Collusion Proven

Updated:  To correct mistake on date, see text below in red.

This summarizes the information I have seen on an excellent Twitter thread by Seth Abramson, Attorney and Professor at that University of New Hampshire.

In the Papadopoulos indictment, it says he met with Russian national to set up Kremlin channel for Trump on 3/24/2016.  He told Trump about it and the ongoing DNC hack by the Russians on 3/31/2016—note the DNC did not know they were being hacked yet (hacked emails were dated from Jan 2015-May 2016).   Also note that Papadopoulos is saying that EVERY attendee of the 3/31/2016 meeting lied about it.  This includes Jeff Sessions, which means there is a good chance that he will face perjury charges soon.

According to J.D. Gordon, Trump campaign’s national-security policy rep for the RNC, told CNN that he and others advocated for watering down the language regarding support for Ukraine because Trump told them to do so back in March 2016–the infamous 3/31 meeting.  This is a change from what Gordon said earlier this year when he said Trump had nothing to do with the change.  He’s probably scared the FBI is coming after him next.

Papdopolous, per the indictment, notified Trump and others about the ongoing DNC hack in April 2016 —note the DNC did not know they were being hacked yet (hacked emails were dated from Jan 2015-May 2016).  Anyway, the DNC emails were released to the world by Wikileaks on July 22, 2016.

So it seems that DNC emails in July 2016 were “quid pro quo” for Trump changing the GOP platform on 3/31/2016.  Basically Trump knew the Russians wanted to collude (per Papdopoulos), that they had info that would help his campaign (also per Papdopoulos) and he took a direct act in furtherance to benefit Russia (per Gordon and others, probably Manafort once he flips, which venal guy that he is is expected, otherwise he’ll rot in Federal prison for the rest of his life).  That is collusion.   Mueller has Trump by short hairs and he’s just getting started with indictments.

Now let’s see what a Narcissist like Trump will do.  If he fires Mueller, a crisis might occur if Congress does nothing to protect Mueller.  The investigation won’t go away but Congress MUST protect Mueller in order to protect Rule of Law and the Balance of Powers.  Will they do it though?  I honestly don’t think they will, sadly.  For the GOP in control of Congress now, staying in power seems to be more important than supporting the foundations of our democracy.  Good Lord, I hope they prove me wrong and do the right thing.

No matter what though……Wow, just wow.

 

Sources:

(THREAD) Paul Manafort and Rick Gates are now indicted. This thread analyzes legal and political aspects of their indictment and surrender. pic.twitter.com/Ir8zKaA1F2

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 30, 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/30/trump-russia-indictment-george-papadopoulos

http://www.businessinsider.com/jd-gordon-trump-adviser-ukraine-rnc-2017-3

The Id from New York

Herr Drumpf is at it again.  He said yesterday he wants to punch Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and bona fide self-made billionaire (worth about 8x’s more than Trump), because Bloomberg had the nerve to criticize him at the DNC this week.  I mean, who would expect criticism during a Presidential election?  /snark

Seriously though, my five year old has more restraint both physically and verbally than this crusty old cheesy poof. I think this video nails the reason down as to why so many people do support him. He is a mostly unrestrained Id. Something very wrong probably happened to him as a child and his development is seriously arrested. Either he was very abused and his maturity is stuck at the age of trauma OR his parents were so lenient that he never suffered repercussions to his behavior and as a result he did not mature past a certain point. This kind of person doesn’t spring wholly formed into adulthood like this–this kind of sociopath is made. But either way, whether he is rebelling and reacting against some inner demon created by abuse or acting out because he has so little self-control, there is very little pause between his emotions, his thoughts and his actions. And that appeals to people who are afraid and frustrated. They WISH they could just let their crazy flag fly but they’re too scared–they’re scared because their parents taught them better and they know if they acted this way there would be serious consequences for them.

