Notes from the Mueller Report

I spent the entire weekend reading The Mueller Report.  That means Friday night, all during the day and part of the evening on Saturday and half of the day and part of the evening on Sunday.

Yes, I’m a slow reader.

Still, it’s 448 pages and it’s dense.  Though it is not so dense that you need to be a lawyer to read it.  In fact, it probably helps to NOT be a lawyer. In that way, you don’t get lost in a mire of technicalities and convoluted, stretched-beyond credulity interpretations of federal and/or criminal statutes.

No TV lawyers either! #sorryAnnalise

What we laymen and laywomen (aka the voters) will ultimately see are the basics.  And then we will all have to ask ourselves some questions.  Those would be:

  1. Did Russia interfere in the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump to U.S. President?
  2. Did the Trump campaign work with Russia to get elected?
  3. Did Trump try to hide (aka lie about) his relationship to Russia?
  4. Does Trump have the qualities of someone we want to continue as President?

If you changed the name of Trump to Smith and every person who worked for him to nom de plumes like, say, Mitzie, Fritzie, Trixie and Vi in this exhaustive account, and then afterwards refrained from consulting with ANYONE who had legal expertise or skin in the game, I promise you there would be only ONE WAY to answer all of these questions.

  1. YES
  2. YES
  3. YES

and

     4. NO!!! No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Me, the entire weekend

But don’t take my word for it.  Here are only a few salient facts.

  1. Did you know that Smith’s campaign manager actually gave specific and ongoing polling information to Russia throughout the campaign about the Rust Belt States that eventually gave Pres. Smith his Electoral College victory? We’re talking about data from and about Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota – the very states that put him over the top.

Oh yeah, he did.  He met up with them and handed the facts not only right before the Republican convention in 2016 but in repeated contacts prior to, right after and right up until the November election.  Truly.  It jumps right out at you in the first half of the report (aka Volume I).

Reading the Mueller report like…

  1. You will also read in that same volume pages and pages on Smith surrogates such as Roger, I mean, Dodger FlintStone, among others. He and they were active participants in promoting fake, Russian-created groups with names like “Stop All Immigrants,” “Being Patriotic,” “Blacktivist” and “United Muslims of America.”   These groups were designed for and succeeded in fanning the flames of partisan anger and resentment on social media among your fellow voters.  Many hundreds of insurgent Russians, helped along by Dodger and the like, then sponsored fake live events where phony Russians (or Americans cooperating with phony Russians) posed as disgruntled or partisan Americans at rallies where shouting matches often ensued.

The anger generated by these events, spread through many other social media repostings from still more Russians and Smith-ers, then spawned other real and more partisan events until soon literally millions and millions of more people became angry, isolated, alienated and convinced that only Smith, who was usually programmed at still other events to coincide with the apex of said bubbling anger, could tout himself as the only one who could save them from such vitriol.

Fanning the flames

  1. You probably already know about that famed “whistle-blowing” organization named Leakie-Lots. But did you also know that the report delineates ways Dodger and the gang communicated between candidate Smith, Leakie and the Russian government tricksters illegally obtained hacked emails as well as other illegally obtained and damning information about the other side?

Oh sure, you’ll read excerpts from any number of Smith tweets and speeches that presage or capitalize on deadly information on his competitor that the Mueller Report connects to relationships between the Smith campaign, the Russians and still other people in the Dodger mold. Ilk.  Whatever.

Chairy, does this get better?

  1. The second half more specifically centers on the personal machinations of President Smith.  For instance, all during that year he spent on the campaign as Candidate Smith, denying he had ANY business dealings with Russia, his lawyer Fritzie, as well as his children Minnie, Ninnie and Nonnie, as well Minnie’s husband, Creamy, all KNEW that this was a big LIE.  In fact, each of them was periodically briefed during that time about ongoing plans to construct an enormous Smith Tower in Moscow.  In fact, this building was being touted as possibly THE potential luxury destination in all of Moscow, and perhaps the world.  And it could be worth countless millions, and in the end perhaps billions, to all of them.

Not as dumb as they seem

  1. But likely the most salacious documentations in the entire report confirm most of the news stories and, yes, gossip, about Smith’s personal behavior during his first two years in the White House. It seems our Electoral College POTUS really did order his closest non-family member advisors and cabinet officials to end the Special Counsel investigation into his relationship with Russia by every means necessary in fear that it would be “the end” of his reign.

His lawyers, appointees, cabinet members and friends (Note: All of whom he saw as Smith employees) tried to ignore his most outrageous requests, such as lying under oath to the SC about specific conservations he had with them and testifying to the exact opposite of what happened.  But it didn’t always work.  So if Smith persisted they would then be forced to prepare resignation letters that he would or wouldn’t accept (Note:  Sometimes he’d even just carry them around in his pocket and then lie about it to promote even more fear), stand their ground and get privately and/or publicly berated by him, or ultimately fired (though in the case of the latter, never by Smith in person).

working for the Smith administration

Various Smith retributions and temper tantrums occurred over other subjects but by far the worst had to do with Smith and Russia.  Despite whatever was observed first-hand, if Smith wanted his people to state it was raining outside, his people were expected to stand before the world in the blazing bright light of a sun-drenched day and convince everyone within ear and eyeshot to come inside in order to get away from the undeniable storm clouds pouring down on them from up above that no one but them and their fellow selected few who were also on the team could clearly see.

Still works #dated #delusional

Okay, perhaps this is all a bit cute….by half.  But it could be the only way to truly understand what the Mueller Report offers about our democracy is to change the names in order to not pre-determine an outcome.  Certainly, reality isn’t doing it.  Thus far about 40-43% of voters are still behind Electoral College POTUS Trump, I mean, Smith.

Think about it.  Then read the report for yourself.  And soon.

