agencies saw all this coming, wrote reports and passed their findings "upstairs" only to find their analyses ignored or forgotten.  The federal bureaucracy is like a bunch of children who don't play nicely with each other, much to our peril.

And we weren't the only victims of Russian shenanigans, the British got hit, too.  I've read that the Russkis had a big part in influencing that Brexit vote which goes a long way in weakening the European Union.  A  fragmented Europe and a befuddled US is exactly the kind of scenario that Putin likes.  He prefers pulling strings, and he is a master puppeteer.

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Since both a split in the Republican Party and the creation of a viable third party are unlikely, I have come up with what may be my stupidest idea yet: the dissolution of both parties.  Both parties suck, in their own way and are equally corrupt and compromised by corporate influence in their own ways.  Split the dough in their coffers among current office holders and then see what kind of parties they can come up with.  Maybe there will be two parties, or maybe ten.  The current Libertarian, Green, and other parties of the fringe persuasion can remain as is.  This half-baked idea needs more work, but what the hell.  It's one way out of this mess and will free us from all the baggage that is associated with being either a Democrat or Republican.