And since they can’t express themselves and this dried goop of semi-rancid orange marmalade can, they support him. He is their Id made manifest. Furthermore, they see his behavior as being honest and genuine. While it may be genuine, it isn’t honest. True honesty involves self-reflection and actually does incorporate filtering, and by filtering I mean expressing that honesty in a way that is constructive. People who spew truth without couching it in a way that people can hear, either through humor or through simple courtesy and humility, are being insulting, childish and basically assholes. Mature people recognize Herr Cheesy Poof (TM!) as the latter.

It comes down to this. I think we as liberals have to accept that voters, particularly American voters are not rational. Call me elitist if you want but the fact that hundreds of millions of people support this sad excuse for a human being is absolute proof of that irrationality. The Left’s failure to truly accept this is hurting us and it will continue to hurt us. People don’t vote rationally so we can’t appeal to their rationality alone. We MUST get better at appealing to their emotions and their deep seated needs along with presenting a rational, logic based case for our solutions and candidates. But for right now, we’re stuck with half the country hoping Herr Cheesy Poof, the Id from New York, will become the next leader of the most powerful country on Earth.

I don’t talk about my faith very much.  I tend to be privately spiritual, more so than the “go to church” and “let me witness to others” type of person.  But there are times when I am seriously worried and when the only thing left to do is to appeal to a higher power.  Now is one of those times.  God help us all.

Our Dictator in the Making, aka Putin’s Useful Idiot

Herr Drumpf has declared China and Russia to be our friends because (the FBI says) they hacked the DNC’s emails (and modified some of them) in order to sow discord in the party’s convention.  While I’m irritated that a handful of emails were ugly they’re not game changers or smoking guns and the DNC has reacted appropriately to smooth things over.  I’m much more concerned with the fact that Putin is purposely interfering with our Presidential election, which is unprecedented in our country’s history to my knowledge.  What’s worse, it appears to be working because our Media, which can’t resist a controversy, is blowing the email story out of proportion and because Herr Drumpf, who relies on Russian oligarchs for money (the same oligarchs that put and help keep Putin in power), is saying that he would essentially abandon our NATO partners to Russia’s encroachment.   Either Herr Drumpf is actively working for Russian interests or he’s their Useful Idiot.  And you know we’re headed for some serious trouble when the best we can hope for is that a Presidential candidate is a Useful Idiot for an expansionist Russian dictator.

 

h/t Ashby at BobCesca.com

Don’t black folk know what they’re supposed to do?

Okay, I can’t stand it any more.  I HAVE to say something about Ferguson and the cop shootings that America is now FINALLY paying attention to.  The tipping point came for me yesterday when I finally watched the video of the Tamir Rice shooting and read an article on the audio evidence that proves Officer Darren Wilson was not telling the truth in his accounts of the Michael Brown shooting.

The U.S. is like a drug addict that refuses to acknowledge they have a problem.  All the signs are there.  The data is VERY clear.    Here’s some examples of what I’m talking about.

• More Utahns were killed by police than by street gangs or drugs or child abuse.
• There is a significant disparity between police shootings of white people than other minorities, particularly blacks.
• The ubiquity of guns in our society means that police must be more heavily armed and in recent years they have become militarized to unprecedented degree.*    Young men, particularly, black men pay the price for our gun rights and we all pay dearly for the militarization of law enforcement (not just with our lives but also with our taxes).
• People are prejudiced even when they think they are not.  It’s subconscious.  Even law enforcement who are better trained and have better reflexes.  Don’t believe me? Go test yourself.

Some thoughts that are just pinging around in my brain that I have to get out.  Keep in mind, I’m not some uninformed liberal spouting off–I have a Masters in Criminal Justice and I’ve worked in the system.