Ray Charles – “America The Beautiful”

 

United States of Handmaids

There’s a moment in the just released duo of episodes from the second season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale where Elisabeth Moss’ title character finds a way to mourn the many dead in her dystopian world.

It’s a rare moment of grace in one of the most depressingly riveting series to ever be on television, yet it doesn’t tip the scales towards hope. More tellingly, it simply provides a road map by which she can go on.

These days I so get it.

I’d so like to see Donald Trump as a handmaid. Mostly because it would mean I wouldn’t ever have to see or hear from him again. (Note: Handmaids don’t get to back talk and if they do they get beaten to a pulp). Plus, he’d look so god damn awful in one of those god damn red robes and god damn white bonnets.

Yeah, this is what I’ve come to. Wishing very bad things – and worse – on other people. I don’t ever do that sort of thing. Except, well, I guess now I do.

We’re here for you Chairy

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, I’d like to see Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his entire meat and potatoes Cabinet and each member of his immediate, extended profiteering family wearing the uniform too. Including Melania. Let’s see if she can silently style her way out of that one while the rest of them long for their halcyon days while chowing down on virtual pieces of their Marie Antoinette-styled tea cakes.

There is nothing in film, television or, frankly, any other art form at the moment that captures the Trump era in America better than The Handmaid’s Tale. This was clearly not novelist Margaret Atwood’s intention when she wrote it 30 plus years ago since back then the occupier in chief at the White House was merely a New York tabloid punch line – the ultimate representation of the nouveau riche 1980s, with all of the tackiness, tastelessness and déclassé that represents.

… which is why this 1990 movie reads in a MUCH different way

But that was then and this is now – as the before and after narratives in Hulu’s small screen series so relentlessly point out. What was once a paranoid delusion (ICE agents in the street ripping apart families) can become as serious as a heart attack (women seen merely as sexual objects who double as baby making machines) in what feels like the blink of an eye (National security risks) in the world of dystopian fiction as adapted for television.

Or is that mostly real life mirroring television as adapted from dystopian fiction.

This is not a drill!

Beats me if I know the difference anymore. In many ways, it’s merely a matter of degree and where you sit when you’re looking at it.

Ask the overwhelming majority of us native New Yorkers who spent any time there in the eighties. Every day these days we rue any other day in the past when we dismissed Donnie, our loathsome homeboy, as nothing more than a corrupt, racist carnival barker.

That is because we know that we treated him as merely a delicious target of amusement – someone we allowed to skate through our headlines fueled by the disgrace of his Daddy’s money, an immoral streak as unrelenting as his motor mouth and as wide as the obviously receding hairline he was even then so desperately trying to hide during a decade where looks, money, and power, as typified by lots of gold gild, somehow became the ideal.

As Barack Obama once so eloquently told us: It is time to own their (nee OUR) failure.

GET ME MORE WINE

I’ll tell you what brought me back here – to that place of rage I was at right after the 2016 election.

— It wasn’t his continuing campaign against Muslims and other non-Whites from entering our country to stoke fear and division.

Uh oh… it’s happening

– It wasn’t his restrictions against transgender people in the military out of sheer ignorance or his order to not include gay families in the US Census out of purposeful spite.

– It wasn’t his constant rolling back of Obama era environmental regulations out of greed, anger and a powerfully personal, neurotic antipathy towards his predecessor.

Getting angrier…

— Nor was it his relentless totalitarian attacks towards what are now Pulitzer Prize winning members of the free press or his own unapologetic compulsion to pass off brazen lies as truth and cold, hard inarguable facts as fake news.

– It wasn’t even the constant lying about his ties to Russia, even by the standards of Alice In Wonderland-type logic (Note: How many of his “people” in the campaign and/or administration now have confirmed ties to the Russian rabbit hole and their various other regional oligarchs – a dozen, two dozen, three thousand?)

Can’t… suppress… the… rage

In truth, it happened with his remarks this week when he was hosting this year’s medal-winning Olympic and Paralympic athletes and their families at the White House.

Specifically speaking to the Paralympians – those being top tier athletes with a wide range of disabilities, including quadriplegia and intellectual impairment – the sitting U.S. president stated:

“And what happened with the Paralympics was so incredible and so inspiring to me…. And I watched — it’s a little tough to watch too much, but I watched as much as I could. It was really fantastic, and I want to thank you.

Imagine, you have a disability you were born with or arbitrarily acquired and yet manage to train to the point where you are an international competitor, in games commensurate to the Olympics every four years, and a guy born into privilege who lives on a diet of junk food and undisciplined rage, stands up and says to you from the loudest bully pulpit in the world that it’s:

a little tough to watch you compete too much but (mea culpa) he watched you as much as I could.

How do you feel about that – you living a daily life of unbridled discipline in order to survive?

And what do you think, or feel, if you’re a friend of such a person, or a member of their family?

Moreover, what is your reaction as another human being to an off the cuff statement like that by some currently serving as you own…president?

Yeah we feel that

Reminder to a large swath (though not majority) of the American people who chose such an individual to be their leader:

Having one or two Black friends doesn’t mean you’re not a racist.

Attending a gay wedding or inviting a gay celebrity over for dinner doesn’t disqualify you from being a homophobe.

Nor does voting for or continuing to support one disqualify YOU from either label.

You’re all terrible

It is time YOU own our failures and for the rest of US who let you off the hook to give you HELL daily.  Especially if you continue to support such nonsense for your own personal convenience, peace of mind or greed.   You don’t like it – tough. You think it’s the wrong strategy? Bite me.

From now on, every day is the day after Election Day.  Or else #WeAreAllHandmaids.

Unless, of course, we already are but just haven’t been given the outfit or streamed till the end of the season.

Grace – “You Don’t Own Me”