• The Prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, in the Brown shooting did not WANT an indictment therefore there wasn’t one.  A typical prosecutor could indict a comatose 90-year old grandmother if he/she wanted to.
  • He dumped a ton of data on the jury without providing any guidance into what was exculpatory, degree of trustworthiness, interpreting (because the forensic stuff can be really tough to understand), etc.  To expect a lay person to be able to sort through, prioritize and understand all of that data is absurd and no real prosecutor would do that.
  • He engaged in victim blaming by telling them that Brown was on drugs when there was no evidence of that
  • He improperly instructed the jury on the law — this is HUGE and if this had been a trial, it would have been excellent grounds for an appeal
  • He should have recused himself.  His father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty by, you guessed it, a black man.
  • He failed to perform his duty as a Prosecutor–they are supposed to advocate for indictment. In fact the vast majority of grand juries in this country return with an indictment.

  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them. 

• The audio from the Brown shooting proves that Wilson did not tell the truth.
• White people riot all the fucking time for the stupidest shit and no one blames it on their “culture of lawlessness”.  But let some black people riot and the media and the majority of white people will shake their heads and question why.  Why would they riot when there’s no history of racial discrimination in policing in the U.S. (ht to Bob Cesca)? Why would they riot when they only have themselves to blame?  All of the Fox News coverage has been in this vein, but the best examples are interviews with Rudy Giulani.
• The Tamir Rice video is horrifying.  The video shows the police lied about many crucial issues.  If you only listen to the police version (as is too often the case), then it sounds like Tamir was a serious threat .  If you watch the video you will be stunned.
  • They said there were multiple people in the park.  The video shows the 12 year old boy was alone.
  • They said they told him to  put his hands up three times.  The video shows less than 2 seconds passed between the car pulling up, the officers got out of the vehicle and when the shots occurred.  So either the officer gave the fastest and clearest commands in the history of human language (award that man a Guinness World Record!) or he didn’t give them at all.
  • Tamir was already down on the ground when they shot him…he reacted immediately to their presence by making himself non-threatening.
  • After they shot him and the boy was clearly no longer a threat they watched him suffer and provided no first aid until a detective and FBI agent showed up.   Although they’re under no obligation to provide first aid IF they felt the situation is unsafe.  But the boy was no longer a threat.  Actually he wasn’t even a threat when they shot him, but why quibble, amiright?  Ironic that the failure to render aid, made sure their version will be the only one we hear (other than the pure luck of the surveillance video from across the street which can’t really tell us the whole story).
•  The Rice shooting is very scary to me personally.  My stepson is 12 years old, loves guns, and is very familiar with them.   He is also brown–decidedly not white.   We’ve taught him to be safe with them.  He knows not to handle real guns without an adult being present.  BUT he doesn’t know that it’s probably not a good idea to handle fake one’s either.    I am going to make damn sure he never has a fake gun in any public place and when his family is not with him.
• There was a shooting just reported in AZ of a black man by a white cop.  I’m still waiting for more details to come in.  Cop thought the guy had a gun in his pocket–it was a bottle of pills.

If you listen to what is being said in the media (not just on Fox but on CNN and local stations too), there is a lot of victim blaming and officer excuse making.  White America’s attitude is coming across like this.

‘Don’t black folk know they should never ever carry anything in their pockets AND should always keep their hands in the air AND always have a pleasant or at least non-demonic look on their face.  AND they can’t be too large or physically intimidating because a big black many is very scary, even to really big white men, even when they’re 25+ feet away**.  So if you’re a big black guy, hunch your shoulders.  And whatever you do, don’t be sullen or angry.’

In other words, don’t give the white cops an excuse to kill you and this message is loud and clear to the black community.  Most of their parents have already told them not to do such things.  Not that doing any of that will actually keep black men safe in this country.  When an entire race of people in our society have to raise their sons to live in fear and act more passive and non-threatening with the police than white people do, then something is terribly, terribly wrong.  The sooner white people acknowledge this, the sooner we can address the problem.  But I don’t think white people in general are capable of acknowledging our complicity in this problem because that would mean acknowledging that we’re wrong about something.  As we’ve seen time and time again, too many Americans think that if we’re not exceptional and right all the time, we’re nothing at all.

Notes:

*I totally understand why the police want bigger and better guns.  When I was a probation officer I always felt like I was outgunned.  I had a Speed 6 Ruger, a “brick” cell phone with a dead battery, no partner or back-up and my crappy little car (VW Fox).  I would go into the field armed with these items.  Here are just some examples of what I faced with those “weapons:

• walking into crack houses where I was surrounded by dozens of male drug addicts and/or dealers
• interviewing a probationers with serious anger control issues (child abuser/molester/wife beater) in their dark and dingy homes
• explaining to VERY angry probationers and their family members why I had to talk to their boss at work about his/her probation and why they lost their job and would soon probably be homeless.  (I took no joy in this task.  I was legally obligated to verify employment with a supervisor a few times a year.  Talk about the system shooting itself in the foot.  The minute they lost their job their risk of recidivism would skyrocket)  

I guess if I couldn’t draw my weapon in time or if I lost it, I could have used the cell phone to brain them.

**Brown was 6 ft 5 in and 290 lbs and Wilson was 6 ft 4 in and 210 lbs.  Wilson isn’t small by any means.  He also had at least two deadly weapons–his pistol and his police car.  Who knows what he had in the trunk–one can safely assume a shotgun.  Plus he had a radio so he could call in reinforcements.  In regards to the distance, the audio article clearly proves Wilson was either lying about the distance or lying about Brown charging him or both.

No do-overs

Three AZ state senators who voted for the hideous “Jim Crow Bill” permitting civil rights discrimination against LGBTQIA people are now asking the Governor to veto it.  Sen. Bob Worsley (R-Mesa), Sen. Steve Pierce (R-Prescott) and Sen. Adam Driggs (R-Phoenix) said they have received feedback from fellow Republicans from across the nation that the bill was unacceptable.  They also say that they didn’t get enough time to really consider the bill.  And finally, they’re saying that opponents of the bill are mis-characterizing it as “religious intolerance” and that this accusation is “causing our state immeasurable harm.”

First, I don’t EVER, EVER want to hear from the people who make laws on behalf of this state or country that they were rushed.  Bullshit.  I don’t care how much pressure they feel. When it comes to ANY bill related to Civil Rights, it’s their job to slow down, present it to their constituents, think about the ramifications (good and bad), run it by some Constitutional Lawyers, and take their DAMN time before making up their mind. Saying they were rushed is a child’s excuse.

Second, why did they have to hear this from their fellow Republicans from other states?  There are plenty of people, you know their actual constituents, complaining right under their noses.  On Feb. 21st about 300 people gathered at the Capital to protest and encouraged Gov. Brewer to veto the bill.  As of last night, the crowd has grown to around thousand–on a weekday.  NYC or LA probably gets flash mobs with more people, but for AZ that’s not a bad turn out.  And it wasn’t just in the state capital either.  Tucson had protesters as well.  And I know the activity online is hot and furious–I wonder how many emails and calls the Legislature and Governor are getting now….  The very angry and active LGBTQIA community and others who support them, like myself, need to be heard.  That’s who our Reps and Senators should be listening to…not other members of their political party from out of state.  Those other Pols are much more concerned about optics than real justice or good governance.

Third, this change of heart is really about money.  They spoke to leaders of the business community (Apple, Inc, American Airlines, etc) who said if you do this, not only will tourists stop coming to the state (and we rely heavily on tourism for our economy) but businesses would also stop moving to Arizona.

Fourth and final, I get the impression that they’re saying [paraphrasing] that ‘people’s misconception of the bill is making us look bad.’  No, no that’s not it. What’s making us look bad is literally the bill itself.  It’s because the bill is an unconstitutional abomination that makes Arizona look like the home of the American Taliban.  Who needs to worry about Sharia Law?  It’s not the scary Muslim Usurper in the White House you need to worry about.  It’s the American (supposed) Christians that are trying to install their very own theocracy that keeps me up at night.  They need to stay out of people’s bed rooms and treat everyone with respect, compassion and kindness….I seem to recall a famous guy who purportedly lived in The Holy Land about 2,000 years ago  saying something like this…..hmmmm….if only I could recall his name…….if only THEY could recall his teachings.